The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Content Marketing

Gone are the times when nearly everything was done manually, and now we are living in a time in which a lot of work is taken over by software, machines, and various automatic procedures.

In this aspect, artificial intelligence (AI) has a prominent place in all the progress made today. AI is the science of machines and computers developing intelligence like humans.

In this technology, the machines have the ability to do some of the easy to complicated things that humans need to do on a regular basis.

AI implementation in an organization

There are distinct kinds of artificial intelligence, each needing some amount of technical knowledge to completely understand. As a result, recent players in this area frequently have difficulty figuring out how to jump in.

Although cognitive technologies like robotics, natural language processing, machine learning etc, may seem difficult to deal with, getting started with them is getting easier all the time.

Many vendors have entered in this field with their offerings providing choices for any organization who want to make their products or processes smarter. You can introduce these technologies in various ways into your company.

Utilizing an existing vendor’s software with cognitive abilities is one of the ways in which these technologies can be introduced into your company. Oracle and Salesforce.com lately announced they’re adding cognitive abilities to their products.

Salesforce is adding features of Einstein to its client facing software clouds, including the capability to classify images utilized in social media, read emails from clients, and automatically score sales leads.

If you are already utilizing Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) offerings and wish to ease into more intelligent processes for services, marketing, and sales, this seems like one of the simplest ways to do it.

Chatbots are a medium-level cognitive technology that utilize natural language conversation for interacting with applications. Facebook (Messenger Platform), Microsoft (Cortana), Apple (Siri) and Google (with the recent acquisition of API.AI) have platforms for developers for deploying their chatbots.

If your business is focused particularly on mobile, where consumers seem inclined toward chatbots, you might dive into cognitive technology by picking one the APIs of those companies and connecting your applications to it.

These user interfaces will surely evolve with time, but it is a wise idea to begin working with them now in the event that you would like to take advantage of easy voice interaction.

You might even make an existing application more autonomous or smarter. Using component-based, modular architectures, it’s possible to add cognitive approaches to applications.

Another way is to build from the open source software. Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have all released open source deep learning or machine learning algorithm libraries. For example, TensorFlow is an open source machine learning library developed by Google for the purpose of high-performance numerical computation. You can know more about this in the below video.

The development of a cognitive solution from scratch using open source tools can take longer than it usually takes for a few of the other options. Hence, this point of entry only makes sense if your organization has very critical needs and is in favor to make a long-term commitment to developing cognitive capabilities.

Probably, it is a better approach if you plan to incorporate cognitive features into your service or product.

So, the above-mentioned examples are the more common ways for the average organization to implement cognitive technologies into their day-to-day process.

It’s good that there exist several options, but when organizations decide to incorporate cognitive technology into their strategies, they must think hard about which one they plan to pursue.

The role of AI in content marketing

One of the areas where AI is of particular interest is content marketing. As you might know, content marketing is defined as a marketing approach which involves development and distribution of relevant and useful content on a consistent basis in order to communicate with existing customers or audiences and to engage with new ones.

Already, artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in the content marketing field, helping to make the processes more effective at a time of massive content overload.

It is helping marketers perceive the content marketing universe by examining the data of users and enabling marketers to make sense of user intent.

AI might not be ready to boss every element of the marketing game just yet, but it’s a fast learner. The days in which machines market to people, monitor campaigns, analyze the data and use it to become even better at marketing to people are fast approaching.

Understanding what artificial intelligence can do to content marketing is crucial for marketers who are willing to accept it. The following are the ways in which AI in content marketing works.

1. Personalization

Creating content that’s specific to each viewer has been the major priority for many marketers as of late, but it’s very difficult to execute this process. To implement effective customization, teams need access to massive amounts of customer data that must be analyzed properly and translated into actionable plans.

While personalization has been a buzzword in marketing for several years, latest advances in AI technology are now making this concept a reality.

Machine learning systems are able to collect relevant data points from customers and website visitors. They can create individual profiles from here and that may be utilized for the creation of a brand experience tailored to each individual.

Tools like OneSpot utilize AI-based algorithms and data related to web interaction to track engagement and fit content to individual tastes. Watch the below video to learn more about OneSpot.

