Digital Marketing Guide

Discovering AI Content Creation

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has captured the attention of business leaders, marketers and policymakers alike — sparking both fears of job displacement and misinformation, as well as excitement over its vast, untapped potential. AI has become an indispensable tool for digital marketers of all kinds. Social media professionals and business leaders who embrace the "AI revolution" today will be better equipped to shape and thrive in the evolving digital landscape of tomorrow.

Using AI

As AI has popularized, the tools available to the public have exploded in variety and interfaces have become increasingly accessible. Now, almost anyone with a computer can do everything from scripting and building chat bots, to creating near-professional quality designs and videos with only a few clicks and prompts. Here are a few uses for AI in the social media space:

• Content Calendaring & Brainstorming: You can use language models such as Microsoft^® Copilot, Google™ Gemini™ or ChatGPT to help you brainstorm ideas for your social media presence, or even develop a full calendar.
• Copywriting: Models such as Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini or ChatGPT can help with writing branded copy in your voice or give you a starting point. Please note that social media users are getting better at identifying AI-generated copy. Communications with frequent em dash (—) use and/or structured emoji use are likely AI-generated.
• Image Editing: Use AI-powered tools to quickly edit images for your content. Drop backgrounds, add new items into existing imagery, expand cropped images or simply improve the overall look of an image or object. Many tools have AI for photo editing purposes — such as Canva's image generation or drop background features, or Photoshop AI. Both offer a simple point-and-prompt interface which allows users to quickly make changes to photos, although it may take a few tries to get it right. Additionally, tools like this can allow users to completely restyle existing images.
• Image Generation: Text-to-image AI generation models offer you the ability to write out a description of an image you'd like created and have an AI generate it in seconds. Services like Dall-E, Midjourney and even ChatGPT (through Dall-E) can create images with a high degree of accuracy. This means AI generators can do simple designs and graphics. Similarly, services like Recraft™ offer users the ability to develop ready-to-use vector graphics, like logos and icons.
• Video Editing: AI can also be used to edit videos, layering images over existing video with ease or changing the style of an existing video asset. This can be particularly useful if you're looking to create something new or use existing assets in a fresh way. Some services even allow users to insert themselves into ready-made video templates.
• Video Generation: Text-to-video generation tools are great to utilize if you don't already have video content to edit or you want to quickly create something new. Services like Runway AI or Google's Veo 3 can compellingly animate statics or generate video with audio entirely from scratch.
• Narration: Text-to-voice generators, many of which are already available in apps like TikTok, allow you to generate narration from a script.
• Advanced Data Processing and Analytics: AI's true strength is in pattern recognition and its ability to parse conversational data, allowing many third-party social media applications to offer in-depth sentiment analysis and listening tools. Services like Sprout Social or Meltwater offer advanced sentiment analysis tools which can help your business identify common themes in your audience.

AI Content Creation

AI should not be a replacement for a creative team in your agency. We still recommend working with a graphic designer for designs, a photographer for photo, a videographer for video, and a copywriter for developing and executing your brand's voice if you can. AI is an available tool, that many businesses can start to use in their work, and that includes insurance agencies like yours! In social media, authenticity is the most important element of a social presence. Many presences may fail by letting AI completely drive content creation — resulting in an inauthentic presence. Instead, leverage AI tools to express or elevate an authentic, human-driven message or concept. Human touch is irreplaceable, but AI can greatly improve content quality and productivity for your agency.

Branded Campaign Workflow

Here's what a content creation process might look like with AI:

1. Start by brainstorming for a new campaign. Use ChatGPT (or another model) as a sounding board. Explain your brand, vision, voice and the expected deliverables. It's crucial to define the structure of the response you want. You could even ask it to roleplay as a marketing consultant or creative. To do this, you'll want to feed it brand guidelines, examples of voice, and content that has performed well.
   
   
2. When it comes to copywriting, either write the copy yourself and have an AI software refine it or review it for you. Or if you're stumped, ask it to create the copy and then refine it yourself afterwards to better fit your agency's tone or brand voice. You can quickly generate all copy for your campaign this way, dramatically reducing time spent.
   
   
3. Generate images or graphics using a text-to-image generator. Depending on the specificity of your request, you may have to go through a few iterations until you get an image you're satisfied with. If only minor tweaks or localized edits are necessary, you may be able to utilize tools installed on your device or online.
4. For video creation, employ text-to-voice narration tools and let the AI software generate captions on your video. One of the most powerful uses of AI is improving existing video assets with graphic and audio elements. Consider using AI editing tools to trim large videos into bite-sized social media clips, maybe a webinar recording or a speech. We recommend using traditional video paired with AI graphic and audio improvements rather than generating AI video.
   
   If you want to go the text-to-video route, try using a text-to-image generator (like Midjourney), animating and bringing scenes together in an AI editor (like Runway AI) instead of using true text-to-video tools. This process usually produces better results than relying entirely on text-to-video prompts. However, if you use text-to-video generators, be very specific in what you want and consider time stamping a script.
5. Schedule your posts. In some social media scheduling applications, you can bulk schedule. The process will vary by platform. AI will suggest the best post times and some platforms may allow you to enable autonomous content generation.
6. Employ AI to identify patterns in your content performance. After your campaign has started, provide comprehensive data sets to an AI system (like ChatGPT) to identify patterns you might not notice. Provide video scripts, captions, image assets and the associated metrics for each post, and ask ChatGPT to deliver recommendations to optimize your content performance. You can also find insights on third-party apps (like Sprout Social) and social media platform insights pages (like Meta Business Suite).
   
   

Considering an automated workflow? While we recommend staying actively involved in the content creation process to ensure authenticity, there are now many tools that allow you to easily automate social media content creation. Apps like Zapier or Make.com allow you to set up automated workflows across many different programs which have been used to run entire social presences — from brainstorming down to scheduling. Zapier allows you to use AI prompts to easily set up automated workflows. For example, with just a prompt, you can instruct it to set up a process that produces and schedules content across all your platforms when triggered by an RSS feed from a trusted news source (or even the Social Media Suitcase site).