Last week, a potential client sent me their current agency’s quarterly social media report and strategic plan. Twenty-three pages. Beautiful graphs. Confident language about “optimized funnels” and “mandatory KPIs” and ROAS targets between 6 and 10+.
It looked impressive. Until I actually read it.
Bullets drifted in and out of alignment. Spelling errors. Inconsistent capitalization. Repetitive phrasing that sounded like it came from the same template, just shuffled around. And most telling: the elaborate paid media strategy they’d been billing for? When I checked Meta’s Ad Library, nothing was running. Their actual ad spend for the month? $684.
This wasn’t strategy. This was strategy theater. And it had AI fingerprints all over it.
Here’s the thing: I’m not anti-AI. We use AI at Social Impressions every single day. It’s an incredible tool. But AI in the hands of a lazy or dishonest agency? That’s a dangerous combination. And it’s getting worse.
The Problem: AI Makes It Easier to Hide Behind Jargon
Before AI, if you were a mediocre social media consultant, you had to work pretty hard to produce a convincing BS report. You had to write all that filler manually. Come up with those vague insights. Craft those impressive-sounding recommendations that meant nothing.
Now? You can generate 23 pages of professional-looking nonsense in about 10 minutes.
The worst part is that clients assume their consultant is telling the truth. Why wouldn’t they? The reports look legitimate. The language sounds smart. The graphs are colorful. And if you don’t know what good social media reporting actually looks like, how would you know the difference?
You wouldn’t. And that’s exactly what these agencies are counting on.
Red Flag #1: Activity Reporting, Not Decision-Focused Reporting
The first sign you’re getting an AI-generated garbage report is that it’s all about activity, not decisions.
You’ll see pages of metrics: views, followers, impressions, engagement rate, and reach. Broken out month by month. Maybe even day by day. It looks thorough.
But here’s what’s missing:
- Any tie between social content and actual revenue
- Connection between organic content and paid performance
- Clear recommendations about what to double down on vs what to stop
- Answers to the question, “So what should we do differently next quarter?”
A real report should help you make smarter decisions. It should tell you what’s working, what’s not, and why. It should give you a clear path forward.
An AI-generated report just gives you data. Lots and lots of data. With no insight. No strategy. No actual guidance.
If your agency keeps sending you reports that make you think “okay, but what does this mean for my business?” that’s your first red flag.
Red Flag #2: Formatting Errors Nobody Bothered to Fix
Here’s a dead giveaway: formatting issues.
When AI generates a document, it doesn’t always get the details right. Bullets might not align. Spacing gets weird. Capitalization is inconsistent. There might be an extra period here, a missing comma there.
A human who actually wrote and owns that document would catch those errors. They’d clean it up before sending it to a paying client.
But if someone just prompted ChatGPT, skimmed the output, and hit send? Those errors stay. Because they didn’t actually read it carefully, they didn’t craft it. They generated it.
This isn’t about being a grammar snob. It’s about professionalism and ownership. If your agency can’t be bothered to proofread a document they’re charging you thousands of dollars for, what else are they not bothering to do?
Red Flag #3: Massive Mismatch Between Narrative and Reality
This is the big one. And it’s what made me realize just how common this problem is becoming.
The report will talk about paid media as a “major growth driver” with “strong ROAS performance” and “optimized campaign structures.”
Then you look at the actual ad spend, and it’s $684 for the month. Or you check Meta’s Ad Library, and nothing is running. Or the “comprehensive influencer strategy” they keep talking about consists of two Instagram DMs they sent three months ago.
The narrative sounds impressive. The reality is embarrassingly thin.
With AI, it’s easy to write an ambitious strategic plan. Multiple landing pages. Custom hero videos. Segmented acquisition funnels. UGC pipelines. Influencer partnerships. It all sounds terrific.
But if none of it is actually being executed? That’s not a strategy. That’s fiction.
Ask yourself: Can I verify any of what they’re claiming? Can I see the ads they say are performing so well? Can I find the content they say is driving engagement? Do the numbers they’re reporting match what I can see in my own analytics?
If the answer is no, you’ve got a problem.
Red Flag #4: Inflated KPIs With No Grounding in Reality
When I see ROAS targets of 6 to 10+ listed as a baseline expectation with no explanation of attribution windows, margin, scale limits, or how they’ll actually achieve that,
I know I’m reading AI-generated fantasy.
