Marketers are always searching for new and inventive ways to understand and target leads with even greater detail.
We’re still getting to grips with marketing automation platforms and social media management, but now it’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) that’s really capturing the imagination of marketers. In fact, society as a whole is awakening to the potential that AI will have on all of our sectors and industries, but its place in pop culture is still very much at the ‘bow down to your robot overlords’ stage.
What lots of businesses are working towards is a healthy balance between human intelligence and AI – when integrated intelligently, social media and AI will be able to accurately tap into user behaviors and deliver better personalized content. The amount of social data, social channels and social influencers out there means marketers are looking to AI-based tools to provide precision.
And it’s clear that we’re only just scratching the surface with AI, but let’s look at some of the ways that social media and AI will and already do work together.
Content Creation
Content marketing is the cornerstone of most marketing strategy and delivering relevant, timely and valuable content is more important than ever. Users are looking for content that addresses their personalized pain points, interests and preferences.
Slack bots can be used to identify user generated social media content, analyze the chances of success for each piece of content and even create content too.
Look at Watson from IBM – an AI platform that uses machine learning to process data and perform tasks. Watson’s installed in Lately’s platform and allows marketers to repurpose blog posts and create months’ worth of posts at the click of a mouse, saving time and money. It tags and organizes content in a file library for easy reference too, with bulk scheduling capability and a multi-channel publisher.
As well as being a content creation device, AI can improve management processes too – David J. Strachan, IBM’s Principal Offering Manager says that “leveraging a set of Watson cognitive services can help marketers get their arms around their content”.
It’s also possible to optimize your content more effectively and use AI enabled tools to identify which content justifies promotion or added focus.
Intelligence Gathering
Generating data through social listening is gold-dust. AI platforms can scour across social channels and find valuable customer insights to turn into actionable steps. The gathering, interpretation and analysis of data can be made into a much easier and seamless process. 44% of executives believe that AI’s biggest advantage is “automated communications that provide data that can be used to make decisions.”
Being able to filter information and use it intelligently can make or break the success of a marketing campaign and allows you to target the right people, in the right place and at the right time. Improve conversions and cut through social noise.
The buying personas that you create for your customers can be strengthened with AI and your brand can deliver more personalized content to your target customers.
Customer Service
Delivering quality customer service is paramount for any modern, growing business and leveraging social media to respond to enquiries is a good use of resources and budget. According to TechCrunch, more and more consumers are turning to social and mobile channels to solve their problems with a service or product.
Customers want responsive customer service when they interact with a brand and AI can help to identify queries, prioritize them and answer certain basic questions too. Chatbots can achieve a faster query resolution in the right context and crucially, AI can help to make customer service agents’ roles easier, less stressful and more productive.
Social media channels are full of spam, bots and fake profiles too, which we’re learning about all the time, so if AI can help to rid channels of disruptive influences and make it easier to identify legitimate customers then it’s a welcome move.
Social Influencers
The last few years have seen the rapid rise of the social media influencers and their marketing capital has been boosted by the significant success they can bring to the right campaign.
Brands tend to identify influencers themselves and target individuals that they feel are the right fit for their business and who will attract their target audiences. This can have its drawbacks though and it can take a lot of time and effort to find the right influencers for a project.
There are now tools such as InsightPool, which use AI tech to help brands find well-matched influencers. They can scan over 600 million influencers across social media platforms and use defined variables to find the right fit, personality and characteristics to suit a brand.
AI can reduce the risk that a brand will pick an unsuitable influencer or someone who hasn’t got the right credentials and audience for a particular product and campaign.
AI and Social Media’s Future
AI is already helping marketers use social platforms in smarter and more focused ways and it’s inevitable that tools and software will be able to add increasing value to marketing strategies.
Customers are still looking for authenticity and trustworthiness, so a humanized marketing approach remains important, but AI allows your brand to do this in a more effective way and with extra impact. Without a doubt, there is huge growth potential for brands and marketers.
