How to create a social media post with AI for free

Coming up with a quick social media post seems like an easy job. But it’s hard to land on the best idea out of the dozens flying around inside your head. And then when you finally do, you tap New post, and another challenge begins: how am I going to wrap this idea in a compelling piece of content for my audience?

If you’re stuck in this cycle, you can use AI to break it and move things forward. It’ll help you put pen to paper—or finger to keyboard, if you will—shaping ideas from a rough first draft to an engaging update for your followers.

Here, I’ll be using ChatGPT and a few other free tools to show you how to create a social media post for Facebook. The process is similar for other social media platforms, so consider this inspiration for whatever AI-generated social media post you’re looking to create.

Table of contents: 

How to brainstorm social media post ideas with AI

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need some post ideas. ChatGPT is great for this because (a) it’s free, and (b) it acts as a brute-force creativity tool: it can generate lots of possibilities, and it’s up to you to choose which ones are the best.

To get the most useful answers, you need to give it as much context as possible. Here’s a prompt template that you can use (you’ll need to update it with your own information): 

Prompt template: I want you to act as a social media expert. Brainstorm 5 post inspiration ideas to post on Facebook for the following brand: [brand name], [insert main value proposition, insert details on products or services you offer, insert your target audience, insert your brand voice values].

For this post, I asked ChatGPT to generate an example business to work with. It created NimbleCraft, a sustainable furniture company. So here’s how I filled in the above prompt with all the details:

I want you to act as a social media expert. Brainstorm 5 post inspiration ideas to post on Facebook for the following brand: 

NimbleCraft. 

It offers environmentally conscious individuals unique, handcrafted furniture made from sustainable materials, providing a way to express their creativity and authenticity while supporting sustainability in their homes. 

This brand stands for creativity, innovation, authenticity, empathy, and sustainability.

The brand voice values are conversational, energetic, inspiring, fun, and educational.

Here’s a portion of the output I got:

I like these suggestions, so I’m going to move forward. But if you want to see more, you can type in “Continue” or “Generate 5 more.” As you see post types that you like, save them to your favorite note-taking app so you can use them later.

How to generate captions for social media posts with AI

Now that we have a few post ideas, we’re going to use ChatGPT to generate the actual caption for the post. Keep a document open on the side, so you can copy and paste what you like and edit as you go.

For this example, I’m going to create a sustainability tips post. Since you already have a conversation open with your brand details, you can use ChatGPT’s memory to work on your post without entering all the information again. One thing you may want to restate in your prompt: which platform(s) you want ChatGPT to draft social media captions for.

Prompt template: Brainstorm 5 captions for a [category or topic] post to share on [platform]. Include [insert details on the type of ideas you want] ideas. Prioritize creativity. 

Here’s the prompt I’ll be using:

Brainstorm 5 captions for a sustainability tips post to share on Facebook. Include original, uncommon, and fresh ideas. Prioritize creativity.

And here are some of the captions ChatGPT came up with:

I like the “Small Steps, Big Impact” idea, but it lacks an attention-grabbing first sentence. Let’s go overboard and ask for extreme results with this prompt:

Using the first idea, rewrite it 5 times according to the following instructions: the first sentence must be a strong opinion, big news, or unexpected view. Increase the shock value. Prioritize viral post style.

Brace yourself:

These are interesting caption openers—they would definitely perk up my attention. But if the question “so what?” is sounding inside your head, it is inside mine, too. We need to follow up our bold, scroll-stopping post with an insightful solution. For this example, I’ll take one headline and ask ChatGPT to think it through for us.  

Prompt template: Starting with “[phrase:]”, provide 5 endings. 

And here are the endings I got for the phrase “Your trash is killing the planet”:

Upcycling furniture from suggestion number three sounds interesting. But I confess: I know very little about it. Hey, ChatGPT. What’s upcycling? 

You’ll grow to love ChatGPT because of this kind of thing. It’ll help you explore areas of knowledge you didn’t know were a thing. But we shouldn’t trust it willy-nilly, especially since ChatGPT tends to make up information. You can ask ChatGPT to cite its sources (if it didn’t already) so you can fact-check its responses. 

