You will be able to build a 30-day calendar with themes, formats, channels, owners and dates you can actually meet.
Priya has a small business and about 5 hours a week to spend on content (an invented example). When she drew up her first 30-day plan, it called for 22 hours, which was more time than she had.
Set aside about 45 minutes for building your own 30-day calendar. It combines the themes from lesson 9.1, the weekly rhythm from lesson 9.2 and the lesson 9.3 method of turning one piece into several. Each slot carries a working title, a theme and a stage in the customer journey. You check the whole month against your weekly hours and trim it until it fits. When it is done, you can see what goes out on each day, on which channel, for which reader and for what reason, and you know you have the time to do it.
You don't need special software. A spreadsheet does the job, and so do Notion, Trello or a shared calendar if you give them the same columns. What you track matters far more than where you track it. Set up these columns:
Date Channel, meaning where the piece goes out: blog, Instagram, email, WhatsApp broadcast and so on Theme, picked from the themes you settled on in lesson 9.1 Journey stage, marked early, middle or late as in lesson 9.1 Working title Format: blog post, short post, email, poll, image or video Status: idea, drafted, edited, scheduled or published Link, filled in after the piece is live
A journey stage describes how far a reader has come on the way to buying from you, and there are three of them: early, middle and late. A working title is a rough title or hook, and you can change it any time before publishing.
Begin with the main pieces. These are the substantial ones, such as blog posts, from which the shorter pieces are made, so the rest of the month depends on where they land. Use the rhythm from lesson 9.2 to place them, for example a blog post every week or every fortnight. Rotate them through your themes so one theme doesn't take every main piece, and rotate them through early, middle and late so you reach readers at different points on the way to buying.
With the main pieces in, add what comes from each of them using the lesson 9.3 method. One blog post gives you four short pieces: a hook post, an email tip, a poll and an image. Spread these over the days following the blog post.
Each slot then gets a working title. Until a slot has one, treat it as a gap in the plan, because gaps tend to get filled in a rush at the last minute.
Find the seasonal hooks you dated in lesson 9.1, mark the ones that land in this month, and tie each to one of your themes. Then keep one slot free in each week, as suggested in lesson 9.2, and use that open slot for something timely or for answering a question a customer has asked.
Take the times you measured in lesson 9.2 for one main piece and one short piece, and work out what the whole month needs. Put that total beside the hours you actually have for the month.
When the total is higher, remove pieces instead of counting on finding extra time somewhere. Take out short pieces first, and if that isn't enough, reduce the main pieces, until the total fits and leaves a little room to spare.
Priya's first draft had 4 blog posts, each taking 3.5 hours, for 14 hours. On top of that were 16 short pieces at half an hour each, for 8 hours. Together that is 14 + 8 = 22 hours. Her time for the month was about 5 hours a week x 4 weeks = 20 hours, so she was 22 - 20 = 2 hours over before writing anything.
She reduced the short pieces to two a week. That is 8 in total, or 4 hours, which brought the planned work down to 14 + 4 = 18 hours. She also kept 4 open slots, one per week, and budgeted half an hour for each, which is 2 hours if she uses all of them. If every open slot gets filled, her month comes to 18 + 2 = 20 hours, which fits. That worst case takes all 20 of her hours, though, with none left over. For your own month, aim for a total slightly below your available hours, so a month in which every open slot gets used still fits.
Her finished calendar runs to 16 rows: 4 blog posts, one for each theme; 8 short pieces, made up of 4 social posts built on hooks and 4 emails built on tips; and the 4 weekly open slots. She had already drafted the first week's content by the time she finished the plan.
Choose a date at the end of the 30 days for your review. Before you close the file, write that date in your diary and on the calendar itself.
When the date comes, work through every piece you published and record which ones led to replies, enquiries or sales. Likes and views alone do not count as success. What counts is an action showing the reader has moved closer to buying from you.
Group the results by theme and by channel. If most replies came from one theme and none came from another, give the first theme more room in next month's plan. Do the same with channels: if one brought enquiries and another brought only views, shift towards the one that brought enquiries. At this stage, a simple count of replies, enquiries and sales by theme gives you enough to plan a better month. More precise measurement of results is taught in the course Marketing analytics: GA4, attribution and testing.
Start by placing your main pieces, because everything else in the month hangs off them. Then fill the rest, check the hours, and book the review before you close the file.
Fill in a 30-day content calendar in a spreadsheet or any tool you like, with every slot filled and a review date set.
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