How ChatGPT Is Kryptonite For Social Media Marketers
If you manage your brand’s social media accounts, there’s one bad habit we need to talk about.
Stop posting about ChatGPT!
Now, I’m not discussing if you should use ChatGPT. For a take on that, read every third post in your LinkedIn feed. What I’m saying is brands are publicly discussing the technology on social media, and those are often their worst performing posts.
ChatGPT was released on November 30, and I tracked 570 posts from 108 different brands who have subsequently talked on social media about the technology. 82% of those brands averaged less engagements on their ChatGPT posts than they averaged on their posts overall.
For example, James Corden posted a segment on YouTube, where ChatGPT asks Kit Harington a question. That got less than 1% of the engagements, a post from his show normally received.
Meanwhile the Vancouver Whitecaps, a soccer team, posted on Facebook a video where they asked ChatGPT to predict how the team would fare in their home opener. What ChatGPT failed to predict was that the post would only get 2% as many social engagements as a Whitecaps post normally would.
Or look at Carter's. They posted a TikTok sharing a ChatGPT generated list of Mother’s Day gifts. The post received less than 3% the number of engagements the brand normally gets.
The common denominator of all these examples, what these brands are fundamentally missing, is how lazy these posts come off. If you have so little to say, you’re farming out your point of view, you’ve already lost the audience.
The Other 18%
Now let’s talk about the 18% of brands whose ChatGPT posts over-performed expectations. Often these posts used ChatGPT as a third party reframing existing messaging.
For instance, Salesforce got a 404% increase in engagements for an Instagram screenshot of ChatGPT successfully explaining what their software does.
Or SSense, which asked ChatGPT to put together a look based on their existing outfits. Their ChatGPT related posts on Instagram got 17% more engagements than SSENSE posts in general.
However, most of the big successes mentioning ChatGPT on social media are TV and Film related. These brands either found creative ways to integrate the technology into their existing identity, used the tool as a plot point, or had an intelligent critique to share.
BattleBots had an insane 3,500% increase in engagements for 10 posts where they had ChatGPT write their social media copy. For a show already about using technology in destructive ways, throwing a chatbot into the mix is a no brainer.
Meanwhile, The Problem with Jon Stewart got over 137,000 engagements for a TikTok video where Mark Cuban explains the real danger going forward with AI models is who controls the information going into them.
Additionally, South Park had an 188% increase in engagements for their 19 ChatGPT related posts. In a recent episode, the kids use ChatGPT to text their girlfriends.
Conclusion
Now, in a vacuum it’s really not a big deal if one or two of your social media posts completely flop. However, it does speak to a larger issue. In the constant search for new content ideas, it’s human nature for marketers to become focused on the new “It” topic everyone is discussing.
Unfortunately, that often skips over the question: is this topic relevant to your brand’s specific audience? By focusing on social media analytics, you get a more objective analysis of what type of content actually resonates with your audience.
That way when the next ChatGPT comes along that you’ll be sufficiently well informed, to not post about it.