The argument in one line.
Claude Cowork and other agentic AI tools can automate 11 specific weekly Instagram tasks—from caption batching to competitor analysis—that don't require your creativity, freeing you to focus on content creation instead of repetitive operational work.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A solo Instagram creator with 5k–100k followers who spends 3+ hours weekly on repetitive content tasks and wants to automate caption writing, post scheduling, or audience engagement.
- A creator running ads or sponsorships who needs to batch-process performance data, track trending audio, or identify collaboration opportunities but lacks systems to do it at scale.
- Someone with an existing brand voice and audience who wants to offload tactical Instagram work to Claude while keeping strategic decisions and final approval in their hands.
SKIP IF…
- You're primarily a fiction writer, visual artist, or video-first creator — the breakdown focuses exclusively on text-based Instagram automations and caption workflows.
- You've never used Claude, ChatGPT, or agentic AI before and need foundational setup help — this assumes comfort with API keys, integrations, and basic prompt engineering.
- Your Instagram strategy isn't yet defined or your posting frequency is inconsistent — these automations assume you already have a repeatable weekly content system to automate.
The full version, fast.
Agentic AI gives chatbots hands, letting a solo creator hand off repeatable Instagram busywork instead of just generating text someone still has to paste. The mechanism is Claude Cowork running unlimited recurring schedules � each task chained to your real accounts (Gmail, Notion, Google Sheets, Canva, ManyChat) so it logs in, reads, drafts, and files results without your involvement. Eleven concrete loops apply this: weekly caption batching, trend-audio spotting, niche-adjacent post research, long-form repurposing into carousels and b-roll reels, idea aggregation from running notes, performance recaps, sponsor outreach, ManyChat lead qualification routing to your pre-written replies, saved-folder mining, a living brand-voice document, and competitor analysis. Automate only steps that lack your taste; stay in the tool rather than copy-pasting outputs yourself.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 05:27
01 · Cold open + agentic AI thesis
ChatGPT-as-smart-person-with-hands-tied metaphor. Promises 11 ideas using Claude Cowork. Plays the December-has-no-X gag.
05:27 – 09:49
02 · Idea 1 — Weekly caption batching
Hand Claude your content calendar; it writes captions in your style with hook/body/CTA, drops into Sheets/Notion/scheduler. The 'stay in the AI tool' challenge gets introduced here.
09:49 – 10:33
03 · Idea 2 — Trending audio hunting
Weekly scan for audios spiking from <1k to >50k uses in a 7-day window. Texted or dropped into a doc.
10:33 – 11:37
04 · Idea 3 — NAP (Niche Adjacent Posts)
Pop culture / news / trends mapped back to your niche. Auto-generated carousels based on past templates.
11:37 – 13:34
05 · Idea 4 — Long-form to short-form multiplier
Transcript-driven clip mining, quote carousels, B-roll reels. Brock confirms this is the workflow he runs on his own podcast.
13:34 – 14:49
06 · Idea 5 — Idea Library aggregation
Notion/Google doc of random ideas → Claude scans daily/weekly → fleshes them into scripts, groups by effort level.
14:49 – 15:59
07 · Idea 6 — Weekly performance recap
Instagram insights auto-populate a Sheet, Claude summarizes what worked and proposes fresh-but-similar ideas.
15:59 – 18:49
08 · Idea 7 — Outreach drafts (sponsors + collab)
Hand Claude a brand list or have it research one; finds the email, drafts the pitch in your voice. Plus collab-DM drafts.
18:49 – 22:22
09 · Shopify mid-roll + Idea 8 — ManyChat DM routing
Sponsor read flows into the DM-qualification framework: pre-written branches (yours), Claude as router (not writer). Beginner / intermediate / expert buckets fork to different follow-ups.
22:22 – 23:52
10 · Idea 9 — Steal Like An Artist (saved folder mining)
Weekly sweep of your Instagram saved folder → summaries + niche-translated angles + draft scripts. Keeps saved posts from rotting.
23:52 – 26:12
11 · Idea 10 — Living brand voice document
Claude reads your reels, captions, comments, inbox, notes, learns your tone, and maintains a self-updating brand voice doc that travels across AI tools.
26:12 – 28:14
12 · Idea 11 — Competitor analysis
Weekly pass over a competitor list, isolates outliers, explains why they popped (hook/caption/visual/pop-culture), and surfaces content gaps.
28:14 – 29:10
13 · Playful close
Don't try to automate your whole life. Replace the repeatable steps that don't need your taste. Sign-off: 'happy networking.'
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Agentic AI gives a super-intelligent brain hands — it can browse, click, draft, and send rather than only advising what to do.
- The leap from chat AI to agentic AI is not incremental; it represents a shift from information delivery to task completion.
- The 11 Instagram automations covered span the full weekly content workflow: planning, writing, audio research, performance review, outreach, and competitor analysis.
- Caption batching via Claude Cowork — feeding next week's topics and receiving formatted captions saved to a scheduling tool — compresses hours into minutes.
