Content Operations

A content project turns a prompt where AI answers cite others and not you into a page on your site or a LinkedIn post. SurfacedBy builds an evidence pack, writes a brief for you to review, writes the draft when you ask for it, and publishes only when you click Publish live or Publish draft.

Content projects live in the Content projects tab of Actions, on the Professional and Agency plans. Generating briefs, drafts, and media uses credits; see Credits for prices and what is free.

Starting a project

Start a project from:

• An opportunity. Select Create on a row in Opportunities, or from the opportunity's evidence drawer. The drawer asks what to make: A page on your site or A LinkedIn post.
• A page check. Select Create content under a Content Checker result to improve the page you checked. The button appears only when the result finds a real content gap.

Each opportunity has at most one content project. Once it exists, the opportunity shows Open project (or Open the page in the evidence drawer) instead of Create.

For a page, the drawer is pre-filled from the evidence and you can change:

• The angle and Suggested title. These steer the brief and draft; neither is published as written.
• Format. The kind of page, such as a blog post or a comparison page, suggested from the opportunity.
• Target. A new page, or an existing page to improve (give its URL).
• Media. Whether the draft may include video, images, and charts.
• Add context. Pick brand knowledge entries, and attach notes, links, or files for this project only.

Selecting Save to plan instead adds the opportunity to your plan without starting a project. Selecting Start begins the brief straight away, and the brief uses credits.

The brief

While the brief is written, the project shows its progress. Before any writing, SurfacedBy gathers an evidence pack from:

• your confirmed brand knowledge and the context you attached;
• the pages AI answers cite for this prompt, and the top search results for it, as reference for what already ranks;
• the products and pages found on your site, so the brief names your real offerings and suggests real internal links;
• the current page itself, when you are improving an existing page.

When the brief is ready, the project shows Ready for review. The brief sets out the target prompt and country, search intent, the suggested angle, an outline, where the evidence comes from, the facts the draft may state, the facts to avoid because their evidence is weak or private, and a publishing checklist.

From there you either:

• Request changes. Say what should change, or change which brand knowledge entries the brief draws on. SurfacedBy writes a new brief version, which uses credits; the current version stays until the new one is ready.
• Generate draft. Generating the draft is how you accept the brief. There is no separate approve step.

The draft

When you generate the draft you choose:

• Quality. Standard is faster and suits most pages. Premium aims for higher quality, adds a web research pass that checks and corrects facts against current sources, and costs more. Both are available on every plan that includes content projects.
• An optional note for the writer.
• Media in this draft. Which media the draft may use, and any images or videos of your own to place.
• Brand knowledge. Use all confirmed sources, a selection, or none. You can add facts, review discovered pages, retry unreadable sources, and change quoting permission here while keeping your reviewed brief.

When selected knowledge has changed, Prepare knowledge checks it against the brief's evidence needs. Essential missing facts must be supplied before drafting. Optional needs are shown as suggestions and do not prevent drafting. Attached project inputs must finish being read; remove or replace any that could not be read.

A draft run goes through research, writing, and fact-checking steps, and uses credits as each step completes. If your balance runs out, the run pauses with the work kept and the project shows Needs credits.

When the run finishes, the project shows Draft ready. If some steps of the run could not complete fully, it shows Needs review instead, with the draft kept. The Checks tab shows how the draft's claims held up. After a draft exists you can Regenerate draft from the project header.

The project page

A project has six tabs:

• Brief. The brief described above.
• Draft. The editor.
• Evidence. Every recorded source, grouped by type, with its current quoting permission and the reason if it was left out. Attached inputs have a quoting switch here. Reusable source permissions are changed in Brand knowledge. Changes apply to the next generation; the saved draft keeps its original evidence.
• Checks. How the draft's claims held up in verification, each flagged claim with what is wrong and how to fix it, and passages likely to be quoted by AI answers.
• Formats. Copy or download the content as Markdown, HTML, WordPress blocks, schema.org JSON-LD, plain text, or a Word document, plus the brief, the outline, and the FAQ block on their own. Before a draft exists, only the brief and outline are available. Publishing is also on this tab.
• History. Earlier versions of the draft.

Editing the draft

You can also add, edit, and remove links, and edit the FAQ entries.

Media

A draft can hold charts, images, and video. What you allowed when generating the draft decides what goes in:

• Charts are built from the cited facts where they help. Each chart uses 1 credit, and a draft run places at most 6.
• Video finds and embeds a relevant video where one fits. Each pick uses 1 credit, and a draft run places at most 3. Videos you add yourself when generating the draft are free; picking or swapping a video in the editor uses 1 credit.
• Images leave spots in the draft for you to fill. Upload your own image for free, or generate one, which is priced from actual usage (at least 1 credit).

