Social Publisher

Social Publisher — The Operator's Desk for Distribution

Decide the when, where, how-often, and what-shape of social distribution, then hand back a dated, schedulable calendar. You own the mechanics of getting one idea onto many channels in each channel's native shape — not the voice it speaks in, not the article it came from, not the video edit.

This skill takes a source asset and a set of channels and produces three things: a per-platform cadence + best-time grid, a repurposing matrix that reshapes one idea into native variants, and a dated content calendar (CSV/JSON/Markdown) a human or a scheduler (Buffer, Hootsuite, Mixpost, Postiz) can import. The deliverable is always the artifact — a calendar with rows you can act on — not a paragraph of advice.

When to use / When NOT

Use when:

• Building a weekly or monthly posting schedule across multiple platforms.
• Deciding posting frequency and best-time slots per platform.
• Repurposing one asset (blog, video, webinar, podcast) into native posts for several channels.
• Producing a schedulable artifact (CSV/calendar) for a scheduler or for hand-off.
• Checking per-platform limits before programmatic publishing (char caps, media specs, API publish/rate limits, approval gates).

Do NOT use when (route to the sibling that owns it):

If a brand voice spec exists, shape every post in it — load ../brand-voice/SKILL.md. This skill schedules and reshapes; it does not invent the voice.

The distribution mental model

Four rules. Internalize them before you touch a calendar.

1. One source asset → N native variants, never N copies. Reshape language, length, hashtags, and format per channel — repurposing is reformatting, not copy-paste. One blog or long video commonly yields 7–10 short clips plus carousels and threads. Source: Buffer "Ultimate Guide to Repurposing Content"; Planable 2026 repurposing guide (accessed 2026-06-02).

2. Aim for roughly one native-original post per two repurposed. Repurposed content reportedly drives ~25–35% more engagement than one-off posts, but an all-repurposed feed reads stale — keep a ~1:2 native:repurposed mix so the account still feels alive. Source: InfluenceFlow / Planable 2026 (accessed 2026-06-02).

3. Consistency beats raw frequency, and gaps are expensive. A steady schedule outperforms bursts; a ~2-week gap after heavy posting can cut reach 30–50%. Plan a cadence you can actually sustain. Source: Sprout Social / Buffer / Metricool 2026 (accessed 2026-06-02).

4. The deliverable is a schedulable artifact. Always end at a dated calendar (rows: date, time, platform, format, body, status) — something a scheduler imports or a person executes. Advice without a calendar is a miss. The schema lives in references/calendar-schema.md; scripts/verify.sh lints what you emit.

Cadence & best-time grid

Per-platform 2026 frequency sweet spots and starting best-time slots. Source: Sprout Social / Buffer / Metricool best-time-to-post 2026 (accessed 2026-06-02).

Caveat, not law: these slots are starting hypotheses. The only authoritative times are in the account's own analytics — schedule to the table, then move slots toward where that audience actually engages. Never present these numbers as guarantees.

Repurposing matrix

Map source type to per-channel native output. Each cell is a shape, not the same text.

Reshape the same idea, not the same string. Bad→Good:

Bad  (same caption pasted to all four — flat, off-shape, link breaks IG):
  "New blog: 5 ways to cut cloud cost. Read here https://ex.co/cloud #cloud #devops"

Good (native per channel):
  X       thread → "5 ways we cut our cloud bill 38% in a quarter. 🧵"
                   one tactic per post, link only in the last post.
  LinkedIn → "We cut our cloud bill 38% last quarter. The boring one
              that mattered most: rightsizing before reserving. Here's
              the order we did it in →" (3–5 short paras, no hashtag wall)
  Instagram → 6-slide carousel, one tactic per slide; link in bio;
              caption is the hook + 3–5 specific hashtags.
  Bluesky → short thread, plain link (no UTM-bloat), 1 tag max.

Channel-native shaping rules

Quick reference; full specs and API reality in references/platform-limits.md.

Rule with a why: put links in the first comment on LinkedIn/IG/FB — link-in-body posts are commonly down-ranked, so keep the body clean and drop the URL below. Front-load the hook everywhere — LinkedIn truncates at ~210 chars and X shows post 1 only, so the first line decides the click.