- ManyChat DM routing automated through Claude can qualify inbound leads and route them to the right flow without the creator touching each conversation.
- A living brand voice document that Claude updates as you create ensures consistency without requiring the creator to manually maintain a style guide.
- Trending audio hunting is a task that benefits from automation because the half-life of trending sounds is measured in days, requiring frequent monitoring.
- Saved-folder mining turns passive curation behavior (saving posts you like) into an active competitive intelligence feed the AI can analyze on demand.
- Long-form content repurposing — turning a podcast episode into captions, reels scripts, and story sequences — is the highest-leverage single automation for creators.
- Sponsor outreach automation can personalize cold emails at scale by pulling brand data before drafting, shifting the creator from writer to approver.
- Performance recap automation transforms raw Instagram analytics into a weekly summary the creator can act on without manually pulling the numbers.
- Approaching agentic AI with a playfulness mindset — 'what problem could this solve?' — produces better automations than chasing every new tool announcement.
Automate the repeatable steps that don't need your taste
What it teaches
Agentic AI earns its value not by replacing creativity but by executing the monotonous, system-following middle steps so you can focus on what only you can contribute.
01Cold open + agentic AI thesis
- Agentic AI differs from chat-based AI in one key way: it can browse, click, and take actions inside real tools, rather than just producing text for you to act on manually.
- The right mindset for adopting agentic AI is playfulness — start with one problem you already have, not an entire system overhaul.
02Idea 1 — Weekly caption batching
- Caption batching becomes a scheduled, hands-off task when you connect an agentic agent to your content calendar and let it write in your style on a recurring cadence.
- The discipline to stay in the AI tool — letting it move the output rather than copying and pasting yourself — is what makes automation genuinely time-saving rather than just time-shifting.
03Idea 2 — Trending audio hunting
- Trend-spotting automation is most valuable when filtered for audios that have grown from low to high usage within a short window, not audios already at peak saturation.
04Idea 3 — NAP (Niche Adjacent Posts)
- Pop culture and news moments can be automatically matched to your niche and turned into carousel drafts without you spending time on the initial research or angle-finding.
05Idea 4 — Long-form to short-form multiplier
- Long-form content repurposing — pulling clips, quotes, and carousel ideas from a transcript — is a strong fit for automation because it follows a repeatable pattern with no creative gatekeeping required from you.
- Giving an agent access to a library of b-roll footage and a design tool can produce ready-to-post reels without any manual editing step.
06Idea 5 — Idea Library aggregation
- A running idea dump in a shared doc, paired with a scheduled agent that fleshes ideas into scripts and groups them by effort level, prevents good ideas from disappearing before you act on them.
07Idea 6 — Weekly performance recap
- Weekly performance recaps that pull platform data into a spreadsheet and generate fresh content suggestions give you a feedback loop without requiring you to analyze raw numbers manually.
08Idea 7 — Outreach drafts (sponsors + collab)
- Outreach drafts for sponsorships and collaborations can be fully generated by an agent — including finding contact information — leaving you to approve rather than write from scratch.
- Collab DM outreach is one of the most underused growth levers on Instagram precisely because the first message feels hard to write — automation removes that friction.
09Shopify mid-roll + Idea 8 — ManyChat DM routing
- Using an AI agent to route DM conversations into beginner, intermediate, and expert buckets lets you serve different audience segments with pre-written responses without pretending the AI is you.
- The key distinction is that the responses are written by you in your voice — the AI decides which response to send, not what to say.
10Idea 9 — Steal Like An Artist (saved folder mining)
- A saved-folder sweep that summarizes posts and translates them into niche-relevant angles transforms passive bookmarking into an active content library.
- Automating the middle steps between saving a post and creating from it means the only parts left for you are the parts that actually require your judgment.
11Idea 10 — Living brand voice document
- A living brand voice document — built from your captions, comments, inbox, and notes, and updated weekly — gives any AI tool accurate style guidance and can be handed to anyone who works on your brand.
- Language evolves over time; an agent that continuously updates the document captures those subtle shifts rather than locking in a one-time snapshot.
12Idea 11 — Competitor analysis
- Competitor analysis automation that surfaces high-performing outliers and explains why they worked (hook, caption, cultural timing) also identifies gaps in your niche that no one else is addressing.
13Playful close
- Replace steps that are repeatable and follow a system, not steps that require your voice, taste, or creative judgment.
Terms worth knowing.
- agentic AI
- An AI system that can take actions autonomously — browsing the web, writing files, sending messages — rather than simply answering questions or generating text in a chat window.
- Claude Cowork
- Anthropic's GUI-based agentic feature inside the Claude desktop app, allowing non-developers to give Claude hands-on control of a computer to complete multi-step tasks automatically.
- NAP posts
- No-agenda posts — casual, low-production social media content that builds audience relationships without promoting a product or following a content formula.
- ManyChat
- A chatbot and automation platform for Instagram and Facebook DMs that can route incoming messages to automated flows, used here as one of the tasks Claude can help configure and manage.
