---
title: "Glossary of the content system: funnel and process"
description: "What every special term in the content system means, grouped by the Know - Trust - Love funnel and the Idea - Write - Edit process."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://cuongthach.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Glossary of the content system: funnel and process

This page lists the meaning of every special term in the pages of the content system, grouped by its two parts: the Know - Trust - Love content funnel and the Idea - Write - Edit process. Every meaning comes from the original content and Cuong's original recordings, and is three sentences at most. Each term has **one meaning only**, in the part it belongs to. Within each group, the terms are in alphabetical order.

## Terms of the Know - Trust - Love content funnel

![Terms of the Know - Trust - Love content funnel](/docs/_astro/illus-docs-ba-ke-thuat-ngu.en.4gBNb2HI_ZTKTiY.svg "Terms grouped by what you are doing")

The funnel's terms are grouped by what you are doing: reading about a type of post, building the funnel, or creating the core message of a post.

### Types of post in the funnel

| Term | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Heartfelt letter** | Another name for the Love post: a letter from the founder, written with everything they have. |
| **Know post** | The post readers meet first, made of a named problem and your point of view on it. You use it so readers find you. |
| **Love post** | The only post in the funnel, made of a full solution that leads to the product. It gets the biggest share of your effort, up to 80%, because it brings readers to the buying decision. |
| **Small test** | Another name for the Trust post: a small action readers do themselves to get a result. |
| **Trust post** | The post that follows the Know post, made of small steps that let readers produce a result themselves. You use it to give readers a reason to trust you. |

### Terms for building the funnel

![Terms for building the funnel](/docs/_astro/illus-docs-cay-dung-phe.en.B4IgEsNQ_ZTKTiY.svg "From the core, the funnel grows three branches")

| Term | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Basic funnel** | The minimum funnel: three linked posts, Know, Trust and Love, with the sales page at the end. It is stage one of the funnel. |
| **Buying decision** | The moment a reader decides to buy, brought on by the Love post. The content system measures it by the number of people on the waitlist and the number of orders. |
| **Expanding and developing the funnel** | The second stage, which starts once the basic funnel runs. It consists of writing in pairs, linking across posts and growing the Know stage, and it never includes a new Love post. |
| **Friction** | A place where readers get stuck while following a Trust post, most of all at a technical step. The Trust post's job is to remove as much friction as it can. |
| **Growing the Know stage** | Adding Know posts to get more touchpoints, including posts on topics that are trending. Use it when the Trust posts below are enough to receive readers who go on. |
| **Know - Trust - Love content funnel** | A way to join every post into one line: Know to Trust, Trust to Love, Love to the product. Use it to decide what gets published: a post that is not on this line stays a draft. |
| **Layers and states** | Know, Trust and Love are three states of the reader. In the funnel and on the sales page, they are three layers. Stages are the two steps of growing the funnel, not the three states. |
| **Linking across posts** | A way to send a new Know post to the best-fitting Trust post you already have, rather than writing a new one. Use it when your Trust posts already cover the topic. |
| **Product's core** | Where you start building the funnel: your edge and the Love post that leads to the product. The funnel grows from the core outward, not from scattered posts. |
| **Proof** | Evidence of who has used the product and what their results were, the Trust layer of the sales page. With no buyers yet, you are the first user and you tell your own result. |
| **Sales page** | The page that comes after the Love post. It has all three layers, Know, Trust and Love, but it is short, because readers who get here are ready to buy and only check again what they are buying. |
| **Touchpoint** | One time a reader meets you through a post. The first time is a Know post, and each Know post you add is one more. |
| **Working backwards** | Building the funnel in the order Love, Trust, Know. Readers still go forward: Know, Trust, Love. |
| **Writing in pairs** | A way of working at the start of the second stage: every new Know post goes out with a Trust post. Use it so readers who just understood something have a guide ready to act on. |
| **Your edge** | Points only you have: what you are skilled at, what you have lived through, and your natural strengths. Use it to choose what the Love post says: rivals can copy features, but not this. |

### Terms for creating a core message

How to create the core message of a post is in [How to create a core message for a post](/docs/content-system/know-trust-love/guides/create-a-core-message).

| Term | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Context** | Three answers for one post: who the customer is, what trouble they are in, and what you offer. The core message is squeezed out of them. |
| **Core message** | The one sentence readers must remember after reading a post: which problem your customer is stuck in, what your solution is, and where it takes them. Each post carries only one core message. |
| **Idea seed** | The one idea picked for a post, from a note, a recording or a few bullet points. The other ideas are saved for other posts. |
| **Pain** | The reader's problem that the post solves, written at three levels. The outside is the problem people can see, the inside is the feeling told through pictures without naming the emotion, and the root is the wrong belief. |
| **Your own solution** | A view, a formula or a process taken from your real experience. If it is still rough, keep it as it is. Write it yourself before you ask AI or search Google. |

## Terms of the Idea - Write - Edit process

![Terms of the Idea - Write - Edit process](/docs/_astro/illus-docs-moc-thuat-ngu.en.TtwmsjII_ZTKTiY.svg "Terms by when you meet them")

The process's terms are grouped by when you meet them: the three steps and what they make, pouring out ideas and recording, and editing and publishing.

