In Write to Sell, you narrow the scope of the Truth vault, which means you build the vault about your product first and leave brand assets for later. A vault focused on the product gives you material to write posts right away, and each group in the vault becomes a content funnel. When you finish this page, you have a 3-level vault for your product.
What you need
Building a product Truth vault is not hard, because you know the product better than anyone. The main job is to declare, which means writing down the facts you already know. Before you start, you need:
- Your core product, made clear in stage 1, whether it is built or still planned. The vault serves this product.
- A list of every product you sell or will sell, so you can group them in the first step.
- A place to write Entity docs, where the pages of the vault will be published in public.
- The 3-level structure of the Truth vault, described on the Docs structure page. The product vault uses exactly that structure.
3 Steps to build the vault
You build the Truth vault for your product in 3 steps, and each step builds one level of the vault. The steps go from the product down to each highlight, then to the small pages inside each highlight.
Choose your product as the area
The top level of the vault is the area, and the area is one specific product of yours.
List all your products, look for what they share, then pick the core product to group around. If you have many products, put them into one big shared group, then name the final product you truly sell.
- You have 2 big product lines: build 2 vaults, one set of docs for each line.
- You have 1 product: build the vault for that product first, then apply the same method to later products.
You will see one area for your first vault, tied to one product.
Write the product intro page
The area opens with one big intro page about the product, like the overview page of the whole vault. This page helps a customer understand what the product is before they read each part.
Along with the intro page comes how to use the product, written as a getting-started guide that says what a new customer does first after they get the product.
You will see that someone who knows nothing about the product, after reading these 2 pages, understands the product and knows how to begin.
Split 3 highlights into 3 groups
Pick 3 highlights of the product, the points that truly set it apart from other people’s products. Each highlight is a component group, the second level of the vault. The group opens with an overview page that names the highlight clearly.
Inside each group, you sort the pages into collections, the third level:
- Concepts: the things customers easily mix up, often written as a comparison.
- Guides: how to finish each task with that highlight.
- Resources: sample prompts, ready-made templates, prebuilt lists, to-do lists.
You will see 3 groups, each with an overview page and all the collections it needs.
Signs your vault is right
A product Truth vault is right when it answers your customer’s questions without you explaining more:
- One area, one product. The vault does not mix 2 big product lines into the same docs.
- 3 groups for 3 highlights, each with its own overview page.
- Every place a customer might get confused has a concept page. You find these places by reading the vault from the customer’s side.
- Collections stay distinct. A concept page does not mix in steps, and a guide does not mix in definitions.
When the vault is right, you move on to writing the content funnel for the first group.
When you have no product yet
When the product does not exist yet, you still need to write the vault. The vault then rests on how you picture the product, as long as you already know clearly where you are going:
- What the product will include.
- Where the product is different.
- What the product looks like when it is finished.
If you cannot picture these 3 things yet, you do not know your product well enough. Make them clear first, then write the content for the product ahead of time, starting now. When the product launches, the vault is ready to lead customers to the product.
Related pages
- Not how to build a vault from what you already have: see Start your Truth vault.
- Not how to build a funnel of 3 posts: see Build a three-post funnel.
- Not how to choose a topic name for a group: see Entity keyword.