Training your specialists

Your specialists start out smart about their platform domains in general. Out-of-the-box they come with knowledge on the best practices on their content formats. However, training is how they learn to create the way you create. This page walks through how training works and how to get the most out of it.

What training actually is

Training is you teaching a specialist your rules for a specific format. For your Newsletter Editor, that might be the kind of opener you like, the sections you always include, how long your issues run, and the sign-off you use. For your Social Director, it's the rules for a text post versus a short-form video script.

The tighter your rules, the closer the first draft lands to something you'd publish. Loose training gives you a good starting point. Sharp training gives you a solid first draft you put your human touch on.

Specialist training vs. Sharpen your team

There are two layers, and they stack.

Sharpen your team lives at the bottom of the sidebar as “Make the team sharper,” with a progress bar underneath. It's the foundational context every specialist on your team needs to know: who you are, who you're talking to, your content pillars, how you sound, and your best examples. You fill it out once and every specialist reads from it. Update it anytime your focus shifts. The fuller the bar, the sharper your team.

Specialist training lives inside each specialist, under the Training tab. It's the format-specific rules that layer on top of Sharpen. Newsletter Editor doesn't need to learn who your audience is again; it already knows. It just needs to learn how you like a newsletter built.

How to start training

1. Pick a specialist from the sidebar (Newsletter Editor or Social Director for beta).
2. Click the Training tab.
3. Click the Start training card for the format you want to train.

You'll move through a series of short steps. Each one asks a focused question and shows you the options. No blank boxes staring you down. Expect less than 10 minutes for your first pass.

Re-entering training later

Your training isn't a one-and-done thing. Come back whenever your taste changes.

When you re-enter, every step is pre-filled from last time. You edit what you want to change and leave the rest. We never hide steps, so you always see the full shape of what your specialist knows.

Reset to factory

If your training has drifted somewhere you don't like and it's easier to start fresh than edit your way back, scroll to the bottom of the Training tab and click Reset [Specialist]'s training. That wipes what you've taught this specialist and restores our defaults for that format. Your drafts and schedules aren't touched.

Use it sparingly. Most of the time, editing a couple of steps is faster than starting over.

How drafts get better

Training isn't set-and-forget. A pattern you'll fall into:

• Train a specialist.
• Generate a draft. Edit it down to what you'd actually publish.
• Notice what you kept changing. That's a rule you haven't taught yet.
• Pop back into training, add the rule, save.

Every round tightens the distance between first draft and published.

Questions? Send us a note.