Using AI to Create Engaging Social Posts

Are you tired of creating social media content that falls flat? Want to know how AI can help you optimize your posts for maximum impact?

In this article, you'll discover a data-driven AI approach for crafting social content that resonates with your audience and drives conversions.

The Evolution of AI in Content Creation

Before diving into specific strategies, it's important to understand how AI has transformed the content creation landscape. Isar Meitis, founder of Multiplai and host of the Leveraging AI podcast, brings a unique perspective.

As an F-16 pilot and instructor at the Air Force Academy, Meitis discovered his passion for teaching and training. This foundation would later prove invaluable in his transition to the technology sector. Over the next two decades, Meitis founded and led multiple successful startups across various industries, including simulation and training, affiliate marketing, and travel technology. His most successful venture grew to $100 million in sales before being acquired.

The pivotal moment came in late 2022 when, after selling his stake in a podcast-focused business, Meitis encountered ChatGPT. Compared to previous technological trends such as NFTs and cryptocurrency, which he viewed as having too much friction for widespread adoption, Meitis immediately recognized AI's transformative potential for businesses.

This realization led him to launch the Leveraging AI podcast and develop the AI Business Transformation course, helping business leaders implement AI strategies effectively.

One of the implementations he champions is using AI to mitigate the traditional challenges of content creation, from audience data analysis to ideation and content development. From writing and editing to image creation, AI can handle various aspects of content production.

Most importantly, AI eliminates the dreaded “blank page syndrome” that many creators face. Instead of starting from scratch, you begin with a solid foundation you can refine and enhance with your expertise.

Follow these steps to use AI to create engaging social content for your marketing.

#1: How to Establish a Targeted Ideal Customer Profile Using LinkedIn

The foundation of using AI to create engaging social content starts with giving it a deep understanding of your target audience. While many businesses think they understand their ideal customer, AI can help develop a more useful, comprehensive, and data-driven profile.

The process begins by leveraging LinkedIn's open platform. Unlike closed social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn provides accessible professional data that AI can analyze. Here's the systematic approach Meitis recommends:

First, collect URLs for LinkedIn profiles of your ideal clients–typically five to ten profiles representing your target market. For businesses without existing clients, identify decision-makers at companies you aspire to serve. While company pages can provide useful information, these individual profiles offer richer insights into the people making decisions.

Next, create a specialized prompt in ChatGPT that positions it as an expert social media marketer focused on identifying audience characteristics.

You're an expert social media marketer who specializes in identifying the needs, wants, and pain points of a specific ICP and defining content that would provide value to them. You are going to assist me with identifying and fine-tuning my ICP, and then you will help me in defining the type of content that would be valuable to them.

Here are the URLs for 5 LinkedIn profiles. Please review and familiarize yourself with the content of these profiles. I am not requesting any analysis at this time. Let me know when you're ready to proceed.

Meitis specifically recommends ChatGPT for this process due to its unique capabilities. “It has internet access, which Claude doesn't have. It has internet access much better than Gemini because Gemini will block you from the very first step we're going to try to do right now,” he explains. Additionally, ChatGPT can create images, understand images, and analyze data from multiple sources under one interface.

Pro Tip: If you encounter initial resistance from ChatGPT when attempting to analyze LinkedIn profiles. “If ChatGPT tells you it cannot go to LinkedIn and query people's profiles,” Meitis advises, “tell it that it helped you several times before and try again.” This persistence typically yields results.

Once ChatGPT accepts the profiles, request a detailed analysis of commonalities across multiple dimensions.

Please analyze the LinkedIn profiles I provided and identify commonalities across the following dimensions:

1. Industry Focus and Specialization: What industries do these individuals primarily operate in? Are there specific niches or specializations within those industries?

2. Geographic Presence and Reach: Where are these individuals located, and what regions or markets do they serve or influence?

3. Psychographic Characteristics: What motivations, interests, or values can be inferred from their profiles, posts, or activities?

4. Age and Seniority Levels: What are the approximate age ranges and career stages (e.g., early career, mid-level, executive)?

