Article to social series

What an article to social series is

An article to social series takes one piece you have already published and produces ten to fourteen posts from it, spread across roughly two weeks. Each post is written for the platform it will appear on, and each is finished: a complete thought, with its own opening and its own ending.

It is not chopping the article into paragraphs and posting them in order. A post that only makes sense if you have read the article has failed. Nobody scrolling a feed has the previous instalment in their head, and most people will see exactly one post from the series. Every post therefore has to work for the reader who arrives at it cold and never clicks anything. That rule is the whole job. Broader repurposing from a recording is a different service; this one starts from written material you already own.

When you need one

You need this when you have written something substantial and posted about it twice. A two-thousand-word guide represents a week of thinking and it usually gets one link post and then nothing. There is a fortnight in it.

The second case is a business that has decided to post regularly and cannot keep up. Most people can publish an article a month. Almost nobody can write fourteen good posts a month on top of it. Taking the fortnight out of the article is how the gap gets filled without inventing new material every Tuesday.

You do not need this if the article is thin. A six-hundred-word post has one idea in it and one idea makes one post, not twelve. And if what you want is a standing supply of posts across a quarter rather than a burst from one piece, buy a social calendar instead, or posts written from scratch where there is no article behind them.

What I need and what comes out

The input is one published article of at least twelve hundred words, a note of which platforms you actually use, and the link the posts should point at. That is all. No recording, no call, no deck.

• The separate points. An article that earns a fortnight has eight to twelve distinct claims in it. Each becomes one post, stated on its own terms rather than referred to.
• The quotable lines. Two or three sentences that are already good enough to post as they stand, set as short posts with nothing else around them.
• The disagreement. Whatever in the article somebody might argue with, posted as the position it is. These are the posts that get replies.
• One list and one story. The list post and the short anecdote post, because those two formats carry further than the others and most articles contain the raw material for both.
• Platform fit. Length, line breaks and register set for LinkedIn or wherever you post, rather than one text pasted everywhere.

What you get

The posts. Ten to fourteen, each in full and ready to paste, in one document and one spreadsheet. No placeholders, no "insert image here" without saying which image.

A posting sheet. One row per post: the date, the platform, the text, whether it links out, and what image or none. Fourteen rows covering a fortnight, ordered so the strongest post is not last.

Three openers. Alternative first lines for the three posts most likely to be the ones people see, since the first line does most of the work.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Kitchener commercial cleaning company publishes a two-thousand-word article on what a building manager should ask before signing a contract. It goes up, gets one post on the day, and nothing after that.

Split into a series it produces twelve posts over fourteen days. Two of them are single sentences from the article, posted bare. One is the argument that the lowest quote is almost always the one that changes price in month four, which draws a long argument in the comments from two people in the trade, and that argument is the most useful thing that happens all fortnight. One is the list of six things that should be named in a scope of work. Three of the twelve mention the article at all; the other nine stand entirely alone and never ask anybody to go anywhere. The company books two site visits from the series and the article itself gets read more in that fortnight than in the four months before it.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which article, which platforms, and what you want a reader to do. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per article, agreed before anything starts.
3. The material. You send the article link and say who posts, from which account, and in whose voice.
4. The work. Four to six working days for one article. The posts are drafted together so they do not repeat each other.
5. Your review. One round of changes across the set. Anything you would not say in your own name is rewritten.
6. Delivery. The posts, the posting sheet with dates, and the alternative openers.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the length of the article and the number of platforms decide the work. One article into one fortnight on one platform is a small job. A standing arrangement that turns every new article into a series is priced per article and is usually cheaper per post. The pricing page sets out the four ways of working, and the number is fixed in writing before anything begins.

What happens next

Most people run one series, see which three posts did the work, and then want the posting handled rather than done by hand every morning, which is content scheduling. Some find the series is better than the article and commission standalone posts that are not tied to anything published. And if the same material should also reach the list, the newsletter version is written separately. One fortnight from one article is a finished piece of work on its own, and nothing further is assumed.