After doing my own research and getting a clearer idea on upcycling, we’re ready to put all of this together into a prompt so ChatGPT can generate a social media post for us.

Write a short Facebook post using these instructions:

– It starts with the expression “Your trash is killing the planet.”

– State how upcycling is a practical solution

Explain that we need to move from a take > make > waste cycle to keeping materials in use to eradicate waste and regenerate nature.

Before we lock in on this: do you feel like ChatGPT forgot what kind of brand voice NimbleCraft stands for? Let’s check with this prompt:

Rewrite the post using the following voice guidelines: conversational, energetic, inspiring, fun, and educational.

Too fun for my taste, but we’ll get to that in a second. I want to hear from NimbleCraft’s followers and learn if and how they’re implementing this mindset in their lives. And we don’t even need to use our own creativity to get this call to action:

Write a last sentence for this post inviting readers to comment with suggestions on how to upcycle.

Ok, I’ve got all I need. Time to hit backspace on the fun and reach a final version:

Your trash is killing the planet. 🌍 

But here’s the good news: we can take what’s old, broken, or “useless” and upcycle it. Think: turning that worn-out table into a stunning centerpiece or transforming jars into gorgeous planters. It’s practical, creative, and—bonus—it helps regenerate nature by keeping materials out of landfills. 

Got a brilliant upcycling idea? Drop it in the comments and inspire others to turn trash into treasure. 🌿✨👇

#UpcycleYourStyle #SustainableLiving #NimbleCraftTips

How to generate social media images with AI

I could leave the post as is and post it straight to NimbleCraft’s Facebook page, but let’s include an image. There are plenty of royalty-free image libraries (just remember to credit the authors in the post caption). But to keep this post as AI-powered as possible, let’s stick with ChatGPT—it uses DALL·E 3 to generate AI images.

Note: Users on a free plan are limited to only two free images per day; users on a paid tier have unlimited access. But there are other AI image generators that offer more images for free. 

Here’s what I asked ChatGPT for:

Create a photo of random materials, including plastic bottles, furniture, and clothing, waiting to be recycled in an industrial setting. Make it colorful and realistic. 

It’s worth noting that AI art generators tend to require more attention to detail—and more attempts—to get what you want. Here are some AI art prompt tips to help you get what you’re looking for faster.

Let’s get this image ready for publishing using Canva. 

1. Create a Canva account if you haven’t done so before. 

2. Click Create a design in the side panel next to the side menu.

3. From the Create a design popup that appears, click Facebook Post (Landscape) as your design template. 

4. Upload your AI-generated image. 

5. Add a bit of text connected to your caption. In my case, I’ll add “Your trash is killing the planet.” 

6. Finish by adding your logo or any other branding elements.

Here’s my end result on Canva:

How to repurpose your AI-generated social media content

If you’re running multiple channels, it’ll be hard to create original content for every single one. Instead, you can take your best ideas and repurpose them into other content types—all using AI.

I created a Facebook post about how trash is killing our planet and how to alleviate this by upcycling. Starting from that idea, I could ask AI to help me:

• Rewrite the post to be a fit for Instagram and the app formerly known as Twitter.

• Write a blog post about upcycling and creative ways to upcycle some of the biggest household items sitting in landfills.

• Look up influencers on the sustainability topic, so I could set up an interview for a podcast episode on the circular mindset.

• Write a video script on the topic, create the video, and post it to YouTube.

Other ways to create a social media post with AI

The example I just walked through is only one of many ways to create a social media post with AI. There are all sorts of tools that can help, depending on your goals—and how much of a budget you have. For example:

Automate your social media workflows 

While AI saves time as you create, automation can save you time as you execute. Use Zapier to connect the apps you use to run your social media strategy. This way, you can automatically do things like generate captions using ChatGPT and schedule those posts in your social media management app. Here are a few pre-made workflows to get you started.

Related reading:

This article was originally published in April 2023. The most recent update, with contributions from Jessica Lau, was in December 2024.