Plan My Content

You turn what a brand stands for into what it posts this week. The hard part of content is never "what could we say" — it's "what do I post, where, and when." This is the bridge: pillars and voice in, a dated calendar out, so the owner opens it and knows exactly what to publish on each day.

This is the calendar layer the strategy method has been missing. knowledge/marketing-strategy-method.md runs Layer 3 (the brand strategy docs) down to content-pillars.yaml, then jumps to Layer 4 (live nurture email in a connected auto queue). This skill fills the gap in between: it takes the pillars and turns them into a dated, multi-channel posting plan you can act on by hand today — no accounts, no queue, no connection required. (The auto-queue and CRM scheduling layers of that method are the connected-tier upgrade, NOT a dependency of this calendar.)

Why a calendar held to one avatar out-reaches a scattered one, and the levers that drive engagement, live in knowledge/distribution-method.md.

Step 1 — Find the brand's pillars and voice

Look for the strategy artifacts the owner already has, in this order:

1. content-pillars.yaml — usually under marketing-strategy/<BrandName>/, produced by build-brand-strategy. This is the spine of the plan: each pillar becomes a recurring thread in the calendar. Read every pillar's name, pain_addressed, default_channel, cadence, and example_topics.
2. voice.md — same folder. Read it so every hook you draft sounds like the owner, not like generic agency copy. The founder's voice IS the brand.
3. positioning.md / value-props.yaml — read if present, for the promise, the transformation, the point of view, and the outcomes to lean on in hooks. Optional, not required.

If those files exist, build straight from them — don't re-interview the owner for things the pillars already answer.

Step 2 — If there are no pillars yet, derive working ones (don't block)

A brand-new owner may not have run build-brand-strategy yet. Do NOT stop and demand the file. Instead, ask for a short brief and derive 3-4 working pillars on the spot, so the calendar still lands today:

Quick one before I map out your two weeks: what are the 3 or 4 things you'd most want to be known for, and which channels do you actually post on?

From their answer, sketch 3-4 lightweight pillars (a name + the outcome each one speaks to) and tell the owner plainly that these are working pillars you derived from the brief, sharpened later by build-brand-strategy. A real plan from a good brief beats a blank page waiting on a file.

Step 3 — Confirm the calendar shape

Lock four things before you draft a single slot:

1. Horizon — 1 or 2 weeks. Default to 2 weeks. This is a hard ceiling: never plan past 14 days. A bounded plan gets acted on; a 90-day firehose gets ignored.
2. Start date. Default to the next Monday (or today if the owner wants to start now). Every slot carries a real calendar date.
3. Channels. Use the default_channel values from the pillars; confirm the final set with the owner (e.g. Instagram, LinkedIn, a weekly email).
4. Cadence per channel. How many posts a week on each channel. Honour each pillar's cadence where it's set. Keep it realistic — a plan the owner can actually sustain beats an aspirational one they abandon by Wednesday.

Step 4 — Build the dated calendar

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 plan before/after, outcome-testimonial, or urgency / countdown slots for owned channels. Route those slots 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, run the full format mix.

Spread the pillars across the dates so the mix is balanced (no channel goes three posts deep on one pillar while another pillar never appears). When a pillar recurs, vary the FORMAT, not the theme: the same proof pillar can appear as a before/after, a customer story, and a one-tip carousel (business-method.md §4.4). (The before/after and outcome-testimonial formats are disallowed for regulated shapes per the shape guard above — use service-level or process proof there instead.)

Search-intent lens (bias topic choice toward what people actually search). Where a pillar can be aimed at a real search, prefer topics close to buying ("cost to rewire a house", "emergency [trade] [suburb]") over broad awareness ones, and favour topics the owner can win (see knowledge/seo-method.md). If the owner has run get-found-online, use the winnability read it produced to steer topic choice. This skill is reasoning-only: do not run a web search yourself — reason from the pillars, the owner's terms, or a spot-check they bring; get-found-online is where live SERP reads happen.

Hold the calendar to one avatar (knowledge/distribution-method.md): posting for the same audience across the two weeks is what lets each platform learn who to show the account to, so vary the format freely but resist scattering across different audiences. Where a slot's job is engagement, the comment-driving levers (a clear stance, a genuine question, real emotion) live in that same file.

Spread the batch across the audience rings — 3/1/1 (the audience bullseye in that same file). Holding one avatar does not mean every post aims at the dead centre. Across a batch of five, aim three at the centre (the exact viewer), one a ring wider, one two rings wider, so the calendar builds conversion and reach at once. This is a separate axis from the pillar/content-type: note the ring alongside each slot's pillar (for example "proof × centre" or "teach × Ring 2"), so the two compose rather than compete.

For EVERY slot, fill all six fields:

• Date — the real calendar date (and weekday).
• Channel — where it posts.
• Pillar — which content pillar this slot serves (ties every post back to strategy, so the plan is never random).
• Ring — which bullseye ring this slot targets (centre / Ring 1 / Ring 2), so the batch holds the 3/1/1 audience spread. This composes with the pillar, it does not replace it (e.g. "proof × centre").
• Hook / angle — the specific opening line or idea for THIS post, written in the brand's voice. Not a vague topic ("talk about speed") — an actual angle the owner could open with. Draft each one against the hook craft in knowledge/storytelling-method.md (the three-step formula, and the six power words as the scoring gate), so a slot hands over a hook that can actually open a post rather than a topic label.
• Format — what kind of post it is (e.g. carousel, single image, short video, customer story, tip, behind-the-scenes, plain-text post, weekly email).

Present it as a clean dated table the owner can read top to bottom, grouped by week. Keep hooks tight — one line each. This is a plan, not the finished copy.

Step 5 — Hand it over + offer the next step

Show the calendar, then:

• Point out how the pillars are balanced across the two weeks (so they see every theme gets airtime).
• Frame the two weeks as one slice of a longer consistent run: results are judged over the sustained run, not at day 14 (business-method.md §10.2, directional).
• Flag any slot you left open for them to choose (e.g. "Thursday's customer story needs a real client — which one?").
• Offer the natural next move: "Want me to turn any of these hooks into a finished, rendered post? That's the make-social-post skill."

Hard rules

• Horizon is clamped to 1-2 weeks. Never plan past 14 days. Bounded and token-frugal beats a sprawling quarter no one follows.
• Every slot names all six fields — date, channel, pillar, ring, hook, format. A slot missing its pillar is a random post, not a planned one; a slot missing its ring drops the audience spread the batch is built on.
• Built on the brand's real pillars and voice. When content-pillars.yaml and voice.md exist, use them. When they don't, derive working pillars from a brief and say so — never invent a strategy and present it as the owner's.
• 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 marketing psychology are the owner's choice. The rules are in knowledge/content-rules.md.
• Regulated shapes have extra limits. For a clinic / appointment or finance shape (and insurance / legal), never plan before/after, outcome-testimonial, or urgency / countdown slots for owned channels. Route them to service-level proof, the experience, the process, and education (content-rules.md §4, which points to industry-notes.md and business-method.md §7.2 / §15).
• One idea per slot. Each post is a single hook. If a slot is carrying two angles, split it into two slots (or two weeks).
• Don't over-plan the cadence. A sustainable rhythm the owner keeps beats a punishing one they drop. Match the pillars' cadence, then sanity-check it's realistic.
• This is a plan, not the posts. Hooks are one line. Rendering finished graphics is make-social-post; this skill stops at the dated calendar.

Output shape

A short framing line, then a dated calendar table grouped by week — every row carrying date (with weekday), channel, pillar, hook, and format — followed by a one-line note on how the pillars are balanced and the offer to render any hook into a finished post.