Should you be using Generative AI for your social media?
- Ailsa Kemp
- Sep 27, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 1, 2023
Generative AI has captured the world's imagination and desire to make things easier. Many industries are still grappling with what it means for various skill sets but for the sake of this article, should you be using it for your social media?
Like all things, I think it is a balancing act. While Generative AI can help speed up your content creation by helping write blog articles (yes, I wrote this) or social captions, it can't (yet) understand human emotion and replicate authenticity. As more brands adopt it to try and save time and money, the ones who don't rely on it completely will be the ones to win out in the end. Audiences have always been able to smell robotic copy and it usually pushes them away. On social media especially, audiences want realistic, engaging and humanising content that lifts the veil and shows the faces behind a brand.
So you shouldn't use it at all?
Like I said, it's a balance. Let's look at some pros and cons:
Pros:
It can help you to save time and money but only if you understand how to use it and what prompts to use. You can find lists online that will help you to figure out what prompts to use but even then, be aware of what content it's giving you.
It can give you a list of ideas on what to post in social media. This is great if you're stuck for inspiration or are struggling to stick to consistent posting. Just make sure to add your own sprinkle of pizzazz.
You can ask it for hashtag ideas. This can help you to narrow down what ones to use, but make sure you then check those to make sure they're being searched for and are appropriate for your audiences.
You can create and scale a lot of content very quickly. This is handy if you're trying to build a catalogue of articles or ideas but I recommend going through and rewriting or editing what it gives you.
It can help you stay on top of trends and keywords by analysing general data. This can help you to create your content that targets these trends to increase your conversion and sales, saving you a lot of time in research.
By using AI, you can keep a consistent tone and voice in your posts and content. It can also help you to create better images and videos.
Depending on what business you're running, generative AI can help you to run after hours customer service and management on your social channels. It can also help you draft customer emails and responses if you're struggling.
Cons:
We are only just navigating the murky waters of who owns any content written by generative AI. Be careful where you're publishing it and whether or not you're profiting off the content - generative AI companies may put in copywrite complaints.
With so many people using it and usually recreating the same prompts, the content response you're getting will be same. It's not going to look good when brands are sharing identical captions or articles. Make sure you're checking any content the generators are giving you and I strongly advise you use it for inspiration and rewrite parts.
People will think it replaces the need for creativity and marketers. It's not hard to find an outline for how to build a social media strategy, what you should include in your captions etc, but experts understand how to tailor these ideas to your brand, goals and audiences. Generative AI can only give you the basics. If you don't know how to build off it and expand, you're not going to get the results you want.
Be careful about feeding data into the systems, and absolutely under no circumstances should you be sharing customer information. Just recently, several large businesses got into trouble for having employees who fed sensitive customer data into AI systems to write scripts and algorithms. Those systems were then breached so be careful about the information you're sharing, even if it's just audience profiling.
AI can't replicate, understand or value human emotion - one of the foundations of successful social media strategy.
The last one I'll mention here is the loss of human touch. Like I said above, audiences don't like feeling like they're talking to a machine or that content was spat out by a robot. Make sure you're mixing a healthy dose of human into your social media content and strategy.
So will you be using generative AI in your social media management and strategy?
