Using AI for Social Media Posts
From ChatGPT to Google Assistant, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a part of everyday life. For businesses, it represents major opportunities for cost-cutting, time-saving, and even innovation. The rise of generative AI, in particular, could help businesses handle the often tedious and time-consuming job of social media management.
Social media posts need to be engaging enough to “beat the scroll.” In other words, you want to grab the attention of potential leads long enough for your brand messaging to take hold. Using AI for social media posts could be a game-changer for businesses needing consistent, confident-sounding social media content on tap. It can also help all types of organizations moderate content, gather data, and indulge in relatively new marketing practices such as social listening.
Social Media Content Creation: Why it Matters
It goes without saying that there are more people on social media than ever before. The recently launched Threads app from Facebook and Instagram giant Meta enjoyed 30 million downloads in its first 16 hours. It’s evident that there’s still that hunger to try something new and get even more connected to the people and brands that matter.
For businesses, this is fabulous news. Social media marketing is booming, thanks to increasing methods of engagement with buyers, including short-form videos, photos and other visual content, captions, sponsored posts and advertisements, and surveys. You know from your own social media feeds that ads are becoming more targeted all the time. Businesses can leverage AI-generated social media content to reach potential customers wherever they are.
Social selling, or using social media channels to promote your products and services, is an absolutely essential investment right now. LinkedIn suggests that 78% of businesses using social media for sales are outperforming those that don’t. Social media allows users to connect with brands via content they resonate with. This might be because that content is funny or relatable or because it answers questions or addresses pain points in some way.
Sprout Social reports 98% of consumers planned to make purchases via at least one social media platform in 2022, and that selling via social media could be worth an astonishing $1.2 trillion by 2025. Recommendations from friends and family rate highly when it comes to why people buy certain brands. Nowhere is it easier to prompt recommendations like this than across social media networks.
Like all digital marketing techniques, social media replaces in-person conversations, so the content must be on point. It needs to carry a company’s brand and tone of voice and even demonstrate that business’s values. Can generative AI really achieve this?
The answer is yes. Thanks to natural language processing, it's possible to utilize AI-powered text generators to create effective, short-form social media posts. In fact, the shorter the content, the better AI is at it! Longer-form writing becomes challenging for AI, as its algorithms generally lead to repetition and a lack of variation in sentence structure. However, for short captions, this isn’t an issue at all.
AI is also useful for businesses utilizing the messaging side of social media. Chatbots like Heyday can give surprisingly succinct responses to a wide range of queries and can even reply to comments on your already AI-generated social media posts. Of course, for complex queries or complaints, you need the human touch. But businesses could enjoy boosted ROI and increased productivity by utilizing AI for tasks it’s really, really good at.
Free AI Tools for Social Media
There are plenty of free AI text generators available online right now. It’s worth being aware that not every free option is actually good value. If you have to spend five or ten minutes editing every “free” post you get, it’s probably costing you more personnel hours than simply investing in a skilled freelance writer. Let’s take a look at some of the free options and how they measure up for improving your business’s social media presence.
ChatGPT
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is arguably the most significant AI-based application of the past 12 months. While it’s not the most powerful anymore, thanks to the launch of GPT-4, it’s still completely free to use and can answer just about any prompt.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT to write a social media post about a particular pet food brand and its nutritional qualities. The AI quickly follows the prompt and outputs a post you’d be happy to put on social media, adding appropriate emojis and hashtags. Just remember, though, ChatGPT doesn’t gather data on current marketing trends and has limited knowledge of anything after 2021.
ChatGPT also doesn’t have the ability to search the internet for facts, so it can only include the information you provide. This means you must fact-check all content, so keep that in mind when considering ChatGPT for social media posts.
Anyword
Anyword is a generative AI platform ideal for generating blog posts, articles, and other marketing content. In addition to the paid subscription, it offers a free social media post generator. Simply choose the platform for your desired post — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Then, choose whether you want the AI to “Be Creative” or create copy that’s similar to your input.
