Your buyers ask AI who to pick. Make sure it’s you.
Gets you selected acrossChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexity
RocMode shows you whether AI picks you or your rival, finds the work that changes it, builds that work, and sends it to you to approve. Then it proves what moved.
We ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, and show where they pick you and who they pick instead. Free, no login. What’s the Score? Or sign up free and try everything for 14 days.
RocMode · Live read · Monday by Nine (example)
Asking ChatGPTBefore
The AI marketing and sales platform
Marketing and sales, rebuilt for the age of AI.
Your website in. A whole marketing and sales team’s work out. RocMode learns your brand from your site, then does the work: strategy, website, ads, social, PR, partners, email, design, and the deck that wins the deal. You approve every piece.
Other tools do one job. This does all of them, as one story.
Other AI guesses. This works from your facts and proof.
Other tools stop at the post. This follows it to the signed deal, and learns what won.
How it works
KnowWhere you really standActWhat to fix firstCreateWe build the work. You approve itProveDid it move?
Know · Step 1 of 10
It gets you. It gets your customers. It connects the dots.
Everything about your brand, your buyers and your rivals, sorted and connected.
Then it works out what to say, where, when and why. It’s the brain behind every step.
Builds: Customers · Offerings · Rivals · Proof
RocMode · BrandGraph · sample data
Following one momentCISO · Comparing · “Who’s the best managed security provider for a hospital group?”Moment found
Brand core3 found
Voice3 found
Visual identity3 found
Products and services3 found
Pricing3 found
Personas and markets3 found
Pains, gains, jobs3 found
Journeys and objections3 found
Proof and trust3 found
Content3 found
Competitors and partners3 found
Team2 found
Halvard Security35 facts
Two hospital case studies/partners
FactClaimProofAI-suggestedExample: Halvard Security, an invented managed security provider.
Reading halvardsecurity.com.au, socials, reviews and listings…
Halvard SecurityBrandGraph
12areas, all connected
3personas
15moments
6rivals
Sample data
Your customers
Customers
›
Personas
›
Journeys
›
Pains, jobs, objections
›
Moments
What you sell
Products and services
›
Offerings
›
Value proposition
›
Differentiation
Your rivals
Competitors
›
Industry
›
Expectations
›
Gaps to exploit
Moments + offerings
Opportunities
›
Campaigns
›
Ads
›
Sales
Content gaps
›
Content
›
Website
So it knows
What to say.Where. When. Why.
Moment foundCISO · Comparing · “Who’s the best managed security provider for a hospital group?”
Know · Step 2 of 10
Your strategy, from everything it knows.
Positioning built from your offerings and the gaps your rivals leave.
Claims you can’t back get cut before anyone sees them.
Seen isn’t selected. AI picks the brands it can tell apart.
Every era of marketing had its visibility number, and AI mentions are just the newest. Most AI tools still sell you visibility. But being mentioned isn’t being chosen, and for the first time you can measure the pick itself.
BroadcastAwareness
Media buyingReach
SearchRankings
SocialFollowers
AIMentions
What countsSelected
What AI made cheap
Making things.
Posts, pages, ads and reports in minutes
Anyone with a login can do it
Your competitors have the same tools
Sell on volume and you compete on price.
What AI made measurable
Being chosen.
Brand ABrand BYouBrand CBrand D
Buyers ask AI who to pick, and it names a few brands
You can ask the same questions and see who’s named
So you can see, moment by moment, where you win and lose
Compete on this and you compete on results.
See it on your brand
See how often AI picks you. Free.
We ask the AI assistants your buyers use the questions they really ask, many times each, at every step of their journey. Then we show where you’re picked, where you’re passed over, and who wins instead.
Your free Selectability Score asks the AI assistants the questions your buyers ask, without your name in them. You see who gets picked, at which moment, and the three gaps to fix first.
Content earns its place by answering a question a buyer actually has, before anyone is selling to them. Most content plans start from a calendar: two posts a week, a webinar a quarter, an ebook for the funnel. Then they hunt for topics to fill the slots. That gives volume, and buyers learn to ignore it.
This playbook starts from the other end. The coverage unit is one piece per unanswered question. Every question comes from a moment in the grid. Every piece answers a set of questions for named choosers, and the calendar is whatever it takes to write them.
Three things follow:
Fewer, deeper pieces. One guide that fully answers ten related questions beats ten posts that each half-answer one.