- caption batching
- Writing multiple social media captions in a single session for scheduling across future days or weeks — delegated here to an AI agent as a recurring weekly automation.
- brand voice document
- A living reference document that captures how a creator or brand writes — tone, vocabulary, recurring phrases, and style rules — used to ensure AI-generated content stays consistent over time.
- long-form repurposing
- Taking a single long-format piece of content (a podcast, YouTube video, or blog post) and automatically extracting it into multiple shorter social media posts.
- performance recap
- A periodic summary of social media analytics — reach, engagement, follower growth, top posts — generated automatically so a creator can review results without manually pulling data.
- saved-folder mining
- Analyzing a creator's Instagram saved posts (content they bookmarked from competitors or inspiration accounts) to extract patterns, themes, and ideas for their own content.
- trending audio hunting
- Systematically identifying audio tracks gaining momentum on Instagram Reels before they peak, allowing a creator to use them early for algorithmic advantage.
Things they pointed at.
18:50channelGannon Meyer
09:50toolManus AI
12:20toolGoogle Drive / Dropbox
15:50linkHow to get paid for posting (previous episode)
Lines you could clip.
00:00
“If AI is the future, then agentic AI is the future's future.”
03:45
“It's like a really smart person who has their hands tied behind their back.”
13:14
“I can extend my output without changing my input.”
08:30
“Stay in the AI tool. Do your best to not take it over yourself.”
19:35
“You could have Claude respond for you, but I'm not a fan of that. The AI's not quite there yet.”
28:14
“Approach AI with a playful heart.”
28:27
“Replace the steps that are repeatable, that follow a system, and that do not require your own unique voice and personality and taste.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogy
00:00If AI is the future, then agentic AI is . I don't have to be the one to tell you that artificial intelligence is really flipping powerful. I think we've all seen the crazy things that it's been used for in the last few years.
00:12I want you to think back the first time you heard about or maybe even used ChatGPT. For myself, it was December 2022, a few weeks after they launched to the public, and I was listening to some podcasts, I was like, holy crap. This is absolutely insane.
00:25I can put in prompts, and I can ask you questions, and it can write emails, and write scripts, and help me come up with post ideas. This is going to be a game changer. And over the last few years, it absolutely has been a game changer.
00:36And the way that ChatGPT has improved, and tools have been built on top of it, and extrapolated what AI is able to do, has been absolutely crazy over the last few years. But since ChatGPT launched, there hasn't been something that has truly blown my mind. There have been some things that are really cool, really useful.
00:51There have been a lot of apps and softwares that have made my life easier. I think that the progression of AI video over the last few years in particular has been absolutely wild. The classic example is Will Smith eating spaghetti.
01:03If you watch Will Smith eating spaghetti from a few years ago versus the AI videos now being made of Will Smith eating spaghetti. It is absolutely crazy. But I can truly say that the thing that has been the most mind blowing for me, the most, oh my gosh, this is going to change everything, is when I started learning about, and then now have started using agentic AI.
01:22And while it sounds complex and it can be overwhelming, agentic AI basically just means having the artificial intelligence do the thing for you. So, for example, if I was having chat GPT write my emails, instead of having it write the email, and then copying what it said, opening Gmail myself, clicking reply, and then pasting in what chat g p t said, AgenTik AI would be able to log in to my Gmail for me, find the email that it wanted to respond to, scan the email, read what it was about, come up with a response that was in my tone and style, and then draft up the response right there in Gmail.
01:55And then it could even save it in my drafts, and send me a little notification that, hey, got a new email, and it wrote a draft for me, and it wants me to review it, and then send it if it's approved. One way that you can think about it is generative text based AI. So ChatGPT, like we've been using it for the last few years, is like the smartest person you'll ever meet.
02:12And don't get me wrong, I know that it absolutely makes mistakes. If you wanna funny example, ask it to confirm that there is a letter x in the word December, and it will tell you, yeah, there's a letter x in the word December.
02:23You're absolutely right, which obviously there's no x in the word December, so it makes mistakes. Absolutely. But its wide variety of knowledge and its ability to search the Internet and give you real time updates is quite impressive.
02:36Its ability to talk to you about a recipe for chicken piccata on one second, and then in the next second, give you an email marketing flow for your business is absolutely cool. But at the end of the day, it's just text output. Right?
02:48It's like a . Like, they can't actually do anything. They can give you really smart responses or really dumb responses in some cases.
02:57They can tell you what to do. They can guide you through processes, but it ultimately is relying on you to take the action. AgenTik AI solves that problem.
03:06It gives this . It gives it the ability to browse the web, to click on buttons, and to actually perform the tasks that you want it to. And so this is something that I've been absolutely geeking out over recently, and at the same time, feeling a little bit overwhelmed by it.
03:23I feel like every time I open up Instagram, I'm seeing a dozen posts about how this person did this automation with their claw, and this person used this AI to do this other thing, and it is absolutely overwhelming. And so, I've been trying to do my best to actually not engage with those posts as much, or maybe save them into a folder that I can come back to when I'm in the right headspace.
