Marketing Examined - 🔍 How Will AI Change Social Media?

Hi, it's Chi! I am a marketer, content creator, and a shitposter who is now writing a newsletter on social media so I can justify my screen time (and my Forbes 30u30 tag). 

Three things I love - pasta, dogs, and memes. 

Three things I hate - early mornings, bananas, and emails…so I will do my best only to write ones that both you and I will love.

And today, we're covering the AI x Social Media landscape, how it's changing, and how to leverage it in your job.

The dominant conversation on social platforms is about generative AI. 

What is generative AI? 

Artificial Intelligence is built to spit out thousands of results - text, audio, or video - based on the prompts. But what makes ChatGPT special other than crossing 1 million users in FIVE days is that it can answer follow-up questions, reject inappropriate requests, admit its own mistakes and challenge incorrect premises.

I know what you are thinking, “what will happen to our jobs?” and when a well-known marketing pro asked AI for a social media strategy, this was the result. 

So maybe strategy is not its strong suit (yet), but dialogue and copywriting are.

 Should you be concerned? 

“I think it's bad news for the bottom 80% of content creators and marketers. Because of so much AI-generated content, there's going to be a bigger demand for authentic human content creators, which the top 20% will benefit from,” says Zain Kahn, marketer and AI expert.

 Instead of being threatened by it, leverage it to be more productive and save time.

And so that’s what Ryan Reynolds, aka one of the greatest marketers alive, did.

Ryan Reynolds uses ChatGPT to write a Mint Mobile ad!

What sets him apart is his personality, dialogue delivery, and, of course, his jokes. 

He asked the AI to write a commercial for Mint Mobile in his voice with four key elements:

•  A joke

• A curse word

• Their holiday promo still going on

• Comparing it to the big wireless competitors 

And ChatGPT nailed it.

This a brilliant example of how to creatively use AI to your advantage. It will not put Ryan or his team of dedicated writers out of a job but will help them scale creatively and save time on basic copy tasks, which leaves more room to create clever content. 
The lesson here is you need to ask the right questions/input-specific prompts to actually make the most of this tool - you are the boss of it, channel your inner Ryan.

Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at Sparktoto says, “We're seeing more excitement about ChatGPT because we're starting to see the real potential to help writers research, ideate, and outline more quickly. The early AI writing tools overpromised on their ability to replace your copywriting team but, in actuality, delivered lukewarm half-baked copy. 

The emerging tools now answer basic SEO searches (think: "What is X?" queries without the Google Ads nonsense), and even help draft outlines and headlines. They serve as real-time collaborators to help writers get over writer's block”. 

Writing is an essential skill for developing critical thinking. Many argue that AI is simply like a calculator for those who study arts/humanities but take away the calculator, and most adults can’t do math.

Take from what Ryan and Amanda said, use these tools to make your creative process easier by letting it do the groundwork for you as the Mint Mobile team did. Tools like ChatGPT could help build the skeleton for your project, but to flesh it out, you need to infuse it with relatable nuggets from your audience data for it to actually work in your favor. Otherwise, everything (and everyone) is going to sound the same. 

Use it to edit your blogs, come up with various CTA copy, experiment with prompts, A/B test your copy vs the AI’s, and perhaps even write cover letters by simply putting in the keywords from the job description! Maybe the only way for your application to pass the AI screening is if an AI wrote it. 

The golden rule for social marketing is to test and learn (or FAFO) - learn about AI technology by using it before deciding where it fits in your strategy.

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So yes, AI can write, make your workflows more efficient, and help save some costs, but ultimately, it can’t express as you can. Internet culture and slang evolve every day, catching those nuances in that golden moment and expressing it with the right tone is a uniquely human skill. ChatGPT can write a whole book with one prompt, but to make it a bestseller, you need the writer to draw from imagination and authentic human experiences. After all, the difference between good and great copy is personality.

Chi, out.