How to Use ChatGPT for Social Media to Boost Efficiency

Daily creating and posting social media posts can quickly become a daunting task. Especially when you have so many platforms to update and so much competition to keep up with. Fortunately, you now have the power of AI on your side to keep social media marketing from becoming a complex, resource-draining endeavor.

In this article, I’m diving into how to use ChatGPT for social media success, saving time and effort and keeping your creativity fresh in the process.

Benefits of using ChatGPT for social media posts

As you may have noticed, ChatGPT is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for marketers. Open AI’s chatbot was one of the first AI tools widely available and has become popular among many professionals, including creative and strategic communication roles.

ChatGPT has as many use cases as you can imagine — and write prompts for. From researching ideas to writing content and creating appealing visuals, AI tools support social media marketers every step of the way. Here are some benefits of using ChatGPT for social media posts:

• Quick and comprehensive brainstorming tool

Think of ChatGPT as an assistant that is never tired. It might not always come up with the best or most original ideas (who does?), but it will create a list of suggestions on any topic that you can choose from and adapt.

• Time- and resource-saver

The hours or days you spend doing research, combing through dozens of online pages, can now be comprised in a few minutes. Whether it’s industry or competition data or a social media plan draft, ChatGPT will provide it.

• Writing and editing aid

I don’t want to rush to conclusions, but we might have finally found a cure for writer’s block — at least content writer’s block. Prompt ChatGPT to create engaging social media captions or to add some salt and pepper to your writing.

• Image and video creation for social posts

With the help of AI, social media managers can now more easily generate supporting visuals for their content. This can streamline and simplify the content creation process.

Before we continue, I’d like to address a common fear. I don’t believe ChatGPT will end up replacing social media managers and their work. We still need the human touch to filter information, check quality, and add that unique creativity only we possess (so far). Using ChatGPT is about automating repetitive tasks, becoming more efficient, and freeing up resources for more complex activities.

That being said, let’s see how you can use AI tools to better communicate with your social media audience.

Creative ways to integrate ChatGPT in your social media marketing strategy

1. Developing a social media strategy

A great social media strategy requires a mix of quality ingredients. There’s no perfect recipe, and there’s some trial and error involved, but ChatGPT can help you move quicker through the process and provide a basis for innovation.

Here’s how you can use this valuable tool to support your social media marketing strategy:

Discover competitive insights and industry benchmarks

Get help in identifying your biggest competitors and uncovering industry best practices. Results might be too general at first, so write more specific prompts and drill down based on the information provided. Check sources to ensure that the insights are accurate and current.

Align marketing goals to business objectives

Are you looking to increase sales, market share, or the size of your online community? Ask ChatGPT to assist you in finding the best social media strategies and tactics to accomplish the objectives communicated by stakeholders.

Identify your audience

Using ChatGPT, you can quickly research your target audience and get valuable insights to use in crafting social media campaigns. Start by describing your industry or niche and ask for details on relevant audiences. ChatGPT will provide information on gender, age, income level, lifestyle, interests, values, shopping habits, etc.

Choose the right platforms

Not all social media platforms are suitable for all businesses, and trying to communicate everywhere can spread resources too thin. ChatGPT will help you focus your resources by giving you a breakdown of the best social media channels to use. For example, I asked ChatGPT to help me choose the best platforms for an online jewelry shop. After an initial longer response, I prompted it to narrow the results and provide some content ideas, too.

Content planning

Streamline your social media calendar by having ChatGPT organize post ideas for a given time period. Following up on the example above, I asked the chatbot to create a social media content calendar for a month for my imaginary jewelry shop. Pretty useful, isn’t it?

Creating a social media strategy is a collaborative process that involves multiple teams and stakeholders (besides AI companions). To make the process easier, use a tool like Planable to set up workflows, get real-time feedback, and easily plan content and distribution.

2. Generating engaging social media post ideas

Time to get down to tactics. After getting a high-level view of how the social media content calendar can be structured, you can start populating your social media management tool with creative ideas.

Here’s what you can ask your brainstorming AI pal to help you with:

• Guidance on types of content

For every social media platform, ask ChatGPT to provide the types of content that work best to get engagement from the audience. Test different ideas to find the most successful ones.

• Consistent brand voice

If you instruct ChatGPT about your brand guidelines, it can ensure that the ideas it provides are consistent with your tone of voice and message.

• Relevant hashtags

Get ideas about hashtags relevant to your niche so you can join ongoing conversations and increase organic reach. See below how ChatGPT helped me identify the most popular hashtags for the jewelry niche and offered a resource for further research.

• Writing and optimizing captions

ChatGPT can play the role of a copywriter and come up with creative captions for your social media posts and help you find just the right wording for your content to get people’s attention.

• Repurposing content

Use ChatGPT to generate ideas for how you can repurpose your content so you can efficiently engage each audience segment. For example, a blog article can be repurposed into a Facebook post with a memorable quote, an Instagram carousel, a Pinterest infographic, and a LinkedIn post posing a challenging question.

Social media management is starting to look easier, right?

3. Uncovering new social media marketing techniques

Beyond creating a strategic content calendar and writing amazing social media captions, your job as a social media manager is to also stay on top of trends — and there’s no shortage of those. What works today might not work tomorrow, and you have to always innovate and keep an eye on new techniques.