Real strategists talk about tradeoffs. They explain why specific targets make sense, and others don’t. They ground their projections in actual data from your account, your industry, and your audience.
AI just regurgitates what sounds good. “Achieve 10x ROAS through optimized targeting and compelling creative.” Cool. How? With what budget? Over what timeframe? What if your average order value is $40?
Those details matter. And they’re almost always missing from AI-generated strategy docs.
Red Flag #5: Everything Is “Most Important,” and Nothing Is Prioritized
Here’s another tell: when everything is labeled “mandatory,” “critical,” or “optimized,” you’re reading AI output that hasn’t been edited by someone who actually understands your business.
Real strategy requires saying no. It requires choosing what matters most right now, given your constraints, budget, team, and goals.
AI doesn’t do that. It just lists everything that could theoretically be done, calls it all important, and leaves you to figure out the rest.
If your agency’s strategic plan reads like a comprehensive to-do list with no sense of what to do first, second, or third, that’s a problem. And it’s a sign they used AI instead of thinking.
So what should you be getting instead?
Good social media reporting is:
Honest about what’s working and what’s not. Not everything succeeds. A good agency will tell you when something flopped and what they learned from it.
Tied to your business goals. Revenue. Leads. Signups. Traffic to specific pages. Whatever matters to your business, that’s what the report should focus on.
Clear about next steps. “Here’s what we’re doing more of. Here’s what we’re testing next. Here’s what we’re stopping because it’s not worth the time.”
Grounded in reality. The plan matches the execution. The spend matches the narrative. You can verify what they’re claiming because it actually exists.
Written by a human who understands your business. Not generated by AI and sent without a second thought.
You should be able to read your social media report and walk away with a clear understanding of how your money was spent, what it accomplished, and what’s happening next. If you can’t, your agency is failing you.
Let me be clear: AI isn’t the villain here. The problem is that agencies are using AI as a replacement for thinking, rather than as a tool to think better.
At Social Impressions, we use AI constantly. It helps us brainstorm. It speeds up our process. It makes us more efficient. It helped me gather, collect, and organize my thoughts to write this very blog. But we never generate a report or a strategy document and just send it without reading, editing, questioning, or making sure it’s actually useful for the client in front of us.
That’s the difference. Ownership.
When you own your work, you read it carefully. You make sure it makes sense. You check that the plan matches reality. You fix the formatting errors. You tie everything back to what actually matters.
When you’re just churning out AI-generated content to look busy, none of that happens. And your clients suffer for it.
If any of this sounds familiar, here’s what you should do:
Ask direct questions. “Can you show me where these ads are running right now?” “How does this metric tie to revenue?” “What specifically are we doing differently next month based on these results?”
Verify what you can. Check Meta’s Ad Library. Look at your own analytics. See if the story they’re telling matches the reality you can see.
Request ownership and access. Do you have full access to your ad accounts, pixels, audiences, and historical data? If not, that’s a massive red flag. You should own all of that. You should be able to see your ads whenever you want to… but I’m not saying you should go in there and make changes on your own, or suddenly feel the need to babysit the pro you hired.
Look for the mismatch. Does the ambitious strategy they keep talking about actually match what’s being executed? Or is there a gap between the plan and the reality?
Trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. You don’t need to be a social media expert to sense when someone is blowing smoke.
How Social Impressions Can Help
I’ve been doing this long enough to know what good social media management looks like. And I’ve seen enough bad reporting to spot it immediately.
If you’re not sure whether your current agency is delivering real value, I offer independent audits. I’ll look at your reports, your ad accounts, and your analytics and give you an honest assessment of what’s actually happening.
Sometimes the answer is “your agency is doing great, keep them.” Sometimes it’s “you’re being taken for a ride, here’s what’s wrong.” And sometimes it’s “they’re trying, but they’re in over their head, here’s what needs to change.”
Either way, you deserve to know the truth. And if your current agency isn’t the right fit, I can either help you directly or refer you to someone I trust who can.
Because at the end of the day, this is your business. Your money. Your growth. You deserve a partner who takes that seriously, not someone who’s outsourcing their thinking to AI and hoping you won’t notice.
If you want clarity, reach out. Let’s talk.