Here at the Content Marketing Weekly, we’re no strangers to robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We might not have robot butlers yet, but we do utilize digital tools to enhance our ability to produce content that is highly relevant to our target audiences.
Marketing analytics software is just one example of the types of complex tools content creators have available. This week, we’re peacefully surrendering to the machines. They’re here to help us, after all.
7 Content Marketing Tasks to Automate Right Now
Many aspects of content marketing cannot be automated. Tasks like developing strategy, writing content, building videos and illustrating graphics will remain firmly in the wheelhouse of human workers for the foreseeable future. However, ancillary tasks such as proofreading and list building are ripe for machine augmentation.
We’ve had automated proofreading for a long time already. Microsoft added a grammar checker to Word way back in 1992. Nevertheless, the technology has advanced substantially, and solutions like Grammarly aren’t limited to a word processing environment. By integrating with Google Chrome, Grammarly brings automated proofreading to any web environment, from email to social media sites and everywhere in between.
Over at Content Marketing Institute, Aaron Agius has put together a list of automation solutions that every marketer should consider. Read the article to learn more.
The Death of Fluff: How Marketers Need to Use AI
In recent years, inbound marketing has proven to be a highly effective strategy for organizations of varying types. Whether we’re talking about software as a service companies or small B2B businesses, inbound lead generation supported by content marketing is the new norm.
Forbes contributor Prayag Narula believes that content marketing is evolving beyond traditional lists and infographics toward more personalized experiences. Much like how dynamic web frameworks allowed brands to display unique web pages to specific users, machine learning and AI are allowing content marketers to put optimized content in front of targeted audiences.
Thanks to remarketing tools and strategies, marketers have more opportunities to engage audiences with content that is relevant to their current informational needs. Narula argues that AI algorithms can enhance email marketing campaigns, chatbot implementations and programmatic advertising platforms to build audience engagement and generally optimize customer journeys.
Read the full article to learn more.
6 Things PR Pros Should Understand About AI
AI and ML solutions aren’t just limited to content marketing. Public relations professionals can gain a number of benefits from these technologies, including the ability to accelerate and manage workflows. In a world where readers expect to receive accurate information instantaneously, PR stakeholders need every possible advantage.
Ragan’s PR Daily contributor Michelle Garrett noted that AI solutions must serve a strategic purpose to be useful. Investing in random AI software won’t improve workflows if stakeholders haven’t defined their challenges well. For example, Garrett explains that ML algorithms with natural language processing capabilities can summarize PR coverage in a matter of seconds, giving human professionals more time focus on complex tasks.
In addition to highlighting current use cases for AI and ML in the PR sphere, Garrett looks ahead to emerging technologies such as computer vision. In the near future, AI could be trained to detect emotional changes in live audiences, providing PR professionals with real-time feedback that could be leveraged to avert an impending brand crisis.
To learn more about the many possibilities AI and ML bring to PR, read the article here.
5 Overused SEO Phrases to Nix & 5 Hot Phrases That Are In
All of this talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning shines a light on the fact that marketers really are living in the future we once dreamed about. Not long ago, tools like analytics and keyword research were extremely limited, providing marketers with only a little more information than could be gathered by reading a cup of tea leaves.
Recently, Search Engine Journal drove this point home by reminding us that the concept of search engine optimization is more than 20 years old. That’s right: While you were setting your AIM away message, marketers were already optimizing web pages to appear in SERPs.
Will SEO disappear like so many dusty Beanie Babies? Probably not. Or, as we’d say in the 90s, “as if!” Nevertheless, SEO looks a lot different today compared with the turn of the millennium.
In the article, Julia McCoy argues that terms like SEO no longer accurately represent what marketers are doing in 2018. Thanks to Google’s many algorithm updates over the past two decades, we no longer have to optimize content for search engines – we optimize content for people.
To learn what other buzzwords are so totally over, read the full article.
It seems that the machines are here to help us, after all. While your robo-vacuum quietly hums through the house, why not let an AI assist you with your next writing project?
