What Content Automation Actually Means
Content automation doesn't mean a robot writes your entire blog while you sleep. It means: removing repetitive manual work from your content process.
That might be:
- Generating outlines (instead of staring blank at a page)
- Distributing to multiple platforms (instead of copy-pasting)
- Scheduling posts (instead of remembering what day it is)
- Curating content (instead of manually reading everything)
The best content automation tools do one thing well. Not everything.
Blog Post Generator: My Most Used Tool
This is my tool. Built on Make.com + OpenAI. You give it:
- Topic
- Target keyword
- Tone (mine is conversational, honest, no hype)
It returns: fully drafted blog post with structure, intro, 5-7 sections, conclusion. Delivered to your email within 10 minutes.
Does it save time? Yes. Do I edit every post? Also yes. It's 60-70% of the work, not 100%.
Why it works: It gets the structure right, which is 50% of writing. I focus on voice and examples, which are the other 50%.
Why I still edit: AI is awkward. It's verbose. It doesn't know my actual opinions on things. It's better as a starting point than an end product.
Social Content: Social Spark and Tailored Social Post
Social Spark is for bulk generation. Give it a topic, get 10 different social posts—one for each platform (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.). Takes 3 minutes, saves 30 minutes of writing variations.
Tailored Social Post is for when you have one article and want to generate social teasers. More targeted, fewer variations, but much tighter writing.
The honest truth: Social media content is hard to automate well. AI struggles with platform norms. What works on LinkedIn bombs on TikTok. What gets engagement on Twitter is boring on LinkedIn.
I use these tools to generate ideas and drafts. Then I edit for authenticity. Takes 15 minutes for a week of social content instead of 2 hours. That's the win.
RSS and Content Curation
I'm not writing all my content. I'm also curating and commenting on other people's work. That requires reading, which is time-consuming.
My stack:
- Feedly ($0 free tier) — Aggregate RSS feeds from blogs I care about
- Make.com webhook — When I favorite an article in Feedly, it automatically saves it to Airtable with my notes
- Weekly digest — I review what I saved, pick the best 3-5 articles, write brief commentary, share to LinkedIn
This takes 20 minutes/week for meaningful curation that keeps me connected to the community. Without automation, I'd spend hours reading.
Scheduling: Native Platforms First, Buffer Second
LinkedIn has built-in scheduling. So does Twitter. Google Sheets has scheduling through Make.com. I don't use a separate scheduling tool—it's overkill for my volume.
If I needed more sophisticated scheduling (like optimal time detection or analytics), I'd look at Buffer or Later. But for "post this tomorrow at 9am," native scheduling wins.
AI Writing Tools: Claude vs. ChatGPT
I use OpenAI's API in Make.com, which means GPT-4. But I also test Claude for longer-form content.
- Claude: Better at reasoning, nuance, longer pieces. Less performative. Better for blog posts.
- ChatGPT (GPT-4): Faster, cheaper, better at structured output. Good for social posts and outlines.
For Blog Post Generator, I use GPT-4 because speed matters (users expect results in 10 minutes). For my personal writing, I'd use Claude because quality matters more than speed.
Tools That Disappointed Me
Jasper (was $90/month): Supposed to be the "AI writing assistant." In reality, it's just a ChatGPT wrapper with a fancy UI. Not worth the premium price when I can use OpenAI's API directly for $10/month.
Copy.ai (tried free tier): Generates short copy well. But anything longer is garbage. Dropped it.
HubSpot (was free): All-in-one marketing platform. Looked good. Was slow. Didn't actually save time because everything was buried in menus. Switched to Make.com + native platforms.
Buffer (was $5/month): Works fine for scheduling. But I don't need it—native scheduling is free and good enough. If you're managing multiple client accounts, Buffer might make sense. For solo, it's unnecessary.
My Full Content Stack (Actual)
Here's what I actually use:
- Blog Post Generator (Make.com + OpenAI): 1 full blog post/week. Saves ~2 hours drafting.
- Social Spark (Make.com + OpenAI): Bulk social content variations. 10 posts in 3 minutes.
- Tailored Social Post (Make.com + OpenAI): Custom social teasers for individual articles.
- Feedly + Make.com webhook: Passive curation. Save great articles, review weekly, share with commentary.
- Google Sheets + native scheduling: Write or paste content, schedule publish times directly.
- Airtable: Log everything. Track performance, reuse good angles, see patterns.
Total cost: $50/month (mostly the Make.com Core plan shared with other projects).
Time saved: 10+ hours/week on content creation and distribution.
The Philosophy
Don't use tools to avoid writing. Use tools to speed up writing you'd do anyway.
The moment a tool starts feeling like overhead (another account to log into, another interface to learn), drop it. I'd rather have five tools that feel native than twenty tools that feel like work.
Start with what you actually need. Curation? Scheduling? Drafting? Be specific. Then find the simplest tool that does that one thing well. Then add the next thing.