Monthly social media content plan with ChatGPT

A content plan turns a month of posting from daily improvisation into a calendar you can staff. ChatGPT drafts one in minutes from your goals and content pillars; the roughly 40 minutes this task takes go mostly into filtering. The model generates plenty of topics. Only the ones you can back with your own facts, examples and people are worth publishing.

Goals of the month

Write down what the month is for: a product launch, a promotion, hiring, an event. Each goal should be visible in the plan. If hiring is a goal and there is no post about the team, the plan misses it.

Audience and pillars

Define the audience and 3 or 4 content pillars with proportions. A common set is useful content, product, people and engagement. Proportions keep the feed balanced: a brand page that is only product reads like an ad channel, and one with no product posts forgets why it exists. Decide the posting frequency per network as well.

The prompt

Role: you are the social media manager of a brand in {{industry}}. Context: audience: {{who}}. Networks: {{networks}}. Goals of the month: {{goals}}. Pillars and proportions: {{pillars}}. Frequency: {{posts per week}}. Task: propose a content plan for {{month}} with the date, pillar, topic, format and an opening hook for each post. Tie the topics to the goals of the month. Format: a table "date, network, pillar, topic, format, first sentence". No long dashes.

The opening hook column is useful even if you rewrite most hooks later: it forces each topic to have an angle.

Filter by facts

Go through the table and keep only topics you can back with something real: a case, a number from your operations, a photo from the office, an employee willing to be featured. The model fills gaps with generic topics ("tips for productivity") and generic holidays. Delete those, or replace them with a topic from your own work. Posts with invented numbers or reviews damage trust faster than posting less often.

Formats and owners

Assign a format and an owner to each post: a carousel, a short video, a photo with text, a poll. The owner is the person who will produce it, not the social media manager by default. A product post may need a product manager; a people post needs the person in it to agree. Plans without owners slip in the second week.

Leave room

Move the plan into the publishing calendar and leave empty slots for timely posts: news about the company, a reaction to an industry event, a customer story that arrives mid-month. A plan with every slot filled leaves no room for the posts that often perform best.

What to do

1. Write down the goals of the month.
2. Define the audience and 3 or 4 content pillars with proportions.
3. Run the prompt for dated topics tied to the goals and pillars.
4. Keep only topics backed by your own facts and examples.
5. Assign a format and an owner to each post.
6. Move the plan into the publishing calendar and leave room for timely posts.

A plan you can run

There is a post for every scheduled day with a pillar, format and owner, and every topic rests on a real company fact.

Plans

The free plan is enough for a monthly plan. Plus at 20 USD per month adds Projects and memory, so your brand's pillars and tone carry over month to month; Business at 25 USD per seat with annual billing suits a marketing team, with team data out of training by default. See ChatGPT pricing, the social media manager's version of this task and ChatGPT vs Claude.