Over the last decade or so, social media marketing has become one of the leading priorities of digital marketers across the globe. Businesses these days are eager to establish a presence on social media for they realise the proximity these platforms allow them to their users. Other modes of digital marketing, namely email, mobile, and affiliate, while each effective in their own right, can border on appearing impersonal at times. Social media, however, bridges this gap rather neatly.
Of late, the emergence of AI has enabled digital marketers to infuse newfound efficiency into their social media marketing campaigns. AI tools with their sophisticated capabilities have unleashed a dizzying range of possibilities for businesses, big and small. With investment in AI projected to only increase in the years to come, there’s one critical thing all marketers must take into account- AI ethics.
Given the immense power AI possesses, the scope for misusing it is equally immense. Hence, businesses all over must abide by certain rules and regulations to ensure that these tools don’t become pawns of malicious intent. Keeping this very sentiment in mind, we address in this blog both, the many ways in which AI can electrify your social media campaigns, as well as various measures you can adopt to combat ethical concerns that its usage raises. Read on to find out!
Leveraging AI for social media success
- Content creation: Even if you are an established content professional, chances are that you will probably struggle a bit with social media content creation if you don’t have any prior experience. So tricky is its terrain that even experienced social media creators are left stumped every now and then by its asks. These platforms reward regularity; so, the more frequently you publish content, the better will be your chances of success. But, that’s not all. You can’t post anything at random; your content needs to be aligned with the unique algorithmic demands of each platform. If you’re wondering, yes, these algorithms are constantly in flux so getting a firm grip on them is an extremely steep affair. An effective way of navigating the many variables associated with social media content creation is to bring AI into the picture. With the help of tools such as ChatGPT or WriteSonic, you can instantly generate social media content that not only satisfies the platforms’ algorithms but which is also in sync with the needs and preferences of your target audience.
- Post scheduling: Knowing when to schedule your posts is just as important as curating your content, if not more. Remember, your audience doesn’t exhibit uniform behavior throughout the day; there are certain pockets in the day where they are more active and it is exactly these windows that you need to capitalize upon. At the same time, you also need to crack the ideal frequency for posting- post too little, and you risk getting drowned out by your competitors; post too much and you risk leaving a sour taste in the mouths of your customers. AI-powered platforms such as Sprout Social can help you analyze your audience’s behavior and engagement, allowing you to identify optimal posting times and frequencies and stay on top of your content organization.
- Identify trends: Social media is all about trends. More often than not, the success of your social media campaigns boils down to how smartly you are able to respond to these trends via your content. But to do that, you first need to identify them; this is no mean feat, to begin with. No trend comes with a fixed lifetime; they remain in vogue for how ever long they manage to captivate the users’ imagination, eventually giving way to the next. As you can imagine, then, keeping track of them manually can prove to be extremely demanding. Fortunately, you don’t have to. AI tools such as Brandwatch will allow you to monitor emerging trends and respond promptly to them. This will help you make sure that your content is always relevant.
Practising AI ethics
- Dealing with bias: AI models train themselves on data sets, meaning if the data set in question is riddled with bias, then, inevitably, the model too shall exhibit bias. There have been multiple instances where AI-generated content has been found guilty of propagating harmful stereotypes and prejudices. In the absence of scrutiny, this can cause hurt and discontentment to the communities that are at the receiving end of such stereotypes. Therefore, it is imperative that any and all output provided by AI tools be first made subject to human intervention.
- Combating misinformation: The age of internet has pretty much ushered in the age of misinformation. And AI, when wielded unconscionably, can end up becoming a highly dangerous vehicle of false information. Since generative AI became the rage a couple of years ago, users have constantly been advised to take the content it produces with a pinch of salt; there have been documented cases of ChatGPT and its ilk providing content that is steeped in either unsubstantiated or downright made-up facts and statistics. If proper safeguards are not instituted to tackle this, you can end up incurring irreversible damage to your brand reputation and credibility.
- Avoiding plagiarism: One constant criticism that has been levelled against generative AI tools since their inception is their tendency to infringe on intellectual property rights. In the course of responding to user’s commands with the appropriate text, image or video, generative AI, in multiple cases, has been known to violate copyright laws. Besides earning you the bitterness of the original artists, this can also land you knee-deep in legal complications. To steer clear of this, it is best if one sticks to utilizing AI tools simply as a brainstorming assistant rather than calling upon it as a creator.
Wrapping it up
There’s no doubt that AI empowers digital marketers to do plenty with their social media campaigns. However, in the process if they fail to exercise AI ethics, they’ll eventually end up having no takers for their innovation. Wish to learn how AI can help streamline the activities of a digital marketing agency? Read our latest ebook!