Content Calendar Planner

---
name: content-calendar-planner
description: Use when building a quarterly editorial / content calendar. Triggers on "content calendar", "editorial calendar", "Q1 content plan", "content roadmap".
---

# Content Calendar Planner

Most content calendars are wishlists. They list 30 pieces a 2-person team will never ship, with no funnel logic, and they're ignored by week 3. This skill builds a calendar with capacity math, funnel coverage, and channel realism.

## Required inputs

1. **Team capacity** — full-time + contractor hours/week, realistic
2. **Quarter** and start date
3. **Business goals** — pipeline, signups, brand, SEO traffic
4. **Audience** — primary persona + 1-2 secondary
5. **Channels** owned — blog, newsletter, podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, X
6. **What's working** — last quarter's top 3 performing pieces
7. **What's not working** — formats / topics / channels to retire

If capacity input is "as much as we can," push back. Ship 8 great pieces, not 24 mediocre.

## Calendar structure

### 1. Quarterly themes (2-4 themes)
Each theme owns a month or 6 weeks. Themes are NOT topics — they're points of view tied to a business outcome.
- Bad theme: "AI"
- Good theme: "Why AI agents fail in production — and the architectures that work"

### 2. Anchor pieces per theme (1-2 per theme)
The big rocks. Long-form essay, original report, guide, video. These ladder everything else.

### 3. Supporting pieces (4-8 per theme)
Smaller pieces that orbit the anchor — case studies, how-tos, breakdowns, contrarian takes.

### 4. Funnel-stage tagging
Every piece gets one of:
- **TOFU** — broad awareness, drives traffic, doesn't try to convert
- **MOFU** — solution comparison, evaluation, frameworks
- **BOFU** — pricing, ROI, demos, customer stories

A healthy quarter is roughly 50% TOFU / 30% MOFU / 20% BOFU. Adjust to goals.

### 5. Channel mapping
For each piece:
- Primary channel (where it lives)
- Repurposing plan (LinkedIn post + X thread + newsletter mention)
- Distribution beyond owned (paid amplification, partner co-marketing)

### 6. Owners and dates
- Writer / producer
- Editor / approver
- Publish date (specific, not "Week 2")
- Status (draft / review / scheduled)

## Capacity math

Before publishing the plan, do the math:

```
Long-form piece: ~12-20 hours per piece (research, draft, edit, publish, distribute)
Supporting blog: ~4-8 hours per piece
Newsletter: ~2-4 hours per issue
Podcast episode: ~6-10 hours per episode (recording + edit + distribution)
Video: ~8-15 hours per video
```

Multiply per-piece hours by quantity. Compare to team capacity. If it doesn't fit, cut.

## Output structure

```
# [Quarter] Content Calendar

## Goals
- [Primary goal with metric]
- [Secondary goal]

## Capacity
- [Team] = [N] hours/week available for content
- Total quarter capacity: [N] hours
- Planned commitment: [N] hours ([%] of capacity — buffer matters)

## Themes
### Theme 1: [Name]
- Month: [Month]
- Why now: [1-2 sentences]
- Anchor piece: [Title, format, owner, date]
- Supporting pieces: [3-5 with format, owner, date, funnel stage]

[Repeat per theme]

## Calendar (week-by-week)
| Week | Piece | Format | Owner | Funnel | Channel |

## Distribution plan
For each anchor piece: 5-7 ways it gets distributed.

## What we're NOT doing this quarter
3-5 things you considered but cut. Important — explicit no-go list prevents scope creep.

## Review cadence
- Weekly stand-up (15 min)
- Mid-quarter recalibration date
- End-of-quarter retro
```

## Anti-patterns

- 30 pieces in the calendar, capacity for 12 — guarantees missed dates
- All-TOFU calendar — drives traffic that doesn't convert
- All-BOFU calendar — no audience to convert from
- Themes that are just topic buckets ("Marketing", "Sales") with no POV
- Owners listed as "team" — accountability dies in the collective
- Publish dates listed as "Q2" — useless for execution
- No retirement plan — keep adding without dropping

## Tone

- Direct about tradeoffs. "We can do 12 pieces well or 18 poorly."
- Cite the data. If newsletter is your best channel, weight it.
- Be honest about what didn't work last quarter.

## Output

Markdown calendar. End with:
1. The 3 pieces you'd cut first if capacity tightens
2. The 1 piece you'd protect at all costs
3. The single biggest risk to this plan executing