Using AI to craft better social media strategies

Dealing with data is a huge part of managing a social media marketing campaign, and trying to work out how to best use this data causes headaches amongst even the very best and most experienced digital marketing professionals.

Although insightful consumer data can massively influence a marketing campaign, the sheer amount of data which is available and can be collected is insane, and the pressures which come from trying to sort, organize and prioritize all of it can easily bog down a marketing department and begin to have a negative impact on the campaigns they are running.

So, how can you as a marketer use data from social media efficiently, in a way which gives you more time to do what you’re good at – creating effective and engaging marketing strategies?

With the use of artificial intelligence, that’s how.

The emergence of AI solutions

AI has come a very long way in a very short amount of time, and it is still continually evolving. It already touches on many parts of our lives and its reach is only going to grow wider as the technologies behind it become more advanced.

There is great promise with AI in helping marketing professionals make better use of and process social media data. There are many benefits to be taken advantage of right now if you are ready to let the machine do some of the thinking for you. AI solutions for social media marketing solve many data-related problems which marketers must face on a daily basis.

Social media marketing success begins with a strong and thorough understanding of your target market, your audience and the competition you are up against. By knowing this information, you can create content which inspires your audience to take action and engage with you and your brand.

AI tools can be used to further your understanding of your audience and competitors and provide a valuable insight into customer behavior which can help you create better campaigns.

When you let AI take control and process the many mounds of data which get thrown at you, you will be able to create impactful content based on valuable information without having to sit there and comb through everything yourself.

AI solutions for social media

The potential for AI is huge, and it can be applied all across the social media marketing process, from content planning to its creation and execution. Here are three ways AI can help you.

1. Social listening

Social listening tools can track posts which focus on a specific phrase, word or brand. With the data provided by social listening, you can unearth opportunities to create specialized content which targets what your consumers and target market are talking about or interested in. This is a great way to interact and connect with an audience.

The most effective AI social listening tools will provide you with a comprehensive dataset which can be used to inform content and help you respond to unique opportunities.

2. Analysis of competitors

This is one area where AI has had the biggest impact—being able to track your competitors and analyze what they are doing is key to strategic planning.

AI can analyze huge sets of data found through social media profiles of competitors, including interactions made between their own customers or clients. This gives marketing professionals a huge advantage, as the data shows what is and isn’t working for your competitors and this can be used to influence your own marketing strategies.

3. Optimization of content

When you are able to understand your audience and have learned about your competitors, you can use all of this knowledge, alongside data provided by AI, to deliver the very best content for your audience.

Although AI cannot write your content for you, the assistance it provides in scraping, collecting and analyzing data and feeding information back to you is invaluable. This automated analysis can save you many hours of research, enabling you to focus on what matters—producing actionable content which converts.

By using AI, you will be able to produce better content simply because you have more time to do so.

AI content creation and other tools

Because AI saves marketing professionals lots of time when it comes to planning, they can focus more of this time on creating quality content. However, for smaller marketing teams or companies with limited access to resources, this is not always enough and there is always a need to save more time.

AI can, to an extent, create content, too. Although AI is not yet at the level of being able to write long-form pieces of marketing copy which are optimized and ready to deploy, there are other things which can be completely automated and further aid the creative process.

Some of the more popular and most advanced areas for social media automation come in the form of virtual assistants and chatbots, particularly the latter. Chatbots can be deployed across instant messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, and they are now a very common sight.

The most popular example of these chatbots are customer service bots which can answer basic-level queries and provide an instant point of contact for customers who need assistance, and other bots such as those which can handle your calendar and automatically schedule meetings have obvious time-saving potential.

The future of AI

Whilst AI is nowhere near the point of being able to generate full-length content which is ready to publish, developments are being made in this area, and content scaling is one of the most exciting areas of AI which is always being improved.

There are some tools which can generate transcriptions and news headlines, for example, and it is likely only a matter of time until we have routine access to tools which can generate publishable short-form pieces of content.

In its current state, however, AI has the potential to free up huge amounts of time for marketing professionals who are being bogged down by processing data. Social media truly is a goldmine for data and it is important to have the right tools in place which can collect, analyze and process it for you.

(Featured image by Jason Howie via Flickr. CC BY 2.0.)

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DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation for writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.