"Content in a flash" represents AI's unique selling point when discussing its applications on social media or other online platforms. Thus, AI's capability to handle content generation has accelerated its adoption among marketers as it frees up time for other revenue-making activities, such as outreach and strategy planning. You can also benefit from AI as we unpack tips and steps for using it in content creation.
- Benefits of AI in Social Media Campaigns
- Using AI to Create Engaging Social Media Visuals
- Automating Routine Content Creation Tasks with AI
- Generating Fresh Ideas and Producing New Content with AI
- Optimizing Content Performance with AI
- Building an Automated Social Media Content Agent
- Streamlining Your Social Media Management with AI
- Caveat: AI for Social Media Content Creation Isn't "Plug and Play"
Benefits of AI in Social Media Campaigns
AI has many use cases in social media marketing, which we‘ll discuss more thoroughly in this article. But before sinking our teeth into each one, here are the reasons why using AI-driven tools is worth exploring and investing in:
1. Increased productivity
AI enables you to automate various tasks—from simple to more complicated processes, hastening their completion times. In this piece, we'll dive deep into:
- Image creation
- Content generation
- Ideation and written content production
- Content optimization
- Social media agent creation
- Streamlined social media management
2. Improved customer satisfaction
AI learns from data. The insights gathered from data—such as what headlines, images, and words lead to the most engagement aside from ideal posting times—allow you to optimize social media posts. Analytics can also help you predict future actions, making your audience targeting and content planning on point (for prospects) and personalized (for current clients), thanks to AI's trends and sentiment analysis capabilities.
By analyzing user behavior, AI can deliver personalized content recommendations that align with individual interests. This ensures each user receives tailored content, enhancing their overall experience.
Chatbots are another powerful application of AI that can elevate customer satisfaction. Using natural language processing (NLP), chatbots offer instant, personalized responses that mimic human interactions, ensuring customers feel heard and valued around the clock.
At the same time, AI can spot problematic issues—including negative feedback—using past data. With this knowledge, you can take action to avert, address, or mitigate controversial statements and protect your brand's image.
3. Cost reduction
Integrating AI into social media campaigns can transform marketing by reducing costs and improving efficiency. AI automates repetitive tasks, minimizing the need for manual labor and significantly cutting expenses. These tools analyze vast amounts of data, offering insights that would take hours for humans to uncover, such as keyword research and idea generation.
AI enhances accuracy and speed, allowing businesses to achieve goals more quickly while freeing up time for high-quality content creation and audience engagement. Additionally, AI-powered tools are designed for scalability. Thus, optimization tools with social monitoring and listening functions can effectively handle increased post volume, posting frequency, and follower numbers.
By optimizing social media posts based on data-driven insights, AI ensures content resonates with the target audience, ultimately leading to a stronger online presence and improved performance all the while reducing your overall costs.
Using AI to Create Engaging Social Media Visuals
In the US, generating images and videos is the second most popular way creators use AI (20.9%), according to a recent survey.
Meanwhile, Hootsuite's Social Trends 2024 report shows that image generation through AI will grow 52% in the next 12 months.
AI tools allow marketers to reduce expenses on licensed images, photography, videography, photoshoot venues, and human models. AI can automatically adjust angles, lighting, and focus. This significantly reduces production and editing time.
One notable example is TikTok's Symphony AI, which has been adopted by 74.3% of marketers who find its suite of tools highly attractive for creating engaging content. Symphony AI not only assists in generating personalized visual content but also enhances brand favorability by 38%, according to recent data from our TikTok Marketing Report 2024. This demonstrates the power of AI-driven tools in creating visually compelling content that resonates with audiences on platforms like TikTok.
BMW car retailer Jan Nygaard uses Phyron to produce still images and videos to showcase its best cars online. Using the AI tool has reportedly led to 88% in savings. Moreover, the company can finish in a day the job that had taken them 3 weeks to complete. Phyron did the background removal and replacement, image resolution upscaling, and other editing required.
With this knowledge about AI's capabilities, how can you integrate its use in your own business?
1. Select the right software.
Including photos, illustrations, charts, infographics, and videos with your written content can spark conversations. But with the multitude of AI image generators in the market, how do you select the appropriate tool you need? These steps can help:
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Examine the software's features.
Study the kind of design styles and image types you can create, their quality, and whether the output aligns with your brand's look or designs.
