You start with the best intentions. A fresh color-coded spreadsheet with dates lined up neatly, maybe even a tab for ideas.
Fast forward a few weeks, and suddenly you have five campaign threads, two separate documents, and a ‘final-final-FINAL’ version of a tweet.
If this feels a little too familiar, it’s probably time for a reset. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to create a content calendar in ClickUp that’s flexible and easy to maintain. 🧰
How to Create a Content Calendar in ClickUp (Step-by-Step Guide)
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhy Use ClickUp for Your Content Calendar?
ClickUp for Marketing Teams is the everything app for work that combines project management, documents, and team communication, all in one platform—accelerated by next-generation AI automation and search.
If you’re a content marketer, social media manager, or part of a marketing team, here’s why you should use the content collaboration software:
- Customize workflows with ease, adding status stages, content types, SEO tags, and deadlines that match your process
- Drag content into the ClickUp Timeline View with a click, and even auto time-block available tasks
- Tag teammates, leave comments, and attach files right where work happens, so nothing gets lost in chat apps or email
- Build dashboards to track content performance and publish schedules, ideal for stakeholder reporting
- Automate repetitive tasks like moving content for review and setting publishing reminders
💡 Pro Tip: Tag evergreen or high-performing content that’s ripe for remixing. This helps when you’re low on capacity but still want quality output.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Create a Content Calendar in ClickUp
If you’re handling social posts, blog content, or full-blown campaigns, this step-by-step walkthrough will help you plan, assign, and track everything in one place within the content calendar software. ⚒️
Step #1: Set up your Workspace and Folder
Before you start planning posts or assigning deadlines, let’s get the foundation right. A solid workspace setup in ClickUp makes everything easier to scale, especially as your content grows across platforms.
Let’s say you’re on the BrightWave Solutions marketing team. Your team handles content for the blog, social media, email newsletters, and video. That’s a lot of moving parts, so keeping things tidy is key.
Here’s how to create an ideal social media project management workspace:
- Create a ‘Content’ folder: Head to your ClickUp workspace and open the Marketing space (or make one if it doesn’t exist yet). Here, add a new folder called ‘Content’
- Break things down by channel: Inside your new Content folder, create separate Lists for each content stream:
- Blog
- Social media
- Email newsletter
- Video
Each List is a mini-project where you can track tasks, deadlines, and content types specific to that channel.
💡 Pro Tip: Group content by purpose, not just by channel. For example, awareness content in one folder, product campaigns in another. It keeps tracking easier and reporting cleaner.
Step #2: Create custom task fields for content tracking
With your workspace set up and Lists for each content channel, it’s time to make your tasks smarter. Instead of relying on a bunch of comments and scattered updates, you can use ClickUp Custom Fields within ClickUp Tasks to keep all your content details front and center.
Now, the BrightWave Solutions team is working on everything from Instagram reels to long-form blogs. Each type of content has its own needs, but you still want a consistent way to track key info, without turning your tasks into a messy scroll-fest.
Head into each List (like Blog, Social Media, etc.) and start adding the Custom Fields you need. Some useful ones include:
- Content type: Article, video, carousel, reel, infographic, whatever you’re creating
- Owner: The team member responsible for the task
- Status: Track the stage: Draft, In Review, Scheduled, Published
- Publish date: The date the content is scheduled to go live
- Platform: Where’s it getting published (e.g., Instagram, LinkedIn, company blog)
- SEO keyword: Add the main keyword you’re targeting
Additionally, Tags in ClickUp are great for categorizing and organizing content across your calendar without getting too complicated. For example, Tags like Blog, Instagram, or Video help you quickly group by platform. You can also tag content themes, such as AI, Product Launch, or your Q3 Campaign.
💡 Pro Tip: Use two separate layers: the real plan and the parking lot. Never dump half-baked ideas directly into your calendar. Keep a separate list for brainstorms, experiments, and random stuff that might be cool someday. Only promote what’s been validated or approved.
Step #3: Add and organize content tasks
It’s time to get those content ideas into the system and start building a flow your team sticks to.
