Social

A studio that composes social posts from a brief and renders them as finished images for each channel, with channel-native captions, hashtags and alt text. A post is designed. Nobody types it into a box: a slide can carry three figures, a numbered sequence, a small table, a wall of customer logos or a chart, drawn in your brand.

Most tools give you a text field and a picture slot, so a post that has something to prove ends up as a sentence about a number. Designing a proper one means a designer, and a designer for every post means you post less.

Social is also where a brand slips most easily: the post is small, it is made in a hurry, and it is the piece most people see. A post composed here carries the same colours, logo and rules as a deck for the board.

A slide can be a drawing. Where a headline over a photograph would go, a slide can show the thing itself: a few figures with their sources, a numbered sequence of steps, a short table, a wall of customer logos, or a chart. The drawing grows to fill the post; it does not sit in a corner. Gyrium can produce one from the facts behind the post when the point is a number, a sequence or a comparison, and you can build one by hand. A shape it cannot draw honestly falls back to the post's words, so a post is never blank.

Charts are drawn. Nothing is pasted. Column, bar, line and ring charts are drawn at the size the post is read at, in your palette, from numbers you can see and edit in the studio. The same facts can be turned between figures, a table and a chart without retyping them; a conversion Gyrium cannot fill honestly is refused and never guessed.

A logo wall fills itself from the logos already in your library, matched by name, and only with customers who agreed to be shown. It needs at least two, otherwise it falls back to words: "three customers trust us" should never quietly become one.

The post obeys the brand. The text colour comes from your colour usage and is measured against the background the post actually sits on; a colour you chose is used as chosen. The logo takes the shape and size set in your brand. Highlights switched off in the brand are off here. Where words sit over a photograph, the wash that makes them readable takes the side opposite the ink: dark under light words, light under dark ones, so a brand whose colours are pale does not lose its own headline into its own overlay. A post can also choose which of your brand colours it sits on, and its buttons use your own button colours.

The brief asks in the order you plan. Where it goes first, because that sets the size every sketch is drawn at; then what kind of post, the look it suggests, what it is about and who it is for. What your brand already decides, the background, a campaign, a template and extra sources, waits under More options, and the closed toggle says how each is set.

You say what kind of post it is. Under What kind of post, choose Teach, Prove, Point of view, Story or Announce. The kind decides how the post opens, what it does with its facts and what it asks the reader to do, on the slides and in the caption alike: a Prove post leads with its strongest number, a Point of view post opens on the opinion. Each kind also picks a look, a carousel for Teach and a single number for Prove, unless you chose the look yourself. Leave it unset and Gyrium decides. An idea you pick brings its own kind with it, when you have not chosen one. The kind also opens the tab of ideas that suits it: Announce and Story open Your story, Prove opens Proof, Teach opens Your offer and Point of view opens Market. When you have no such tab, the first one opens.

You choose the shape, and a carousel's length. Under Look, each shape is drawn as a small sketch at the size of the post you are making, tall for a portrait post and wide for X, so you can see the shape before anything is written. The look you pick is the one the post is written in: choose Numbered carousel and you get a carousel, choose a quote and you get a quote. For a carousel, Slides says how many: leave it on Auto and Gyrium writes a cover, three to seven points and a closing slide; step it between 2 and 12 and it writes exactly that many, the cover and the closing slide included. At 2 slides it is a cover and one slide, with no closing slide: the call to action goes in the caption, and the one slide carries no number. Let it choose puts it back on Auto.

Post ideas come from what Gyrium knows, grouped by where they come from. Right under the kind of post, under What do you want to post?, the brief offers ideas for posts, one tab per source: each of your collections by its name, and your proof, your offer, your market and your story. Each idea names the document it rests on, and an idea a post has already used says so, with how many posts. Unused ideas come first, and Hide used leaves only those. Pick an idea and it becomes what the post is about, and the post is written from that idea's own facts. Change the words and the post goes back to drawing on everything Gyrium knows. The box for your own words sits under the ideas, as Or say it in your own words. New ideas asks for a fresh set.

A blueprint comes with what it asks for. Start a post from a blueprint, such as Testimonial or Tips & tricks, and the brief says which one under From the blueprint, with what it is for. When the blueprint asks for particular things, its questions are there too, each with a box: answer what you can, and the post is written from your answers and your facts. The questions come in the language your interface is set to, English, Dutch or French, where the blueprint has them in it. The composer is told the blueprint itself, so a post started from Testimonial is written as a testimonial. Start without it goes back to a post of your own.

One summary before you compose. Beside the brief, What you'll get draws the post at its own size and says, one line each, where it goes, its look and length, what kind of post it is, what it is about, which facts it draws on, who it is for, its background, its campaign and what it costs in credits. Mode and the compose button sit under it, so you read what will be made on the way to making it.

A post costs 2 credits. They are taken when the post is composed, after you confirm: the compose button first asks, saying what will be made and what it costs, and nothing is made or taken when you choose Cancel. A compose makes one post for each platform you chose, and a carousel is one post however many slides it has. Planning a Guided outline, regenerating one slide, rewriting the caption, editing and saving cost nothing, and a compose that fails costs nothing. On a narrow screen it sits below the brief.

