S1. Ep 5 Automating Social Media Research

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Noel, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe and I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hello, Noel.

Noel: Hello, good to be back.

Katie: What are we talking about today?

Noel: We're going to talk about how to automate your social media research. So looking at keywords and then scraping all of that data. And then the end goal is to then repurpose that content. So you can look at all the viral things that are going on in your particular niches and then creating content from that. But we're going to do that fully automated.

Katie: So this episode all came about when I was, so I had been seen. videos everywhere on TikTok and also Instagram saying that if you really want to grow your account, then look at what other successful accounts are doing. And that makes sense to me to some degree. But what you don't want to be doing is copying others, obviously. So it's looking what other people are doing and where they're getting like lots of views. So more views than they have maybe followers or over like the million view mark and lots of people were saying well you need to put in your keywords you know for your say niche or industry and then go and look through that data yourself manually and I don't have really the patience to do that and it's very time consuming. So then once you've got obviously all of this data, you're then thinking, right, how can I now use this for my own niche or my own industry or for my own business? So you're not copying, but you're just going, right, what's my take on this? How can I use maybe I don't know the hook and the visual hook? And then it goes on, you know, a particular subject in my niche or, you know, that's related to my business. So I know that there is a business, a very successful business out there that charges $3,500 per month to go and do this research and then to write the scripts for you. So like for reels or carousels or TikTok videos. So we're going to save you $3,500 per month.

Noel: Yeah, that's the I.

Katie: And we're also going to tell you how you can do this without actually having to manually do it. That's correct, isn't it?

Noel: That's it. Yeah, yeah, that's what we're going to do. It's really kind of straightforward when you look at it. But yeah, we'll get it for a new person, but we'll get you there.

Katie: Okay. We know, like, why we want to do it. We just don't want to have to manually do it. So what would be the first step in, like, automating this for, for our business?

Noel: So for me, the first step would be to work out what tool you're going to use to do the automations. That's always the first step.

Katie: That's the first

Noel: step I talk through with my clients. They may have preferences. But for me, I prefer using make.com, mainly because it's so open, there's so many native integration apps. Have a great free account that you can just get started with today. And it's really simple drag and drop. Yeah. Yeah.

Katie: Lots of things connect with Make as well, don't they?

Noel: Yeah, there's like 2,500 to 3,000 apps. Yeah.

Katie: And I know with like some automation apps or software, you've got to pay like per connection. And that's not the case is it with Make.com?

Noel: No, so make.com, it depends on, so when you create the scenarios that that's what they call each workflow, whatever you want to say, so each bubble, which is like an app, So each time it steps through each of those bubbles, that is one operation, and you pay for those operations. So if you've got like something that's got like 100 apps, all interlinked, then you run that once, that'll cost you 100 operations. So yeah, and then the free account will, that will cost, I think you get a thousand free operations per month.

Katie: So there's plenty there.

Noel: Yeah, there's plenty there to get started. And for this particular one, to get to the point of actually scraping the data, I think you'll only need about four or five operations for each room. So there's not many at all. Okay,

Katie: so let's do the steps then as we were using make.com. So one, find your platform. So for this example, we are going to be using make.com. So what's the second step?

Noel: So the second step is to work out how and where you would like to use the automation. So you need to figure out what tool or application do I use on a daily basis that I can integrate into make.com to start these automations and also store the. the data that comes back. So I think for this example that we've seen on Instagram, TikTok, they're using Google Sheets a lot. So for this one, Google Sheets is also free. So it's always a nice low barrier to entry. We'll use Google Sheets. And to start it all off, we'll have like a spreadsheet. And then we can input our keywords in a column and then tag it with like a status that says to go off and scrape. So it could just be scrape. And then Make.com sits there and it looks to that sort of interaction. As soon as it spots something as scrape, it goes, right, start the automation. And then off it will go and then start the next part. But that comes in step three. Okay.

Katie: So we can use Google Sheets. We can use Notion. We can use Airtable. Anything that basically you can see the data really clearly.

Noel: If you're new to make, you can go on their website and they list all of the apps that they natively host.

Katie: So if

Noel: you use something that's not. maybe a little different, then check that out and then see if it's in there first before you get started.

Katie: So what is step number three?

Noel: So step number three is the interesting bit is how to get the information that you need from Instagram or TikTok or whatever platform you want to scrape and figuring out then how you would like the data stored back within that spreadsheet in Google sheets. For me, I use a tool called Appify, and that has hundreds of different scrapers, especially on social media platforms, Instagram's got for like 50 or more, you know.

Katie: And they're

Noel: all kind of doing the same thing, and they've all got different price points, but there's someone there that are free and things like that. So it's, again, really low barrier to entry.

Katie: Okay, so what is the cost of using Appify?

Noel: So you can set up a free account, and with that free account, you get $5 credit per month. So, For a customer I'm working with at the moment, we're scraping his entire client database of like 8,000 Instagram contacts. We're looking at it for him, and there's some scrapers in there that are cost like $2 per 1,000 results. Again, it's not a lot of money. And if you're only looking at certain niches, you're not going to get anywhere near that sort of level of results that you'll need. So it's still very low. and if anything, you probably won't even go over that $5. I struggle to.

