Are Chatbots The Answer To Social Media Engagement? Hell, Yeah.
Marketing has changed by leaps and bounds in the last several years. In the early 2000s, it was all about SEO — filling the web pages with blocks of content with the right set of keywords. Then, came the era of social media marketing, which made every marketing effort incomplete and irrelevant without social integration.
According to Forrester Research, investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to triple this year. Tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon are already tapping the potential of machine learning with inventions like Home, Cortana and Alexa. Talking to faceless machines to get things done is not a dream anymore, it’s a reality and a lot of people are indulging that.
Having said that, chatbots will soon be used extensively by consumers for multiple activities — such as inquiring about brands, confirming flight/hotel details, making purchases, etc. Not that bots aren’t being used currently!
Ever heard of Amy that schedules personal meetings? Or Microsoft’s Tay — who caused a controversy on Twitter last year for tweeting offensive messages. Tripoto’s travel assistant is a successful AI story that helps interested travelers in collating necessary travel info.
An interesting survey published on Adweek, states that the consumers are already reacting to the use of chat bots.
The good part is that in the survey almost everyone reported a “positive” or a “very positive” experience. Of course — the consumers also noted certain areas of improvement for chatbots; some of which included the need for a “more natural sounding conversation” and “better accuracy”.
Nonetheless, this technology offers a golden opportunity to brands and marketers to create services that precisely match the desires of the consumers.
Listen — chatbots are ruling the digital spectrum and how
In your POV, what exactly is social media engagement? Is it engaging a consumer to like or share a post? Yes. Does it involve commenting on a brand post? Yes. Is it engaging a person to play a video or click a link you’ve shared on a social platform? Yes, that’s right. But just like everything else, brand-consumer engagement is also evolving, and it is set to happen through chatbots.
In an age of hyper-personalization, a consumer would prefer to speak to a human-sounding bot to seeing a random video posted on the brand page. Nope — the latter is not his definition of personalization anymore. Disagree? Here us out: chatbots can ensure a fun, personalized conversation with the consumers. They can inform, educate and entertain — all on a single platform!
Look at Sephora’s bot on Kik, for instance: It offers beauty tips by asking specific questions to users about their areas of interest such as hair, eyes, skin, etc. Sephora is a leading beauty and cosmetics brand and if it can offer a free consultation service (via a chatbot), its popularity will easily hit the roof!
And, who wouldn’t want that? Everyone would! With 60% of millennials using chatbots confidently, and further 71% of them on the verge of trying chatbots of major brands, it is safe to conclude that we all are moving in the right direction.
Transforming social media engagement through chatbots
In this age and time, it is not possible for marketers to do their job properly without the use of social media. Any strategy — big or small — is incomplete without the intrusion of social media. Quite interestingly, chatbot is considered as one of the newly-adopted social media tools in marketing today.
This technology has carved a niche for itself by offering a completely new level of customer service to the target market. Since chatbots are considerably new, it is tricky to mix them with the usual marketing strategies. Here’s how you can amp up your social media engagement game with chatbots:
1. Make your chatbot an intelligent entity
Now, there are two types of bots: AI-powered ones and rule-based ones. If you opt for the latter, your consumer will lose patience sooner than you’d like because the chatbot will not be able to maintain a flow of conversation. Speaking to a robot and a human-sounding bot are two different things. So make sure your chatbot is able to keep the consumer engaged in a conversation.
The chatbot should be able to ask question around age, location, gender and product preferences. This will help the bot to gather consumer data and also, provide the right kind of inputs as the conversation moves forward. Your chatbot should be able to publish content that is based on consumer interests and preferences.
2. Integrate your chatbot across all digital platforms
With Facebook Messenger Chat bots, it became clear that its CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted this technology to become a standard part of any digital marketing strategy — for every company. Thankfully, chatbot-building companies heard him and now there are so many of them building bots that can be used on various other platforms such as Twitter, Slack, WeChat, Kik, etc.
So if your brand has an account on 3 platforms, make sure there is a chatbot support too. Engage with consumers everywhere, and you will be surprised how helpful they are.
3. Integrate your chat bot with your email
Chatbot is an awesome data-mining tool that can tell you exactly when to deliver relevant content to your consumers. Fortunately, they can be integrated with emails — which means nurturing campaigns can be planned and executed better — that would in turn yield better conversion rates.
4. Chatbot is an analytical tool; use it
Of course, it is! As mentioned before, they help in collecting data. While the Chatbot analytics are still new, and there is a lot of learning to do, simply reading individual chats will give you ample idea about how a particular consumer behaves — and that’s good enough.
Over to you
Adoption of chatbot technology will continue and that also, at a rapid pace. If companies start using this technology at the earliest, they will definitely gain a competitive edge over other brands. What are your thoughts on chatbots? Do you think this technology is really the next big thing?
Co-authored with Asavari Sharma and Wigzo Technologies.
