Automated Social Media Content Pipeline Using ChatGPT, Make.com, and Buffer
Client: Small Business Operator
Industry: Marketing & Content Creation
Platforms: Make.com, Google Sheets, OpenAI (ChatGPT), Buffer (optional), Midjourney (optional)
Time to Build: ~8 hours
Time Saved: 5–8 hours per week
Consulting Partner: Lumio Consulting
Project Overview / Problem
A small business marketing team needed help automating their daily social media content workflow. Every day, they manually drafted captions, found royalty-free images, and posted to multiple platforms—Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Facebook, and Pinterest. The process was slow, repetitive, and prone to inconsistency.
They asked if we could help them create an automation that could streamline this process while keeping their voice and visual style intact. The ultimate goal was to publish engaging content every day—without relying on a full-time social media manager.
Goals of the Automation
The automation needed to:
Automatically generate daily content from a list of curated news links or trending topics
Create platform-specific captions and visuals using OpenAI (ChatGPT + DALL·E)
Post or schedule content to Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Pinterest, and more
Allow for human review and content refinement where necessary
Reduce the time required to publish cross-platform content from hours to minutes
Solution Overview / Step-by-Step Breakdown
This automation was built using Make.com and designed to be modular and flexible, with a human-in-the-loop approach that allows for manual review when needed.
Step 1: Pull Content from a Curated Source
Pull a list of recent news links from a Google Sheet
Alternative Option: Automate link gathering based on Google keyword search via SERP API, as shown in our Automated Blog Content Generator Case Study
Step 2: Generate Captions & Hashtags
Use ChatGPT to analyze the content of each link
Generate platform-optimized social captions and hashtags (tone- and length-adjusted)
Step 3: Generate Visuals
Generate an image using DALL·E based on the content
Optional: Use Midjourney (via plugin) for more aesthetic images
Optional: Use ChatGPT Vision to verify the image matches the content
Optional: Manually override or replace image from Unsplash or internal brand folder
Step 4: Route to Platforms
Use a router module to branch to each platform (LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Medium, Tumblr, etc.)
Each platform has its own caption style, character limits, and image preferences
Optional: Instead of posting immediately, route content to Buffer for scheduled publishing
Optional: Deactivate any non-applicable social platforms
Step 5: Publish or Schedule
Post content immediately OR
Push to Buffer queue for scheduled posting (recommended for better timing and control)
Challenges
We ran into several problems during development:
Image generation is inherently faulty, though some images may be immediately presentable, it often required human review and updates
Each platform has unique requirements for captions and images, which requires adjustments and fine-tuning by platform
(Optional) Midjourney integration requires additional API ($$) and image selection logic (not shown in this workflow)
Results / Outcome / Time Saved
The team now generates and schedules daily content for all platforms in less than 15 minutes per day.
They save roughly 5–8 hours a week, which used to be spent copywriting, sourcing images, and manually publishing content.
Best of all, their engagement has gone up thanks to consistent posting and fresher content.
Client Feedback
“This workflow helped so much, social posting was always a “if I have time” activity, i.e. it never got done, but with this automation, we get consistent, on-brand content ready for review and publishing. We don’t love every auto-generated post, but with our input, we can tweak the content to match our style. It’s a million times better than what we had before, which was nothing.”
Additional Improvements
Since the initial rollout, we’ve discussed several possible improvements (not yet implemented):
Replace ChatGPT Dall-E3 with Midjourney for more realistic image generation
OR replace ChatGPT Dall-E3 with Unsplash API for real photography
Utilize ChatGPT Vision to verify that images match content
Created a version that pulls trending SEO keywords automatically (versus pulling from new articles or a pre-built list of topics)
Tools, Plug-ins, and Platforms Used
Make.com: Scenario builder and router logic
Google Sheets: Content source for article links
OpenAI (ChatGPT, DALL·E): Caption and image generation
Perplexity (optional): Review and summarize articles for content
Buffer: Optional scheduling tool for queued publishing
Midjourney + ImagineAPI (optional): Higher-quality image generation
ChatGPT Vision (optional): Image validation
Unsplash API (optional): Alternative image source