Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful concept. Industries are quickly adopting it to produce all kinds of advantages. Content marketing can benefit, as well. AI in content marketing is an emerging trend, and it’s reshaping the landscape with new possibilities relating to audience analysis, content ideation, content personalization, and content analytics.
Let’s look at why your content team should be leveraging it to make processes simpler and easier.
Are Organizations Using AI in Content Marketing?
AI in content marketing is increasing, but it’s not mainstream. The 2019 CMO Survey found its adoption is rising, with many looking to accelerate use in the next three years. How do organizations use AI? The most prevalent uses are content personalization, predictive analytics for customer insights, targeting decisions, and customer segmentation (see full results below).
Image: CMO Survey
The top four use cases all relate to content marketing. Personalization is a direct subset, but predicting customer sentiment, better targeting, and segmenting are all essential to content strategy and effective content marketing.
How can you begin to use AI for content marketing automation? Let’s look at ways AI can make the lives of content marketers easier.
Data-Driven Feedback Loops
To continue to master content marketing and ensure audience engagement, looking back is necessary. Insights from content performance provide context for brands, helping them to improve and optimize. It’s also something many companies struggle with, even large enterprises.
AI tools can make a critical difference when it comes to understanding insights. They can provide data-driven feedback that is accessible to your content creators. Because the loop is continuous, you’re always getting “smarter” about what content works and what falls flat.
This new concept is now being called content intelligence. Wikipedia defines it as “a strategy that uses artificial intelligence systems and software to process content data into reliable insights about the effectiveness of a business’ content.” You can apply those insights to your content strategy, content planning, and the content itself.
For example, AI tools may detect patterns in consumer behavior that are different from your assumptions. This intelligence may impact your buyer personas, how you distribute content, or the format of the content.
Content Intelligence Drives Content Personalization
Content intelligence is also a big part of hyper-personalization. This valuable information can help you plot out buyer journeys better and be as relevant as possible to the individual based on their preferences, challenges, demographic, or any other segment.
Here are a few tools to consider:
- PathFactory: A platform for content insight and activation that allows buyers to move through their paths to purchase faster and more efficiently, by delivering relevant content recommendations.
- Conversica: A tool that allows you to engage with customers with personalized conversations via AI-powered intelligent assistants. Marketing, sales, or customer success can use it.
Using AI in Content Auditing
Content auditing is the process of analyzing the content that you have and categorizing it in a variety of ways (i.e., format, buyer stage, topic, status, etc.). In this audit, you can discover gaps and opportunities as well as understand performance.
To do this manually would be an enormous task even for large content teams. AI tools like MarketMuse can audit your website content rather quickly and provide recommendations on how to improve what you have. This knowledge lets you analyze where you are and see where you can go, and it’s all data-driven. You’re not guessing what works and what doesn’t. You have proof.
Content Topic Ideation
It can be hard to come up with content ideas consistently. Brainstorming exercises are an excellent tactic, but they can only get you so far. Using AI for content topic ideation is another way to scale your repository.
AI-based predictive analytics solutions can forecast audience reaction and sentiment. AI tools can also perform competitive research on topics. By leveraging machine learning, these tools help identify topics that will perform well with audiences.
Some examples of these tools include:
- MarketMuse: The platform analyzes your current content and market trend data to identify gaps and then it can help you produce content briefs to ensure your assets hit the mark.
- HubSpot’s SEO Tool: It assists with topic discovery and organizes topic suggestions to help you build authority.
- Concured: This AI platform enables content research, creation, and personalization. It works by analyzing content your audience consumes and determining why it appeals to them, so you can then replicate the framework.
Image: Concured
- Buzzsumo: This content tool helps you discover what’s trending. By using AI, the platform gathers data on a topic and reveals what’s getting a lot of engagement on social as well as the most common search queries for a keyword.
Content Creation with NLG
Natural Language Generation (NLG) works by converting computerized data to narratives through the use of algorithms. NLG is not going to replace your writers. However, it can give them support so that you continue to produce content at a high frequency.
AI-based software is already hard at work writing short articles, which you may have read. These “robot content creators” are in use by Forbes, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press.
This practice is still in its infancy, but expectations are that adoption will rise. It’s another way to scale your throughput.
AI Improves Content Accuracy
Proofing and editing are time-consuming processes. Writers are often left to self-edit if content teams don’t have dedicated resources. The problem is that it’s hard to catch everything when you’re the original creator. AI can help.
Tools like Grammarly do more than check for spelling and grammar errors. The platform also provides recommendations to restructure sentences for better flow and readability. It can process thousands of words in seconds. It’s not perfect, but it can learn. If Grammarly provides a suggestion that’s not accurate, you can report as such.
Another option is Atomic Reach. It uses AI to optimize content with insights on improving it, so it’s engaging for your audience.
Image: Atomic Reach
Where Will AI Take Your Content?
Content marketing is a 24/7, long-term strategy. There are no shortcuts to quality, but these AI-powered tools can make processes, planning, and analysis easier for your team. Consider trying out these tools and see what you discover. For more great tips created specifically for content marketers, subscribe to the DivvyHQ blog.