Generative AI And Social Media: Redefining Content Creation – Search Engine Journal
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Find out how AI and social media can streamline your marketing efforts while enhancing content creation for greater impact.
Social media offers a valuable channel for businesses to connect with their prospects and current customers.
A whopping 63.9% of the world’s population spends time on social media. Yet, social has also become an increasingly difficult forum to stand out in as more businesses continue to seek to capitalize on the opportunity that awaits.
The need for frequent updates, diverse content dependent on social media platforms, high-quality visuals, and compelling copy puts pressure on marketing teams to consistently deliver, often with limited time and resources.
This is where generative AI comes into play.
AI-powered tools can help automate many aspects of social media content creation, helping brands write witty captions, generate unique images, and even produce videos.
However, leaning on AI to help draft social media content comes with one notable dilemma: efficiency versus authenticity.
In this article, we’ll explore how brands can make the most of generative AI while still adhering to brand standards, diving into how AI can be put to work for social media marketers in an ethical and authentic way that captures customer interest.
Generative AI enables social media marketers to quickly and nearly effortlessly generate different types of content, such as text, images, videos, and even audio.
AI learns patterns from vast datasets and can translate this vast amount of information into content that aligns closely with what a human could create.
Unlike traditional automation, which follows pre-set templates, generative AI generates new content based on the prompts the end user provides.
AI is becoming widely adopted, as 75% of marketers are either testing the waters with AI or have fully implemented AI in their operations.
For social media marketers specifically, AI is being used to help generate post copy, reply to comments, create AI images, and much more.
Generative AI has changed the game for content creation and impacted the way social media marketers engage with their followers and analyze insights across their social media channels.
However, it’s important to note that human creativity remains a must. AI is paramount to incorporate into every marketer’s day-to-day efforts, but it must be used wisely.
Here are a few ways social media marketers use AI to automate routine tasks.
Perhaps one of the primary uses for AI-powered language models is to create engaging content for a variety of divergent social media formats, including:
In order to create relevant content that converts, AI tools analyze what content performs best and what gets customers to engage.
As with any AI-generated content, it’s imperative to have human oversight to ensure your message aligns with brand voice and tone and is factual.
Here’s an example of AI in action.
Consider a travel brand that wants to encourage people to travel to a new destination. It might use AI to create a few different versions of a caption. Here are a few different examples of captions AI created:
With a few versions to choose from, brands can quickly tailor their messaging for different audiences and can pick the one that will resonate most with their potential customers.
Visual content is growing increasingly popular, given the rise of TikTok and Instagram.
A recent study found that nearly 22% of marketers reported that over 75% of their content this year was visual content.
The same study found that 34.3% of marketers said that visual content made up at least 20-50% of their overall content marketing strategy.
Given the high demand for engaging visual content, marketers are tasked with finding the resources (and time) to create high-quality visuals.
Bandwidth constraints and a lack of creatives can lead to marketers producing solely text-based content. Enter Generative AI.
Generative AI can now produce high-quality graphics, illustrations, and videos without requiring a human designer. Below are a few ways AI is reshaping how visual content is made:
Consider a beauty brand that plans to launch a new skincare product. The beauty brand could use AI to:
AI visuals help businesses save on labor like production costs and editing fees while allowing brands to generate unique visuals at scale.
Social media marketers know that engagement is key to growing a business’s social media presence.
AI-powered technology can now manage customer engagement, responding to social media comments and direct messages in real-time.
This helps brands boost engagement while also ensuring customers receive timely, thoughtful responses.
For example, a restaurant brand can use AI automation to:
For example, a popular fast-casual restaurant revamped its customer experience by mining through a plethora of customer feedback to identify areas of improvement.
The restaurant found it could improve its ordering and delivery systems by mining for common negative feedback.
By proactively addressing this feedback and making swift changes, the restaurant was able to boost its Google star rating from 4.2 to 4.4.
A recent global survey found that 38% of professionals in marketing, PR, sales, and customer service identified increased efficiency as the top advantage of using generative AI for social media marketing.
