By The growing influence of AI in content creation can’t be understated. AI-generated content is becoming increasingly prevalent in today's digital landscape, and while it can streamline content creation processes, it's crucial to maintain a human touch and authenticity to resonate with your target audience.
Social media is an important communication channel. Ensure you create content that connects with your audience by downloading our free “White-label social media checklist” now.
Retaining authenticity in your social media marketing is more than just a slogan, as it can help you build trust, foster engagement, and strengthen brand loyalty with your clients and their customers. In this article, we’ll provide you with some tips and tricks to help you strike the right balance between leveraging AI's efficiency while maintaining an authentic brand presence.
How much has AI grown in social media?
The global market for artificial intelligence in social media is expected to reach a total value of around $12 billion by 2031—up from $992.7 million in 2021 (Allied Market Research). That’s an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.7 percent.
To understand how fast that growth is, compare that expected CAGR to the expected CAGR for the same period for other strong markets:
- Global social media advertising through 2030: 8.7 percent (Yahoo! Finance)
- Big data analytics through 2030: 13.5 percent (Global Newswire)
- Pharmaceutical logistics through 2030: 6.16 percent (Yahoo! Finance)
The takeaway for agencies and others involved in social media content creation is that AI is poised to play an increasing role in the sector. Understanding how to use AI to help with digital marketing efforts now and in the future is important for those that want to remain competitive.
Use cases for AI in social media post creation
AI already has a lot to offer agencies that are selling social media packages. While the technology isn’t ready to create content all on its own, numerous options exist for using AI to cut costs, save time, and make tedious processes easier for teams.
Content inspiration
Social media is a heavy drain on creative resources as brands must continuously post to stay relevant and present. For example, one study found that businesses on Twitter should post one to five times daily on average (Rev Local). That’s 30 to 150 posts every month per brand. If your agency manages 50 brands, that’s 1,500 to 7,500 posts for Twitter alone.
Eventually, teams run out of ideas to fill all these content needs. AI can help with that. You can ask AI to:
- Generate lists of topics similar to one you already came up with
- Mine the internet for interesting links and stories about certain topics
- Suggest questions that might engage users
Creating content
You can also create social media posts with AI, though it’s important to remember that AI is a tool and not a content creator itself. Just a few content creation uses for AI include:
- Quickly drafting new content. AI can write rough drafts of posts on a variety of topics within seconds.
- Pulling in potential research. You can ask AI to list facts, statistics, or other bits of content you can use in posts.
- Responding to comments and messages. With the right tools, you can draft responses quickly by starting with AI suggestions.
- Outlining content. AI can provide outlines for longer posts that work as templates your team can add to.
Variations on content
When you use AI for social media content, you can have it rewrite posts your team creates so they can be used across various platforms. For example, when managing social media for multi-location businesses, you may need to convey the exact same information in unique ways for locations in different cities. AI can help you do that quickly.
Curating content
Another great use case for creating social media posts with AI is curating content. You may want to include a few links every week to content that would interest or help an audience. AI tools can generate lists of potential links with a few clicks of the mouse and a couple of key phrases.
Analyzing trends
AI can analyze enormous amounts of data and convert that information into insights about audience behavior or what target audiences seem to prefer. Social media marketing teams can use these insights to dial in messaging or provide content that better engages the right consumers.
Hashtag suggestion
Another area where the data capability of AI on social media comes in handy is with hashtags. AI can help teams understand which hashtags are trending so they can create more relevant brand content. It can also help you find little-used hashtags that you can claim for brands.
What should you keep in mind when using AI?
The use of AI in social media management comes with a lot of responsibility. Here are some things you should keep in mind when using AI for content creation and social media management:
- A computer doesn’t think like a human. When working with AI, give it plenty of direction and never assume that the content will be 100 percent ready to go without human assistance. Ensure people review and edit content.