03:42And instead, I've just been trying to approach agentic AI from a mindset of playfulness. How can I play around with this? What problems am I facing that I could solve using agentic AI?
03:53What regular things am I doing in my routine that I don't need to be doing personally? Are there things that I'm doing every month, or every week, or maybe even every single day that just aren't necessary for me to do? They don't require my taste, or my personality, or my creativity, and they're instead things that are just drag this here, put this here, share this here, send this here.
04:11And so while I recognize that it can be very overwhelming, and it also is something that is accelerating at a never ending pace, it is constantly getting faster and faster, and new tools, and new automations, and new this. Every few days, there's a new thing, I want you to take a deep breath, and just approach it from the standpoint of how can I play with this, and how could I use it to solve a problem in my life?
04:31With all that being said, in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you 11 different ideas of how you can use Claude Cowork, which is Claude's agentic AI, to do things for you that will make your Instagram life easier. Now, for this episode, I've specifically chosen to focus on Claude Cowork, not because they're paying me or anything.
04:48I wish they would. But simply because I've played with a few of these different tools, and it's the one that I've liked the most. But if there is a different tool out there, like maybe Manus AI, or one of these other agentic AIs that you find very useful and preferential for you, knock your socks off, and a lot of what I'm gonna be sharing can absolutely be applied to other models as well.
05:06But not only do I have the personal preference of Claude Cowork, it seems like, and according to the data, a lot of people are making the jump from ChatGPT to Claude. So I hope this is relevant for you, and if it is, don't forget to hit that subscribe button because every single week here on the podcast, I put out helpful tips, strategies, and ideas for using AI and not using AI to grow your business smarter on Instagram or any other social network.
05:28The first way that you can use Claude co work to make your Instagram life easier is to have it batch write captions for you every single week. Basically, single week, you could give it your content calendar or your planned posts for the upcoming week, or you could give it the topics that you wanna talk about this week, and then it could go through them and write captions for you in your style with a good hook, a body, and a call to action.
05:50It could then automatically save all of those into a Google sheet, a notion document, a Google doc, or even right into your scheduling tool, if your scheduling tool has its API tools available. If you use something like Airtable, or Google Sheets, or Notion to plan your content in advance, then you could even hook it up to Claude, so that Claude doesn't need your prompting.
06:11It doesn't need you to go in and say, hey, here's my post for this week. You could set it so that every Monday at 9AM, it goes through the post that you have scheduled in Notion, and then writes captions for you.
06:23Now, here's the really cool thing, not just for this idea, but for all of the ideas I'm sharing with you today. Do I know how to do them? No.
06:30Do I know how to set them up? No. Do you know how to do them?
06:33Probably not. But even more important, do you need to know how to do them? Absolutely not.
06:38That is the really cool thing about working with an AI agent. You don't have to know how to set any of this up. It can set it all up for you, and you're just kind of there as the overseer in case it gets stuck, or needs login approval, or needs you to click a certain button that it can't click itself.
06:53But something I wanna challenge you to do with all 11 of these ideas is stay in the AI tool. Do your best to not take it over yourself and say, oh, okay. Well, it gave me this list of captions.
07:03Now, I'm going to copy and paste them. No. See if it can copy and paste them yourself.
07:08See if it can do the task for you. See if it is able to problem solve for you, instead of you problem solving for it. And also something that I briefly mentioned during idea number one, and I kind of glossed over that is maybe my favorite part of using agentic AI with Claude Cowork, is that you can have it do things on a repeatable schedule.
07:25That was one of the limitations that I didn't love with Manus when I was playing around with their agentic AI, is that with Manus, you were only allowed, at least at the time that I was using it, to schedule one reoccurring task per week. But with Claude Cowork, you can have an unlimited amount of reoccurring tasks. So for example, every single day, multiple times a day, I'm having Claude Cowork log in to my Gmail account, go through my email inbox, and determine what needs a response, and then not just what needs a response, but then write the email and save it in my drafts for me.
07:56But I also have it on a repeated schedule, that whenever one of these YouTube videos is uploaded and published, it will transcribe or grab the transcription of the YouTube video, and use the transcription to write chapters, and then add those chapters to the description themselves, so that you, as you're watching this video, hopefully it's true right now at the time that I'm saying this, there should be little chapters down here, so that you can skim through the video and find the specific moment that you're looking for.
08:21And that is something that I used to do myself, and something that wouldn't take me too long, but it was another thing that I was having to do every single week that didn't require my own taste or creativity or expertise. It was essentially just taking the transcription and summarizing it and breaking it down into different chapters.
08:36Now, Claude is doing that 100% for me. As someone who cooks about 95% of their meals at home, and no, that's not an exaggeration, usually, the only meal that Tay and I eat out each week is our sushi Saturday.
08:48What we eat, what we prepare, it matters a lot to us. And that's why I'm so excited to introduce you to our newest sponsor, HelloFresh. HelloFresh allows you to choose between more than 100 recipes every single week, including cuisines from all around the world and bigger portions that satisfy everyone.
