Agentic Automation for Social Content

Enterprise Content Orchestration for Content Creation, Approval and Scheduling with n8n & Airtable

There’s a slew of tools available for content marketing - from ideation, to text and media generation, to content scheduling. AI has massively upgraded the way marketers are creating content.

However, because of the fragmentation of tooling, they’re forced to grapple with a bunch of different tools that operate separately. I previously wrote a post compiling insights from enterprise leaders in marketing and finance, and deep diving into the challenges of fragmented AI tooling, and the need for enterprise orchestration.

This time, I looked deeper into the content marketing use case, and evaluated the n8n framework for orchestrating content creation and scheduling.

Having built agents from the ground up, my initial reaction to n8n was one of disdain. This experiment has changed my mind about tools like n8n.

More Tools, More Problems

As marketing teams layer on more tools, one theme keeps surfacing: a total lack of cohesion.

1. No integration between tools, requiring manual gluing of output to input

2. Configuration fatigue - repeated brand configuration across each tool

3. Missing overview of work status

4. Disjointed approval process

5. Evaluation and execution fatigue

The Solution: Enterprise Orchestration

Instead of switching between disconnected tools, a platform like n8n lets you orchestrate your entire content workflow - from ideation to creation to publishing - in one automated pipeline.

It connects your AI tools, content calendars, CMS, and approval steps into a cohesive system. No more manual glue work. No more status guesswork.

To illustrate this, I built a minimal but end-to-end setup. Here’s the stack that I used:

1. Orchestration Dashboard - Airtable

2. Brand Config Repository - Google Drive & Airtable

3. Orchestrator - n8n

Airtable Dashboard Setup

For the orchestration dashboard, I had the following key requirements:

1. UI to feed new content ideas

2. A lightweight datastore for social content, statuses, comments, and approvals

3. Calendar view, showing the generated and scheduled content

4. Kanban system for review and approvals

While I could have very well used a Google Spreadsheet for the whole setup, I wanted something a bit more user friendly, and so I chose Airtable. They literally had everything I needed, in a “Social Media Calendar” template.

Airtable: Brand Guideline & Prompt Repository

I setup an Airtable datastore and a simple form on top to store prompts containing the brand guidelines, and specific instructions for writing Linkedin and other social posts.

The best part? It actually has versioning out of the box, and shows a diff between multiple versions of the prompts. I started out with a Google Doc to support versioning, but this turned out to have a better UX.

Brand Guideline and Prompt Repository on Airtable

Airtable: New Content Generation Request

Airtable makes it trivial to spin up forms on top of any table. I built a request form to feed in new content requests.

Airtable: Content Calendar and Kanban Setup

I was able to spin up three different views on the data mimicking a typical social content planning setup.

• Kanban: Visualize content stages (e.g. Request → Generate → Review → Schedule) in a drag-and-drop board.

• Calendar: See content by publish date to track deadlines and release schedules.

• Gallery: Browse content cards with images and key details at a glance.

Kanban View

Calendar View

n8n: Content Generation & Scheduling Workflow

The n8n component serves as the central automation hub that transforms structured inputs from Airtable into ready-to-publish content across social platforms.

There are three key pieces:

1. Text Generation Agent - powered by gpt-4o

2. Image Generation Agent - powered by gpt-img-1, or Leonardo.ai API

3. Scheduling Workflow - Schedules posts via Hubspot, or directly to the social platform

How It Works:

Changes to the ticket statuses in Airtable trigger workflows on n8n

Text generation: Status is changed → AI Copy Generation

1. Fetch the latest brand guidelines from Airtable

2. Start text generation agent

   1. SerpAPI for web research

   2. OpenAI LLM for generation

   3. Output parser for structured JSON output

3. IF gate to check if the post was drafted

4. Update the copy and status on the ticket via Airtable API request

n8n Text Content Generation Agent

Image generation: Status is changed → AI Graphic Generation

1. Fetch the latest image guidelines from Airtable

2. Start Image generation

   1. Uses GPT-img-1 for generation based on suggest image content

3. Upload the generated image to Google Drive

4. Make the image shareable so that it can be pushed to Airtable and social platforms

5. Update the image and status on the ticket via Airtable API request

n8n Image Generation Agent

Scheduling flow: Status is changed → Approved

1. Determine which channel to schedule the post to

2. Schedule the post via Hubspot API (or directly to the social platform)

3. Update the ticket status on Airtable

n8n Content Scheduling Workflow

n8n Workflow Video Demo

Watch at 1.25x speed for quicker consumption

Suggested Improvements

• Generation of video scripts, to create videos with tools such as Heygen or Veo3

• Addition of other popular social networks complete the picture

• Ideation workflow that suggests content pieces based on the brand guidelines and current events

Take-aways

• Tool sprawl is killing productivity: The abundance of generative AI tools has paradoxically increased marketing workload due to fragmented interfaces, configurations, and handoffs.

• Airtable is an underrated orchestration canvas: It's not just a spreadsheet; its forms, views, and API integrations make it a capable UI layer for workflow-driven teams.

• n8n is more than just a glue tool - it’s the brain of the system: With conditional flows, API integrations, and agentic branching, n8n transforms static steps into intelligent automations that react to changing statuses. I’m tremendously impressed with the ease of use and UX of n8n’s workflow builder.

• Agentic design wins over monolithic apps: Instead of using a single bloated app, modular agents (text, image, scheduler) connected by a workflow engine offer more flexibility, scalability, and traceability.

• Enterprise orchestration is no longer optional: For content teams scaling output across multiple platforms and stakeholders, orchestration is now a strategic capability, not a technical nice-to-have.

Limitations

• n8n isn’t no-code, it’s some-code: Building something serious with it requires technical skills. While it's easy for a software engineer, it's not as accessible for non-technical folks

• Hubspot API is a question mark: Their API for scheduling is deprecated, and syncing changes back from Hubspot to n8n requires an expensive plan supporting webhooks.

• You’re trading buttery smooth UX for consolidation: Each of the AI tools have highly optimized UX’s. Building your own dashboard with Airtable is a downgrade from that user experience.

• Cost math is fuzzy: You’ll likely pay ~$70/month for 10K executions, but there’s no easy way to predict actual usage until you’ve shipped and scaled. It feels cheaper than Hubspot - until n8n hits you with rate-triggered surprises.

• Enterprise-grade security with Airtable is challenging: Role-based permissions are fine for small teams, but for larger teams, this could get complicated quickly.