For instance, Midjourney is known for producing highly artistic and imaginative visuals, making it ideal for brands seeking a unique and creative touch. On the other hand, DALL·E by OpenAI excels at generating detailed and contextually rich images, which can be particularly useful for marketing materials that require storytelling through visuals.
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Check its ease of use.
Is the interface or dashboard easy to navigate? What editing options does it have—for adding text, changing colors, or applying filters? Can you upload the generated image/video onto the social platforms you use? Test the software to determine user-friendliness and compatibility with your other systems.
DALL·E’s user interface is intuitive, making it accessible even for beginners, while Imagen by Google Cloud integrates seamlessly with other Google services, streamlining the workflow for those already using Google's ecosystem.
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Consider the price.
Select a platform that fits your budget and has the features you need. While Midjourney offers a range of subscription tiers that cater to different levels of usage, DALL·E provides a pay-per-use model, allowing flexibility based on your specific needs.
You can check our article on AI image generators and AI logo generators to explore free and paid options.
2. Optimize your text prompts.
Use specific descriptions when entering your AI prompts. Instead of just saying "muffin pan," say "12-cup, cast iron muffin pan." Also, include specific actions when you’re generating an image of a person, object, or animal.
Remember to add design style terms, such as “sketch,” “artistic,” “cartoons,” “3D,” or “realistic.” When your image features people or scenery, specify the mood—happy, sad, or foreboding—to produce a more accurate result.
3. Customize the visuals with your brand elements.
Ensure the solution accurately reflects your brand colors, logo, and fonts for consistency across your marketing materials.
4. Test and analyze the results.
Conduct A/B testing on a small audience to see how the AI-generated output performs. Monitor the results and make necessary adjustments.
See AI in action: Canva’s Text to Image Tool
In this video tutorial, Keegan Edwards, CEO of New Media Retailer, shows how to use Canva's AI-powered "text to image" feature. The design app partnered with OpenAI and Stable Diffusion to make this possible.
When the "Text to image" window displays, the left panel has a space on top for typing your prompt. Below this blank box are the different design styles and samples for each.
Canva creates four images but can show more when you click "Create again."
Once you find the image you want, tap the "Share” button on the screen's upper right corner. Then, choose "Download" or "Share on social" from the new pop-up window.
Automating Routine Content Creation Tasks with AI
In an MIT study conducted in 2023, survey participants preferred AI-generated marketing copy over content written by humans when the text's origin wasn't disclosed beforehand. Thus, it’s no surprise that AI's superior "writing ability" has captured many a marketer's heart, leading to its integration into the workflow. When automating the production of text-based content, consider the following:
1. Have a clear objective.
Your goal—scheduling, SEO, engagement, or analytics—will determine the most suitable AI content-generating solution for you or your team.
2. Explore your options.
Check our article on AI writing tools for busy marketers to get an overview of platforms for this purpose. Select software that aligns with your proficiency level and offers CRM integrations.
3. Train your team and integrate AI use gradually.
Hold training sessions and set a learning window, so your team can get comfortable with the new technology. Start using AI in one or two of the following tasks or processes and study the results before expanding its usage. Some functions may already be part of your routine:
- Ideation and outline creation
- Plagiarism check and AI detection
- Content optimization
- Content structure and creation (headings and writing of body text)
- Scheduling post publication
4. Personalize content.
Customize your content according to your audience's location, language, culture, and preferences.
5. Use analytics to determine the best posting times.
Analytics can show you when your target audience is most engaged in each platform. View our suggested real-time analytics tools to help you identify your followers' peak engagement period. This way, you can automate the publication of posts during those high-traffic days and hours.
See AI in Action: Airtable
Stephen Pope is the founder of Kontent Engine, which specializes in AI-enabled content management automation. He produced a tutorial on how to "automate 99% of content workflow" using Airtable. Although the platform has functions similar to project management tools like Monday.com and ClickUp, Pope said Airtable can help you create over 100 unique content pieces for distribution across the internet weekly.
You'll find the Workflow feature on the app's Content tab/window. The process starts with ideation where you and your team decide what content to create.
Once you've listed your content items, you can create a workflow using Airtable's Kanban board. For a YouTube video, for instance, the production stages include "test idea," "pick record/publish dates," "thumbnail creation," "script," "record," "edit," and "repurpose."
The platform also allows you to look at each asset at a granular level (publish date, the brand it's associated with, media type, production status, team member assigned to work on it, and the project folder where it belongs).
