Social media managers should be concerned: AI is definitely, quickly coming for many of our jobs. The tools that platforms are envisioning or already developing are not designed with you in mind. They’re going to be designed to allow any business owner to do a passable job themselves with a minimum of time and effort.
Meta, X and other social media companies will take all the functionality of current third-party generative AI tools, combine them with automated social media marketing strategies, and then aggressively integrate them into their respective platforms.
You’re going to hear a lot about “AI agents” that work autonomously with little human input over the next couple of years. They already exist, of course, but their functionality is going to continue to expand and improve rapidly.
Humans still fit into the equation, but as it has always been with managing social media, our role will change dramatically.
How We Got Here
When ChatGPT jumpstarted the AI era in 2022, we predicted what it would mean for social media marketers and businesses that rely on social media marketing:
- Platforms will acquire AI companies and incorporate their technology to provide users with AI-generated posts on demand.
- The next generation of paid social media advertising platforms will include AI-generated copy for your campaigns that will be designed to be more successful.
- The next generation of AI image generators will allow you to upload your photos and let AI edit them for you.
- Marketers will have to adapt to a focus more intently on strategy, editing and the value of authenticity.
It was clear from the beginning that this was where we were headed. We’re already seeing the earliest version of this with Meta AI’s text, image and now video tools for building better ads. AI tools already provide recommendations to refine your Google AdWords settings to improve your results and reach specific goals, so applying that model to social media ad platforms isn’t a big leap anymore.
Yet Meta and other platforms are going to take a step further: everyone will soon have access to AI agents that allow you to not only create but execute a social media strategy.
Where AI And Social Media Are Going Next
For example, you will soon be able to chat with a Meta AI agent in a conversational way, not just a “feed in the right prompt” way.
You’ll answer a few questions, upload a few photos of your business or your logo (or more likely just point them to your website), and the agent will create content, schedule it, and post it. It will be oddly similar to the initial onboarding and ongoing strategy conversations that social media managers have with their clients now, but the latter’s proverbial seat will be taken by a fully virtual AI agent.
These AI agents will learn and improve over time, developing and refining a brand voice and overall strategy that will make the agent continuously more efficient and powerful.
This social media manager in-a-box will also design, schedule and run your social ads. It will include the latest iterations of AI chatbots that can answer most customer questions in your comments and DMs with speed and accuracy.
This will be a boon for small businesses that don’t have the resources for dedicated social media marketing but understand the importance of it. It will provide consistent branding, messaging, improved SEO and a minimum level of customer service.
As for social media marketers, this will just be the latest development for a role where the only constant is change.
Where Do Human Social Media Marketers Fit In To This Future?
As has been the case since “social media manager” first became a full-time job, the role of humans in this new reality will evolve and shift to fit the technological tools available.
The one-person digital marketing team–the single person hired under job titles like “Social Media Manager” or “Digital Marketing Manager” that’s tasked with developing a strategy, creating content, and then executing–will continue to be a thing. Businesses and brands will use expanding AI toolboxes as a reason to continue and even grow the practice of replacing a team with an individual.
Specialist roles–graphic designers, copywriters, paid advertising managers, content creators, community managers, videographers, email marketers, etc–will still exist but most companies will expect you to heavily leverage AI tools or to essentially become a prompt engineer.
These roles will soon go to people who can manage a suite of AI agents by designing the right prompts, deciding which generated suggestions on strategy and settings to accept, and to edit and curate the content that’s generated. The specialists will also be expected to leverage AI to increase their output both in terms of speed and quantity—the same managers and executives who already have unrealistic expectations due to AI tools today.
Early on, these automated AI SMMs-in-a-box will have their missteps and we will laugh as they go viral. They will make embarrassing mistakes that will prompt debates about the need for humans in social media.
We already see discussions today about what is and isn’t AI-generated and whether it’s any good as brands experiment with the current generation of tools. This kind of discussion will extend to entire AI-generated campaigns.
What Social Media Marketing Agencies Will Look Like Next
Yes, many businesses and brands will happily turn on a fully automated, AI social media manager to run their profiles.
Most others will need a human expert to set up and manage these tools for them or to teach them how to most effectively leverage them. The latter means there will be an increasing demand for more coaches and consultants, where you would use your social media expertise to help guide businesses in how to utilize this next generation of AI agents to handle their social media marketing in house.
I believe many of these new social media management roles will still be able to use a retainer model, but at a significantly lower rate per client than they charge now for hands-on, day-to-day management run by a human.
This could mean more bandwidth for marketers and agencies to take on more clients at any given time, but it also opens opportunities to charge premium prices for an actual human team that uses AI as part of their repertoire instead of as a replacement for highly skilled people.
What If AI Is Just Another Fad, Like The Metaverse?
AI is definitely not a fad. The technology is still in its infancy and there are legitimate legal, ethical and environmental concerns about the current generation of models and platforms. Yet there two major things going for AI that wasn’t true of a fad like the metaverse:
- Widespread adoption
- Real world successes with multiple forms of AI, such as the scientists who used AI to develop ultralight but ultrastrong materials or tools like Gamma that we used to turn a blog post into a social media carousel
In short, the technology is already proving too useful and powerful to be just a flash in the pan. What’s more significant is that the collective energy being poured into improving existing models and creating new ones is sure to yield even better tools.
Thus there’s no avoiding this technology, just as the days of businesses ignoring social media and digital marketing are long gone. The only thing left to do is figure out how best to utilize it.
Cover photo by Salvador Rios on Unsplash
