Who would’ve thought — back in 1950, when Alan Turing wrote a paper on “ Computer Machinery and Intelligence ” — we’d today be navigating the complexity of this revolutionary invention, termed Artificial Intelligence? Did Turning think the computation of complex figures could get easier if the machine could think on its own, or did he actually believe two machines could talk to each other?
Artificial Intelligence has come a long way since its actual inception in 1955 . Believe it or not, AI is going to rule humanity.
We humans have been inventing this technology, that will, in the near future, overwhelm us with our own dependency on it, in all spheres of life. This article will focus only, however, on how AI has also been introduced into the realm of social media.

Can social media bank its future on artificial intelligence?

Social media platforms account for a massive 2.77 billion users and are accountable to the multitude of data they possess. With ever-growing technological advancements in social media, these numbers on data are only going to increase at an alarming rate. Artificial Intelligence in marketing is taking a load off of modern marketers’ shoulders, allowing them to focus on more data-driven strategies.

Why the need to introduce AI into Social Media Marketing?

Marketing becomes more human with AI enabling data-driven marketers to explore newer dimensions of marketing.
Social media marketers can leverage the rudimentary principles of AI in order to understand human psychology and the implications of it in the real world scenario. When social media marketing automation leverages AI, it helps to understand and track multiple aspects of user behavior, such as –

1. How much time do they spend online?
2. Which social media platform do they spend the most time on?
3. What do they exactly use social media for?
4. What form of content do they consume?
5. Which products/brands get the most visibility from them on social media

Once marketers get sufficient visibility on these aspects, they can combine it with their past marketing campaign data and then build hyper-personalized marketing messages that are sure to bring success.

The Current State of AI in Social Media

In 2018, Facebook acquired Bloomsbury AI to ramp up its NLP (Natural Language Processing) in order to combat fake news and tackle inappropriate content issues. In 2017, Facebook bought Ozlo , an AI-based startup which claims to be the index of knowledge about the real world. This would be integrated with Facebook’s messenger to mark its entrance in the virtual assistant space. Ozlo has claimed to answer users questions ranging from movies to restaurants and so on.
Facebook’s AI approach to enhance people’s lives :
LinkedIn leverages AI to assist its members to better their profiles and help them tune their work experiences based on the industry suggestions. It also helps recruiters source the best fit employee for their job description based on the time of his/her employment duration. See how LinkedIn is leveraging AI to enhance its platform:
In 2016, Twitter acquired Magic Pony Technology to add up AI force to Cortex, that wants to build the most advanced AI platform in the world to apply the most advanced AI algorithms to the most challenging datasets, effortlessly. Twitter uses AI to show the most relevant tweets on a users timeline based on their previous activity based on the kind of tweets they engaged with, replied to, retweeted and the language used in the tweets. Twitter also recently launched a major update to its services using Artificial Intelligence that crops an image using face detection or by creating a thumbnail from an entire image.

How Artificial Intelligence Can Empower Social Media Marketers

1. AI-Assisted Content Creation – AI tools study the kind of content a brand posts, how your target audience engages with the content and suggests on what kind of content to create and which content has to be optimized. This will help in determining the buying habits, users’ everyday environment and what exactly influences their purchasing decisions. Companies like USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, CBS are already using AI to generate content.
2. Round-the-Clock Online Presence – Constantly managing the social media pages is really exhausting. But with the use of AI-based chatbots, brands can not only manage their online presence but also respond to customer messages or queries round the clock with tailored responses as human as possible. Chatbots powered by AI have the ability to answer open questions. These bots use NLP (Natural Learning Processing) and ML (Machine Learning) to find the right response. Intelligent conversational chatbots, can also immediately tackle issues as they come.
3. Automated Bidding – Bidding on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is numbers game. With AI these platforms are well equipped to analyze the form and type of the content to adjust the bid accordingly that will generate maximum results. By implementing AI, companies get real-time, actionable insights into where their marketing spends that are performing exceptionally well, allowing them to increase marketing ROI and focus on the keywords that really matter — without having to hire additional human resource.
4. Enhanced Audience Targeting – Target audience is the holy grail of paid ad campaigns across various social media platforms. Since all the activities of the audience get stored online, marketers can leverage the technology of AI to collate all the audience data and turn into meaningful audience insights, such as:

• Social media usage
• Online user behaviors
• Frequent buying patterns

Social media marketers can use the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to expand their campaign to reach beyond linear segmentation and target individuals who are similar to those who have already converted (Ex: lookalike audiences in Twitter). This will allow them to identify the right target audience, based on past behavior and advanced patterns, that will increase the relevance, leading to better conversions and higher ROIs.

Artificial Intelligence: The Present and Future of Social Media

Artificial intelligence in social media is gaining prominence in every-day use, whether you realise it or not. Many social networking sites have acquired smaller AI businesses to increase their functionality and appeal to users. For example, LinkedIn invested in Bright, a company which enables the site to offer better candidate matches for both employers and job seekers. It takes into account the user’s hiring patterns, work experience and similarities in job descriptions.
While artificial intelligence in social media will be increasingly refined, it will take some time to replace the human connections required to establish a strong bond between brands and customers. AI tools are continuously improving in pursuit of successfully forging strong bonds with buyers. But for now, it is still up to social media marketers to do all that’s necessary to reach out to prospects organically and create conversions and loyalty through personal involvement.