Content strategy

Content Strategy

Quick start

When an SMB owner asks "what should I post this month?" or "what's my content plan?", this skill:

1. Pulls sales data from QuickBooks or PayPal (transaction history, product/service revenue by date)
2. Identifies patterns — top-selling products, slow movers, seasonal trends
3. Layers in context — seasonality (user-provided or industry benchmarks), past performance
4. Produces a 30-day brief — ranked recommendations of what to push, what to hold, what offers to consider
5. Gets owner approval before the brief feeds into social-content-engine for asset generation

The output is strategic only — no calendar scheduling, no creative assets.

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Workflow

Step 1: Pre-flight check (QuickBooks only)

If using QuickBooks, verify the business profile is set up:

1. Call company-info to check if Industry is populated
2. If missing or "Unknown":
   • Ask: "I need your business category to pull the right seasonality benchmarks. What industry are you in?" (e.g., retail, services, SaaS)
   • Call quickbooks-profile-info-update with the user's industry
   • Confirm: "Profile updated. Ready to pull your sales data."
3. If profile is set, proceed to Step 2

Note: PayPal and Square do not require profile setup.

Step 2: Clarify priorities & metrics

When triggered, ask the user:

• "How do you want me to measure 'top performers'?"

  • By total revenue?
  • By profit margin?
  • By sales velocity (how fast they're selling)?
  • Combination of the above?

• "Do you have seasonality patterns in mind?"

  • If yes: "Tell me about them" (capture user's known seasonality)
  • If no: "I'll use industry benchmarks for your category"

Step 3: Pull and analyze sales data

Fetch data from the authenticated connector (QuickBooks, PayPal, or Square, user's choice):

• Date range: Last 90 days (or full history if <90 days available)
• Extract: Product/service name, date sold, revenue, quantity

Connector-specific notes:

• QuickBooks: Fetch invoice line items via profit_loss_quickbooks_account (pre-flight sets industry context). Read the rows or monthlyBreakdown; the response's totalExpenses reports 0 against real rows, so never read the summary fields
• PayPal: Fetch merchant transactions via list_transactions. Rate-limiting: If you hit rate limits, pause 30 seconds and retry once. If still blocked, gracefully offer: "PayPal is rate-limited. Would you like to switch to QuickBooks or Square instead, or I can continue with historical data I already pulled?"
• Square: Requires location ID first. Call make_api_request(service="locations", method="list") to discover available locations, then fetch orders for each location.

No connectors at all? This still runs, and it is a supported path — not a degraded one. Ask the owner to export their sales history and upload it. Name the export by the label they will actually see in the app:

• QuickBooks — Reports, then the "Sales by Product/Service Detail" report, set to the last 90 days, exported to Excel or CSV
• PayPal — Activity, then Download, set to the last 90 days, "Completed transactions" as CSV
• Square — Reports, then Item Sales, set to the last 90 days, exported as CSV

Any one of those carries product name, date, revenue, and usually quantity, which is everything Step 3 needs. A pasted list of what sold and roughly when also works — say plainly that the read is rougher, and run it.

Fallback: If <3 months of data, use industry seasonality benchmarks for the SMB's category (e.g., retail, services, e-commerce)

Identify:

• Top 3–5 performers (by user's chosen metric)
• Bottom 3–5 slow movers (consider holding or repositioning)
• Trending up (gaining momentum in last 30 days)
• Trending down (losing momentum)

Step 4: Layer in seasonality

• User-provided: If they shared seasonal patterns, weight recommendations against them
• Industry benchmarks: For categories without strong user data (e.g., "Q1 is strong for tax services")
• Timing: Flag products that should ramp up/down in the next 30 days based on seasonal patterns

Step 5: Build the 30-day brief

Structure:

• Executive summary (1–2 sentences: "Your best sellers are X and Y. Seasonal shift to Z is starting.")
• Push hard (Top 2–3 products + recommended content angle, e.g., "Case study on ROI", "How-to video")
• Hold steady (Middle performers; maintain visibility but no heavy lift)
• Reposition or pause (Slow movers; consider discounting, bundling, or pausing)
• Seasonal opportunities (What's coming next month that you should position for now)
• Recommended offers (Bundle, discount, or free-trial strategy based on data)

Example length: 200–400 words (brief and actionable, not essay-length).

Step 6: Owner approval & iteration

Present the brief to the owner. Ask:

• "Does this match your gut?"
• "Anything to adjust?"
• "Ready to feed this to social-content-engine for asset generation?"

Iterate if needed; once approved, return the final brief as structured JSON (ready for downstream tools).

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More sources, and direct invocation

Read reference/v2_sources.md for the mapping:

• Shopify — per-SKU velocity, variant performance, and product images that flow straight into asset generation downstream
• Stripe — subscription and recurring revenue, where relevant

Direct invocation

If the owner asks for a sales brief, run this and return the brief. Don't route them anywhere.

Gotchas & edge cases

See reference/gotchas.md for common pitfalls.

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Examples

See reference/examples/ for worked examples (SaaS, retail, services).

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Output

Deliver the 30-day brief per the owner's stored output preference — never default to a markdown file. Check the ## Business context block's Output preference (shared style guide rule, ../../shared/artifact-style.md):

• Visual artifact (the default): render the brief as an HTML page in the house style — what to promote as the lead, the why behind each pick with its numbers in tabular-nums, and the channel call per push. The structured JSON for downstream tools rides along unchanged; it is an input to other skills, not a second deliverable.
• docx / md / notion / canva preference: deliver the same content in that form — a DOCX or markdown file, a Notion page created via the connector (named destination, never overwriting), or a Canva Doc created via the Canva connector (a new design each run, named with the date; tables become lists); fall back to the visual artifact if Notion or Canva is not connected — and say that is why.
• Best for skill: use the visual artifact — this output is a decision page, not prose.

After the brief

The 30-day brief is approved and ready to act on. The natural next step is "make the content" — social-content-engine turns the brief into the standing calendar and the posts. Also nearby: "run this brief" (canva-creator) for a one-shot campaign build from this exact brief, and "is my marketing working" (growth-pulse) to check whether last month's push paid off. Offer at most three, and skip any offer the owner already declined this session.

Using a tool that isn't listed

The connectors named in this skill are the tested paths, not a wall. If the owner wants this flow to use a tool that isn't connected or listed, offer build-connector — it checks the connector directory first and connects through Zapier otherwise, never hand-building against a raw API. Once the connection exists, the tool joins this skill like any other optional connector, under the same approval gates.