In this newsletter, we'll walk through the step-by-step process of building an automated content engine from the ground up. No more late nights spent crafting social media posts or pulling together analytics reports. With a few smart automations, you can take your content marketing to the next level.

The Key Components of an Automated Content Engine Before we dive into the "how", let's break down the essential parts of an automated content assembly line:

• Content Ideation & Planning: Generating content ideas and mapping them to a calendar

• Content Creation: Actually creating the content, whether written, visual, or video

• Cross-Platform Adaptation: Reformatting content to suit each publish platform

• Publishing & Scheduling: Pushing content live to each platform on a pre-set schedule

• Analytics & Reporting: Measuring content performance and extracting insights

• Content Repurposing: Identifying top content and recycling it to maximize lifespan

To truly automate your content pipeline, you'll need to connect tools and build workflows that streamline each of these steps. But don't worry - it's easier than you might think!

How to Build Your Content Engine: The Step-by-Step Process

Step 1:

Centralize Content Planning with Airtable The first step is getting all your content ideas organized and scheduled in one place. I recommend using Airtable as a content calendar, since it integrates easily with automation tools. Set up fields for:

• Publish date

• Content type (blog post, video, infographic, etc.)

• Title / topic

• Target keywords

• Publish platforms

• Current status

This will act as the central hub that triggers your automated content pipeline.

Step 2:

Connect OpenAI to Streamline Content Creation Next, it's time to put some AI power behind your content creation. Using a tool like Make.com (formerly Integromat), set up a workflow that:

1. Pulls in the content topic, keywords and key points from Airtable

2. Feeds that information into OpenAI's GPT-3 or GPT-4 model via a well-crafted prompt

3. Takes the AI-generated output and formats it into a draft blog post

4. Pushes the draft content back to Airtable for human review

This takes the hard work of content creation off your plate, while still keeping you in control of quality and messaging.

Here's an example of the type of detailed, hyper-specific prompt you can use with GPT models to generate high-quality, factual content:

"Act as a blog post writer creating a detailed 1500 word blog post on the topic of [TOPIC] for [TARGET AUDIENCE]. Include the following key points: [KEY POINT 1], [KEY POINT 2], [KEY POINT 3]. Format the post with an engaging introduction, clear subheadings, detailed body paragraphs, and a strong conclusion. Incorporate relevant statistics and examples. Optimize for the following target keywords: [KEYWORD 1], [KEYWORD 2]. Write in an [TONE] tone using simple language. Aim for a 6th grade reading level."

Step 3:

Leverage Tools Like Bannerbear to Create Visual Assets Of course, your content engine needs to create more than just text. With Bannerbear, you can automatically generate images perfectly sized for each platform based on templates. Your Make workflow can pull the content title and meta description from Airtable, feed it into your Bannerbear template, and generate a branded image or even video to go with your content.

Step 4:

Syndicate Content Across Platforms The next step is adapting your core piece of content to each of your publish platforms. With your Make workflow, you can:

• Shorten and add hashtags to your post for Twitter

• Break it into multiple slides for LinkedIn carousel posts

• Reformat it as a script for a YouTube video

• Resize images for Instagram

Then, your workflow can automatically publish the adapted content to each platform, or push it to Airtable for scheduling. This saves hours of manual work while still getting your content in front of all your audiences.

Step 5:

Automate Analytics and Reporting To really supercharge your content strategy, you need granular insights on post performance. Using Make, you can pull key metrics like:

• Reach & impressions

• Average engagement rate

• Audience growth

• Top posts by engagement

• Follower demographics

Automatically pull these data points into a Google Sheet or Airtable base to track performance over time. You can even auto-generate weekly summary emails with key highlights and recommendations to keep stakeholders in the loop.

Step 6:

Identify and Repurpose Top Content Finally, your content engine should help extend the lifespan of your best performing posts. Set up a Make workflow that:

1. Identifies posts that cross performance thresholds (e.g. 500 likes on Instagram)

2. Pushes that content to Airtable and labels it for repurposing

3. Automatically queues it up to be reformatted and re-posted on other channels

This amplifies the reach of your top content without any extra work on your end.

Putting it All Together When connected, these automations create a powerful, scalable content engine that takes you from ideation to publication and analysis with minimal manual effort.

Of course, this is just a high-level overview - the true power comes from customizing each piece based on your unique content needs and goals. But hopefully this gives you a roadmap to start building an automated content assembly line of your own!

If you want a more detailed breakdown of any of these steps, just hit reply and let me know. I'm happy to dive deeper into the specific tools, templates and workflows that can take your content marketing to the next level.

Happy automating!