Content calendar generator

1. Pick your apps and how often. TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels, each from 1 post a week to 4 a day. The days and times start from the studies' best windows for that app, a few hours apart when you post more than once a day; tap a day or change a time to make it yours.
2. Add your long videos. How many podcast episodes, streams or videos you make a week or a month, and how long they are. Name the first one, like Episode 48, and the rest count up from it.
3. Choose when. The day to start, 2 to 5 weeks or a month, and your audience's time zone.
4. Check the numbers. The result shows how many clips the plan needs a week against how many your videos can give, and the calendar puts a clip from a named video in every post.
5. Take it with you. Download it as an .ics calendar or a .csv sheet, or print it, and tick each post off as it goes out. The plan stays in this browser for when you come back.

To add the .ics file to Google Calendar, open Settings on a computer, then Import & export, and pick the file. To open the .csv in Google Sheets, use File, Import; in Notion, Settings, Import, then CSV makes it a database you can filter by app or week.

Start from the long videos, not the posts. A calendar is only as good as what fills it, and a short-video calendar eats clips: one post a day on three apps is 7 clips a week if each goes on all three, or 21 if every post is new. The easiest supply is the long videos you already make, or the ones you clip for a creator: Clyper makes about 10 clips that stand on their own from an hour-long episode on Auto, and up to 30 when you ask for more. That's what repurposing video content comes down to.

Pick a pace per app you can keep for months. Buffer's TikTok study below found that posting more helps, but mostly by giving you more chances at a post that takes off, so a pace you hold beats a burst you drop. For each app's numbers, see how often to post on TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

Post each clip once per app. Putting the same clip on TikTok, Reels and Shorts means a third as many clips as a new one in every post. Posting it twice on one app doesn't help: Instagram says that when it finds two or more identical pieces of content, it only recommends the original.

Spread each video across the days until the next one. The generator puts a new video's clips in the days after it comes out, newest first, and alternates between two videos on a day with more than one post, so a week doesn't feel like one episode on repeat.

Make a week of clips in one sitting, and schedule them. Cutting clips one at a time each day is what makes calendars slip. See how to batch create content and how to schedule TikToks, Reels and Shorts ahead in each app.

What the apps say, and what large studies of real accounts found:

Hootsuite's averages are for businesses and count every kind of post, not only videos. Buffer found the typical post's views stayed around 500 at every pace: what grew was the top, the posts that took off. So more posts means more chances, as long as each one is worth watching.

The generator's suggested days and times come from these third-party studies. They're based on accounts that use scheduling tools, they measure engagement rather than views, and every time is the viewer's local time.

Sprout Social's best window for each day:

For Shorts, SocialPilot found Friday from 4 to 7 pm the strongest single window. Sprout Social says the best times for Instagram Reels match its overall ones; its Facebook study covers every kind of post, as none of these studies looks at Facebook Reels alone.

Your own analytics beat all of them. Your audience may be students, night workers or in another country. YouTube Studio shows when your viewers were on YouTube over the last 28 days, and Meta's Post Composer recommends times when you schedule a post. Test two or three times for a few weeks and keep the best. More in the best time to post on TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

Post for your audience's clock. Set the time zone to where your viewers are. Clipping for a campaign that counts US views from the UK means US afternoons, which is your evening: schedule them and the calendar app shows each post in your own time.

Hold the times still while you test. Change one thing at a time and compare each video at the same age, say after two days, so a post that's been up longer doesn't look better. The engagement rate calculator works out each post's rate.

Leave room. A calendar that's full to the minute breaks the first time something comes up. Plan at a pace you could keep on a busy week, and treat extra posts as a bonus.

Pick the moments first. The clips that do well open on a line that makes people stay. The video highlight finder finds the liveliest moments in a long video, and Clyper finds the ones that stand on their own from what's said: see podcast clips and YouTube to Shorts.

Review it once a month. Keep what held viewers, drop what didn't, and plan the next month from there. For the bigger picture, read the short-form video strategy guide.