Running Your First Campaign

A campaign in ACS is one complete weekly content run — from idea selection through content generation to publishing across all your active platforms. This guide walks through what to expect at each step.

Before You Start

Make sure you have:

• At least one platform connected under Settings → Integrations
• At least one platform enabled in Settings → Platforms with a posting schedule configured
• A strategy written under Start Here → Strategy
• At least one idea in your Idea Bank with status Available

Triggering a Campaign

ACS campaigns run automatically on your weekly schedule. To trigger your first campaign manually:

1. Go to Dashboard or Start Here
2. Click Run Campaign (or Start This Week's Campaign)
3. ACS will confirm which idea it has selected and which platforms it is generating content for
4. Click Confirm to begin

Generation typically takes 1–3 minutes depending on the number of active platforms.

What Happens During Generation

ACS works through each enabled platform in sequence:

1. Strategy review — reads your current strategy, brand voice, and persistent context
2. Idea expansion — expands the selected idea into a full campaign brief with angles and direction
3. Per-platform generation — generates a content piece for each active platform, adapted to that platform's format, length, tone guidelines, and audience
4. Self-critique — each piece is reviewed internally against your strategy for coherence and quality

When complete, all generated pieces appear in your Content section.

Reviewing Your Content

Go to Content in the navigation. You will see the new pieces listed with their platform, title, and status — Pending Approval if approval is enabled, or Scheduled if auto-publish is on.

Click any piece to open the full review view, which shows:

• The complete content formatted for its platform
• Platform metadata (slug, meta title, meta description for articles; subject line and preheader for newsletters)
• Critique notes — ACS's self-assessment of how well the piece meets your strategy
• Revision history if the piece was regenerated

To approve: Click Approve to queue the piece for its next scheduled publishing date.

To edit first: You can edit content directly in the review view before approving. All edits are saved.

To request a revision: Click Request Revision and optionally add a note explaining what to change. ACS will regenerate the piece. You can request revisions as many times as needed.

Publishing

Approved pieces publish automatically on their scheduled dates. To see what is upcoming, filter your Content view by status "Scheduled."

To publish a piece immediately rather than waiting, open it and click Publish Now.

After the Campaign

Once all pieces are published:

• Analytics begin collecting from connected platforms
• The campaign is marked complete
• The idea that powered this campaign is marked Published
• ACS prepares to select the next idea for next week

What to Do After Your First Campaign

Review output quality. Does the content sound like you? Is the strategy being applied? If not, update your brand voice section and tone guidelines before the next campaign.

Check platform delivery. Go to Settings → Integrations and confirm all pieces were delivered without errors.

Give it time for analytics. Most platforms take 24–72 hours to report meaningful engagement data after publishing. Check your Analytics dashboard a few days later.

Add more ideas. Keep your Idea Bank stocked. After your first campaign you will have a better sense of which kinds of ideas produce the content you want — use that to inform what you add next.

Tips for Your First Campaigns

• Enable approval on all platforms for your first few campaigns so you can review everything before it goes live
• Start with 1–2 platforms rather than everything at once — it is easier to calibrate quality at smaller scale
• Treat the critique notes seriously — if ACS flags something, it usually points to a gap in the strategy that is worth addressing