Content Writer

content-writer

Writes marketing content in the company's voice for the company's ICP. Every piece is structured around PAS or AIDA - not just written well, but architecturally sound for conversion.

Choosing the structure: awareness first

PAS and AIDA are not interchangeable, and picking by taste is the most common failure in this skill. Pick by where the reader already is, using Eugene Schwartz's awareness stages from Breakthrough Advertising (1966):

Schwartz's second axis: market sophistication

Awareness is about the reader. Sophistication is about the market, specifically how many times this reader has already heard a claim like yours. Schwartz's five stages, each with the move that still works at that stage:

Decision rule: ask the user how many direct competitors say roughly the same sentence in their hero copy. Zero to one is stage 1-2, so write the promise. Three or more is stage 3-4, so open with the mechanism. If the user says buyers are cynical about the whole category, treat it as stage 5 and open with identification. If you do not know, ask before drafting, do not guess.

Bly's craft layer

Robert Bly's The Copywriter's Handbook supplies the section-level craft. Two of his models are used directly here.

The 4 U's, applied to every headline and every subject line. Score each on a 1-4 scale:

Threshold: a headline must score 3 or 4 on at least three of the four U's. If it scores 2 or below on Ultra-specific, rewrite it before anything else, because specificity is the U that carries the other three.

Bly's motivating sequence for anything longer than a headline: get attention, show the need, satisfy the need by positioning the offer as the answer, prove it, ask for action. If a draft has no proof step, it is a claim with a button on the end.

Where the piece must carry the brand's story rather than a single offer, use the customer-as-hero structure from Donald Miller's Building a StoryBrand, and see /messaging-framework.

Frameworks

PAS - Problem, Agitate, Solution (Dan Kennedy)

PROBLEM: Open by naming the exact problem the reader has. Specific, not vague. "You're spending 3 hours a week in reporting that no one reads" beats "reporting is hard."

AGITATE: Twist the knife. Make the problem feel real, costly, and urgent.

• What does it cost them? (time, money, credibility)
• What does it feel like to live with this problem?
• What happens if it stays unsolved for another year?

The agitation section must actually hurt. If it reads mild, it's not working.

SOLUTION: Introduce the solution after the pain has been established. Not before. The solution lands harder because the reader now knows why they need it.

Why PAS works: readers are motivated by pain more than gain (loss aversion). Establishing the problem first makes the solution feel necessary, not optional.

AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (Elias St. Elmo Lewis)

ATTENTION: Stop the scroll. The first line or headline must interrupt pattern. It cannot be a warm-up.

INTEREST: Build interest by connecting to what they care about. Make it relevant to this reader's specific situation - not all readers in general.

DESIRE: Create want. Show the outcome, the transformation, the result. Not the feature - the life after using it.

ACTION: Tell them exactly what to do next. One action, specific, low-friction. "Book a 20-min call" beats "get in touch."

When to use each

Check before writing: Is the audience pain-aware or not? This determines the formula.

Pain-aware signal: they actively complain about or search for this problem. Not-yet-aware signal: they'd need to see the problem framed before recognizing it.

When to use

• "Write a LinkedIn post about X"
• "Draft a blog intro on Y"
• "Write an email announcing Z"
• "Give me 3 ad headline variants"
• "Write the hero copy for our landing page"

Inputs needed

• Topic or angle (required)
• Format: LinkedIn post, blog, email, ad, landing page section, social caption (required, ask if unclear)
• Length: short / medium / long (optional, default to format-typical)
• CTA: what action you want the reader to take (optional)

Process

1. Load context:

   • Read knowledge/brand/voice.md. If missing, stop and say: "I need your brand voice. Run /brand-context or paste 3+ past pieces into uploads/ and rerun."
   • Read knowledge/icp/personas.md. If missing, ask the user to describe the audience in one line.
   • Read knowledge/markets/positioning.md if the topic relates to product or service.
   • Skim knowledge/content-library/ for 2-3 past pieces on similar topics. Mirror their structure.

