AI has been on the top of everyone’s list lately. It’s creating waves that will rock so many industries. Whether that will create more work or less remains to be seen, but it will definitely change the way we work.

But what about social media? I think some content marketers have been quaking in their boots thinking we’re all about to be replaced by a machine.

Here’s the thing: When AI does come into regular use for social media content, it would be a huge mistake to think this will take the human out of your social media marketing. In many ways, you will need the human even more to manage the AI and give it that touch your fans need and deserve.

AI & Responding to Customers

Chatbots have been in use for quite awhile for customer service, especially in Facebook Messenger. This is a terrific use of AI, because the same questions get asked over and over. A human is not necessarily needed to do that.

But you can’t anticipate every question that will be asked and those chatbots do needed to be tweaked here and there as they are in use.

Using the chatbot but also keeping an eye on it so you can provide the right customer service is essential. Either the human steps in and bypasses the chatbot entirely and/or you add in the necessary information for it to be better next time. The human will always be essential here.

AI & Writing

CNET announced that it was using AI to write some of its articles and content marketers watched. What would happen? Would they prove that writers were no longer necessary? The concept seemed scary and ludicrous at the same time. What happened ended up more on the ludicrous side.

First off, they had editors checking the articles before release. But after the articles were released, they found something that was not so startling: plagiarism. AI is not capable of original thought, so what it did was take others’ original thoughts and used it in the articles.

I don’t think writers have anything to be worried about when it comes to AI anytime soon. I think it’s a great tool to help get articles done, but it needs to be used as a tool and not as a writer.

AI & Timing

This is another place with AI has been used with great success. It’s nice to have it go through your followers and tell you when the best times are to post. I’ve been a huge fan of using this with several caveats.

You need to space out your posts appropriately for each channel. So whenever I’ve done this, I ask for about double the times I need, so I can manually space them out. Otherwise, the times will be too close together and your posts will be competing against each other.

Also, the times that most of your fans are on isn’t necessarily the time they will be looking for your particular information. I know for a lot of brands Sunday evening at about 8 pm is a great time to post on Facebook. Let’s say you are a restaurant and know most of your fans will be on at that time. But are they looking for a meal at that time? Probably not. It might be better to post a gorgeous photo of food just before a mealtime when someone is thinking about what they might want to eat. Knowing what your fans needs and wants are can be just as important to timing as it is to subject matter.

There is no denying that AI is coming to rock social media’s world in more ways than any of us can possibly anticipate. However, that human touch shouldn’t go anywhere if you want your marketing to be original and effective.

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