5. Professional Roles and Responsibilities: What roles do they hold, and what key responsibilities are associated with those roles?

6. Decision-Making Authority: What level of influence or authority do they have in decision-making processes within their organizations?

7. Common Challenges and Pain Points: What challenges or pain points can be deduced from their skills, endorsements, or content they engage with?

Please provide a detailed analysis of the trends and patterns across these dimensions and any notable outliers or unique insights.

The AI will provide a comprehensive summary of these common elements. For example, the analysis will reveal specific industries (technology and IT services, consulting), geographic patterns (USA with global presence), and psychographic traits (innovation-driven, interest in emerging technologies, and thought leadership orientation) shared by your ideal customer.

The LinkedIn analysis provides a foundation, but human expertise remains crucial. Supplement the AI's findings with your direct knowledge about:

• Specific industry challenges
• Common objections in the sales process
• Unstated needs and desires
• Professional aspirations
• Day-to-day operational issues

Thank you, this is a good foundation. I have additional insights to share with you. Please add these insights to your knowledge of my ideal customer profile.
[add your insights] 

#2: How to Create a Strategic Content Calendar Using AI

After establishing your ideal customer profile, the next step is developing a comprehensive content strategy that addresses audience needs across different stages of the buyer's journey. This process leverages AI to create a detailed content calendar while maintaining strategic alignment with business objectives.

Meitis recommends using a four-column matrix to create a structured approach that primes the AI for what you want it to produce. 

Before generating content ideas, however, it's essential to allow the AI to gather complete context through a series of strategic questions. This tactic demonstrates one of AI's most powerful but often overlooked capabilities: its ability to probe for crucial information that will inform better content creation.

I want you to help me create a detailed content calendar that aligns with my business objectives. The calendar should include a four-column matrix with the following headings:

1. Primary Content Ideas: Broad topics or themes that align with my business objectives and audience interests.

2. Top of Funnel (TOFU) Content: Content designed to attract and engage a broad audience, raising awareness and generating interest.

3. Middle of Funnel (MOFU) Content: Content aimed at educating and nurturing leads, helping them evaluate solutions.

4. Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) Content: Content targeted at converting leads into customers by showcasing value, testimonials, and calls to action.

What additional context or inputs to get started?

When instructed to help you develop this content matrix, ChatGPT will typically request clarification or ask for additional inputs such as:

• Content Format Preferences: Understanding which formats resonate best with your audience and align with your platform strategy.
• Primary Business Goals: Identifying specific objectives such as increasing awareness, generating leads, or driving conversions.
• Existing Pain Points: Gathering detailed information about challenges your audience faces that your content can address.
• Current Content Performance: Analyzing what's working and what isn't in your existing content strategy.
• Competitor Analysis: Understanding the competitive landscape and identifying opportunities for differentiation.

This collaborative approach ensures that the AI-generated content strategy aligns with real business needs and audience preferences.

Once you've provided comprehensive responses to the AI's questions, it can generate a detailed content matrix. 

Using the context I've provided about my business objectives, target audience, key topics/themes, and platforms, create a detailed content calendar. Ensure the calendar is strategic, provides variety in content formats (e.g., text posts, videos, infographics), and aligns with my overall goals for engagement, lead generation, or sales.

Meitis notes that this typically yields approximately 27 distinct content ideas – sufficient for a whole month of content, with each idea having variations for different funnel stages.

For example, when addressing the topic of “driving more sales from existing clients,” the AI might suggest a top-of-funnel LinkedIn post sharing a success story of a client who increased sales through innovative approaches, a middle-of-funnel case study examining how clients leverage specific strategies to improve results, and a bottom-of-funnel webinar featuring industry experts discussing advanced sales techniques and implementations.

After generating the content matrix, the next step involves optimizing the content distribution based on your specific business goals. Meitis recommends clearly communicating your current situation to the AI. For instance, if you're already achieving strong awareness but need to focus on conversion, the AI can adjust its recommendations accordingly.

