Social media rocket fuel: Using AI to spark creativity on social media

The blinking cursor of a blank page. The living horror of every marketing writer and social media manager who sets out to produce a ground-breaking piece of content or a full-blown strategy. Ok, maybe not ground-breaking. You can settle for inspiring. No? Great? Decent? Passable? Anything? 

We’ve all been there. Sometimes, you just need that little spark of inspiration to ignite your creativity and populate that hateful blank page. Enter ChatGPT.  

This AI chatbot hardly needs any introduction. But in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last several months — ChatGPT is a rapidly evolving chatbot that has taken the content industry by storm. Scratch that. It was an outright tornado.  

Those are not just empty words. Within a week of its launch on November 30th 2022, ChatGPT has crossed the one million users mark. And in January 2023, the number reached 100 million.    

What's so special about ChatGPT?

ChatGPT works on a pretty simple principle. You ask it a question or give it a task (a.k.a a prompt), and ChatGPT produces an answer to the best of its ability. And here’s where it gets interesting. In the last several months, that very ability has been developing in leaps.  

If you had asked it to help with social media content a year ago, the best thing you could have gotten would have been some awkward social media posts and a generic strategy copy-pasted from Wiki sources. Today, you can get an entire content calendar populated with diverse posts tailored to your brand and even mimicking its tone of voice. That is if you know how to ask it the right questions. 

Spoiler alert. We do know. In fact, we identified the exact prompts you could use to get the best results and produce outstanding social media content. More on this later, so bear with us. 

How to use ChatGPT to level up your social media game

When it comes to social media content creation and ideation, ChatGPT offers an incredibly broad range of possibilities. Want to generate a series of unique posts based on the article you’ve just created? Done. Want to get some witty and genuinely funny jokes about your product that you can use to humanize your brand on social? Done. Want to get some ideas for a cool (and relevant) TikTok challenge and then tailor it further to match one of your brand personas (that ChatGPT identified just a minute ago)? Done and done.  

The only thing that limits you is your imagination. So, how can ChatGPT help ignite your creativity? 

Generate social content ideas 

You’ve spent hours scouting the accounts of your competitors, doing research on the latest industry trends, and trying (yet again) to find a new angle for presenting your product/service. Only to hit the virtual wall and find yourself staring at the blank page or, possibly worse, going down the rabbit hole of ‘related’ posts and videos.  

ChatGPT can save you time and sanity by producing an avalanche of ideas on a certain topic. Think of it as a research assistant you never knew you needed. Make sure to accurately describe your brand (unless you happen to work at a well-known company), narrow down the topic if you can, and enjoy the stream of inspiration.  

Produce social posts  

This one is pretty straightforward, but it also has the broadest application. You can ask ChatGPT to create social content on a certain topic or around a particular event or product and reap the results. 

You can tailor the content further by telling ChatGPT to customize it for a specific audience. Don’t exactly like what you see? Ask it to rephrase the results. You can also ensure accurate spelling (think, British ‘colour’ vs American ‘color’), indicate the tone (educational vs funny vs formal), and even prompt it to write the posts in a certain style.  

Feeling poetic? Just ask for some posts in a Shakesperean, Chaucer, [enter-your-favorite-poet-here] style. Missing some inspirational content with a touch of grandeur? How about some posts in the style of Winston Churchill? The possibilities are near endless. Go wild.

 
Create content calendars 

Who said you should be restricted to a single post? With the right prompts, ChatGPT can create an entire content calendar for your brand. Depending on your needs, it can add dates, focus on certain topics, address a particular audience, and more.  

You can define your preferred format, select specific platforms, and include any other considerations that you usually would when creating a calendar yourself.   

Analyse brand personas 

With enough information, ChatGPT can define brand personas based on the available content. You can do it either for your own brand or your competitors.  

Want to analyse their social media platforms and followers and see whom they are targeting, so you can adjust your approach? Easy. Want to find ways to create content specifically tailored to the identified personas? Simply ask your friendly neighbourhood AI chatbot. You can even ask ChatGPT to create the tone of voice guidelines for each persona, so you can be sure you ‘speak their language.’  

Those are just some of the possible social media applications of ChatGPT. However, there are certain ChatGPT limitations that you need to be aware of. 

What are the limitations of ChatGPT?

While ChatGPT is a fantastic tool, it is not all-powerful. Which means that AI is not ready to take over the world just yet, but at the same time, it also means you can’t fully rely on it to do all your social media work. So, what are the main things you need to keep in mind when using ChatGPT for your social media? 

Its data is limited.

At the time of writing this post, ChatGPT can only fetch data prior to the year 2021, when its training stopped. This means that the chatbot is not particularly useful for identifying the latest trends or hashtags, as well as analysing your latest social activity. However, you can overcome that last obstacle by manually uploading the list of your relevant posts.   
 
It can’t access metrics.

Unless you export and manually add the metrics to ChatGPT, it won’t be able to analyse them and identify trends. However, you can use other tools to fetch those numbers for you and then upload them to the chatbot.  
 
It only recognizes established brands.

This means that if you are not creating social content for well-known companies, ChatGPT won’t readily produce results for you. You will have to go the extra mile and add your company name, description, location, target audience, and so on before you can ask the usual questions. 
 
Its facts are not always reliable.

This limitation is particularly obvious in specialist areas like medicine, finance, banking, and so on, so it’s essential to fact-check the provided information. But then, think about it. ChatGPT collects information from across the internet. All of it. Considering how much false information is out there, it’s only logical that the chatbot would pick up some of it.  
 
Its free version is limited.

Considering the tool’s popularity, this is only to be expected. There is a clear shift to the paid model, with the free plan facing restrictions on the number of available prompts and growing entry-waiting times.  
 
It lacks the human touch.

Yes, we’re talking about that little je ne sais quoi, the character and beautiful weirdness that can only come from the creative minds of content creators and social media managers. But then again, ChatGPT is not here to replace SMMs. It’s here to remove the burden of mundane and admin tasks so you can watch your creativity shine.  
 
It needs the right prompts.

The only way you can get a good answer is if you ask an even better question. Using precise prompts is essential for getting the best results from ChatGPT. Luckily, we have created an asset just for that. Without (even) further ado, let us introduce 256’s Social media ChatGPT cheat-sheet. 

What is the Social media ChatGPT cheatsheet?  

The 256 research lab has spent many hours of careful analysis and experimentation with ChatGPT, and we have finally generated a solution. No, the ultimate resource for AI-powered social media content generation and ideation.  

This social media cheat-sheet contains the precise prompts we’ve tested in-house that you can use to power up your social media efforts. While you certainly can use the produced results from ChatGPT as is, we recommend treating them as a launchpad for your own creativity. This way, you can produce the ultimate social content. AI and creatives working together.  

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  

Unlock the full potential of ChatGPT with 256 

At 256, we're dedicated to helping brave B2B brands create moments of relevant discovery for their audiences. Our expert social media team is well-versed in creating campaigns that are engaging and scalable to help you grow your audience over time.  

Are you ready to take your social media strategy to a brand-new level? Get in touch.