The world is going bonkers over artificial intelligence and for all the right reasons. AI is almost at the helm of ruling the realm of marketing technology and it is here to stay for a long time to come. At the same time, B2B marketers are exploring and harnessing every possible tool, platforms, and techniques to tap to the most imperative business aspect, that is, customer experience and engagement. Here, social media plays a meaty role!
The article will focus on probing the ‘ifs and buts’ of combining social media marketing with artificial intelligence, popularly known as “social artificial intelligence,” and will shed some light on how to add intuition to this union without being intrusive.
Let’s see how interesting or eerie it can get to mix machines with emotions
Love it or hate it but we can’t ignore the fact that AI is dominating the way enterprises do business today and also the way they interact with customers. Be it Cortana, Siri, Echo, Google Now, Watson or Einstein, global technology giants are co-creating the AI phenomenon to reshape marketing functionalities and operations, in order to proactively and accurately listen, analyze, reach and engage with their target customers in real-time with most apt solutions. AI-enabled solutions include personalized, relevant and customized content targeted at audiences, which not only enhances their web experience but also accelerates brand value and perception. Social AI can work wonders in understanding prospects and generating leads.
As a matter of fact, AI for social media is undoubtedly going to grow in an unprecedented way. According to a report made my Markets and Markets, it is estimated to grow from $644 million in 2018 to over $42.1 billion by 2023.
AI is influencing social media marketing in multiple ways
The growth of AI has proved to be a newfound boon for B2B marketers! Basically, AI is associated with functions generally known as deep learning, which essentially means extracting in-depth knowledge and valuable insights after analyzing and articulating large data sets. When applied in social media, AI effectively consumes, compress and collects meaningful and intelligent observations from large piles of user-generated information and social media conversations taking place between targeted audiences.
Hence, AI in sync with Social Media can assist in numerous ways including recommendations, suggestions, previous engagements, image and voice recognition, as well as sentiment analysis in real-time. As a result, marketers can use readymade therapy to reach the right consumer at the right time with the right message through the right channel and make the ultimate use of in-moment marketing.
This means machine learning is all set to understand human emotions and interactions and if done well, it can do wonders in creating value-based marketing tactics, serving benefits to both marketers and customers.
Here are a few examples where you can witness social media platforms leveraging AI:
- Facebook does almost everything on its platform like proposing your content, recognizing your face, suggesting friends and targeting ads to users through advanced machine learning.
- Instagram identifies and suggest visuals and images using artificial intelligence.
- Snapchat leverages an AI technology in the form of computer vision to monitor your facial features and then superimpose filters for your face in real-time.
- LinkedIn uses the power of AI to recommend connections, suggest job vacancies, serve specific posts in feed and people you would like to follow.
AI is adding zing to social media marketing for brand building
Apart from playing a major role in social media monitoring and listening, where it breaks through customer interactions, sentiments and conversations in social media, AI also summarizes the same into meaningful, apt and actionable perceptions.
It is also extending its game in unprecedented ways. The next-generation machine learning, for instance, is powered with all the necessary and latest techniques that will take branding and marketing activities at a higher level altogether.
Deep learning facilitates marketers by offering insights about the kind of messages and narratives that a brand should focus on while conversing with the target audience in their purchase decision journey. It predicts emerging patterns and responses with effective social listening techniques and enables brands to build strong and relevant stories that the customers can resonate with.
More so, AI has its own predictive analytics functionality that can warn marketers of potential marketing risks and raise alarm to indicate the advertisers using its deep and logical learning techniques. It assesses a certain situation, identifies the significant sources of information and conversations in social media and online communities, and provides customized/personalized solutions at the right time to quicken and enhance effective decision making and business performance.
Hence, the role of social AI can be summarized briefly in four major points:
- Facilitate social listening and offer in-depth and intuitive observations
- Drive social media content distribution and other campaign elements
- Offer actionable insights from large clusters of social media interactions
- Provide real-time customized, relevant and personalized content for better engagement
How much of it is enough and where to draw a line?
Although social AI bandwagon is causing a rippling effect all through the realm of advertising and digital user experience, marketers must ensure to draw a line before it gets creepy and starts invading peoples’ privacy. Marketers are expected to enhance the user buying journey and their digital experience but not at the cost of their convenience and privacy. Hence, user and customer data should be handled with sensitivity.
Privacy concerns are at an all-time high as customers tend to get irritated with irrelevant and constant messages and follow-ups, which signify that AI-enabled marketing automation platforms and social media marketing processes should draw a line between being intuitive and intrusive.
Relevantly crafted personalized messages and content should reach customers only at their convenience and when it is genuinely required, and this is where social AI’s challenge becomes a little trickier. Human interference along with social AI is the keyword and marketers at this point should also know the art of differentiating the most important insights from the least important details provided by AI enables solutions.
Apart from taking care of privacy issues, it is also imperative to stay close to contextual social media messages, performance objectives, key business goals, and marketing priorities.
Afterword
Social AI is increasingly becoming a favorite platform for marketers to help brands quickly and effectively engage with, interact and learn from their customers while enhancing their overall digital journey. However, it is to be noted that human touch is still the most desirable aspect in social media marketing and will never go out of fashion when it comes to emoting and expressing to customers’ responses and reactions with empathy.
Marketers and advertisers are living in a time when a complete balance between man and machine is where perfect marketing solution lies. Customers love brands that create a bonding without suffocating them with constant interruptions and social AI is supposed to follow this thumb rule to stand the test of time.