Currently, there are more than 4.7 billion people using social media around the world.
These users access platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn (just to name a few) on a daily basis, for entertainment, to source news, to interact with loved ones, and even to engage with brands.
For businesses, social media platforms have emerged as a valuable way to engage with customers, build important relationships, and gather leads. However, as both social media platforms and their users have evolved, the work involved in building an effective presence has grown more complex.
For many organizations, the main problem in leveraging social media isn’t a lack of skill or knowledge, but the time it takes to establish and maintain an effective social media presence. Crafting personalized campaigns, constantly connecting with audience members, and maintaining an active connection with an audience is time-consuming, tedious, and often requires the skills of social dedicated social media marketing experts or teams.
AI in social media could be the solution.
Like social media, AI has leaped into the mainstream in recent years, reaching a value of approximately $119.78 billion in 2022. The demand for this technology is set to even grow more going forward, with a registered CAGR of 38.1%.
With AI, companies can maximize the potential that social media has to offer and do so rapidly. Along the way, they can gather data and deliver insight, produce automated campaigns, and connect with customers—essentially automating a lot of the tedium involved in the process.
The Rise of AI in Social Media Marketing
Using AI for social media might seem like a relatively new concept, but it actually goes further back than most would assume.
For the most part, many social platforms simply wouldn’t exist without AI. The channels consumers and brands use today leverage AI solutions, in some form or another, with the intent to organize content, and deliver experiences based on specific user preferences.
For companies, AI in social media is an opportunity to accelerate growth and generate new engagement, with minimal effort. And as the use of AI continues to become more mainstream, industries are discovering new ways of using intelligent technology to improve their marketing strategies. Today, AI in social media marketing is used for:
Creating Social Media Content
Effective social media content has to be engaging, interesting, and relevant. To that end, they have to be based on the specific interests of your target audience, which requires research and insight. And once you have all this data, you have to commit to publishing content regularly, on the correct channels, and dedicating time towards engaging your followers in the interest of growing them.
But while creating content for social media marketing is arguably one of the most time-consuming tasks that brands face today—it is a non-negotiable facet of the business. If you want to stand out and be noticed in whatever industry you’re in, you need to have a social media presence.
Many companies have since built dedicated departments to handle this for them. Others with more limited resources hire an in-house employee or opt to outsource the tasks. With the arrival of AI, businesses now have the option to streamline the social media workstream in a manner that’s both time and cost-efficient.
AI writing assistants, for example, help streamline the content creation process. Tools like Grammarly can make it easier for content teams to develop typo-free material, or more sophisticated platforms like Humbot the top AI humanizer that can be relied on to craft undetectable AI text.
In short, these tools can help writers, marketers, and content teams produce written content faster and more consistently.
Managing Social Media Marketing
Aside from using AI to write content, companies can also leverage AI to help manage and even promote their campaigns.
Many social media platforms powered by AI can capably automate critical workstreams that ensure better marketing efficiency. For example, scheduling and publishing across multiple platforms can easily be done with a few clicks using these tools instead of manually uploading them. The platform can also gather important insight into audience activity so brands can tailor their strategies in an effort to make them more effective.
With the right tools, business leaders and marketers can automatically publish posts, attach content, optimize their copy and schedule, and promote content to the right audiences in seconds.
AI solutions can also ensure companies optimize their marketing efforts over time, with useful insights. Tools can track everything from social media mentions to engagement on the behalf of brands, and provide useful reports for future campaigns. They can even provide advice on which hashtags to use for different posts.
Social Media Chatbots
Chatbots used on social media platforms are usually used for customer service, but they are slowly gaining a lot of ground in the online marketing space as well.
AI-powered chat software can now engage with customers to a degree that they are able to provide effective solutions to customer queries. To that end, they are now reliable options for improving customer care.
A chatbot can also be created to host conversations with customers on the behalf of a business, improving customer relationships and brand loyalty. Businesses can tailor chatbots that showcase the unique aspects of their personality, with a compelling tone of voice, and consistent identity that aligns perfectly with their brand image.
These chatbots can also collect information from customers, run polls, and collect insights that can contribute to later social media marketing campaigns.
Social Media Listening
As mentioned above, one of the most effective uses of AI in social media comes from listening tools, which make these platforms capable of collecting insightful data.
These AI-powered tools can deliver more comprehensive information about a company’s audience, their preferences, and even their perception of the brand.
It can also let companies learn everything they need to know about the topics and trends in their industry, making it easier for companies to leverage trending news relevant to their audience.
Armed with the right tools, businesses no longer have to search through articles and webpages, or scour through pages upon pages of news reports to find something worth curating for their brand, they can simply rely on the platform they’re using to analyze huge amounts of content in seconds, then deliver actionable insights.
Using AI-focused listening tools, businesses can also get insight into keywords and hashtags they should be using in their posts. They can track global brand mentions, find new audiences to target, keep tabs on their reputation and even monitor competitors.
Social Selling Tools
As social media platforms have grown more popular, customers are beginning to use them for a wider range of use cases, including purchasing products. According to some studies, social commerce is now a $1.2 trillion business.