Click the blue, sparkly “Generate” button and, in a few seconds, you have a new social post. These posts are limited to 600 characters, which is fine considering AI-generated text is generally more human-sounding in shorter bursts.
The limitation here is that there are only four networks to choose from, and there’s no information provided about the accuracy of any facts provided. Fact-checking is always recommended! Also, the blurb below the generator states it’s fine for YouTube titles and descriptions, as well as Pinterest content, but those options aren’t available on the drop-down menu.
SocialBee
There’s another free social media post generator on the SocialBee website. SocialBee is a social media management solution with options for scheduling posts and analyzing the impact of social media campaigns. You don’t need to sign up for an account to use the free social media resources, but there’s a lot of advertising prompting you to do so! You can ignore it and just use the free tools, though, so this could be a useful solution for businesses on a tight budget.
The interface is more complex than Anyword’s. Users can choose templates for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Business Profiles, Pinterest, TikTok, or YouTube. A useful addition here is the ability to create ad copy. You can also choose how many words you want the post to be and whether you want the tone to be funny, witty, enthusiastic, or informational. There are many more ways to customize posts so they're “on brand” without paying extra for these services.
The maximum word count is 100, but you can get this tool to generate multiple posts simultaneously. It took about 10 seconds to generate three LinkedIn posts about building a personal brand — a template option available from the LinkedIn menu on the left-hand side of the interface.
While these posts read really well, it takes time to get used to the interface and familiarize yourself with all the options. However, while this is relatively time-consuming compared to, say, ChatGPT, it allows for a much higher level of customization.
Radaar.io
Radaar.io is another social media management platform with a few freebies to tempt users to sign up. The interface here is one of the most attractive of all the social media post generators, although it lacks the finesse of some. There’s a single box to add prompts and a generate button. You then see a range of results in a horizontal carousel, including both texts and images that are AI-generated and free to use.
One advantage of using the Raadar.io generator is that you can share these posts directly from the interface to your social accounts. Alternatively, you can download the posts to use at a later date. While this tool looks great and is super easy to use, there are no options for personalizing or branding posts other than editing them yourself.
Hootsuite
While Hootsuite is generally known as a paid service for social media scheduling — more on that below — it also offers some freebies. One is this AI caption generator for social media networks. Like SocialBee, there are plenty of options for customization here. However, the interface is much simpler, with a single list of drop-down menus to deal with. There’s also the option to include your own SEO keywords.
The tool prompts you to sign up for OwlyWriter AI, a paid Hootsuite tool, which we’ll explore in the next section of this article.
Scripted
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Scripted is a popular content marketing platform that allows businesses to connect with a carefully curated pool of copywriters with years of industry-relevant experience. Businesses all over the world use Scripted for blog posts, articles, press releases, and more. Scripted’s platform has AI at its core and uses it for its proprietary SmartMatch service — matching businesses with writers perfect for their needs. AI also makes various other previously time-consuming tasks simple and fast, such as generating content briefs or performing SEO keyword research.
Scripted has recently upgraded its available plans to offer a completely free AI text generator. The new “Starter” plan includes:
- A GPT-4 chatbot called Scripted Copilot
- An email sequence generator
- An ad copy generator
- A press release generator
- An infographic text generator
- A landing page generator
- Headline and blog ideas
- A social media post generator
Scripted’s new AI-only offering could be a major saving for businesses looking for a comprehensive AI-powered solution for their content marketing needs. Plus, for businesses that need additional content that’s more in-depth, Scripted provides paid plans that give access to subject matter experts (SMEs) from industries ranging from construction to software development.
Scripted’s platform is intuitive and easy to use, plus there’s always support available should businesses need a helping hand.
Chargeable AI Solutions for Social Media Marketing
While some of these free options are amazing, there are paid solutions where social media posts are usually just one aspect of a wider content generation package. Here are some of the most popular platforms businesses invest in to get a better handle on their social media strategy.
Hootsuite — Again!
