I get asked to review a lot of AI tools that promise "social media on autopilot."

And honestly? Some of them are quite good.

But there's a problem.

They're all black boxes. You feed in your content (input), it disappears into some mysterious prompting process, and out pops a social media post (output).

If you're lucky, it's great! But if it's not... well, tough luck. You can't peek inside the box. Can't tweak the process. Can't make it better.

We need to build our own black box. But with an access hatch we can open and have a tinker with! One where we control exactly what happens between input and output.

Let’s get started:

Choose Your Format First

The biggest mistake people make? Trying to create one magical prompt that converts content into every possible social media format. A Swiss Army knife of content generation.

Don't do it.

Instead, pick ONE format to master first. Want to write Twitter threads? Focus on that. LinkedIn posts? Perfect those first. Each format needs its own finely-tuned prompt. Trust me, this focus pays off.

This is probably the 4th Playbook where I’ve bullied Swiss Army knives. Sorry Switzerland!

The Refinement Method

Here's the step-by-step process I use to create perfect, reusable prompts:

1. Upload your input source - could be an article, Reddit thread, whatever - and ask ChatGPT or Claude the obvious: "Turn this into a Twitter thread." The output will be terrible. That's okay! We're just getting started. We need the raw stone to start chiselling our masterpiece.

2. Give Specific Feedback This is where the magic happens. Don't just say "make it better." Give both negative and positive feedback. Be specific:

• "Remove all emojis"

• "The language is too robotic"

• "Never use the phrase 'let's dive in'"

• "Paragraphs should be shorter"

• "I like how you structured that second point"

• "This tone is perfect - conversational but knowledgeable"

3. Iterate and Refine Ask for another version. Give more feedback. Each time, your feedback makes the output better. Keep going until you're genuinely impressed with what you're seeing.

4. Take a snapshot Here's the crucial step. Once you're getting good outputs, ask the AI to create an evergreen prompt that captures all your feedback. Something like:

Based on all the feedback and refinements we've done, create a comprehensive, self-contained prompt that can:

Take any input content

Apply all the style rules and preferences we've discussed

Generate consistently high-quality output in this format Make it evergreen - it shouldn't be tied to any specific input content

5. Test and Refine Take your new prompt to a fresh chat. Feed it new content to test how it does with a fresh input. Not perfect? Give more feedback. Ask for an updated prompt that incorporates the new insights. Rinse and repeat.

Once you’ve got your prompt to a place where it can consistently generate quality outputs from any input you throw at it save it somewhere. We’ll use it in the next Part when we automate.

If you are struggling to get good results again make sure that you are focusing on ONE format (ie. LinkedIn article or Twitter thread or Tiktok script). Never more than one.

If still problematic you may need to focus your input sources too. For example creating a prompt that works for news articles specifically but not for other sources.

Here's another thing to watch out for - AI models love to get specific. They'll start crafting prompts that are too tied to your test content. Be firm! Remind them that you're creating a reusable prompt for any input. You might need to say this multiple times during the process as AIs can drift!

Once you've got a solid prompt, you can ask for multiple outputs from one input. Want five tweets instead of one? Feed that back during the refinement process. But be careful - quality drops fast if you get greedy. Three to five variations is usually the sweet spot. Don’t force it to 100 tweets from one new article input! Can AI do it? Yup - but it’ll be crap.

The Power of Process

Yes, this is more work than using an off the shelf black box tool. Yes, you'll end up with multiple prompts - one for tweets, one for threads, one for LinkedIn posts, and so on.

But here's the beautiful part - these prompts are yours. You understand them. You can tweak them. And next time we'll show you how to plug them into an automation system that'll generate multiple formats at once.

In Part 4, we'll dive into automation. But for now, pick ONE format and create your first custom prompt using this process. Start simple - maybe single tweets or short LinkedIn posts.

Remember - you're building the foundation for your automated future. Take the time to get it right.