09:03Over 35 of those weekly recipes are high protein recipes, which fires me up. And it allows me to feel great because I know that I'm eating wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and a 100% antibiotic and hormone free chicken. And of course, most important of all is how it tastes, and let me tell you, it actually tastes really good.
09:20This helps me be a better business owner because I'm able to eat meals that taste good and help me feel satisfied. I don't have to spend as much time thinking or prepping each meal, and I can make sure that I'm hitting my protein goals in the process. Go to hellofresh.com/byt10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife, which is a $144.99 value on your third box.
09:43This offer is only valid while supplies last. Free meals applied at discount on your first box for new subscribers only, and varies by plan. The second thing that you can have it do for you every single week on a repeated schedule is look for trending audios.
09:55Now, you could give it specific Instagram accounts to look for, you could give it a specific niche or type of trending audio that you're looking for. I have found it helpful to have it help me trend spot. So not just pull out trending audios that have over a million uses, but specifically look for trending audios that have recently grown from less than a thousand uses to over 50,000 uses within the last seven days, because those are the trends that are really popping off and blowing up right now.
10:20And you could have it do this maybe once or twice a week, and then you could even set it up so that those trending audios are added to a Google document, or they're sent to you via text message so that you can then use them and thus take advantage of the trend that much easier and that much faster. Idea number three relies on the strategy that I've taught here on Build Your Tribe before, which is called taking a NAP, in which NAP is an acronym that stands for a niche adjacent post.
10:44Usually, it's taking something from pop culture, or the news, or something that's trending in the world in general, and relating it back to your niche. This is something that used to take a lot of time, and energy, and creativity to research, but now you could set it up so that every single week, Claude Cowork is researching for different trending topics and popular things within pop culture or news headlines that relate to your niche, and then you could turn those things into posts, or you could have Claude Cowork automatically create carousels for you based on the instructions that you give it, based off the past carousels that you've made, and that ultimately relate to those topics.
11:22Or you could have it look for trending topics and ideas that are a little bit outside of your niche, and then have it be challenged with coming up with how this thing that is a little bit outside of your niche, like the Olympics, or whatever movie is super popular right now, relate back to your niche. Idea number four is for those of you who have long form content, so a podcast, a YouTube channel of your own, or maybe you do live streams on some other platform, you could have Claude automatically take that long form content, transcribe it, and then pull out the best moments, the best quotes, the best clippable phrases, and then not just pull out those moments or pull out the text, but it could then generate carousels or quote posts or even text post reels using those quotes.
12:04You could even give it access to an entire library of b roll content of you, and then it could use that b roll content to create entire done for you reels. To do that, of course, you would have to have a bunch of b roll footage of yourself. You'd probably have to upload it to some sort of cloud based storage system like Google Drive or Dropbox, and then you would probably have to give Cloud Code access to like your Canva account or something.
12:26But it could take that b roll, put it into a new document in Canva or some other editing app, and then take out these text snippets or these sound bites from your long form video, and automatically add it on top of the b roll footage, thus creating b roll reels for you in just a matter of seconds automatically. And this one is another example of something that I'm actually having it do for the Build Your Tribe podcast every single week.
12:48I have it take the transcription of the episode, and have it pull out the sound bites or these clippable moments, these things that are really going to be juicy and perform well on social media, and then I have it create a few different style of carousels for me that are ready to go and post on my Instagram, which makes my life so much easier.
13:05And again, it's something that doesn't necessarily require my own personality or creativity or taste. I am the one ultimately with the final say, and I get to be the final judge of whether or not I want to post these things, but I'm the one also who's doing the work recording these podcasts and creating this education and putting out these tutorials, and these tips, and these ideas for you.
13:23And so now, I don't also have to be the person who's going through and cutting them up, and pulling out these little snippets. Instead, Claude can do that for me, and I can . Idea number five is what I'm gonna call trend aggregation, or maybe even simpler, post aggregation.
13:40If you're anything like me, then you have a running note of random ideas. Maybe you're laying in bed about to fall asleep, and a random idea for real pops in your head. Maybe you're eating your breakfast in the morning, and you're like, oh, I should do a video about that.
13:52But you can't exactly record it in that moment. So what you normally do is you write it down in your notes, and then maybe the next time you're going to film, you cross your fingers and hope that you remember what it is that you wanted, or you remember to even look up that note, or you're able to even find it somewhere lost in your notes app.
14:07Instead, what you could do is put all of these random ideas into something like a notion document or even a Google doc, and then you can give Claude co work access to that document and set it with the tasks so that every single day or maybe every single week, it scans the document, and it pulls out those ideas, and it turns them into maybe fully fleshed out scripts.
14:27Maybe it's going to group them into different kinds of reels. Hey, these seven reels are going to take a lot of time, energy, and effort, but these three reels are going to be easy. Maybe it's going to break them down by different topics that you normally talk about.
