How advancements in artificial intelligence will impact content marketing

• From content strategy and audience targeting to SEO and email writing, a wide variety of activities performed by marketers every day will be intelligently automated to a certain degree in the near future.
• Honey Singh, CEO, #ARM Worldwide writes a few ways in which you can use artificial intelligence and strengthen your marketing strategy.

Back in 1950, Alan Turing, the English logician and computer scientist, posed the question: "Can machines think?" Since then, computers have done everything; from defeating a Russian chess grandmaster to writing a sci-fi screenplay.

The way AI has entered our lives and changed our perception tells us a lot about what the future holds for us. We have already witnessed a lot of smart applications of AI like voice-powered assistants such as Siri and Alexa. Other AI-based inventions include autonomous cars, predictive algorithms, quantum computers, augmented reality and Internet of Things (IoT). The list is getting endless with each passing day.

The potential of AI is so massive that is has touched almost every industry such as finance, research, marketing, customer service, telecommunication, education - you name it.

Now, how much of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact your job as a marketer in the next few years? Probably a lot more than you think.

From content strategy and audience targeting to SEO and email writing, a wide variety of activities performed by marketers every day will be intelligently automated to a certain degree in the near future. In fact, content marketing activities dominated the list of highest-rated use cases for Artificial Intelligence in marketing. Out of the top 10 cases identified, seven of them explicitly deal with the functions of content marketing. These include keyword selection, content analysis, optimization, data-driven content creation, and creating personalized content.

With Artificial Intelligence, the world of content marketing is undergoing a change - and we can see that it's a great one.

Think beyond fashion word of 'Chatbots' - It is about customer experience

In simple terms, chatbots can be defined as computer programs that automate certain tasks, typically by chatting with a user through any conversational interface. It is safe to say that at a time when social media has taken the world by storm, chatbots will definitely be the future of interactive engagement. They will allow consumers to smoothly engage with marketers in terms of customer service, content consumption, and transactional engagements. In fact, according to a report from eConsultancy, 57% of consumers preferred to live chat to get their queries resolved. And why not? Every customer typically expects a quick and responsive service, and chatbots are best programmed to provide that.

Several companies like Facebook and Uber are successfully using chatbots to interact with users and offer relevant information in real-time. Smaller brands should leverage this technology to increase and maximize customer engagement.

If you’re planning to integrate a chatbot in your content marketing strategy, check out these tools.

• Chatfuel
• Flow XO
• Motion.AI
• QNA Maker

With the availability of these platforms anyone with little to no knowledge of coding can create a basic chatbot & integrate it in their content marketing strategy.

Getting Ready For Voice Search

Due to the excessive use of AI-powered virtual assistants, voice search is the new phenomenon that will prove to be much more useful in the future. From home assistant devices to autonomous cars, voice search is absolutely here to stay and change the game. With so many voice commands already on the plate like Siri, Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Alexa, voice will have a sure-shot effect on search trends.

• According to research by TheeDesign, out of 3.5 billion searches made every day on Google, at least a third of those are voice searches.
• This year around 50% of all searches are projected to be voice-searches
• Voice-based shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion in 2022

As we know, search engines keep evolving and have become more capable of inferring meaning and deciphering queries, long-tail keywords will be replaced with more conversational keywords. Integrate it with few trends of SEO & VOice, simple text points.

Predictive analysis will alter the digital landscape.

Predictive analysis is the process of data mining, modelling, and statistics to make predictions about future outcomes. This technology can be vividly seen on Netflix and YouTube, where they make suggestions based on consumer interest.

Another system like Gmail's Smart Compose offers suggestions on what users should type next, and then consequently records and analyses what suggestion they pick. If the user repeatedly ignores a particular set of recommendations, there is a high probability it will offer different suggestions in the future. The most advanced software are capable of teaching themselves how to improve their functionality. Another shining example would be typing assistant software Grammarly - which not only runs a grammar test on your text but also suggests improvements to enhance your writing style.

Now, there has been a great saying that 'Content is King' - but essentially, content is meaningless without distribution and context. By analyzing things like consumer demographics, geographics, the time of day, time of year, and other factors, artificial intelligence is going to paint a much clearer picture for marketers when it comes to context.

AI plays a massive role by using data points, engagement trends and behaviour to understand relevance, distribution, and context for content marketers. By leveraging AI, brands will know where exactly their loyal consumers are engaging and serve up content that is likely to be attractive to them.

Below is a list of predictive analytics applications that marketers can use:

• Lead scoring: Sales and Marketing division will be able to collaborate in a much more meaningful way. Every lead will be scored based on its readiness to purchase.

• Customer insights: Predictive modelling can be widely used for all kinds of customer segmentation. In this, the AI algorithm can segment target groups based on preferred factors.

• Campaign nurturing: Using behavioural and demographic data, lead nurturing campaigns can be tailored to move the process down the sales funnel.

• Personalized product recommendation: Marketers can track the preferences of consumers based on their habits and buying behaviour.

Customized News Feed Algorithms
AI would customize the news feed of your consumers for their social media networks - including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. With this, you can make sure that the posts would be shown to only those people who want to see it. This is possible since they are capable of analyzing a number of different variables and predicting the accuracy that a user would place on each post - such as the number of likes, comments, or spam. Furthermore, these algorithms can provide help in social media ads as users get to see only the ads that they will be interested in.

AI is revolutionizing the marketing industry and will continue to vastly transform jobs, disrupt content marketing in which we can't imagine, and create immense opportunities for businesses to leverage this technology.

- By Honey Singh, CEO, #ARM Worldwide