Information in this blog post was obtained from the the HubSpot Blog, Social Media Examiner, and Sprout Social.
Previously, an individual would have to spend hours sifting through every Netflix movie and series they liked, analyzing the amount of time you spent watching certain episodes, what genres they were most interested in, and how they rated each entertainment piece. They would then have to transform that information into usable data that will give you accurate match predictions and recommendations for what to watch next.
Fast forward to today, where AI can go through all these processes not only more efficiently but more accurately as well, giving you more precise and personalized show recommendations faster. Think about the time this frees up for Netflix employees to pursue other more valuable work.
Now think about this power in the social media realm. Instead of TV shows, AI will examine your follower behaviors for you and give you accurate information about their preferences before you even get to their profiles. Media marketing campaigns just became simpler, more manageable, and more efficient.
In this blog post, we’ll cover what AI is, how it can be helpful for social media marketing strategies and functions, and if it is worth your investment in this blog.
What is AI and How is it Applied to Marketing?
The topic of artificial intelligence (AI) has grown immensely and is dominating conversations in 2023. This has led to revolutions in the marketing world, transforming the way social media strategies are formed and carried out. So what is AI?
According to Social Media Examiner, AI is the science of making things smarter through machine learning. AI uses previously found data to forecast future results.
AI is used by marketers to gather and analyze information. This knowledge is then used by AI tools and marketers to enhance content, customer interactions, and strategies. By doing this, AI reduces your time spent on tasks to improve your time efficiency. On top of being more time efficient, AI also provides tools that aid social media marketers in:
1. Monitoring and Analyzing Social Media Channels
AI gathers campaign and consumer insights and stats. It then applies this information to your media in order to improve performance outcomes, upkeep media brand reputation, and improve oversight capabilities for all of your media channels.
2. Content Curation, Creation, Strategy
AI can help with a wide range of marketing areas revolving around content. These areas include configuring the best times to post and send messages, idea brainstorming, creating and upholding a unified content feed, layout designs, trends upkeep, content dispersion, and personalization.
3. SEO and Writing
Optimizing your writing and search engine reach is another aspect of marketing AI has been programmed to aid marketers. Specifics such as captions, blog material, keyword usage, written layouts, voice tone, topics, titles, webpages, and all written aspects of media can be enhanced through AI support. Essentially, AI can save your fingers from looking like this.
4. Data and Behavioral Analytics
AI can gather customer reports and utilize this knowledge to help you reach your target audience in more relatable and resonating ways.
5. Consumer and Sales Predictions
AI allows you to understand and foresee marketing asset outcomes as well as the way consumers will respond to your campaigns before you employ the campaign. With this knowledge, you can make informed adjustments to your strategies to get the most out of your campaigns from the get-go and achieve the highest return on investment (ROI).
6. Customer Communication and Experience
You can program AI to respond to customer messages and emails and answer frequently asked questions with automated responses or with information AI pulls and generates from your brand's media. It can also reach out and curate influencer relations and improve engagement, loyalty, and leads by configuring messages and interactions that customers respond best to.
7. Social Media Advertisements
AI can aid in creating and optimizing advertisement content and strategies by allowing marketers to explore experimentation with a/b testing and more, budgeting, recommended channels to put their ads on, optimization of bids and custom pricing solutions, audience targeting, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Check out this link with the top 10 best AI tools for social media marketers in 2023 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/ai-marketing-tools/.
Is Using AI in Your Marketing Strategies Worth It?
As technology advances, so does the controversy around it. AI’s ability to gather information quickly and effectively share that new knowledge in a way that enhances the social media marketing processes makes it look like a no-brainer, but like social media and the internet, with all the positives there are some negatives that need to be acknowledged as well. In order to make a fully informed decision about your use of AI in your marketing strategies, you’ll need to weigh the risks and benefits it brings.
Risks
While it’s more efficient and accurate in data gathering and analysis, there are faults in its systems. Some complain that AI:
Doesn’t match the touch humans bring to marketing. AI won't be able to portray the same depths of human emotion and connection that an individual can. I think you know what I mean.
Brings up privacy concerns. The techniques AI uses to provide a more personalized experience can come at the cost of customer privacy. Remember the Netflix example from earlier? In order to give a consumer personal recommendation, AI had to have access to that consumer’s previous actions and behaviors. This means that consumers have to provide personal data in exchange for convenience and personalization.
Doesn’t generate consistent high-quality content. Despite being more accurate in its processes, AI can still share inaccurate, biased information and step away from the brand's strategies.
Inadequacies in analyzing qualitative data. AI can evaluate a large amount of data, but all of this data must be quantitative for the machine to understand it. Qualitative key performance indicator (KPI) metrics will have AI at a loss.
Benefits
AI has become an attractive instrument with 71% of marketers incorporating it into their systems.
Those using AI tools have reported:
Positive results. (82%)
Higher productivity rates (61%)
Accuracy improvements (49%)
Faster content curation (47%)
Increased content output (37%)
This means most marketers left work saying:
AI won’t stop here. Business leaders expect AI to advance in behavior and communication abilities, predictive mechanisms, and dynamic pricing capabilities.
For more information on AI tools that can help take your social media marketing game to another level check out Jon's post here.
With all that you know now, have you decided? Will you hop on the AI train or will you try to ride out this AI wave?
*Disclaimer no AI was hurt in the making of this blog.
Resources
Risterbato, R. (2023, May 24). AI Marketing - The Complete Guide. HubSpot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ai-marketing.
(2023). The Future of AI in Marketing: Emerging trends in investment and adoption. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/interactive/future-of-ai-in-marketing/.
Phillips, A. (2023, August 28). 10 AI Marketing Tools Your Team Should Be Using in 2023. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/ai-marketing-tools/.
Stelzner, M. (2019, September 6). Artificial Intelligence and Marketing: What marketers need to know. https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/artificial-intelligence-and-marketing-what-marketers-need-to-know-paul-roetzer/.
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