Mastodon for a small business is the job of writing posts and replies that sound like a person who does the work, and it is a Skill job you can finish in one sitting. Give the AI your real material for the week and a few threads worth answering, and it drafts a week of posts, replies and image descriptions in minutes; reading and trimming them takes under an hour, and you post across the week. This page covers drafting posts and replies only. Choosing a server and setting up the profile come first, and they are yours to do once. The AI drafts. You post, from your own account, after reading every line.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- one sitting
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because it is one repeatable move: real material goes in, posts and replies come out. There is nothing to install and no chain of steps where one output feeds the next. Once you have a brief that works, you reuse it every week.
What makes it a skill, rather than a one-time prompt, is that the brief gets better each time you use it. The first drafts will sound too eager, too polished or too much like an ad for the room. You tell the AI what you cut and why, and the next batch starts closer to how you talk. Keep the brief in a note so the next session starts from your improved version.
Mastodon asks more of the brief than most networks do, in three specific ways. There is no central algorithm, so hashtags carry a lot of the work of reaching new people. Many users expect a written description on every image, so alt text is part of the post, not an extra. And each server sets its own rules and its own character limit, so the brief has to name yours. An AI does all three well when you tell it to, and forgets all three when you do not.
What that means for you: the AI handles the wording, the tags and the descriptions, and you supply the part that makes a post worth boosting, which is something specific that happened.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. The more of your own material you hand over, the less the drafts sound like everyone else's.
- Three to five things from this week's work. A question a customer asked, a job that went differently than expected, a mistake you fixed, a small thing you are proud of. Write each one in a line or two, in your own words.
- One sentence per photo you plan to post. What is in it, and the one thing a person who cannot see it should know. The AI turns this into alt text.
- One page from your website you want people to read. Its address and a sentence on who it is for. One post can point there.
- Two or three things you have written before. Past posts you liked, a text to a customer, an email reply. The AI uses them to match your voice.
- Two to four posts by other people worth replying to. Pasted in full, with any replies already under them. Your social listening searches and the hashtags you follow are good sources.
- Your server's limit and rules. The character limit from your compose box, and one line on anything the server's rules say about business accounts, promotion or content warnings.
- The hashtags you want in play. Five to ten tags people in your field or town actually follow. If you do not have a list yet, hashtag research is a one-sitting job of its own.
- What you will and will not say. Your line on prices, promises, client names, and anything your trade or license rules out.
What comes back
Paste the brief below into the AI you already use, fill in the brackets, and run it once for the week. Keep the conversation open while you edit, so it remembers your corrections.
You are helping a small business owner draft Mastodon posts and replies.
The owner will read, edit and post each one from their own account.
The owner's business: [what you do, where, for whom]
The owner's server: [server name], character limit [number]
Server rules that matter: [business accounts, promotion, content warnings]
This week's real material:
1. [a customer question, in the owner's words]
2. [a job or moment from this week]
3. [a mistake fixed, a tip, or a small win]
4. [optional]
5. [optional]
Photos and what is in them:
- [photo 1: one sentence in the owner's words]
- [photo 2: optional]
One website page worth pointing to: [address and who it is for]
Examples of how the owner writes:
[paste 2 to 3 past posts, texts or emails]
Posts by other people to reply to:
[paste each one in full, with any replies under it]
Hashtags to choose from: [your list]
Do not say: [your list]
Write:
A. One post per piece of material above, three to five in all. Each post must fit the character limit, counting spaces. Show the character count after each one.
B. For each post, two to four hashtags from the list, placed at the end. Write multi-word tags with a capital letter for each word.
C. For each photo, alt text of one to three plain sentences that says what a person who cannot see the image needs to know.
D. One reply for each post by other people above. Each reply must answer or add to what that person said.
Rules for every post and reply:
- Open with the specific thing, not with a greeting or a question to the reader.
- Plain sentences, the way the owner talks. No sales language, and no "visit us", "book now" or "check out" lines.
- At most one post links to the website page.
- No business mention in a reply unless the person asked for a recommendation.
- If a post touches a topic the server's rules say needs a content warning, suggest the warning text.
- Do not invent facts, prices, results or experiences the owner did not give you.
- Mark anything you are unsure of with [CHECK].
