Buffer analyzed 1.2 million AI posts to see if they outperformed human content

If you’re on social media, then you’re definitely aware of how popular AI content has become. Heck, there’s a good chance you’ve used one yourself.

Judging by the average quality of the AI bot post you see on the timeline, you also probably think that AI content doesn’t perform very well. I used to think that too.

But then I read Buffer’s latest analysis of 1.2 million AI posts. 

Setting the scene

Buffer is a social media marketing tool. Their main thing is making it easier to distribute your posts across different social media channels, but they also have an AI assistant that helps you create content.

That tool has been used by over 55,000 people to create over 1.2 million posts. It is these posts that Buffer decided to analyze. 

More specifically, they compared the median engagement rate between AI posts and human-created posts on Threads, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn. 

The results

Overall, the median engagement rate for non-AI posts is 4.82% while AI-assisted posts are at 5.87%. And not only that, but AI-assisted posts score better on every single platform:

• 11.11% versus 5.56% on Threads.

• 6.13% versus 4.89% on Facebook.

• 6.14% versus 4.17% on TikTok.

• 4.35% versus 3.86% on Pinterest.

• 3.7% versus 2.8% on X.

• 3.9% versus 3.7% on YouTube.

• 6.85% versus 6.22% on LinkedIn.

Why is this happening?

Besides admiring the crazy engagement rates on Threads and LinkedIn, the natural reaction to this data is “why?”.

Buffer’s hypothesis is that the most important factor for engagement is consistency. As they put it, consistent creators are able to take more shots on goal, giving them a higher chance of hitting the mark. 

Thus, because AI makes it easier to create a lot of content, the engagement rate of AI-assisted content is higher. Add in that AI helps optimize content, and you have a recipe for success.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Levels frequently praises X’s most frequent posters, and as Tomas Pueyo describes it, creating a masterpiece looks like this:

So, whether you use AI or not, get out there and start posting more.