Content calendar prompts for ChatGPT and Claude

These 13 content calendar prompts help you plan a month of content with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini: set content pillars, build the calendar table, fill it with ideas from real customer questions, repurpose each piece across channels and review what worked. Each prompt asks for your capacity and your audience's actual questions, because a calendar you can't keep up with is worse than none.

How to use these prompts

Copy a prompt, replace the blanks in double braces, or keep the default after the colon: {{channels:blog, LinkedIn, newsletter}} means those three channels unless you change them. Blanks with no default, like {{customer_questions}}, need your own material.

Gather four things first:

• Goal: what the content is for this quarter, such as signups, sales calls or newsletter subscribers.
• Capacity: how many hours a week you and your team really have.
• Source material: customer questions from sales calls, support tickets, comments and search queries.
• Past results: an export of last month's posts with views, clicks or signups, if you have one.

Run the setup prompts once per quarter, the idea prompts once per month and the weekly prompts each week. Ask for tables: they paste straight into a spreadsheet, Notion or your scheduling tool.

For writing the posts themselves, use the social media prompts, the blog writing prompts or the LinkedIn prompts.

Which prompts set up the content calendar?

1. Content pillars from your audience and goals

Three to five pillars keep a calendar focused. Each one should connect a customer problem to something you sell or know.

Help me choose content pillars for {{business:a bookkeeping service for small agencies}}.

Audience: {{audience:agency owners with 5 to 30 staff}}
Goal this quarter: {{goal:book more discovery calls}}
What we know well: {{expertise}}
Customer questions we hear often:
{{customer_questions}}

Suggest {{count:4}} content pillars. For each: a name, the customer problem
it addresses, how it connects to our goal, 3 example topics taken from the
questions above, and the formats that suit it. Flag any pillar that isn't
backed by at least two real questions.

2. Build a monthly calendar table

The core prompt. Stating capacity up front keeps the plan realistic.

Create a content calendar for {{month:November 2026}}.

Channels: {{channels:blog, LinkedIn, newsletter}}
Capacity: {{capacity:one blog post and three LinkedIn posts a week, one newsletter a month}}
Pillars: {{pillars}}
Fixed dates (launches, events, holidays we care about): {{dates:none}}

Output a table with columns: date, channel, format, topic, pillar, call to
action, status ("idea"). Balance the pillars across the month. Don't exceed
the capacity. Put each blog post before the social posts that promote it.
After the table, list any assumptions you made.

3. A posting cadence you can keep

For a team that keeps starting calendars and dropping them.

I have about {{hours:5 hours}} a week for content across
{{channels:blog, LinkedIn, newsletter}}. Here is roughly how long each
format takes me: {{time_per_format}}.

Suggest 3 cadences: minimum, steady and ambitious. For each, show the
weekly hours, what gets published, and what I would have to stop doing to
reach it. Recommend one and explain what to cut first in a busy week.

Which prompts fill the calendar with ideas?

4. Ideas from real customer questions

The best topics are questions people already ask. This turns raw notes into calendar-ready ideas.

Below are customer questions from sales calls, support tickets and
comments.

{{customer_questions}}

Group them by theme. For each theme, write 3 content ideas with: a working
title, the format that suits it ({{formats:blog post, LinkedIn post, short video}}),
which pillar it fits, and the exact question it answers, quoted. Rank themes
by how often they come up. Don't add topics that aren't in the questions.

5. Seasonal and date-based hooks

Useful for planning around your industry's year. Check every date yourself, because models get them wrong.

List moments in {{period:Q1 2027}} that matter to {{audience:agency owners}}
in {{country:the UK}}: industry deadlines, buying seasons, events and
holidays that change their workload.

For each, give a content idea that connects it to one of my pillars:
{{pillars}}

Mark every date as "VERIFY" so I can confirm it from an official source.
Skip awareness days that have no real link to my audience.

6. Turn one pillar into a series

A series gives the audience a reason to come back and makes the calendar easier to fill.

Turn the pillar "{{pillar:cash flow for agencies}}" into a {{count:6}}-part
series for {{channel:LinkedIn}}.