Every piece feeds other builds. A problem guide becomes the website's problem page, the passages assistants quote, the newsletter issue, the social posts and the ad's landing page. Content is the raw material; the other builds are its outlets.
The calendar comes last. First decide what must exist. Then decide the order. Then set the rhythm the team can keep.
In RocMode: the Content library. Sample data.
The footprint, and Kestrel in 60 seconds
The content footprint on Kestrel's grid
Content leads where buyers are still working out what's wrong: the COO's and finance director's framing, the finance director's first alarm about costs, and almost everything the in-house improvement lead asks. It supports the early moments other builds lead (the ad, the social post, the assistant's answer, the website's options pages) and two of the questions that come after the review.
Kestrel in 60 seconds. Kestrel Advisory is the invented firm used in every playbook: a 60-person operations consultancy that helps mid-sized manufacturers find waste and lift output. Its main offer is a fixed-price, six-week operations review. Its strategy is in Part one, and its full moment map in Where you stand, part one.
Who chooses: usually a committee. The COO starts it, the finance director approves the spend, the plant manager lives with it and procurement runs the paperwork. The owner, the in-house improvement lead, an investor and AI assistants all have a say.
The reason to be chosen: "We find the savings on the floor in six weeks, at a fixed price, and the review pays for itself or you don't proceed." (Invented. A real firm would need proof for every part of that sentence.)
The alternatives: a large consulting firm, a specialist lean consultant, the in-house improvement team, buying new equipment, or doing nothing.
Its slice of the Score
Content's part of the Selectability Score is the early gate and the first answer: Known and Found at trigger and framing, and Answered wherever a buyer is still working out what's wrong.
Kestrel today, at the 23 moments content leads before a deal
Known
Found
Answered
Moment score
Average
10
0.7
5
0.1
One detail in those numbers is worth more than the averages. The only two moments where search finds Kestrel at all are both content: two old blog posts, on flat output and rising costs, that still rank on page one. They were written years ago, they answer part of a real question, and they still work. Twelve posts, two of them still ranking, and those two are the whole of Kestrel's presence before a buyer calls. That's the case for this build in one line: content that answers a buyer's question keeps working; content that fills a slot doesn't.
Step 1: the shape, pillars and formats
Content has two kinds of shape: the pillars (what the firm is known for talking about) and the formats buyers in the category expect.
The pillars come from the story spine. Kestrel's spine is: the problem in the buyer's words, the reason, the proof pattern and the way out. So its pillars are:
Pillar
What it's for
The spine it carries
The problems
Why output is flat, costs climb, stock piles up, and what to check first
The problem, in the buyer's words
The cost
What each problem costs, in money a finance director can use
The reason: savings found on the floor
The evidence
What reviews find, across plants, sectors and sizes
The proof pattern
Making change stick
Why improvements fade, and how in-house teams keep them
The way out, and what clients keep
Nothing goes outside the four. "The future of manufacturing" isn't a pillar; it's a slot-filler.
The formats come from the category. Count what the leading competitors publish. A format on at least three of five sites is canon: buyers expect to find it, and its absence costs belief.
Format
Competitors using it (of 5)
Canon?
Long-form guides
5
Yes
Articles
5
Yes
Case stories
5
Yes (built in the Website Playbook)
Research reports
4
Yes
Newsletters
3
Yes (run in the Email Playbook)
Webinars
3
Yes
Templates and checklists
2
No
Video
2
No
Podcasts
1
No
The counts are invented for the example. Canon tells you what's expected, not what's enough: a format only earns a piece when a question needs it.
Step 2: coverage, the question bank
Start from the footprint: 17 lit cells, split by problem where the question changes. That's 77 moments: 24 that content leads and 53 it supports.
A moment content leads holds more than its top question. The cell's pain, cost and objection each raise a question of their own, so lead moments get four. For the COO's framing moment on flat output:
1. The top question: "Is it people, process, equipment or planning?"
2. What's causing it: "Why does output stay flat when we're running flat out?"
3. What it costs: "What is the lost output worth to us each month?"
4. What to do first: "What should we check this week, before we spend anything?"
Supporting moments get one question each: the content that helps the lead build do its job.
