The Problem Every Marketer Knows
You know you should be publishing consistently. You know content compounds. You've read the posts about "just start writing" and you agree with all of them. And yet -- you don't publish. Not because you lack ideas, but because the overhead kills the momentum.
Setting up a blog means choosing a platform, picking a template, configuring a CMS, designing post layouts, figuring out categories. Before you've written a single word, you've spent a weekend. And that weekend was supposed to be the one where you finally started writing.
I've been that marketer. Multiple times. Today I decided to stop waiting and just build the thing.
What I Actually Did
I told Claude Code: "Build me blog infrastructure. I want a blog index, a post template, shared styling, and write the first post based on today's session." Then I watched the pieces come together.
But here's the part that matters more than the blog itself -- I also said: "Now document the entire strategy into a playbook so we can do this every day." That's where the real value landed.
In 30 minutes I had:
- A styled blog index page with card-based post listings that match my existing site design. No template shopping, no theme configuration.
- A post template with headers, callout boxes, blockquotes, code blocks, and a footer CTA. Consistent, clean, ready to fill.
- A publishing playbook that documents the content strategy, post structure, daily workflow, topic backlog, and repurposing plan. The kind of document that usually takes a content strategist a week to produce.
- A homepage integration with a "From the Blog" section that features the latest post. New content is visible the moment someone lands on the site.
- A first published post -- live, formatted, and linked from everywhere it needs to be.
You're reading the second output of that system right now. And it took about 5 minutes to create this post file, because the template already exists and the playbook tells me exactly what to do.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
Most marketers think of content as a production problem. How do I write more? How do I write faster? That's the wrong frame.
Content is an infrastructure problem. The reason most people don't publish consistently isn't that writing is hard. It's that everything around the writing is hard. The setup. The formatting. The publishing steps. The "where does this go and how does it look" questions that eat your energy before you've even started thinking about what to say.
When the infrastructure cost drops to zero, publishing becomes a habit instead of a project. You stop asking "should I write a post about this?" and start asking "why wouldn't I?"
The bottleneck to consistent publishing isn't writing skill or time. It's infrastructure friction. AI doesn't just help you write -- it eliminates the setup tax that keeps you from starting. Build the system first. The content follows.
What You Can Steal From This
Build the system before you write the first word. Don't start with a blank page. Start with a template, a structure, and a documented workflow. When tomorrow's post is just "fill in the sections," you'll actually do it.
Document your strategy in the same session. I created the playbook alongside the blog, not after. It captures decisions while they're fresh: voice guidelines, post structure, content pillars, repurposing plans. Future-you will thank present-you.
Make the daily cost absurdly low. My publishing workflow is now: (1) identify what I did today, (2) draft with AI in 15-20 minutes, (3) copy the template, paste the content, update the index. Total overhead beyond writing: about 3 minutes. That's the threshold where daily becomes sustainable.
Integrate content into your existing surface area. The blog isn't a separate destination. It's woven into the homepage, the navigation, the post footer CTAs. Every piece of content should make your other content more discoverable.
This is post two of a daily series. The system is working. Tomorrow we'll see what it produces next.