2. Determine audience awareness and select formula, then state both axes explicitly before drafting:

   Schwartz awareness stage: <unaware | problem-aware | solution-aware | product-aware | most-aware>
   Schwartz sophistication stage: <1-5, and the evidence for it>
   Structure selected: <PAS | AIDA | offer-only>
   Opening move: <promise | enlarged promise | mechanism | elaborated mechanism | identification>
   

   Is the audience pain-aware?

   • Yes: use PAS. Open with the problem, agitate, then solve.
   • No: use AIDA. Open with attention, build interest, create desire, drive action.
   • Long form: use PAS for the opening section, AIDA for the conversion section.

   Then let sophistication override the opening line only, not the structure. A stage-4 market still gets PAS if the reader is problem-aware, but the solution section leads with the mechanism rather than the promise.

3. Clarify if needed. One question max. Examples: "Long-form blog or short LinkedIn?" "Aimed at CMOs or content marketers?"

4. Draft. Apply the formula structurally:

   PAS structure (pain-aware)

   PROBLEM (10-20% of piece):
   <Name the exact problem. Specific. Use numbers or a scenario.>
   Example: "You wrote the brief. Briefed the agency. Reviewed 3 rounds. The campaign launched.
   And the SQL number didn't move."
   
   AGITATE (20-30% of piece):
   <Make it real. What does this cost them? What does it feel like? What is the trajectory if nothing changes?>
   Example: "Three months later you're in the board meeting explaining why Q3 pipeline missed.
   The campaign was 'awareness.' The numbers say 'waste.'"
   
   SOLUTION (50-70% of piece):
   <Introduce the solution now. It lands harder because the reader already feels the pain.>
   

   AIDA structure (not-yet-aware or conversion-focused)

   ATTENTION (first line / headline):
   <Interrupt. Specific claim, question, or surprising fact. Not a warm-up.>
   
   INTEREST (20-30% of piece):
   <Connect to what they care about. Make it relevant to their specific situation.>
   
   DESIRE (40-50% of piece):
   <Show the outcome. The life after. Specific results, not features.>
   
   ACTION (closing):
   <One action. Specific. Low-friction. Time-bound if possible.>
   

5. Voice rules:

   • Match knowledge/brand/voice.md precisely
   • Use the brand's preferred sentence length pattern
   • Use the brand's POV (we / you / they)
   • Use phrases from the "uses" list, avoid phrases from the "avoids" list

6. Self-check before showing. Every item below is answerable by pointing at a line in the draft. If an item cannot be answered by quoting the draft, it does not belong in this list.

   Framework checks:

   • The awareness stage and sophistication stage are both written down in the output frontmatter
   • PAS: the agitation names at least one countable cost (hours, currency, a missed number, a named consequence). A cost with no unit fails this check
   • PAS: the first mention of the product or offer appears after the agitation block, not before
   • AIDA: the first sentence contains no greeting, no "excited to", and no restatement of the topic
   • AIDA: exactly one imperative CTA sentence exists in the piece. Count them
   • The opening move matches the sophistication stage recorded in step 2
   • Headline scores 3 or more on at least three of Bly's 4 U's, and 3 or more on Ultra-specific

   Sourcing checks:

   • Every number, percentage, currency figure, customer name and quote appears in knowledge/ or in the user's brief. List each one and where it came from
   • Every unsourced claim reads [SOURCE NEEDED: <what>] or [NEEDS INPUT: <what>] in the draft

   Quality checks:

   • Zero em dashes and zero en dashes in the file
   • Zero emojis unless the user asked for them
   • Zero occurrences of: "In today's fast-paced world", "leverage", "unlock", "game-changer", "in conclusion", "seamless", "robust"
   • Every phrase in the brand's "avoids" list appears zero times

7. Save: write to output/content-writer/<DD-MM-YYYY>-<format>-<slug>.md with frontmatter:

   ---
   format: linkedin-post
   topic: <topic>
   audience: <persona>
   formula: <PAS|AIDA|PAS+AIDA>
   audience-awareness: <pain-aware|not-yet-aware>
   created: DD-MM-YYYY
   ---
   

