Content calendar planner: how many posts, pillar pieces and hours your plan needs.

By the Autowhat AI team · Updated 2 Nov 2026

What this planner tells you

Most content calendars fail on volume, not ideas. A plan of “four Instagram posts, three LinkedIn posts and a blog every week” sounds modest until it is multiplied out over a month and across channels. This planner does that multiplication, splits the total into posts you write from scratch and posts you cut down from a longer pillar piece, and shows the hours it takes at your own pace. If the hours do not fit your week, change the plan before you build the calendar, not halfway through the month. Teams that want the volume without the hours often hand the everyday posts to an AI content studio for brands and keep a person reviewing each one.

How it is calculated

Every figure is simple arithmetic on what you enter:

• Posts per week = Instagram + LinkedIn + X + blog + WhatsApp posts per week.
• Total posts = posts per week × weeks in the plan.
• Repurposed posts = total posts × repurposed share ÷ 100, rounded to the nearest whole post.
• Original posts = total posts − repurposed posts.
• Pillar pieces needed = repurposed posts ÷ repurposed posts per pillar piece, rounded up.
• Total hours = original posts × hours per original + repurposed posts × hours per repurposed post + pillar pieces × hours per pillar piece.
• Posts per working day = total posts ÷ (weeks × working days per week).

A pillar piece is the long item you repurpose from: a blog article, a recipe, a product video or a webinar. If your pillar piece is already one of the blog posts counted above, set hours per pillar piece to 0 so its time is not counted twice.

Worked example (illustrative)

These numbers are made up to show the arithmetic; they are not a recommendation or a typical figure. A brand plans 4 Instagram, 3 LinkedIn, 5 X, 1 blog and 2 WhatsApp posts a week, which is 15 posts a week. Over 4 weeks that is 60 posts. Half are repurposed, so 30 are repurposed and 30 are original. Each pillar piece yields 10 repurposed posts, so 3 pillar pieces are needed. At 1.5 hours per original, 0.5 hours per repurposed post and 4 hours per pillar piece, the month takes 30 × 1.5 + 30 × 0.5 + 3 × 4 = 45 + 15 + 12 = 72 hours. With 5 working days a week, that is 60 ÷ 20 = 3 posts every working day.

How to use the result

1. Start with the hours. If they are more than you can give, cut posts per week on the channel that matters least to your customers.
2. Raise the repurposed share before you cut channels. One good pillar piece can feed several channels if each version is rewritten for the format.
3. Book the pillar pieces first in the calendar, then place the repurposed posts in the days after each one.
4. Re-run the planner each month with the hours you actually spent, so the plan gets more honest over time.

Where Content AI fits

Content AI is built for the everyday side of this plan: you set brand voice, colours and languages once, pick a product, a goal and a channel, and get images, carousels, captions and blogs to edit, approve and schedule from a monthly content calendar. A person still decides the mix and approves every post before it goes.

Related reading: how to build a social media content calendar a small brand can keep and festival marketing calendar for Indian brands.

See it on your own data. Content AI — A month of content, in an afternoon. Book a 30-minute working session with an engineer.

General guidance, current as of the date above. Figures and examples are illustrative unless a source is linked.