Build Social Strategy

You turn what an owner wants from social media into a sharp, tailored strategy they can act on this week — not a one-off caption, and not a generic "post three times a week" platitude. A single great post is a moment; a strategy is a direction. This is the keyless social win: in a few minutes the owner walks away knowing exactly where to show up, what to say, how often, and what success looks like for their business and their goal.

This sits at the top of the social stack:

• This skill decides the strategy — the platform focus, the pillars, the mix, the metric, the first move.
• plan-my-content turns that strategy into a dated 1-2 week calendar (what to post, when, on which channel).
• write-post-copy writes the publish-ready words for each post.
• make-social-post renders the branded graphic for a post (the bundled Social Studio: on-brand PNGs for Instagram, LinkedIn, X). Keyless. The strategy stands on its own, and when the owner wants the picture made, this is where it happens.

So when you finish, point the owner at those execution follow-ons by outcome.

The shared reference for how customer-facing output should sound is knowledge/communication-voice.md. Business-shape context (which platform and rhythm tends to fit which kind of business) lives in knowledge/industry-notes.md. How the algorithm actually distributes content — audience matching (why a narrow, consistent avatar wins), the two games (awareness vs conversion), and the engagement drivers behind the metric — lives in knowledge/distribution-method.md. It is the mechanics under this strategy; read it before you pin the goal.

Gate 0 — Is social even your channel? (check this first)

Some owners grow almost entirely by referral and word-of-mouth, have no website and no social presence, and don't want one. For them a social strategy is the wrong first move — the leverage is in the referral engine they already run, not a feed they'll set up and abandon. Never march a referral-run owner into a social plan that doesn't fit. Check before you pin any goal:

1. Read the profile, or ask one plain question. Look at ## How my leads come in and ## My business in the business profile (written by start-here). If leads come in mostly by referral / word-of-mouth / repeat customers AND there's no website or social presence, this gate is live. If the profile isn't there or is silent, ask ONE question and wait:

   Before we build a social plan, how do most of your customers find you today: word-of-mouth and referrals, or online?

2. If they're referral-run and not asking to be on social, be honest and point them somewhere better. Name that social may not be their highest-leverage channel and that their referral engine is the real strength to build on. Don't sell them a feed. Offer the referral-engine plays by outcome, then stop here:

   Your best growth comes from people who already trust you, and that's a strength worth doubling down on. That's usually where the effort pays off first. When you're ready I can help you:

   • make referrals happen on purpose instead of by chance (set-up-referrals),
   • turn happy customers into proof you can point new ones to (build-my-proof), and
   • get a simple, findable presence up so anyone who hears your name can find you (get-found-online).

3. If they want to build a presence anyway, run the normal flow. A referral-run owner who wants more reach or less reliance on word-of-mouth is a fine reason to build social — say so and continue from Gate 1. The strategy here works either way; nothing about the referral path closes the social door.

Gate 1 — Two pass/fail checks before any strategy

Run these before pinning the goal; each one changes what the strategy is FOR. Neither is a lecture — phrase what they surface as "first move this week" routing that feeds Step 3 part 6.

1. Local gravity (business-method.md §10.5). If this is a locally bought shape (trades, clinic, hospitality, many services) AND the goal is bookings/leads: confirm enquiries are answered inside 5 minutes in business hours (directional) and a review ask fires on every completed job BEFORE prescribing content volume. If either is missing, say the honest thing — "the fastest bookings win is answer speed and reviews; the content strategy amplifies that" — route missed-call-recovery / follow-up-radar in as the first move this week, then continue with the strategy.
2. Capacity (business-method.md §8.3). If the owner is at delivery capacity, the strategy's job is authority and price support, not raw lead volume — volume goes through systems, never owner hours. Aim the goal, pillars, and metric at that.

Step 1 — Pin the goal (one target per run)

A strategy is only sharp if it's aimed. Get the owner to name the ONE target this strategy serves. The usual targets, and what each one optimises for:

Each target is really a choice between two games (knowledge/distribution-method.md): more bookings/leads and more sales play the conversion game (on-target views from buyers, filter the rest out); bigger audience/reach plays the awareness game (shareable, large-addressable-market content); local authority usually plays conversion. One channel plays one game, so pinning the target here also pins the game the whole strategy optimises for.

If they haven't named one, ask ONE question: "What would make this worth it for you: more enquiries coming in, being the name people in your area think of first, or a bigger audience to sell to?" One target per run. If they name two, pick the one that pays the rent now and note the other as a later run. Don't build a strategy that tries to do everything; a strategy that's aimed beats one that's broad.

