How I stay active on LinkedIn without always being on LinkedIn
Use Claude to maintain voice and authenticity without always being on platform
I’m doing a deep dive this week into an automation that saves me time each day and allows me to stay connected on LinkedIn when I just don’t have the time to engage. There are other ways to accomplish what I have below, but my hope is to spark more ideas on how AI can help transform your workday. Enjoy!
If you remember, last week my topic for this newsletter focused around a simple marketing and sales operating system that I put together and am implementing with customers.
Well, I have my own PatOS.
My PatOS is my operation center for everything related to my business. I currently have it in Claude Code and run it by Claude Cowork. I actually started building PatOS when I was managing people before I jumped out to start my own business.
Basically, I load PatOS up with tasks and automations that help me be more efficient in how I operate on a daily basis in my business.
I will be picking a few operations and tasks here and there that I think will be beneficial to my readers and spelling them out in more detail. First up:
The Social Engagement Assistant
As I often preach, it’s best to start with the workflow and the process before we layer on the tools. Let’s break that down.
A main component of building my business is building relationships. Part of that is building those connections with people online. For me, that means LinkedIn and Substack.
Part of building those connections with people on those platforms is engaging with their content. Yes, it’s good for me to show up and appear online, but my main purpose is supporting them in their efforts and helping get more exposure for the content that they put out there.
As I build more connections, there are more people that I want to follow and engage with. This is a good problem to have, of course, but as I get busier with other things outside of social engagement, it’s harder and harder for me to give the attention to this that I want to.
There are mornings where I have a networking meeting, a customer meeting, and other projects that delay my ability to get to LinkedIn and Substack until maybe mid-day or late afternoon. Then just opening up those platforms doesn’t exactly mean I’m going to see the post because of all the different algorithms involved. So I need to intentionally go and look for these people and the content that they’ve put up.
This takes more and more time the more people that I want to engage with.
So I needed a better process and automation to auto-discover the content out there from profiles I’m following and help me engage.
(Before I get further into this, I’ll answer one question. Yes, I know there are tools on the market that do this. But my goal was not to add another subscription, and I don’t need all the functionality of a full blown social media management tool.)
Glad you’re here and thank you for reading Approachable AI by Pat Schaber! In case you missed some recent articles, here’s a recap:
Who is this automation for?
Yes, this has been helpful to me, but here are some examples of who else I see this could be very impactful for:
Social Media Marketing Managers: If the budget isn’t there for a full-blown social media management tool, this is a great substitute that would save hours of time for social media managers.
Marketing Agencies: Imagine coming in every morning to a fully loaded spreadsheet of all posts of customer competitors or comments on customer posts, queued up for you with proposed drafted replies. Then being able to edit the drafts and having it post for you.
Business Leaders Building Profiles: If you’re the business leader that has become the de facto face of the organization online, you likely don’t have the time to take full advantage of the engagement on these platforms. This solves that.
The Solopreneurs: This is me! I want to continue building the relationships with social connections, and I need a better way to keep up with it.
What resources am I using?
First, the tools I’m using:
Claude Code and Claude Cowork: I’m on the pro version of Claude, which is $20 per month. PatOS is built in Claude Code, but I typically do most of my operations in Claude Cowork.
Apify: Apify is basically a web data scraper. I’m on the free version, which gives you $5 of usage a month, which currently is plenty for me to run my operation a few times a week. I’m using the API key in Claude Code.
Google Sheets: This could also be Microsoft Excel, but I currently have Claude Code and Claude Cowork connected to my Google Workspace, so it can be maintained there.
How did I build it?
Before I show you how it actually works, here’s a quick recap of how I built it. I may at some point do a deeper dive for my readers on Claude Cowork and Claude Code, but there are a ton of resources already out there to help people learn those tools. Here is an example of one that is a great guide to getting started with Claude Cowork:
Claude Cowork Guide for Power Users: 50+ Tested Tips on Plugins, Skills, Sub-Agents, and Memory
I typically start things like this in a simple Claude Chat. It helps me build out the concept without using the more extensive token usage in Claude Cowork and Claude Code.
Sometimes this can get me all the way to a skill file; otherwise, it just gives me a very solid starter prompt for my Claude Code session.
I know the below screenshot can look intimidating to people that don’t know how to code, but my background is not in coding either. What we’re doing here is NOT coding.
We are talking with an interface that builds the code for us.
Remember my post from last week. This is basically the same thing, but built in Claude Code and a little more extensive. It has the CLAUDE.MD file, which is the brains of the operating system and folders that contain my operating system context, assets, client folders, and any templates that I want the system to use.
