The Content Planner
The Month Is Built Before It Runs.
Most content calendars are filled in the week they go out, which is why they drift toward whatever is easiest to make. Ours is decided up front: topics chosen against your funnel, formats assigned deliberately, platforms picked per piece, and the schedule generated from all three.
Step One
Split the Month Across the Funnel First
Before a single piece is chosen, the month is divided across the three stages a buyer moves through. Publish only top-of-funnel and you get an audience that never buys. Publish only bottom-of-funnel and you are shouting offers at people who have never heard of you.
Awareness
The people who do not know you exist yet. Answers to the question they actually typed, clips that get watched by strangers, and material that earns a follow rather than a sale. Usually the largest share of the month.
Consideration
They know you exist and are comparing. Explainers, comparisons, pricing transparency, proof that you have done this before. This is the stage most businesses skip entirely, and it is where deals are lost.
Conversion
They are ready and need a reason to act now. Offers, case studies, the quote tool, the booking link. Small share of the volume, large share of the revenue.
Items are auto-assigned against the split, and can be adjusted individually in the calendar. Illustrative sample campaign.
The default weighting leans toward awareness, because that is the stage that compounds. It moves as the scorecard tells us something: if the top of the funnel is full and nothing converts, the mix shifts down.
Step Two
Topics Come From a Library, Not From a Blank Page
During setup we build a topic library for your business: the questions your buyers actually ask, mapped to the stage they ask them at. Nothing gets written because it is Tuesday.
Where topics come from
What people search, what they ask assistants, the questions your team answers on the phone every week, your competitors' gaps, and the seasonal pushes you already run. The audit seeds it; your capture sessions keep feeding it.
Mapped to a stage
Every topic carries the funnel stage it serves, which is what makes the monthly split possible. A pricing question is middle of funnel. A symptom question is top. A seasonal offer is bottom.
Nothing published twice
Every asset is logged, so the planner knows what already exists. A clip shot in June can be found in October, and a topic covered in spring does not quietly reappear in autumn with a new headline.
Step Three
Choose the Format for the Job, Not for the Habit
A topic can be an article, four clips, a carousel or all three. Each format does a different job, costs a different amount to produce, and belongs on different platforms.
| Format | What it is | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Long form | An in-depth article, blog post or recap, built to rank and to be quoted by AI assistants | The piece a serious buyer reads before they contact you, and the anchor everything else is cut from. Heaviest to produce, longest to pay off, and the only format that still earns traffic a year later. |
| Short clip | Short video, extracts and re-edits cut from your capture sessions and job-site footage | Reach. This is the format that puts you in front of people who have never heard of you. Cheap per item, which is why volume lives here. |
| Highlight reel | A sixty to ninety second compilation, auto-curated from the month's best material | The recap that works as a pinned post or an ad. Pulls together a month of individual clips into something that stands on its own. |
| Quote card | A minimal graphic carrying one idea, one statistic or one line from a capture | The cheapest way to stay present between the bigger pieces, and the format that travels furthest when someone shares it. |
| Carousel | A multi-panel explainer, process walkthrough or before-and-after | Middle of funnel work. Explains a process, a price range or a comparison without anybody needing to be on camera. |
| Social post | Written posts sized for each network, drawn from the same topic library | The connective tissue that keeps a profile alive between the pieces that took real effort. |
| Newsletter | The week's long-form piece, emailed to your list | The cheapest revenue in the mix, because it reaches people who already know you. Past customers are the likeliest people to buy again. |
Heavier formats consume more of your monthly production allowance than lighter ones, which is why the planner shows the cost of the mix before you commit to it rather than after.
Step Four
Assign Platforms, Then Generate the Schedule
Each item is assigned to the networks it suits: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, TikTok and YouTube. A clip that works on TikTok is not automatically a LinkedIn post, and the planner does not pretend otherwise.
The schedule that comes out of the formats, volumes and platforms chosen. Illustrative sample campaign.
Spaced, not dumped
The calendar spreads items across the month rather than clustering them, so your feed looks like a business that is present rather than one that remembered on the 28th.
Reviewed by a person
The agents do the volume. Every piece is read by a human editor before it goes anywhere near your name, and you can review the queue yourself if you want to.
Everything points somewhere
Each piece carries its campaign tag and a destination: the quote tool, the booking calendar, or a landing page. That is what lets the scorecard trace a booked job back to the post that started it.
A Month You Can See Before It Happens
Plans include content produced for you every month, planned this way. Add volume on top whenever the scorecard says you need it.