Personal note · 3 min read
Your work is already the content
What I would tell a service business owner staring at an empty posting calendar.

When a service business owner thinks about making content, I think they often picture the wrong job. They picture the person entertaining them on their phone. The quick hook, the trend, the joke. Then they look at their own day and decide there is nothing interesting to post.
But their day is full of things a potential customer might want to understand. What did they notice before starting the job? Why did they choose one approach over another? What did they explain to the customer afterward? Those are ordinary questions to the person doing the work. They are useful questions to the person trying to hire someone.
A cleaner does not need my advice on how to act like an entertainer. I would rather ask them to show me their work. Tell me what was difficult. Tell me what a customer usually gets wrong. Help me understand the care I would not notice from the finished photo alone.
That does not mean everything should be posted without thought. There still needs to be a clear idea of what the business wants to be known for. If every post points somewhere different, it becomes harder for a reader to work out why they should pay attention.
I think about the person who discovers that explanation later. They might be deciding who to hire. They might have the exact question the owner answered on an ordinary Tuesday. A useful piece of content can still be useful long after the day it was made.
I’m interested in how AI changes the way those explanations are discovered, but I do not think the owner needs to start by learning a new set of buzzwords. Start with a person. What would help them understand your work and decide whether you are a fit?
That is the habit I want to make easier through Protocol. Share something real from the day. We help prepare it, you check that it sounds right, and the approved version becomes part of a clearer picture of your business.
You already did the hard part: you learned the work and did it for someone. There may be more worth explaining in that day than you think.
Keep reading.
About Eric →
A better fit
The future I want to help build starts with a more thoughtful introduction.

Learning to ask one more question
The difference between writing down what a business sells and understanding why it exists.

Building for twenty years
How I’m learning to balance a long view with the work that needs to happen today.