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5 AI Tools I Use Every Day for Social Media in 2026
The actual workflow. ChatGPT, Claude Code, Adobe Express, Riverside, HeyGen, and Lovable — how they work together, not in isolation.
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Most "best AI tools" articles in 2026 are written by people who don't actually use the tools. This isn't one of them.
These are the five tools I use every single day to run social media, the newsletter, my websites, and the consulting side of the business. They're not alternatives to each other — they're a stack. Each one handles a specific layer of the workflow.
Here's the entire stack, in the order I touch it.
Tool 1
ChatGPT + Claude Code — The Brain
ChatGPT is your business co-pilot. Claude Code is your production engine. Use them together, not as alternatives — and don't fall for the "ChatGPT vs. Claude" content from people who clearly haven't built anything with either.
What I use ChatGPT for: ideation and copywriting. I drop in years of my own writing — both editions of The End of Marketing, every blog post, every newsletter, every video transcript. When I write a LinkedIn caption, I talk-to-text into my phone, paste it into ChatGPT, and let it refine the copy to sound like me on a good day. Because ChatGPT has my work saved in context, the output reads like 30 minutes of my own writing — in 30 seconds.
What I use Claude Code for: production. This is where 85–90% of my computer time goes. Claude Code can:
- Build a landing page from scratch
- Edit a video
- Take over my computer to register a domain on GoDaddy, build the site, and connect Stripe
- Turn a YouTube video into an ebook, a landing page, and an email sequence — in one session
- Generate slide decks in minutes
ChatGPT can't do that. Claude Code can.
The integration that matters: use ChatGPT to write a creative brief for Claude Code. Prompt: "Act as a growth marketing expert and write a creative brief for Claude Code to build [the thing]." Take that output. Drop it into Claude Code. Bypass the permissions so it can move fast. Let it cook.
→ Read the ChatGPT review on BestStacked and the Cursor review (Cursor is the editor I run Claude Code in).
Tool 2 · SPONSOR
Adobe Express — The Visual Layer
You don't need to be a graphic designer to ship good content in 2026. I'm not one.
Adobe Express handles the visuals — graphics, video editing, thumbnails, slide decks, social posts, you name it. Every nuance that used to take 24 hours of waiting for a Fiverr designer (resize this, remove the background, add text on top, match the brand kit) now takes 90 seconds.
The integration that matters: Adobe Express plugs directly into ChatGPT. I never leave ChatGPT to design anything. Prompt Adobe Express through ChatGPT. Graphic appears. Done.
What Adobe Express is best at:
- Resizing one design across every platform (LinkedIn carousel → IG square → TikTok vertical → email header)
- Removing backgrounds and adding text overlays in seconds
- Slide decks for keynotes, client meetings, sales presentations
- Brand-kit templates that keep every output consistent
- Scheduling social posts directly from the platform
For a marketer or creator who's not a designer, Adobe Express is the difference between shipping today and waiting until Thursday.
Here's what that AI workflow looks like in practice. In this short Adobe Express tutorial, I walk you through the 2 AI features I use most often to move from idea to execution faster — without sacrificing creative control.
Generate the image. Style the text. Drop it in a template. That's the workflow — AI handling the friction while you keep control of the creative direction. The goal isn't to replace your creativity. It's to remove the bottlenecks that slow you down.
Adobe Express is the sponsor of this article. The link below is an affiliate link — we earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you.
Try Adobe Express — Free→ Read the Adobe Express review on BestStacked.
Tool 3
Riverside — The Repurposing Engine
Record once. Distribute everywhere.
Riverside is where my long-form content becomes everything else. I drop a YouTube video into Riverside and within a few minutes I have:
- A transcript I can edit into a blog post
- Short clips for reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts
- A podcast episode that goes to Spotify and Apple Podcasts
The reason this matters: most creators record one piece of content and post it on one platform. That's leaving 80% of the reach on the table.
Full workflow: record a long-form YouTube video → drop into Riverside → pull the transcript → feed transcript into Claude Code → Claude Code generates a landing page, a blog post, an ebook outline, an email sequence, and social captions for every platform. One recording session, ten distribution surfaces.
→ Read the Riverside review on BestStacked.
Tool 4
HeyGen — AI Avatars
This one is creepy. It's also incredibly powerful.
HeyGen lets you upload a photo of yourself plus a voice recording, and it generates an AI avatar that delivers content on camera as you. You can write a script, hand it to the avatar, and get a video back that looks like you actually filmed it.
Use cases:
- Faceless accounts — running an Instagram or TikTok for a niche topic without putting your face on it (I'd use this for a pro wrestling fan account I keep separate from the Carlos Gil brand)
- Webinars on autopilot — record once, deliver forever
- Content scaling — when you can't get on camera but need to publish
- Localization — your avatar can speak languages you don't
The unsettling reality: as AI gets better, it's going to be harder and harder for audiences to tell the difference between a real person and an AI version of them. That's the world we're heading into. Use HeyGen now and you're ahead of the curve, not behind it.
→ Read the HeyGen review on BestStacked.
Tool 5
Lovable — Where It All Lives
You can have the best content in the world, the best graphics, the best videos. But if there's no landing page to capture leads, no website to send people to, no funnel to convert them — the content is wasted reach.
Lovable is a vibe-coding platform. Type a prompt describing the landing page or site you want, Lovable builds it. No HTML, no CSS, no design background required. My website gilmedia.co was built in Lovable in minutes — not weeks, not days, minutes.
The workflow: every YouTube video gets its own landing page. Every newsletter issue gets its own opt-in page. Every product launch gets a dedicated funnel. Lovable makes that economically possible because each page costs you a prompt, not a developer's day rate.
If you don't have a website in 2026, you're missing valuable traffic and a place to capture leads. Lovable removes every excuse not to have one.
→ Read the Lovable review on BestStacked.
The full stack — in order
From the author of The End of Marketing
The book behind this article
Carlos's bestselling book — subtitled Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI — is the philosophical foundation behind why this AI stack works. AI handles production. You handle the humanity. The brands and creators that win are the ones that use the stack without sounding like the stack.
Get The End of Marketing on Amazon →
About the author
Carlos Gil
Marketing thought leader, LinkedIn Top Voice, bestselling author of The End of Marketing, and Editor-in-Chief of BestStacked.com (AI tools) and BestSends.com (email infrastructure).
More from Carlos →Article #4 in the series
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Article #4 · You're here
5 AI Tools I Use Every Day for Social Media in 2026
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