Artificial intelligence, the most touted technology event of the current century is steadily touching all the industries that rely on technology. We have self driving cars, chess playing computers and content recommendation engines. Which are all based on a machine’s ability to process information and get human desired insights.
An umbrella term used to denote technologies like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing, artificial intelligence, or AI is basically intelligence acquired by machines over time, feeding on data and learning to mimic human like behavior. Online Publishing Platform is one field where AI can be leveraged to automate various workflows and used in different ways. It can gain better marketing insights and launch campaigns for wider and more accurate targeting.
In digital marketing a simpler form of AI, like automation tools used for email campaigns, has been used for over a decade now. This is a basic use of data by automation tools which reduces human efforts. It gives some insight like open rates and the action taken by the recipient.
Artificial intelligence however can be a game changer for content marketing. It also gives far deeper insights with greater automation and can work through a great pile of data. Its been helping to increase conversions and achieving other goals.
Some of the fronts where artificial intelligence can be leveraged by content marketers are;
- Finding the right audience
- Content personalization
- Customer segmentation based on behavior and intent
- Identifying keywords and content topics
- And in some cases, even content creation
Personalization
Has it ever occurred to you that you do a Google search for something and you see a related Ad on your browser every now and then? Sounds creepy but the same Ad might even play on your Spotify (not if you have a premium account), this is in fact not so thrilling but a basic use of artificial intelligence. It happens because we leave our digital footprints whenever we interact online.
Companies are trying to find the right audience for their services and they are trying to make a precise recommendation. Google does this all the time, their algorithms use machine learning to learn about our online behavior. Google uses predictive analysis and recommend content to us that we might be interested in.
Marketers can use AI tools to target the right audience who are most likely to consume and react with the content. They can get insights on how the content is consumed and based on that create campaign strategies to target a specific audience. AI can also help in content personalization by indicating how many readers are interested in what type of content and recommending changes in the content to target a particular audience.
Customer Segmentation
AI tools can help content marketers by suggesting what mix of content should they create for a particular audience for maximum results. They can also tell us exactly who interacts more with our content. Along with what other type of content they prefer and other parameters like what platforms they use, their demographics, personality traits and geography. This also helps in segmenting the audience in clusters for more precise marketing campaigns. Besides, they can also be used for other marketing related activities like lead prioritization, sales strategy, and retargeting
Content Creation
Artificial intelligence has many use cases for content marketers, it helps us find the right audience and create the right content. But the task of content creation, which is the bulk of the entire activity, still needs human effort and is a major task. Would you ever rely on a computer application to write content for you? Most of us don’t even want to imagine this but AI is more powerful than we want to imagine. Heliograf is Washington Post’s robo reporter which churned out 300 reports during the Rio Olympics in 2016 and it helped the post cover House, Senate and gubernatorial races for all 50 states on election day. The Associated Press has used bots to cover financial stories and USA Today has used video software to create short videos.
The most interesting use of artificial intelligence in content creation happened in scholarly publishing recently. Springer Nature published its first AI generated research book titled ‘Lithium-Ion Batteries: A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research’. The pdf file, which is free for download mentions that the book is ‘cross-corpora auto-summarization of current texts from Springer Nature’s content platform “SpringerLink”, organized by means of a similarity-based clustering routine in coherent chapters and sections’. It automatically condenses a large set of papers into a reasonably short book. This method allow readers to speed up the literature digestion process of a given field of research instead of reading through hundreds of published articles.
The Future and the Incredible Possibilities
Springer’s book is just the beginning. A day might come when machines create content to entice human emotions and this might freak us out. As the least we expect from machines is to stir our emotions. But that’s a different story, as we have already seen its capability. AI tools in the near future could create marketing content that requires minimal human intervention and also saves on time and resources.
Tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are investing heavily in AI. These companies know that the future in AI is revolutionary and they all want the biggest share of the pie. In content marketing AI finds one of the most suitable applications. We will also see a lot of improvements in machine learning and growing applications in content marketing.
In the age of hyper awareness and personalized services it’s indispensable to understand your audience and their choices. On top of that building a strong customer relationship is key to business success. The amount of customer information available and also possibilities around it is colossal. For humans alone to manage it will be nearly impossible, artificial intelligence is key to innovations and indispensable to remain competitive in a super competitive markets.