Cell
This build
Moments
Questions each
Questions
COO · framing
Leads
7, one per problem
4
28
Finance director · trigger
Leads
7
4
28
Finance director · framing
Leads
7
4
28
Improvement lead · framing: "Why didn't lean hold?"
Leads
1
4
4
Improvement lead · options: "Can we do this ourselves?"
Leads
1
4
4
Improvement lead · extend: "Can we run the next review ourselves?"
Leads
1
4
4
COO · trigger
Supports advertising
7
1
7
Plant manager · trigger
Supports social
7
1
7
COO · options
Supports the website
7
1
7
Finance director · options
Supports the website
7
1
7
Assistant · framing
Supports search and AI answers
7
1
7
Assistant · options
Supports search and AI answers
7
1
7
Assistant · building the case
Supports search and AI answers
1
1
1
Improvement lead · delivery
Supports customers
1
1
1
Plant manager · extend
Supports customers
1
1
1
COO · scope: "What should the review cover?"
Supports the website
7
1
7
Assistant · scope: "What should I look for in an operations consultant?"
Supports being named
1
1
1
149 questions. That's the bank. Each one is written in the buyer's words, tagged with its cell, its problem, its stage and its bias, and kept in one list the whole team can see. A writer never starts from a topic. They start from a set of questions, and the piece is finished when every one is answered.
Step 3: what's answered today, then gaps, biases and jobs
Audit what exists against the bank. Kestrel's old blog (invented) had twelve posts. Five answer no question in the bank at all: company news, two event write-ups, an award and "the future of manufacturing". The other seven touch 14 questions in passing. None of the 149 questions is answered fully.
Pillar
Questions
Touched today
The stage that fails
The bias at work
The problems
77
9, by posts on equipment effectiveness, scheduling and changeovers
Known: nothing in the buyer's words; Found: posts too thin to quote
Familiar feels safe: buyers read the names they already know
The cost
56
2
Believed: no figures a finance director could use
Losses loom larger: without a cost, doing nothing feels safe
The evidence
1
0
Believed: nothing across reviews
We follow others
Making change stick
15
3, by one post on lean
Preferred: nothing for the improvement lead, who reads Kestrel as a threat
Losses loom larger
Each gap becomes a job:
Moment
Stage
Bias
The job
COO · framing, each problem
Known
Familiar feels safe
One guide per problem, in the COO's words, that names the likely causes and what to check first
COO · framing
Answered
A hard choice stalls
End each guide with the options, including fixing it in-house and buying equipment, and when each is right
Finance director · trigger, each problem
Known
Losses loom larger
Put a cost on each problem, in money and in a form a finance director can test with their own numbers
Finance director · framing
Believed
We follow others
Back every cost with sourced figures from the benchmark, never estimates dressed as facts
Assistant · framing and options
Found
Good enough beats best
Write each guide in passages that answer one question each, so assistants can quote them
Improvement lead · framing
Preferred
Losses loom larger
Explain why improvement programmes fade without blaming the people who ran them
Improvement lead · options
Believed
Familiar feels safe
Publish how to run a review in-house: candid, useful, and the best proof that Kestrel isn't a threat
Improvement lead · extend
Kept
We follow others
Show how client teams run the next review themselves
Plant manager · extend
Kept
Losses loom larger
A 90-day check that the changes stuck, which plant managers can run alone
Everyone · evidence
Believed
We follow others
An annual benchmark from Kestrel's reviews, published with clients' permission
The in-house guide will look risky to some. Giving away the method seems to give away the sale. It doesn't. The improvement lead was going to block Kestrel anyway; the guide turns a blocker into a reader. And a team that tries it alone and gets stuck knows exactly who to call.
Step 4: reconcile, the content plan
Put the questions into the pillars, and choose the format each set of questions needs. Group questions that one reader would want answered together. Kestrel's 149 questions fall into 19 core pieces. This is the content build's equivalent of a sitemap.
