⚡️You're in the right article if you...
- want help brainstorming content ideas.
- want to save time in the post creation process.
- know what you want to share with your audience, but aren’t sure how to phrase it.
📝 Buffer's AI Assistant is available on our Free, Essentials, Team, and Agency plans. If you are a legacy customer on our Pro, Premium, or Business plans and would like to switch to our new pricing, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help! Learn more about why AI Assistant isn't available on our legacy plans here.
The Buffer AI Assistant is in Open Beta and details are subject to change. If you have any feedback, please reach out to us or join our Discord community!
If you’re tired of wasting time with writer’s block or struggling to write the perfect post, we have just the ticket for you! Buffer’s AI Assistant helps you generate fresh, engaging content in just a few seconds. Give Buffer AI Assistant a single prompt and it’ll help you craft replies, populate endless post variations, and can repurpose your content in a click—meaning you can focus on the fun stuff. Think of Buffer AI Assistant as a powerful sidekick, ready to make your ideas shine!
This article contains the following sections:
- How Buffer’s Assistant works
- How to generate a suggestion
- How credits work
- Good to knows
- Ways to use Buffer’s AI Assistant
How Buffer’s AI Assistant works
The service that powers Buffer’s AI Assistant is provided by OpenAI, and to make sure we’re able to give everyone fair access to the service, we’re introducing a credits system for usage of the AI Assistant. Each time you use Buffer’s AI Assistant to generate a suggestion, it will use one credit.
At this time, credits are one-time use, but we are exploring options to replenish credits in the coming months. For full details on credits, jump down to How Credits Work.
How to generate a suggestion
- Head to the Content section of Buffer.
- Click Create Idea.
- Enter a prompt that’s at least four words long.
📝 Tips for creating a great prompt:
- Be specific.
- Share information about yourself or business.
- Add details such as:
- The social channel you’re posting to
- The topic you’re interested in
- Specifics about your audience
- As an example, instead of writing “Write a tweet about the traveling” you could say “Write a tweet encouraging more women to solo travel in their 20’s.”
- Click Generate 🪄 and Buffer’s AI Assistant will generate a post caption for you.
If you’re not totally happy with what the AI Assistant generates, another credit can be used by clicking the Try Again option to generate a new caption.
Or, you can highlight four or more words within the suggestion to use as a new prompt. Once you highlight four or more words, the Generate button should reappear, like this: -
Review your new caption and adjust as you see fit. After all, Buffer’s AI Assistant is brilliant, but not as brilliant as you are!
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Click Save Idea to save your idea to save to your Content dashboard, or click Create Post if you’re ready to schedule your post.
How credits work
Each time you generate a new suggestion, it will use one credit from your organization. The number of credits you have depends on the plan you’re on and the number of channels you’re currently paying for.
| Plan | Number of Credits per organization |
|---|---|
| Free | 50 total credits |
| Trialists | 50 total credits |
| Essentials | 150 credits per channel purchased |
| Team | 300 credits per channel purchased |
| Agency | 3000 credits for the first ten channels connected and 300 credits per channel purchased after the initial ten |
📝 Good-to-Knows
- At this time, credits are one-time use, but we are exploring options to replenish credits in the coming months.
- Credits are not tied to the channel that is purchased, so you can use credits to generate suggestions for any of your channels.
What happens if you remove a channel slot or downgrade to a lower plan?
Adding or removing channel slots will increase or decrease the number of credits allocated to your organization. (To learn more about how to adjust your channel slots, see: Adding or removing a channel slot from Buffer)
If you remove channel slots from your organization, we’ll deduct the equivalent amount of credits from your organization. For example, if you're on the Team plan and remove a channel slot, 300 credits are also removed. When you add a channel slot, 300 credits are added.
If the number of credits left is less or equal to the amount that is deducted due to a channel being removed, then unfortunately, your organization will be left without any credits and you won't be able to generate suggestions.
How do credits work on the Team and Agency plans?
Credits are shared across your entire organization, meaning that the total of credits will not change depending on the number of team members you have connected.
Credits can also be used by all connected team members, regardless of permissions (see: Adding users and setting up permissions in your organization). With Buffer’s AI Assistant being in Open Beta, things may change in the future.
How can I see the total number of credits I have available?
To see the total number of remaining credits in your organization, hover over the Generate button, like this:
Good to knows
- In order to use Buffer’s AI Assistant, your prompt must be at least four words and less than 1,000 characters. If your prompt is less than four words or greater than 1,000 characters, the Generate button will become disabled.
- If the connection fails, or we’re not able to generate a suggestion for you, you'll see an error message and we will not deduct any credits.
Ways to use Buffer's AI Assistant
Still not sure how to get started? Check out our beginner’s guide to using AI on social or see it in action below: