How AI-assisted content performs vs. human-only content

Hey there 👋🏾

I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity recently. If you’re a new subscriber, let me explain why.

We’ve been running a 30-day posting challenge for Buffer community members, and I’ve been posting every day for the past two weeks. We’ve also decided to eliminate recurring meetings for Q4 and have termed it our “Deep Work Quarter.”

Between these two things, my YouTube and Spotify algorithms are working overtime to supply me with soundtracks for all the thinking I’m doing every day.

All these happenings led to a creative experiment where we soundtracked, filmed, and shared a deep-focus companion video. Many thanks to Kirsti, Brandon and Kate for all their hard work on this. I will be working to this everyday.

Check out the video below!

Have a lovely weekend, and we’ll see you next Friday.

Warmly, 

Tami & the Buffer team

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🖊️ Deep dive: How AI vs non-AI-assisted posts perform

We launched the AI Assistant feature to help Buffer users generate new content, repurpose existing posts, and generate endless new ideas. Over 55,000 people have used the feature since its launch.

While we love that many people find it helpful in the creation stage, we’ve been curious about what happens after. How is the content performing?

We set out to answer this question by uncovering our internal data on the average engagement rate of AI-assisted posts vs. non-AI-assisted posts.

We analyzed engagement rates on 1.2 million posts across Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube to discover how AI-assisted content performs compared to human-only content.

Here’s what we found:

AI-assisted posts consistently had higher median engagement rates across all platforms than non-AI-assisted posts. The median engagement rate for non-AI posts was 4.82%, while AI-assisted posts were at a rate of 5.87%.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that AI-assisted content will always perform better. It’s largely dependent on the platform you’re posting on and its current algorithm.

The platform with the most significant difference in performance was Threads, with non-AI posts at 5.56% engagement and AI-assisted posts at 11.11%. The platforms with the lowest difference were YouTube (3.7% for non-AI vs. 3.9% for AI) and LinkedIn (6.22% for non-AI vs. 6.85% for AI).

For the other platforms:

• Facebook went from 4.89 percent for non-AI-assisted posts to 6.13 percent for AI-assisted content.
• TikTok jumped from 4.17 percent to 6.14 percent.
• Pinterest went from 3.86 percent to 4.35 percent.
• X/Twitter went from 2.8 percent to 3.7 percent.

However, don’t raise your pitchforks to the robots just yet.

Our hypothesis is simple: AI assistance empowers creators to produce a higher content volume more efficiently, significantly increasing their chances of creating posts that connect with their audience.

Our internal data correlates with this — users who used the AI assistant created posts more frequently than those who did not.

Takeaway: The key to success, AI or no AI, is volume. Think of it as more chances at the goal — the more content you create, the greater the odds of something hitting the mark.

📹 Check out our latest YouTube video

⌛ "We grew a client's accounts by 400 percent"

We pride ourselves on being an excellent tool for creators and business owners to grow on social media — and our users are more than happy to back us up. 

Jayak at redpigeonmedia says: “Over the past 3 months we've managed to grow one of our client's social media accounts by 400% from 6k to over 23k followers!”

Want to skyrocket your growth? Get started with Buffer today!

📱7 days of content prompts for your next post

Here are this week’s Creator Camp content prompts. Bookmark this newsletter so you can revisit them throughout the week!

1. Share your philosophy and approach to procrastination - get funny or deep with it!
2. Here’s why [common advice] didn’t work for me and what I did instead.
3. How to tell if [X] is right for you.
4. If you’re struggling with [activity], here’s the one thing that made it easier for me.
5. Reflect on a piece of feedback you received recently and how it helped you improve your approach to work or life or content.
6. You only need these 3 things to get started with [skill].
7. Share your take on a recent development in your industry or niche, hot or not.

🤳 What's happening in social?

• YouTube rolls out several new features, including a new miniplayer, sleep timer, and more

   

• Head of Threads shares tips for what, how, and when to post to get more views

   

• Speaking of Threads — you can now see when people in your feed are online

   

• Instagram is experimenting with a new way to keep tabs on the content you’ve shared

Thanks for reading! 💟

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