WRITTEN BY Caitlin Jardine
AI (artificial Intelligence) has now revolutionised the digital landscape with it’s rapid growth over the last couple of years, and it’s migrated over to social media too. It’s changing the way users are interacting online – but is it for the best?
From personal recommendations to content creation, AI tools have allowed users to save time and improve performance on even the most basic day to day tasks, as they no longer have to seek answers themselves.
When it comes to social media, what is it these technologies offer and is it win for businesses looking to maximise their social media strategy efforts, or do the drawbacks outweigh the good?
What AI Can Offer
Time Saving
One benefit to using AI as an aid for social media marketing tasks is that with it’s ability to schedule posts, respond to customer queries and analyse data, means it frees up time for businesses to focus on the creative elements of their social strategy and complete required tasks more efficiently.
Content Creation
That being said, AI also has the power to create content whether that be high quality images or videos, as well as compose text copy and captions as per business direction and stipulation. This benefits business content creators in maintaining a consistent posting schedule without the need for extensive manual effort.
Insights
AI has the ability to analyse and digest huge amounts of data at any one time, more so than any human can, which proves to be extremely useful when it comes to identifying patterns in audience behaviour and measuring campaign performance over an increased period of time. Social media marketers and businesses can therefore leverage AI to help pinpoint what content is resonating with their audience most, highlight the best time to post based on previous patterns and refine messaging so that maximises engagement.
Customer Service
There are now various AI chatbots available to provide instant responses to your customers, whether that be to queries about your product or service, or by directing them to the relevant touch points. Particularly amongst busy periods whereby time may cause rapid customer response to fall through the net, this chatbot automation can improve customer satisfaction by hugely speeding up response times for the more simple answers, whilst escalating more complex issues to human customer service agents.
Data
Artificial intelligence is made up of a whole encyclopaedia of data thats spans across the internet (the clue is in the name!) but this means that it can search for and access real time analytics and use it to predict insights based on historic patterns down to the figure. This removes the guesswork and interpretation limited by human abilities that are not able to be solely down to fact, meaning businesses can make data driven decisions to best refine their social strategy and optimise campaigns for maximum results.
So what are the negative impacts of AI use for social media strategy?
Human Connection
Whilst it may save some time, using AI to connect with customers might not have the desired effect you would like it to, with it’s lacking ability to empathise or show genuine emotion. Whilst it can mimic human conversation, AI conversation is likely to feel impersonal, potentially alienating customers who want to feel listened to by a human.
Generalised Content
Without correct prompting, AI generated content may not always be perfect and suggestions may not align with your core brand and values. This may be through generic suggestions or content that isn’t quite tailored to your individual business, and that lacks creativity and originality. Which means that in order to maintain brand authenticity, humans will have to oversee and potentially take over operation regardless, to ensure that the content is suited to, and aligns exactly with the business and it’s tone. At the end of the day you know your audience better than anyone and blindly trusting AI input, may mean you risk audience resonation.
Bias
AI algorithms ingest and store all previous exchanges so that it can build a personal profile to best suggest answers, which may in turn generate biased information based on previous user preference. This lack of impartial favouring, limits the ability for AI to provide diverse perspectives and even potentially reinforce misinformation, which is massively concerning for businesses projecting messages to wide audiences on social media.
Data Concerns
Moreover this data collection and storage raises concern of privacy. Whilst AI requires all of this user data to be able to function most effectively, with the increasing information that is given out by business to these systems about their audience, businesses need to be careful that they aren’t going against data protection polices such as GDPR to preserve user privacy.
Investment
In order to have the desired effect on your social strategy, AI softwares need to be used correctly and with the correct detail and direction. Meaning that before jumping in, those looking to benefit may need specific training in using the software to be most impactful, which in itself initially will cost the business time and money. Particularly the more advanced tools come at a cost which may cause smaller businesses with limited budgets to struggle to commit to integrating AI to it’s full extent, into their social strategy.
In Conclusion…
Overall, when it comes to efficiency AI can be a game changer, however businesses must evaluate their social strategy needs to decide whether utilising AI is the way to go for them. It will also depend on the business itself and it’s audience, as to whether the rewards that AI reap aren’t detrimental to the authenticity that human creativity brings to the table, in engaging with customers.
So rather than replacing human effort with AI, it should be used to amplify and support your efforts on social media.
Learn more about social media in our recent blog here.
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