If you’re tired of paying for expensive tools to manage your content calendar, this guide shows how to use free tools like n8n and DeepSeek for AI-powered social media automation.
Social media management tools facilitate the creation, administration, and enhancement of a brand’s presence across diverse social media platforms.
Social media management tools empower us to create more creative content for broadcast, thanks to the power of AI. One approach that I found to be extremely beneficial is to allow AI to compose a brief, visually appealing piece of content that is appropriate for the platform and potentially include hashtags. This process does not require any human involvement!
Nevertheless, social media management tools are not available for free. Specifically, the platform that includes AI imposes an additional fee if you wish to enable AI in the service.
In this post, I will demonstrate an alternative that is incredibly simple to construct, including scheduling, AI content generation, and social media posting, all for nearly zero cost.
To get started, you’d need two things: n8n and an AI model — Deepseek.
What is n8n and why is it a game-changer?
n8n is a free and open-source tool for automating workflows that allows you to connect various applications and services through a user-friendly, node-based interface. Consider it as your digital assistant, diligently fulfilling the tasks you have established. The self-hostable nature (which we will utilize if you require a very low cost) of n8n offers unparalleled control and flexibility without draining your bank account, in contrast to other automation platforms that can be costly and restrictive.
Regardless of whether you are a content creator, a marketer, or a small business owner, this suggests that you can create custom workflows that are specific to your needs in the context of social media management.
Despite the fact that there is a slight learning curve to become familiar with n8n (which is not overly complex), the workflow tool offers a substantial advantage in that it can significantly automate numerous aspects of your life.
No coding skills? No problem. With n8n’s drag-and-drop interface and built-in integrations, anyone can get started quickly. n8n includes numerous built-in and third-party tools. Frequently, you will simply need to establish connections and perform drag-and-drop operations. Coding is necessary for advanced users; however, this is a topic that can be addressed in a separate post.
What is Deepseek and why is it a game-changer?
DeepSeek is an AI startup that is transforming the AI landscape by creating open-source models such as DeepSeek-R1 that are transparent, cost-effective, and highly performant.
It is being hailed as a game-changer for its capacity to provide top-tier AI capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional AI models, thereby democratizing access to advanced AI technologies.
You are aware that the tokens they charge are expensive if you utilize those model APIs. At just $0.27/million input tokens and $1.10/million output, DeepSeek slashes AI costs by 90% compared to OpenAI—ideal for side projects.
Conversely, ChatGPT-4o assesses a fee of $3.75 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens. This leads to a significant cost disparity, with DeepSeek being approximately 92% less expensive for the same token usage.
Building Your Social Media Workflow
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Step 1: Setting Up Your n8n Instance
The beauty of n8n is its flexibility. Start with a free trial on n8n Cloud or opt for self-hosting on your own server for total control. Self-hosting is surprisingly straightforward and can be done on various platforms.
I will use the Docker option to self-host n8n on my Mac Mini. You can go to https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n to find all self-hosting options.
In a terminal with Docker up and running, run the following lines to create a new volume and pull the n8n image to run the server.
docker volume create n8n_data
docker run -it --rm --name n8n -p 5678:5678 -v n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n
A few minutes later, you will see the n8n server is running
Once you go to that host, you will see the n8n web UI.
Step 2: High Level Design for the Workflow
We will develop a workflow that schedules a post on X (Twitter) every four hours. The content is derived from previous blog posts randomly, and we will use AI to summarize the post and provide tags. The post will be customized for X to ensure that it does not exceed 280 characters.
Step 3: Get a list of blog post from my personal blogs
I downloaded a list of blog links from my personal blog: chengzhizhao.com. Then, I used Notion as a local database to store them. The reason is that I want to have something I can quickly copy & paste, so I don’t have to worry about copying data into an actual database. In Notion, it is possible to create a table view that functions as a database.
Once you have the Notion page, the next step is to choose the Notion node. You can follow the instructions to set up the Notion credential if you haven’t already. Then we can choose the resource as Database Page and the operation as Get Many. You can select the table name you provided earlier for the database.
Step 4: sort, limit
All of the entries in the table will be available in the output from Notion. We intend to randomly select one entry from the list provided in accordance with our design. In order to facilitate this, n8n provides two nodes: sort and limit.
There is an option to perform a random sort on the sort node, and subsequently, we can use the limit to select a single item.
Step 5: Generate short link
Despite the fact that this is advantageous for search engine optimization, a substantial number of blog posts contain hyperlinks that are excessively descriptive. The process is further complicated by Twitter’s word limit. Consequently, in order to generate a brief link, I require a service call.
n8n has a node from Short.io that facilitates this process. You can create a free account, and it gives you some free credit; we will use it for now to get started.
One of the most advantageous aspects of n8n as a workflow tool is the collection of nodes; it is advantageous that an output can be utilized as the input for the subsequent node.
For example, I grab the output from the previous node limit only one blog post. Then I got this Jinja template that can refer to the previous node’s output —{{ $json.name }} . This significantly reduces the overhead associated with mapping input and output, thereby enhancing productivity.
Step 6: Leverage AI to Generate Content to Post
Our goal is to use AI to generate content that includes a link to my personal blog post. Once we have the short link, we can easily connect to an AI agent node in n8n.
The AI Agent node is usually involved with 3 main things: the prompt, the model, and the output. For the prompt, I will use the following example:
You are a helpful assistant to create content on social media. Your task is to create content with some emoji to attract more readers to click my blog post. You need to limit the number of characters to be less than 280.
Please output the format like this
{
“context”: “xxx”
}
Please summarise my blog post {{ $json.name }} and use this short link {{ $json.shortIoResponse.shortURL }} and create context to be posted on Twitter. Please also include hashtags
For the model, we will choose DeepSeek and use its R1 model.
For the output format, we will use the same json output format as we provide to the mode
{
“context”: “xxx”
}
Once you have executed, you will see the output, which includes a nice summary generated by the AI model!
Note this part will cost a couple of pennies to run using Deepseek. 💵
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Step 7. Post to X (Twitter)
The output from AI is what we want to post on X (Twitter); this is the final step that needs to be automated. n8n already has the X (Twitter) API integrated; all we need to do is set up an X (Twitter) developer account and then choose to create a tweet from the previous AI node’s output.
Step 8: Schedule
Instead of manually triggering, n8n includes a schedule. We can create a schedule in front of all nodes. Then, using a cron expression, schedule the frequency with which you run your tasks. I have set the tasks to run every four hours.
n8n Schedule | Image By AuthorFinal Thought
At this point, we have built a n8n workflow that automates the AI content generation process and schedules our social media posts for X. DeepSeek’s low cost makes using n8n and AI almost free.
If you have a Mac mini that can be used as a self-hosted server, you can design your own workflow management process without having to pay for the social media management service.
I hope this post has given you some insight into what n8n is capable of and inspired you to come up with more ideas for using n8n to automate your workflow with AI.
Please share your comments or more workflow automation ideas below.
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