small-business-content-strategy

name	small-business-content-strategy
description	Analyzes sales data from PayPal and QuickBooks to find top performers and slow movers, layers in seasonality, and produces a prioritized 30-day content brief: what to push, what offers to run, what to hold. Strategic output only — no calendars or assets. Use when the user asks what to post, wants a content plan, asks what's selling, or what to promote this month.

Content Strategy

Status: MVP draft Owner: JJ Version: 0.2.0 · Phase MVP Category: Marketing & Sales

Quick start

When an SMB owner asks "what should I post this month?" or "what's my content plan?", this skill:

1. Pulls sales data from QuickBooks or PayPal (transaction history, product/service revenue by date)
2. Identifies patterns — top-selling products, slow movers, seasonal trends
3. Layers in context — seasonality (user-provided or industry benchmarks), past performance
4. Produces a 30-day brief — ranked recommendations of what to push, what to hold, what offers to consider
5. Gets owner approval before the brief feeds into canva-creator for asset generation

The output is strategic only — no calendar scheduling, no creative assets.

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Workflow

Step 1: Pre-flight check (QuickBooks only)

If using QuickBooks, verify the business profile is set up:

1. Call company-info to check if Industry is populated
2. If missing or "Unknown":
   • Ask: "I need your business category to pull the right seasonality benchmarks. What industry are you in?" (e.g., retail, services, SaaS)
   • Call quickbooks-profile-info-update with the user's industry
   • Confirm: "Profile updated. Ready to pull your sales data."
3. If profile is set, proceed to Step 2

Note: PayPal and Square do not require profile setup.

Step 2: Clarify priorities & metrics

When triggered, ask the user:

• "How do you want me to measure 'top performers'?"

  • By total revenue?
  • By profit margin?
  • By sales velocity (how fast they're selling)?
  • Combination of the above?

• "Do you have seasonality patterns in mind?"

  • If yes: "Tell me about them" (capture user's known seasonality)
  • If no: "I'll use industry benchmarks for your category"

Step 3: Pull and analyze sales data

Fetch data from the authenticated connector (QuickBooks, PayPal, or Square, user's choice):

• Date range: Last 90 days (or full history if <90 days available)
• Extract: Product/service name, date sold, revenue, quantity

Connector-specific notes:

• QuickBooks: Fetch invoice line items via profit-loss-quickbooks-account (pre-flight sets industry context)
• PayPal: Fetch merchant transactions via list_transactions. Rate-limiting: If you hit rate limits, pause 30 seconds and retry once. If still blocked, gracefully offer: "PayPal is rate-limited. Would you like to switch to QuickBooks or Square instead, or I can continue with historical data I already pulled?"
• Square: Requires location ID first. Call make_api_request(service="locations", method="list") to discover available locations, then fetch orders for each location. Future enhancement: Square integration is stubbed; full path documented in reference/square-integration.md.

Fallback: If <3 months of data, use industry seasonality benchmarks for the SMB's category (e.g., retail, services, e-commerce)

Identify:

• Top 3–5 performers (by user's chosen metric)
• Bottom 3–5 slow movers (consider holding or repositioning)
• Trending up (gaining momentum in last 30 days)
• Trending down (losing momentum)

Step 4: Layer in seasonality

• User-provided: If they shared seasonal patterns, weight recommendations against them
• Industry benchmarks: For categories without strong user data (e.g., "Q1 is strong for tax services")
• Timing: Flag products that should ramp up/down in the next 30 days based on seasonal patterns

Step 5: Build the 30-day brief

Structure:

• Executive summary (1–2 sentences: "Your best sellers are X and Y. Seasonal shift to Z is starting.")
• Push hard (Top 2–3 products + recommended content angle, e.g., "Case study on ROI", "How-to video")
• Hold steady (Middle performers; maintain visibility but no heavy lift)
• Reposition or pause (Slow movers; consider discounting, bundling, or pausing)
• Seasonal opportunities (What's coming next month that you should position for now)
• Recommended offers (Bundle, discount, or free-trial strategy based on data)

Example length: 200–400 words (brief and actionable, not essay-length).

Step 6: Owner approval & iteration

Present the brief to the owner. Ask:

• "Does this match your gut?"
• "Anything to adjust?"
• "Ready to feed this to canva-creator for asset generation?"

Iterate if needed; once approved, return the final brief as structured JSON (ready for downstream tools).

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Gotchas & edge cases

See reference/gotchas.md for common pitfalls.

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Examples

See reference/examples/ for worked examples (SaaS, retail, services).