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AI is taking the world of social media by storm, but what will the long-term impacts be? Find out on the Iconosquare blog!
Sean Begg Flint
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There’s no denying it; social media and content marketing are currently at one of the most significant crossroads in history, thanks to the emergence of improved AI technology.
But what will the industry look like as we move forward, and how will AI impact social media marketing in the coming years?
It’s fair to say that AI will result in some pretty drastic changes to the type of content we see, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either.
In this post, we will look at how we predict artificial intelligence will change the world of social media, along with the benefits and drawbacks that could arise from further adoption.
Here are some of the key points that we’ll be discussing throughout this article:
Read on to learn more about AI for social media from the digital marketing experts at Position Digital.
AI is a phrase you’ll have seen everywhere recently, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know what it means, what it is, and, crucially, how to use it.
At its core, AI means ‘artificial intelligence’, which means it’s an algorithm that uses machine learning to mirror human thought patterns to provide answers and complete tasks.
If you’ve never looked at AI before, you might be under the impression that it’s a dangerous piece of technology here to end the world, but that isn’t something you need to worry about.
AI is safe, easy to use, and incredibly intelligent, giving you access to a wealth of different layers of functionality with minimal effort required.
It’s a true marvel of the modern age, and we’re excited to see how it develops as more and more users begin to use it.
One thing you might not know is that social media platforms have already been using AI technology for quite some time for various functions.
A few examples of AI social media applications that you may be familiar with are:
Of course, these seem like pretty small applications, given the full potential of AI tools.
With the latest iterations of AI into the iconosquare schedule, ChatGPT, and more… we can do so much more than automate simple tasks. Instead, we can outsource the human thinking process for these tasks to an online intelligence!
Below, we’ve covered some of the most significant impacts AI will have on the social media marketing industry.
A Google Trends graph highlighting the growing interest in ChatGPT in 2023.
From our perspective, one of the major changes that we’re going to see in the coming years is that the quantity of social media content produced each day will skyrocket.
Before the emergence of AI, producing content for social media was a very manual process. You’d have to:
There are many steps, making it a very time-consuming process.
But now, with AI, we’re seeing that with the right prompts and guidelines, tools like ChatGPT can generate engaging social media posts that are perfect for brands, cutting the time needed to create content and produce a social media plan into a fraction of what it once was.
In turn, this makes an active social media presence less of a hindrance and more of a priority for businesses yet to fully harness the benefits of social media, with the effort-to-reward ratio completely flipped on its head.
Modern AI tools can act as an AI social media post generator when used correctly, giving businesses access to a wealth of social post concepts in the blink of an eye.
But what specific parts of the content creation process can AI tools assist with?
By playing around with the varying types of prompts, you’ll find that ChatGPT is very flexible, providing you with whatever you ask for to the letter.
Here are a few parts of the process that we've seen AI handle with ease:
You’ll want these social media posts to reflect your brand correctly, so you need to spend a little time getting to know the platform and providing it with context around who you are, what you do, and what your audience is generally looking for. But from there, minimal effort is required to turn the AI-powered content into a practical, high-quality social media strategy.
This is perfect for businesses looking to start engaging with social media in a more targeted manner! You’ll have AI-generated social media posts designed by an algorithm for your target audience - what more could you ask for?
However, with this increased quantity and ease of creation, we’re likely to see a dip in average quality across most social media channels as businesses turn to artificial intelligence for their social media marketing.
This dip, in our opinion, will be caused by a lack of human touch in the majority of posts we’ll be seeing each time we open up our social media feeds.
Unlike the current state of social media, where businesses are actively turning to relatable human content (with great success, look at Duolingo, Bose, and RyanAir!), we’ll likely see a shift to content that feels slightly more vague, distant, and disconnected.
However, there will still be some great social posts from businesses using AI.
But, and there’s always a ‘but’, we’ll most likely see these from those that have spent the time giving the tool the right level of context and information during the creation process rather than those that have opted for a speedier approach with less attention to detail.
As we’ve touched on above, there are some serious advantages to using AI to create social media posts, but the benefits don’t stop there.
We’re now at a point where AI social media management is a real possibility, allowing businesses to outsource even more of their social media marketing responsibilities.
This will mean that businesses can select posting times for their AI content within their chosen marketing tool - such as the increasingly popular Iconosquare - which helps to save time by giving users the ability to bulk upload content and schedule posts weeks, or even months, in advance!
Combined with the content generator functionality of today’s AI tools, this provides businesses with a seriously powerful approach to marketing strategies on social media channels.
