If you keep up to date with new technologies in the content marketing industry, you’ve probably come across “artificial intelligence” and “content intelligence” before. But what exactly do these terms mean and how do they differ from each other?
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a branch of information technology that enables computers to perform tasks and react in a human way.
AI-powered technologies mean software can be used to perform tasks that would previously require human decision-making, learning, or intelligence.w
Artificial intelligence has several applications in marketing. The number of AI-powered marketing platforms is growing all the time. Some tasks that AI can be used for include:
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Natural language and speech processing for search engines and chatbots
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Spotting trends in large sets of data
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Predicting customer behavior based on previously collected data
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Automatically optimizing content and ads to improve conversions
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Automatic scheduling of content publication, email sending, and social media posting for best effect
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Recommendation engines to suggest products and services unique to each individual user or customer.
This is just a small sampling of the possibilities that artificial intelligence marketing currently offers. There are new AI-powered marketing platforms and software being developed all the time.
In fact, many marketers go so far as saying that artificial intelligence is the future of marketing due to the improved customer experience and ROI it promises.
What is Content Intelligence?
So what about content intelligence?
Content intelligence uses the power of AI and data to provide insights into content that can help content marketers improve and optimize their strategy and make their content more effective.
Most content intelligence systems follow a three-step process:
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Data collection – this is usually from a variety of sources, which might include web analytics, statistics from social media, customer surveys, your CRM, and other business metrics.
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Analysis– during this phase, the system will mine the data to spot patterns, trends, and correlations.
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Insights and recommendations– after the data has been analyzed, the system can provide actionable insights to improve your content effectiveness and value, boost your ROI, and better meet your customer needs. It may also make predictions about future trends or how you can improve your content strategy going forward.
Content intelligence essentially helps marketers understand their content and audience better so they can make better decisions and improve their content marketing strategy.
The Benefits of Content Intelligence
Why should you consider using a content intelligence platform in your marketing efforts? Content intelligence offers several benefits over the traditional research, production, and distribution process.
Better understanding of your audience
Do you really know who is consuming your content? Content intelligence provides valuable insights into your audience, which can help you better meet their needs and improve your targeting for higher engagement.
A content intelligence platform will look into all your customer data including demographics, interests, preferences, previous interactions with your brand, and browsing behavior to provide valuable insights into the type of content you should be producing.
Better customer experience
As you’ll be able to create more effective and valuable content for your actual audience (not just who you think you’re writing for), you’ll improve the overall experience for your customers or users and help to boost your brand reputation.
All your customers will be at a different stage on their buying journey. Content intelligence can help you to fine-tune your content marketing strategy to produce different types of content for all stages of this journey. You can more easily guide initial leads through to sales and keep your current customers engaged.
Content intelligence also means you can “hyper-personalize” your content for a targeted audience, making it highly relevant and more likely to convert.
Improve your content marketing effectiveness
Like many aspects of business and life, content marketing tends to follow the 80:20 rule. Generally speaking, you’re likely to see 80% of your results from only 20% of your content. The trick is to identify this high-performing content quickly and produce more of it so you can emulate its effect.
Content intelligence is the key to this as it can analyze thousands of data points to figure out exactly what’s working for your particular audience. This will help you to create an effective “content recipe” that delivers great results every time.
There’s no need to keep wasting your time on ineffective content when advanced content intelligence systems can help you to optimize your content creation and get the best possible ROI from your efforts.
Spot trends and predict future customer needs
Wouldn’t it be great if you had a time machine so you could travel into the future and see exactly what your audience would be going crazy over in six months or a year?
This is exactly what content intelligence can do for you. One thing that artificial intelligence excels at is spotting trends in data and extrapolating data to predict future results.
A good content intelligence platform can not only help you decide what to write about that is likely to be highly relevant in the near future, but it can also spot shifts in social media usage and marketing effectiveness. Is investing in content for Facebook still a good strategy for your business in 2019? Content intelligence can help you to figure this out.
Find the best times and platforms to promote your content
As well as the actual content production itself, distribution and promotion are important parts of your content marketing plan.
While it’s possible to figure out the best social networks and posting times for optimum engagement by trial and error, this is a time-consuming and lengthy process.
AI-powered content intelligence draws insights from data to automatically calculate the best times and places to post your content. It can do this in real-time as your audience and external factors change over time.
Improve your existing content
As well as providing guidelines to help you produce content in the future, content intelligence can help you to optimize your existing content. This is not only faster and easier than starting from scratch but can help you to prioritize which content to work on first.
For example, your content intelligence platform might predict that you’ll improve your engagement rate by 200% by simply adding an image to a post, or that linking to an old post on your social media channels could result in 3X the conversions from that particular piece of content.
In these examples, the changes will take only a few minutes of your time, but the benefits they bring you could be significant. When compared to researching and producing a whole new piece of content, it’s really a no-brainer as to where you should spend your time.
How to Get Started with Content Intelligence
Concured is a content intelligence tool that will tell you exactly what to write about to optimize your audience engagement and ROI, while saving you valuable time.
You can learn more about the platform here, or find out more about content intelligence and strategy at our Clever Content blog.