It’s the age of AI, and our job as marketers is to keep up
The following seven steps are crucial to building a social media strategy:
- Identify Your AI and Social Media Goals
- Validate Your AI-Related Assumptions
- Conduct Persona and Audience Research
- Select the Right Social Channels
- Identify Key Metrics and KPIs
- Choose the Right AI Tools
- Evaluate and Refine Your Social Media and AI Strategy
Keep reading, roll up your sleeves, and follow this roadmap:
1. Identify Your AI and Social Media Goals
If you’re just dipping your toes into the AI sea, start by defining clear objectives.
Is it to boost engagement? Streamline your content creation? Or simply understand your audience better? It’s important that you spend time understanding what you want to achieve.
For example, say you’re a content marketing agency like Foundation and you’re trying to increase your presence on LinkedIn. The specificity of this goal will help you understand the initiatives you want to achieve and determine which AI tools could help you make that happen.
Are there AI tools that will help you create content more efficiently? Are there AI tools that will help you optimize LinkedIn Ads? Are there AI tools that can help with content repurposing? All of these things are possible and having a goal clearly identified will help maximize the impact. Learn more in this Foundation Marketing piece on incorporating AI into your content workflow.
Once you have identified your goals, it’s time to get your team on board and assess what tools are available in the market.
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2. Validate Your AI-Related Assumptions
Assumptions are dangerous — especially when it comes to implementing new tech.
Don’t assume AI is going to fix all your problems.
Instead, start with small experiments and track their progress carefully.
3. Conduct Persona and Audience Research
Social media isn’t something that you can just jump into.
You need to understand your audience and ideal customers. AI can help with this, but you’ll need to be familiar with best practices. If you need a primer, this will help:
Once you understand the basics, consider ways in which AI can augment your approach.
4. Select the Right Social Channels
Not every social media channel is the same.
It’s important that you understand what channel is right for you and embrace it.
The way you use AI for X is going to be different from the way you use AI for LinkedIn. On X, you might use AI to help you develop a long-form thread that is filled with facts and figures. On LinkedIn however, you might use AI to repurpose a blog post and turn it into a carousel PDF. The content that works on X and that AI can facilitate creating is different from the content that you can create and use on LinkedIn.
The audiences are different.
The content formats are different.
So operate and create a plan accordingly.
Recommended Tools and Resources:
5. Identify Key Metrics and KPIs
What metrics are you trying to influence the most?
Spend time understanding the social media metrics that matter to your business and make sure that they’re prioritized as you think about the ways in which you use AI.
These are a few that matter most:
- Reach: Post reach signifies the count of unique users who viewed your post. How much of your content truly makes its way to users’ feeds?
- Clicks: This refers to the number of clicks on your content or account. Monitoring clicks per campaign is crucial for grasping what sparks curiosity or motivates people to make a purchase.
- Engagement: The total social interactions divided by the number of impressions. This metric reveals how effectively your audience perceives you and their readiness to engage.
Of course, it’s going to depend greatly on your business.
But with this information, you can ensure that your AI social media strategy is rooted in goals.
6. Choose the Right AI Tools
The AI landscape is filled with trash and treasure.
Pick AI tools that are most likely to align with your needs and your level of tech-savviness.
For example, if you’re a blogger creating content about pizza recipes, you can use HubSpot’s AI social caption generator to write the message on your behalf:
The benefit of an AI tool like HubSpot and the caption generator is that what at one point took 30-40 minutes to come up with — you can now have it at your fingertips in seconds. The HubSpot AI caption generator is trained on tons of data around social media content and makes it easy for you to get inspiration or final drafts on what can be used to create great content.
Consider your budget, the learning curve, and what kind of support the tool offers.
7. Evaluate and Refine Your Social Media and AI Strategy
AI isn’t a magic wand; it’s a set of complex tools and technology.
You need to be willing to pivot as things come to fruition.
If you notice that a certain activity is falling flat, consider how AI can support that process.
Did you notice that your engagement isn’t where you want it to be? Consider using an AI tool to assist with crafting more engaging social media posts.
Make AI Work for You — Now and in the Future
AI has the power to revolutionize your social media strategy in ways you may have never thought possible. With its ability to conduct customer research, create personalized content, and so much more, thinking about the future of social media is fascinating.
We’re going through one of the most interesting times in history.
Stay equipped to ride the way of AI and ensure that you’re embracing the best practices outlined in this piece to get the most out of the technology.
