One Article, a Week of Posts

You spent nine hours on the article. You post the link once, 140 people see it, 11 click. Then you start the next article. That is a waste of nine hours.

Any one post reaches a small slice of your followers. A good article has five or six separate things in it that can each stand alone: a number, a quote, a document, a moment on video, a chain of events. Post each one on its own day, in the format that suits it, and each one links back to the full story. Same reporting, five times the chances to be seen.

The invented article

We will use one story the whole way through. Everything here is made up.

Now take it apart. Read your own article with a pen and mark anything that could carry a post by itself. In this one:

• The gap: $14.2 million versus $11.8 million
• The cost to a homeowner: $86 a year on a $250,000 home
• The finance director's quote
• The project list page from the agenda packet
• The meeting video where the question was asked
• The sequence: packet, meeting, vote, ballot

Six pieces. That is a week.

Piece 1: the main post (Monday)

The article goes up. The main post leads with the strongest single finding and carries the receipt, as in lesson 2.

Cedar Gap's November road bond asks for $14.2 million. The engineer's project list in the city's own agenda packet totals $11.8 million. That leaves $2.4 million the bond documents don't itemize. Full story with the documents below.

Attach a side-by-side image: the bond amount from the ballot resolution and the total line from the project list, each boxed. Alt text: "Left, Cedar Gap Resolution 2026-41 bond amount, $14,200,000. Right, project list total from Sept. 9 agenda packet, page 22, $11,800,000."

Piece 2: the chart (Tuesday)

One chart, one comparison. Two bars: $11.8 million in projects, $14.2 million in bond. Label the bars directly with the dollar amounts. Title it with the finding: "Bond asks $2.4M more than listed projects." Source line at the bottom: "Source: Cedar Gap Resolution 2026-41; Sept. 9 agenda packet p. 22."

Make it 1080x1350 so it fills the phone. Alt text gives both numbers and the difference. The module on images covers building simple charts; PresentationStudio at jeffapierson.com/journal_tools/presentationstudio/ and ColorPicker Studio at jeffapierson.com/journal_tools/colorpicker/ can help with layout and colors that hold up for colorblind readers.

Charts travel well on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads. People share a clean chart far more readily than a link.

Piece 3: the pull quote (Wednesday)

A pull-quote card is a plain background, the quote in large type, and the attribution underneath. Keep the quote short and exact.

"Contingency and bond issuance costs."
Ana Ruelas, Cedar Gap finance director, council meeting, Sept. 23, 2026

The post text adds the context the quote lacks: "That was the answer when a resident asked what the extra $2.4 million in the road bond pays for. The bond documents don't break it down. We've asked the city for the itemized estimate."

Piece 4: the document (Thursday)

Post the project list page itself. Crop it so the total and the column headers are readable on a phone. Many readers trust a document more than your summary of it, and they should. Caption with the document name, page and a link to the full packet on the city site if one exists. This is the post opponents of your position cannot easily wave off, because it is the city's own paper.

Piece 5: the reel (Friday)

Short vertical video, 30 to 45 seconds. A simple plan:

1. 0 to 3 seconds: text on screen, "The road bond: $14.2M. The project list: $11.8M."
2. 3 to 15 seconds: the meeting clip where the resident asks the question and the finance director answers. Label: "Cedar Gap City Council, Sept. 23, 2026."
3. 15 to 30 seconds: you, or a voiceover, explaining the gap in two sentences and showing the document.
4. Last 5 seconds: "Full story and documents: link in bio."

Burn the captions into the picture. Most people scroll with sound off, and captions are how deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers follow along. The module on reels covers the editing; VideoStudio at jeffapierson.com/journal_tools/videostudio/ runs in the browser, and StudioConverter at jeffapierson.com/journal_tools/studioconverter/ can compress the result to a size the platform accepts.

Piece 6: the thread (Saturday)

A thread tells the sequence. Each post makes one step. The first one must work alone, because it is the only one most people see.

1. Cedar Gap's road bond asks voters for $14.2M. The city's own project list totals $11.8M. Here's how we got here, with the documents.
2. Sept. 9: The engineer's project list appears in the council packet. Seven road segments. Total: $11.8M. (image of page 22)
3. Sept. 23: A resident asks what the rest pays for. The finance director: "contingency and bond issuance costs." No breakdown given.
4. Same night: Council votes 4 to 1 to put the bond on the ballot. Councilor Dale Kimura votes no.
5. Cost to you: about $86 a year on a $250,000 home, per the county assessor.
6. We've filed a records request for the itemized estimate. Full story: [link]

Skip the "1/12" numbering at the start; it wastes the most valuable characters you have. Use the thread format on X, Threads and Bluesky. On Facebook and LinkedIn, the same content works as a single longer post.

Sunday

Rest. Or answer comments. Or, if the city sent the itemized estimate, you have a follow-up, and that becomes Monday's main post.