There are over 3.4 billion active social media users across the globe. New conversations, photo uploads, tweets and status updates are everywhere. Thanks to AI, it’s becoming easier to collect, analyse and understand all these consumer social interactions and behaviour. But Why is collecting behavioural data important? It’s because it allows businesses to optimize their operations. It’s no longer just a matter of bringing together what consumers are saying but about understanding why they are saying it. Here are 10 AI Developments Marketers Will Love
#1 AI for Sentiment Analysis
On a daily basis, there are:
- Over half a billion tweets
- 2 billion Facebook likes and comments
- 5 billion Instagram likes
- Over 5 billion videos watched on YouTube
This is just part of the list and manually going through all these interactions to understand how consumers feel about your brand is outright tedious. AI sentiment analysis tools like Hootsuite Insights help to navigate through the clutter by monitoring and analysing conversations to determine their deeper context.
Using AI for sentiment analysis aids in addressing issues as they come up and helps with identifying the services and products that people are happy with. For instance, evaluating social media reviews can highlight potential customers interested in a product and this can improve targeted marketing.
Top takeaway: Use AI-powered tools to monitor how people perceive your brand using filters like keywords, location, gender, and language to get a better picture.
#2 Using AI for Data Analysis
On average, social media users have 7.6 accounts across different platforms. This means marketing efforts are normally spread out on various networks. AI takes out the need for analytic tools on each platform by combining the complex analysis tasks across several social media platforms.
Vizia is one such data analytic tool using AI to create data visualisations and a comprehensive picture of the activity across all networks. This tool also allows for real-time data sharing and integration across the organisation.
Top takeaway: Data analysis tools are increasing and you can access both free and premium ones to grow your brand. Use AI data analysis tools to undertake competitive analysis, benchmark your marketing strategies and monitor important consumer insights that you can use for your campaigns.
#3 Predictive Analytics
In the past, social media marketing relied on determining trends retroactively. AI is making it possible to reliably model future trends that can be used for future marketing campaigns. Predictive analytics for social media make it possible to ‘reverse-engineer’ consumer experiences from data to determine what will occur in future and why it will occur. The analysis helps to identify opportunities and risks on social media like the likelihood of consumers leaving a brand.
Top takeaway: Get tools to predict, interpret, and forecast consumer behaviour from large amounts of data. The right tools allow you to gain feedback and insights that will help you market better. Check out IBM Cognos Analytics to get a peek at what predictive analytics can do for your marketing.
#4 Audience Segmentation
Consumers are increasingly demanding personalised experiences and this has prompted the need for smaller customer segments. AI can simplify segmentation. It effectively sifts through data to identify common characteristics among consumers and what they need.
AI also enables dynamic segmentation. Consumer demands and behaviours change constantly and dynamic segmentation accounts for this using the most relevant real-time data. SocialBakers is an example of an AI tool that is being used for dynamic segmentation to avoid creating campaigns with outdated data.
Top takeaway: Save time and create social media campaigns that convert cheaper and faster with an AI-powered audience segmentation platform. Audience segmentation is a great way to personalise customer experience. 88% of marketers agree that personalisation improves business considerably.
#5 Crafting Buyer Personas with AI
Successful segmentation and marketing rely heavily on having the correct buyer persona. The more you know your customer the easier it is to sell. AI is now a vital tool for customer profiling and creating a precise buyer persona. Both these elements are crucial for building personalised social media campaigns.
Buyer personas can increase marketing-generated revenue by over 170%. There are various AI tools available to create personas. Some examples include Hubspot’s ‘Make My Persona‘ feature and SocialBakers’ AI-powered persona development tool.
Top Takeaways: To support your segmentation efforts, you need tools for creating accurate buyer personas. Crafting your buyer persona should be done in conjunction with the sales and customer service teams to reap the most benefits for the business.
#6 Customer Service in the Age of AI
Excellent customer service is key to attracting and retaining customers. AI messaging technology offers quick and personalized communication, which increases the quality of customer service. Moreover, tools such as AI customer service software could be used that can further improve clients’ experience while availing your services. AI can optimize multiple online features and your business website to befit your customers, with facilities like chat and call bot assistance, etc. In fact, customers want personalization so much that 52% of them are more inclined to switch brands if a business doesn’t provide personalized communication.
Top takeaway: Take advantage of AI messaging technology to improve your customer service. Tools like ManyChat allow you to create a messaging bot that lets you engage your audience seamlessly.
#7 Chatbots and Social Engagement
Chatbots are not only ideal for messaging on social media, but they can increase your engagement and sales. 37% of Americans are even willing to buy through a chatbot. AI bots are being integrated into live chat to enhance interaction. The use of chatbots provides instant feedback, closer attention to customers and allows for the management of multiple requests in one go.
Chatbots make for great customer service and they are great social media virtual assistants. One of the bots rocking social media is the Wall Street Journal chatbot which makes it easy to keep up with big news and live stock quotes on Facebook Messenger. You can even customise your alerts.
Top takeaway: Use chatbots to decrease customer wait times and to help keep customers on your page longer. It’s easy to create your own social media chatbot with tools like MobileMonkey that allow you to get higher ROI on your marketing efforts.
#8 Social Media Monitoring
Social media marketing campaigns involve interacting with lots of people. Without the right kind of support, you won’t be able to monitor what people are saying about your brand. AI monitoring tools are helping brands keep tabs on brand mentions and thought influencers and they help segregate customer information.
Top takeaway: Use monitoring tools like Digital Air Strike to get in touch with customer experiences with your company. This will help you automate social media insights, refine your marketing strategy, and it will make it easier to identify thought influencers who can boost your campaigns.
#9 Content Creation and Optimization with AI
Several brands including the Associated Press are already using AI technology to create content.
Software like Wibbitz is allowing brands to create video content from written content in minutes. Additionally, AI-powered technology is being used to optimise content to increase visibility and engagement. AI can help you craft your social media content faster and with better analysis and insights.
Top takeaway: Streamline your content creation and optimisation with AI tools to save time and make better use of your marketing resources. Several tools including Cortex and Market Muse are available on the market to give you automated content analysis and keyword optimisation.
#10 Augmented Reality
AI has brought with it augmented reality (AR) which is changing the face of marketing strategies. In fact, there was much talk about Spark AR Studio at the recent Facebook F8 Conference. Spark AR Studio is an AR platform that allows people to create AR effects easily.
There’s no doubt that AR will shape the future of social media marketing especially after the success of masks and filters on giant social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Your social media marketing should make use of AR to shape up campaigns.
Top takeaways: Create unique and interactive content and ads with AR. You can use AR to speed up purchasing decisions. Customers can try out different products using AR before purchasing thereby cutting out the need to test out products physically. This is already proven to cut down on returns too so there is definite value in the software. To get started with AR, you can check out Spark AR Studio to create your own AR effects for Instagram.
AI is here to stay and ignoring it will greatly reduce your marketing competitive edge. How will you use AI to boost your social media campaigns? If you are stuck on where to begin, speak to my team at Contentworks to help you with your social media strategy. Enjoyed reading 10 AI Developments Social Media Marketers Will Love? Please share it on your networks.