Moreover, Airtable allows you to use ChatGPT from within the app to generate titles and social media posts based on a video's transcript.
The project manager or person in charge can view the content at any stage and give feedback or instructions for the video editor to act on. The platform also lets you give clients limited access to view content in progress.
Generating Fresh Ideas and Producing New Content with AI
Although AI isn't supposed to replace human creativity, writer's block can hit the best of us. After all, thinking of new topics or themes every week can be draining. Moreover, your team may develop a bias and follow a safe track.
When that happens, AI can be the friend that offers fresh—or even wild—ideas to inject variety and spice into your social media marketing. After your chosen tool generates suggested topics, you and your team can brainstorm to refine it into something that mirrors your brand's creative vision.
1. Enter long-tail keywords.
To get more relevant suggestions from AI, type in keywords and other descriptive words specifying what you need. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude are particularly adept at understanding and processing long-tail keywords, offering nuanced and context-rich content suggestions that align closely with your needs.
2. Experiment with word and phrase combinations.
Try pairing different keywords and phrases related to a theme. You can also merge two AI-generated results to see if the tool can produce something novel. Or you can enter a question (4 Ws and 1 H) as your prompt to draw out more detailed content ideas. Gemini, for instance, excels at generating diverse and creative combinations, allowing you to explore unique angles for your content.
3. Let AI ask you questions.
Make AI ask questions about your content goals to arrive at a more comprehensive idea list. For example, type: "I want to discuss productivity during seasons of exhaustion in a post series. Ask me specific questions, one at a time, on how to stay productive despite feeling physically drained." Perplexity AI stands out here with its interactive questioning capability, prompting you to think deeper and refine your content strategy.
4. Circle back to your audience's interests and needs.
Choose your prompts and resulting AI content ideas based on your followers’ demographics and expectations. Tools like Claude and ChatGPT can tailor suggestions that resonate with your audience by analyzing the language and preferences that appeal most to them.
5. Refine and prioritize.
Go over the AI-generated results and change the sequence after identifying your favorites. You can review your past top-performing themes when deciding on your final selection. Then, modify the wording of your chosen idea based on your brand voice, style, and mission. Gemini's advanced capabilities in content refinement help ensure that the final output aligns seamlessly with your brand’s voice.
6. Scrutinize AI output for accuracy and compliance.
Assign reviewers who will cross-check AI-generated ideas to prevent misinformation and legal issues, especially if you're in the healthcare, legal, or finance sector.
See AI in action: SocialBee's AI Post Generator
SocialBee's AI assistant has a post generator feature, which allows you to type in a prompt yourself or select from their customizable "suggested prompts."
This video overview shows that the platform provides prompt templates for each social channel. It also allows you to set the tone of voice and number of AI-suggested posts before clicking "Generate."
After tapping the “Generate” button, the AI output appears on the right-most part of your screen.
Optimizing Content Performance with AI
Marketers can employ various AI-aided techniques to optimize content. These include:
1. Sentiment analysis through natural language processing
AI uses algorithms to process large volumes of text from social followers and classify text inputs as positive, negative, or neutral. The results can help you improve your campaigns, including how you promote your product or service features.
See AI in Action: Brand24
Brand24 used its brand mentions feature to conduct a Twitter sentiment analysis on the Crocs brand. This video shows that the platform can display a graph showing positive and negative tweets side by side within the user's specified timeframe. However, an option is available to show positive or negative messages only. The user can also click on "Sources" to view who the tweets were from.
2. Keyword research
Using AI-powered tools to identify keywords relevant to your brand and niche allows you to align your messaging with specific user intent or a social follower’s goal for typing a specific search query.
See AI in Action: Mandala AI
Mandala AI displays the most trending keywords and hashtags across various platforms in the last three, 12, 24, and 48 hours. The listing provides the number of mentions and engagement for each keyword.
Meanwhile, keyword research leader Semrush doesn't just generate related keywords. Powered by AI, its "Keyword Overview" shows the "volume" or the number of times people search for a specific term monthly. The platform also shows the term's "keyword difficulty." The percentage represents how hard it is for that word to rank in the first search engine results page (SERP). The difficulty level applies even to social media content.
Users of Semrush can access the Keyword Magic Tool to find alternative terms to rank for. By selecting the appropriate suggestion filters (choosing “possible” for KD and 1K to 10K searches monthly for volume), the platform displays the terms that suit your needs.
