Role of AI in Social Media

Have you ever come across an ad for a product moments after you searched it on Google? Is Big Brother watching? Maybe. But it’s not what you think — you’re being shown personalized ads based on your search history through the power of artificial intelligence.

AI in advertising refers to the replication of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans, in order to mimic their actions based on the information they’re analyzing. Based on historical data, users are suggested options that can aid their decision-making ability.

Planning for a foreign trip? Did searching for “the best airline to travel on” lead to you seeing ads for an airline offering the best experience at a bargain price? That wasn’t just a coincidence. Cognitive advertising may increase personalization, potential ROI, engagement, relevant content, and much more.

AI algorithms collect and compile user data to offer them personalized content. AI algorithms work perfectly when it comes to digital advertising. About 60% of marketers believe that AI improves insights into their customers’ preferences.

But is it all positive? Well, that depends on the importance you place on privacy. Some may find it creepy, or rather embarrassing, to be shown ads based on past search history, you know…

However, one can’t just put the brakes on evolving technology, no matter how rigid you may be in accepting change, the role of AI in our daily lives, most of which will be online, will only increase.

Social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn rely on AI in order to develop targeted advertising for their desired demographic. AI can also be used to predict growth trends by analyzing past data and user behavior.

Let’s take an in-depth look at the use of AI in social media, mainly:

1. Social media advertising
2. Social media listening
3. Social insights
4. Social media content creation
5. Chatbots
6. Enhanced security

Social Media Advertising

The social media advertising market is estimated to grow to $56 Billion by 2022 with Facebook ad spend reaching about 80%. And AI plays a pivotal role in what content is targeted towards Facebook’s users — be it images, videos, text posts, or ads. AI-generated ads are cheaper and more influential, as they target potential customers based on their interests, and location. Content moderation heavily relies on AI algorithms, which offer search and user recommendations based on user data and past experience.

Social Media Listening

Industry leaders such as Nestlé and Unilever use digital consumer intelligence platforms to understand how their potential customers perceive and react to their products. Social media monitoring platforms like Brandwatch, Hootsuite and Agorapulse help collect and analyze user feedback and opinions in order to improve product quality and services. Moreover, they also gather data about public users, trending topics, and brand mentions to enhance digital marketing strategies.

Social Insights

AI finds patterns in user data and helps companies recognize the sort of content that engages their potential customers. AI monitoring tools extract relevant information from customers’ posts and profiles. Utilizing these tools will provide you with a competitive advantage over rivals since they provide insight into how customers see brands. AI gives you insights into the kind of customers that are showing interest in your brand. A personal connection may be made with clients by using AI to learn their preferences.

Social insights are more important than ever, as 72% of consumers claim to only engage with personalized content. It also gives you an idea about the emerging consumer trends.

AI also enables the creation of posts that receive significantly higher engagement from consumers, based on previous data. It recommends post content and posting frequencies.

Recommendations are carefully crafted based on the users’ data. It offers insights into when users are most active and the time when they are most likely to make a purchase, as well as what type of content appeals to them the most.

Social Media Content Creation and Management

AI utilizes sentiment analysis tools like NLP (Natural Language Processing), text analysis, and computational linguistics to comprehend the tone and sentiment behind posts on social media. This allows AI to auto-generate posts identical to posts with the highest amount of engagement.

AI tools can automatically incorporate hashtags and shortened links into social media posts. You can increase engagements and bulk schedule posts to maintain social pages and enhance engagement.

AI tools can be optimized to create engaging content for customers, based on sentiment analysis and the information gathered from the internet. There are intelligent tools such as Wordsmith, Articoolo, and Quill that can be used to create articles based on factual data, with minimum effort.

Industry giants, like Forbes, use such tools to write short news articles and create content that increases engagement on their websites. AI can help roll out new social media posts within minutes, with little to no human input.

Chatbots

AI-enabled chatbots are revolutionizing the way customers interact with businesses online. AI chatbots are well-equipped to answer any type of question or concern a customer might have and are able to get them the help they need. Chatbots can replicate human communication due to AI-powered NLP. They are able to determine the text’s true intention when it is typed by a real person, and then they may respond in a way that reflects that intention.

This is why social media companies have introduced dedicated chatbots for businesses to help them automate their customer service and help them scale without worrying about customer services.

Enhanced Security

AI is helping social media companies ramp up their security measures and contributing towards user data privacy. This is done through mechanisms like spam detection, user authentication, and fraud prevention.

AI helps social media companies identify security threats, flag inappropriate content and outsmart anyone trying to misuse social media platforms. Instagram uses AI to filter out spam since the platform has a regular run-ins with spam bots that post comments and content.

Downside of AI algorithm

The Netflix Documentary, “The Social Dilemma” sheds light on a rather creepy side of the AI algorithms running social media. According to the documentary, your favorite social media website may sell your personal data to third-party advertisers. The documentary discusses how big tech companies use AI algorithms to present users with content that they may like. As a consequence, AI algorithms only present content users agree with, which may propagate false narratives about how the world perceives different views.

“The way to think about it is as 2.5 billion Truman Shows. Each person has their own reality with their own facts. Over time you have the false sense that everyone agrees with you because everyone in your news feed sounds just like you. Once you’re in that state, it turns out you’re easily manipulated.” — Roger McNamee, Early investor venture capitalist in Facebook.

“We were all looking for the moment when technology would overwhelm human strengths and intelligence. When is it gonna cross the singularity, replace our jobs, be smarter than humans? But there’s this much earlier moment… when technology exceeds and overwhelms human weaknesses. This point being crossed is at the root of addiction, polarization, radicalization, outrage-ification, vanity-ification, the entire thing. This is overpowering human nature, and this is a checkmate on humanity.” — Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google and co-founder of Centre for Humane Technologies

What does the future look like?

From social insights to content creation, AI algorithms are changing digital advertising. If done right, companies can utilize AI in social media advertising and take marketing to the next level. We can learn to improve the AI algorithm in a constructive way if we can figure out how to properly deal with consumer data and privacy.

AI is expected to help businesses improve their audience targeting, create more meaningful content, predict high-converting offers, and a lot more. Overall, it is expected that social media will have less reliance on human interaction, and brands as well as users will be able to interact seamlessly. As social media usage grows day by day, the use of AI becomes more crucial than ever. AI can open new possibilities for us, once we find a way to ethically process private information.