For many, the mention of artificial intelligence conjures up images of robot arms performing surgery or one ubiquitous car brand that’s well on its way to developing self-driving vehicles. While these are certainly compelling examples, they don’t tell the whole story about artificial intelligence—which is that it’s already quietly powering many of the experiences we have every day.
For instance, artificial intelligence is thriving in the world of content marketing. But where exactly are content marketers already employing artificial intelligence? How do they see it developing in the near future? And what can your own business do to stay on top of this important shift?
Understanding AI in the Context of Content
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term that describes the “simulation of human intelligence.” Machines and digital platforms can use AI to learn new functions (machine learning) automatically, read human languages (natural language processing), and even write or speak those languages (natural language generation).
In the context of content, AI brings a lot to the table. Artificial intelligence can process and identify patterns in vast volumes of data instantly. This gives content marketers the information they need to quickly understand how consumers respond to campaigns, what tweaks to make to improve performance, and which new marketing trends to pursue next.
In addition, AI is ideal for automatically completing routine tasks. As a result, content marketing pros can spend more time focusing on nuanced work with this helping hand. And by empowering employees to use their time more productively, AI-enabled content operations also help businesses get campaigns to market faster.
Where AI is Already Powering Content Marketing
Here are several areas of content marketing where AI is already being widely used.
Content Creation
While AI won’t be winning any creative writing awards anytime soon, powerful artificial intelligence platforms can and are already being trained to help with what were once straightforward yet resource-intensive elements of content production. AI is helpful when it comes to tasks including translation, transcription, research, editing, and even writing simple reports.
To learn more about what’s possible with AI and content creation, start with this interesting article created by an AI-powered language generator—but don’t forget to follow up with this scathing counterpoint that brings up some thought-provoking takes on AI and content.
Personalization
Personalization, especially on any large scale, relies on collecting and making sense of a lot of consumer data. So, again, this is an area where AI excels.
Modern marketing tools that incorporate artificial intelligence can gather and analyze massive amounts of behavioral and demographic data nearly instantly. This information helps marketing teams create and serve the right content to the right user groups—when and where they want to consume it.
Organization
Today, AI is also being used to automatically organize and label content assets based on category, sentiment, etc. As a result, organization makes content assets easier to find, easier to keep optimized, and easier to deploy in marketing campaigns. The benefits of organization are especially valuable for large marketing teams, spread across various locations, or dealing with multiple versions of content created for different languages or sub-brands.
The Future of AI and Content Marketing
Wondering what’s next in the world of artificially intelligent content marketing? Here are some jobs that AI-powered marketing platforms may expand to include.
Identifying Content Opportunities
Taking content organization a step further, in the near future, AI marketing platforms will be able to combine information about your existing content catalog with what they’ve learned about your customer base to make intelligent recommendations that fill in content gaps and deliver precisely what your audience wants to see.
Automated Content Upgrades
Creating content that aligns with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices—and then endlessly refreshing it as those practices shift—is a time-consuming effort. On the horizon, we can expect to see AI development that saves creators time by suggesting SEO improvements as content is being written.
Improved Integration Across Smart Content Marketing Tools
The future of content marketing AI is moving toward smart tools that become even more harmonious than they already are.
Intelligent home software already shows us how transformative it can be when different tools work together flawlessly to accomplish specific goals. Take, for example, how Google Home’s smart speaker integrates with Nest Thermostat to enable users to change the temperature of their homes with just a few words.
In the not-so-distant future, AI-powered content marketing tools could work together in similarly seamless, innovative, and automated ways to make life better for marketers as well as the audiences they serve.
There’s a lot to look forward to in a future of content marketing that’s boosted by artificial intelligence. The best thing you can do today to take advantage of this shift is to make sure the underlying tech upon which your marketing department is built is flexible. Using microservices, API-first, highly composable technology enables businesses to easily and quickly integrate with the AI-powered marketing platforms of their choosing.
Whether you’re impatient for the day AI helps you hit your SEO goals in real-time or your department is just now taking its first steps into smart content marketing, the evolution of AI in content marketing is going to be one to watch.
