A Tuesday afternoon, gone on four posts
Someone on the team is responsible for social. On a posting day they find a photo from the shared drive, crop it three ways for LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, write a caption, rewrite it shorter for another platform, add hashtags, send a screenshot to the manager on WhatsApp for approval, wait, adjust, then log in to each platform or the scheduler and post.
That is one post. By the end of the afternoon there are four, and the rest of their job has waited. When they are off sick, nothing goes out.
Add a second location or a second brand, and the job doubles. The person doing it knows it is repetitive, and they would rather spend the time talking to customers in the comments or thinking about what is worth posting, but the mechanics eat the day first.
Why it takes so long
The writing is rarely the slow bit. The time goes on handling: moving the same idea through several formats and several people by hand.
- Source material (job photos, product news, blog posts) is scattered, so each post starts with a search.
- Each platform wants different dimensions, lengths and tone, and each version is made by hand.
- Approval happens informally over messages, with no queue and no record.
- Scheduling is done per platform, or in a tool that still needs everything pasted in.
- Nothing links posts to results, so nobody knows which posts are worth the effort.
The real cost
Beyond the staff hours, irregular posting makes the channel weaker, and the pressure to post something leads to filler. The dependence on one person is a risk in itself. And because nobody can see which posts lead to enquiries, it is hard to decide whether social deserves more effort or less.
| Step | Manual today | In the pipeline |
|---|---|---|
| Pick source material | Search the drive | Pulled from a content list or feed |
| Write captions | One by one per platform | Drafted per platform for editing |
| Resize images | Crop by hand | Generated from templates |
| Approval | WhatsApp screenshots | Queue with approve or edit |
| Scheduling | Log in to each platform | Pushed to scheduler on approval |
What we build
- A content source list: new blog posts from your CMS, product updates from Shopify, completed job photos from a shared folder or your job management system, and a simple form for one-off ideas.
- Caption drafting per platform with a model such as OpenAI or Anthropic Claude, using your tone guide and a list of things you never say.
- Image templates that crop and brand photos for each platform automatically, with a person able to swap the crop if it looks wrong.
- An approval queue in a tool you already use, such as Airtable, Notion or a small web page, where the approver sees every version side by side.
- Scheduling through the APIs of Buffer, Later, Hootsuite or the platforms themselves, triggered only when an item is approved.
- UTM tags on every link so clicks and enquiries from social show up in your analytics and CRM.
We keep human judgement where it matters: choosing what to post, checking the words and approving the final version. The pipeline handles the repetition.
Most of this can run on n8n or Make with a few custom pieces. If your volume is small, we will say so and keep the build small: sometimes a caption template, an image template and a proper approval queue are all a business needs.
The week afterwards
Your social person reviews a queue of prepared posts, edits a few captions, rejects one that does not feel right, and approves the rest in one sitting. The manager approves from their phone without screenshots. Posts go out on schedule even when someone is on holiday, because the queue was filled in advance.
After a couple of months, you can see which kinds of posts bring visitors and enquiries, and adjust.
Signs you need this
- One person spends a large part of their week on social posting.
- Approvals happen over WhatsApp or email screenshots.
- Posting stops when that person is away.
- You resize the same photo several times for different platforms.
- You cannot say whether social brings you any enquiries.