How Artificial Intelligence Can Elevate Your Social Media Strategy

AI Marketing Apps

AI In Social Media

More than 2 billion people are active on social media today. To make sense of all the data available on social channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, more marketers are turning to artificial intelligence.

By leveraging artificial intelligence in social media, marketers can create smarter social campaigns and engage with consumers by understanding their thoughts and needs. Some tools use AI to determine consumer engagement with a brand’s social content, while others help companies track when and how consumers mention their brands, for example.

The role of AI in social media is growing fast. What’s the best way for your brand to start leveraging artificial intelligence to improve your social media strategy?

5 Ways AI Impacts Social Media

Before you can understand which AI tools you need, you have to know how AI in social media is making a difference for companies. Here are six ways it’s doing that:

1. Improving Customer Service

Consumers have more power than ever before, which means the customer experience is becoming increasingly important.

Couple that with the fact that 80% of consumers use social media to interact with brands. So, companies must communicate with their customers in ways that are meaningful to them.

But unless your company can afford to hire social media staff, it’s not always easy to fill this role. Luckily, companies can use AI tools to answer basic questions that help maintain a relationship with customers.

2. Rerouting Questions

When AI can’t find the right answer, the next best thing it can do is direct customers to the right person or department (or inform someone in the department to step in).

Thanks to machine learning and natural language processing, artificial intelligence-based programs (such as virtual assistants and chatbots) have an easier time understanding your customers. These programs know when a question is beyond what they are capable of answering.

Check out the best AI chatbots to increase customer engagement and revenue.

3. Determining Future Content

Brands are continually looking for ways to create engaging content on social media. But finding time to curate posts, research trending topics and engage with other accounts is a time-consuming luxury for many businesses. One study even found that over 50% of senior marketing directors spend only one hour or less per week on social.

AI-based platforms, however, make it easy to sift through the noise of social media and help companies optimize their channels. AI tools analyze social mentions, industry-relevant questions and even review what gaps your competitors are leaving open.

Stumped for content ideas? Take a look at our six favorite content idea generators.

4. Performing Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis involves analyzing how your audience feels about your social media posts or ads. By performing sentiment analysis, you can determine what content or writing tones resonate best with your network.

For example, if you recently launched an ad about undershirts but didn’t see much engagement, you would perform this analysis to understand viewers’ opinions. Sifting through comments and likes on multiple platforms can be tiring, but AI-based systems can analyze responses in no time.

5. Finding Influencers

The popularity of social media influencer marketing continues to accelerate. Companies are looking for influencers who align with their branding and values and can help them reach a wider audience.

But finding the right influencers isn’t always easy. Luckily, artificial intelligence can help marketers track down and choose the right influencers based on follower count, personal branding and relevant content.

6 AI Tools to Boost Your Social Media Strategy

Now that you know some ways AI can elevate your social strategy, it’s time to get started. Try these five tools to get a head start on improving your social media strategies and consumer relationships.

1. Chatbots

Purpose: Create exceptional customer experiences through customer service communication.

Chatbots can help your brand improve customer service on social media through instantaneous responses.

Note that not all chatbots employ AI software. So as you’re vetting different chatbot platforms, talk to vendors about how they use machine learning, natural language processing and AI-based programming.

2. Yext

Purpose: Keep up with customer reviews and maintain your social reputation.

Yext helps organizations set up and maintain company profiles across multiple websites. You can also process customer review data and respond to the most urgent reviews promptly.

3. Netbase

Purpose: Monitor and provide insights into social analytics to improve products and services.

Netbase is an AI-based social media analytics platform. Nextbase provides you with thoughtful recommendations and insights, encouraging your company to focus on being proactive, rather than reactive about your social responses.

4. CRMs

Purpose: Equip your business with a central platform to manage customer communications.

Customer relationship managers (CRMs) can integrate your social media relationships with ongoing service interactions. In other words, if a customer emails you, then messages your brand on Facebook, you’ll be able to keep track of the relationship and ensure seamless correspondence.

Many CRM and automation platforms already have built-in AI tools. Make it easy to connect the touchpoints between you and your customers, and glean insights into the data they allow you to access.

5. Pattern89

Purpose: Handle social media ads to ensure you don’t overspend.

There are two ways to build a social ad campaign: Set the budget and let the ad run until the budget is capped, or create an ad and allow the platform to set the bid for you. Either way, you might not get the return on investment you want.

Enter a tool like Pattern89, which uses AI to analyze how your ad creative can attain better ROI. You can enhance your bid and optimize channel management and budget for a better overall social ad experience.

Use Personalize to Get Started With AI in Social Media

The more you deploy AI in social media, the better your customer experience will be. But where do you even start? With metrics? Customer reviews? Influencers? And once you implement these tools, how can you ensure your prospects go from mild interest on social media to purchase or conversion?

With Personalize, it’s easy to make strides in your social media strategy and overarching digital marketing strategy.

Personalize is an AI-powered recommendation engine that enables you to track your customers’ top interests in real-time. You can use Personalize in conjunction with other AI social media tools to connect with your customers and provide personalized product recommendations. From there, you can create campaigns that directly target your contacts’ interests, keeping them engaged for the long haul.

Request a demo and sign up for a free 30-day trial of Personalize today!