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Staying relevant on social media requires consistency, creativity, and content that connects.
But for most marketers and business owners, maintaining that level of output across multiple platforms—day after day—is overwhelming.
Even if you have a content calendar and brand voice guidelines in place, there's still the pressure of generating new ideas, writing engaging captions, and designing visuals that align with your brand.
This is where
But is it as smart and helpful as it sounds? And more importantly, can it really replace hours of manual effort in your content workflow without sacrificing quality?
Let's find out.
Important Note: To get the most out of this guide, sign up for a free 1-week trial of Social Content AI. This gives you full access to its features—post generation, visual content creation, video tools, and more—so you can explore everything the tool has to offer before committing to a subscription.
Table of Contents
Semrush Social Content AI is an AI-powered tool within the
While it's part of the broader
Essentially, Social Content AI combines several AI capabilities:
- Post idea generation using your website or business description as a base.
- AI-written post drafts optimized for different social platforms.
- Visual content generation, including image, graphic, and video creation.
- Seamless handoff to
Semrush 's Social Poster for scheduling and publishing.
Rather than being a mere social media content generator, it's designed to be a full-cyle solution that helps you maintain a high-quality, always-on social presence.
Social Content AI is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It serves specific types of users particularly well, including:
- In-house marketers and social media managers managing multiple channels who need a tool to assist with volume and consistency.
- Small business owners who lack the resources to hire a dedicated content team but still want to maintain an active presence.
- Agencies that manage content for multiple clients and are looking for an AI-powered tool to help scale output without increasing headcount.
- Freelancers and solopreneurs who are building their personal brand and need to show up regularly online with minimal friction.
What it's not ideal for: Brands with highly complex, regulated, or rigid content requirements that require heavy human oversight, niche visuals, or legally-approved language for every piece of content.
Social Content AI is available directly within the main
Head to the Social Media section in your
Once activated, you can enter your website URL or a brief description of your business.
Based on this input, the tool analyzes your business focus and starts to generate categorized post ideas and topic suggestions.
From this initial setup, the content workflow splits into four powerful capabilities that drive the tool's core value.
The next section walks you through each of these features in detail, along with when and how to use them most effectively.
1. Post Idea Generation Based on Your Domain or Description
This feature is arguably the most underappreciated—yet vital—aspect of the tool.
Once you provide your website or a short business description, Social Content AI generates 100+ post ideas per day, neatly categorized by topic.
These suggestions draw from relevant industry trends, top news items, and semantically related themes that fit your niche.
Each idea comes with:
- A headline or working title.
- A short content suggestion.
- Relevance tags for sorting and filtering.
- Links to trending stories (if applicable).
This doesn't just save time—it gives your content calendar a strategic starting point.
Instead of asking, "What do I post today?" you're selecting from dozens of tailored suggestions based on your niche and current trends.
2. Post Generation Based on Your Idea
Once you've selected an idea, you can generate a social post optimized for your platform of choice.
To create a post, you can click on the "Generate" button next to one of the ideas:
This will open up a slide-over panel on the right where you can create your idea-based content.
You can then select your preferred social media channel, choose your tone of voice, and specify a post type.
That's it — you'll receive a draft of the post which you can then post on your socials.
The best part? You can rephrase, shorten, or expand the content with one click. It's highly editable, allowing you to keep control over your messaging while still accelerating the process.
Once you're satisfied with the draft, you can generate an image or video based on the design templates. (More on these features in a bit)
You can then choose to save the post or send it to Social Poster to share or schedule the content.
3. Image or Design Generation Based on Your Post or Prompt
Visual content is critical on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Social Content AI offers four ways to generate visuals:
- Static Designs: Based on templates; ideal for quotes, product promos, or info snippets.
- Video Templates: Short animated clips using your content as a base.
- Illustrations: AI-generated art with a stylistic flair (great for educational or lighthearted content).
- Custom Designs: Created and edited in the built-in Design Editor, allowing more granular control.
