Of the six stages in a blogging process, four can largely be automated: topic finding, planning, writing and publication including distribution. Setting objectives remains manual work, and approving each post is a mandatory step that no business should skip. Anyone who lets everything run through without checking risks incorrect information about their own company and a breach of Google's spam policy on mass-produced content.
Automating a blog doesn't mean flipping a switch and never looking at it again. A company blog is a chain of six stages, and each stage has a different degree of automation. This page shows, stage by stage, what a machine reliably takes care of, what it only manages with proper instructions, and where a human absolutely has to check. Knowing this in advance saves you from the two typical disappointments: the blog that goes quiet again after three weeks, and the blog that says something wrong about your own business every week.
The six stages at a glance
| Stage | Task | Degree of automation | What stays with a human |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Objective | Define readers, benefit, desired action | None | Everything, but only once |
| 2 Topics | Gather questions from search queries and customer conversations | High | Remove what the business doesn't offer |
| 3 Planning | Spread topics across weeks, factor in the season | Medium to high | Add promotions, trade fairs, holidays |
| 4 Text | Draft with subheadings, FAQ, internal links | High | Nothing, if the brief is right |
| 5 Approval | Check facts, prices, tone | None | Mandatory step, a few minutes per post |
| 6 Publication and distribution | Publish on the website, share on social media, measure | High | Choose channels, interpret figures |
This classification is based on practical experience, not on measurement. It shows where time is saved: in stages 2, 3, 4 and 6. Stages 1 and 5 don't save time, they safeguard the result.
Stage 1: Objective
No tool can decide whether your blog should address private customers or architects. This decision is made in a twenty-minute conversation and recorded in writing: target audience, their typical decision, desired action after reading. Everything that's automated afterwards depends on these three sentences. Without them, automation quickly and neatly misses the mark.
Stage 2: Topics
Search queries can be read out automatically: Google suggestions, the "People also ask" box, the queries in Search Console. A system can build a topic list from this based on what people in the region actually type in. What it doesn't know is that you don't renovate flat roofs, or that the competitor in the neighbouring village has just claimed this very topic. That's why the list needs a quick look from you before it goes into planning.
Stage 3: Planning
Spreading topics across calendar weeks, bringing seasonal topics forward, filling in evergreen topics: this can be done by rule. What a system doesn't know is the trade show in March, the company holiday in August, or the new team member who's offering bathroom planning from May onwards. For an example of a template that covers both, see Editorial calendar for the company blog.
Stage 4: Writing
The stage with the highest degree of automation, and the one where the biggest mistake happens. A language model delivers a draft in seconds. Whether that draft is usable depends on the brief: tone of address, Swiss spelling, services, taboo words, structure. With a good brief, the draft is ninety per cent done. Without a brief, the real work only starts once you read it.
Stage 5: Approval
The mandatory step. Every post contains statements about your business, your prices and your region. A model can't know these, it can only take them from the brief or guess. Approval checks exactly that: are the facts correct, is the tone right, does the text avoid promising anything you can't deliver. With a clean draft, this takes a few minutes. Skipping this step doesn't save time, it just shifts the problem to the moment when a customer calls to order a service that's on the website but not actually offered by the business.
Stage 6: Publication and distribution
After approval, the post should appear on the website automatically and, if you wish, be shared on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. This requires an interface: the REST API for WordPress, or the respective API for Wix and Shopify. Without it, you're left with copy and paste, and copy and paste is the step where most blogs fail in everyday use. How distribution on social media works is described in Connecting your blog with social media.
The risks, clearly stated
- Scaled content abuse. Since March 2024, Google has had a spam policy against mass-produced content that is mainly intended to influence rankings and gives readers nothing. What matters is not whether an AI writes it, but whether the pages are useful. Details at Scaled Content Abuse.
- Incorrect information about your own company. The most common problem in practice. The cause is almost always an incomplete briefing, not the model.
- Uniformity. Fifty posts with the same structure and the same stock phrases read like a catalogue. The briefing needs to include banned words, and the approval process must also check the tone.
- Dependence on the connection. If the interface fails, the blog stands still. When buying a system, the question about the connection is therefore more important than the question about the model.
What to do with this
Automate in this order: first the writing with a fixed briefing, then publishing via a proper interface, then topics and planning. Keep the approval step with yourself, even if it only takes three minutes a week. A business that works this way has twelve posts online after a quarter, all of them correct. A business that starts with full automation has twelve posts online and doesn't know what's in them.
Frequently asked questions
Which stage should an SME automate first?
Writing, because it takes up the most time and is easiest to control with guidelines. Then publishing, because copying and pasting between a text file and the website is the step where blogs tend to stall in everyday life. Topic finding and planning follow once the first posts are up and running.
Can I have posts published automatically without reading them?
You can, but you're responsible for every statement on your website. Automatic publishing with a stop option is reasonable if the briefing has reliably produced good drafts for weeks and you spot-check them. For a new blog, manual approval is the safer route.
How does an automated blog differ from spam in Google's eyes?
Google doesn't judge the production method, but whether content is useful to people. It becomes a problem when many pages are created mainly to influence rankings without offering readers anything. One post a week with a genuine answer to a genuine customer question doesn't fall into that category.
What does it cost if the automation fails at one stage?
Usually time, not money. If the connection to the website fails, posts pile up until someone publishes them by hand. That's why it's worth making sure, when choosing a system, that it has a proper interface rather than just a text file export.