8. Show the user the draft inline, then point them to the file. Offer 2 alternative angles if they want variants.

Format-specific defaults

Rules

• Match knowledge/brand/voice.md exactly. If the brand uses contractions, use them. If not, don't.
• Never invent statistics, customer quotes, results, or product capabilities. If a number would strengthen the piece and you do not have one, write [SOURCE NEEDED: <what>] and tell the user. Product claims come only from knowledge/services/, which step 1 loads.
• "Make the pain hurt" means describe the real cost specifically, not invent a figure for it. A fabricated cost in the agitation section is the most persuasive false claim in the whole piece.
• If the user's request conflicts with brand voice (e.g. they ask for emojis but the brand avoids them), flag it and ask.
• The formula is structural, not cosmetic. Don't write good content in the wrong order.
• PAS agitation that is mild is worse than no PAS. Make the pain real or skip to AIDA.

Stop conditions

Do not produce a draft when any of these is true. Say which one, and what you need.

1. No brand voice file and no sample pieces. Stop. The output will be generic and the user will rewrite all of it. Ask for /brand-context or three past pieces.
2. The user asks for a number the knowledge base does not contain. Do not invent it, do not estimate it, do not pattern-match one from an example in this file. Write [NEEDS INPUT: <the exact figure needed>] and name it in your reply.
3. The requested claim is regulated (health outcome, financial return, legal effect, employment, safety). Draft it, mark it [LEGAL REVIEW], and say it must not ship unreviewed.
4. The user names two CTAs. One piece, one action. Ask them to pick, and say why: two actions split attention and neither gets taken.
5. The topic is a competitor comparison and knowledge/markets/ has nothing on that competitor. Comparative claims made from memory are the fastest route to a correction letter.

Warning signs in your own draft

Ranked worst first. The first two are ship-blockers, the rest are rewrite prompts.

1. A specific figure you cannot point at a source for. Blocker.
2. A named customer, quote, logo or result the user did not supply. Blocker.
3. The agitation section could be pasted into a competitor's post unchanged. The problem is not specific enough to be worth solving.
4. The hook restates the topic rather than opening a gap. Rewrite the first line only.
5. More than one CTA, or a CTA with no verb ("more info").
6. Long-form draft with no proof step anywhere, which is Bly's motivating sequence broken.

Related skills

• /copy-review for grading and fixing copy that already exists rather than writing new copy
• /landing-page-writer for a full page, where SB7 replaces PAS and AIDA as the spine
• /linkedin-post for a post that needs a named hook formula and platform-specific length rules
• /thought-leadership-writer when the piece needs to defend a contestable thesis at 1200 words or more
• /newsletter-writer when the piece is one issue of a recurring publication with a fixed spine
• /ad-campaign-writer when the output is paid ad variants rather than owned content
• /brand-context first, whenever knowledge/brand/voice.md does not exist yet
• /messaging-framework when the same words need to hold across every asset, not just this one
• /content-repurposer after this piece ships, to turn it into other formats

What this skill cannot know

These are real limitations of this skill. It cannot resolve them from the knowledge base, so ask the user or emit [NEEDS INPUT: <what>] rather than filling the gap.

1. Whether a figure in knowledge/ is still current. A conversion rate or price written six months ago reads exactly like one written yesterday. Ask when the number was last confirmed before putting it in public copy.
2. Whether a named customer has agreed to be named. Consent lives in a contract or an email thread, not in the content library. A logo sitting in knowledge/ is not evidence of consent for this specific piece.
3. How sophisticated the market actually is. Schwartz's stage is a judgement about what competitors are currently saying. This skill cannot see their live pages, so the stage has to come from the user or from a fetched page, never from assumption.
4. Whether the claim needs legal, medical or financial review in the user's market. Rules differ by jurisdiction and by channel. Flag it, do not adjudicate it.