Keeping up with your industry is HARD.

I get it. It’s particularly bad in the AI space moves at a dizzying pace. New models dropping daily, features updating hourly, and everyone and their dog sharing their "hot take" on what it all means.

It used to drive me mad trying to keep up. Opening 50 browser tabs of articles to read "later" (spoiler: never happened…). Following every AI thought leader on Twitter. Joining all the Discord servers. Subscribing to every newsletter.

The result? Complete paralysis.

I was so busy trying to consume everything, I created nothing.

Too much time spent reading. Not enough writing.

And what I did manage to share was rushed, surface-level, and frankly... not very good.

I needed less information, not more. Quality sources, not quantity.

Because here's the truth - if we're going to automate our social media, we need to start with exceptional inputs. Otherwise, we're just automating mediocrity.

In this Part we’re going to talk input sources.

Let’s get started:

GIGO

Let's talk about a fundamental truth: garbage in, garbage out (GIGO)

This Playbook will help you build a social media automation system.

We have Inputs (covered in this Part), how we Process the inputs using AI (next Part) and our social media posts as Outputs.

If we muck up now and put garbage into the system it doesn’t matter how good our AI processes are. We’ll get garbage Outputs.

This is even more crucial when we're thinking about automation. Because when you automate, you're not just sharing one piece of content - you're potentially sharing hundreds. If your source material is mediocre, you're about to amplify that mediocrity at scale. Eek.

So before we plunge in we need to decide on quality sources. Think farm-to-table rather than McDonalds.

Your Five Core Sources

I've tested dozens of different content sources over the years. And with AI I’ve added a few more recently. I’m going to show you my Big Five. They're the perfect mix of current events, expert insights, community discussion, deep knowledge, and personal expertise.

A lot to cover here so I’ll keep it high level!

AI-Powered News via Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that aggregates news and provides summarised insights. The basic version is free. Think of it as having a research assistant who reads everything and gives you the highlights.

Use a basic prompt like “what happened this week in AI?” and Perplexity will go and grab the top (recent!) stories for you:

Importantly these are genuinely new. The Project Jarvis example here was published 1 hour and 38 minutes before I searched.

What It's Good For:

• Breaking news in your industry

• Finding unique angles on current events

• Getting quick context on complex topics

Best Practices:

• Set up daily searches for your key topics

• Focus on stories with staying power (not just daily drama)

• Look for patterns across multiple stories

• Save the most insightful pieces for future reference

• Use it to find original sources, not just summaries - you can trace back to the original link via Perplexity.

X/Twitter Lists

A curated collection of genuine experts and practitioners in your field. Not influencers - actual people doing the work and sharing insights.

In X/Twitter you can create specific lists and add accounts to them. Add legit experts and clear thinkers in your niche for i) quick access to their posts and ii) we can automate off the back of lists later.

What It's Good For:

• Real-time insights from practitioners

• Controversial takes

• Engaging with thought leaders

Best Practices:

• Keep your lists small (20-30 people max)

• Review and prune. People leave Twitter all the time so clear your lists.

• Look for people who share process, not just results

• Create separate lists for different aspects of your field

Subreddits

Whenever I want a real answer online I’ll append “reddit” to the end of my Google search. Why? This will show me answers from Redditors - which is a real repository of knowledge. Amongst all the rubbish!

Subreddits are focused communities where people discuss specific topics, share experiences, and ask questions.

Here’s the r/entrepreneur subreddit for example:

All great potential sources for content.

Your job is to go and find the quality subreddits connected to your business and expertise niche. What will your social media posts talk about? Find the subreddits connected to those topics.

What It's Good For:

• Understanding real problems people face

• Finding common questions and pain points

• Seeing how solutions work in practice

• Identifying gaps in current content

Best Practices:

• Focus on 2-3 core subreddits

• Sort by "Top" posts weekly or monthly to see what’s most popular

• Look for recurring questions. These are goldmines.

• Pay attention to comments, not just posts. I’ll often prepare content off comments not just the actual post.

RSS Feed Curation

A streamlined way to follow specific blogs and publications that consistently provide high-quality, detailed content in your field. This includes newsletters.

We’ll later connect RSS feeds to our automations but if you just want a good way to find, curate and read RSS feeds then use an app like Feedly.

What It's Good For:

• Deep insights and analysis

• Well-researched content

• Thought leadership pieces

• Tutorial and how-to content

Best Practices:

• Use Feedly or similar RSS reader

• Limit to 5-10 key sources. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed here!

• Focus on evergreen content as these will be more useful to social media posts later

Your Own Content Archives

Your own existing long-form content - newsletters, blog posts, articles and guides. If you already create then you should be repurposing longer form content into shorter form social media posts. This also works with video as you can transcribe the content into text.

What It's Good For:

• Proven content that resonates with your audience

• Detailed insights you've already refined

• Personal stories and experiences

Best Practices:

• Create a system for organising your content (ie. Notion or just a Google Sheet)

• Tag pieces by topic and type

• Keep a "greatest hits" folder/list

• Look for content that can be broken down into smaller pieces

Curation rather than consumption

Your main task at this point is to go and gather up these quality sources. Get them saved in a document or anywhere handy - we’ll use them later as Input sources.

Remember: The goal isn't to consume everything from these sources. Read enough to know they are quality but that’s sufficient. Our purpose right now is to have reliable places to find quality content when you need it in the subsequent Parts.

In Part 3, we'll look at how we go about converting these source materials into engaging social media posts. But for now, I want you to set up just ONE of these source systems.

Pick the one that resonates most with you and get it organised this week. Step by step is good! One well-organised source is worth more than five chaotic ones.