Customized offers and recommendations are in high demand among customers, as 80 percent disclosed they’d be more inclined to buy from an organization that provides personalization.

By using AI-enabled software to track preferences and the behavior of customers, brands can use this information to guide their content strategies via multiple approaches, including customized content that is specific to each customer, and sending personalized offers for higher conversions.

2. Content creation

You can use AI to create content for simple stories like sports reports and stock updates.

This practice isn’t a new one. Using machines to automatically generate content has been common for years, and companies like Fox and The Associated Press take full advantage.

It could be that you’ve come across content that was created by an algorithm even without noticing it.

Artificial intelligence already creates content. Hundreds of Washington Post articles have been authored by a robot. Heliograf, the paper’s own AI technology, has written short articles about the Olympics, political races and high school sports. The video below explains more about this AI technology.

3. Content planning

Determining what kind of content to create can often be a major hurdle marketers face. You want to create something that resonates well with your audience, be it a an ebook, a blog post, or a video.

Artificial Intelligence can reduce the amount of time it takes to plan content by examining what customers are after, and by evaluating successful, previously produced content.

One component of planning content is predicting or guessing what content type will resonate well with your target audience, or what kinds of content will enable you to connect with a new audience.

Artificial Intelligence can enable you to predict the content type that will flourish by being able to understand which content forms are about to be trending.

4. Engagement (with the help of Chatbots)

Chatbots are termed as computer programs that utilize AI to mimic conversation with users. Facebook Messenger is one such example, which utilizes chatbots to answer real-time concerns and queries, and perform quasi-conversations with users.

Organizations like 1-800 Flowers and Uber utilize Facebook Messenger chatbots to select their flower arrangements or to enable users to request a ride without the need to open the application. Check out the below video to see how the 1-800-Flowers chatbot enables you to browse and order flowers from Facebook Messenger without navigating anywhere else.

Facebook Messenger chatbots can also be utilized to send promotional content if a user initiates the interaction. Chatbots are useful for streamlining the process of customer support. In this process, chatbots help you get a real-time answer if you just type in your query instead of filling out the form.

Chatbots utilize machine learning to track and examine every conversation and make enhancements with each interaction.

Because of their capability to gain knowledge and adjust to meet the needs of every customer around the clock, higher engagement levels are received by chatbots when compared with any other tactic. However, you must know how to choose a chatbot that perfectly suits your business.

A survey on the usage of Chatbots was conducted by Salesforce, Drift, and myclever, and the survey showed that 37 percent of people used chatbots for obtaining quick answers during emergency purposes, and 35 percent of people said they used chatbots to resolve an issue.

Image Source: convinceandconvert

5. Automating repetitive tasks

To stay on top of search and marketing trends, you need to constantly evaluate and analyze a lot of data.

Most of these manual and repetitive tasks can be automated with the help of marketing tools powered by artificial intelligence so you can analyze, measure, promote, personalize, optimize, and plan content and its performance.

You can begin by assessing your present content marketing process and determining tasks that can be automated with artificial intelligence technologies to save money and time.

For instance, freeing your resources from repetitive tasks like identifying the best topics and content format based on real-time data will allow you to invest more time and budget on in-depth analysis, reports, research, and the content where human intelligence will be needed more.

What AI skills do content marketers need?

AI can make a huge difference, and we are only getting started. AI usage is not going to slow down anytime soon.

The Artificial Intelligence market revenues around the world in 2018 are $7.35 billion U.S. It is expected to reach about $17 billion in 2020 and $89.8 billion in 2025.

Image Source: Statista

According to Salesforce’s 2017 State of Marketing report, 51% of marketers are already using artificial intelligence and 27% are planning to use it in the next 2 years.

Image Source: Salesforce

Hence, if the requirement of marketers is not essential to complete these tasks, then what are they left with? Can they compete with AI? On what skills should they gain expertise so that their jobs remain secure now and in the days to come?

