Social media marketing is always evolving. And the more you dive into the world of content management, the more you realize the growing power of AI.

AI technology can be extremely useful in helping businesses and creatives to maintain their digital presence. Whilst it can be helpful for writing and publishing content, it can also analyze and optimize material that you're looking to post.

There are some key AI social media tools available for social media teams that can help you increase your engagement and successfully reach your target audience.

This article will look at the best AI social media tools available right now. Let's get to it.

AI and social media

Managing various social media platforms is increasingly challenging. Not only can it be time-consuming, but you need to ensure you're staying up-to-date with current trends. As a result, it’s important that content is consistent, has the right messaging, and is aligned with your brand image.

So how do AI social media tools help with this?

While AI integrations within the social media space aren't a new thing, new forms of generative AI can really shape a brand's online presence. Firstly, it makes the creation of content far more efficient. It can also assist in finding your target audience, as well as advising the best times to post. The combination of these factors can help boost your brand to new heights.

By implementing AI tools, your marketing plans can excel.

What’s more, once the AI understands your audience, it will then go on to predict the behavior of your users and start to recognize their preferences. This can take your data analytics to completely new heights when you're looking to maximize your brand’s profile.

Better yet, it doesn’t matter the size of your organization or what industry you're in – AI technology can cater for anything.

The benefits of AI social media tools

Before we look at the AI tools that are available for social media management, it's worth exploring the benefits these tools can provide.

By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, this allows for intelligent automation when looking for audiences to target. Plus, the more data that that AI tools analyze, the more you can identify patterns to create detailed profiles and segments of your target audience.

These benefits aid:

  • Content creation: With AI technology, instead of spending days producing content, you can do it in minutes. Plus, you can sometimes do this within the same platform where you do all of your current social media project management activity.
  • Audience targeting: There's a more advanced AI technology that will create precise audience targeting, so that you can reach the type of customers that are most likely to engage with your brand.
  • Automation: One of the most time-consuming aspects to content management is scheduling posts. By automating these commitments, you're free to focus on other aspects of your social strategy.

These advantages lead to more efficient processes, which save you time and allow you to put effort into other areas of your business.

The AI technologies influencing social media

When thinking about diving into the use of an AI social media tool, it's crucial to understand the technology behind it. There are a number of influential tools on social media that help you improve on content, performance, and enhance your online presence.

Here's the background tech that you might not be aware of:

  1. Machine Learning: This is a subset of AI that builds systems which help to improve on performance. In terms of social media posts and content creation, it enables you to stay ahead of the game with predicted trends, recommendations of how to improve content, and image classification.
  2. Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP technology essentially allows AI to understand, interpret, and respond to human text and speech. It's frequently found in empowering chatbots, analyzing social sentiments, and extracting keywords.
  3. Natural Language Generation (NLG): NLG is the application of AI models to transform content so that it makes sense to humans. A subset of NLP, it uses text summarization to help you understand large volumes of information far quicker than digesting books or videos.

By mastering these AI technologies, you can successfully boost your online presence, improve engagement, and always be one step ahead of the competition.

The best AI tools for content creation

AI tools can be used to create many different kinds of content for your social media platforms – such as high-quality visuals, automated content, and copy assistance.

As an agency, you might be working on a large-scale project that involves several different social media channels, for multiple clients, so you might turn to an AI tool that automatically generates bespoke visual content. This will not only save you time, but also allows for you to put energy into other areas.

Below are four types of AI content – and the tools that can help you create them.

1. AI-generated images and videos

Using AI tools when creating social media posts is rapidly becoming a key tool for social media teams, especially when producing bespoke visuals for different platforms.

The use of AI-generated imagery and videos can save you plenty of time, and you can continue to create high-quality visual material. Plus, it’s super cost effective.

These AI tools, such as Pixlr and Canva, allow advanced machine learning algorithms to create visuals that are not only unique, but that can also grab the attention of your audience in social campaigns.

The advantage of using these tools is that you can speed up your current processes for creating content, which gives you much more time to create impactful social media campaigns.

2. Automated content production

Automated content has the power to help organizations become more competitive amongst its rivals.

Modern day content production has seen an huge increase of automation in a business’ marketing processes.

