How To Automate Generating Social Posts with AI

Watch: How To Automate Generating Social Posts with AI

This booknotes.ai example generates book-based social posts and stores drafts before scheduling. This example uses Instagram. Other platforms require their own supported publishing module and account permissions. In the first part of this series, I built an AI book recommendation service for booknotes.ai.

Tools for this workflow

To create this workflow, you will need to use a few different pieces of software.

• Airtable - This is going to be used as our content calendar. It is also directly linked to our database that houses our content for the website.
• OpenAI API - will be used to generate the text that we will be using in our Instagram prompts
• Placid - will be used to generate our social images. We will be using the book covers stored in our books database and a gradient background.
• make.com - to set up the workflows for creating and scheduling our social media marketing posts

Build the generation and publishing stages

In order to create and schedule our social media posts, we need to take a few steps.

• The first step is to test our prompts for OpenAI. We want to use the playground to see what responses we get for each prompt, so that when we start running our workflow we know what to expect.
• After we have settled on our prompt, we will start creating our first workflow that will allow us to create our social posts. We will store all assets (text and images) in Airtable, so we can make adjustments prior to scheduling.
• The final part will be to set up our workflow for scheduling our posts.

Testing Prompts in the OpenAI Playground

I compare at least three prompt frameworks across three books before connecting the generation workflow. Compare each draft with the source book information. Continue after the prompts produce useful drafts without invented claims.

Setting Up the Social Media Post-Generation Workflow

The first step in generating our social media post is to tell make.com when we want to trigger the workflow. We start by triggering a webhook in make.com. This webhook is triggered by automation set up in Airtable Automation that fires a webhook when a book record’s social post status is changed to “Generate”. Pass the book record ID in the webhook payload so Make retrieves the intended source record.

Retrieve the Airtable record

In order for us to populate our prompt and our Instagram table with data from the right record in Airtable, we use the GET airtable record. The Record ID is passed through with the webhook.

Create GPT Prompt

Populate your prompt with all relevant information in Airtable. Make’s OpenAI modules include Generate a response. Choose a supported model and map the source fields. Copy the tested prompt from OpenAI Playground into the module. Set an output limit and a generation budget. API billing is separate from a ChatGPT subscription.

Generate your Instagram template

In this step we will send our book cover and our dynamic background that we uploaded to Webflow to Placid to generate our social media image. To do this, you will need to create a template in Placid and select it in your Placid module. There are more details on how to create your Placid template in the next section.

Create a record with your OpenAI and Placid responses in the Content Calendar table

Make sure to create a content calendar table with a field for your post text and image. Store the values from your workflow responses in there. Update your Book record with the status of “Done” to have a reference that you have created a social post for a record. To request another draft, create a new version key before selecting “Generate” again. Repeated triggers must reuse the existing version.

Using Placid to Generate Instagram Templates

To create a template in Placid, you select a size, in my case 1200x1200 for Instagram and start adding layers. In my example I added two image layers. One for the background and one for the book cover. It is a good idea to use realistic images to test, so you can make adjustments before running your Placid workflows. Ensure to make the elements dynamic if you want to change them in the workflow. You can do this by selecting the dynamic element symbol in the layer panel.

Setting Up the "Post to Instagram" Workflow

Schedule Make to check the content calendar in a named timezone. Select Status = Scheduled and a scheduled timestamp at or before the current time. The original Date=Today rule needs time handling so posts do not run early or disappear after a failed day.

Publish only reviewed posts

Use the Instagram for Business Facebook-login module requirements for this connection. This connection requires an Instagram Business account linked to a Facebook Page. You also need the documented access to that Page. Its documented connection does not support Creator accounts. Other connection types can have different requirements. Test access before scheduling a campaign.

Store the source book ID, caption, image URL, status, scheduled timestamp, timezone, version key, and published post ID. Use Draft → Review → Scheduled → Publishing → Published, with Failed for errors. Select only reviewed posts whose scheduled time has arrived. Set a single publishing worker to prevent competing runs. Save the returned post ID after successful publication. After an uncertain response, check the account before retrying. A timeout does not prove nothing was published.

A prompt to test

This example uses replaceable book data:

Write an Instagram caption under 80 words for this book.
Title: [book title]
Author: [author name]
Verified summary: [source summary]
Audience: readers choosing their next book
Use only these supplied facts. Do not invent quotes or claims.
End with one question about the book's topic.
Return the caption only.

Test three frameworks against three books, as in the original workflow. Review text and image together before scheduling. Confirm you can use the book cover in this context. The other social-post workflow shows how content generation connects to a wider publishing process.