Each part: a title, the one idea it teaches, how it builds on the previous
part, and a call to action that leads to the next one. The last part should
point to {{offer:a free cash flow checklist}}. Base the series on these
customer questions: {{customer_questions}}

How do you repurpose one piece across channels?

7. One blog post into a week of posts

Plan repurposing in the calendar itself, so every long piece produces several short ones.

Here is a blog post we are publishing on {{date}}:

{{post}}

Plan how to repurpose it across {{channels:LinkedIn, newsletter, X}} over
the following {{days:7 days}}. For each piece: channel, date, format, the
single point it takes from the post, a draft opening line, and a link back
to the post. Each piece must stand on its own for someone who never reads
the blog. Output as calendar rows.

8. Long video or podcast into a content plan

Paste a transcript. The model finds the strongest moments and maps them to formats.

Here is a transcript of our {{format:podcast episode}}:

{{transcript}}

Find the {{count:6}} strongest moments: a clear tip, a surprising number,
a strong opinion or a good story. For each, quote the passage word for
word with its rough position in the transcript, suggest a format (short
clip, quote graphic, post, newsletter section) and a channel. Then place
them in calendar rows over two weeks.

Which prompts help you run the calendar week to week?

9. Weekly brief for each piece

A short brief makes drafting faster, whether you, a teammate or a model writes the draft.

For each calendar item below, write a brief with: the reader and their
problem, the one takeaway, 3 key points, the source material to use (from
my notes), the call to action, and length.

Calendar items for the week of {{week}}:
{{items}}

Notes and source material:
{{notes}}

If an item has no source material in my notes, say so instead of filling
it with general points.

10. Gap and balance audit

Run it on the full month before you commit to it.

Here is my content calendar for {{month:November 2026}}:

{{calendar}}

Check it for: pillars that are over- or under-represented, too many
promotional posts in a row, channels with long gaps, topics that repeat,
items with no call to action, and weeks that exceed my capacity of
{{capacity:4 pieces a week}}. List each problem with the dates involved and
a specific fix.

11. Sponsored and partner post check

For calendars that include paid partnerships, affiliate links or gifted products. The FTC's Disclosures 101 for social media influencers says to disclose any financial, employment, personal or family relationship with a brand, and that the disclosure should be placed with the endorsement message itself.

These calendar items involve a brand partner, affiliate link or free
product:
{{items}}

For each, tell me: the relationship that needs disclosing, a clear
disclosure line in plain words that fits the format ({{formats:post, video, story}}),
and where it should appear so people see it without clicking "more". Flag
any item where the relationship isn't clear from my notes.

How do you review what worked?

12. Monthly results review

Export last month's posts with their numbers and paste the table. Ask for patterns, not praise.

Here are last month's published pieces with their results:

{{results_table}}

Our goal is {{goal:discovery calls booked}}, so weight that above reach.

1. Rank the pillars and formats by results against the goal.
2. Find patterns in the top 5 and bottom 5 pieces (topic, format, day,
   hook, length).
3. Say which patterns are strong and which could be chance, given how few
   pieces there are.
4. Suggest 3 changes for next month's calendar.

13. Plan next month from what you learned

Closes the loop. The new calendar should be visibly different from the old one where the data says so.

Using these findings from last month:
{{findings}}

And these new customer questions:
{{customer_questions}}

Draft next month's calendar in the same table format as before. Keep what
worked, cut or change what didn't, and add one small experiment I can
measure. After the table, list each change and the finding behind it.

What should stay human in your content calendar?

A model can fill a calendar in seconds. That is the risk. Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content asks "Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?" and notes that "using generative AI to produce large amounts of text without manual oversight or curation represents little to no effort."

Scheduling still happens in each platform or tool. On YouTube, for example, you can schedule a video's publish time in YouTube Studio, and YouTube Help notes that to change the scheduled publish time, the video's visibility must be Private. Put the publish time from your calendar into the platform as soon as the piece is ready, so the calendar and the schedule never disagree.

How do you keep these prompts handy each month?

A content calendar is a monthly routine, so the same handful of prompts gets used over and over. Kipt stores prompts like these as Markdown in a private GitHub repo you own. Save the calendar and review prompts with their blanks, tag them "content", and find them with Cmd+K when the month turns over. For video-specific planning, see the YouTube prompts.