Revolutionize Content Creation with Make.com: Say Goodbye to Zapier and Taplio
Episode #2: How I Discovered the Right Path to Efficient Content Creation with Make.com!
Welcome to my new newsletter, Cloud Native Creator!
The main topics of this newsletter are content creation, automation tools, and AI tools from the point of view of a part-time content creator on a budget.
This newsletter is intended to summarise everything I learned while writing and marketing my leading newsletter Cloud Native Engineer, while working full-time.
In this article, we are going to discuss the following:
Automation on a budget as a part-time creator
All the solutions that I tried
What is Make.com?
My current use cases
Learning material
Conclusion
Automation on a budget as a part-time creator
Given the limited time and budget of being a new dad with a full-time job, automation has always been a priority.
Still, I never had the luxury to pay expensive subscriptions or implement everything from scratch.
I have always tried to achieve a good balance of cheap but powerful and effective automation tools.
Anything that would allow me to concentrate on my craft (writing content) instead of marketing previous articles all day.
Since last year, I have tried countless tools and was very dissatisfied until I discovered Make.com.
All of a sudden, everything changed.
I could easily use a single tool to manage all my social media accounts and so much more.
I have been an avid user of Make.com for the past 3 months.
In this relatively short time, I have only spent a couple of hours each week on automation, but I achieved so much.
In this article, I'll introduce Make.com and leave future articles to discuss the details of some real scenarios I have implemented.
Remember that what you will learn in this newsletter assumes basic skills as a Software Engineer.
Some integrations in Make.com require you to experiment with APIs and create developer accounts on the major social media accounts.
While this is not rocket science, it might feel overwhelming for some less technical people.
If you get stuck and need extra support, don't hesitate to get in touch with me on LinkedIn.
I offer both single sessions and monthly recurring mentoring at https://mentors.to/gsantoro.
Other solutions that I considered
During this past year of experimentation, I tried the most famous social media marketing tools and the least famous ones too.
Here are four of the ones that left the most significant mark in my experience:
Buffer - Easy tool to schedule content on all major social media accounts. A free tier provides a choice of 3 channels (or accounts), but things get very expensive with every new channel.
Zapier - The most famous generic automation tool. The free tier is limited to 2-step Zaps, making it almost useless for any social media automation. It's costly if compared with Make.com. More on this later.
Taplio - LinkedIn's most famous automation tool. The cheapest tier is currently priced at $32/month. It is overpriced for what it offers, given it only covers LinkedIn.
Typefully - Scheduling tool mainly for Twitter, but it supports cross-posting on Linkedin and Mastodon. It offers some advanced features for Twitter, but the support for LinkedIn is quite limited.
I tried so many other tools, too many to list here. Anything that would provide me with a free trial.
My experience with Buffer was decent. I have used it for a few months but needed to support more than 3 channels/accounts. Given that I had a personal account and a separate account for my newsletter on all primary social media accounts, supporting them all would have been costly.
I have to be honest. I never really tried Zapier. I have researched it extensively, but the limited free tier with only two-step Zaps and 100 free tasks (at that time) and the very expensive paid plans make it unsuitable for my needs.
To make Zapier useful on the free plan, I would have needed to connect countless two-step Zaps, which is impractical.
Sorry, Zapier, but a more generous free tier would go a long way in winning me over.
I've almost given up on using no-code tools during this research.
I thought more than once to implement everything myself from scratch.
Until I discovered Make.com!
It was love at first sight.
What is Make.com?
Make.com, formerly Integromat, is an advanced online automation platform enabling users to connect various applications and services to streamline workflows and automate repetitive tasks without requiring coding skills.
What that definition translates into, in practical terms, is that Make.com is the best tool out there for general automation.
The balance between many simple off-the-shelf integrations and the powerful ability to go one level down in the stack and integrate directly with the raw API makes it an unbeatable option.
Some features that make it stand out from the competition:
The free tier has unlimited tasks per scenario, two active scenarios, and 1,000 free operations per month.
You can connect with as many social media channels or APIs as you want. Forget paying based on the social media channels like Buffer.
Reasonably priced compared to its competition. The first paid tier, the Core tier, gives you 10,000 operations at
9$/monthcompared to150$/monthfor Zapier.More expensive plans from Make.com are geared towards collaboration between team members and greater operations limits per month. Still, it is a very reasonable price when compared to Zapier.
If you are interested in using Make.com for your automation scenarios, feel free to register for a free account at https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=cloudnativeeng.
The one above is my personal referral link. By using it, you can support my newsletter at no cost to you.
My use cases
So, after a week of using Make.com to automate everything, I ran out of free operations and jumped on the Core plan immediately.
The Core plan (priced at $9/month has been enough for me to automate all my social media accounts, such as LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Instagram, and Threads.
I also integrated those social media accounts with tools like Notion, Discord, Gmail, YouTube, etc.
Furthermore, I have also used Make.com to automate posting on Dev.to, a blog for technical content similar to Medium.
During this time, I have also experimented with integrating Make.com with:
Airtable, A flexible cloud-based platform that combines the features of a spreadsheet and a database, enabling users to organize and collaborate on data in a visually appealing way.
Placid, an automation tool that allows users to create dynamic images and videos by customizing templates with data from various sources.
Stripe, An online payment processing platform that allows businesses to accept payments, manage subscriptions, and handle transactions securely over the internet. I use it as my payment tool for mentoring.
I might talk more in-depth about those experiences in future articles.
As a side note, I plan to implement Placid from scratch with React, Tailwind.css and Golang code. I've already achieved some excellent results. More on this in a future article.
I'm currently experimenting with generative AI tools like ChatGPT to summarise my Substack articles or develop suggestions on social media content.
Learning Material
Before we go, I would like to suggest some learning materials that are helping me:
Make - YouTube - Official channel from Make.com with plenty of content.
Stephen G. Pope - YouTube - Stephen explains in-depth automation scenarios with Make.com, mostly for social media marketers. I have learned quite a lot by watching his videos. Be mindful that most of his videos are geared toward creating video content instead of just text or images.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you are like me, a part-time content creator on a budget or just tired of paying for expensive subscriptions that don't provide you everything you need, you should try Make.com.
I plan to add more to my automation scripts in Make.com, so stay tuned to learn more.