Wondering what artificial intelligence features are coming to social media and advertising platforms?
Want to know how machine learning can improve your marketing?
With an estimated 2.77 billion social network users around the globe, social networking platforms possess an unimaginable amount of data. The reach of social media networks is expanding at an alarming rate around the globe in 2019. These figures will continue to grow. Social media provides a phenomenal amount of user-generated data. Due to the nature of data which is mainly unstructured, it is a herculean task to gauge actionable insights from this sea of information.
This is where the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes into play. AI is an area of computer science that aims to decipher data from the natural world often using cognitive technologies designed to understand and complete tasks that humans have taken on in the past.
While many naysayers of AI suggest that this technology will eliminate jobs, it is actually meant to enhance intelligence and effectively analyze data in order to streamline processes and work in a highly effective and efficient manner.
Every digital marketer that’s paying attention is either wary, concerned, or deathly afraid of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
These systems feature absurd processing power and instant analytical capabilities. They eat big data and spit out hyper-targeted marketing. They take no breaks or vacation days, and spend no time screwing around on Facebook (except to ingest behavioral insights to make themselves smarter).
Various tech behemoths have branded their marketing AI in their own image. IBM (#client) has Watson, of course. Salesforce (#client) has Einstein.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
Artificial intelligence is defined as “the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.” More practically, it’s the science of quantifying and replicating the processes of human intelligence. It is not a single technology, but rather a collection of technologies such as:
- Computer Vision: A computer’s ability to “see” and identify visual objects
- Natural Language Processing / Generation: A computer’s ability to understand language and write or respond to prompts the same way a human does.
- Neural Networks: Computer systems modeled on the way human brains think.
- Machine Learning: A machine’s ability to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed.
AI solutions are comprised of some or all of these technologies working together to find patterns and connections within massive data sets (also called Big Data,) and apply these patterns to perform tasks and processes at a speed, scale, and level of efficiency not possible before.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA ROBOTS ARE HERE
To date, social media (other than social listening, of course) has been largely immune to the effects of machine learning.
AI-powered digital marketing world has been focused in these areas:
- Mobile testing and optimization
- Web content testing and optimization
- Email testing and optimization
- Behavioral data pattern recognition and ID of “best” and disenfranchised customers, as well as likely advocates and influencers
Persado is a fascinating company. They use a whole host of data inputs and relationship data to create highly targeted, massively specific content pieces inside email, on a home page or landing page, etc.
Their core assignment has been helping e-commerce companies boost their conversion rate by dramatically boosting relevance and resonance of digital copy and imagery.
But last week, they launched Persado One which allows digital marketers to customize messaging and look and feel at the individual level, rather than just the customer segment level. Even more importantly, Persado can now deploy those one-to-one campaigns as social media ads and—get this—craft them based on historical emotional engagement.
Imagine the Orpheum Memphis (#client) wants to use Facebook ads to sell more tickets for upcoming performances. Based on users’ historical engagement with messages of different tones and tenors, Persado can combine copy and images and put together the perfect ad for EACH USER.
If, based on your website, email, and social media behaviors, the database believes you like to go to the Orpheum Memphis with your family, you’ll see a Facebook ad emphasizing that benefit. However, if your history indicates you are more into seeing classic Blue’s artists live, you’ll see an ad with those attributes highlighted.
With more than two billion monthly users, Facebook is using artificial intelligence to flag posts automatically that show expressions of suicidal thoughts for human moderators to review. Facebook has enhanced its program to allow human moderators to review 20 times more suicidal posts, and Facebook is sending its suicide prevention materials to twice as many people.
Although in nascent stage, the company is deploying updated systems in different languages to improve suicide prevention on Instagram.
LinkedIn uses Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence for almost all its products. With almost seven million open candidates, LinkedIn offers biggest pool of candidates for a recruiter to contact and connect with highest response rate. LinkedIn uses algorithms with the capability to predict users who are possibly the best fit for the role. Using AI algorithms, LinkedIn can highlight candidates who are most likely to respond or seeking new opportunities.
LinkedIn drastically changed its job-matching algorithms to improve performance. To be precise, it leads users to two million more (job) applications than before.
Twitter recently launched an update to its service using Artificial Intelligence that crops an image using face detection or creating a thumbnail from an entire image. With neural networks, Twitter can decipher which part of the image user would be interested in.
The neural crop system is applicable for faces where the crop could cut out faces in portrait shots, whereas the AI-based image recognizes important part of faces and puts that in the preview.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Artificial intelligence in social media is gaining prominence.
It’s practically impossible to have a brand without a social media presence, yet just being on these platforms isn’t enough. They need to be utilized correctly to achieve maximum output, generate more customers and ultimately increase ROI.
However, many businesses don’t have the resources to hire human staff that can monitor trends, social patterns and insights. AI is a way of solving such problems and affords marketers the freedom to be creative with their outreach.
AI acts as a way for brands to scope the vast pool that is social media. They can cover bases that were once hard to monitor. Think of AI as the airplane moment, when people finally had the chance to go from one country to another.
2.5-billion people will be within easy reach, and it’s down to AI.
About Blair
Blair Evan Ball is a Social Media Coach and founder of Prepare1, a company that works with businesses, individuals and non-profits. He is a former executive with a Fortune 50 company, and his national division did $1Billion+ in sales annually.
Blair has written three e-books: Facebook for Business Made Easy, Facebook Pages for Business Made Easy, and WordPress Blog Setup Made Easy.
Blair also educates, trains entrepreneurs and business professionals how to amplify their brand, increase revenues, and raise more funds.
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