Will AI kill social media marketing?

The short answer: yes, AI is going to kill part of this industry, just not the part most people think. The commodity layer dies: generic captions, templated graphics, $800-a-month posting packages that change nothing. What survives, and gets more valuable, is the part AI can't do: standing in your venue with a camera, knowing your regulars and engineering a reason for people to walk through the door. I say this as someone who uses AI tools every single day, so this isn't a luddite writing a eulogy for his own job.

It's the question behind half the nervous conversations I have with business owners right now, usually phrased as "can't I just get ChatGPT to do my socials?" So here's the honest answer I give across the table.

What AI genuinely kills

If a social media service was ever really a person pumping out caption-and-graphic posts from a content calendar template, that service is already dead, it just hasn't fallen over yet. AI does that work in seconds, for free, at roughly the same quality. The bottom rung of the pricing ladder, the $349-a-month posting packages, is exactly the work AI automates first. If that's what you've been paying for, cancel it and keep your money. Honestly.

The uncomfortable truth for my industry is that a lot of agencies were selling automatable work long before the automation arrived. AI didn't create that problem. It exposed it.

What AI can't do, and why it's your advantage

AI cannot stand behind your bar at 6pm on a Friday. It can't notice that your chef's banter with the regulars is funnier than anything a writers' room could script, film it, and know it's the video that fills Wednesday night with ćevapi bookings. It has never met your customers. Everything it makes is assembled from everyone else's content, which is precisely why it all feels the same.

And here's the part working in your favour: as feeds flood with AI-generated sameness, the value of being visibly, obviously real goes up. A phone-shot video of an actual human in an actual place is becoming the scarcest thing on the internet. People watch it longer, trust it faster and share it more, because they can walk in tomorrow and meet the person they just watched. For venues and local businesses, being real isn't a limitation. It's the one moat AI can't cross.

How I actually use AI, since I'm not pretending I don't

• Thinking jobs, yes. Research, performance data, brainstorming angles, tightening copy, the admin that used to eat hours. AI has made me faster at everything that isn't the content itself.
• The content itself, no. Every video I put out for a client was filmed by a human in their actual business. The strategy of what to film comes from knowing the venue, and the footage comes from being there. That's the part clients actually pay for.
• Discovery is changing too. More people now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI "best social media agency in Melbourne" or "where should I eat in Fitzroy" instead of scrolling links. Those tools quote sources, which is why a website that genuinely answers questions matters more in the AI era, not less. It's why this blog exists, and it's working.

So what should you actually do?

Stop paying for anything AI can do, and double down on everything it can't. Use the free tools for your captions and your planning if you're doing social yourself. Spend your actual money, or your actual time, on the thing that still moves the needle: real video of real people in your real business. The businesses that win the next five years on social won't be the ones with the best AI, they'll be the ones whose content could only have come from them.

AI didn't kill social media marketing. It killed pretending. What's left is the real work, and the real work is the part that was always worth paying for.