The AI tools available in this space, such as Brandwatch's Iris integration with ChatGPT, makes content creation far more time-efficient, whilst keeping it highly marketable. The tool has features that create AI-generated and data-driven content, and through its automation it finds solutions to repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

3. Brandwatch Writing Assistant

Using Brandwatch's Iris Writing Assistant with a set of OpenAI-powered features means you can directly manage your social content and engagement together.

Iris Writing Assistant helps you with everything related to creating text: from social posts and ads to replies to customers’ messages. 

Iris can also make your drafts better by improving text, while also create social media posts from scratch based on your brand's personality.

You can do everything from automatically creating replies to customer inquiries based on a conversation’s context, to streamlining your social media workflows.

The time and effort that can be saved using a platform like Iris enables you to put a higher focus on a level of strategic planning that further grows your presence on social media.

4. AI for blogs and social posts

It's crucial when curating blog and social media posts that you're authentic in your messaging when establishing your online following and engaging with your audience.

Readers can spot disingenuous posts from a mile away, and they are less likely to interact with your marketing efforts if they sense inauthenticity.

The problem is, not everyone is an expert in writing blogs, Instagram posts captions, and other copy. But lukcly, there are AI tools that can provide features to help with this. All without overwhelming your content and making it look inauthentic.

These tools, like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor, are tailored to the demographic that you’re targeting. By doing this, you can improve the readability of what you're positing –whilst also generating new topic ideas.

It's possible to analyze a scheduled blog post or social media post and assess its overall structure, tone, and grammar. This ensures every bit of content meets the required professional level and you can make quick edits before publishing.

What’s more, there are tools like Crayon and MarketMuse that utilize AI in a way that will put you ahead of your competitors. They do this by analyzing your content and generating data patterns that help develop your own content strategy.

By utilizing AI-driven tools in your content creation process, you can streamline your social media messaging which, as a result, will improve results by boosting engagement.

Social media strategy with AI

Behind any good content is a solid social strategy. And the use of an AI tool can vastly improve your quality and efficiency within this process.

But firstly, you need to understand your audience. There are AI tools available that can critically analyze your audience, their behavior, and what their needs are, helping you to paint a better picture of who you're trying to target.

Once these tools understand your audience, they can further advise you on when to post your content based on how your users are currently engaging with your brand.

Let's look in detail about how to use AI when strategizing a social media marketing campaign.

Target audience analysis

Nailing audience engagement starts with proper analysis. AI tools can help by analyzing the behavior of your audience, while studying their preferences and responses – giving you a clearer picture of what content resonates with them the most.

AI tools help you understand:

  • Popular subjects, trends, and user-generated content
  • Your audience demographic (age, gender, location etc.)
  • Patterns in their engagement and the times they are engaging

For your social media content strategy, these insights create invaluable insights into your audience. And, crucially, they enable you to build far more meaningful brand-to-consumer connections as you understand their needs and interests better.

AI-enhanced social media planning

Effective social media planning requires you to create and schedule content that aligns with what you're trying to achieve and that matches your strategic goals.

Whether you're part of an agency or brand, or you're an influencer, you'll always be under pressure to deliver consistent content. And that can be overwhelming.

But AI powered tools can help deliver on this holistic approach.

You can use AI-enhanced tools, such as Brandwatch, to streamline the planning process on social media. And these can assist you in generating content ideas, curating content, and when scheduling posts.

What are the benefits?

Of course, any AI tool needs to offer something to the user – especially if it costs. Some immediate benefits for your social media marketing efforts include:

  1. Content ideation: AI tools can analyze current trends, predict new ones, decipher useful keywords, provide an analysis of competitor content, and generate new ideas for your own strategy.
  2. Curation: There are AI-powered curation tools that will find bespoke content from different sources that ensure your platforms are up to date with relevant material, whilst also saving you time.
  3. Scheduling: Some algorithms have intelligent scheduling methods, and they will identify the best posting times and frequencies based on how your audience is currently engaging.

If you properly integrate AI tools into your strategic planning, you can gain invaluable insights, streamline your processes, and improve your engagement across channels.

Embracing the influence and power of AI can provide your brand with an optimized marketing strategy to helps you meet your goals. It's not about letting the artificial intelligence dictate your day-to-day tasks – AI features are there to be used to perfect your content marketing plans.

