🚂 The Location Station Digital Marketing, Online Advertising Tactics & Location Technology for Businesses & Brands   /     🤖 #7. Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) Kill Human Content Marketing? with Paul Roetzer

CEO & Founder of Marketing AI Institute Paul Roetzer gives us the scoop on Artificial Intelligence in content marketing! The purpose of today’s episode is to completely unnerve business owners and content marketers, while at the same time putting you at ease. Dave and Paul look at Artificial Intelligence in content marketing through a location-based lens, explaining what it is, how it affects local business now and what the future holds.

5 Questions You Can Answer After Listening To This Episode About Artificial Intelligence In Marketing With Paul Roetzer:

 

1. How long does it take for an AI computer to master Space Invaders?

2. What does Artificial Intelligence mean?

3. What is the future of Artificial Intelligence content creation?

4. How can a small local business use Artificial Intelligence practically?

5. How many turkey sandwiches does Paul Roetzer eat every week?

 

 

If you’re at all intrigued or freaked out about Artificial Intelligence (or both), then you’re not alone. Dave is spoiling-his-pants excited and scared to speak with Paul Roetzer about Artificial Intelligence in content marketing and the exciting future of content creation.

Founder of The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, Paul Roetzer is definitely ahead of the curve when it comes to AI in content marketing. He is also the founder and CEO of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and has spoken at several industry events such as Content Marketing World.

The purpose of today’s episode is to completely unnerve business owners and content marketers, while at the same time putting you at ease. Dave and Paul look at Artificial Intelligence in content marketing through a location-based lens, explaining what it is, how it affects local business now and what the future holds.

INTERLUDE! If you’ve just discovered Vicinity Marketing, below is a short video about who we are and what we do. If you just came for the article, you can simply skip past the video and keep reading

 

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What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

Artificial Intelligence essentially means making machines “smarter” by inputting enough data to allow them to complete certain tasks autonomously, where previously the code (the instructions) would have been written by humans.

 

“The fuel of artificial intelligence is data.”

 

Not only does AI technology allow machines to complete tasks without being prompted, it can actually be programmed to update itself, using the data it receives to figure out the most effective algorithms and get better results.

So when you hear about things like Machine Learning, Cognitive Computing, Image Recognition, Deep Learning & Robotics, all it means is providing computers with the data to become smarter, AKA, AI.

 

How Does Artificial Intelligence Affect Our Everyday Lives?

AI has been quietly absorbed into our lives, solving problems we didn’t even know we had and making the daily grind that little bit smoother. In developed countries, there’s almost no escaping it. A few examples of well-integrated global AI systems are:

Virtual Assistants

We haven’t quite reached the sophistication of Her yet, but Siri, Cortana & Google Now are widely used to assist us in everyday digital tasks such as search and planning calendar events.

Suggested Music, Films & TV

Apps like Spotify, Pandora & Netflix recommend content based on your interests & usage history.

Credit Card Fraud Detection

Using data these systems like SAS, FICO Falcon & Verified by Visa are taught to tell the difference between regular and irregular purchases and transfers.

Self-Driving Cars

Ok so you can’t exactly head over to your local Google dealership and pick one up for $24,990 drive away… yet. Google’s self-driving car prototypes are already here however, so it’s only a matter of time!

 

What Are Some Examples Of Artificial Intelligence In Marketing?

User Specific Content

Custom newsfeeds are old news, with most of us quite used to seeing content on our Facebook or Instagram that has been hand-selected just for us by an algorithm – personally I get annoyed when content and ads are not specifically relevant enough to me. While these algorithms are human made, they are quickly becoming more advanced and will eventually rely on AI to self-upgrade.

Online Customer Support

Many websites have Chatbots which are designed to simulate conversations with their customers, providing faster response rates and intelligent answers to questions.

Automated Content Publishing

Tools that help plan social media content publishing like CoSchedule are becoming incredibly advanced. They’re fantastic time-savers for businesses who publish content on a regular basis and can even write SEO headlines for you.

Natural Language Generation

Also known as machine-assisted content, NLG is probably the most exciting and nerve-wracking technology facing content marketers today. It can’t quite pen a Pulitzer novel yet, but companies including Associated Press now use AI software such as Automated Insights’ Wordsmith to write data-based content autonomously such as financial reports, weather reports and sports news.

Machine Learning Google Algorithms

Algorithms like Google Rank Brain are designed to gradually learn about how and why people search, constantly self-updating in order to provide better results.

 

Where Can We See Artificial Intelligence In Content Creation?

As mentioned above, marketers are already beginning to delegate their menial, data-driven reports to AI software. Aside from analytics and weather reports however, there are some pretty mind-blowing things already being created with AI technology, including:

• IBM Watson’s chilling movie trailer for a horror film about Artificial Intelligence

• Google’s DeepMind learning how to play and slay Atari games like no human could

• Sony’s pop song created by Flow Machines software using a database of The Beatles music

• McCann Japan’s breath mint commercial made by an AI Creative Director

• ROSS, another IBM Watson creation, the world’s first AI lawyer

While (with the exception of ROSS) these technologies seem more impressive than practical at this point, you don’t need artificial intelligence to imagine the possibilities for content creation in the future of marketing.

In the near future, we will even begin to see personalised articles written specifically for the individual who is going to read them, based on insights gleaned from data about them.

In terms of practical business applications for content creation, we are mostly seeing copywriting algorithms such as Persado which are capable of writing small, optimised pieces of text for email subject lines, Facebook ads, text messages, etc.

 

Is Artificial Intelligence Practical For Small Businesses?

The more data you have access to, the quicker you can train your AI software to operate faster and more effectively than any human could.

That being said, many of the big AI players like Facebook, Google & Microsoft are beginning to open up their technologies for others to use. They are creating applications in which smaller businesses have access to a huge open source algorithm, enabling them to benefit from an entire network of data.

 

Imagine a small location based business being able to produce hundreds of Google Analytics reports every month with superhuman speed and accuracy, optimising their AdWords account like never before with all this new data.

 

AI services like Automated Insights, Pave IQ, Narrative Science & BoomTrain are designed to aid marketers in becoming more productive and they’re not just limited to big enterprises anymore.

Automated Insights for example, is offering $250p/m subscriptions for businesses to use their own data to create up to 1000 narratives, which is much cheaper and faster than a copywriter could (albeit less creative).

For creative content that isn’t specifically data-based, Companies like ScoopIt help businesses to curate relevant content found on the web in addition to suggesting the most optimal content for you to produce yourself.

 

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Humans In Marketing?

Not anytime soon. While us copywriters have a legitimate right to be scared, the marketing world in general will only benefit from AI tools designed to make time consuming tasks quicker and easier. In the podcast, Paul helps to set our minds at ease:

 

“There will be disruption in the marketing industry, but in the near future [AI is] going to do nothing more than augment what we do… it’s not going to replace marketers.”

 

Dave also brings up a good point about the raw, documentation-style direction in which content marketing is headed. Platforms like Instagram Stories and Facebook Live are soaring in popularity and if this “branded reality tv” trend continues to grow, it looks like there will still be plenty of room in content marketing for human-made content.

 

“There’s always going to be that part of us that wants to connect with humans and doesn’t want to see an automatically written blog post.”

 

The future of AI holds some incredible opportunities for marketers, in addition to being scary as hell. Quite the opposite of Artificial Intelligence killing human content marketing, it’s going to make business owners’ and  marketers’ lives easier by enabling us to create and promote content more efficiently than ever.
To find out more about today’s guest Paul Roetzer and keep in the loop with new advancements in AI, connect with him on Twitter & LinkedIn.

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