3. A/B testing
With AI-driven analytics software, you can create several variations of your social post and retain the one that performed well during your A/B test based on your metrics.
See AI in Action: SmarterQueue
SmarterQueue's Variations feature lets you test different versions of your social post. SmarterQueue gives you built-in access to Pixabay, Giphy, and Unsplash for royalty-free visuals. It also has an AI assistant for generating captions. You can view your variations on the right side of the Post Editor by clicking the left and right arrow keys.
After choosing the images and captions to test, users must click "Recycle after Posting" before tapping “Save.” With this action, the platform will automatically publish a different version of your post per cycle.
To determine which image or text performed best, go to Analytics, select "Past Posts" from the drop-down menu, and then locate the post whose performance results you want to view. Click on the three dots and tap "View Stats per Cycle" to display your post's engagement metrics (impressions, likes, comments, and more).
4. Competitor analysis
You can further improve the content of your social posts by researching what your competitors are doing. AI can help you discover your rivals' social campaigns and how the public responds. Your findings can supply the ideas to further differentiate your brand based on strengths and weaknesses you find in others' campaigns.
See AI in Action: Competitors App
To conduct competitor research using Competitors App, specify the companies you want to monitor by typing in their names or website URLs. Click "Add new competitor" to track more businesses. The platform then scrapes the web for these brands' social channels.
You can go to the Dashboard to view a summary of your rivals' social posts by volume, engagement, rankings, and followers for a specific timeframe (for instance, 30 days).
Then you can click on the Activity tab to study their content in detail. The posts appear like a news feed.
Building an Automated Social Media Content Agent
If you find AI-driven content generation impressive, wait—there's more. Enter social media agents, a system that can automate content production from sourcing and compiling post ideas to publishing the post on your social platforms. To create an AI agent, you need automation software, where you assemble your tools and organize their usage sequence to turn a news source (for example) into a fresh post. Once the system is set up, the AI agent can carry out a series of tasks without human intervention.
See AI in Action: Make.com
Make.com is a popular automation platform for building such AI agents. This video shows Alex of the "Surviving Your 20s" YouTube channel selecting an RSS module as the first tool in his automation system. He specifically chose "Watch RSS feed items" to pull in articles from his selected source. The AI agent he set up generates a social media post from new articles from theringer.com.
Meanwhile, Jack Roberts creates an AI agent with Google Sheets as the starting point. He manually selects a specific article for the system to process.
As you can see in the screenshots above and below, both users included OpenAI in their automation. They used it to rehash the original content from the web into new content for their social channels and create matching new images.
However, the two differed in their agents' modules for reviewing and approving posts. Alex used Airtable while Jack chose Google Sheets.
The result? Jack’s AI agent published its post on LinkedIn. It’s based on an article from the American Kennel Club about English Springer Spaniels.
Meanwhile, Alex’s AI agent's output, which comes from a Ringer article on Jennifer Lopez, was shared on Facebook.
Streamlining Your Social Media Management with AI
Streamlining social media workflows includes the topics we have discussed so far, from getting ideas to personalization and studying your post's real-time analytics. What we have yet to cover is using AI to ensure you have a unified brand voice across all your platforms. You can feed your AI tool with your brand voice guidelines to ensure that its generated content is consistent across every customer touchpoint.
See AI in Action: Narrato
You can train Narrato's AI to know your brand voice and apply it to the content, which this platform can also create for you. The app will ask for relevant URLs and existing content to establish what your brand voice is.
Once you've supplied information and clicked "Analyze brand voice," Narrato will write a brief description of your brand voice. You can edit or save as it is. Once saved, your custom brand voice gets automatically added to the brand tone list on all AI writing templates.
Caveat: AI for Social Media Content Creation Isn't "Plug and Play"
AI can dramatically speed up your content production for social media. However, responsible AI usage is crucial in balancing innovation with compliance and privacy. We conclude this article with this advice to social marketing teams: develop a generative AI usage policy. You can begin with a simple set of "do's and don'ts" that can include the following:
Do:
- Use AI to generate and edit content (especially for sensitive topics like social issues and mental health)
- Harness AI for production efficiency
- Conduct some testing and form an AI "toolkit" (even content generators differ in output)
Don't:
- Neglect quality control and publish raw AI
- Assume AI can guarantee improvement (in engagement or other metrics)
- Rely on one AI tool
