AI is reshaping how marketers approach social media content strategies, from ideation to distribution and analysis.
But adopting AI in social media without a clear plan often creates more friction than results.
To help you overcome the challenges AI adoption raises nowadays, in this guide, I’ll walk you through the process how to building an AI content strategy that works: practical, data-backed, and designed for how marketing teams actually operate. Let’s dive right into it!
Why should marketers build an AI-based content strategy?
If you’ve ever stared at a content calendar trying to fill it while also analyzing last quarter’s performance, planning next month’s campaigns, and keeping an eye on competitors — I feel your pain.
Social media content planning is simply more of everything. More platforms, formats, data, and expectations (from the audience and stakeholders). And while your to-do list keeps growing, your time and resources probably haven’t kept pace.
Understanding how an AI-based content strategy can assist you should not be put off. Let me give you an insight: AI can support various aspects of your content strategy, from planning to execution, without replacing creativity or strategic thinking.
I’ve seen this firsthand. AI takes care of the heavy lifting so you can concentrate on making progress rather than spending hours putting together performance metrics or guessing which content themes might be popular.
Here are three essential things AI brings to the social media game:
- Accelerated execution: From identifying your top-performing posts across platforms to spotting patterns in your engagement data, tasks that used to take hours can now be completed in minutes.
- Making better choices: AI uncovers insights you might have missed. AI can find trends, anomalies, and opportunities that would take you much longer to find when analyzing thousands of posts or tracking performance across multiple accounts.
- Processes that can scale: You can compare yourself to ten competitors using the same AI-driven workflows that help you analyze one competitor. The insights that inform one campaign can shape your entire content strategy.
Working realistically within the constraints that the majority of marketing teams face, such as limited budget and time, rising demands, and the need to demonstrate results, is the focus of AI content planning. A content strategy with AI doesn’t have to be a complete overhaul. It can begin small and expand as necessary. I explain how to do that effectively in detail below.
How do you lay the groundwork for your social media efforts with an efficient AI content strategy?
A good AI content strategy is more than just tools. Put your faith in me here. It entails making deliberate choices that are compatible with your objectives, resources, and workflow.
In the following section, I will take you through the process of establishing a foundation for your AI content planning that is both long-lasting and efficient, beginning with defining your goals and ending with measuring what is actually working.
Set objectives for your use of AI
Make sure you know exactly what you want AI to help you accomplish before you start experimenting with AI tools or automating parts of your workflow. In fact, Carolyn Cohen, Lockton’s Global Content Strategist, told me recently during a conversation:
In addition, if you believe that “Use AI to improve social media” is an appropriate objective, you will need to accomplish more and be sufficiently specific to guide your actions. To help you make clear goals, here are some starting points: Volume up the content without sacrificing quality. Maybe your team is stretched thin, and you’re struggling to maintain a consistent posting schedule across platforms. AI can help you produce more without burning out your team.
- Reduce content creation time: AI can significantly reduce the amount of time spent writing, editing, and reformatting content for various channels in your current workflow. But you’ll want to benchmark how long things take now so you can measure the improvement later.
- Adapt to different platforms: When you manage five platforms as opposed to one, creating content for social media becomes exponentially more difficult. AI content planning can help you adapt content across channels more efficiently.
- Improve engagement rates: While AI cannot magically increase the number of people who read your content, it can assist you in recognizing patterns in what is already working and applying those insights more consistently.
- Pick one or two primary social media goals to start: You can always expand later, but trying to do everything at once usually means nothing gets done well.
Examine the efficiency of your current content and workflow
Start by asking: How much time does it actually take my team to create content across all your channels? And how much time is spent reporting on the performance of that content? In my experience, most marketers underestimate both numbers. When you add up the ideation, creation, editing, scheduling, monitoring, and analysis across the hours stack up quickly.
You can determine the areas where AI can have the greatest impact by conducting an honest audit of your current state. Identify the bottlenecks in your social media content process by looking at it from beginning to end. You’ll also need to know how well the content currently works. Which posts are gaining traction? Which platforms are driving the most engagement? You need a baseline against which to measure your AI-driven content strategy.
Also, did you know that using a tool like Socialinsider, you can quickly find the metrics that matter and the best-performing posts, both your own and those of your competitors? For example, the dashboard below shows which content is generating the most engagement, with clear performance indicators for each post.
