Trending Briefing

Compile a concise daily or weekly briefing on what's trending in the brand's space. The founder doesn't have time to live on social media — this skill turns noise into signal: the 5-10 things they actually need to know.

Purpose

The founder should never have to ask "what's happening on social?" This briefing pre-empts that question. It's designed to be read in 2 minutes, acted on in 5 minutes, and filed away for content planning reference.

When to Use

• Daily: end-of-day or next-morning founder briefing
• Weekly: Friday or Monday summary
• Pre-content-planning: briefing to inform the calendar
• Founder asks "what am I missing?"

Inputs Required

• Trend monitor outputs (from trend-monitor)
• News response decisions (from news-response)
• Competitor activity observations
• Brand engagement data (from metrics-track)
• Content calendar (for relevance context)

Quick Reference

Procedure

1. Aggregate inputs from monitoring period: trends, news, competitor activity, audience conversations, engagement spikes.
2. Filter ruthlessly. Not every trend makes the briefing. Filter: "would this change anything the founder does today?" If no, cut it.
3. For each briefing item:
   • Trend/topic (1 line)
   • Why it matters (1 line — relevance to brand)
   • What brand did or should do (1 line — action/opportunity)
4. Structure for scanability:
   • No walls of text. 2-3 minute read max.
   • Bullet format, bold key terms
   • Most important item first
   • At least 1 "opportunity" item (not just monitoring)
5. Add founder action items:
   • "Reply to this yourself"
   • "Review this draft"
   • "Decision needed: ride this trend or skip?"

Output Format

# [Daily/Weekly] Trending Briefing: [Date]

## Top of Mind (Must See)
- **[Topic]:** [Summary. Why it matters. What we should do.]

## Things Happening
- **[Trend]:** [Summary. Relevance. Action or note.]
...

## Competitor Watch
- **[Competitor]** — [What they did. Lessons for us?]

## Opportunities
- [Trend with specific brand angle suggestion]
- [Comment opportunity — specific account + post]

## Founder Action Items
- [ ] [Action: reply / review / decide]

Done Criteria

The skill is complete when:

1. 5-8 items for daily, 10-15 for weekly
2. Each item has a "why it matters" and "action" component
3. Briefing is readable in under 3 minutes
4. At least 1 action item for the founder
5. Items filtered by relevance (not everything makes the cut)

Pitfalls

• Including too much detail (founder skims, doesn't study)
• Items without action implications ("X is trending" — so what?)
• Same format every session (founder stops reading)
• Adding filler items (better 3 high-signal items than 10 bullets)
• Not tracking what the founder finds useful

Verification

Read your briefing in under 2 minutes. Did you get the most important information? Is there at least one item the founder can act on? Would you forward this if you were paying yourself $500/hour for their time?