SableFinds: a store that markets itself every day

SableFinds is a small Shopify store selling travel and everyday tech: portable misters, noise-cancelling earbuds, the kind of gadgets you keep in a bag. It’s also our own store. We built AutoAgent for stores like it, so it was the obvious place to run AutoAgent first and the place where every new feature goes live before anyone else sees it.

The problem: marketing that never gets done

A one-person store has the same marketing to-do list as a big one. Post on Facebook. Post on Instagram. Make a Reel, because Reels get seen. Write a blog article, because Google rewards stores that answer questions. Do it again tomorrow.

On most small stores that list loses to everything else: orders, suppliers, customer emails. SableFinds was no different, which is exactly why we wanted it to run on its own.

What AutoAgent does for SableFinds

One post a day, on both networks. Every evening AutoAgent picks a product, writes a caption in the store’s voice and publishes it to the SableFinds Facebook Page and Instagram account. Times follow the store’s own timezone (New York), wherever the person checking the app happens to be.

Reels from product photos. No filming. AutoAgent turns the product photos SableFinds already has into a short video with music, the price and the store name. The Reel for the Sentinel ANC earbuds was made exactly this way, from the photos already on the product page.

A weekly blog article. Each week AutoAgent researches a real search around the products, such as travel essentials or quiet tech for commuting, writes the article and publishes it to the SableFinds blog with a Google preview to check first.

Everything visible before it goes out. Tomorrow’s post sits in Up next on the Home screen, shown as it will look on Facebook and on Instagram. Change the product, switch between a photo and a Reel, edit the caption or skip the day. Do nothing and it simply goes out on time.

What SableFinds taught us

Running the app on our own store every day changed it more than any plan did.

1. People want to see the post first. The most common complaint in reviews of other auto-posting apps is “it posted something I didn’t want”. The preview in Up next came straight from that, and it’s now the centre of the Home screen.
2. Silence is the worst failure. If a Facebook password changes, the connection expires and posts quietly stop. AutoAgent now checks for this and flags it, so a broken connection gets fixed instead of discovered weeks later.
3. Times have to be the store’s times. Showing “7:00 PM” in the viewer’s timezone confused everyone. Home now shows store time and says so.
4. Reels need to be easy to say no to. Some products look better as a still photo. One click switches between the two.
5. The free plan has to be genuinely useful. SableFinds tried Pro during the trial and is back on Free today. It still posts daily, still gets 4 Reels a month and still gets its weekly article. That’s the bar we hold the free plan to.

Where it goes next

The next step is results: which posts and articles actually bring visitors to the store, shown right on the Home screen. As always, it will run on SableFinds first.

If your social accounts have gone quiet, AutoAgent can fill them from your product catalogue starting tomorrow, on the free plan.