Piece
Pillar
Format
Questions
Signals
Priority
When output is flat: causes, costs, what to check first, and what a review should cover
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage, strategy
P1
When costs keep rising
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage, strategy
P1
When cash is tied up in stock
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage
P2
When scrap and rework climb
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage
P2
When a new line won't reach speed
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage
P2
After an acquisition: where the operating margin hides
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage
P2
When automation isn't paying back
The problems
Long-form guide
11
Canon, coverage
P2
What flat output really costs
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage, strategy
P1
What rising costs are made of
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage, strategy
P1
What stock really costs
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage
P2
What scrap and rework really cost
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage
P2
What a slow ramp-up costs
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage
P2
What margin an acquisition can find on the floor
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage
P2
What idle automation costs
The cost
Article
8
Canon, coverage
P2
The mid-sized manufacturing operations benchmark (annual)
The evidence
Research report
1, and feeds every guide
Canon, coverage, strategy
P1
How to run an operations review in-house, and what a good one covers
Making change stick
Long-form guide
5
Canon, coverage, strategy
P1
Why improvement programmes fade
Making change stick
Article
4
Canon, coverage
P2
Running the next review yourselves
Making change stick
Article
5
Canon, coverage
P2
The 90-day check: did the changes stick?
Making change stick
Checklist
1
Coverage
P3
The questions add up to 149. Every piece traces back to named cells; every question has a piece.
Families. The seven problem guides share one template and one brief, filled in per problem. So do the seven cost articles. That's 14 of the 19 pieces from two templates, which is how a small team keeps them consistent.
One piece, many outlets. Each core piece is written once and used by the other builds. This is where content pays for itself:
Core piece
What it becomes
Assets
Each problem guide (7)
The website's problem page; a newsletter issue; four social posts; a one-page checklist
49
Each cost article (7)
A section of the finance director's page; a newsletter issue; two social posts; an ad for the COO's trigger moment
35
The benchmark report
A press release; seven problem cuts; four sector cuts; a webinar; ten social posts
24
The four improvement-lead pieces
A newsletter issue and two social posts each
12
19 pieces become 120 assets. The webinar finally earns its place: it presents the benchmark, rather than filling a quarterly slot.
Build order. Priority sets the order, never the list. Six P1 pieces first, then twelve P2, then one P3. At two core pieces a month, that's about ten months for one writer, with the benchmark refreshed each year.
Rejected, with reasons:
"The future of manufacturing" and other opinion pieces. No moment asks for them. They fill a calendar, not a buyer's need.
News, events and awards as articles. They answer no question in the bank. If they're worth sharing, they go in the newsletter or on social.
A weekly posting quota. Volume set before questions is how the old blog ended up with twelve posts that answered nothing.
Gating the guides behind a form. Assistants can't read behind a form, so a gated guide can't be quoted. The guides stay open. Only the benchmark's detailed data is gated, for buyers who want it.
28 sector-by-problem articles. The questions don't change enough. Sector examples go inside each guide instead.
Mass-produced articles. Thin pieces dilute the ones that do the work, and contradict the proof pattern.
The coverage test: every one of the 149 questions has a piece; every piece answers named questions; every lead moment is answered in full by at least one piece; and every piece has at least one outlet in another build.
The anatomy library
Each kind of piece has a standard order of sections. Readers know where to look, and assistants find each answer where they expect it. Required sections are in bold.
Piece
Kestrel's pieces
Sections, in order
Length
Problem guide
7
The problem in the buyer's words, answered in one paragraph · The likely causes, ranked · What it costs · What to check this week · The options, including doing nothing · What a good review covers · A case · Related questions · One next step
2,500 to 3,500 words
Cost article
7
The cost, in one sentence, with its source · How it's made up · Work out your own · What usually moves it · One next step
900 to 1,400 words
Research report
1
The headline findings · Method and sample · Findings by problem · Findings by sector and size · What the best plants do differently · Sources and permissions
20 to 30 pages; a 2-page summary open to all
Method guide (in-house)
1
What you'll be able to do · The steps, in order · The templates · Where teams get stuck · When to call for help
3,000 to 4,000 words
Practice article
2
The answer first · Why it happens · What works, with an example · One next step
1,000 to 1,500 words
Checklist
1
What it checks, and when to use it · The checks · What to do with the result
One page
Three rules hold for every piece:
Every section answers one question from the bank, and answers it in its first sentence.
Every figure carries its source in the same sentence, and comes from the benchmark, a named case or a cited study.
Every piece ends with one next step, chosen for the reader's moment: the checklist after a guide, the business case kit after a cost article.
Step 5: the piece brief, then a brief for every section
The piece brief holds what no single section can: the questions, who they're for, the pillar, the arc from the first question to the next step, and where the piece will be used. Then every section gets its own brief, answering one question for one chooser.