The same report found that 34% of respondents highlight easier idea generation as a key benefit of generative AI, showcasing the technology’s growing role in streamlining content creation and strategy.
Generative AI has many potential use cases such as allowing brands to seamlessly create, manage, and optimize content at a rapid pace that would be difficult to replicate with a human touch alone.
The following are other major advantages of AI in social media.
AI produces content with just a few clicks. Enter a prompt and users will receive a response nearly in an instant.
Social media marketers have turned to AI to help generate captions, posts, responses, and more to help streamline work.
This reduction in time allows social media marketers to focus on actual strategy, drive revenue, and grow the brand’s social media presence.
Social media marketers no longer need to invest time in brainstorming the perfect hashtags, a catchy caption, or relevant copy as AI can generate multiple diverse content variations in seconds.
Responding to comments is an equally essential task and AI enables personalized responses to customer feedback rapidly.
For some brands, their target audience’s frequent different social media platforms. Each platform requires a different content strategy.
For example, longer-form content typically performs well on LinkedIn, whereas shorter-form content is necessary for X (Twitter) given its character limit.
Lean marketing teams may find value in using AI to scale content production to remove some of the burden of work from the team.
For example, an agency running multiple client accounts might use AI to help generate content or brainstorm potential content ideas without hiring additional writers.
AI is able to review a wealth of information in a matter of seconds, analyzing user behavior and preferences to help create relevant content for different audience segments.
AI-driven audience insights enable brands to understand what type of content resonates most.
It can also translate and adapt messages to fit regional preferences as well, adhering to that region’s unique tone and other popular nomenclature.
For example, a fitness brand creating targeted messaging for individual locations across the country might use AI to adjust language, tone, and services based on regional audience behavior.
Prior to AI, copywriting, graphic design, and video editing were left solely to the professionals.
Now, AI tools can present significant cost savings, reducing the need to rely entirely on professionals, if needed.
AI-generated images and videos can eliminate the need for costly video and photo creation and reduce reliance on external agencies.
For example, a small business that may have previously spent thousands on its creative needs can now use AI tools to create ads with minimal effort or expertise.
One of the biggest concerns surrounding the use of generative AI in social media marketing is the risk of losing the brand’s individuality and unique voice.
In turn, the brand can be seen as disingenuous and inauthentic, both of which greatly erode brand trust.
Consumers have become accustomed to AI and are getting smarter at detecting AI-generated content. This is why it’s essential to have a high level of human oversight.
A human must be tasked with reviewing any and every piece of content that gets published, ensuring content matches brand voice and tone.
While AI-generated content can be a game-changer for streamlining work, over-reliance on it and leaving it unchecked can lead to misinformation, impersonal messaging, and generic content that fails to connect with audiences.
To maintain brand authority in the AI era, brands must be deliberate and strategic in their usage of AI.
Creative storytelling and quality content continue to reign supreme.
Only humans can truly discern whether messaging aligns with brand voice standards and will land right with their audience.
Generative AI can best be seen as an assistant, a tool that helps marketers streamline work but still requires editing and oversight.
Left unchecked, it can lead to false information, poor user experiences, and, in extreme cases, lost sales.
To ensure you’re using generative AI in a way that’s ethical, responsible, and meaningful for your target audience, avoid the following tactics:
The current frontier of AI is exciting, presenting myriad opportunities to scale content at a rapid pace.
However, as exciting an opportunity AI may seem, it doesn’t and can’t replace humans.
Only humans have the expertise and emotion necessary to connect with other humans. Striking a balance between automation and authenticity is a must.
Social media marketers who successfully harness AI will strategically use the technology to assist, rather than replace, human creativity.
Those that can strike a balance will be able to take advantage of AI’s myriad benefits while also maintaining meaningful connections with their audiences.
More Resources:
Featured Image: ImageFlow/Shutterstock
Chelsea Alves is a results-driven content marketing leader with extensive experience in digital marketing, content strategy, artificial intelligence, and SEO.
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