We delve into exploring the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in managing social media strategies.
The premise that guided our research was clear: what happens when AI, represented by ChatGPT in this case, takes full control of planning a social media strategy?
From the beginning, the proposed hypothesis suggested that a social strategy created solely by AI could not match the effectiveness of those conceived by human minds. This approach was based on the intrinsic limitation of AI in fully understanding the complexities and unique identity of a brand.
To test this theory, ChatGPT, a neural network-based artificial intelligence platform, was selected to create a social media strategy for a LinkedIn profile. The strategy was required to include:
Suggest a social media strategy for a real business, including a posting schedule for one week.
Write posts and suggest images to execute the schedule.
Compare one week of results from the brand's current social media, which was created by a human.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE EXPERIMENT
The process was developed as follows, based on the shared experience.
Here are the findings that emerged from this experience and a step-by-step overview of what was investigated.
Stimulation
ChatGPT was instructed to "act as a social media strategist" and create a LinkedIn strategy for a business. It developed a simple yet effective strategy. So far, so good.
Content Creation
Subsequently, it was tasked with designing a posting calendar, drafting daily messages, and suggesting images to accompany them. This is where the first complications arose, as the suggested posts were simple and did not align with the brand at all. More information and examples of recent work were provided to adjust the approach.
Editing
Given the nature of the ideas generated by the artificial intelligence, the editing phase became crucial. The AI had produced many vague and empty ideas. Some of the other posts required significant back-and-forth between a human and ChatGPT, so the AI was asked to refine its results. This process took about 3 hours, approximately the time a human would spend drafting the posts from scratch.
Scheduling
With the content refined, ChatGPT was set to schedule the posts using a social media management platform.
RESULTS
The strategy and posts generated by the artificial intelligence did not meet expectations. Interestingly, the time required to create a plan generated by the AI was comparable, and even slightly longer, than that needed for one conceived by humans. Additionally, a decrease in visitor engagement and website clicks was observed during the week of the AI-generated posts.
Visitor engagement and website clicks decreased during the week of the AI-generated posts.
Although artificial intelligence retains its value for generating ideas and inspiration, this experiment highlighted that it has not yet reached the maturity needed to fully replace social media strategies created by humans.
The use of AI in digital marketing and content creation has its pros and cons. The posts generated by AI required a significant amount of time to refine the copy and align it with the brand. The challenge of providing the necessary information to ChatGPT to write like a human proved to be a persistent difficulty. It was too challenging.
Although artificial intelligence remains valuable for generating ideas, obtaining inspiration, and even creating specific captions, it has not yet reached the maturity to fully replace social media strategies developed by humans.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this shared experience highlights the importance of recognizing the current limitations of artificial intelligence. While it is a valuable tool, it should not replace the specific brand and industry knowledge that humans provide.
Now that you've seen these results,
Are you willing to delegate your communication strategy to a robot?