I either upload the skill file or the prompt from Chat into where my bottom arrow is pointing, hit return, and then discuss integrating the skill into the operating system with Claude. Claude Code takes care of adding any instructions I need to the CLAUDE.MD file and updating any context files that are related to the new skill.
Whatever needs to be done here, Claude will help you walk through it.
Done.
This isn’t that complex! It looks difficult, but it’s not. It just takes curiosity and experimentation to get used to the environment.
How does this all work?
I launch this one of two ways:
From my Claude desktop app
Or, using Claude’s new Dispatch to launch it from my phone when I’m not at home. This is really useful if I’ve been out at meetings in the morning, but when I get home, I want to work on my social engagement. This can all be ready for me when I get back.
Claude first reviews a list of LinkedIn profiles that I want it to check.
Using my free Apify API (not hard to set up at all), it will visit those profiles and scrape the last post that person made within the last three days and any associated comments.
I don’t need to see all the comments, but it pulls those so that it can verify that I haven’t already commented on the post.
For posts that I haven’t commented on, it scrapes the date, the contact who posted it, the post content, and the post URL, and it goes out and fills in my Social Engagement Assistant in Google Sheets.
It also proposes a comment that is written in my tone of voice that takes into consideration all the context files that I have built into the folder.
I will rewrite the comment and edit it as I need. I’ll be honest, I actually really don’t use the proposed comment all that much because I have a certain style that I like to write in on LinkedIn, and it hasn’t done a very good job of hitting that yet. This is the importance of humans in the loop!
For posts I want to comment on, I change the approval to yes. For ones that I don’t want to comment on, I just set the approval to no.
I let Claude know that all my edits and approvals are in the sheet. It will go and post the comments that I have approved for it to post. Once posted, it will change the status to Posted.
That’s it. Done.
For days where I don’t have the time to fall into the rabbit hole that sometimes can be LinkedIn and Substack, yet I want to support the relationships that I’ve built on there, this is the clear ticket.
My time involved in this is just writing the comments that I want to be posted in the spreadsheet. Claude takes care of all the other manual work around this initiative.
I don’t have it working the way I want to yet, but I could have a Substack agent working at the same time, taking care of this same process for that platform. Theoretically, you could have this working on as many platforms as you want at the same time.
I’ll be honest, it probably took me longer to write this Substack post about it than it did to actually build it in Claude!
Now I have a repeatable skill built that I can add on to over time. Even if I don’t, it still takes manual task time off my plate each day that allows me to focus on other things.
The key strategic, relationship-building component to all this is the actual comment, and I fully control that. Nothing about that is automated!
Some Interesting Related Reads
Ways to Work with Me
Quick Win Session
A focused, high-impact working session designed to identify one immediate AI opportunity and give you a practical roadmap you can implement right away.
AI Readiness Assessment
A structured evaluation of your people, processes, data, and tools to determine where AI will create the most value and what needs to happen before you scale.
Workshops & Projects
Hands-on, team-based engagements that turn AI from theory into execution through tailored workshops, use-case design, and guided implementation.
Fractional AI & Marketing Leadership
Ongoing executive-level support that embeds AI strategy, operational rigor, and revenue-focused marketing leadership directly into your business.
AI Tech I’m Currently Using
I get quite a few questions on Substack, LinkedIn, and through my website on what AI tools I use for what use cases. I’ll try to share a few in each newsletter so it will give you some ideas of tools you can try for specific purposes. Here are a few for this week:
Everyday LLM - ChatGPT and Claude: I cover a lot of this above so won’t dive in too far here.
Call and Meeting Transcriptions - Granola: I like Granola for a couple of reasons. It takes the transcription and rolls it up into very good notes and action items but doesn’t need to be added to a meeting as an attendee. Also, it syncs great with my Hubspot CRM which makes it very easy to send notes to the contact record.
Presentations / Branded Documents - Gamma.app: I use this 3-4 times a week for anything I do with client presentations or professional document creation. I cover why I’m a heavy Gamma user in this post:
Video Recording / Editing - Descript: I’m trying to work in time to my weekly routine for video creation. I feel it’s important to give people a more personal connection. Descript is a huge timesaver. Imagine being able to erase or add text from a script and have it be reflected in the actual video in seconds. Unbelievable.
Sales Prospecting - Apollo.io and Clay: I don’t do a ton of outbound prospecting for my business but I’ve been using the free versions of Apollo.io and Clay to find companies that I could get to know through LinkedIn that may be interested in my services. I’m only touching on a sliver of the capabilities of these tools.