How I Use ClickUp Automations for Social Media Content Creation

We use ClickUp Automations for all types of workflows. In this video, we’re going to give you ONE example, by showing you how we use ClickUp Automations for Social Media Content Creation in our business.

So if you..

• Want to learn how to use ClickUp for workflow automation…
• Are looking to streamline and automate your workflow using ClickUp…
• Or are hoping to make ClickUp your “business hub” for your self-managing team…

This ClickUp automation tutorial will show you the major steps to turn ANY workflow into a fully-automated ClickUp workflow…using just 6 ClickUp automations that I use in my own ClickUp workspace.

We’ll walk you through how to

• Map your workflow for ClickUp
• Turn your process into a ClickUp template
• And how to build ClickUp automations for a simple social media workflow.

(Are you a ClickingUp member or about to become one? Don’t forget to check out our “Automated Service Delivery Workflow” template that gives you a running start on this build-out!)

Let’s dive in.

The goal of what we’re going to build today is to be able to automate the process of taking a prompt for social media, and moving it through all the different stages – until it is ready to be scheduled for all of our social media platforms.

Keep in mind, this is just ONE example. The ClickUp Automation feature can be used to automate any type of workflow! This is just a process we feel confident in, and felt was a good example use case for building out automations in ClickUp.

Turning on the Automation ClickApp

Now before we get started, this first step to using the ClickUp Automation features, is turning on the Automation ClickApp. If you are an admin in your ClickUp Workspace, you should be able to see ClickApps in the bottom corner of your ClickUp account. When you click on your ClickApps, it’ll take you into a menu of all the available ClickApps, and you just need to make sure that Automations are turned on (so you can actually follow along, and apply this tutorial to your workflow).

ClickApps are great for any Workspace! They are essentially modular features that can make ClickUp more complex or less complex based on what you turn on. (Check out this video for more information on ClickApps and how they can help your workflow in other ways, here.)

Layla gives a step-by-step walk-through for this at 00:58.

Mapping Out Your Workflow, So You Can Automate It

You’ve got your Automation ClickApp turned on. Great! Now we’re ready to automate, right!?

Not exactly.

Automations are great for eliminating a ton of manual work and steps in a process. However, well-designed and useful automations, can really only stem from well-designed workflows. If you workflow doesn’t flow, then you’re automation probably won’t either. (And that’s just adding more headache of chasing down mistakes your automations make, because there were holes or mistakes in your process.)

So to continue the example of automating our own social media process, we talk about what we already have mapped out in our process. These are steps in the process that we know work, flow, and are well-designed in getting us to our end goal of a published social post:

• We’ve clarified our statuses. For us, those statuses are either “To-Do” or “Closed“. We kept it simple.
• We’ve identified our stages. In this example, the prompts we use to create our social media posts go through five stages, which we’ve brought into ClickUp using drop-down Custom Fields:
  • Prompt – meaning we haven’t done anything with it yet, it’s still just an idea.
  • Drafted – we’ve responded to the prompt with a draft, but we haven’t really gone much further.
  • Polished Draft – we’ve taken our draft and turned it into an almost ready-to-publish post.
  • Edited – meaning all the edits have been saved, it looks good, and is all but scheduled.
  • Scheduled – the post is in our scheduling tool, ready to be posted on all relevant platforms.
• We’ve decided which assignees are responsible for which stages.
• We have our due dates. (In this example, instead of setting due dates with a specific date, we’ve set them up to depend on the stage completed. Rather than “this is due by MM/DD”, we use a format based on a turnaround time. So for example, “when the task reaches the polished draft stage, the due date will be 2 days later”.)

Layla shows exactly how she mapped out this process, and brought that process into our workspace, starting at 01:37.

Creating Your First Automation

Now that we have our ClickApp enabled, a beautifully mapped out process, and have added all of the relevant fields to this task – let’s get to automating!

When adding an automation, you’ll see three tabs in the automations area.

• Usage – this tab shows how many of your allotted automations (depending on your ClickUp plan) you’ve used in the last 30 days. (If you’re looking for a workaround that will help you achieve more with the automations you have available, check out our video on 3 Free Ways to Automate More in ClickUp.)
• Manage – where you can manage existing automations.
• Browse – this is where you will add new automations.

So to continue our example of using automations in our social media process, we’re going to add six automations.

1. When a Task is created, and the status is “to-do“, and the stage is “prompt” > then change the assignee.
   • You’ll notice that we have narrowed down the trigger to automate only when we want it to.
2. When the task is moves from the “prompt” stage to the “drafted” stage > change the assignee, add an automated assigned comment, and change the due date to 7 days later.
   • This lets the next person in line for this task know they can start editing, automates a comment that provides instructions on what to do next, and lets that assignee know that they have 7 days to complete their part in this process.
3. When the task is moved from the “drafted” stage to the “polished draft” stage > change the assignee, add an automated assigned comment, and change the due date to 2 days later.
   • This automation is very similar to the last. It changes the assignee to the next person in line, automates a comment with instructions, and lets the assignee know they have 2 days to move it to the next stage.
4. When the task is moved from the “polished draft” stage to the “edited” stage > change the assignee, add an automated assigned comment, and change the due date to 2 days later.
   • Again, we’re just passing the baton off to the next person in line, they do their thing, it moves on to the next stage.
5. When the task is moved from the “edited” stage to “scheduled” > mark the overall task status to “complete“.
   • This allows all assignees to only have to focus on changing the stages, not the statuses. By having an automation mark the task complete when scheduled, we eliminate any need to manually change the status and let the team know that they won’t have to wonder if that task was completed because it’s not still hanging out as an overdue task.
6. When the task is marked complete, and that status is not scheduled > add an automated comment.
   • This is more of an automation to enforce the process. By adding this automation, we ensure that if someone accidentally marks the task complete before it is finished, they see an automated comment that says “hey, this task has not moved through all of the stages yet, don’t mark it complete!”. This keeps simple mistakes like closing a task too early from throwing off the whole process.

And that’s it!

Congratulations, you’ve now made your social media content creation so much easier with ClickUp Automations.

If you need a clearer walk-through, check out this video at 08:02.

Related Resources

➤ 10 BEST ClickUp Automation Examples for Small Businesses [with Examples]

➤ Use ClickUp to Repurpose Content for Blog, Email, and Social Media (Workflow Example)