AI & Content Marketing - Friends or Foes ?

There could be many answers to whether artificial intelligence (AI) is a boon or a threat to content marketing. You might get a concoction of answers which might get you confused as to whether your job as a content writer, marketer, or maker is at peril or is it actually a blessing to keep your business thriving.
The argument may be that AI-driven content is faster, much more accurate, and makes perfect sense but they are dry and require a human touch to captivate the interest of the humans. Therefore, the threat of AI to content marketing is completely suggestive and subject to how the consumers leverage it.

While some might say that it is a threat, the majority has an opinion which is in favor of artificial intelligence (AI).

How can the marketers today utilize AI and bring it to their advantage?

1. There are some interesting APIs available for content marketers to use such as the Cloud Natural Language and the Cloud vision. - Bill Slawski (director of SEO research at Fish Digital)
2. AI in content marketing can make suggestions based upon connecting ideas & concepts & Data that haven't been brought together before. - Bill Slawski 
3. 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. - As quoted by Thumbprint
4. Trend analysis has become easier. identifying similar semantic trends that can be used to quickly generate content and 'ride the crest of the wave' has become much easier.
5. The design, dimension, and messaging 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.
6. 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.
7. Understanding human behavior on the internet has become easier. We can now get a clear view of what the visitors to the site are exactly looking for based on user behavior so that we can plan the content strategy accordingly.
8. 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.

Why AI is it presumed to be a threat?

This is because when people talk or think about AI, their mind immediately leads them to think about perfect AI. Some people look at AI and Machine Learning as all sci-fi scary, take writing jobs, etc. They often do not see that. AI could be used to train the algorithm in a narrow niche - to analyze: which phrases and words from a given semantics are most often used together or in a sentence, etc. For example, ArticleForge generates water text but is already close to the semantics of the topic. As well as self-learning search engine algorithms can utilize a lot of AI tools. 

Conclusion

AI is subjective to its utilization. It can be a threat to those who are unwilling or lazy enough to let the competition posed by AI overrule them. It in-fact is a reality that is coming. 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. AI can boost your content by generating links to similar semantic topics. It can help you understand what your customers' behavior is and what he wants to see.

To actually understand how to start with AI you need to study what the search engines are doing. Google & Bing are major pioneers in AI research and implementation.

Concentrate on the area where AI could be beneficial:

1. Solving a problem
2. Time efficiency
3. Deep-dive into data
4. Optimization opportunities
5. Personalization

Then research and vet the right tool or platform to solve that problem.

What AI lacks is human intelligence and human empathy. It can generate a story for you but the way you tell the story, i.e. the storytelling part remains in your control solely. Humans are still needed to explain to stakeholders what the findings mean and help veer them towards the right content strategy plan for their users. 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.

As we already know, it can only kill you if you let it kill you, it will make you stronger if you use AI as your strength.

Humans need to adapt their skillsets and utilize the time-saving features that AI can provide, from AI-generated content to AI content analysis.

By enhancing your skillsets and orienting yourself more with AI, you would see the opportunities that AI brings you, from solving your problems to AI-generated content, AI can be a content marketer's best friend.

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