An editorial calendar template is worth more than a hundred configuration tutorials — it shows you exactly how a real, running blog schedules its content week by week. This tutorial gives you a complete AI Content Generator calendar template you can copy: anchor times, random windows, blackout dates, category rotation, provider mix, and the reasoning behind every choice.
By the end you’ll have a working calendar covering 25–30 posts per week across three campaigns and three topical clusters, with mid-morning anchor slots, afternoon random windows and clean weekend behaviour — ready to be adapted to your niche.
The template at a glance
The template has three campaigns. Campaign A — Cornerstone tutorials: long-form (1500–2000 words), Claude Sonnet 4, 1 post/day Mon–Fri at 09:00 anchor time. Campaign B — News summaries: short-form (400–600 words), Gemini Flash, 3 posts/day Mon–Fri via random window 10:00–17:00. Campaign C — Weekend evergreen: medium (900–1200 words), OpenAI GPT-4o Mini, 2 posts/day Sat–Sun via random window 08:00–20:00.
Total: 5 + 15 + 4 = 24 posts/week. Cost breakdown (rough): Claude Sonnet $2 + Gemini Flash $1 + GPT-4o Mini $1 = ~$4/week on AI. Cover images via DALL-E 3 Standard: 24 × $0.04 = ~$1/week. Total: ~$20/month for a full editorial calendar.
Campaign A — Cornerstone tutorials
The pillar content. Long-form, high-effort, evergreen. Configure Base data: Articles per day 1, Time window 09:00–10:00 (narrow window for anchor time), Fixed times “09:00”, Jitter ± 5 minutes, Active days Mon–Fri, Blackout dates for holidays. SEO brief (content): Min 1500 / Max 2000 words, Content preset Guide, Content tone Authoritative / Expert. AI Provider: Claude Sonnet 4.
Why: cornerstone content deserves the best model. Claude produces the cleanest long-form. The anchor time at 09:00 signals a reliable daily rhythm to readers and to Google. The narrow window prevents accidental multi-post days.
Campaign B — News summaries
The volume layer. Short news pieces, high-frequency, driven by Live News Mode. Configure Base data: Articles per day 3, Time window 10:00–17:00, Minimum gap 90 minutes, Active days Mon–Fri, no Fixed times (random within window). SEO brief (content): Min 400 / Max 600 words, Content preset Standard. AI Provider: Google Gemini (Flash variant). Live News Mode ON: RSS + NewsAPI queries scoped to your niche.
Why: Gemini Flash generates short summaries in under 10 seconds at very low cost. The 90-minute gap prevents flooding. The 10:00–17:00 window covers reader working hours. Random distribution feels natural on the RSS feed and social previews.
Campaign C — Weekend evergreen
The weekend fill. Medium-length evergreen content — listicles, opinion pieces, deep-dive analyses that read well on a Saturday morning. Configure Base data: Articles per day 2, Time window 08:00–20:00 (wide), Minimum gap 240 minutes, Active days Sat–Sun. SEO brief (content): Min 900 / Max 1200 words, Content preset Standard, Content tone Neutral professional. AI Provider: OpenAI GPT-4o Mini.
Why: weekend readers browse longer and expect thoughtful content. Two posts a day is the sweet spot — enough to keep the blog fresh, not so much that it dilutes. The wide window handles weekend reader patterns which are more spread out than weekdays.
Category assignment strategy
- Campaign A → “Tutorials” — one category, clean SEO silo.
- Campaign B → “News” — one category, matches the content type.
- Campaign C → “Deep dives” — one category, weekend-appropriate identity.
Three campaigns, three categories, no overlap. The blog index page can then show category badges on each post, and the related-posts widget always suggests genuinely related content.
Blackout dates in the template
Configure Blackout dates on all three campaigns for these dates (adapt to your locale): 25 December, 26 December, 1 January, Easter Sunday + Easter Monday, 1 May, 15 August. Additionally add your local national holidays.
Enable “Catch up missed articles after pause” on Campaign B only (news content shouldn’t be caught up — stale news isn’t news), disable on A and C (cornerstone and evergreen can wait to the next scheduled slot).
Author rotation
Set Author Mode to Fixed author for each campaign. Assign one WordPress user per campaign: the campaign name and the author name form a stable identity that Google and readers recognise. Rotate authors only if you have a genuine team; solo blogs benefit from consistent named authorship.
Extra AI instructions common to all three
Save 15 minutes and reuse the same Extra AI instructions block across all three campaigns:
Write in second person, direct tone. Never start a title or paragraph with "Discover". Always include a TL;DR at the top for articles over 1000 words. Never invent statistics, quotes or dates. When mentioning AI Content Generator, link to /how-to/ the first time. When mentioning Anthropic, OpenAI or Google, use rel="nofollow" on the link.
Weekly review ritual
Every Friday morning, open the Content calendar. Scan the next 10 days for empty slots, check the AI Content Generator Logs panel for failed generations, look at Google Search Console for new impressions.
Five to ten minutes per week. The calendar template does the rest.
You’re done
That’s the template: three campaigns, three categories, three AI providers, ~24 posts/week, ~$20/month AI cost, ~$1/week in DALL-E covers. Five-minute weekly ritual. Adapt to your niche, drop in your own Main keywords and Extra AI instructions, run.