Here are some of the key benefits that businesses will experience when adopting social media AI tools:
Engagement is one of the key metrics you’ll use to measure the impact of your social media activity. Likes, shares, saves, and replies are the key to organic social media growth, so finding ways to get your audience to engage with posts across all social networks is pivotal.
In almost every case, the best way to increase social media engagement is to produce content regularly, targeting each post to your target demographic’s wants, needs, pains, and aspirations.
In order to achieve this, we’d definitely recommend spending some time creating customer personas for your target audience, as you'll be able to use these as prompts for the AI content generator!
Using sophisticated algorithms and contextual prompts, AI social media tools will help you produce pinpoint posts scientifically designed to hit home and drive engagement and growth.
And on top of that, you can even use AI to help you keep track of those key performance metrics by utilizing a social media management platform, where you’ll find all the essential stats in real time!
As with any marketing campaign, cost and return must be considered before you begin utilizing AI to create and manage your social media output.
Thankfully, AI can be a very cost-effective way to get up and running with consistent social media creation. Whilst some tools require a monthly subscription, like Jasper, there are plenty of free tools that are capable of helping you out.
In particular, ChatGPT is one to keep an eye on. It’s a free tool by OpenAI that is getting better and better by the day, with the latest iteration, ChatGPT-4, offering users more options than ever before.
The most significant benefit that AI adoption can offer to any business is its impact on the output rate for content such as social media posts.
Creating a calendar of posts spanning a month or an entire quarter requires constant attention, starting with brainstorms and ideation, moving through to research and validation, then onto the creative design aspects, and finally, scheduling content.
As you can probably tell, this process is complex and requires multiple hands on deck, which isn’t always possible for busy companies with stressed resources.
With AI, you massively reduce the time and resources required to structure a social media strategy, giving every business an easy entry point to social media marketing that’s more efficient and productive than the manual alternative.
For example the Iconosquare AI feature, that allows you to create your captions efficiently at a glance. Enter your caption’s subjects directly into your scheduling feature and get fresh content in seconds. Make your next captions write themselves for free, start your 14-day free trial now.
AI is always learning.
Each time you use the platform, it becomes a little more familiar with your business and audience, giving you high-quality content that’s continuously improving.
As we’ve stated a few times, providing the platform with context is crucial. One of the most critical bits of contextual information to provide the tool is a detailed description of your target audience.
By providing this, you can refine your content in seconds, creating social media content that resonates with the trials and triumphs of your company’s audience demographic.
In turn, this hyper-targeted content is ideally placed to achieve more impressions, shares, likes, and followers, giving your brand the visibility it deserves.
The initial prompt and response from the ChatGPT AI.
The AI-generated social media posts created by ChatGPT.
Additional suggested hashtags for each post generated by the ChatGPT AI, based on a further prompt used to refine the results given.
As you’d expect, there are a few drawbacks and dangers that you need to be aware of before you go full steam ahead with AI social media content - it’s not all sunshine and roses.
With AI, the most considerable risk we can see on the horizon is the possibility of penalties being given to accounts and websites consistently posting low-quality AI-generated content.
In line with the spam guidelines stated by most social media platforms, this type of content will likely lead to removal, suspensions, and possible bans for accounts abusing the rules consistently.
Another drawback that could occur is the creation of insensitive or inappropriate content being released on professional social media channels, with AI unable to rely on human emotion and common sense when producing posts.
If this was to happen, brands could lose followers and suffer considerable damage to their reputation, which could take quite some time to recover from.
In addition to this, there may also be instances where AI generated content is factually incorrect, which could lead to complaints and further issues if it is published before the error is recognised.
In most cases, this can be solved by implementing a human quality assurance process between content creation and posting on social media. As with any content created by a machine, we’d suggest detailed proofing, fact-checking, and utilizing a plagiarism checker before allowing any AI-generated content to go live.
And there we have it - a complete rundown of the impacts that AI could have on social media marketing!
In our opinion, AI is a fantastic tool to have in your arsenal to assist you in the content creation process. But to maintain high standards across your social media channels, you should always add a layer of human emotion and relatability to everything you share with your audience.
By working in tandem with the tool, you’ll be able to produce and release more content, drive more engagement, and increase visibility for your brand, so there’s never been a better time to get started.
We hope you’ve enjoyed our guide to AI social media content - for more insights, head over to the Iconosquare blog!
Sean Begg Flint is the founder and CEO of Position Digital, a digital marketing agency for ambitious and growing brands. They help companies get found online through SEO, creative content, digital PR and targeted outreach.
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