14:39You can have it set up however you want, but basically, it's turning these random thoughts and ideas that are always popping into your head into things that you can actually take action on, and that you're able to take action on so much easier. Idea number six is a weekly performance recap. Essentially, would just have to connect Claude to some sort of Google Sheet, and you could even have Claude set it up so that your Instagram data, your Instagram insights automatically populate into said Google Sheet, and then it could take all of the data in that sheet and create useful summaries for you, so that you know what is actually working on your Instagram.
15:11And then you can have it take it a step further and not just determine what is working and what isn't, but then come up with new ideas. Right? New scripts, or find fresh trends and ideas that are similar to ones that have worked well in the past, but are slightly new and different.
15:24Idea number seven is to have Claude draft outreach to potential sponsors or brands that you wanna work with, which, by the way, I did an episode a few weeks ago, and it's one of our worst performing videos on the channel, which I kinda figured that it would, but it's truly so helpful. If you are someone who wants to get paid for posting, not become an influencer, but just make maybe a couple 100 or a couple thousand extra bucks every single month for the audience that you have already worked so hard to build, and yes, even with a thousand followers, this is possible.
15:51I highly recommend going back and checking out that episode. I will link it up down in the show notes below. But again, it's how to get paid for posting.
15:58But this idea, idea number seven, is to have Claude automatically write up outreach for you. Write up the emails that I talk about sending in that episode.
16:08You could also have Claude, somewhat similarly, draft up emails or even just DM messages that you're going to send to other Instagrammers who you want to collaborate with. Collab posts are one of the most underrated and best ways to grow on Instagram, and yet so few people do them because that initial outreach, that sending of the message, you wonder what should I even say?
16:29How should I even write that message? Claude can do that for you, and it can save you so much time by writing it in your tone, and style, and voice, and personality without you having to manually sit down and do it.
16:40And for this, like many of the other things on the list, you could give Claude a list of brands that you wanted to outreach for, and then have it do the work of finding the correct email address, and then writing up that email. Or you can even backtrack a step and have Claude do the research, come up with what brands it thinks you should reach out to, and what brands it thinks you should work with, then find the email address, then draft the email, and save it for you, so that really you're just there to sign off on the email and sign off on the brand that you actually wanna partner with.
17:07Back in 2016, when I started my first real online business, I remember that my head was filled with so many what ifs. What if no one buys this? What if I'm an impostor?
17:18What if there's no market? What if I can't sell? What if what if what if?
17:22What if this is all just a big waste of time and I'm just banging my head against the wall? But what I wish someone told me back then is just like you can imagine all the negative what ifs, there are just as many if not more positive what ifs. What if this works out?
17:36What if this is my breakthrough? What if this is what sets me financially free? And thanks to one of today's sponsors, Shopify, it's easier than ever to turn those positive what ifs into reality.
17:46Shopify is the ecommerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and it now represents about 10% of the entire ecommerce market in The US. From some of the most famous and well known brands in the world, like Gymshark to solopreneurs, Shopify has you covered.
18:01Shopify helps you get the word out about your ecommerce business as if you had an entire marketing team behind you. It easily helps you create email and social campaigns so that you can attract customers wherever they're scrolling. And if you ever get stuck, Shopify has twenty four seven round the clock award winning customer support.
18:18That way, you can tackle the important tasks from inventory to payments to analytics all in one place. No need to bookmark multiple websites and sign up for multiple tools, you can do it all in Shopify. It makes your life easier and it makes your business operations run smoother.
18:32It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/tribe.
18:42Go to shopify.com/tribe. That's shopif.com/tribe. Idea number eight is to use Claude to qualify your leads in the direct messages.
18:54This is something that I recently learned about from my good friend, Gannon Meyer, and he is an absolute pro when it comes to ManyChat and automation. So check him out on Instagram. But something that he's been talking about and teaching and implementing for people who work with his agency recently is using Claude to kind of like oversee your ManyChat DMs.
19:12Let me try to explain this in a way that makes sense, because when he first told me about it, I was a little bit confused myself. Essentially, you have people send a keyword, and then from that keyword, a automation is triggered. They send the word guide to get your free guide.
19:25But then once they send that keyword, they don't just get a boring old link, and then it ends there. There's actually an entire flow, or you could think of it as like an entire conversation that branches off from there.
19:35Now here's the key distinction. You could have Claude respond for you, but I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of pretending like it's you responding, but it's actually going to be like an AI robot.
19:46I don't quite think the AI is quite there yet. I've seen way too many examples of people calling out other people for using an AI agent or an AI responder in their DM. So instead, here's how you would use it.
19:59You would have pre written responses that you wrote. So it is you writing, and it is your voice. But then, which response people get would be based off of their own open ended response, and Claude would be able to figure it out.
20:12So let's say someone DM'd you the word guide because they wanted your ebook. You were like, oh, okay. Cool.
20:16I'll send you the guide in just a second. Let me get your email first. They respond right there in the DMs with their email.
20:22Boom. The PDF is sent to them right there in the DMs. But then two hours later, there was a follow-up that was like, hey.
20:28I saw that you got my free guide for rock climbing. I'm curious how long have you been rock climbing? And then, it's not like you have to give them a multiple choice, which is what you would have had to do in the past.
