Brief Settings — what gets drafted.
Platforms, blog cadence, how much gets written each day, and the per-platform rules the writer has to follow. The one thing that isn't here: your send time.
Everything about what your brief drafts for you lives here: which platforms get a post, how often you want a blog idea, how much gets written each day, and the house rules the writer has to follow. Reach it from the Brief Settings button in the Daily Brief header.
Settings are per brand. Switch brands and you configure that one separately.
The schedule is not on this page
The time your brief arrives, and its timezone, are not set here. They live on the Channels page, because your send time belongs to the channel you connected. This page has no clock on it, and people hunt for one. When your brief arrives →
The same page covers the rule that catches everyone: with no connected delivery channel, ScoutRival doesn't generate a brief at all.
Social posts — the nine platforms
Tick the platforms you want a daily post for. Each one you enable gets a post written to its shape — length, hashtag conventions, tone — not one draft copy-pasted across all of them.
LinkedIn Instagram Facebook X / Twitter Pinterest Reddit TikTok Threads YouTube Community
A new brand starts with LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Facebook on. The header counts what you've picked: “4 platforms”.
Each platform row also carries a Set rules button — that's the same drawer described further down, reachable without leaving the page.
Blog cadence
Six options, one choice:
- Off — no blog suggestions at all. This is the only setting that hides the card completely.
- Daily
- Every 2 days
- 3 times per week — the default.
- 4 times per week
- 5 times per week
Treat the middle four as a statement of intent rather than a hard schedule — a suggestion can still surface on an in-between day if there's a good one. If you truly never want one, pick Off, or set blog topics per day to 0. Blog suggestions →
Daily output, and the cost strip
Two numbers. These are the dials that decide what your brief costs.
| Setting | Range | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social posts / day | 0–20 | 3 | How many platform-native posts get drafted for you each day, spread across the platforms you enabled. |
| Blog topics / day | 0–10 | 1 | How many blog titles and outlines get drafted for BlogCraft to expand. |
Underneath them sits a live cost strip that updates as you type:
Your daily brief costs about ≈ 8 credits/day (3 social × 2 + 1 blog × 2)
That's the whole pricing model, on screen, before you save. Two credits a social post, two a blog idea. Scraping is charged separately and doesn't appear in this strip. The full cost model →
Set both to zero and you still get the whole competitive picture — position tiles, gap boards, competitor signals, the Verdict, your Next Move — with no drafted content and nothing metered for writing. It's a legitimate way to run ScoutRival if you have a writer already.
Per-platform rules
This is the most underused feature in the product, and the one that most reliably fixes “the posts don't sound like us”.
Click Set rules on any platform and a drawer opens with a free-text box. Whatever you write there is handed to the writer as instructions it must follow — for every future post on that platform, for that brand. Not just the next one.
- Up to 4,000 characters per platform. A live counter shows where you are.
- Bullets work well. So do plain sentences. There's no syntax to learn.
- Empty means no rules. Clearing the box deletes the rule outright.
- Rules are per platform. Your LinkedIn rules don't apply to your Instagram posts, which is the point.
Rules that actually work
The drawer shows you a starting hint for each platform. They're worth reading even if you write your own, because they're calibrated to what each platform actually rewards:
Always include https://yourbrand.com/start at the end.
Never use emoji.
Tag your brand name in the first line.
Hashtag stack: 8-12 mixing #yourindustry #relevant tags.
Always tag @yourhandle.
CTA: "Link in bio".
Hard 280 chars including link.
Punchy opener — no soft setups.
1 link max, hashtags inline.
Keep under 600 chars.
Use 1 emoji max.
Always include a question to drive comments.
No hashtags.
No promo language.
Lead with the insight.
Link only if it adds context.
100-300 chars.
3-7 trending hashtags.
Lead with a hook in the first 15 chars.
Keyword-rich title under 100 chars.
5-10 hashtags.
Required: the pin's source URL.
Under 500 chars.
Casual tone.
Skip the hashtag pile.
200-800 chars.
Community-style — pose a question.
Link out only if needed.
“Always end with our booking link.” “Never say 'solutions'.” “Mention that we're family-run.” “No exclamation marks, ever.” The specific, slightly fussy rules are the ones that make the difference — they're exactly the corrections you'd otherwise be making by hand every morning.
Saving, and when it takes effect
Two things to know, and one of them trips people up.
- The drawer's Done button only closes the drawer. Your rules aren't saved until you hit Save settings at the bottom of the page. The drawer footer says so, but it's easy to miss.
- Rules apply to the next generation, not to what's already on screen. A brief that's already been written doesn't retroactively obey a rule you just added.
To see a rule take effect immediately, don't regenerate the whole brief — open the social card for that platform and hit its own Regenerate button. It re-reads your saved rule as it goes, and the button even relabels itself Regenerate w/ rules so you know it will. The card actions →
If you set the rules from a social card's own Set rules drawer instead of from this page, they save immediately — that drawer has a real Save rules button.