AI-assisted social media management

Social media management tools can help you improve consistency and productivity, while also keeping a historic track of your content. And once you start doing this, you can start to understand your audience better.

When you add AI into the mix, it becomes even easier, giving you a level of insight that humans can't achieve. Its technology can start to predict performance on posts before you even publish, which will put you one step ahead with very little work.

Below are some of the examples of how AI can assist you in elevating your brand with more professional and productive social media management.

1. Efficient post scheduling

The best AI social media management solutions make scheduling posts a walk in the park.

Tools look at past performance data, its patterns, and can then identify optimal posting times when user engagement is at its peak. You can get this for free when scheduling Facebook and Instagram posts on the Meta Business Suite.

Even better, top tools allows for you to create and schedule posts on different social media channels, which creates far more efficiency as a social media manager.

Social media management platform Followr has the following features:

  • Automated posting: Handles your social media calendar with personalized, scheduled posts which are tailored for you.
  • Predictive analytics: Cutting-edge data analysis to help you make informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
  • Efficiency: Leveraging the latest AI technology to enhance your workflows.

2. Real-time monitoring and engagement

You can gain a greater level of insight into your social media channels by using the monitoring capability of an AI tool.

These tools can help you by scanning and analyzing all conversations and mentions of your brand, which enable you to stay on top of your user behavior.

What are the key features?

  • Sentiment analysis: Looks at how your audience engages with your brand so you can respond appropriately.
  • Alerts: Gives you real-time notifications for key events such as viral content or bad feedback.

These tools keep you in the know with your audience and allow you to sufficiently address their concerns where required.

3. AI-driven project management

It can be a daunting task managing social media channels when you're confronted with a high volume of tasks that require coordination. This is a particular issue if you have different social media posts spanning more than one social media platform.

Artificial intelligence can help you manage projects better, by:

  • Streamlining content creation: Brainstorming unique ideas through AI-generated suggestions.
  • Coordinating team efforts: Insightful AI-powered platforms like Brandwatch help you assign tasks, create deadlines, and deliver project updates across teams.
  • Measuring performance: Gain valuable insights from data-driven reports that measure how effective your digital campaign has been.

Social media management becomes far more optimized by implementing AI-driven project management tools that produce successful results.

Maximizing audience engagement

AI social media tools don't just create content, but they also ensure you're maximizing audience engagement. This level of oversight is invaluable for steering your overall social strategy from start to finish.

A lot of the focus around engagement centers on striking real, lasting connections with your audience. Here's how AI can help.

Creating meaningful connections

In order to enhance your audience engagement, it is fundamental to ensure you create a meaningful connection between your brand and users.

By understanding your audience’s preferences and behaviors, you can develop more tailored social media strategies to enhance your brand-to-consumer relationship.

Social media content creation ideas

The first thing AI can help with is the content ideation stage. Be on the ball with fresh and on-trend content that resonates with your audience.

Test different content formats in all forms of visuals – including images, text, and videos. This will help you find the right mix to match your audience's needs.

You can test this with:

  1. Finding user-generated content that involves your audience.
  2. Repurposing existing content to retain interest.
  3. Spotting timely topics or events, where you can weave your brand in where possible.

Use a content calendar

AI also helps with your content calendar, helping you to plan ahead better, include and track key dates, schedule events, and post consistently.

You can also track metrics such as engagement rates, link clicks, and shares to understand which kinds of content resonates with your audience.

There are AI tools that can be used to help collect and analyze this data to give you a higher understanding of your user behavior. Some key things to focus on include:

  • Engagement rate: This is the percentage of your audience that interacted with your content.
  • Click-through rate: The percentage of your audience clicking your content.
  • Shares: How many times users have shared your content on the platform.

Meaningful connections

Once you've researched your content ideas and set up a calendar, it's time to look at curating meaningful social media content that can maximize your engagement.

AI can help you build these connections by acting as the middle man between you and your audience or customers. For example, this could come in the form of a chatbot that correctly filters complaints and queries into the right place.

Alternatively, you may need AI to help with content generation during a peak period where your brand mentions are skyrocketing.

Meaningful connections are usually the result of successful marketing campaigns and impressive customer-service operations. But they can also come out of the ether. Using an AI tool like Brandwatch allows you to listen in to social media conversations across the industry, assess audience sentiment towards your brand, and act upon the results.