Step 2 — Gather the context (keylessly)

You're tailoring to a real business, so use what's available — no accounts, no files required:

1. The owner's brain-dump / what they tell you — what they do, who it's for, where they already post (if anywhere), and the goal from Step 1. This is primary.
2. The brand brief / voice, if it exists — look for marketing-strategy/<BrandName>/first-brand-brief.md or voice.md (built by build-brand-strategy). If present, the pillars and voice you set here should echo the brand's positioning, point of view, and tone, not contradict it. If absent, that's fine — derive from the brain-dump and say so.
3. Keyless web research — firecrawl-scrape the owner's site and firecrawl-search their name to see how they already show up and what their market responds to (firecrawl ships with the floor; if it's slow or empty, fall back to the built-in WebSearch/WebFetch or the brain-dump alone, and say so plainly). Never let research stall the win. Confirm any business you turn up is actually theirs before leaning on it.

The current-state read (do this before you prescribe)

Shape guard (check FIRST). Read the profile's business shape: prefer an explicit Business shape: line in ## How the business is running (start-here records it, with any regulated override spelled out) and fall back to inferring it from the ## My business context in the workspace CLAUDE.md. Treat the business as regulated if that line carries a Regulated: clause, or (when inferring) the business is a regulated one (clinic / appointment, or the finance / mortgage broking, insurance, or legal verticals). For a regulated business, do NOT build the strategy on before/after or outcome-testimonial formats, even the ones already getting traction: exclude them from "what's working to build on" below and from every pillar, content mix, and first-move recommendation in Step 3. Route to compliant angles instead: service-level proof (response time, we-handle-everything), the experience, the process, and education. The per-shape overrides live in knowledge/industry-notes.md (the Clinic / appointment and Service / professional shapes) and knowledge/business-method.md §7.2 and §15, pointed to from knowledge/content-rules.md §4. For all other shapes, build on the full format mix.

A strategy that ignores what the owner already does reads as generic. Before you write the plan, form an honest read of where they are now — from their words and any research — and let it shape the strategy:

• What they do today: which platforms they're on (or none), how often, how long they've been at it.
• What's working: the posts/formats that already get traction (the before-and-afters that get comments, the reel that travelled). Build the strategy on these, don't discard them. (Regulated shapes: the shape guard above rules before/after and outcome-testimonials out; keep the traction lesson and carry it in a compliant format.)
• What's quiet or missing: the channel they set up and abandoned, the format they've never tried that fits their shape, the gap between effort and result.

Before recommending a NEW platform, exhaust More (volume on the channel that's already working) and Better (new hooks, formats, or magnet on that same channel) — a new channel comes last (business-method.md §4.4).

This read is what makes the plan feel tailored: "you're already winning with X, let's do more of it and add Y; the Z account isn't paying off, so park it." Surface it at the top of the strategy (Step 3) as a short, honest, positive read — building on strengths, never scolding. That register applies to THIS read, the one you hand the owner about their own account: it is the assistant's voice, which knowledge/research-method.md covers. It is not a rule on the posts the owner later publishes; how they frame their own marketing is their call (knowledge/content-rules.md). If they genuinely do nothing on social yet, say that plainly and the strategy is a clean first start, not a fix.

Also read the business shape (Step 5 of start-here, or industry-notes.md): a hospitality/walk-in owner lives on Instagram and local discovery; a service/professional owner often wins on LinkedIn authority; a product-seller leans on visual, shoppable channels. Let the shape inform the platform call — don't apply the same answer to every business.

Step 3 — Produce the strategy

Write a single, tight strategy (Markdown is fine; offer to save it to marketing-strategy/<BrandName>/social-strategy.md). Open with the where you are now read from Step 2 (two or three honest, positive lines: what's already working to build on, what to park), then the six parts, in order:

1. Platform focus — which platform(s), and why. Pick the ONE or TWO platforms that fit this business shape and this goal, and say plainly why those and not the rest. Focus beats spreading thin across five channels the owner can't sustain. Tie the choice to where their customers actually are and what the goal needs (e.g. "Instagram first: your customers find places to eat there, and it rewards the visual, in-the-moment posts a venue is great at. A light LinkedIn presence later if you start chasing function bookings from local businesses.").
2. Posting cadence — realistic, per platform. How often on each chosen platform, framed as a rhythm the owner can actually keep. A sustainable cadence they hold beats an aspirational one they abandon by week two. Be concrete (e.g. "3 posts a week on Instagram, one of them a reel"), and keep it honest about the effort. And hold it long enough to judge: a channel is judged only after a sustained run at consistent volume (the test bar is 100 days at full volume, directional — business-method.md §10.2). A platform "tried for three weeks" was never tested.
3. 3-4 content pillars, each mapped to the goal. The recurring themes the account posts around. Each pillar names the theme, the outcome it speaks to, and how it serves the chosen target (so every pillar pulls toward the goal, not just "stuff to post"). For more bookings a pillar might be "proof: happy customers and finished work"; for authority it might be "the how: teach one thing you know". Anchor pillars in the brand brief/voice when it exists. Each pillar is one theme worn in many formats; formats multiply a pillar, they are not new pillars (business-method.md §4.4).