- AI might plagiarize. AI learns to create content by analyzing existing content on the web. If you want a Facebook post about comfortable couches, for example, AI will search for and emulate posts on social media related to that topic. That means there’s a decent chance some of what it spits out might be directly copied, so you should always run a plagiarism checker before you publish.
- AI doesn’t always get facts right. Artificial intelligence bases its knowledge on what’s on the web. If that information is wrong, AI will be wrong. Machines also struggle to parse out complex facts, especially when there are subjective emotional or creative factors at play.
Pros and cons of using AI to help generate social media posts
Using AI for social media marketing comes with benefits and disadvantages. Understanding the pros and cons is important so you can work to balance them for your agency.
| Pros | Cons |
| Processes that include AI are often more efficient, and AI can generate dozens of social media posts in minutes. | The content generated by AI is often awkward or dehumanized, which can hurt a brand’s reputation or ability to engage its audience if it isn’t edited. |
| AI can draw on a never-ending data stream to suggest posts or ideas for social media content. | AI doesn’t always understand the values or voice of a brand, which can lead to content or suggestions that aren’t appropriate for a business. |
| The non-stop production capability of AI helps drive the critical consistency in posting schedules that leads to success on social media. | Cultural context or nuances in certain industries can elude AI, so it’s not the best tool for content creation in all cases. |
| AI is currently advanced enough to provide content that’s grammatically correct and even includes key phrases or other elements you dictate. | AI may have a preponderance of ideas, but it won’t deliver the type of outside-of-the-box thinking an experienced human can. |
| The volume abilities of AI support scaling. | Since AI relies heavily on existing data and algorithms, using it too much can create static content that doesn’t compete well. |
| AI can provide a lot of data and analysis that helps you customize social media marketing approaches for better performance. | AI content isn’t always of the utmost quality, so it may require more layers of quality control. |
Tips for using AI to create your social media posts
If you decide the application of AI in social media will work well for your agency and clients, follow the tips below to enhance your chances of success.
Ensure you understand your audience
AI content is only as good as the direction you provide. When you can offer detailed information about your target audience, AI is better able to generate content that might engage or help that audience. Work to understand your clients’ audiences by:
- Leveraging a social media questionnaire. Start every client relationship by asking questions about their business, goals, and audience.
- Using AI-driven insights. AI can offer analysis of demographics, preferences, interests, and user behavior that helps you publish content that’s right for each client.
- Being involved in the brand’s social media community. Don’t set and forget social media campaigns. Remain involved so you can understand the community’s interactions.
Add personalization and customization
Humanize AI-generated content with the correct brand voice and style. The more personality a brand voice has—think of tone requirements like “tongue-in-cheek” or “motherly”—the more you may need to add to AI-generated content to achieve that voice.
Edit and refine content for enhanced quality
Social media is important in reputation management, and brands can’t afford to have ungrammatical, low-quality, or inaccurate content on their pages. Agencies that use AI to generate any type of content should create processes to edit and refine it. Consider having a human writer enhance the quality of the posts before passing them through normal proofreading and quality assurance channels.
Use AI as an idea generator
When you’re constantly coming up with new social media ideas for businesses, your team can run out of creative steam. AI works well as an idea generator because it can list unlimited topics, ideas, facts, and questions related to prompts you give it—all of which can help spark content ideas.
For the best results, feed AI tools specific instructions. If you enter something like, “List some ideas for Facebook posts about coffee,” you may get a lot of content that isn’t relevant to what you need. Instead, say, “Please provide 25 ideas for topics, questions, and links we can share on Facebook. The content should be related to coffee in some way and be information or topics that young professionals aged 25 to 35 would find interesting. Avoid anything related to health and wellness, politics, and religion.”
Always combine AI with human experience
As previously noted a few times in this guide, AI social media content creation shouldn’t occur in a vacuum. It’s important enough to repeat. Always ensure human experience is present in the instructions provided to the AI as well as the content editing.