How you can build these connections

If you want to build direct, meaningful connections to your customers, you could:

  • Host giveaways or competitions on social media or across the wider press landscape.
  • Collaborate with influencers or content creators.
  • Prompt users to share their experiences with your brand.

Optimization tools for social media

Social media optimization tools help businesses improve their presence online and boost engagement across their channels. And AI has become a core part of this optimization effort, as organizations grapple with the scale of content required on social media platforms.

For things like analyzing data and analytics, it can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Below are some of the key points to enhancing your efficiency on social media and the AI tools available to do this.

Handling multiple channels

It can be overwhelming when managing content across multiple social media platforms. Especially if, for example, you're an agency working with multiple clients that have different needs. Being able to spin multiple plates at once isn't easy – but you can definitely use AI social media tools to help.

These tools can assist you in social media scheduling, so you can keep track of brand mentions and handle all your platforms in one place.

Examples of these tools:

  • Brandwatch: Create and schedule posts in an instant with the help of AI and get real-time feedback across multiple channels.
  • Hootsuite: Schedule posts for optimized times of day and transform content to fit on various social media platforms.
  • Buffer: Stay on top of all social media posts and figure out which are connecting better with your audience with advanced algorithms.

By using these tools, you can see huge benefits which optimize your online presence across all your social channels, whilst also maintaining consistent messaging. 

Analytics and insight tools

Analysing data can take hours if you don't have AI to help optimize the process.

Using an AI tool, you can quickly assess crucial data about your users and how they engage with your content. Once gathered, you can use these insights to enhance your social media strategies on the various number of channels you use.

Analysts tools you can use:

  • Google Analytics: Produces data around website traffic and will track your social media campaigns.
  • Socialbakers: Provides insights into how your audience behave and also analyzes demographics. Drives growth through gaining a deeper understanding of the user.
  • Brandwatch: Get real-time and historical reports on social media activity from across the industry. Zone in on your followers, your target audience, competitors, and everything in between.

Utilizing these tools will help you understand relevant trends and look at the most effective content that is tailored to your audience.

Customization with pre-made templates

Social media content creation never stops, so using AI tools to help establish templates is ideal for those who don't have the resources to keep up with the pace. Customization with pre-made templates enables you to maintain a consistent feel across your various social platforms.

Consistency is important because audiences love familiarity. A tool like Pixlr, for example, lets you create consistent templates that match your brand identity. You will become more recognizable as a brand and your audience are far more likely to continue engaging.

AI-driven tools can help this by:

  • Creating templates for your channels.
  • Offering pre-made layers with easy customization.
  • Tailoring templates specific to your industry.

Crello is another great tool that will help you to find that bespoke and consistent design. Using such tools can save you time, resources, and make sure that your brand’s visuals are in line with the message you are trying to get across. As a result, this can enhance your reach and engagement across multiple platforms.

Challenges and considerations

It's fundamental to be aware of any ethical implications that advanced technology can bring to digital marketing. The first thing to consider is a potential invasion of audience privacy. The more sophisticated that AI tools become, the most important it is to make sure that personal information is treated properly and only with consent.

Moreover, AI algorithms may inadvertently reinforce biases because of biased training data or incorrect algorithmic logic within a social media platform.

To alleviate this risk, you must critically calculate the data and algorithms that the AI tools use and make adjustments where needed.

Adapting to changing AI technologies

With AI technologies becoming rapidly more sophisticated, this can present certain challenges when staying up-to-date with your digital marketing strategies.

There isn't any need to be afraid of AI and its increasing advances. For an effective, long-term relationship with AI social media tools, it's important to be flexible and adaptable.

How to implement this:

  • Continuous learning: Remain informed about the latest updates and trends in AI technology.
  • Agility: Don’t be daunted by the technological advancements that come to fruition. Embrace them and adapt your strategy as a result.
  • Collaboration: Use a diverse team of experts, collaborate with them and ensure a deeper understanding of AI tools.

Fully mastering AI social media tools doesn’t come without challenges. However, they offer incredible benefits and are central to most social media marketing strategies these days.

As long as you are aware of the ethical implications and you actively adapt to the growing technology, you can thrive in the power of these tools and take your social media strategy to a whole new level.