Singapore – Over half (55%) of businesses in Asia Pacific consider artificial intelligence crucial to their social media initiatives, with teams indicating plans to increase their use of artificial intelligence tools in 2024. This is according to the latest state of social reporting in APAC by software development firm Meltwater.
Data from the findings revealed that around 64% of the APAC respondents stated that AI tools help them save time on writing content. Another 36% of them also said that these tools have helped them improve their copy.
This reliance on artificial intelligence stems from the challenges that teams are experiencing with reduced resources, despite 48% of them saying social media will be crucial for businesses this year. In particular, it was observed that even respondents from large companies with more than 1,000 employees operate in small social media teams of 2 to 5 members.
Furthermore, many social media teams also face challenges in strategy and execution, with 34% of respondents stating they are still in the process of defining a strategy, while a quarter have one but lack the resources to execute it.
Other key findings further showed that Instagram had the highest channel of interest (45%) for APAC teams, followed by TikTok (43%).
Teams in the Asia Pacific region also appeared to dedicate the same budget to social media that they did in 2023, unlike teams globally, which are increasing social media budgets.
In addition, a significant 64% of APAC respondents further agree with social listening as a key component in strategic planning, with the majority indicating they use social listening to better understand their target audience or to manage brand reputation.
Interestingly, companies in APAC are more keen on written content and single imagery over video, though video is widely accepted as the format that is more engaging on social media.
Mimrah Mahmood, vice president, enterprise (APAC), and partner at Meltwater Asia-Pacific, commented, “Social media teams are in an unenviable position of doing a lot more for their organisations this year with limited resources and budget. Concerningly, not having a defined social media strategy is a more prominent challenge in APAC than other regions.”
“With the typical social media user using 6.7 platforms each month, brands need to understand the usage intent of their target audience for their platform of choice. With bandwidth being a major concern, it is crucial that teams identify which channels are priority channels and customise content accordingly,” continued Mimrah.
“Brands typically post three to four times each week, and the challenge is to consistently create engaging content in a scalable way. AI will continue to be a technology of interest as it augments the capabilities of social media teams. Meltwater’s writing assistant, powered by ChatGPT, helps marketers brainstorm, create, and improve their social copy, speeding up the writing process by up to ten times,” he also added.
“While the usage of AI is currently centred around finding inspiration and creating copy, we can expect greater usage of AI to further boost content creation as text-to-image and text-to-video AI models improve and become mainstream. For instance, Meltwater uses a DALL-E-powered image generator to use natural language text prompts to create royalty-free images. This can help brands save time and money as it reduces the need to outsource content production to an external agency,” concluded Mimrah.