First, you should not think about artificial intelligence replacing your jobs. Instead, you should improve your skills in which you are lacking and master the tasks that artificial intelligence will not be able to accomplish. If you want to ensure you’ll be able to keep up in this new era of AI, then you must do the following:

• Sharpen your soft skills including your emotional intelligence and communication skills so that you can deepen your relationships with customers and clients – AI won’t help you as a marketer if you don’t have the soft skills like accountability, communication, creative mindset, and empathy that are needed not only to read your customers’ minds but to communicate with them.
• Determining the nature of your customers via qualitative research – With the help of AI, you can acquire information about the kind of interactions your customers can have with you at different points of your sales funnel. But, raw data and artificial intelligence alone will not help you in understanding your customers. You should see the data it provides, and then decide what strategies and elements to test.
• Selecting the right data sets to examine – Your customers will create a ton of data. But, utilizing artificial intelligence to examine all of it is a waste of your time. You should be in a position to locate the datasets that can provide you with the outcomes you are striving for.
• Gaining knowledge of analytics, coding, and math – This will help you figure out how to use the data to propel your business forward. The knowledge of analytics is needed for effective use of predictive marketing tools to understand what data they need to be successful. You also have to be excellent at math so you can make crucial business decisions after your data gets reviewed. You have to go to marketing forums and look at code samples and video tutorials to stay curious about your data and technology.
• Creating engaging content for your audience – AI cannot take photos, make videos, or write blog posts that are going to connect with, inform, and entertain customers. So, marketers still need to know how to be great at creating content!
• Understanding the ethical concerns – AI may be highly “intelligent”, and it can collect a huge amount of consumer data, but it doesn’t have a conscience. The ethical concerns will be the key moving forward as marketers have experienced with GDPR. Marketers should be in a position to communicate how they are protecting consumer data and make their customers feel comfortable.

The future of AI in content marketing

This is just the beginning of marketing AI. While advancements are moving quickly, most content marketers haven’t undertaken much research on how AI can and will influence their jobs, businesses, and performance.

Artificial intelligence won’t only augment or automate certain activities related to content marketing. It is also going to change how marketing channels work and which skill sets are needed to flourish in the near future.

When marketing AI systems have the capability to optimize paid and search campaigns automatically, the skills which marketers are valued for will change.

Marketing AI is increasingly becoming capable of generating educational reports. Because of this, the kind of analysis valued by and required of marketers will probably be different. If marketing AI is able to create basic content, content marketers will need to adapt.

It is obvious that marketing skills change with the times. But, with with the help of marketing AI, these skills will be changing even faster.

As intelligent systems learn and improve, they’ll become increasingly effective at performing cognitive tasks previously reserved for humans.

Artificial intelligence isn’t here to replace human intelligence but can work side by side with human coworkers.

While AI is going to be exceptionally good in data analysis and might offer possible solutions and suggestions in the years to come, it’ll still be up to us to make decisions about strategic choices and think out innovative solutions.

At present, marketers are focusing on utilizing artificial intelligence for enhancing efficiency and automating tasks, but it can be utilized for so much more.

It comes of no surprise to me that today, marketers are quite worried about artificial intelligence replacing their jobs. My take is that, in the future, AI will act in service of marketers, not replace them.

Specifically, it can help marketers make sense of information at a deeper level, accelerate tedious and time-consuming tasks, and help marketers make quick decisions to ensure the best experiences are always delivered to customers.

Conclusion

When it comes to the content marketing field, AI is here to stay and help content marketers in improving their content marketing activities.

You can achieve fantastic results when you combine human skills and artificial intelligence.

The vital part is building a team consisting of experts in artificial intelligence who can form an idea of the use cases of artificial intelligence, code, and put them into practice.

Similarly, the availability of data to train and test AI systems is critically important. Irrelevant or insufficient data jeopardizes the AI applications’ accuracy, rendering them unusable and unreliable.

So, companies with a proper combination of skills and data derive greater benefits from artificial intelligence when compared with those who have yet to develop them.

As a marketer, it is time to accept artificial intelligence with open arms if you want to make your audience engaged in a meaningful and profitable way, remain relevant, and stay at the top of the curve.

Guest author: Savaram Ravindra is working as a Senior Content Contributor for Mindmajix. His previous experience includes Content Writer for Vmonlinetraining. His passion lies in writing articles on different niches which include some of the most innovative and emerging software technologies, digital marketing, businesses, and so on. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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