After the drafts, list in one line each any reply that would be a bad idea to post, and why.What comes back is a numbered set of posts with their character counts and hashtags, alt text for each photo, a reply under each post you pasted, and a short list of warnings. Take the warnings seriously. If the AI flags that a thread is an argument, a joke or a complaint about someone else, the right move is usually to skip it.
When the week is done, paste back the versions you actually posted, ask the AI what you changed and why, and ask it to fold those changes into the brief. Save the updated brief. That is how the skill improves from one week to the next.
How to judge it
Read every draft as a stranger scrolling a hashtag feed would. You can reject a bad one in under a minute if you know what to look for.
It sounds like an ad. "Excited to share", "game-changer" and "check out our" mark a draft that will be scrolled past, and on Mastodon it can get the account muted. A good post reads like something you would say out loud to a customer at the counter.
The hashtags are a wall. A post that ends in eight broad tags reads as spam to Mastodon users. Two to four specific tags that real people follow beat a long list of popular ones. A multi-word tag written all lowercase is a sign the AI ignored the brief, and a screen reader will stumble over it.
The alt text says nothing. "Image of a shop" or "photo" is not a description. Good alt text tells the reader what the photo shows that matters to the post, in a sentence or two. If the AI described something you did not mention, check the photo, because it guessed.
It opens with a question to the reader. "Did you know..." and "Ever wondered..." are filler. Open with the thing itself.
The reply misreads the post. A bad reply answers the general topic instead of what the person said, treats a joke as a question, or offers advice nobody asked for. If you would not say it to that person face to face, delete it.
It pitches under someone else's post. If a reply works fine without your business in it, take the business out. If it only works with your business in it, it is an ad and it does not belong there.
It claims something you did not supply. An AI filling a gap will state a price, a timeline or a past job in a confident tone. Delete every fact you did not give it, and check every line marked [CHECK].
Every post has the same shape. Five posts that each open with a claim and end with a tip read as a template. Ask for variety, or rewrite two of them by hand.
What stays with you
The AI writes drafts. Five parts of this job stay with you, and they are the parts people on Mastodon actually notice.
The server. Which server you join decides who sees your posts first and what the rules allow. Read the rules page before you join, and check whether business accounts are welcome there. No AI can make that call for you, because it depends on who you want to reach.
The material. The specific moments that make a post worth boosting come from your week, not from the AI. If you have nothing real to say this week, post less, however good the drafts sound.
Every claim. Check every name, date, price and promise before it goes out. Get permission before you mention a client, show their work or quote what they said. If you work in health, law, finance, real estate or another licensed trade, decide in advance what you will not say in public, and keep it out of every draft.
The descriptions. Read each piece of alt text against the actual photo. You are the one who knows what is in the frame and why it matters. The alt text guide covers what a good description includes.
The conversation and the post button. When someone replies to your post, the answer is yours to give. That is where people decide whether the account is a real person worth following. You post from your own account, as yourself, and you do not hand the account to a tool that posts or replies on its own.
An editorial example
This is an invented example to show the skill, not a real business.
Say you run a one-person bike repair shop in a mid-sized town. This week a customer asked why their brakes squeal in the rain, you rebuilt a wheel that someone else had given up on, and you noticed three people in a row came in with tires far below the right pressure. You write those three things down in a line each, add one sentence about the photo of the rebuilt wheel, and paste two replies you sent customers by email last month. You also paste a post from a local cycling group asking where people learn basic repairs.
The AI returns three posts, alt text for the wheel photo and one reply. The brake post explains what wet rims do to pads and comes in well under the limit, with two hashtags for your town and for cycling. The tire post states a pressure number you never gave it, so you delete that sentence and write what you actually tell customers. The alt text says the wheel is shown on a truing stand with new spokes, which matches the photo, so it stays. The reply to the cycling group points to the library's repair books and a free community class in two sentences, with no mention of your shop. You read each one once more as a stranger would, fix one line that sounds too polished, and post them across the week from your own account.
None of the posts asks anyone to visit the shop. They show what you know, and that is the whole job.
Where this sits with the rest of your marketing
Mastodon posts work best as a second life for things you already made. A customer question you answer on Mastodon can become a longer post on your website, and a page you already wrote can feed a week of posts, which is the idea behind content repurposing. If you also post on Bluesky, the Bluesky version of this skill uses nearly the same brief with a shorter limit, so one sitting can cover both. More jobs like this one, each with its own shape, are on the DIY marketing list.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
