Social Media and AI: How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Marketing Content

Artificial intelligence is changing the way that businesses approach marketing, and social media is no exception. Social media content is the backbone of building long-lasting relationships with your audience, and AI technology is reshaping what marketers can – and should – do to build their brand. Let’s break down how AI is transforming social media content creation and the advantages and disadvantages of this technology.

A History of How AI is Changing Social Media Marketing

While artificial intelligence is currently major news for modern marketers, the history of generative AI dates back to the 1950s. Generative AI really took off in the ‘90s and 2000s as new hardware and digital data became more accessible. These tools helped inspire a new age for machine learning, allowing generative AI tools to take existing data and artifacts to create content, inspire ideas, and assist marketers in a variety of other ways.

The social media world specifically took a major turn toward utilizing AI in the early 2010s when Facebook started using facial recognition technology. Various social media platforms quickly adopted AI-powered technology – Instagram provided personalized content based on user preferences, the platform formerly known as Twitter adopted an algorithm to show users more relevant Tweets, etc.

These days, it’s not just the platforms that have access to AI. There are a variety of AI tools to assist your social media content efforts. Here are some of the best AI tools for social media marketing efforts.

• Canva, Lensa, and Midjourney – Create and edit images with AI prompts.
• ChatGPT and TeamGPT – Draft conversational copy, conduct research, and provide other text-driven information.
• EngageAI – Generate personalized LinkedIn comments and monitor valuable hashtags.
• CreatorIQ – Discover and evaluate influencers for your brand.
• Sociable.ai – Automate responses for social media interactions.
• Jasper.ai - Assists with creating high-quality content more efficiently.

Advantages of AI in Social Media Marketing

Social media and AI are no new combination, but the recent evolution of generative AI opens up so many possibilities for businesses. There are a variety of ways that social media marketers can use AI for content creation.

Improved content efficiency and effectiveness

Creating social media content takes time. AI can make that process take less time. One of the biggest advantages of AI is that it streamlines a lot of different processes.

From tedious tasks to major marketing endeavors, there’s only so much time for marketers to tackle their tasks. Here are some ways that AI can make your social media efforts more efficient.

• Assistance with content ideas and research.
• Draft social media copy that you can adjust as needed.
• Provide editing help with current copy.
• Generate images and videos.
• Create templates for various types of content.
• Optimize posting times.
• Analyze post performance.
• Identify target audiences.
• Generate performance reports.
• Automate customer responses via chatbots and other technology.
• Automate the discovery of relevant influencers.
• Predict the potential success of partnerships between brands and influencers based on past campaign data.

Whether you use AI for one or all of the above efforts, you can enjoy some serious time saving. Even if AI only gets you 10% of the way there, that’s still means less work than you had before.

Inspire new content opportunities

It’s one thing to speed up your ability to create content, it’s another to expand your content potential. AI technology provides social media marketers with the dual benefit of both quality and quantity.

To start, these tools can analyze existing data and content to offer up new ideas that can lead to different types of content. They can also turn existing content into even more content. Here are some ways that AI can broaden your social media efforts.

• Break down existing posts to produce additional content.
• Take other forms of written content like blog posts and break them into individual posts.
• Turn longer videos into Instagram Reels and other short-form videos.
• Forecast viral post opportunities.
• Monitor brand mentions and conversation from outside users.
• Use existing insights like engagement to customize content strategies around user interests.

Brand personalization

AI can personalize more than just the content social media users see. Odds are that your brand isn’t going to look and sound exactly like every other business.

Whether you need a whole post or just a cover photo for a video, different AI tools can help you maintain that carefully crafted branding that your audience already knows. For example, you can train AI to tailor your content with the following facets in mind.

• Brand identity and tone of voice.
• Color palette, fonts, and other elements of your brand’s visual identity.
• Preferred grammar, spelling, and other preferred writing style rules.
• Customer personas.

Disadvantages of AI in Social Media Marketing

As we’ve stated before, AI is a great tool. However, every tool has its downsides. In general, generative AI has a few potential limitations.

• Inaccurate information. AI uses existing data, but what they use isn’t always accurate. Users need to take all information with a grain of salt and fact check AI results.
• The quality of results can vary. Even if the results are accurate, they can still be bad. What you get isn’t always what you want, so you may need to tweak your prompts and offer feedback until the results work for you.
• Some people don’t trust AI. There are plenty of people who aren’t fans of AI for a variety of reasons. Members of your audience may not appreciate obvious uses of AI or question its validity.

While these issues affect all facets of marketing, they can negatively affect your social media content in a few specific ways.

Authenticity

Social media is a tremendous tool for creating real bonds with your audience. AI can help you build those relationships, but it can also create a disconnect with your ideal audience.

Balancing efficiency and authenticity is one of the biggest challenges for social media marketers. Time is money, but a lack of authenticity can cause users to drift away from your brand. If you’re not careful, AI content can:

• Lack your desired tone without proper training.
• Come off as shallow and robotic.
• Feel like a canned answer if you use automated responses for user comments and messages.
• Lack that personal touch that users want to see from brands.

The key to avoiding these issues is to make sure that there’s always a person behind every piece of social content. Avoid using AI content verbatim. Your social media posts should come across as authentic as possible, so personalize your AI content and review user comments and messages so that people know your brand is really there for them.

Creativity

AI isn’t supposed to do everything for you. The allure of automating everything is strong, but an overreliance of using AI can turn into a crutch that can kill your creativity and lead to lesser results. For example, using AI to drive too much of your social media content creation can:

• Produce a lot of content that’s too similar to past posts because AI identified a pattern.
• Cause people to do go back to what they know works instead of trying something new and testing it.
• Take away a lot of what makes your brand unique by drawing from everyone else’s data.
• Lead people to rely on a machine’s recommendations because it’s easier than being original.

As with authenticity, it’s essential to remember that AI is a digital double-edged sword. AI isn’t an automatic death knell for innovation. AI can give you the seeds for new ideas, but you shouldn’t let it plant the whole tree for you. Just don’t develop a bad habit when it comes to relying on AI tools.

Deception

AI is great in a lot of ways, but it can be dangerous if you’re not careful. A lot of people are already tired of seeing their newsfeeds flooded with AI images and AI bots – and sometimes even AI bots commenting under AI posts. The range of harmful possibilities varies greatly, as AI content can:

• Trick users into thinking that AI generated content is real, especially among user groups who are less likely to tell what is real or not.
• Spread misinformation, even if you don’t intend to do so.
• Create disillusionment among your audience when people discover that something you posted isn’t real.
• Lead to potential legal issues, such as if you use someone’s likeness without permission.

The best defense against these dangers is human oversight. You should always have someone monitor what your AI creates and nix anything that would at all seem deceitful. Don’t let AI do anything that you wouldn’t do normally and make sure that people aren’t going to feel like your brand is lying to them with your content.

Prepare for the Future of AI in Social Media Marketing

Whether you’re using AI for your business’ marketing efforts or not, this technology is becoming an increasingly important part of social media. The key is using it responsibly to take advantage of these tools – Aztek has even put together our own guidelines on how to embrace generative AI for marketing.

Need some help building a successful social media strategy for your brand? Reach out to Aztek today to learn how we can support your business’ digital marketing efforts.