PIECE When output is flat: causes, costs and what to check first (long-form
guide)
PILLAR The problems
QUESTIONS (11) COO framing x4: "Is it people, process, equipment or
planning?", "Why does output stay flat when we're running flat out?", "What
is the lost output worth each month?", "What should we check this week?"; COO
trigger; plant manager trigger; COO options; COO scope: "What should the
review cover?"; finance director options; assistant framing; assistant
options
READERS COO first; plant manager; finance director skims the cost section;
assistants quote the passages
THE ARC Recognise the problem in your own words, see the likely causes, put
a number on it, check three things this week, see your options, take one
small next step
THE REASON (echo, never sell) Savings are usually found on the floor, not in
new equipment
PROOF Benchmark figures for flat-output plants, sourced and dated; one named
plant
NEXT STEP The checklist; then the business case kit for readers who want to
act
OUTLETS Website problem page; 10 quotable passages; newsletter issue; four
social posts; checklist
GUARD Every figure from the benchmark or a named case; no claim Kestrel
couldn't defend to a plant manager
Then each section gets its own brief. Two of the seven:
SECTION 2 Why output stays flat when you're running flat out
ANSWERS COO: "Why does output stay flat when we're running flat out?"
JOB Known · COO · familiar feels safe (name the causes they half-suspect, in
their words)
FIRST SENTENCE The answer: the usual causes, most likely first
THEN Three causes, each with how it shows up on the floor and a benchmark
figure
PASSAGES Each cause stands alone in under 80 words, so an assistant can
quote it
GUARD No cause blamed on the plant's people; every figure sourced
SECTION 6 Your options: fix it in-house, buy equipment or bring someone in
ANSWERS COO and finance director: "Fix it ourselves, buy equipment or bring
someone in?"
JOB Answered · COO and finance director · a hard choice stalls (make the
choice simple, and fair)
FIRST SENTENCE When each option is right, in one line each
THEN What each costs and how long it takes; when buying equipment is the
right answer
LINKS Kestrel compared; Kestrel vs new equipment; How to run an operations
review in-house
GUARD Fair to every option, including the ones that don't need Kestrel
The flow check. Read the finished guide top to bottom against the arc. Then read each passage alone, as an assistant would quote it. A guide has to work both ways.
The finished example: "What flat output really costs", written in full
The cost article is the finance director's piece: it leads the finance director's trigger on flat output, and supports the COO's ad and the website's finance director page. It answers eight questions from the bank. Each section carries its job in italics, then the copy. Kestrel, its benchmark and its clients are invented.
Headline: What flat output really costs a mid-sized plant
The cost, in one sentence
Known · finance director · losses loom larger
In a mid-sized plant, flat output usually costs between 4% and 9% of annual contribution margin, almost all of it from capacity the plant already owns but doesn't use (Kestrel operations benchmark 2025, 38 plant reviews).
How it's made up
Answered · finance director · a hard choice stalls
The cost doesn't show up as a line in the accounts. It hides in three places:
Lost sales and late penalties. Orders turned away or shipped late because the bottleneck line can't keep up. In the benchmark, 21 of the 38 plants had paid late-delivery penalties in the year before their review.
Overtime and weekend shifts to make up for capacity lost during the week. The median plant ran 9% of its labour hours as overtime (benchmark).
Capital spent too early. A new line bought to add capacity the old one was losing. Six of the 38 plants had a purchase approved or under way when their review started.
Work out your own
Believed · finance director · we follow others
You don't need our figures. Use yours:
Lost hours a week = (best rate - average rate) / best rate x running hours
Contribution lost = lost hours x units per hour at best rate x contribution
per unit
A worked example. A carton line runs 120 hours a week. Its best sustained rate is 47 cartons a minute; its average is 41. That's 13% of its time lost: about 15 hours a week. At 2,820 cartons an hour and 9 cents' contribution a carton, that's about A$3,900 a week, or A$200,000 a year, from one line. If the line is the bottleneck, every carton it doesn't make is one the plant doesn't sell.
What usually moves it
Answered · finance director and COO · good enough beats best
In the benchmark, three changes recovered most of the lost capacity: changeovers timed and owned (the largest gain in 23 of the 38 plants), small stops logged and fixed at the root, and the bottleneck line loaded first in the schedule. None needed capital. In the plants that made all three, the median gain was 11% more output from the same line within three months.
