A month-long content calendar, built in one hour

A month-long content calendar takes an hour if you decide three things before writing a single post: how often you post, which fixed dates your month has, and which types of posts you pick from. The table does the rest. Below is that hour broken into chunks, with a timer next to you.

Minutes 0–10: a rhythm you can actually keep

The first mistake is an overambitious rhythm. A post a day looks good on paper and stops in week two. For a small business, where the owner or an employee posts between other jobs, two or three posts a week kept up all month beat seven in the first week and none after.

Write at the top of the page:

• how many posts a week (say three: Monday, Wednesday, Friday);
• which channels (Facebook and Instagram; your Google Business Profile, if you have one);
• who writes and who takes the photos.

Three a week means 12–13 posts a month. That's all you need to fill.

Minutes 10–25: the month's fixed dates

Take the calendar and note everything that's definitely happening this month, in this order:

1. Your own events: a new product, a day with different opening hours, a trade fair, a discount you've already decided on.
2. Your trade's season: back to school for a bookshop, harvest for a winery, the first cold day for a heating repair business.
3. Holidays and days off that matter to you. Not all of them. Only the ones when your customers actually behave differently.

Don't fill the calendar with "International Coffee Day" if you don't sell coffee. A date added just to have something to post shows right away.

Minutes 25–35: four post types

So you don't start from scratch every time, pick four "drawers" to pull posts from. For most small businesses these work:

With three posts a week, you rotate the drawers and each comes up three times a month. It's not a fixed rule: if the month has a launch, the Product drawer gets more room.

Minutes 35–55: the table

Now fill it in. A simple table, in Excel, Google Sheets or on paper, with these columns:

For each row, write the topic in one sentence, not the whole post. "Pumpkin pizza, first of the season, photo on the table by the window" is enough. You write the text later, in one go, for the whole week.

Put in the fixed dates first, then fill the gaps from the drawers. If you get stuck on a row, leave it blank and move on; a gap in the calendar is better than a filler post.

Your Google Business Profile gets different content from Instagram. That's where updates, offers and events go. Offers and events need a start and end date, so put both in the calendar.

Minutes 55–60: when you write and schedule

Use the last five minutes to block one hour a week in your diary for writing and scheduling the next week's posts. Meta Business Suite lets you create and schedule posts and stories for Facebook and Instagram, both on a computer and in the mobile app. Once scheduled, the posts go out on their own, and you no longer depend on how busy your day is.

What to do at the end of the month

Spend ten minutes on what worked: which posts brought messages, calls or visits. Likes count for less. The drawer that brought customers gets more room next month. We wrote about posts that don't sound like ads in our Instagram article.

If you'd like to build the calendar together, or hand the posting over to us, see our marketing services.