Let’s keep rolling with the BrightWave Solutions example. Here’s how to keep it all moving within the social media management tool:
- Add each content idea as a ClickUp Task in its corresponding List. That new blog post about ‘Trendspotting in AI’? Create a task for it in the Blog List. Give it a clear title, and don’t forget to fill in all those custom fields you set up earlier
- Assign owners like writers, designers, or strategists to avoid the dreaded ‘Who’s handling this?’ moment
- Break it down with subtasks to reflect your team’s actual process
- Attach your content brief or connect your ClickUp Doc to the task
For instance, the task for the ‘July Product Launch Blog’ can be assigned to the content writer. You can add subtasks for writing, design, review, and publishing, and drop the content brief link in the description so everyone has what they need.
Once your content tasks and workflows are in place, enhance your setup with ClickUp Brain. Unlike generic AI chatbots, the social media AI tool understands your projects, tasks, docs, and even your team structure.
Let’s say the team at BrightWave is launching a new AI-powered feature, and you’ve got a campaign coming up with blogs, Instagram teasers, and email newsletters.
Here’s how ClickUp Brain helps you pull it all together:
- Speed up content creation: You can ask it to draft a quick summary for your product blog post based on the brief attached to the task
- Organize your content marketing strategy: Use the AI Knowledge Manager to quickly find all tasks, subtasks, and documents tagged with ‘Product Launch’ or ‘AI Feature’
- Generate team updates: Ask AI to generate a weekly update on the status of all content deliverables tagged for the July campaign
⚡ Workflow upgrade: let Super Agents keep your calendar aligned
As your content machine grows, keeping everything in sync becomes harder than creating the content itself. ClickUp Super Agents quietly handle the housekeeping behind the scenes by monitoring task updates, spotting blockers, flagging slipping deadlines, and prompting next steps across your campaign.
Whether you’re managing a product launch with ten moving parts or juggling weekly social posts, Super Agents help keep your calendar consistent and your team unblocked without adding more manual check-ins or Slack reminders. They act like the always-on coordinator your team wishes it had.
💡 Pro Tip: Create your content briefs directly in ClickUp Docs to build a content database and keep everything centralized. Then, use ClickUp Brain to generate outlines, pull key points from meeting notes, or even draft sections of the content right inside the doc.
Step #4: Visualize your calendar with ClickUp Views
Now that you’ve added your content tasks and organized the details, it’s time to see it all come together. Clickup Views enable you to visualize your content calendar in ways that make sense for your team.
ClickUp Calendar View is where everything lives on a timeline. You’ll see all your content scheduled across days, weeks, or months, color-coded and easy to read.
Let’s say the July Product Launch is set to go live on the 10th. It pops up on the calendar exactly where it should.
If the launch gets bumped by a week? No problem, just drag the task to the new date. If BrightWave also has its Instagram teaser scheduled for the 8th and an email blast planned for the 11th, they can spot overlaps and adjust gaps on the fly.
If you want Kanban-style columns, turn to ClickUp Board View. As tasks progress, you can drag them from one stage to the next.
The content team drops the Product Launch Blog into the Idea column when it’s pitched, moves it to Draft once it’s assigned to Andrea, shifts it to Review when it’s ready for feedback, and finally shifts it to Published on go-live day.
💡 Pro Tip: Use ClickUp’s List View to filter and sort content by owner, publish date, or platform. Additionally, add the Gantt Chart View in ClickUp to plan timelines, visualize dependencies, and track project progress. It’s especially helpful for scheduling tasks, managing resources, and seeing how all your work fits together on a timeline.
Step #5: Use templates and recurring tasks to save time
Here’s where it gets more efficient: ClickUp Templates and ClickUp Recurring Tasks.
Let’s say BrightWave shares a ‘Weekly Instagram Tips’ post every Monday. Instead of creating a new task from scratch each time, the team can just set it up once as a Recurring Task. It’ll automatically pop up on the calendar every week, ready to be assigned, written, and published—no extra clicks, no forgotten posts.
ClickUp’s Content Calendar Template provides a visual and structured way to manage and track your content across multiple channels. Calendar View brings all your scheduled content into one clean, color-coded layout.
Each card in the content calendar template represents a task, such as a blog post, social media update, or video, and displays key information, including the content channel, category, and publish date.
🎥 You’ll learn how ClickUp syncs calendars across devices, lets you toggle different calendar layers, and becomes a single command center for managing personal, team, and campaign schedules.