One next step
Bought · finance director · a hard choice stalls
If your number from the worked example is larger than you expected, the business case kit puts it in a form the board will accept, with the assumptions shown. [Build the case →]
What to notice. Every figure carries its source in its sentence, so an assistant can quote any one of them correctly. The worked example lets a finance director trust the method without trusting Kestrel. And the piece sells nothing until its last line, which is why a finance director forwards it, and why it can feed the ad, the finance director's page, a newsletter issue and two social posts without being rewritten.
Templates
The question bank (one row per question; the team's single list)
ID
Question, in the buyer's words
Moment (chooser · step · need)
Lead or support
Stage
Bias
Pillar
Piece that answers it
Answered in full?
The piece brief
PIECE [title, as the buyer would search it]
TYPE [from the anatomy library] PILLAR [one of the pillars]
QUESTIONS [the bank IDs it must answer in full]
READERS [choosers and moments]
THE ARC [first question to one next step, in one line]
FIGURES [each one, with its source]
CLAIMS USED [from the claims register, with state]
OUTLETS [which builds use it, and as what]
PRIORITY [P1-P3] FRESHNESS [evergreen / refresh yearly / dated]
The section brief
SECTION [name]
THE QUESTION [bank ID, answered in the first sentence]
JOB [stage · chooser and moment · bias]
FIGURE + SOURCE [in the same sentence]
WORDS [target]
GUARD [passes only if it reads correctly on its own]
The outlet map (one row per core piece)
Core piece
Website page
Passages for being named
Newsletter issue
Social posts
Ad or landing page
Sales asset
Live?
Step 6: the business check
Revenue: the two P1 guides and cost articles cover the problems behind most of Kestrel's work. If the plan's effort sits elsewhere, the question bank has drifted from the business.
One reason: every piece echoes "savings found on the floor", without selling. A guide that reads like a brochure loses the reader and the assistant.
The proof is real: the benchmark needs enough reviews behind it and clients' permission. Until then, the guides use named cases only.
The in-house guide is a decision, not a draft: the partners agree that publishing the method is the strategy. If they don't, it drops to the improvement-lead articles alone.
Capacity: one writer, two core pieces a month, plus the outlets. If that isn't there, write the two P1 guides and the benchmark first, and let the other builds wait for their raw material.
Step 7: the measures
Measure each piece by the questions it was written to answer, never by page views alone.
Measure
What it tells you
Stage
Share of the 149 questions answered in full
Whether the plan is built
Coverage
Assistant answers quoting a Kestrel passage, per guide
Whether the passages are good enough to quote
Found
First calls where the buyer uses a guide's words for their problem
Whether the framing landed
Known
Readers who go on to the checklist or the business case kit
Whether the guide moves people to the next step
Answered
Press pick-ups of the benchmark
Whether the evidence is travelling
Believed
Deals where the improvement lead is named as a supporter, from sales notes
Whether the in-house guide turned blockers into readers
Preferred
Outlets live per core piece
Whether the other builds are using the raw material
Coverage
In the campaign plan
Content is the raw material of almost every campaign, so it's planned first and released on the campaign's date. The rule: a campaign uses a core piece that already exists, or it commissions one from the question bank. It never commissions a piece the bank doesn't ask for.
Kestrel campaign
The core piece
What content supplies
The annual benchmark (Q2)
The benchmark report
The report, seven problem cuts, four sector cuts, the webinar deck, the press release
"Before you buy another line" (Q3)
"When output is flat" and "What flat output really costs"
The ad's figure and line, the landing page's sections, two newsletter issues
Board season (Q3 and Q4)
The seven cost articles
One cost per finance director's problem, ready to drop into the business case kit
The improvement leads' series
"How to run a review in-house" and the two practice articles
A three-issue newsletter series and the talk for the owners' round table
The year's content calendar is this table sorted by date. Nothing goes on it that isn't here.
Running it
Who owns it. At Kestrel, one writer owns the question bank and the core pieces; the head of delivery checks every guide for accuracy; the managing partner signs any new claim. Outlets belong to the builds that use them, but the writer keeps the outlet map, so nothing is rewritten without the core piece changing first.
