Powering Social Media Marketing with AI

This article is written by Victoria Jenkins, member of the Social Media Council and Senior Account Manager at agency:2.

AI has been defined as a “branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers” (Miriam-Webster dictionary). It’s the tech that is behind image and voice recognition, sentiment analysis, personalised product suggestions, highlighting trending topics and allows social media platforms to filter users’ news-feeds more efficiently through clever algorithms that are constantly changing.

AI enables social media marketers to make more cost-effective decisions based on hyper-targeting to make a user’s online experience more customised. AI is not only becoming more prevalent within the social space, but it is improving the social experience in the following ways:

Bots

AI allows for a greater degree of personalisation by understanding a person’s digital environment more efficiently that any human marketer could. It allows for personalised, one-to-one relationships with a mass audience.

AI powered chatbots are the next generation of service interface, transforming the way businesses interact on social media with their customers. Gartner has estimated that by 2020, 25% of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant or chatbot technology.[1]

AI will also allow for increasing personalisation for customer user journeys, with many global brands already using Bots extremely effectively, especially within the retail, hospitality, travel and banking sectors. Some examples include using chatbots to recommend travel deals based on previous travel destinations, or giving personalised banking advice based on patterns of saving.

AI as a force for good

Many social networks are harnessing the vast power of AI as a force for social good; whether this is assisting with disaster relief; developing faster MRI scans; or assisting with Facebook’s blood donations feature. The latter has been achieved by connecting people interested in donating blood with local hospitals, blood banks, and other organisations that provide blood to those in need.Facebook's AI-powered donate button helped raise over $1 billion for charities. Microsoft is also using AI as a power for good through AI Accessibility, which focuses on using technology to help those with disabilities.

The Future of AI for Marketers

Strategy is becoming increasingly important for marketers as AI takes on more of the manual data work and reporting tasks. It’s important that AI is fully integrated into a company’s marketing strategies; not siloed in IT or the Innovations Team.

AI should be seen as a tool which allows marketers to have increased confidence in the accuracy of the results from their campaigns. The future of AI marketing is looking bright and extremely intelligent but human inquiry will still be essential to ask the right questions and to ensure that creativity is not lost

[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-19-gartner-says-25-percent-of-customer-service-operations-will-use-virtual-customer-assistants-by-2020