Social Media Helper

Few things strike fear into the heart of employees as hearing that they need to develop a social media strategy. It’s widely considered the realm of youths (which is fine) but often in a business context, the youths aren’t necessarily as polished as we’d like them to be. Polish only comes with time and experience, so it’s not their fault, but we run into an obvious conundrum regardless. 

Social media needn’t always be scary, it’s just communication after all. A different kind of communication mind you, but communication all the same. Many tend to dislike doing it though, which is why we often see ChatGPT being employed to get it done. The issue? Without using it properly, the social media content it pumps out can be lacking.

ChatGPT being in its infancy means most people simply aren’t using it in an effective manner. Asking it to simply give you a tweet storm of content on some random topic is generally going to blow up in your face, because it ends up defaulting to a communication style that can feel empty or unfocused.

To show what I mean, let’s run a short experiment. First we’ll prompt it to give us 3 tweets on waking up early (no other instructions given):

1. One perspective highlights that mornings can be the most productive part of the day, offering undisturbed time for focus and task completion before the rest of the world wakes up. This uninterrupted quiet can lead to significant achievements and a sense of accomplishment early in the day.
2. Another viewpoint stresses the long-term benefits of early rising, such as enhanced exercise routines, improved sleep patterns, increased confidence, reduced stress, and potential career advancements. The argument suggests that waking up early can lead to a healthier lifestyle, better mental health, and a more fulfilling life overall​.
3. An inventive approach involves using the Buffer app to schedule a potentially embarrassing or costly tweet to go out shortly after your desired wake-up time. This method leverages the fear of social shame and financial loss as motivation to wake up early and cancel the tweet, proving to be a highly effective wake-up strategy for some.

Alright. This is something. First off I’m going to flag that not one of those is short enough to fit in a tweet, so right off the hop we’re in a bit of a pickle. While I do adore the pure chaos of suggesting people key up a life-damaging social media post that they have to save themselves from every morning, I can’t say these posts are necessarily engaging. They’re more like a blog post chunked into 3 sections. 

So what makes an engaging social media post? There’s a lot of ways to do it, but a few tips are to make it relatable, conversational, and informative. We maybe hit informative, but the other two are lacking. Let’s run this again with a bit of guidance. 

Let’s direct it to create 3 tweets that don’t exceed 240 characters, start with a personal anecdote that could be seen as relatable, move on to a “why it works” explanation, and ends with a call to action for the reader.

1. Two years ago, hitting snooze was my only morning routine. But shifting to waking up at 5 AM has completely transformed my life. It wasn’t just about more hours in my day; it was about reclaiming my sense of control and purpose.
2. Why did it work for me? The solitude of the early hours provide an unmatched environment for focus. It allows for uninterrupted reflection, planning, and productivity before the day’s chaos begins (and the chaos is coming).
3. Wanna try? Start small. Wake-up 15 minutes earlier each week. Use the extra time for something you love but never have time for, and reflect each day how it felt. It’s not about sacrificing sleep; it’s about prioritizing yourself. 

It may not be my style, but it’s at least better than our original run. We immediately hit a relatable note for anybody who can’t get up early: the eternal drug that is the snooze button. Then the claim that ceasing to chase the snooze button dragon was transformative. Tweet #2 provided the why, and tweet #3 provided the how. Contrast that to the overly vague wording on the first set. “One perspective,” “another viewpoint stresses,” and “an effective strategy for some.” That’s all well and good, but it’s not actionable as “I had a problem and here’s what I did.”

This simple formula is employed by effective social media users all the time, and while the content may not be your thing, it can be repurposed into almost anything else you need. I had a problem. This is how I fixed it. You can too. It’s a simple process, but one that ChatGPT won’t necessarily use unless you know to ask it to. This happens time and time again with all things we ask it to write. Without giving it guidance (even guidance itprovides), it defaults to something that easily misses the mark every time. 

CREATING SOCIAL MEDIA HELPER

So we’re going to take the formula we employed in our example as well as a few more, and create our own social media machine. Depending on the platform you’re using, you may not need to break it up into pieces, but that’s just a single line to adjust in the instructions. 

We’ve already got “I had a problem, here’s how I fixed it, here’s how you can too.” Let’s explore some other formulas we can plug into our helper.

1. I spent time testing a thing so you don’t have to (I read 100 books so you don’t have to, and here’s what I learned)
2. To solve X, I do Y, and it helps me achieve Z (To get 4 hours of work done before noon, I use a $10 timer, and it’s changed my life)
3. Trending thing, my thoughts, it can help you (<Trending thing> just happened, here’s what I think of it, and here’s why that matters to you.)
4. Reflective advice (I did X, but it could have been way easier, here’s what I’d do differently)
5. What’s really going on (Most people think X is because of Y, but it isn’t. It’s because of Z, and here’s why that matters)
6. The success story (<person> did something incredible, but how they did it is even more interesting)
7. People need a shortcut (X is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be, so here’s how to get ahead of 90% of everybody else)

We can plug all these into our helper, and right away we have 8 potential templates to reframe what we want to say. 

INSTRUCTIONS

TESTING SOCIAL MEDIA HELPER

I tried the GPT out on a few specific topics as well as one where I left things incredibly vague. It did a great job of expanding a single idea into about 10 potential directions. Even if the tweets weren’t totally my style (initially it went ballistic with emojis and hashtags), I was able to tweak the instructions to revise. 

I was impressed how it took the 8 templates and made genuinely unique content out of them, despite a lot of them being somewhat similar. For example, I asked it to help me write a thread on flossing (everybody’s favourite thing). It did give some generic ideas such as “I started flossing and here’s how it’s going”, but also a very interesting take on “most people think sugar is the main culprit in cavities, but that’s not entirely true, and here’s where flossing plays a role.”

These types of questions could easily be adjusted to work for whatever it is you need to use social media for. Perhaps you’re not trying to be the next viral hit, but just need to advertise an upcoming sale. The beauty of this is they’re designed to get people to read and understand, so they’re highly adaptable. 

ALTERNATE USES

This GPT focuses on crafting engaging social media content using specific structured templates, which can be adapted for various communication strategies beyond traditional social media posts. These methods could also be creatively applied to:

Customer Testimonials:

A GPT could reframe customer testimonials using these templates, making them more engaging and relatable. For instance, a testimonial could be presented as a success story (template 6) where a customer’s problem is solved in a surprising way by a product or service, enhancing its appeal and demonstrating real-world value.

Product Descriptions:

Product descriptions on e-commerce sites can be transformed to follow the “I had a problem, here’s how I fixed it” template (template 1). This approach could make the product features and benefits more relatable to potential buyers by showing how it solves a common problem or enhances the user’s life.

Internal Company Updates:

Communicating internal updates or changes within a company can sometimes be mundane. Using the “What’s really going on” template (template 6) could make these updates more interesting and engaging for employees, offering deeper insights into decisions and fostering a better understanding of company directions.