2.6 The Persona Content Plan
You have a niche (2.1), a position (2.2), a character (2.3), a timeline (2.4), and a visual system (2.5). The content plan decides what actually gets published, how often, and in what proportion.
It has five components: pillars, formats, rhythm, the format ratio, and the week template.
Four content pillars
A pillar is a theme the account returns to. Four is the workable number: fewer and the account is repetitive, more and it is incoherent.
Each pillar should be answerable from the The six-part specification that makes a persona reproducible as a character across months. without new invention, and each should do a different job:
| Pillar | Job | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| Authority — what she knows, teaches, demonstrates | Builds the reason to follow | 40% |
| Life — where she is, what she is doing, the world from 2.3 | Builds attachment and continuity | 30% |
| Opinion — what she thinks, agrees with, disagrees with | Builds a voice, drives comments | 20% |
| Commercial — product, partner, promotion | Converts | 10% |
Two notes on these proportions.
The 40/30/20/10 split is a default, not a law. A persona-as-product (2.2) inverts the emphasis toward Life; a persona-as-channel leans toward Authority. What matters is that the commercial pillar is a minority and that the ordering is deliberate rather than accidental.
The commercial pillar at 10% is not a moral position; it is a reach position. An account that sells in every post trains its audience to scroll past. Ten percent means roughly one post in ten, which is often enough to convert and rare enough to survive.
Formats
Six formats cover almost everything a persona does:
A synced speaking clip; the format that moves a pipeline from Minimum to Working.. The persona speaks to camera. Voice, opinion, explanation. Requires the video and Matching synthesized speech to a face; priced per minute and the most retried line in the cost sheet. The numbered folder convention such as 00-bible/ and 40-output/ that keeps every asset addressable. from Part VI.
Lifestyle. The persona in a world. The cheapest format with a generated persona, because it needs no performance — only a scene and an identity (Part V).
Tutorial or demonstration. Step-by-step, usually with text or voiceover. The strongest Authority format, and the one that exposes errors most visibly (2.1's feasibility axis).
Trend response. A format, sound, or meme adapted to the persona. Cheap reach, low durability, and the highest risk of breaking the The ten facts a persona cannot break, each specific enough to check in ten seconds..
Behind the scenes. The making-of: how the persona is generated, what went wrong, what changed. This one deserves special mention.
Promotion. The commercial post. Requires the disclosure rules from 11.3 in every case.
That fourth format — behind the scenes — is the synthetic category's structural advantage and its most underused format. A persona who is open about being generated can publish content no human creator can: the failed generations, the retraining, the prompt that produced three arms. It converts the category's biggest liability into a content pillar, and audiences respond to it because it is genuinely novel rather than performed. If your archetype is the underdog, this is your best format.
Rhythm: minimum, optimum, maximum
Minimum: two posts per week. Below this, the account does not accumulate. Reach is a function of recency in most ranking systems, and a two-week gap resets more than momentum — it resets your production habits.
Optimum: three to five per week, plus stories daily if the platform supports them. This is a sustainable cadence for one operator with a working pipeline, and it is enough to test formats and pillars in a reasonable time.
Maximum: whatever you can produce without dropping below your quality floor — and that ceiling is lower than you think. The failure mode when you exceed it is not obvious. Quality falls gradually, the identity consistency work gets skipped, QA becomes a glance, and the account drifts while volume rises. Reach does not reward the extra posts enough to pay for that.
The honest framing of the tradeoff: posting more than your pipeline can support costs you consistency, and consistency is the one thing a synthetic account cannot buy back. Chapter 4.6's quarterly battery exists partly to catch the drift that volume causes.
Signals that you are over the maximum: QA checklists being skipped, the same prompt template reused for a week, comments about the face, a drop in engagement on the posts you spent least time on.
The format ratio
Video reaches; stills hold.
Short-form video is the discovery surface — it is where new viewers arrive. Stills reach predominantly the existing audience: followers, profile visitors, and search. That asymmetry has a direct planning consequence:
- If you need reach, the ratio leans video. 60/40 video-to-still is a reasonable discovery mix.
- If you need depth — and the subscription path from Part X does — stills matter more than their reach suggests, because they are what a follower sees when deciding whether to stay.