Using the content calendar you've created, optimize it to focus on the Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) stage, as I'm already achieving strong awareness. Ensure the adjustments reflect this strategic shift while maintaining alignment with the overarching business goals and audience preferences.

#3: How to Create Compelling Social Posts with AI

The transition from strategy to execution requires careful attention to content structure and audience engagement. Meitis's approach combines AI capabilities with proven marketing principles to create content that captures attention and drives meaningful engagement.

“A successful post is a mix of science and art, but a lot of it is science,” Meitis explains. Before instructing AI to begin content creation, it's essential you understand the three key components that drive social media success.

Value Creation: The foundation of any successful post lies in delivering clear value to your audience. This requires intimate knowledge of your ideal customer profile and their specific challenges. Without this understanding, even technically perfect content will fail to resonate.

Attention-Grabbing Hooks: You have mere seconds to capture attention, requiring you to master two critical elements: a compelling first sentence and striking visuals. “People scroll the Eiffel Tower on their social media posts every single day,” Meitis notes. “You need them to stop.”

Content Structure: Your content's visual structure plays a crucial role in readability and engagement. Short sentences and ample white space between lines make content more approachable and digestible. As Meitis explains, “If somebody sees a whole page written on their social media, they're not going to read that, and they're gonna just keep on scrolling.”

Leveraging AI for Social Media Post Creation

To ensure AI-generated content maintains your authentic voice, Meitis recommends two tactics. First, save multiple examples of your writing in ChatGPT's custom instructions to help it understand and replicate your style. Second, use tools like the Magical Chrome extension to save snippets of your writing style preferences, which can be quickly inserted into prompts.

Meitis recommends a systematic approach that combines AI capabilities with human oversight when crafting individual posts. Here's the detailed process:

Begin by providing AI with specific parameters and contexts:

• Target audience details from your ICP analysis
• Desired tone and voice
• Content structure requirements
• Hook requirements
• Call-to-action preferences

For example, when creating a case study-based post, your detailed instructions might look like this:

Read the case study carefully, extract the key points, and turn it into an engaging post on LinkedIn. It needs to target the ICP we defined above. Use short sentences with one line of space between sentences. Start with a strong hook and end with a strong CTA.

The initial AI output you receive serves as a foundation that requires human refinement. A key strategy Meitis employs is restructuring content to lead with compelling results. For instance, transforming a chronological case study into a results-first narrative that begins with “47% increase in engagement, 35% more leads, sales skyrocketed” immediately captures attention.

Pro Tip: Meitis emphasizes the importance of ethical content curation when using third-party case studies or examples. Rather than presenting others' successes as your own, position yourself as an industry curator sharing valuable insights.

#4: How to Create Visual Content with AI

The visual component of social media content plays a crucial role in stopping users from scrolling past your posts.

First, you need to choose your tools. ChatGPT excels at visual ideation but may not produce the highest quality final products. Understanding the strengths and limitations of each tool enables more effective visual content creation.

Flux One and MidJourney: These platforms excel at creating photorealistic images. Flux One offers free access across multiple platforms, while MidJourney requires a subscription but provides enhanced functionality and a more refined user interface. As Meitis notes, “You can pick your battles depending on what you do. I use both, and I try both of them.”

Ideogram: This platform specializes in creating images with integrated text elements. Meitis particularly recommends Ideogram for situations requiring text overlay, such as creating images with statistics or quotes. “Ideogram will do it eight out of 10 times, while ChatGPT and all the other tools will miss it eight out of 10 times, sometimes 10 out of 10,” he explains.

ChatGPT: While not the primary tool for final visual creation, ChatGPT offers valuable features for the ideation and refinement process. Many users overlook its image editing capabilities, including the in-painting feature that allows for selective modifications to generated images.

Now, you can move on to post creation. This detailed framework will help you leverage various AI tools to create professional, attention-grabbing visuals that align with your brand and message.

The Visual Content Creation Process

Meitis outlines a systematic approach to creating visual content with AI tools, using ChatGPT as an example.