ChatGPT can help you stay updated. Here’s what you can discover:

• The best ways to improve organic reach

Growing your audience organically is tough, as social media platforms tend to keep organic reach pretty low. However, there are plenty of ideas to try with a little help from your AI friend.

• Paid advertising

Setting up efficient paid campaigns is challenging. Platform rules are always changing, and best practices differ for ads on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, for example. Provide ChatGPT with information about your communication channel, campaign objectives, and audience information to get customized, actionable steps for setting up ads.

• Influencer marketing

Working with influencers has become an integral part of most brands’ communication strategies. ChatGPT can help you identify popular influencers, come up with ideas for approaching them, suggest types of engaging content, and assist with writing briefs.

These are just a few examples of how you can leverage the power of AI to craft and improve your social media marketing strategy. Depending on your goals, you can come up with other creative ways to generate desired outputs for one brand or multiple clients.

Tips for getting started with ChatGPT for social media

ChatGPT can be a great helping hand with a variety of social media tasks. Here are a few tips to get you started on the right foot:

1. Learn how to write clear, specific ChatGPT prompts

The quality of the output depends a lot on the quality of the request. The more relevant details you provide, the better ChatGPT can customize the ideas for your use case. Moreover, you often need more than one prompt to get all the information you need. Think of it as a conversation in which you use AI’s response as a basis for further discovery.

2. Don’t copy and paste AI-generated content

It’s tempting to just take ChatGPT’s answers and use them as such, and some people certainly do it, but beware that the result will be mediocre at best. While AI is excellent for generating fresh ideas, the content it produces is just a rough first draft. You must edit, adapt, and add your magic human touch.

3. Find the best tool for different needs

ChatGPT is connected to an array of custom versions that serve different purposes. Also, various platforms integrate AI capabilities to serve specific user needs. To get the best results, identify your needs and match them to a dedicated AI tool.

Let’s look at some different tools that leverage artificial intelligence to help social media managers generate high-quality content.

3 AI tools for social media marketers

1. Planable: best AI social media content creation tool for marketers

If you’re looking for a tool specifically designed for social media managers, Planable is your best bet. Planable AI helps you create posts from scratch, develop existing ideas, rewrite social media captions for more punch, or simply get some inspiration.

If your content strategy is relying heavily on images (and whose doesn’t), Planable AI also helps you generate a caption based on your image.

Coupled with Planable’s easy-to-use content calendar, which makes planning, creating, and scheduling posts a breeze, the AI features transform this tool into a one-stop shop for social media needs.

What’s more, teams can easily collaborate, offer feedback, and approve content within Planable. The tool allows you to create workflows, set up access layers, and tag people for quick reactions and a more streamlined marketing process.

Pricing: Planable offers a free plan for up to 50 posts. The Basic Plan starts at $11 per month/user and offers unlimited posts, several pages per workspace, different views, and types of approval.

2. Google Bard (Gemini): best for brainstorming creative ideas

Google Bard (recently renamed Gemini) is a useful tool for generating ideas on a certain topic or playing around with existing themes for new takes and perspectives. Compared to ChatGPT, Google Bard tends to offer more concise outputs, and it also explains its choices, so it can be a good learning tool, especially for more junior team members.

While Google Bard is useful as a springboard for creativity, social media managers will need additional tools to support content publishing.

Pricing: Gemini’s 1.0 Pro model is available for free, while Gemini Advanced (1.0 Ultra model) is priced at $24/month, with a 2-month trial period. Gemini is also featured as an add-on for Google Workspace users.

3. Jasper: best for copywriting

Copywriting is definitely part of the job for social media marketers. Social media captions must be engaging, and a tool like Jasper can boost your writing. Its features help teams maintain a cohesive brand voice while optimizing content creation tasks.

Jasper is targeted at enterprises, so it might not fit the needs of freelancers or smaller, developing marketing teams.

Pricing: Jasper offers a free 7-day trial, after which the pricing starts at $39 per month/seat.

Best GPTs for social media

ChatGPT offers access to different versions of the chatbot that specialize in various skills. Here are a few of the most useful GPTs for social media marketers:

1. Social Media Strategy Assistant: best for improving engagement

From general ideas for improving your Instagram presence to specific instructions on how to get more engagement on Facebook, the Social Media Strategy Assistant provides a lot of valuable, actionable advice. It writes captions, hashtag ideas, and even descriptions for visuals to accompany your posts.

2. Write for me: best for writing first drafts

Looking for a writing assistant to develop your creative ideas? Write for me is a GPT that will deliver engaging and relevant content based on your brief. You can also ask it to edit texts with a focus on grammar, style, tone, clarity, or anything else you need. Remember: use it as a starting point and edit the output to make it your own.

3. Canva: best for social media visuals

Canva is already a fan favorite when it comes to easy design for marketing purposes. Canva’s GPT is great for quickly generating visual content to support your social media presence. Enter a prompt describing the image and accompanying text. Or, why not copy and paste the instructions generated by the Social Media Strategy Assistant, for example?

Keep in mind that GPTs are as efficient as the prompts you enter. Use your human creativity to fuel AI generosity.

Maximizing social media success with ChatGPT and Planable

ChatGPT is not here to take your job but to make your life easier. By now, you should feel confident to use it to improve your brand’s online presence and unlock new creative streams. Want to get the best of social media management combined with AI-powered content creation? Try Planable for free and get started in minutes.