- Carousels are the underused middle. They hold attention longer than a single still, they are cheaper than video, and they carry narrative well.
The mistake to avoid is publishing video only. It grows an audience that never encounters the quieter content where attachment forms.
The week template
Four slots, and the fourth is the one that protects the other three.
| Slot | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Production 1 | Batch generation for the week's content | 2–3 h |
| Production 2 | Video, voice, or edit work | 2–3 h |
| Production 3 | Captions, scheduling, publishing | 1–2 h |
| Review | QA against 4.6, canon check, metrics, next week's plan | 1 h |
The review slot is not administrative. It is where the canon test from 2.3 is actually run, where the week's numbers are read against the plan rather than glanced at, and where next week's pillars are chosen. Accounts that skip it do not notice drift until it is expensive.
The twenty-to-thirty rule
When you work with brands, the production requirement changes shape. The figure reported by operators working at that level is twenty to thirty creative variations per week: the same campaign idea adapted across angles, formats, and hooks, because brand work is judged on volume of usable assets rather than on a single post.
What that means for you, before you accept brand work:
- Your pipeline must be One production run, sized from the survival rate rather than from ambition.-capable. Twenty variations from one prompt session is a workflow property, not an effort property. Chapter 5.4 is the batch pipeline and 7.1 is the automation that makes it a single operation.
- The character bible's The recurring places and objects around the persona; what turns generation from invention into retrieval. is the limiting factor. Twenty variations need twenty distinct scenes, outfits, or angles. If 2.3's world section has fewer than twenty places with three objects each, this is not achievable.
- Identity consistency at volume is harder than at three posts a week. This is precisely where the training path from 4.5 becomes worth its cost, and where 4.6's battery needs to run more often.
- Price accordingly. Chapter 9.2 covers rates, but the structural point is that variation volume is the cost driver, and a rate that ignores it makes brand work unprofitable at exactly the moment it starts to matter.
If twenty to thirty variations a week sounds impossible, you are not ready for brand work yet — and knowing that before signing is worth more than the first contract.
The first ninety days
The plan above is steady state. The ramp is different, and worth stating because a new account that starts at full cadence with no data is publishing into a void.
Days 1–14: one pillar, one format, three posts a week. Pick the strongest Authority pillar and the Lifestyle format. The purpose is not growth; it is to find out what your pipeline actually costs you per post, which nobody estimates correctly the first time.
Days 15–45: add the second and third pillars, hold cadence. Now you have a baseline to compare against, and the comparison is the point.
Days 46–90: add formats, including behind-the-scenes, and start the review slot in earnest. By now there is enough data for 8.3's practical reading of the algorithm, and enough published material for the quarterly audit in 12.2 to have something to audit.
Introducing all four pillars and six formats in week one produces a month of unfocused posts and no usable comparison. The ramp exists because the information you need to choose comes from the first two weeks, and you cannot buy it in advance.
Where this goes wrong
No pillars. Every post is a new decision, and the account has no recognizable themes.
A commercial pillar above 20%. You have trained the audience to expect a sales pitch.
Chasing maximum volume. The quality floor falls quietly, and consistency is what breaks first.
Video only. Reach without attachment.
Skipping the review slot. Drift accumulates unseen.
Accepting brand work without a batch pipeline. The contract you cannot deliver costs more than the one you decline.
Pillars that require new invention. If a pillar cannot be answered from the bible, it will be abandoned in month two.
The gate
- Name four pillars and their proportions.
- Which formats are in rotation, and are any of them behind-the-scenes?
- What is your minimum, and what is your honest maximum?
- What is your video-to-still ratio, and does it match what you need — reach or depth?
- Does the week template have a review slot with a fixed hour in the calendar?
- Can your pipeline produce twenty variations in a week, and if not, what is missing?
What you leave with
Four pillars with a default proportion and the reasoning behind the commercial minority, six formats including the underused behind-the-scenes pillar that only synthetic accounts can run, a rhythm defined by minimum, optimum, and honest maximum with the failure signals for exceeding it, the reach-versus-depth ratio that decides your format mix, a four-slot week including the review slot that protects the rest, and the twenty-to-thirty variation requirement as a pre-condition for brand work rather than a surprise after signing.