How to Automate Social Media Posts with AI: A Beginner’s Guide

You can be a business owner, solo entrepreneur, marketer, or content creator, but the pressure to show up consistently online can feel overwhelming regardless of your role.

But here’s the thing: you don’t have to do it all manually.

With today’s tech, you can automate the hard stuff without losing your voice or sacrificing quality. Here, we’ll show you how to automate social media posts with AI and provide the exact AI social media workflows you need to get the job done.

Why Automate Social Media with AI?

Automation is about eliminating repetitive, time-wasting tasks, like manually posting the same story across three platforms, or copy-pasting hashtags. AI, on the other hand, helps with the creative part. It can suggest captions, analyze data to tell you what’s working, generate ideas when you’re stuck, and even help design visuals. Combine the two, and you get a content machine that works even when you’re offline.

Top 3 Ways to Automate Social Media Posts with AI

Ready to start getting your social media feeds more automated? Here are the three key ways you can do that, along with some tools in each category.

Use AI-Powered Social Media Tools

You don’t need to be a developer or social media strategist to use AI tools. These platforms are designed for everyone, including solo business owners, part-time creators, or those managing accounts for multiple clients. AI-powered tools can help you ideate, write, design, and schedule your content faster than ever, and most of them work right out of the box.

Let’s take a closer look at three of our favorite AI social media post generators and how they can fit into different types of workflows.

FeedHive – The Repurposing Powerhouse

Perfect for: Creators and coaches who post frequently across platforms FeedHive is one of those tools you don’t know you need until you try it. At first glance, it looks like a basic scheduler. But under the hood, it’s a repurposing beast. We used FeedHive to take long-form LinkedIn posts and turn them into Instagram carousels, tweet threads, and Facebook snippets with just a few clicks. Its built-in AI assistant can:

• Suggest content variations.
• Rewrite existing posts in different tones (funny, professional, persuasive).
• Detect your best-performing formats (like “short and punchy” vs “long and insightful”).

One of our favorite features is that it can predict how your post might perform before you even hit publish.

Postly – Your Bulk Content Generator

Perfect for: Startups, small businesses, or social media managers who need volume If your content calendar is starting to feel more like a content chore chart, Postly is your new best friend. It’s made for bulk generation, meaning you can create multiple post variations (text + image) at once, using just a few keywords or content prompts. One thing we love about Postly is how visual it is. You get previews for each post, which is perfect if you’re managing a client account and need approval before anything goes live. Here's what you can do with Postly:

• Enter a product description, and Postly will write five different captions tailored for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Add a headline or blog title, and it creates quote graphics or promo images using its AI-powered design assistant.
• Quickly generate a week’s worth of posts for a launch, sale, or event.

SocialBee – The Evergreen Engine

Perfect for: Educators, podcasters, service-based businesses, and anyone juggling different content types.

SocialBee’s approach to automation is focused on longevity. Instead of writing new content every week, you build categorized libraries of evergreen posts that cycle through your schedule.

You can create content “buckets” like tips, testimonials, blog posts, or quotes.

Then, using its AI caption generator, you can quickly populate those categories without spending hours writing. This is content that keeps working for you, week after week, even when you’re on vacation or buried in client work.

Set Up Automation Workflows with Zapier or Make

When people hear “workflow automation,” they often think it’s some scary tech stuff reserved for developers and coders. But the truth is that if you can write a sentence, you can build a simple workflow with tools like Zapier or Make.

These tools are like virtual assistants that connect all your favorite apps together. They quietly work in the background, reminding you to post on LinkedIn, email it to your list, and repurpose it next month.

To learn more about automation tools and how they work, check out our Make Review, Make vs Zapier, and Make vs n8n.

Build Custom AI Workflows

A custom AI workflow is a tailored system that uses a combination of tools. This often includes ChatGPT or another AI writing assistant, Canva or a design tool, and a social scheduler, to create, design, and post your content from start to finish.

The best part? Once you’ve built the system, you can rinse and repeat every week. While you don’t necessarily need deep tech skills to set this up, there's a learning curve. And some workflows will require a developer’s help.

The key players in a custom AI workflow are:

• ChatGPT / Claude / Jasper (for writing): Use these tools to generate captions, blogs, newsletters, tweet threads, carousel ideas, you name it.
• Canva AI / Adobe Express / Visme (for visuals): These help you turn written content into scroll-stopping graphics, branded templates, or video clips.
• Trello / Notion / Airtable (for planning): Track ideas, organize content calendars, assign tasks to your team, and tag content by campaign, type, or platform.
• Metricool / Buffer / Hootsuite / Later (for scheduling): Upload your content, preview your grid, measure social media success, and automate publishing, all from one dashboard.

