🎬 Generate content ideas from social trends with Apify, Gemini, and Google Sheets

⚡ 105 views · 🎬 Content Creation & Video

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Description

Trend2Content

This n8n workflow (named Trend2Content) takes a short topic input from a small web form, scrapes recent/top social content for that topic (via an Apify act), aggregates the raw text, passes that aggregated content into a LangChain AI agent (Google Gemini in this flow) which returns a structured content output (topic summary, blog post title ideas, tweet hooks), formats that output, and appends the results into a Google Sheet.

It’s a lightweight:

Topic → Trending Content → AI Ideas → Sheet

pipeline for fast content ideation.

How It Works (Step-by-Step)

1. On Form Submission
   The user fills a single field Topic (webhook/form trigger).

2. X Scraper (HTTP Request)
   Calls an Apify act run-sync-get-dataset-items with:

   • searchTerms: [{{ $json.Topic }}]
   • maxItems: 20
     to fetch social posts for that topic.

3. Edit Fields (Set)
   Extracts fullText from each scraped item and stores it in a Content field.

4. Aggregate
   Aggregates the Content field so the AI agent receives one combined input rather than many separate items.

5. Google Gemini Chat Model (LM) + AI Agent (LangChain Agent Node)
   The agent uses a templated system prompt + the aggregated content to generate a structured response with:

   • Topic summary
   • Blog title ideas
   • Tweet hooks

   The agent is connected to a Structured Output Parser node to force a predictable JSON schema.

6. Code in JavaScript
   Transforms the structured JSON into sheet-friendly strings (joins arrays with bullets).

7. Append Row in Sheet (Google Sheets)
   Appends the generated blog_post_titles and tweet_hooks to the target Google Sheet.

8. (Optional)
   Sticky notes and internal meta nodes exist for documentation and board organization.

Quick Setup Guide

👉 Demo & Setup Video 👉 Sheet Template 👉 Course

Nodes of Interest You Can Edit

1. On Form Submission (formTrigger)

• Edit form fields (add author, language, region, or filters).
• Change webhook behaviour or require authentication.

2. X Scraper (HTTP Request)

• URL: Change to another Apify act or another scraping API.
• jsonBody: Change maxItems, sort (Top/Recent), or modify searchTerms (e.g., topic + hashtag).
• Headers: Set the Authorization: Bearer token (Apify).
• Add pagination or query parameters if switching scraper APIs.

3. Edit Fields (Set)

• Map additional fields (author, date, source URL).
• Add filtering logic (remove short posts, retweets, duplicates).

4. Aggregate

• Customize aggregation strategy:
  • Concatenate
  • Sample top N
  • Deduplicate before combining

5. Google Gemini Chat Model / AI Agent / Structured Output Parser

• Edit systemMessage and prompt template (tone, format, extra outputs).
• Tune LM parameters (temperature, max tokens).
• Update schema to request:
  • Sentiment
  • Key quotes
  • Additional formats

6. Code in JavaScript

• Modify formatting (CSV-ready, add timestamp).
• Add metadata columns.
• Add deduplication or length checks before write.

7. Append Row in Sheet (Google Sheets)

• Change spreadsheet ID or sheet name.
• Add more columns.
• Switch from Append to Upsert.
• Configure batch appends.

What You’ll Need (Credentials)

1. Apify API Token

• Used in the HTTP Request node.
• Set in header:
  Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN

2. Google Sheets OAuth2 Credentials

• Must include spreadsheets scope.
• Required for appending rows.

3. Google / PaLM / Google Gemini API Credentials

• Used by the LangChain / Google Gemini node.

Optional

• n8n webhook URL (for mounting the form).
• Monitoring credentials (Slack webhook, Sentry, etc.) for alerts.

Recommended Settings & Best Practices

• Enable workflow only after testing (active: true).
• Limit maxItems (20–50 recommended).
• Sanitize & dedupe content before sending to the AI.
• Always use a Structured Output Parser for reliable JSON.
• Set low temperature (0.0–0.6) for consistent results.
• Add retries and exponential backoff for external APIs.
• Add logging or Slack alerts for failures.
• Keep execution log columns in the sheet (status, error_message, run_time).
• Store workflow JSON in version control.
• Monitor API rate limits (Apify + Google).
• Avoid writing scraped PII into public sheets.

Customization Ideas

• Add output types:

  • Instagram captions
  • LinkedIn posts
  • Video scripts
  • Email subject lines

• Add sentiment / trend scoring.

• Add language detection & translation.

• Store aggregated content in a vector database (Pinecone / Chroma).

• Schedule runs using Cron trigger.

• Add multiple data sources (Reddit, RSS, HackerNews).

• Add approval workflow (Slack / Notion).

• Add metadata columns:

  • source_urls
  • top_authors
  • most_shared

Tags

#content-ideation’
#social
#ai
#google-gemini
#apify
#google-sheets
#n8n

🔗 Nodes Used

Google Sheets, HTTP Request, AI Agent, Structured Output Parser, n8n Form Trigger, Google Gemini Chat Model

📥 Import

Download workflow.json and import into n8n: Workflow menu → Import from File

📖 Importing guide · 🔑 Credential setup