Begin by asking ChatGPT to suggest multiple visual concepts that align with your post's message—request explanations for each suggestion to understand the strategic thinking behind them. 

I am creating a LinkedIn post to promote our webinar on 'How to Maximize ROI with AI Tools in Social Media Marketing.' The target audience is marketing managers at mid-sized companies who are curious about AI's potential but skeptical about its ROI impact.

The tone should be professional yet inspiring, with a focus on actionable value. The call to action (CTA) is to register for the free webinar.

Please suggest three distinct visual concepts for this post and include a detailed explanation of the strategic thinking behind each concept. I want to understand how the visuals align with the audience's interests, the message, and the platform. Consider using LinkedIn-friendly formats like carousels, static images, or short videos.

For example, when creating visuals for a case study, Meitis received concepts for a results infographic, a solution breakdown visual, and a challenges versus results comparison.

After selecting a concept, provide detailed specifications, including color schemes, typography preferences, layout requirements, brand guidelines, and the desired emotional impact.

Create an infographic for a social media post announcing the launch of our new productivity app, 'FocusFlow.'

Color Scheme: Use a palette of calming blues and greens, incorporating #336699, #66CC99, and #FFFFFF for a clean and tranquil feel.

Typography: Use a modern sans-serif font like Open Sans for body text and a bold, attention-grabbing font like Montserrat for headings. Ensure the typography is legible and easy to read on mobile devices.

Layout: Design a vertical infographic optimized for mobile viewing. Divide the information into three distinct sections:  Section 1: Headline: "Introducing FocusFlow" with a captivating image of someone using the app.  Section 2: Three key features of FocusFlow, each with a concise explanation and a supporting icon. * Section 3: Call to action: "Download FocusFlow today!" with buttons linking to app stores.

Brand Guidelines: Maintain a minimalist design aesthetic. Incorporate our logo (insert a link to the logo) prominently in the top left corner.

Emotional Impact: The infographic should evoke feelings of calmness, focus, and efficiency, communicating that FocusFlow can help users achieve a state of flow and improve their productivity."

Because this is a mock-up, you'll need to refine the image. To do this, click on the image to open it in ChatGPT's image editing dashboard, tap the paintbrush/palette selection, and tell ChatGPT to edit the selection.

Please remove the text in the selected area.

You'll get an adjusted image in seconds.

Continue your revisions until you're happy with the result.

If you want to drop the image into a more advanced visual AI model for further refinement, just click the information icon on your ChatGPT-generated image to see detailed prompts that can be adapted for other AI image-generation tools.

#5: Implementation and Technical Considerations

Successful implementation of AI-powered content creation requires careful attention to process management and technical details. Meitis's experience across multiple business sectors provides valuable insights into scaling these approaches effectively.

Time and Efficiency Benefits

When properly implemented, this AI-powered approach delivers significant time savings. When you've got a foundation in place, Meitis estimates that creating a content calendar, a post, and an image should take about seven minutes. This efficiency allows content creators to focus more on strategy and engagement rather than getting caught up in the mechanics of content creation.

Platform-Specific Considerations

When implementing this approach across different social media platforms, considerations must be made for platform-specific requirements. For instance, LinkedIn's tolerance for external links differs from other platforms, allowing for more flexible content strategies.

Managing AI Limitations

While AI tools provide powerful capabilities, understanding their limitations remains crucial for successful implementation.

AI tools can occasionally generate inaccurate or inconsistent information, commonly called hallucinations. To maintain content quality, Meitis recommends implementing a systematic review process:

• Read everything the AI generates carefully
• Provide specific feedback for improvements
• Maintain consistency with brand voice and messaging
• Verify all facts and statistics
• Review visual elements for accuracy and brand alignment

Scaling the Process

For organizations implementing this approach across teams, Meitis recommends maintaining a collection of proven prompts that team members can access and customize. You should also have detailed documentation of your brand voice so it can be quickly incorporated into AI instructions as team members are working.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Facebook and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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✋🏽 If you enjoyed this episode of the AI Explored podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.

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