When
What happens
Every two weeks
One core piece drafted, checked and published, with its outlets scheduled
Monthly
The question bank updated from sales calls and the scan: new questions added, answered ones ticked
Quarterly
Pieces re-read against the measures; any figure older than a year flagged
Yearly
The benchmark refreshed; every guide's figures updated from it the same month
When the map changes
New moments become new questions in the bank, before anyone suggests a topic
Using AI to write. A section brief is tight enough for an assistant to draft from, and the guard criteria make the draft checkable. The figures, the cases and the claims never come from the draft: they come from the benchmark and the claims register, and a person who knows the floor reads every guide before it's published.
Common mistakes
The mistake
The stage it breaks
The bias it ignores
On Kestrel's old blog
Instead
Starting from the calendar
Answered
Good enough beats best
Twelve posts; five answered no buyer's question, and none answered one in full
Start from the question bank; the calendar comes last
Writing about the firm
Known
Familiar feels safe
Company news, an award, two event write-ups
News goes in the newsletter; pieces answer buyers
Opinion with no figure
Believed
We follow others
"The future of manufacturing"
Every claim with a sourced figure in the same sentence
Thin posts on big questions
Found
Good enough beats best
600 words on equipment effectiveness: too thin to quote, too vague to act on
One guide that answers ten related questions in full
No cost on the problem
Known, for the finance director
Losses loom larger
Problems described, never priced, so doing nothing felt free
A cost article per problem, with a way to work out your own
Treating the in-house team as a rival
Preferred
Losses loom larger
Posts implying in-house teams fail
Help them: the in-house guide turns a blocker into a reader
Gating the guides
Found
A hard choice stalls
A white paper behind a form that nobody filled in
Guides open; only the benchmark's detailed data behind a form
Writing each outlet from scratch
Believed
Familiar feels safe
The ad, the post and the page each said something different
One core piece; every outlet cut from it
Judging by page views
All, unseen
Good enough beats best
The award post had the most views and won no work
Each piece judged by the questions it answers and what readers do next
The bias to watch in the team: the planning fallacy. Every content plan assumes the writer will hit two pieces a month and the reviews will be quick. Plan for the P1 pieces and the benchmark first, so that if the year runs slow, the pieces that matter exist.
The Loop for this build
Each quarter the Loop (step 11) reads the content measures beside the Score, and asks for each core piece: did the questions it was written for get answered, and did anyone act on the answer?
What the Loop finds
What it means
What changes
Quoted by assistants, but readers don't take the next step
The piece answers but doesn't lead
Rewrite the last section; check the next step fits the reader's moment
Read, but not quoted
The passages don't stand alone, or the figures lack sources
Rewrite to the anatomy library; put each source in its sentence
Neither read nor quoted
Nothing sends anyone to it, or it answers the wrong question
Check its outlets are live; check the questions against sales calls
New questions in sales calls
The bank has drifted from buyers
Add them to the bank; extend a piece before starting a new one
A figure is a year old
The proof is ageing
Refresh from the benchmark, or remove it
What Kestrel's first year would look for. The two P1 guides and cost articles quoted in assistant answers to the flat output and rising costs questions within two or three scans of publishing, as the two old blog posts already are. First calls where the COO describes the problem in the guide's words by mid-year. And after the benchmark, press pick-ups and the first finance directors arriving with their own number already worked out. If the guides are read but the Score's Known and Found don't move at framing, the guides aren't reaching the sources assistants read, and the benchmark's press plan is the place to look.
Shapes by business type
Pillars always come from the story spine. The formats change with the category:
Business type
Formats that are usually canon
B2B professional services
Guides, articles, research reports, case stories, webinars, newsletters
Explainers, calculators, guides by life stage, plain-language FAQs, video
Ecommerce
Buying guides, how-to video, size or fit guides, care guides, gift guides
Local services
Pricing guides, before-and-after stories, seasonal checklists, local FAQs
Marketplaces
Guides for each side, safety and trust guides, success stories
Feeling a bit overwhelmed?
You should be, a little. That was one firm: 77 moments, 149 questions, four pillars, 19 core pieces, 120 assets across five other builds, and ten months of writing for one person. Most content plans skip the question bank and start from the calendar, which is why most blogs look like Kestrel's old one.
RocMode does the heavy part for you:
Your buyer map, built for you. RocMode maps your choosers and their moments, with the pain, gain, job and objection in each, and you can change any of it.
The gaps, shown. It shows which moments nothing answers yet, so you know what has to be written before anything gets scheduled.