### Terms of the three steps and their products

| Term | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Big idea, small idea** | A big idea is a main part of the post, with its own title in the outline. Small ideas are the points inside one big idea. |
| **Gut sense** | Being able to look at an outline and see whether it flows or falls apart. It comes from a habit of reading books, the news, or watching videos. The Idea step rests on it, not on a gift for fine writing. |
| **Handover** | The time between the Idea step and the Write step: you go over the outline for blind spots and study until you know enough. All looking things up is done here. |
| **Off key** | When a title and the part below no longer match, because the title was changed after the content was written for the old one. |
| **One of a kind** | A post nobody else could write: an idea nobody has said yet, or a shared idea told through your own experience. No rehashing, no copying from others. |
| **Opening** | The start of the post, which is not in the outline. It shows up on its own once you have answered all the ideas, and you type it yourself in the Edit step. Short, names the problem, points straight to the solution. |
| **Outline** | The script of the post and what the Idea step makes: the post title and the big ideas with titles, usually six to eight, picked by your core message. Once locked, it is not changed. |
| **Publishing skill** | The skill of taking a piece of content from an idea to publishing, built by repeating it. Not a gift for fine writing. |
| **Rough draft** | What the Write step makes: everything you understand about each idea, not yet edited. It is the longest version of the post. |
| **Stopping point** | The moment a step is done and what it made is put away. The next step starts only from there. Cuong calls it a rest stop. |
| **Three hats** | The three roles you switch between across the steps: screenwriter in Idea, actor in Write, editor in Edit. The editor cuts the way the director wants, not the way the editor wants. |
| **Tighten** | The job of the Edit step: cut repeats, extras and hard parts so the post is tight but complete. Only cut, never add words. You need enough volume before tightening gives you something solid. |
| **Writing loop** | The cycle of writing, editing, redoing the outline, writing in more and changing titles, with no stopping point, that happens when the outline is not locked. |

### Terms when pouring out ideas and recording

Context and core message are used in this step too. Their meanings are in the funnel's core message group above.

| Term | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Blind spot** | An idea in the outline you do not understand well enough to explain yourself. You fill it at the handover, before you write. |
| **Capture and Share** | Cuong's daily habit: capture is learning something new until you understand it deeply, share is telling it again to someone else. With it, recording is easy, because the knowledge is already there. |
| **Editing disease** | Fixing as you write: writing one line and deleting it ten times, stuck on polishing, so you go very slowly. Talk to write avoids it. |
| **Extra recording** | An added round of recording, only about ideas that are still thin after sorting, or ideas where you got stuck. Not needed when your first round already answered the whole set of guiding questions. Look into the gap before you record. |
| **Guiding questions** | A set of questions written for your topic and post type, read aloud and answered while you record in the Idea step. They keep you on point and stop you from repeating yourself. Cuong also calls it the idea-starter structure. |
| **One shot** | Saying a whole post in one go, keeping your energy from start to end, with no break in the middle like when you type. |
| **Pouring out ideas** | Saying or writing every idea about the topic, before any choosing, so you see them all and then choose. |
| **Talk to write** | Recording instead of typing: you say your ideas out loud, then a recording app and AI write them down as text. It is not recording a podcast or a video. It works in the Idea step and the Write step. |
| **Three starter questions** | What is it, how does it work, why does it matter. The three questions that open the Idea step and break down a one-line topic. Cuong also calls them the three root questions or the three guiding questions. |

### Terms when editing and publishing

![Terms when editing and publishing](/docs/_astro/illus-docs-thanh-truot-van-viet.en.8ZcifdPK_ZTKTiY.svg "In Edit, turn about 70% into written style")

| Term | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Four things readers skim** | The title, the description, the opening and the main content, looked over through the table of contents. Readers decide whether to keep reading after skimming them. |
| **Spoken and written style** | Spoken style is the way you talk, like in a chat. Written style is sentences already trimmed tight. In the Edit step, turn about 70% into written style and keep some spoken style so it feels close. A personal brand keeps more, a business keeps less. |
| **Word hoarding** | Feeling a loss at cutting 60 to 70% of what you said, so you stuff it back into the post. A stuffed post distracts readers. Sort by your core message, and save the ideas you cut for another post. |

## Read next

- [AI in Idea - Write - Edit](/docs/content-system/resources/ai-and-prompts) — What AI does, what you do and what it does not do at each step of Idea, Write, Edit, with three sample prompts to copy and how to check results.
- [Common questions](/docs/content-system/faq) — Short answers to common questions about the content system, grouped by part, from what to write with and how many posts to whether it sells.

Source: https://cuongthach.com/docs/content-system/resources/glossary/index.mdx