20:38What you can do is just leave it open ended. It's a genuine question. How long have you been rock climbing?
20:42And then based off their response, Claude is able to analyze that and give them a different follow-up from you based off their response. So if they respond and they say, you know, I'm kinda just getting into it. I don't really know if I wanna take it that seriously yet, but I'm going on a trip this weekend, so I wanted the free guide.
20:58Claude could then group them into a bucket that determines that they are a newbie or a beginner. If they were someone who's like, yeah. I've been rock climbing for the last few years, and I'm starting to take it a little bit more seriously.
21:08Claude could say, oh, well, then they're intermediate. And if they were someone who's like, yeah. I'm an advanced I'm a rock climbing coach myself, and I wanted to see what your guide included, then Claude could put them as an expert.
21:17And then based off whether they're a beginner, an intermediate, or an expert, it could then have a different follow-up. So if they're a beginner, Claude could give them an automated follow-up, again, written by you in your tone, voice, and style, totally you, a follow-up that's like, awesome. Super excited to introduce another rock climber into the world of rock climbing.
21:36I created this mini course to help you get kick started, because I know that going to a local gym can be a little bit overwhelming. Here it is. And then it's giving them a beginner course.
21:45For the intermediate person, it could be like, awesome. What's your favorite place to go rock climbing? And then they could respond, and then based off the geographic area of the country that they respond with their favorite area to go rock climbing, it could then give them a different guide to the best places to rock climb in that area of the country.
22:00So the responses are totally different. They are written by you. So they're your voice, they're your tone, but which response people are getting is being determined by Claude.
22:10Again, how do you set all this up? I ain't got no clue. Ask Ganon or ask Claude and ask the AI to figure it out and set it up for you, and either walk you through the process of setting it up or literally set it up itself.
22:22Idea number nine is what I'm gonna call the steal like an artist automation. If you're anything like me, not only do you have a giant note with a bunch of random ideas and posts and things you wanna do, but you also probably have a saved folder with hundreds or honestly maybe even thousands of posts that you've saved, that you want to come back to, that you want to remake, or that you want to get inspired by in the future.
22:43You could have it set up so that on a weekly basis, Claude goes through your entire saved library or even a specific saved folder on your Instagram, pulls out all of those ideas, and then writes a little summary of them, or comes up with a way that you could use this idea for your own niche, or even writes a fully fleshed out script based off of the inspiration of the post that you have saved.
23:06That way, the only thing that you have to do is the things that you are great at, and the things that only you can do, which are number one, taste. Having the preferences, and the style, and the personality to say, oh, I really like this reel. Oh, this is a good idea.
23:18Oh, this one caught my attention. That initial ideation phase, then you can skip all the steps in the middle of, oh, yeah, what was that post that I saved? What was my idea?
23:26What was original about their reel? Did I like their hook? Did I like their format?
23:29What can I borrow? What can I get inspiration from? And you can instead jump right to the final step, which is you actually creating it using your own creativity.
23:38And you're allowing Claude to do all of those monotonous steps in the middle, which is also going to make you less likely to skip or forget about a post that you saved, and thus also make you more likely to actually use the post that you're saving, and make the most of the time that you spent scrolling. Idea number 10 is something that is so overlooked, so underrated, and yet it's going to be so helpful for you.
23:58I was talking to this big wig marketer the other day, and we both agreed that a very common problem that brands and small business owners and solopreneurs face is that they don't have a brand voice document.
24:11Like, you know what you want to sound like. You can read something and be like, that sounds like chat GPT. I wouldn't say it that way.
24:17But it's hard for you to articulate how you would sound. And so that's why your captions sound so much like ChatGPT. That's why no one's engaging with your post, because it's clear that they were written by ChatGPT.
24:27They don't have your unique voice or personality or style or taste or anything like that. Something that you can do is actually use AI to overcome sounding like AI. You can use Claude to go through your Instagram, including the words you're saying in your reels, and what you're writing in your caption, and how you're responding to people in the comments.
24:43You can have it go through your email inbox. You can have it go through your notes app, or your Google docs, and learn what your tone is, and learn what your style is. And honestly, you don't even ever actually have to see what it knows.
24:57It can just learn all those things about you, and then apply that to anything it's creating in the future. But what I think the actual power play is, is to have it on a weekly basis, go through one of the things that I just listed, your Instagram, your inbox, your notes app, whatever, and constantly be learning what your tone is and how it's changing.
25:17Because it's likely that there's words that you're saying in 2026 that you never said before 2023, and there's phrases that you said all the time in 2022 that you learned on TikTok, and it was in some trending audio, that you never say anymore.
25:29And so those little things, those little nuances that evolve over time that you might not even notice or pay attention to, AI can track, and it can create kind of like a living brand voice document. So this document can then be put into any other AI model that you might move to in the future.
25:46It can be used by Claude or any other AI tool that you are a fan of to create better content, write things that sound more like you, and plan content that is actually in your voice. And if you ever end up working with an agency, or a coach, or a business coach, or anything like that who needs to know, like, what is your brand voice?