With AI automation and bots, companies can streamline the process of selling to their customers across a range of social media platforms. These tools can provide users with access to products within chat widgets and social conversations and allow consumers to complete purchases without ever having to leave their chosen platform.
AI systems are also available to help connect social media sales platforms to other tools within the business ecosystem, like ERP, CRM, and inventory management software. This ensures business leaders can keep a close eye on all sales using an omnichannel strategy.
Optimizing Social Media Marketing Campaigns
There are various AI tools that can help companies to optimize and enhance their online presence. For example, AI story generators can offer insight into keywords and phrases companies should be using to boost engagement. Intelligent analytics systems are another and can help provide advice on which campaigns are driving the most sales and conversions.
AI tools can also help companies to find influencers to work with as part of their marketing campaigns. AI-driven platforms can be used to identify potential influencers who meet the criteria of specific brands. It can constantly monitor topics, content, and audience responses, to help companies find the right partners for their brands.
The same tools can also monitor posts created by influencers and watch for issues of fraud and spam. This helps companies to maintain their reputation when they’re working with other innovators online. With an all-in-one AI dashboard, companies can access everything from insightful benchmarks to post-analytics.
Creating Social Influencers
Perhaps one of the most interesting examples of AI in social media marketing comes from the production of AI influencers and content creators.
“Virtual influencers” have become increasingly popular in recent years, with the rise of the Metaverse and extended reality. In fact, one study found that around 58% of Americans now follow at least one virtual influencer online.
These AI-generated influencers allow companies to consistently promote their products round-the-clock, interact with their audience, and design new campaigns.
For instance, Lil Miquela is one of the best-known virtual influencers around. The virtual online personality has already released her own single, and music video. She’s also worked alongside major brands like Prada, Calvin Klein, and Dior.
Unlike most influencers, AI-generated influencers can work at all times of the day and can quickly adapt to suit the styling and branding of any company.
The Benefits of AI in Social Media Marketing
The benefits of AI in social media marketing can be phenomenal when the technology is used correctly.
In recent years, companies have begun embracing AI technology to streamline their content production process, save time, and cut costs. AI can help brands to reconnect with their audience, open new avenues for promotion, and even optimize campaign results.
The biggest benefits of AI in social media marketing include:
- Increased Revenue: AI is a fantastic tool for optimizing the performance of social media campaigns and posts. It can assess huge amounts of data at a phenomenal speed, providing companies with clear insights into how they can reach the right audience, and boost engagement. Because AI with machine learning capabilities can also learn over time, it can deliver consistent, gradual improvements to each brand.
- Unlock New Opportunities: AI systems can assess the marketplace on the behalf of a company, and pinpoint new opportunities for growth. It can offer information on competitors, to help businesses differentiate themselves. Plus, it can find new audiences for companies to target when they want to expand their reach. AI also has the potential to unlock new opportunities for customer engagement, through chatbots and automated social selling.
- Reduce Costs: AI in social media can be a fantastic tool for companies looking to reduce their spending but increase their revenue. You can automate and scale the creation of social media content in no time with AI writing tools. Plus, companies can automate posts to be published at specific times, reducing the need for human employees to manage campaigns. It can even reduce the costs associated with answering customer questions via chat.
- Save Time: Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of AI in social media marketing, is that it can save businesses a significant amount of time. With AI, it’s possible to create content in a matter of seconds, rather than spending hours on campaigns. Posts can be scheduled to publish automatically, allowing marketers to focus on other value-added tasks. Plus, companies can easily assess data in minutes.
- Preserve Brand Reputation: With social listening tools, companies can improve their brand reputation, and keep their finger on the pulse of audience perception. This can be particularly important at a time when customer opinions are easily swayed. Plus, with AI tools to help companies optimize and write the best content, business leaders can ensure a consistent level of success across all of their channels.
It’s worth noting, that while AI solutions in social media marketing have a lot of benefits, they’re not without their challenges. Automating social campaigns using AI tools may be efficient, but relying too much on them can result in output that makes a brand sound canned or robotic. It is still highly recommended to always make sure that a human writer or editor can help guide content development using AI tools.
There’s also a chance that AI tools can occasionally make mistakes. For instance, an AI-generated copy may not be entirely correct from a grammatical perspective. The technology is still subject to error. But this doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be experimenting with AI in social media. It simply suggests any business leveraging AI in its content or marketing toolkit should also be double-checking and monitoring output.
Will AI Change Social Media Marketing?
While it’s difficult to say for certain how much AI in social media marketing will influence the landscape going forward, we can see a lot of great examples of its impact so far.
Currently, AI is helping businesses around the world save time and money by being efficient content production and editing tools.
With AI, you can create posts in seconds, manage your campaigns by yourself, and even expand your reach across multiple social media channels with minimal effort. AI has the power to truly transform the way we think about social media marketing. The only caveat is that companies will need to be cautious about how they leverage this tool; but if it’s used thoughtfully and implemented well, AI in social media could be the key to transforming your digital marketing presence.