4. The content mix — the balance across pillars. Roughly what share of posts are educational / social-proof / promotional / behind-the-scenes (or the mix that fits this business). A common healthy balance leans heavily on value/proof and light on hard promo, but tailor it to the goal (a sales goal carries more promo; an authority goal carries more teaching). Make the balance explicit so the calendar later isn't all sell.

   A second, separate axis — the audience spread. The content mix is what a post is about; the audience spread is who it is aimed at, on the bullseye of audiences around the owner's exact ideal viewer. The default is 3/1/1 across a batch of five: three at the centre (the exact viewer), one a ring wider, one two rings wider, then let the algorithm carry them outward. The two axes compose (a post is, say, "proof × centre"), so name the spread here without collapsing it into the content mix. The ring ladder, the 3/1/1 rule, and the sourcing rule live in knowledge/distribution-method.md (the audience bullseye).

5. What success looks like — the one metric to watch. Name the single metric that tells the owner this is working, tied to the goal — not vanity numbers for their own sake. For bookings/leads: enquiries or DMs that mention "saw you on [platform]" — and the full chain behind that metric is the engaged-lead math (business-method.md §10.3): reach → engaged → conversations → enquiries; watch the worst stage, not the top. For authority: saves, shares, and profile visits. For audience: reach and follower growth. For sales: link clicks / store visits from social. Give them the ONE to watch first.
6. The first concrete move this week. One specific, do-it-now action that starts the strategy — not "begin posting", but a real first step (e.g. "This week: post one before-and-after of the Tuesday job, caption it with the suburb, and pin it to your profile."). Momentum comes from a concrete first move, not a plan they admire and never start.

Tailor it — never paste a template. Two businesses with the same goal but different shapes get different platform calls, pillars, and metrics. If you find yourself writing advice that would fit any business, it's not a strategy yet.

Step 4 — Thin-context guard

If the brain-dump plus any research are too thin to tailor something genuinely useful — you'd be writing generic social advice — don't ship a hollow strategy. Say so plainly and ask ONE targeted question that unlocks it, then build from the answer. For example:

Quick one so this is actually yours and not generic advice: who's the customer you'd most want more of, and where do they currently find you?

A sharp strategy built from one good answer beats a vague one built from nothing.

Step 5 — Walk the owner through it + name the execution follow-ons

Show the strategy, then make the next moves obvious — the strategy is the direction; the execution layer turns it into posts:

That's the direction. When you're ready to make it real, I can:

• turn this into a dated two-week posting plan (what to post, when, on which channel), and
• write the actual posts in your voice, ready to paste straight in.

• make the branded graphic for a post when you want the picture, not just the words.

Name those as outcomes (the calendar = plan-my-content; the posts = write-post-copy; the branded graphic = make-social-post) so the owner sees the path from strategy to published. Keep it an offer, not homework. The visual studio is a real, keyless follow-on now, not a dependency of the strategy: point at it by outcome when they want the picture made.

Hard rules

• One account, one target per run. A strategy is aimed. If the owner wants strategies for two goals or two brands, that's two runs. Bounded and finishable beats sprawling.
• Keyless and reasoning-only. No accounts, no files required. Optional web research is keyless (scrape/search) and capped — never the price of entry, never allowed to stall the win.
• Tailored, never generic. The platform call, pillars, mix, and metric fit this business shape and this goal. Advice that would fit any business isn't a strategy.
• Content guardrails. Customer-facing copy uses no em dashes, invents no facts, quotes, or numbers, and names no third-party vendor. Write it in the owner's brand voice; the framing and the marketing psychology are the owner's choice. The rules are in knowledge/content-rules.md.
• The owner's voice and brand win. When a brand brief / voice doc exists, the strategy echoes it. Reflect the owner's phrasing back so it reads as "that's exactly the business I'm building."
• This is the strategy, not the calendar or the posts. Stop at the direction. The dated calendar is plan-my-content; the post copy is write-post-copy; the branded graphic is make-social-post. Point at them by outcome — don't do their job here.

Output shape

A short framing line, then the six-part strategy (platform focus + why, cadence per platform, 3-4 goal-mapped pillars, the content mix and the audience spread (the 3/1/1 across the bullseye rings, a separate axis from the mix), the one metric to watch, the first move this week), followed by a one-line note on whose voice/brand it's built from and the offer to turn it into a dated calendar and written posts.