AI marketing tools are here, and many are afraid of what that means for their future. Certain tasks will be taken over, but that doesn’t mean that humans will lose their position — humans just need to adapt their skillsets and utilize the time-saving features AI can provide.
Last week, the SEMrushchat community, and guest Mark Traphagan discussed AI and content marketing. One big theme I noticed in this chat, some people have AI and machine learning confused; it is essential to know the difference, so you know which tools to invest in. And on that note, we would love to know your experiences using different tools that utilize AI or machine learning — what has worked, what hasn’t, and what you recommend to fellow marketers.
Below you will see great insights on the opportunities AI can bring, use cases for content marketers, skills needed to manage AI, how to get started, and what our community hopes AI can help them with in the future. There is a lot to learn from the tweets below, so check them out.
Q1. AI in content marketing: threat or opportunity? Why do you think so?
AI in content marketing can make suggestions based upon connecting ideas & concepts & Data that haven’t been brought together before. There is potentially a lot of value in that.
To quote ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’: “If something looks real enough, do people still care that it’s fake?”
I think some people look at AI and Machine Learning as all sci-fi scary, take writing jobs, etc. But that’s not how to use it. It’s a tool in our arsenals & I’m excited to learn more. Of course, we all must adapt & do if we have anything to do w/SEO.
It’s a reality that is coming, but I think the biggest threat is to consumer trust in content created by AI. Am I speaking to/ reading something genuine by a real human? Video will be even more important. #Semrushchat
It’s only a threat if you don’t make it into an opportunity. If you’re not willing to find ways to disrupt your own business process, others will. Adapt or fall behind.
Both. Threat to people who don’t have time to write content for their site as competition will overtake them. Using AI you can potentially craft a lot more content done properly. Humans are not thick though*; can spot artificial content easily. *exceptions
Challenges: Tomorrow’s AI-written articles may make perfect sense and be (mostly) accurate, but artificially generated content can be a little ‘dry’. It would likely still need a touch of human creativity to captivate readers with humour and emotion.
I like to look for the positive in emerging tech. So I see great potential in AI. I’ve tested a couple of AI content writing services. They aren’t quite there yet but the future looks bright IMHO. I’m curious to see what other applications it can have too!
Q2. What are the use cases for AI in content marketing that every marketer can leverage right now?
A2. Can improve UX by changing content to conform to the user’s exact search query in real-time. It increases personalization in ad copy without creating an ad group for every single search. I don’t think it’s perfect for every vertical though including mine. #SEMrushChat https://t.co/KRsCPw5ls4
It’s important to clarify that “AI” isn’t something out there on its own ready to tackle SEO. Tools need to be built and how/who builds them makes a difference. And it isn’t ML.
There are some interesting APIs available for content marketers to use such as the Cloud Natural Language API https://t.co/EqIVVVi4gs and the Cloud Vision API https://t.co/q8ffa2Riy8
Email Marketers can leverage AI-powered marketing tools to optimize the subject lines, body copy, and formatting of their campaign-based emails as well as determine the best days and times to send nurture emails to their top prospects and customers.
Trend analysis. Quickly and accurately (to a point) identifying similar semantic trends that can be used to quickly generate content and ‘ride the crest of the wave’. To be most effective though it needs a competent & efficient content creation team behind it.
I think talking tech we need to separate machine learning from AI. They’re not the same thing. But that’s just me being nitpicky. Turbo slang wins of course. 😆
Q3. Everyone is afraid AI will replace people. What AI skills do content marketers need to develop to always be in demand?
People will always be needed to help control and optimize AI. Computers can’t register emotion or social norms in a given culture.
Well, not fearing that AI will “replace people” and having a logical understanding of the role AI plays in marketing programs and processes that are human-led would be a start to staying in demand.
Emotional Intelligence. Human Empathy. Being able to predict human behavior comes with a deep curiosity of humans and how brands and content relates to them and their values- is AI relies only on uninformed human behavior – it will miss the mark
Data storytelling. Maybe machines will do the research entirely one day but a human is still needed to explain to stakeholders what the findings mean and help veer them towards the right content strategy plan for their users.
It’s good to know the tools, but staying in-demand will be about staying AHEAD of AI. AI can learn and adapt, but it doesn’t know where your industry is headed or what new pain points are around the corner for your audience.
It is going to take a lot of time for AI to understand human emotion. Make that part of your marketing technique with some creative work and you’ll be untouchable for quite a few years.
Q4. How can one get started with AI-powered content marketing?
Study what the search engines are doing. Google & Bing are major pioneers in AI research and implementation.
Concentrate on ONE area where AI could be beneficial: – solving a problem
– time efficiency
– deep-dive into data
– optimization opportunities
– personalization Then research and vet the right tool or platform to solve that problem.
Think of tool that can do a task, like transpose text into voice & how they are tweaked to each input/output of #content types. Tools you can do batch with like some Adword tools, not full AI though.
Make sure you are awesome at human-powered content marketing first. #semrushchat. My clubs aren’t why I suck at Golf.
How to get started with AI is the wrong question. The tool should never be the focus. Invest in improving the content strategy, execution, etc., and just don’t be afraid of AI tools that can help along the way.
Q5. What manual processes in content marketing would you want to be fully replaced by AI?
The automation of content sharing. Machines are better at knowing the what/where/when of sharing your content
The design, dimension and massaging the content for various platforms. This process is time-consuming, an AI that automates this could be a great asset. The real marketers can then focus on crafting the right message.
I’ve seen suggestions that AI can be used to study a corpus such as Google Scholar, and provide new ideas for technologies and answers to questions that haven’t been addressed yet. That sounds interesting. Not recommending full replacement of anything by AI.
I do a lot of work on the IoT. AI sifts through tons of data and finds exceptions a human needs to get involved with. For content, the idea is to find what works for specific audiences. Platform-aware content analytics should be a big area.
We are already using scheduled posts in Social networking using AI. Apart from that, we would like to know what the visitors to the site are exactly looking for based on user behavior so that we can plan the content strategy accordingly.
Wondering what kind of tools Amar is talking about? Here is an article with a list of AI & machine learning tools to check out.
Join #SEMrushchat next week, with guest Madalyn Sklar.
We will be discussing Twitter marketing strategies with Madalyn and our community. SEMrushchat starts at 11 am ET/4 pm BST on Wednesday, December 11th.