Recompose writes the same post again. In an open post, Recompose rewrites that post from its own brief: the same platform, format, look and number of slides, the same background, campaign and facts, and the point it makes. The new slides and caption replace the old ones in the same post, with the same reference, so nothing extra appears in Files. It costs 2 credits, like any compose, and edits you have not saved are lost, so the studio asks first when there are any.

A quote is signed with the person's own title. When a post quotes someone, it names the person the source says said it, and gives the title they have on your Team. Someone who is not on your Team is named without a title, so nobody is given a job they do not have.

Guided: the outline first. Under Mode, Guided plans the post before anything is written. Choose Draft the outline and Gyrium returns the takeaway and one line per slide, from the same facts the post would use. Change any line, move a carousel's points up or down, add one with + Add point, or leave a point empty to leave it out. Then choose Compose from this outline, and the post is written to what is there, slide by slide. Draft again asks for a new outline. Auto writes the finished post straight from the brief. A Numbered carousel starts on Guided, so you see Gyrium's plan for each slide before anything is written; every other look starts on Auto. The mode you choose yourself stays.

One photo across the slides. For a numbered carousel, choose One photo across the slides under Look. The photo continues from slide to slide, so it reads as one picture when someone swipes, and it is never stretched: each slide shows its own part of it, lined up exactly at the edges. The brief says how many slides the photo carries sharply, and runs it that far unless you choose Across a different number; slides after it keep your brand colour. A small photo cannot run across slides at all, and a wider one carries more. Below it you see the whole photo with every slide's part marked and numbered, and the part no slide shows dimmed. Click the photo to move what the slides show; the post is cut exactly as marked.

A carousel reads as a sequence. Every slide is shown at once as a filmstrip, in order, and the numbers on the slides are drawn as part of the design, and never typed into the titles. A step can carry an icon from the same set your decks and pages use, and so can a line of body text: write the icon's name between colons and it is drawn where you wrote it, so a run of lines reads as a list without anyone building one. In a list of two or more such lines, the icons hang in a column beside the words, the way a deck draws its bullets, in the icon colour chosen under Colour usage and the icon style chosen under Iconography in Foundation. Headlines and figures deliberately take none: a number does not need a picture of itself.

You can change the order of the slides. In the post, pick a slide in the filmstrip and choose Move left or Move right. The slide takes its words, its facts and its picture with it, the numbered points are numbered again in their new order, and the images follow on their own.

The post tells you when it has gone stale. It reports, in the same panel every other format has, that the brand has moved since the images were made, that a fact it cites has changed, is no longer on file or is in dispute, that a picture frame was left empty, or that the caption still uses a word your brand never uses. It reports; you decide.

A post speaks in your brand voice, whoever it is for. A line using a word your brand never uses is rewritten once, and a post that still carries one cannot be marked ready or posted until the line is edited.

A caption is held to the facts behind the post. Every number, web address and email address in it is checked against the facts the post was composed from, your brief, and your organization's own contact details. Anything that cannot be traced is named in the studio, so you see it before anyone else does. The only website, email or phone number a caption may use is your own. A post that asks for a customer's words, such as a testimonial, tells you when you have none on file, and does not quietly become a different post.

Someone reviews it inside Gyrium. Under Review in the post, ask a colleague to look at it before it goes out, a head of marketing for example. Only people who can open the post and sign it off are offered. They get a message on their dashboard that opens the post itself, and they answer in the same thread or sign it off. A post has no public link: it is published on the channel, so nobody outside needs to see it in Gyrium.

Finishing it. Sign the post off like any other piece, and a signed post's download carries a note of that sign-off in a file of its own, apart from the caption. Each one carries its own reference. When it has gone out, say so, and the post records the day it was posted.

1. Start from a brief, or from a channel, and choose the platform and size at the top: every sketch below is drawn at that size.
2. Under What kind of post, choose the kind, or leave it to Gyrium. The ideas under it open on the tab that suits that kind.
3. Under What do you want to post?, pick an idea from the tabs. An idea brings its own facts, so pick one before you write anything yourself. Only when none fits, write what the post should say under Or say it in your own words.
4. Under Look, check the shape the kind picked, or pick another. For a Numbered carousel, set Slides to the length you want, or leave it on Auto.
5. Say who it is for if you know. The background, a campaign, a template and extra sources are under More options, which shows what they are set to while it is closed.
6. Read What you'll get beside the brief; its line Credits says what composing will cost. To see the plan first, choose Guided under Mode (a Numbered carousel starts there), then Draft the outline; change the lines, move the points with Up and Down, and choose Compose from this outline.
7. Choose Compose post. Gyrium asks first, with what it will make and what it costs; confirm to compose, or choose Cancel to go back to the brief.
8. After composing, pick the shape of each slide: words, or a drawing of the proof. To put a slide elsewhere, pick it in the filmstrip and choose Move left or Move right.
9. Read what the studio names as unsupported or out of date, and fix it there.
10. If someone should see it first, write what they should look at under Review, choose them, and choose Ask for review.
11. Sign it off, download the images with the caption, hashtags and alt text, and post them in the channel.
12. Mark it as posted, so the record says when it went out.

Gyrium does not post for you, and it does not schedule. Text is edited in the panel beside the post, and not on the picture itself. A conversion into a chart picks columns; choosing a ring is a decision you make. A logo wall needs at least two logos it can match in your library. The caption check covers numbers, web addresses and email addresses; a claim made in words alone is not checked that way, so read the caption before it goes out.