How AI Can Enhance Your Content Marketing Strategy

An interview with Alexavier Guzman, senior full stack developer at Forbes, who is responsible for developing BrandVoice special features and internal tools and solutions to support various departments across the organization.

Artificial intelligence is driving market gains, revolutionizing industry – and, some argue, gearing up to destroy humanity once and for all. If we’re still around, it will also drive innovations in branded content. Here, courtesy of Forbes techie Guzman, are three AI-enabled applications that could transform content marketing.

BIOMETRIC SENSORS

What it is: Guzman asks us to imagine a male college student standing next to a sensor-equipped bus-stop LED screen one morning. He’s wearing a Lacoste shirt, carrying a knapsack and drinking a Starbucks caramel latte. “That screen will serve AI-generated branded content themed to male students who like French polo shirts and expensive sweet coffee drinks and take public transit to class,” Guzman said.

How to play it: To avoid intrusiveness, smart content marketers will cultivate next-level AI’s ability to predict a target’s moods. That could mean something as obvious as sending an upbeat, and contextually appropriate, content asset to a target’s phone. But it could also mean sending him nothing at all.

“The content that succeeds here will be the content that avoids annoying people,” Guzman said.

DECENTRALIZED APPLICATIONS

What it is: Dapps, for short, are peer-to-peer applications that function via blockchain. They’re associated with cryptocurrencies, the distribution of which they render fast, frictionless and cheap.

How to play it: “After the AI capability feeds users content customized to their specific interests, content marketers can pay them tiny sums of cryptocurrency to incentivize consumption,” Guzman said. “Do well on a quiz about the sponsored content you just read and you’ll immediately receive a transfer in your mobile e-wallet.”

At scale, this could make economic sense, with better engagement metrics leading to higher rates to make up for all those incremental crypto disbursements.

AI + IoT

What it is: Imagine that much-discussed IoT-enabled fridge of the future that notices your milk is running low and orders you another quart via FreshDirect. Now imagine it fitted out with neural network-enabled AI.

How to play it: Publishers could feed client content to consumers based on an appliance’s feat of pattern recognition. Your coffee maker, for instance, notices that you keep ordering a non-fair-trade coffee, triggering your reception of an agricultural NGO’s content about the challenges that Latin American farmers face – either aurally, via Alexa or via a text post beamed to your phone.

“Again, it’s going to be a matter of making the experience positive for people,” Guzman said. No consumer wants to be caught in a running argument with an appliance about his or her eating habits.

A recurring theme here, of course, is the need for restraint in using this transformative technology. “A soft touch will be necessary,” said Guzman. “The rise of ad blockers indicates that people can find poorly done advertising intrusive. Imagine what they might think of this technology if it’s not used gracefully.”

Author:  Andrey Slivka , Forbes Staff  View Article Here