You can pick the versions of these tools that fit your style (and budget), then build the workflow around them. Try Softailed’s Comparison Tool to compare social media management tools side by side.

3 AI Workflows for Social Media Marketing (That We Actually Use)

Let’s break down three specific workflows we’ve tested in real life. These are beginner-friendly, scalable, and customizable for different business types.

Workflow 1: SocialBee + RSS Feed

Ease of Use: Easy Perfect For: Coaches, bloggers, and small business owners with existing blog content Step-by-Step:

• Connect your blog’s RSS feed to SocialBee.
• Categorize content under a “Blog Posts” or “Educational” bucket.
• Every time you publish a blog, SocialBee creates a draft post with the blog title, summary, and link.
• Approve or tweak the post.

Results: This saved us hours of copy-pasting. Plus, our social channels stayed active even when we didn’t have time to post manually. It’s especially effective if your blog is your primary source of content.

Workflow 2: Zapier + ChatGPT + Buffer

Ease of Use: Moderate Perfect For: Tech-savvy marketers, freelancers, and content managers Step-by-Step:

• In Zapier, create a zap that triggers when a new WordPress post is published.
• Use webhooks to send the post details to ChatGPT with a caption prompt.
• Use the output as your social caption.
• Schedule the post via Buffer, Hootsuite, or Metricool.

Results: Once this was set up, every new blog was published to multiple platforms with an AI-generated caption tailored to that audience.

Workflow 3: ChatGPT + Canva AI + Metricool

Ease of Use: Intermediate Perfect For: Brands with a visual identity and weekly content themes

Step-by-Step:

• Use ChatGPT to generate captions, tweet threads, or carousel outlines.
• Import them into Canva and let Magic Design create branded visuals.
• Upload the full week’s content into Metricool and schedule it across platforms.
• Track results via Metricool’s analytics dashboard.

Results: We were able to create 5–7 pieces of high-quality content in about an hour per week. It was effective for batching content ahead of time and making sure our feed felt consistent and on-brand.

The key to custom workflows is stitching together the right tools to do exactly what you need.

More Expert Tips for Automating Your Social Media Content

Want to take your automation strategy to the next level? Here are a couple more tips to make your workflow more efficient.

Leverage Native Scheduling and AI Features

Many social media platforms now offer their own native scheduling options, and some are even starting to roll out built-in AI features, including AI-powered suggestions around best times to post, trending topics/hashtags, captions, and engagement predictions. These can save you time, reduce your tech stack, and help you keep everything in one place.

Build Evergreen Content Libraries

An evergreen content library is one of the most underrated, most powerful tools you can use to automate your social media. Creating fresh content daily (or even weekly) is exhausting, but evergreen content is content that stays relevant over time.

Because it’s not tied to a specific date, season, or trend, it can be reused, repurposed, and recycled throughout the year without feeling outdated.

Think:

• FAQs about your products or services
• Inspirational or motivational quotes
• Testimonials or reviews
• Educational tips, how-tos, or stats
• Behind-the-scenes brand stories
• Brand values or mission statements
• "Did you know" facts about your industry
• Curated lists or recommendations

This is content you don’t have to reinvent every time. It works just as well in January as it does in June.

To build out an evergreen content library, follow these steps:

• Pull out past posts that performed especially well across your social platforms.
• Sort the content into “buckets” or themes. Examples include quotes, tips, testimonials, blogs, FAQs, etc. This helps you ensure variety and avoid sounding repetitive.
• Use tools like SocialBee or MeetEdgar that allow you to create content categories and assign posting schedules.
• Set aside 30 minutes per week to turn new blog posts, social captions, or emails into evergreen content pieces. Add them to the appropriate bucket so your library keeps growing over time.
• Even evergreen content can go stale if reused too frequently. Every few months, review what’s still working, what needs to be refreshed, and what could be retired or updated.
• Use AI tools like ChatGPT to expand your library faster. Give it prompts like: “Write 10 Instagram captions with inspiring quotes about female entrepreneurship” or “Create five short-form LinkedIn posts based on this blog.”

Your Next Move

AI isn’t going to run your business for you. But it can help you run it more efficiently.

Pick one strategy from this guide and commit to testing it this week. Whether you schedule blog content, build a content library, or automate captions, you’ll immediately see how much time and energy you save.

At Softailed, we can speed up the process of choosing the right tools for the job. Our Social Media Best Picks highlight the 10 best social media management tools out there. You can also use our comparison tool to compare social media management tools side by side.

You’ve got the brand. You’ve got the vision. Let AI handle the busywork so you can focus on what matters most.