Katie: Okay, okay, so Appify, so step four?

Noel: So step four is then, well, what do we want to, the data to be shown and come back? So you'll create like a separate sheet within your Google sheet, and we'll look at the data output from Appify and then map all of that information in Make.com. So every time Applify completes, it will then populate your spreadsheet. sheet automatically. And once you've done it, it will take a while to set all that up, depending on how many different columns you have, but once you've done it once, you don't have to do it again. So, you know, you can just keep going and going and going. And this sheet would just keep getting bigger with

Katie: all the different results.

Noel: So yeah, it's really, really straightforward. Okay.

Katie: And are there any more steps?

Noel: So in this day, I mean, this is a bit of a coup, really, because we haven't used AI at any point in this process.

Katie: Oh, this is AI Automations for Business podcast and you're telling me you won't use any AI. No.

Noel: So you can get all of that data for free, really, using free accounts. And, you know, it's then what will you do with that data thereafter? So there would be like a part two to this sort of automation. And that part will be, you know, you'll need to then work out what's your aim? What would you like to do with this information?

Katie: Are you, you know,

Noel: wanting to repurpose or just have a look, see what's working and things

Katie: really if you're gathering this information you want to kind of see maybe for me if there's any patterns but mostly it's going to be how can I recreate this for my own business so say that there has been a few posts videos that have done really well for people and I think yes I could totally recreate that, maybe I would want, I don't know, AI to write me a script for it. Yeah,

Noel: absolutely, yeah. So within that second sheet, let's see, we have like another status column. So as soon as the data gets added, it will be tagged as new. And then let's say you like the look of a post that's on there, you know, you could tag that again as create content, you know, and then that could then trigger a whole other set of automations, depending on what you like. So as an example, let's say we're looking at Instagram and we want to keep it simple and it's like an image post. Nothing fancy, photo, caption, you know, it did really well. So what we can do within the second part is to put that image through the AI. We can then train the AI on what you do and your tone of voice and also provide it like the caption from that really good post and then say, look, this work well. This is what I do. do it for me and

Katie: then it will

Noel: go off and then redo all the captions. They can then give you prompts on what sort of image you should put on there. And then if you really fancy, you could go off and then create an AI generated image, you know, to kind of match what's going on within that original post.

Katie: Yeah. Why?

Noel: Yeah. But there's also, I mean, if we're getting into videos, you know, you could go off and get the transcripts for the videos and then use AI to then rewrite the scripts for those transcripts.

Katie: Yeah, because that's really, important as well like we're not copying people we are looking to see what worked for them and taking it as inspiration and then going okay actually i could do this format but for my business or you know something that you want to talk about

Noel: definitely yeah it's also important as well when it comes to like the brand voice i mean we went through this in great detail in an earlier podcast about prompt engineering so go and check that out So, you know, you get a better understanding of how you can inject your brand voice into this sort of stuff. Because you don't want to repurpose a really good bit of content with some AI generated nonsense, which is just like the generic stuff. That's boring. You know, we want a bit of personality. So, yeah. So, yeah, check out our prompt engineering and then, yeah, add that brand voice in.

Katie: Yeah, that's really important. It has to sound like you. Oh, yeah. Especially like if you're doing a video and it sounds like someone else or the energy is just not right, people really pick up on that. People aren't going to connect with it whatsoever. I'll make sure that we link that podcast episode in our show notes before. So if you haven't listened to it, then you can find it really easily if you just look at the show notes before. No, is there anything else that you feel we need to share or talk about when? when it comes to this particular automation.

Noel: So I think we've covered all the basics. We haven't shown you anything yet, but I think we will very soon, hopefully. I'd like to say, it's always the same with every automation. You need to figure out how you're going to start it and what's your end goal. And then once you figure that out, you can connect all the dots in the middle to make that happen. So as long as you keep to those sort of rules, you'll be fine. Yes.

Katie: And if anyone's got any questions about this or you're not sure on how to get started, then we do have a free LinkedIn group, AI Automations for Business. You can come in and you can ask any questions that you want in there and one of us mislately know we'll come and answer your question for you. So yeah, don't kind of, you know, stay stuck if this is something that you want to do. You feel like, you know, this is something that you want to do for your business, your social media, but you just do not want to go through and manually do it.

Noel: Anyone's free to join the LinkedIn group. Like Hey, you said, I'm always in there and always happy to help. We always share some extra little tips in there as well that we probably don't show on the podcast or maybe do. And there's other people in there. They're also experts. So they're sharing their thoughts and insights as well. So, yeah, it's an early group, but yeah, happy to help anyone in there.

Katie: I will also put the link to the free group in the show notes as well. so you can grab that and you can come and join us over on LinkedIn. Thank you so, so much for listening to this episode. If you've liked it, please feel free to leave us a review. It really, really helps us. And we will see you for the next episode next week.