What you’ll be able to do

By the end of this you’ll be able to get an AI tool to draft a LinkedIn update, a Facebook post or an Instagram caption that actually sounds like you wrote it. Not the version of you that’s “thrilled to announce” things. The real one.

I’m not going to pretend AI writes great social posts on its own, right out of the box. It doesn’t. It writes generic ones, fast. What changes that is what you feed it, and how you ask. That’s basically the whole guide.

Before you start

Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you first try this: AI hasn’t met you. It doesn’t know your voice, it doesn’t know what you’d actually say out loud, and it definitely doesn’t know that you’d never in a million years write “I’m humbled to share”. So when you type a bare prompt like “write a LinkedIn post about my promotion”, it does the only sensible thing it can, it reaches for the most common version of that post it’s seen. Which means everyone gets roughly the same post back.

This is why so much AI-written social content feels off, even when the grammar’s perfect and the structure makes sense. It’s not wrong, exactly. It’s just nobody’s.

The fix isn’t a magic prompt. It’s giving the AI actual material, examples of how you write, specific details only you’d know, a clear idea of what the post is actually for. Once it has that, the output gets a lot better, a lot quicker than you’d expect.

Get set up

You’ve got a few options here, and honestly the tool matters less than the material you bring to it.

If you want something built for this specific job, I’d point you at ScriptGrain, which is one of ours. It writes across content types including LinkedIn and social posts, and it’s built to hold onto your measured voice rather than defaulting to the same breezy AI tone everyone else gets. Which is, genuinely, the whole problem with most AI social posts, they all sound like the same person wrote them. The free tier gives you one profile and one draft, enough to see if it fits before you commit to anything.

You don’t need it though. ChatGPT or Claude will do a solid job if you paste in three or four of your own past posts as examples before you ask for anything new. That’s the trick, really, give it your own writing to copy the shape of, not just an instruction.

There’s also what’s built into the platforms themselves. LinkedIn has a rewrite-with-AI option on some plans, and tools like Canva, Buffer or Hootsuite are worth knowing about too, though they’re mostly for scheduling and light editing rather than writing from scratch.

Before you open any of them, gather your raw material. You want:

Three or four posts you’ve written before, the more “you” they sound, the better. One specific idea for this post, just one, not a general theme. A real detail nobody else would know: a number, a moment, a thing someone said to you.

That’s it. That’s the setup.

Try it yourself

Here are three prompts, each doing a different job. Copy them, swap in your own details, see what comes back.

This first one is for a straightforward professional update, the kind you’d post after finishing a project or hitting a milestone.

I want to write a LinkedIn post about [specific thing that happened].
Here are three posts I've written before, so you can see how I sound:

[paste post 1]
[paste post 2]
[paste post 3]

Write a new post in that same voice. One idea only. The first line
should make sense on its own, without needing the rest of the post
to explain it. Include this specific detail: [your real detail].
Don't use hashtags, don't start with "I'm thrilled" or "I'm excited
to announce", and don't summarise at the end with a generic
takeaway line.

This second one is for something looser, a Facebook post to friends or a small community group, where the tone needs to relax a bit.

Write a short Facebook post about [what happened]. Keep it casual,
like I'm telling a mate over a coffee, not presenting to a
boardroom. Here's how I usually write when I'm being casual:

[paste an example, a text message, a comment, whatever shows your
casual voice]

One idea, no more than four sentences, no emojis unless I've used
them in the example above.

And this third one isn’t for drafting at all, it’s for testing what you’ve already written.

Here's a post I've drafted:

[paste your draft]

Read this as if you're a sceptical follower who's seen a hundred
posts like this before. What would make you scroll past without
reading it? What sounds like it could have been written by anyone?
Be honest, don't soften it.

That third prompt is the one people skip, and it’s probably the most useful of the lot.

Check the result

Right, so you’ve got a draft back. Before you post it anywhere, run it through a few checks.

Read the first line on its own, out of context, and ask if it means anything. If it needs the rest of the post to make sense, rewrite it. A first line that only works with what follows is a sign the AI’s padding rather than saying something.

Then look for the tells. Is there a hashtag wall at the bottom? Does it open with “I’m thrilled to announce” or something in that family? Does it end with a neat little lesson, wrapped up too tidily? These are the fingerprints of a template, and readers, and honestly the platforms themselves, are getting quicker at spotting them. Posts that read as obviously AI-generated engagement bait tend to get quietly downranked, which rather defeats the point of posting at all.

Ask yourself if there’s one detail in there that only you could have written. If the answer’s no, go back and add one. This is usually the single fastest fix for a post that sounds hollow.

And finally, read it out loud. Actually say it. If you wouldn’t say it to a person’s face, don’t post it. This sounds obvious but it catches more than you’d think.

If it doesn’t work

A few things worth knowing before you go further.

Never paste anything into an AI tool that names clients, colleagues or private conversations without their permission, full stop. Same goes for anything confidential from work, anything that identifies someone else without their say-so, or personal details that aren’t yours to share. Most mainstream tools including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini may use conversations to improve their models depending on your account settings, so treat the input box like it’s not entirely private. Check the settings for your specific tool if you’re unsure, and when in doubt, leave it out.

If your posts still sound templated after trying the prompts above, the most common reason is thin examples. One old post isn’t enough for an AI to learn your rhythm from, you generally want three or four, and the more varied they are, the better it picks up your range rather than just one mood.

Another common issue: asking for too much in one post. One idea, one post. If you’re trying to announce a launch, thank your team and plug an event all at once, it’ll come out sounding like a press release no matter what tool you use.

And if you’ve tried all this and it’s still not landing, it might just be that the tool isn’t right for you. Some are better at your specific tone than others, and that’s fine, worth trying a couple before settling.

Keep exploring

If you want the AI to hold onto your voice more consistently, not just for one post but everywhere you write, have a look at “How to get AI to sound like me”. If you’re writing on behalf of a business rather than yourself, “How to get AI to sound like my brand” covers the same idea at that level. And if you need an image to go with the post, “How to get AI to create an image” is the next one to read.

Sources and review notes

Review date: 15 September 2026 — every source above was opened and checked against the text on that date.

Disclosure: ScriptGrain is one of our products — this site is made by the same studio, Adapt Progress Evolve. We have tried to compare fairly, and the alternatives named are real and worth a look.