Why you shouldn't use Chat GPT for your social media strategy in 2026

Why you shouldn’t use Chat GPT for your social media strategy in 2026

Does your business’ social media strategy feel stale? Prioritising social media, particularly as a small business, can be incredibly difficult. Maybe you’ve got limited resources and you feel it needs a fresh pair of eyes, or maybe you simply don’t know where to begin with a social media strategy.

If this sounds like you – put down the laptop and please don’t ask ChatGPT to write your 2026 social media strategy.

At Digital 24, we know all too well that small businesses, business owners and even large corporations leave social media to the last minute. But when you do that nothing flows, there’s no consistency, there’s a disconnect between you and your audience, and ultimately, maybe you shouldn’t have bothered posting at all. When your posts eventually flop and your profiles aren’t growing you’re often left wondering why it didn’t work.

So when you ask Chat GPT to give you ideas for your social media, or even write you a strategy, it can feel like a real weight off your shoulders. But we’ll tell you why you’re giving yourself more of a headache by letting it do the thinking for you.

Offers general advice

Have you ever noticed how Chat GPT dances around a subject without giving real detail? How you have to keep pestering it for more? Or how you have to pay for an upgraded version to get the information you’re really after? Chat GPT gets all of its advice from pre-existing information, and without the full context of your business it’ll give you general ideas on the question you’ve asked. So if you ask it for a social media strategy for 2026 it’ll most likely, and unsurprisingly, pull in articles that have been written about social media strategy for 2026 regardless of your business industry, size or niche. Whilst it’s great to be given an overview and idea of what’s considered best practice for this year – this doesn’t mean it’s the best idea for you. Why, you ask? Because it applies a one size fits all formula. Chat GPT isn’t aware of your resource, content you’ve tried before and failed, your social media goals and more. Ultimately, you should know these things yourself and address them in your very own strategy.

A good example of this is we recently trained a government body that often faces controversy on social media, namely in their comments. To demonstrate to them that they shouldn’t be letting AI make the decisions for them we asked Chat GPT to come up with some content ideas for the organisation. It suggested Facebook Lives. Now, I don’t know about you – but can you imagine the carnage?

Instead of asking Chat GPT to write your entire strategy for you why not ask it:

What is considered best practice for social media in 2026?
How often should I be posting on Instagram?
What content formats are best performing on Instagram?

You may still get an odd answer, but at least it’s one step closer to refined advice. You can then decide if these would work for your business – but still take it with a pinch of salt!

Lacks context for decision making

AI answers are the culmination of many answers across the internet. This often means sometimes the advice is conflicting, and more importantly, removes individual thought. The difference between AI coming up with your strategy and a human being is a human will question your choices and decision making. AI simply agrees with you. Whilst it’s great to be told you have so many wonderful ideas and that they’ll all work indefinitely, sometimes we all need a dose of reality – and we’re telling you right now, even as a digital marketing agency, not everyone needs to be on TikTok. The lack of context is most concerning as it means there could also be things you don’t know about your own business. Do you know your social demographics? Do you know what formats actually work best? What is the context of your content that works best – are there consistent clues in what your audience values most? Chat GPT can’t answer this for you I’m afraid – you’ll have to work that one out yourself.

Does what you ask it to do

Chat GPT isn’t a sentient being, so when you demand it to do things for you – it simply goes off and does it. No questions asked. If we all lived in a world where people told us we were right and never asked any questions we wouldn’t learn a thing. A strategy isn’t perfect the first time either, it gets moulded and detailed the more information you have and through the feedback you get. Sorry to go all business studies A-Level on you – but it needs to be SMART. I.e. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Some of the most important being: specific to your business, measurable via metrics you actually have access to, and achievable with the resource you have. We promise you, you’ll get blank stares if you dump a strategy on your employees / colleagues that matches none of these objectives.

Flatters you

AI loves to flatter you. After all, why would you continue to talk to something if it didn’t agree with you and was negative? If you ask if something is a good idea, its answer is ‘Yes that’s a great suggestion [Insert name here]’. If you tell it it’s a bad idea, it’ll say ‘Sorry – you’re right’. While it is wonderful to have so much positivity and always be in the right – just remember that artificial intelligence wants you to keep using it – it’s trying to keep you happy. There’s a lot of talk about how founder-led content is the next big thing for social, and it’s almost always one of Chat GPT’s top recommendations. However, founder-led content can also be harmful for your business and requires a strategy of its own. Take the likes of Aimee Smale of Odd Muse, Grace Beverly of Tala or even now controversial Steven Bartlett of Diary of a CEO. When you insert yourself in the centre of your business value and offering, there is a huge reliance on you to 1. Put yourself out there 2. Be likeable and 3. Always be seen to be doing the right thing. That’s a huge amount of pressure for any business, never mind an individual. Founder-led content only matters if you are the reflection of your target customer. If you’re not, move along!

Nuance

There’s a little known thing that people forget when it comes to social media and how humans interact with it. It’s the vacuum, the grey area, the great unknown. It’s the one thing that keeps you up at night wondering why, WHY, didn’t my genius idea work? It’s called nuance – and it’s the thing that AI will never truly understand or be able to capture. Objectively, AI can look at a social post and read that it had low performance but it cannot often provide insight to why. This is where human thought comes in. If a post has low reach this can mean it was posted at a time where your audience isn’t active or it can mean the content format wasn’t well received. That then means you need to try a different posting time, or try the post as a video for example. If a post has strong views but a low hook rate, it means your content isn’t holding their attention for as long as it needs to. Look at when they dropped off – what made them scroll on? From there, you can decide whether or not to include those clips in your future content.

Each month, we review our clients social media performance looking at top performers and low performers and when we really delve in the answers are clear. Sometimes the difference between a good cheese pull and a bad cheese pull is palpable. But AI won’t tell you that – which leads us nicely onto our last point.

Where’s the data?

Here’s the real clincher. In AI world, data doesn’t matter enough to make business-altering decisions, but in the real world, you would look into all the data available and make informed changes to the way you do things. Asking Chat GPT to write you a social media strategy may as well be the equivalent of asking it to write you a business strategy. It’ll do it no problem – with absolutely zero evidence or data to back it up. At Digital 24, we don’t switch things up on our clients based on a ‘hunch’ that it might be a good idea – or because everyone else is doing it for 2026. We do it because it’s based on months of results; we do it because it matches what their audience engage with; we do it because the data tells us so. So before you consider asking AI to come up with your strategy – ask yourself when was the last time you really looked at the data. If you find that’s too much of a headache, answer these simple questions below to get started;

What do I want to be known for on social media?
Who is my audience?
What do my audience value? (Hint: look at your top performing posts)

Social media strategy at Digital 24

At Digital 24, we thrive on social media strategy and train on it too. There is truly nothing more fulfilling than seeing a business feel re-energised by collective thoughts and goals and seeing tangible results reflected in their monthly socials. If you want a social media strategy tailored to your business and your team – give us a shout. We promise it’ll be em dash free.