In the editor you can render or regenerate a chart, search for a video and pick or swap one, upload or generate an image, and clear a slot. Searching, uploading, and clearing are free.

Brand knowledge

Brand knowledge is a set of facts, product details, and notes that every brief for the domain can draw on. Open it from the Content projects tab.

Add knowledge takes pasted text, a link, or a file, with a category such as Product, Pricing, Guide, Support and policies, About, Proof, Comparison, Facts, or Brand voice. Brand voice material is a writing sample: it is used only as a style reference and is never quoted as fact.

Pages discovered on your own site are confirmed automatically. Pages outside your site need review: choose Confirm and use to allow quoting, or edit the page and confirm it as context only. Removing a suggestion keeps it from being suggested again. Only confirmed, selected sources that are ready and allowed for quoting supply factual claims and product links. Other meaningful pages can still provide context without being listed as products.

Text and files you add are private context by default. Allow quoting only when their facts may appear in generated content. You can switch quoting off again or edit a confirmed source from its row actions. Brand voice remains a style reference, regardless of quoting permission.

Publishing

Publishing sends the finished draft to a target connected for the domain. Connect targets on the domain's Integrations page, or with the Set up button for a target on the project (for example Set up WordPress); connecting a target takes the Admin role. Publishing to a connected target takes the Editor role.

• WordPress connects through the site's REST API with an Application Password you create in WordPress and enter when connecting. Some hosts strip the authorization header that this needs; the connection test reports it when that happens. Schema.org JSON-LD is added to the post only when the connected WordPress user is allowed to post unfiltered HTML. Shopify articles include it. This is separate from the free SurfacedBy WordPress plugin.
• Live publishes the page so AI platforms can find it, and starts tracking at once.
• Draft creates a draft in your CMS. Take it live there, then select Confirm it's live on the project to start tracking.

Articles publish only to WordPress or Shopify, and LinkedIn posts only to LinkedIn. Retrying a publish that is still in progress or that failed does not create a duplicate.

A project publishes one post. Once it has published to a target, the button becomes Update the published post: it replaces that post's title, body, and summary with the current version, keeps the same post in your CMS, and never creates a second copy. With Draft selected, an update leaves the post's visibility as it is; with Live selected, it also takes a draft post live. A project that has published to one target cannot publish to another, and a LinkedIn post cannot be updated from SurfacedBy (edit it on LinkedIn). To publish a genuinely new post, start a new project. If the post was deleted in your CMS, the update reports that it could not be found.

If you publish outside a connected target, for example by pasting an export into your CMS, use Confirm live URL on a project with a ready draft to start tracking. If a page comes down, Not live anymore? > Mark as not live stops tracking and returns the project to Draft ready. It does not remove the page from your site.

What happens after a page goes live is covered in Content Impact.

Archiving and deleting

You can archive a project from the list or the project menu. Archived projects are read-only. Restore returns a project to the status it had before. Only archived projects can be deleted, and deleting is permanent.

While a brief or draft is generating, the project cannot be archived or edited. After a project is published or live you can still edit it by hand, but you cannot regenerate the draft or a section.

LinkedIn posts

A LinkedIn post is a single short generation, without the brief and draft steps.

• Start it from an opportunity (Create > A LinkedIn post) or from a win on the Today feed (Create post).
• SurfacedBy fills in the angle and supporting facts; you can edit the angle before generating. Generating a post uses credits.
• On the post's page you can copy it, regenerate it, or publish it to your connected LinkedIn account. It publishes live.

LinkedIn does not share post metrics through the connection, so SurfacedBy does not track engagement on your posts.

Sharing an article in a community

On an article with a finished draft (Draft ready or Needs review) or one you have published, Draft a community post turns it into a post written for a community you pick, using the article's approved facts, your brand voice, and that community's posting norms. A project that has only a brief cannot be shared this way. The draft goes to the Engagement queue for review and uses credits. As with replies, you post it yourself.

Content voice

SurfacedBy learns your preferences in two ways, and neither uses credits. What you write in a change request or a Refine note is kept as a preference. The edits you make to drafts are reviewed once a week, and a rule is added when the same kind of edit keeps coming back.

Learned rules shape content drafts, section regeneration, and suggested rewrites. They are not used to write briefs. LinkedIn posts learn separately from your edits to posts, and engagement replies and outreach pitches keep their own learned preferences.

Workspace owners and admins can review the rules under Settings > Automation > Content voice, in What content drafts have learned and What social posts have learned. Each rule applies to all your brands or to one brand. You can edit its wording, move it between the two, or remove it.