Letting the calendar fill itself: publish cadence, the 24-hour fallback and human in the loop

You can plan every post by hand in RankMill. You give a post a time, or you drag it to a new day on the calendar. That works, but it means somebody has to remember to do it every week. If you would rather not, a project can fill its own calendar.

This post covers how that works. You will see how to switch the publish cadence on, what RankMill puts on each slot, and when a topic on a slot gets written. It also covers what the 24-hour fallback spends and what Human in the loop changes. At the end, you will see how to keep a topic you do not want off the calendar for good.

What the publish cadence does

The publish cadence is a setting on each project. When it is on, RankMill looks at the next two weeks and keeps the slots in that window filled. It fills them with posts the project already has.

It works through them in a set order:

1. Finished posts first. A finished post that has no publish time yet can go on a slot.
2. Suggested topics next. When the finished posts run out, suggested topics fill the slots that are left. They do not need approving to be placed.
3. New topics when it runs dry. If there is nothing left to place, the project goes looking for new topics.

So your calendar stays about two weeks ahead of today. You can open the calendar at any time and see what is going out and when. The month view gives you the big picture. The week view shows the detail. You can filter to one project if your team looks after several.

Before you switch it on

The cadence needs a publishing destination. Until the project has one, you cannot switch the cadence on.

That rule makes sense once you think about it. A post that reaches its scheduled time goes out, so RankMill needs somewhere to send it. Each project has one destination:

• a GitHub repository
• a WordPress site
• a Ghost site
• a webhook you run
• our API, which your own code calls to fetch finished posts and confirm them live

WordPress and Ghost can take a post as a draft for you to publish there, or publish it straight away. If you want a last look before anything goes live, the draft option gives you that. On GitHub, a finished post goes out as a pull request that RankMill opens and merges. The post counts as published when the pull request merges.

Picking your days, your hour and your posts per day

With a destination in place, you make three choices.

The weekdays

Pick the days of the week your posts go out on. The days are in UTC. If your readers are far from UTC, keep that in mind. A slot late in the UTC day can land on the next morning for some readers, or the previous evening for others.

The hour

Pick the hour posts go out. This is in UTC too. Work out the UTC hour that matches the time you want your readers to see a new post, and set that. If your local clocks change for summer time, check the hour still suits you after the change.

How many posts each day

Each day you picked can take up to four posts. Most small teams will want one.

Think about credits before you pick a bigger number. Writing a post uses 10 credits. While RankMill is in early access, your team gets 100 credits a month, shared across everyone and every project, and it resets on the 1st in UTC. That covers 10 posts a month.

Posts that are already finished cost nothing more to place. But every suggested topic that lands on a slot will be written, and each write uses 10 credits. A cadence of two days a week with one post each comes to eight or nine slots a month. Turn it up much past that, and the topics on your slots can use up the whole allowance.

When a topic on a slot gets written

A finished post on a slot is ready to go. A suggested topic is not. It still needs writing. RankMill writes it at one of two moments:

• Once its questions are answered. As soon as you answer them, the topic is written.
• 24 hours before its slot, if the questions are still open.

Answering the questions

A suggested topic can arrive with up to four questions. These are the things the agent could not find out by itself. It might be a price, a customer name, a date, or whether you support some integration.

You answer them in the app. The Needs attention list shows every topic across your team with questions waiting for you, so you do not have to hunt for them. Your answers go to the writer as facts from the business. That is how a post ends up with your real prices and your real customers in it.

The 24-hour fallback

If the questions are still open 24 hours before the slot, RankMill writes the topic anyway. This is the 24-hour fallback.

The writer does not guess the facts you left blank. It writes the post so the missing fact is not needed. You get a post on time, but it may be less specific than it would have been with your answers. A post about pricing with no prices in it is still a post, just a thinner one.

What the fallback spends

A fallback write spends credits like any other write: 10 per post. This is the part to keep an eye on. A topic you never opened can still be written and still use credits, because placing it on a slot did not need your approval.

The Working now panel shows the credits your team has used this month at the foot of it. It is a quick way to check how much is left. If a write fails, the credits stay spent, but writing that failed post again is free.

Once the topic is written, it is a finished post on its slot. When the slot comes round, it goes out to your destination.

What changes when you switch on Human in the loop

Human in the loop is a switch on each project. It removes the 24-hour fallback.

With it on, a topic on the calendar is not written until its questions are answered. Nothing is written on your behalf at the 24-hour mark. If the slot passes and the questions are still open, the topic gives the day back. No post goes out on that slot.

Here is when that is the better choice:

• The facts matter more than the date. If a post without your prices or dates would be no use to your readers, you would rather skip a day.
• Someone else has to confirm the details. If you look after a client's site and the client has to sign off on facts, the switch stops a post going out before they reply.
• You want every write to be a choice. Each write uses credits. With the switch on, no topic with open questions spends them until you have answered.

The trade is simple. Without Human in the loop, the calendar keeps moving even when you are busy. With it on, the calendar waits for you, and a busy week can leave gaps.

If you switch it on, build a habit around Needs attention. A quick look a couple of times a week keeps the questions answered and the slots filled.

Moving things around

None of this locks you in. A slot with no post simply waits. You can drag a planned post onto another day on the calendar. You can also clear a post's time, which takes it off the calendar.

There is one catch with that last one, and it leads to the next section.

Keeping an unwanted topic off the calendar

With the cadence on, a post with no time goes back into the pool. RankMill may place it again on the next free slot. So clearing the time on a topic you do not want is not enough. It can come straight back, and then it can get written and use credits.

The fix is to decline the topic. A declined topic is not written.

When you decline, add a reason if you like. Every later topic hunt is told what you declined and why, so it stops suggesting the same thing. A short reason helps here:

• "We do not sell to enterprise teams."
• "We covered this on the old blog."
• "Too close to what our competitor writes about."

The clearer the reason, the better the next round of suggestions.

A weekly routine that keeps it running

Once the cadence is on, the work left for you is small. Here is a routine that fits into a few minutes:

1. Open the calendar and look at the next two weeks.
2. Decline any topic you do not want written.
3. Open Needs attention and answer the questions on the topics you are keeping.
4. Check the credits used this month in Working now.
5. Drag a post to another day if the order does not suit you.

Do that, and the calendar fills itself with posts you are happy to see go out.