Social media scheduling tools are essential for getting posts published and promoted at the right time. Hootsuite is the social schedule tool of choice for many businesses, thanks to the ability to rack up tweets, reels, and Facebook posts to go live exactly when you want. Hootsuite regularly appears on the “Best Social Media Management Tools” lists, and Forbes considers it the best option for managing multiple platforms and accounts.
In addition to its chargeable social media offerings, Hootsuite offers free templates and resources, such as the social media post generator we mentioned earlier. However, there’s also a paid version of this called OwlyWriter.
OwlyWriter AI goes beyond the basic drop-down options of the free version and provides instant caption generation and content ideas. Hootsuite also promises it fits in with data compliance regulations, and the tool’s promotional video suggests it could save over 16 hours of time per month.
The major advantage of OwlyWriter over the free alternative is that users can plug in a link to a blog or article, and the AI will generate a social post about this content using only the URL. This could be a significant time saver for busy content marketers.
Hootsuite starts at $99 dollars per month, so businesses need to weigh whether increased productivity would save money or generate more profit than the cost.
Jasper.ai
Jasper.ai is a complete content generation platform powered by AI. In addition to social media posts, it can generate blog posts and other long-form content or even edit existing documents. There are features to manage the tone and voice of the content, essential for ensuring any type of copy remains on-brand.
Jasper is appealing to many businesses because it has Grammarly integration and tools, such as sentence rewriting, to help ensure that copy doesn’t become repetitive or stilted. The starter plan (now called Creator) at $39 a month provides a single “brand voice” and unlimited words but only one user seat. This could be a great option for solo entrepreneurs or content marketers wanting to up their social media post frequency or expand to additional platforms.
Phrasee
Phrasee is an AI content platform aimed at larger enterprises. The platform supports message testing and optimization and promises on-brand content generation at scale. It also claims it can increase the output of a company’s content marketing strategy by a factor of 60. Curry’s and P&O Ferries currently use Phrasee, and the AI platform is currently sharing success with social media posts via budget retailer Wowcher.
Phrasee is one of the more expensive AI-only options at $500 a month. This is billed annually, so it’s a steep layout for businesses trying AI content for the first time or only needing social media content for a few platforms.
AI for Social Media: Increase Productivity, ROI, and Get Brand Recognition that Makes Real Impact
There are so many ways to utilize AI to get your social media game on point. You can repurpose popular blog posts by asking AI to take snippets of them that work best as a solo post. You can create TikTok video content captions — a useful way to take advantage of one of the most surprising B2B business opportunities of 2023. Stats show that TikTok ads reach 885 million people worldwide.
You can even use AI to delve deeper into your target audience, gathering data on the types of posts they enjoy the most and honing your marketing campaigns accordingly.
AI social media marketing tools also help keep your content creation strategy and workflows continuous and creative. Scripted, for example, offers AI-powered blog idea generation. This is such a useful tool for businesses that feel like they’ve said everything there is to say about a particular subject. AI delivers content ideas that copywriters can expand upon for blog posts, articles, or whitepapers. Or, of course, those ideas can drive the next run of social media posts. It’s the ultimate remedy for writer’s block.
Businesses need to spend less time on arduous content creation and more time on the aspects that drive growth, such as research and development or attracting investors. AI can help businesses hit productivity metrics, increase ROI, and develop a social media strategy that’s sure to impress stakeholders.
If you want more information on how high-quality AI content generation could drive the performance of your social media strategy, talk to Scripted. Our philosophy is that human content creators work better and faster when aided by AI. We’re also offering our first completely free AI-generated content to help savvy sales teams and marketers engage with audiences more quickly than ever. Whether you need an AI assistant to help drive innovation or completely AI-generated text, Scripted has a solution that matches your organization’s requirements.
Using AI for social media posts could provide the boost your marketing efforts need. It’s up there with influencers and affiliate marketers as a top method for increasing your output while retaining brand integrity. With stats suggesting AI could generate 40% of social media interactions by the end of this year, it’s time for businesses to invest in AI content generation that works.
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