Small businesses could save £812 annually simply by adopting the use of AI tools on socials

• The UK spends an average of 2 hours 18 minutes a week on social media.

• Businesses could save 48 hours a year by using AI to streamline content on their socials.

• British businesses could save an average of 55 minutes per week, and £812 per year, if they used AI to edit images.

A recent survey found that 77%1 of CEOs plan to invest in AI this year, after business marketing revenue increased to 9.1%2 in 2023.

Eager to find out how much businesses could save by implementing AI in their social media strategies, Adobe Express firstly surveyed 2,000 Brits to find out how long they spend editing social media posts.

They then calculated the estimated time AI could save on this and compared this against the weekly median wage in cities across the UK, to quantify how much businesses could save through AI automation.

Where can businesses save the most by using AI in their social media content?

*Time saved based on median minimum wage is in relation to the entirety of the UK. For the full dataset, please view here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13r9XViA1eGNAf9Omu0wgyaiThamo4M59U24H7GGVziM/edit#gid=1501691319 .

Businesses could benefit the most by using AI on their social media content in Leeds, with the potential to save £962.31 annually.

With people from this city spending 2 hours and 47 minutes per week editing posts, AI could save an hour and seven minutes per week.

In second place is Norwich, where businesses could save £941.41 a year by utilising AI. Whilst the most time is spent on perfecting social media content here (2 hours 49 minutes), a slightly lower minimum salary of £18.10 places businesses just under Leeds.

Participants in Sheffield shared that they spend one minute less editing their profiles per week than Norwich. If AI were to be employed, however, business owners could benefit from savings of £938.21 yearly, based on the highest median minimum wage of £18.51.

On average, the UK spends around 2 hours and 18 minutes editing social media posts. But if AI were to be used in the future Britain’s businesses could save not only 55 minutes weekly  (almost 48 hours annually), but a shocking £812 in total each year.

Three tips to using AI on social media:

1. Saving time on content curation

Using AI technology for your social profiles could make tasks  quicker, allowing you to automate things such as content creation in a more effective way.

Creating captions can sometimes feel like a mundane, difficult task considering the competitiveness to have the ‘best’ online presence. Trying to be unique against other creators can take its toll, so why not save yourself time with AI by allowing it to compose catchy captions, posts, hashtags and responses based on your preferences and social plan.

2. Upgrading visual content

Upgrade the aesthetics of your feed through your visual content creation – here AI can suggest improvements for your images, graphics and videos to make followers more engaged and interested in what they are seeing.

However, most content created by tools will be robotic, so it is important to give refined details and prompts that ensure it is tailored to your liking. Before publishing, ensure to edit it to provide your final personal touch – this will make it feel more realistic and in turn, increase engagement to your audience.

3. Focus on a feed schedule

To save yourself time planning the perfect time to post a picture, AI can create a schedule for you. Some tools are able to examine your followers’ online activities and calculate optimal times to post, meaning your followers will be able to see your activity when they are actively using the social platforms – improving visibility and interaction performance.

You can also track your followers’ usage, to understand their needs and expectations better. Some tools let you know which content receives the best engagement, allowing you to create better content for your audience, and in turn, keeping their loyalty.