Continuously optimize
As with any social media content you create and publish, follow up with analytics. Monitor post performance and customer feedback to understand what AI-generated content works and what doesn’t, and make tweaks to your processes to continuously improve the performance of your social media efforts.
Establish clear guidelines for using AI
AI is a tool, just like any other software program or technology you might use. You likely have written processes that govern how your teams use other tools, and AI shouldn’t be an exception. Create procedures and quality standards that outline what teams should—and shouldn’t—use AI for and what extra steps are required to ensure AI-generated content is appropriately edited.
If you’re using white-label social media management services, clear written guidelines become even more important. They can help ensure vendors and other partners also follow your requirements.
Keep up with AI advancements
AI evolves by leaps and bounds daily, and technology limitations from a few months ago are no longer relevant today. With more than 50 percent of companies already leveraging AI to provide seamless customer experiences, social media agencies can’t afford to fall behind (CompTia).
Keep up with AI innovations, particularly in social media. Encourage your teams to read industry news and play with new tools as they become available so they can recommend how to use them to support clients in the future.
Test and iterate
A top social media management tip is to always test content and processes to push the envelope on performance. Just as you might test what times of day or week you post, you should test AI-generated content variations to find out what works best for each audience. Consider testing AI content against human content as well as content created with the help of both processes.
Pay attention to context and relevance
Always double-check AI-generated posts and other content for context issues. Look up industry terms and any other unique phrases AI includes to ensure they’re used correctly.
6 AI tools—free and paid—to use for creating social media posts
Ready to get started with these valuable technology tools? Here are some paid and free AI tools for social media to consider.
ChatGPT
You can use ChatGPT for social media in a variety of ways. Ask it to generate lists of ideas, discover hashtags you might use, pose frequently asked questions, or write entire posts.
As of the summer of 2023, you can use a free version of ChatGPT. A paid version provides a few more features and ensures you have access to more consistent uptime.
Grammarly or Word-Tune
These are AI editing tools that go beyond a simple spell check. Use them to refine your writing and ensure posts and messages are clear and concise. While there are limited free features you can try out, these are paid tools.
Magic Studio
This easy-to-use photo-editing AI lets you handle a few Photoshop-type tasks with the click of a mouse. You can remove backgrounds or other objects to create images that go with posts or align with a brand. You can use this app for free.
Stockimg.ai
If you want to include images with every post but don’t want staff spending valuable time searching stock image sites, this AI can help. It creates stock images and other visuals.
You can try out this tool with a very limited free plan. Paid plans provide access to more images per month.
Acrolinx
This platform includes AI functionality for creating and managing content. It includes tools and services that help optimize human- and AI-generated content to meet brand values and voice expectations. This is a paid service.
Vendasta’s Social Marketing
Vendasta’s Social Marketing tool includes a number of automations and AI functions to reduce the burden of social media work on agency teams. Some features include:
- Post scheduling. Schedule posts across a variety of platforms from a single dashboard and rely on automations to ensure content is pushed out appropriately.
- AI suggestions for responses. Get AI suggestions in real-time when responding to customer comments or messages.
- AI suggestions for content. Get AI suggestions for hashtags and other content when creating posts.
- Data analytics. Leverage deep data insights about post performance, audience behaviors, and audience sentiment to inform social media strategies.
Frequently asked questions about AI-generated social media posts
How can I ensure my AI-generated social media posts align with my brand’s voice and tone?
Provide detailed instructions for AI when possible. Include links to content you want to sound like or provide examples of previous social media posts for your brand. You can also provide lists of words you don’t want to use or ideas you don’t want to convey. At the end of the day, you might consider adding human editing to refine content created by AI tools.
Are there any ethical concerns with using AI-generated social media content?
Common ethical concerns under discussion regarding AI-generated content include worries about bias, misinformation, and plagiarism. Artificial intelligence learns to create content by “ingesting” huge amounts of content people have created. AI tools mimic this content in an attempt to answer questions or generate responses to directives. This leads to many questions regarding copyright and intellectual property rights.
