What is a topical post?

A topical post joins a conversation that is already happening. It reacts to something people in your market are talking about this week, a launch, a number, a debate, an outage, and lands on what it means for the reader. The alternative is the evergreen post, which teaches something that was true last month and will be true next month. Both belong in a feed. The topical one gets read first, because the audience is already looking for it.

Why one post in three should be topical

Evergreen content compounds and topical content spikes. A feed that is all evergreen reads like a textbook and nobody shares a textbook. A feed that is all topical has nothing to say on a quiet week and dates badly. The mix that works for a small company is roughly one topical post in three (the Content Marketing Institute has argued for years that evergreen and timely content need each other): enough to show the account is awake and paying attention, not so much that it chases every headline. Oetzi's posting plan keeps that share on its own, drafting a topical post whenever the last fortnight on a platform has fallen under a third, and keeps the other two slots for what the share of model plan and the brand's own angles need.

Where topical posts come from

Two sources, and a good tool holds both in one list. The first is your own news: what shipped, a customer story, a number you crossed. Nobody else can write those, so they draft first. The second is what your buyers are talking about: a story in the news, a thread that earned attention, a topic rising across the conversations you listen to (see emerging trend detection). Oetzi keeps both on Topics, a short list under Content, with the team's own news pinned at the top and picks from Trending underneath. Every row drafts on demand, and the plan drafts open rows before anything else.

The bridge

A topical post fails when the tie-in is forced. The test is one honest sentence from what people are saying to the problem you solve. If that sentence needs a "which is why" and a stretch, the topic is not yours, and the post will read as a brand hijacking a conversation. If the sentence writes itself, the post is worth a credit. Oetzi scores every candidate trend for fit with the buyers and writes the bridge line before anything is drafted, and the drafter is told to use only what the headline says, so a topical post never invents details to make the bridge work.

Questions

How fast does a topical post have to go out?

Same day for news, within the week for a rising thread. A daily scan plus a nightly cluster build is enough for a small team. Hourly is for newsrooms.

Can a topical post be a video?

Yes. A topic on the list can become a batch of short video ideas the same way it becomes a post, and the hook is usually stronger because the audience already knows the subject.