Four Skills a social marketer should actually build, what goes in each, a worked SKILL.md, and the refuse conditions that stop Claude writing engagement-bait in your name.
Social media is the discipline where Claude either saves you an hour a day or quietly wrecks your brand. The difference is whether you set it up as infrastructure or keep pasting context into every conversation. A Skill is the setup. It is one markdown file Claude loads on its own whenever the work matches, so your platform rules, your tone, and your hard nos travel with you instead of living in your head.
This is the discipline guide that sits under the complete guide to Claude Skills for marketing. The pillar covers what a Skill is and why it matters. This post is narrower: the four Skills a social media marketer should build, and what to put in each. If you have never opened a SKILL.md, read how to build a Claude Skill in 20 minutes first, then come back.
Three to five narrow Skills beat one giant "social" Skill every time. Each one earns its trigger or it does not ship. The frame for each below is the same three lines: what it triggers on, what it knows, what it refuses. The refuses are not optional. They are the part that keeps Claude from posting something you would have to delete.
The most common social task is taking one piece of source material (a blog post, a webinar, a long LinkedIn draft) and turning it into native posts for three platforms. The lazy version of this is the same paragraph posted everywhere with the hashtags swapped. A repurposing Skill exists to refuse exactly that.
Triggers on: "repurpose," "turn this into posts," "make this a thread," "cut this down for," any request to move content from one format to another.
Knows: the real constraints of each platform. LinkedIn rewards the first two lines before the "see more" fold. X threads need a standalone hook tweet. Instagram captions front-load the payoff because most people never tap "more." A short does not work as a carousel and vice versa. The Skill holds these as facts so you stop re-explaining them.
Refuses: to post identical copy across platforms. To pad a 90-word idea into a 10-tweet thread because threads "perform." To invent a statistic the source did not contain. That last one matters: repurposing is where fake numbers sneak in, because the model fills a confident-sounding gap. The Skill names the source as the only allowed source of facts.
Hooks are the 12 words that decide whether anyone reads the rest. They are also where Claude is most tempted to reach for the formulas that made the feed unreadable: "Unpopular opinion," "Nobody is talking about this," "I'll say what everyone is thinking." A hook Skill is worth building precisely so you can ban those by name and still get volume.
Triggers on: "write hooks," "give me openers," "first line for," "scroll-stoppers," any request for the top of a post.
Knows: the hook patterns that hold up (specific number, named tension, a concrete before/after, a question only your audience would ask) and the dead ones it is not allowed to use. It knows to generate ten and rank them, not hand you one. It knows your audience well enough to skip the openers that only land for a different crowd.
Refuses: engagement-bait. No "comment YES if you agree." No manufactured outrage. No "the algorithm hates this so share fast." These get reach today and cost trust tomorrow, and a Skill is the only place to encode that judgment so you do not have to re-litigate it at 9pm on a Friday.
Replies are where brand voice lives or dies, and where it is hardest to stay consistent because you are doing it fast, in small boxes, often annoyed. A triage Skill sorts incoming comments and drafts replies that sound like a person, not a brand account on autopilot.
Triggers on: "draft replies," "triage these comments," "how should I respond to," a pasted block of comments.
Knows: the four buckets. Genuine question (answer plainly, link if useful). Praise (thank, do not gush). Criticism with a point (acknowledge, do not get defensive). Bad-faith bait (the Skill knows when not to reply at all). It knows your escalation line: anything legal, safety, or refund-shaped gets flagged to a human, not auto-drafted.
Refuses: to argue with trolls. To post a defensive reply to fair criticism. To use canned support language ("we're sorry to hear that") on a real person. The refuse condition that earns its keep here is the do-not-reply call. A Skill that knows when silence is the right move is doing more for you than one that drafts a reply to everything.
Your brand voice is one thing. Your register shifts by platform, and that shift is real, not a betrayal of the voice. LinkedIn is your voice with the collar buttoned. X is your voice after one coffee. This Skill encodes the dial so the same idea lands native everywhere without going off-brand anywhere. It pairs with the idea that Claude mirrors the register you feed it: give it the dial explicitly and it holds the line.
Triggers on: "in our LinkedIn voice," "make this sound right for X," "tone this for Instagram," any platform named alongside a tone request.
Knows: the register per platform, written as do/don't pairs from your real posts, not adjectives. "Dry, not cold" means more once it points at two actual examples. It loads your voice guide and layers the platform dial on top.
Refuses: to flatten every platform to the same neutral middle. To swing so far that the brand stops being recognisable between feeds. The voice is the constant. The register is the variable. The Skill holds both.
Here is the hook-generation Skill end to end. The YAML decides when it loads. The body is the three-line frame: knows, does, refuses. Drop your real hook examples into the knows section and it stops generating generic openers.
--- name: social-hook-generator description: Use this Skill whenever the user asks for hooks, openers, first lines, or scroll-stoppers for a social post on any platform. Triggers on "write hooks," "give me openers," "first line for," "hook for this." Generates ten ranked hooks and refuses engagement-bait and fabricated statistics. --- # Social Hook Generator ## What this Skill knows Hook patterns that hold up (use these): 1. Specific number + outcome ("3 edits cut our reply time in half") 2. Named tension the audience already feels 3. Concrete before/after, no abstraction 4. A question only this audience would ask out loud Banned openers (never use): - "Unpopular opinion:" / "Hot take:" - "Nobody is talking about this" - "I'll say what everyone is thinking" ## What this Skill does - Generate 10 hooks, then rank them 1-10 with a one-line reason - Keep each hook under 12 words unless the platform allows more - Pull every fact from the source the user provided, nothing else - If no source is given, ask for it before generating ## What this Skill refuses - No engagement-bait ("comment YES," "tag someone," "share fast") - No manufactured outrage or fake controversy - No invented statistics, percentages, or "studies show" - No claim the source material does not support - If asked for bait anyway, say no and explain why once
Every Skill here has a refuse section, and the refuses are the point. Social is the discipline most likely to reward the wrong instinct: bait gets reach, fake stats sound confident, the same post everywhere is faster. A Skill is where you encode the judgment to say no once, so Claude says no every time without you in the loop. That is the whole pitch. The Skill is plumbing. Your standards are the work, and the refuse conditions are how the plumbing carries them.
Build these in the order you feel the pain. Most social marketers feel repurposing first, then hooks, then replies. Each one is twenty minutes. None of them needs to be perfect on day one, because a Skill is a file you edit, not a contract you sign.
If you would rather start from working examples than a blank file, the four free Claude Skills on the Hub are the same template these are built on: YAML, instructions, and the refuse sections done. Voice Extractor, Competitive Teardown, SERP-Informed Brief, Performance Readout. Drag-and-drop, no email, CC BY 4.0. Open one, read the SKILL.md, copy the shape for your social Skills.
Get the 4 free Skills