26:04What do you sound like? What makes you different from everyone else? You have this entire document that was written for you automatically by Claude.
26:12And then finally, the eleventh way that you can use Claude to automatically make your Instagram life easier is having it do competitor analysis for you on a regular basis. Again, just like so many of the other ideas I've given you today, you could have Claude come up with your list of competitors for you, or if you already know who these competitors and I put it in air quotes because all ships rise together.
26:30I don't view anyone else as competition, but, you know, someone else who's in your niche, someone else who does what you do on Instagram or on whatever your social media is, you could give that list of five or 10 or 15 people to Claude, and then on a weekly basis, it could analyze their content and pull out the outliers.
26:48Pull out the ones that are high performers, and then figure out why were those high performers. Was it the hook?
26:53Was it something in the video? Was it something in the caption? Was it something going on in pop culture that had nothing to do with the post?
26:58Why did it perform so well? And And then let's take it a step further. Let's not just give you a weekly rundown of here's what other people are doing that works well, but then here's how you can reuse these ideas, or here's how you can take inspiration, or here's a video format that you could create.
27:13You could also use it to help you figure out where the gaps are. Like, what is something that all of these people are missing out on talking about? What is a topic that you could bring in, something that you are uniquely credible or qualified to talk about or make a post about that these other people are ignoring in their content?
27:29Again, you can have all this done for you automatically on a weekly basis. You could have it write entire scripts with hooks and planned out b roll. You could even theoretically have it create those reels for you.
27:40That would be quite an advanced and multi step automation, but it's absolutely possible. You would be absolutely shocked and mind blown, as am I every single day using these agentic AI tools, because their capabilities are absolutely nuts, and while it is overwhelming and crazy how fast this AI train is accelerating, it's also really cool that every few days, it can do more.
28:02Every few days, it has better capabilities. Every few days, it's faster and more efficient. Every few days, it's that much better.
28:09So again, I know that this is overwhelming, but the last piece of advice that I wanna leave you with is a reminder. Approach AI with a playful heart. Experiment, test things out, and see how it could solve just one problem for you today.
28:22Don't try to automate your entire life. Don't try to replace every step in your system with AI. Replace the steps that are repeatable, that follow a system, and that do not require your own unique voice and personality and taste and interest and style, and you'll be able to multiply your output, grow more, help more people, increase your income impact or influence on the world, and ultimately do that while working less and doing more of what you absolutely love to do.
28:48Thank you so much for being here today, and as always, happy networking.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Brock Johnson opens cold with a thesis: ChatGPT is the smartest person you'll ever meet — with their hands tied behind their back. Agentic AI unties the hands. The episode is a 29-minute listicle of 11 weekly automations a solo creator can hand to Claude Cowork, framed throughout by a single discipline: stay in the AI tool, don't take the work back.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:45concept
ChatGPT vs Agentic AI
ChatGPT = the smartest person you'll ever meet, with their hands tied behind their back. Agentic AI = same brain, with hands. It can click, log in, draft, save, send.
Steal forany pitch that needs to make agentic AI legible to non-technical audiences
10:33acronym
NAP — Niche Adjacent Post
- Niche
- Adjacent
- Post
Take something trending in pop culture / news / general world and relate it back to your niche. Auto-research weekly, auto-generate carousels.
Steal forMod Creator + Killing Excuses content calendar — easy weekly format
08:30concept
Stay in the AI tool
When the agent gives you output, resist the urge to take over (copy/paste, paste-into-Sheets, etc). Force the agent to do the boring last-mile step too. That's how you learn what it can actually do.
Steal forany agent-building workflow — discipline, not just tooling
18:50model
DM Qualification Flow (Gannon Meyer)
- User sends keyword (e.g. 'guide') → triggers ManyChat
- Bot delivers the asset + asks for email
- Follow-up 2 hours later asks an open-ended question
- Claude reads the reply and buckets: beginner / intermediate / expert
- Each bucket gets a different pre-written-by-you follow-up message
Critical distinction: the message text is always written by YOU. Claude is the router, not the writer. Avoids 'AI wrote this' detection while still gating leads.
Steal forany lead-magnet funnel — gives Joe a defensible AI-leverage pattern that doesn't sound AI
13:14concept
Extend output without changing input
The thesis of the whole episode in one phrase: the creator doesn't work more; the agent multiplies what already exists (transcripts, b-roll, saved posts, performance data).
Steal forheadline / hook for any agentic-AI pitch
24:13concept
Living brand voice document
Weekly auto-update of a doc that captures the creator's evolving tone — words you say in 2026 you didn't in 2023, phrases you used in 2022 you've dropped. Portable across AI tools.
Steal forJoe's own content systems — kill the 'sounds like ChatGPT' problem
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
17:37product
“Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/tribe.”
Sponsor-driven CTA mid-episode. No hard subscribe ask at the end — just 'happy networking' sign-off. There is a soft subscribe pitch at ~04:35. Brock is leaning on sponsors and the InstaClubHub link in the description rather than push-asking from the host seat.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