If you've already written a post, the tool can generate images based on your caption.
To generate an image for your post, navigate to the "Generated Content" tab and click on the "Image" option.
Next, select the text that needs visuals or enter a fresh prompt.
Select an aspect ratio for the image and pick your style from the "Natural," "Digital art," or "Fine art" categories. Once you're satisfied with the prompt, hit the "Generate" button.
You'll be shown four image variations to choose from. Select the one that best fits your content, then save it to your post.
If none of the options meet your expectations, simply click "Generate again" or "Restyle" to create a fresh set of images.
In practice, image quality is decent—but not always spot-on. You'll likely need to tweak or reselect a few elements to match your brand colors and style.
You can follow a similar process to generate a video for any of your posts. Just head to the "Generated Content" tab, choose "Video", and follow the same steps—select the aspect ratio, pick a style, enter your prompt, and hit "Generate." That's it.
4. Video Generation from Your Prompts or Site
Short-form video is arguably the hardest type of content to produce. Social Content AI makes this process more accessible with its Scripted Video Generator.
You can enter a URL or a topic, and the tool will:
- Extract relevant messaging.
- Generate a script and visual storyboard.
- Add subtitles, background music, and optional voiceovers.
To generate a scripted video, click the "Generate Content" button in the top-right corner.
Choose "Scripted video" to create a video from a written description, or select "Scripted video (link-based)" to generate one using a link.
Next, enter a brief description of your video's topic in the prompt field, choose your preferred format, and set the desired video length.
You can then select your media source (AI image, stock video, or stock photo) and video style (if you choose "AI image" as your media source).
Finally, decide whether you want to include a voiceover. You can also check the "Use business description" box to help the AI tailor the video to your brand's context.
Once you've finalized your settings, click "Generate" to create your video.
After the video is generated, you can fine-tune it using the built-in editor—adjust scenes, swap out visuals, or re-record the voiceover with a different tone to better match your message.
The results are serviceable for social content—great for explainer videos, announcements, or quick promos.
Pros:
- Strong ideation engine tied to real-time trends
- Unified platform for text, image, and video creation
- Excellent platform-specific post formatting
- Seamless publishing with Social Poster integration
- Intuitive UI with built-in editing tools
Cons:
- Image and video generation still require human oversight
- Not ideal for heavily regulated or compliance-sensitive industries
- Can become expensive at scale compared to standalone AI tools
I approached this tool as someone who creates a high volume of content across multiple platforms. Over the course of two weeks, I used Social Content AI to generate content for a mix of B2B and B2C brands.
Here's what stood out:
- The post idea generation was genuinely helpful. Not generic or repetitive, but surprisingly specific to each brand's niche.
- The tone customization worked well, especially for LinkedIn and Twitter (X) posts. Witty, educational, and even serious tones came through clearly.
- The design tools were hit or miss—static visuals were decent, but AI-generated artwork sometimes looked off-brand. Custom designs using the editor were better.
- Video creation saved a ton of time. I used it to make teaser videos for blog posts and new feature launches. The AI-generated script was solid, though I often edited the visuals for clarity.
Yes, if you:
- Publish content across multiple social channels and need to scale
- Want to reduce manual time spent on ideation, writing, and visuals
- Already use
Semrush tools and want a centralized workflow
No, if you:
- Prefer full creative control over every post and visual
- Rely on highly branded, polished visuals that can't be auto-generated
- Only need a handful of posts per month and can manage manually
Final Verdict
Semrush Social Content AI is more than a mere content generator. it's a robust assistant for social media teams who need to publish at scale. It removes the friction from ideation, speeds up the post-writing process, and makes visuals more accessible—even for those with no design skills.
While it's not perfect (you'll still need to edit and customize content), it strikes a solid balance between automation and creative control. For marketers looking to offload the heavy lifting of social media content creation without sacrificing quality, Social Content AI is well worth exploring—especially if you're already embedded in the
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