Workflow 013: The Content Planner

I've made YouTube content for seven years, and I still run out of ideas.

Not occasionally. Regularly. I've hit that wall more times than I can count.

A content planner is a skill that researches what your audience has actually been asking, checks what's been trending in the last 30 days, works out your specific angle on it, then schedules a month of titles into your content calendar. Mine runs on Claude and writes into Notion.

The important part is that it runs the process I was already doing by hand. It doesn't invent ideas. It gathers evidence.

What this replaces

Sitting down to plan a month of content and hoping something comes.

I teach two audiences: people starting and growing as virtual assistants on one channel, and founders building businesses on the other. Both channels need ideas that are useful, not just novel.

The manual version worked, it just took a whole session of digging. Read comments on my videos. Read comments on other people's videos. Notice what keeps getting asked. Cross-reference with whatever I'm currently nerding out on.

That's a good process. It's also the kind of process that quietly doesn't happen when the month gets busy.

Blueprint

Research the questions. Find your angle. Schedule the month.

Trigger: manual, at the start of each month. Inputs: comments from your videos and competitors' videos, trending topics from the last 30 days, your niche and audience. Output: a month of titles scheduled in the content calendar, with bullet-point guides.

The steps the skill runs:

1. Search comments from the last month for recurring questions on the topic I want to cover
2. Pull what's been trending in the space in the last 30 days
3. Work out my angle on those trends, sized for my audience and niche
4. Verify the research before anything gets scheduled
5. Write titles using the phrasing people actually used
6. Schedule them into the content calendar
7. Add bullet points for each, not a full script

Organize

What you need first:

• A publishing rhythm consistent enough to plan against
• Access to comments, yours and your competitors'
• A clear sense of your niche and who's already subscribed
• A content calendar the skill can write into
• Your own process for finding ideas, written down

That last one is the whole prerequisite. This skill exists because I had spent years developing a way of finding ideas. The AI made it faster. It didn't invent it.

Systematize

You are my content planner. At the start of each month, research and
schedule my content.

My context:
- My channel and audience: [WHO YOU SERVE AND WHAT YOU TEACH]
- My niche: [SPECIFIC ANGLE]
- Roughly my size: [AUDIENCE SIZE, so ideas stay realistic]
- I publish [FREQUENCY] on [PLATFORM]
- My content calendar lives in [TOOL]

The topic I want to cover this month: [TOPIC]

Run this process:

1. RESEARCH THE QUESTIONS
   Look through comments from the last month, on my content and on
   similar creators' content. Find the questions people keep asking about
   this topic. Quote the actual phrasing they used.

2. RESEARCH THE TRENDS
   Find what's been discussed in this space in the last 30 days. What's
   new, what's changed, what people are reacting to.

3. FIND MY ANGLE
   For each trend, work out my version. Not the general take, the version
   for my specific audience. If a general video exists on a topic, my
   version is that topic for my niche.

4. VERIFY
   Before scheduling anything, check the research holds up. Flag anything
   you're unsure about rather than including it.

5. WRITE THE TITLES
   Use the phrasing from real questions wherever possible. Someone already
   typed that sentence, which means someone will search it.

6. SCHEDULE
   Add them to my content calendar for the month, one per publishing slot.

7. ADD BULLET POINTS
   For each title, give me 4 to 6 bullet points to talk from. Not a script.
   A guide.

Tell me which titles came from real audience questions and which came
from trends, so I know what's evidence and what's a bet.

How to set it up

1. Write down how you currently find ideas. If you don't have a process, build one manually first.
2. Save it as a skill with your niche and audience details.
3. Run it and check the research. Early runs will include things that don't hold up.
4. Correct it, and fold the corrections into the skill.
5. Run it at the start of each month, when you're in the right headspace to think about a whole month at once.

Why bullet points instead of full scripts?

Because I riff. These daily videos are me talking from experience, not reading. A full script would make me slower and stiffer.

If you read from a script well, ask it for a script. The output should fit how you actually record.

Assign

What the AI does: gather the questions, pull the trends, verify, draft titles, schedule, and outline.

What stays human: the judgment about what's worth saying, and the recording itself.

There's a specific thing I bring that it can't. I'm an early adopter, so I usually know instinctively what people will care about in a few weeks, because I'm already learning it. The research confirms or challenges that instinct. It doesn't replace it.

And here's the mistake I want to save you from.

Do not add AI to a process you've never run.

People try to use AI to figure out what their process should be, and it produces something plausible that doesn't fit them at all. AI works best when it has something to work from. That's exactly what a systems audit does: look at what's already there, then find where AI belongs.

Rule of thumb from this build: add AI to something that already works.

If you don't know what your content process is, the answer isn't a smarter prompt. It's doing it by hand until you do.

Integrate

The planner sits at the front of the whole content system:

• It writes into the content calendar, so the week starts with the title already there
• When I sit down to record, I look at the calendar and the bullets are waiting
• The recording becomes the video
• The repurposing engine catches the video and turns it into everything else
• The voice skill makes sure all of it sounds like me

The reason I plan a month ahead is unglamorous: so that being sick, travelling, or having a bad week doesn't break the streak. The planning happens once, in the right headspace, and the rest of the month runs on it.