Artificial intelligence powers everything from research and analysis to creativity. It helps brands uncover audience insights, generate content ideas, and optimize ad campaigns. However, AI has its limitations—and you should understand them before relying on it for social media marketing.

Whether you’re an avid user of AI-driven tools or just beginning to explore their potential, this article offers practical advice for everyone. You’ll find tips on effectively integrating AI into your social media marketing and common mistakes to avoid.

Five years ago, it took a team of people and hours of work to figure out why your content wasn’t performing on social media. Today, a single AI-powered assistant can do the same job in minutes.

This shift has been transformative for marketers. Instead of spending time on reports, brainstorming, or curating posts, professionals now delegate these tasks to machines that handle them automatically.

Take the AI Image Generator from DepositPhotos. It can solve the visual content challenge for any company once and for all. With this tool, you can:

• Generate custom, high-quality images for your social media posts in seconds.

• Get officially licensed visuals suitable for any commercial project.

• Speed up image creation with preset visual styles.

• Access ready-to-use content collections with licensed photos, vectors, and illustrations.

• Get prompt inspiration when you’re stuck.

• Use free AI tools to edit images for social media quickly.

With its ability to handle multiple jobs, AI has become indispensable. That’s why 71% of marketers already use AI and automation tools, and nearly half say AI is essential for their social media strategy.

To make the most of artificial intelligence in your workflow, you need to know what works and what doesn’t. Here are eight key dos and don’ts for marketers using AI.

The dos:

1. Get inspired with AI

Creativity drives social media marketing, but constantly generating fresh ideas can be tough. Artificial intelligence can give your creative mind a break, helping brainstorm everything from captions and posts to complete campaign concepts.

AI can also study your past campaigns to suggest ideas that are more likely to succeed with your audience. Beyond that, you can ask AI to analyze your competitors’ social media ads to gather insights and inspiration.

2. Leverage AI for content generation

Content creation is one of the most time-consuming marketing tasks. The process can drag on, from gathering content insights and writing creative briefs to editing drafts. Automation tools help streamline it all.

If you need unique, high-quality images, DepositPhotos’ AI Image Generator can deliver them in seconds. Want videos? Midjourney is one of the best AI tools for generating videos for social media marketing. For text, use AI writing assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grammarly.

3. Tap into AI-powered social listening

Monitoring what people say about your brand online, known as social listening, is another powerful way to use AI in social media marketing. It can track mentions, customer feedback, competitor activity, industry trends, and more.

With sentiment analysis, artificial intelligence can also classify brand mentions as positive, negative, or neutral. This allows companies to identify and address issues before they escalate into PR crises.

4. Identify influencers with AI

AI-powered social media monitoring is also useful when brands need to find the right influencers. Companies can discover creators relevant to their niche with quality content, strong engagement, and a genuine interest in the brand.

Once potential influencers are identified, brands can use AI to evaluate engagement rates, audience demographics, and even past collaborations—helping avoid partnerships that could harm the brand’s image.

The don’ts:

5. Don’t use AI without brand guidelines

It’s important to train AI on your brand guidelines to keep your content consistent in style and messaging. For more accurate results, feed the system with everything relevant, from brand colors and fonts to tone of voice. 

Identify posts that reflect the essence of your brand and use those as examples for AI training. The more detailed and specific the input, the better the output. However, without proper guidance, your social media content may appear robotic and disconnected from your audience.

6. Don’t rely 100% on AI for creativity

As a marketer, you can’t keep creativity flowing consistently, but you also can’t rely on AI to do all the work for you. Doing so can result in generic content that won’t deliver any value to your business.

Instead, you should strive to balance human creativity and AI support. Use social media AI tools as creative assistants to spark ideas, but never as substitutes for your unique voice and brand personality.

7. Don’t let AI dominate your social media

Research shows that 50% of consumers can now recognize AI-generated social media content. While some are comfortable with brands using AI, others still prefer the authenticity of a human touch. That’s why you shouldn’t let AI take over your social media presence completely.

The most effective approach is to balance the efficiency of artificial intelligence on social media with human creativity. Use AI to streamline your workflow, but always leave space for authentic storytelling and personal insights that build real connections with your audience.

8. Don’t assume AI is always right

While AI is a powerful tool for social media analytics, management, and content creation, it isn’t flawless. Artificial intelligence can sometimes “hallucinate” and generate misleading information just to satisfy requests or produce content faster.

Marketers should approach AI-generated text with caution. Always review sources, verify citations, and fact-check every AI-created post before publishing. When producing social media images using AI, carefully review them for inconsistencies, unrealistic elements, or distortions.

AI in social media marketing is most effective when paired with human expertise, creativity, and insight. Without this balance, you risk producing generic, impersonal content that fails to engage your audience.