Can machines think?
These words were uttered by Alan Turing in the year 1950, nearly 70 years ago. Since then, computers have evolved at a mind-boggling speed, carrying out more tasks than it was ever thought they could.
From Sofia (the humanoid you can have conversations with in real time) to Google’s AI-powered call screening where a bot takes your calls for you, the impact of Artificial Intelligence cannot be denied. Or ignored for that matter. Especially in the field of content marketing.
The content marketing industry of the future is set to be shaped by AI. In the recent past, AI’s potential in content marketing has grown significantly. A lot of mundane to critical tasks in the realm of content marketing are carried out by artificial intelligence, which certainly points to a bright future.
But the million-dollar question is: How can you use AI to power your content marketing strategies?
That’s what I am going to discuss with you today. Here are 6 ways you can use artificial intelligence to drive your content marketing efforts:
1. Strategize content
So far, the approach to content strategizing adopted by marketers has been fairly straightforward – go by your gut. Trust your instincts. Throw in a bit of data analysis and then hope for the best.
Easy as it might be, this approach is not guaranteed to work in the long run. Luckily, AI can future-proof it by streamlining the whole strategizing process.
With the help of AI tools, you can mine and analyze a ton of data within a matter of minutes. Consequently, you can use the data-driven insights you get to come up with an informed and well-planned content marketing strategy.
You can even perform text mining with the help of AI tools to get an in-depth list of keywords and terms, which you can then use to create highly targeted content that’s bound to work.
2. Enhance the levels of personalization
Personalization is the name of the game. Stats show that 90% of American adults find personalized content to be appealing, while only 4% of them find it very or somewhat unappealing.
The stat in itself is a total eye opener. It shows the influence personalized content holds in present times. And indeed, you really need personalized content to get to your audience as they are less and less likely to engage with generalized content these days.
How do you get personalized content though?
Why with the help of artificial intelligence of course!
AI can help you have one-on-one engagement with every person on your target audience list. With AI backing you up, you can get tailor-made landing pages, customized emails and more. What’s more, with the help of AI, you can decode important consumer variables such as values, behavior, real-time location and context.
With info like this at your disposal, you can differentiate between and effectively target each and every consumer. For example, you can use the intel gathered to know if a consumer is a vegetarian or meat-lover, the kinds of food he/she likes to eat with people, when alone or while traveling. The information you now have can be used to create highly personalized content to target that particular consumer.
AI even gives you the option of extreme personalization, via which you create unique consumer personas and reach out to people immediately without waiting for a detailed analysis to come in.
3. Analyze data and give churn out actionable insights
Did you know that 90% of all the data available on the web right now was created between the years 2015 and 2017? That’s a whole lot of un-mined data you could use to your advantage to come up with a solid marketing plan.
AI is the only way to extract useful information from this ocean of data. And companies have already realized this and put a plan in place to mine the data.
For example, IBM with the help of its Watson Explorer Deep Analytics Edition or WEXDAE uses natural language processing and machine learning to extract hidden insights from this humongous data storehouse.
Insight is not all AI can get you though. One of AI’s core strengths lies in predictive analysis, which in itself is very interesting and useful as far as your content marketing strategy is concerned.
Predictive analysis entails the process of modeling, statistics, and data mining in order to come up with predictions regarding the future outcome of a strategy concerned.
Once you figure out what your customer base thinks of your brand, you are in a better position to offer them content that pertains to their specific interests and needs. So, what happens with predictive analysis is that you are able to fast-track the sales process. Furthermore, you can analyze a large amount of data to detect meaningful patterns, which you can base your content marketing models on in order to achieve better results.
4. Automate Content Creation
I am sure you will agree with me when I say that marketers have too many responsibilities to take care of. Considering the number of tasks, you have to carry out every day, blogging can often take a backseat.
Well, AI can help you with that. AI is a viable way to create as well as curate content. You can even distribute the content created. It’s a great money and time saver to be honest.
Just like natural language processing is a part of AI, so is natural language generation (NLG). With the help of NLG algorithms, AI can create basic posts and news articles without the need of human interference.
Several famous companies have already used AI to generate content. The Washington Post, Fox and The Associated Press have used AI to churn out basic weather reports and sports stories.
Even though AI can help you create unique content, it is important to keep in mind that content creation bots are still very limited in terms of their capabilities. They cannot create long-form, free flowing content like humans can. So, if you want to write an article with your musings, you are better off hiring a human.
That said, you can use AI tools such as Feedly and DrumUp to discover new content and schedule your social media posts. Or use tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer to streamline the scheduling of all your social media posts.
5. Increase content engagement with chat-bots
If you open Facebook Messenger, you will see a chatbot there you can interact with in real-time. Chatbots are like personal assistants of sorts you can use to increase customer engagement with your brand.
These artificial intelligence-based computer programs work by mimicking conversations with users in real time. Not only can you use them to allow consumers to use your services – Uber and 1-800 use Facebook Messenger to let users book a ride or order flowers for example – but you can also send out promotional content via chatbots.
What’s great about chatbots is that they use machine learning to improve with every interaction they have with a user. Since they can gain knowledge overtime and customize their interactions on the basis of the user, they serve as great tools for increasing customer engagement. As per a survey conducted jointly by myclever, Drift and Salesforce, 37% of users interacted with chatbots to get quick answers in emergency cases; while 35% of them used chatbots to get the solution to an issue. Something to keep in mind about the potential of chatbots in your content marketing strategy.
6. Take care of regular, mundane tasks at the workplace
A lot of repetitive tasks come under the umbrella of content marketing. Of these tasks, data analysis is one of the most critical ones. Unfortunately, such tasks can be highly time-consuming and exhausting to say the least.
The silver lining though is that you can use AI to carry out all the mundane and repetitive tasks. AI powered tools can help you analyze, plan, promote, personalize, optimize and measure content and its performance.
If you don’t know where to start, begin by assessing the content marketing process you follow. Once you find tasks that can be taken over by AI, entrust AI with them so you can save both time and money. Freeing up valuable resources will help you direct your time and energy towards tasks that matter such as research and reports, in-depth analysis and more.
Wrapping up – AI in content marketing is here to stay
As a marketer, you cannot escape the impact of AI. You can only imbibe it as AI is set to be the future of content marketing. You will need certain skills to ensure the proper assimilation of AI in your content marketing plan. Sharpening your knowledge of coding, math and analytics are absolute musts. Especially if you intend to go the DIY way as far as adopting AI in content marketing is concerned. You obviously have the option to hire AI specialists or outsource the job if you so want. In any case, the fact remains – AI already does and will continue to play an integral role in content marketing.
