Blog ideas and the content calendar

Ideas for your next post suggests categories from your own catalog that are worth a post, each with one plain sentence saying why — a fact about your catalog, such as how many products the category holds and whether those pages have coverage already.

The suggestions are worked out from your catalog and your existing posts. They are never a claim about what shoppers are searching for, because CataSEO has no search-demand data for your store.

Click Write about this on any of them and the AI wizard opens with that category already chosen.

Ideas from your market shows subjects your competitors and the writers you follow have covered and you haven’t. Each one says why in numbers you can check — “3 of your 6 sources wrote about pruning in the last 60 days.”

These come from the content sources CataSEO tracks for your store, which are set up from your store analysis. If your store has no sources yet, this group doesn’t appear. See Store analysis settings.

A market subject isn’t one of your products, so clicking it opens the wizard on the topic path and the post is written from general knowledge about your field.

Two ways to say no:

• Not for me on an idea drops that subject but keeps watching the source that raised it.
• Dismissing the source stops CataSEO reading that site at all.

Plan a series lets you pick a few ideas and give each one a date, in one go. You can plan up to four at a time.

Nothing is generated and nothing is charged. Each one becomes a placeholder on your content calendar, and you write it later through the normal wizard.

Content calendar shows the next four weeks, one row per planned post, soonest first. Each row carries a status:

• Idea — planned, not written yet.
• Generating — being written right now.
• In progress — a draft you started and haven’t finished.
• Generation failed — the last attempt didn’t finish. Nothing was charged.
• Scheduled — written, and not yet on your store.
• Published — live on your blog.

The controls on a row are Write now, which opens the wizard for that idea, and Remove, which takes it off the calendar. Removing an idea that hasn’t been written needs no confirmation — nothing was generated and no token was spent. Removing a post that has already been written asks you to confirm, because that one cost an express token and deleting it doesn’t refund it.

When several ideas are due, Write these now starts them one after another. After each post CataSEO asks Keep going? — continue into the next, or stop. Ideas you don’t get to stay on the calendar either way.

CataSEO does not generate planned ideas on their date. An idea sits on the calendar as an idea until you open the wizard for it. When planned ideas are coming due, the calendar shows a banner saying so, and it says it plainly: “Nothing is generated automatically — finish them before their date.”

Once you have written a planned idea, it shows as Scheduled, and CataSEO publishes it to your blog on the day without asking you again. You don’t have to come back and press anything, and closing the wizard without saving doesn’t stop it.

This is the only way a blog post goes live on its own. A post you wrote without planning it first has no date and is never published for you.

If you’d rather decide at the time, publish or save the post yourself before the date, or remove it from the calendar.

If an idea you planned is within three days of its date and you haven’t started it, CataSEO emails your store’s admins once to say so. One email per store lists everything due, not one email per idea, and each idea is only ever mentioned once.

Starting the post stops the reminder: ideas you’ve already opened in the wizard are never included.