Social Post Research agent

  • Updated

The Social Post Research agent in Optimizely Opal researches trending angles, competitive context, and hashtags for any campaign topic. It then packages findings into a structured brief ready to hand off for social post creation. The agent cuts down manual research and grounds every post in what resonates in the market.

  • Challenge – Staying on top of trending topics, competitor activity, and audience sentiment across social platforms is time-consuming and fragmented. Manually monitoring feeds makes it difficult to plan post strategies that are timely and data-driven. Manual monitoring leads to missed engagement opportunities.
  • Agent outcome – The agent analyzes real-time social data, competitor posts, and industry trends to surface actionable insights. It identifies high-performing topics, suggests optimal posting times, and provides content recommendations based on what captures the audience's attention.
  • Value – The agent shifts social strategy from guesswork to informed execution by automating the heavy lifting of trend analysis. The agent backs every post with current market data, increasing relevance and engagement rates, without hours of manual research.

Required Optimizely products

None

Install the Social Post Research agent

Opal Administrators, Agent Builders, and users with the Add, edit, and install specialized agents attribute for a custom role can add agents to their organization's Optimizely Opal instance. See Add users and set permissions.

To install the Social Post Research agent in Opal, complete the following steps:

  1. Go to Agents > Agent Directory.
  2. Click Social Post Research.

  3. Click Install Agent to add the agent to your Opal instance.

    Screenshot of the Agent Directory page in Optimizely Opal where the Install Agent button is highlighted.

Use the Social Post Research agent

To use the Social Post Research agent in Opal Chat, enter @social_post_research and provide details for the following parameters:

  • Post Content – Anything about what you are posting about, such as a topic, campaign description, creative brief, URL, or pasted output from another Opal agent. More context produces better results, but a topic alone is sufficient.
  • (Optional) Target Platforms – Comma-separated list of the platforms you are posting to. For example, 'LinkedIn, X, Instagram'.
  • (Optional) Production Constraints – Any execution limits to account for in format recommendations. For example, 'no filming, graphic and text only', 'short-notice turnaround, low-lift only', or 'remote team, no in-person assets'. The agent uses these constraints to shape format recommendations.
  • (Optional) Competitor Accounts – Competitor brand names or handles to scan for post patterns. For example, 'HubSpot, Marketo, @salesforce'.

The agent returns a structured research brief. The brief includes trending angles, competitor post patterns, recommended hashtags, and content suggestions tied to the campaign topic.

To use the Social Post Research agent in a workflow agent, drag and drop it into your workflow. See Configure a workflow agent.

Default agent configuration

The Social Post Research agent ships with the following default configuration. After you install the agent in your Opal instance, you can customize these details based on your organization's needs. See Manage agents for instructions.

Input variables

The Social Post Research agent takes the following input:

  • Post Content
  • (Optional) Target Platforms
  • (Optional) Production Constraints
  • (Optional) Competitor Accounts

Tools

The Social Post Research agent uses the following tools internally to process your request:

  • browse_web_html
  • search_web

Additional configuration

The following settings control how the agent processes requests:

  • Inference level – Pro. Determines the processing capacity the agent uses. Pro inference provides higher accuracy for complex requests.
  • Files – None. This agent does not use file attachments.