⚙️ Bonus: Use the ClickUp Editorial Calendar Template for blog and email planning, and a social media template like the ClickUp Modern Social Media Calendar Template to streamline posts across Instagram, X, and more.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTips for Managing a Scalable Content Calendar in ClickUp
As your content operation grows, things can get messy. But with ClickUp, it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to manage a content calendar that keeps up with your team and creative chaos. 💁
- Build dashboards: Track everything from how much content you’re publishing each week to where things are getting stuck. Create a custom ClickUp Dashboard that pulls in cards for task status, deadlines, and even marketing campaign management
- Connect to third-party tools: Integrate tools like Figma and Google Drive right into ClickUp. That means less toggling between tabs and more getting things done in one place
- Automate repetitive work: Set up ClickUp Automations to automate content creation and other gruntwork like assigning reviewers, moving tasks to the next status, or nudging team members when it’s their turn
- Standardize everything you repeat: Save your weekly social posts and monthly newsletters as marketing plan templates to avoid unnecessary repetition
- Keep everyone in the loop: Use task comments, mentions, and real-time editing to streamline communication. Feedback doesn’t get lost, and approvals move faster
- Streamline feedback and approvals: Add comments directly on images, videos, or PDFs attached to tasks. You can assign feedback, resolve comments, and keep all review conversations in one place with ClickUp Proofing
Hear it from Sid Babla, Wellbeing Program Coordinator at Dartmouth College – Student Wellness Center:
Another excellent way to ensure your content calendar stays scalable is Clickup Calendar.
It’s a central hub for everything from scheduled posts to meetings and deadlines. Let’s say you’re managing content for a fast-paced FinTech startup, and you’re juggling blog deadlines, campaign rollouts, and recurring syncs across teams in different time zones.
Need to reschedule that Thursday newsletter? Just drag and drop it. Want to see only your video content deadlines for the month? Filter by Custom Fields. You can even sync it with Google Calendar or Outlook, so your editorial team remains on the same page.
And with AI-powered scheduling, ClickUp Calendar can auto-block focus time, reschedule tasks when priorities shift, and even generate meeting summaries that turn into actionable tasks.
📮ClickUp Insight: 18% of our survey respondents want to use AI to organize their lives through calendars, tasks, and reminders. Another 15% want AI to handle routine tasks and administrative work.
To do this, an AI needs to be able to: understand the priority levels for each task in a workflow, run the necessary steps to create tasks or adjust tasks, and set up automated workflows.
Most tools have one or two of these steps worked out. However, ClickUp has helped users consolidate up to 5+ apps using our platform! Experience AI-powered scheduling, where tasks and meetings can be easily allocated to open slots in your calendar based on priority levels. You can also set up custom automation rules via ClickUp Brain to handle routine tasks. Say goodbye to busy work!
Summarize this article for me pleaseLet ClickUp Handle Planning and Publishing
And there you have it! Your step-by-step walkthrough for building a powerful, organized content calendar in ClickUp. From planning blog posts to keeping up with your social schedule, everything lives in one place, updated in real time, and tailored to how your team actually works.
You can use Calendar View to map out due dates, Custom Fields to track granular content details, or Recurring Tasks to eliminate repetition from your weekly social posts. And with tools like ClickUp Brain to generate briefs and automate updates, and pre-built templates to skip the setup, you’re not just staying organized, you’re staying ahead. Sign up for ClickUp for free today! ✅
Summarize this article for me pleaseFrequently Asked Questions
What is a content calendar in ClickUp?
A content calendar in ClickUp is a structured planning system using tasks, lists, views, and custom fields that helps teams schedule, organize, and track content across channels.
How do I set up a content calendar in ClickUp?
Start by creating a workspace and a Content folder, then make Lists for each channel (e.g., blog, social, video). Add tasks with custom fields like publish date, platform, and status, then visualize them using ClickUp Calendar or Timeline views.
Can I automate content workflows in ClickUp?
Yes. Use ClickUp Automations to move tasks through review stages, remind assignees of deadlines, or reroute work when a task is overdue. This reduces manual steps and keeps the calendar moving.
What views help with editorial planning in ClickUp?
Use Calendar View to see scheduled content, Timeline and Gantt View to plan across weeks and months, Board View for workflow stages, and List View to sort and filter content details.
Why use Custom Fields in a ClickUp content calendar?
Custom fields let you capture key content details like content type, platform, SEO keyword, status, and owner, which helps teams filter, group, and manage tasks more effectively.
How does ClickUp Brain help content planning?
ClickUp Brain can draft summaries, generate weekly updates, find related tasks/docs, and surface contextual insights across your workspace, speeding up brief writing and alignment.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
