New AI Tools Emerge For Social Media Marketing
New and promising artificial intelligence tools are beginning to emerge for trucking companies that market on social media and that are looking for a gem-like polish on their text as well as optimization of their campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. “In today’s competitive market, it is important to produce the best content possible to establish your brand, increase credibility and drive traffic,” said John Lahr, director of marketing and growth for Cortex, which offers AI-driven social media marketing tools.
Each day, approximately 2.4 million Google searches are conducted, 2.3 million blogs are published and more than a million websites are created, Lahr said. “The statistics speak for themselves, and the question still remains: How can marketers produce content that stands out and competes in this ever-thriving market?”
The answer, Lahr said, is AI.
Jennifer Greene, founder of Tyrannosaurus Marketing, which does promotion work for the trucking industry, agrees that getting the best possible social media marketing content is critical.
“Experience with this industry has shown that many managers and senior executives are incredibly active on social, even if they may not make it clear that they’re there,” Greene said. Entry-level and other employees “are often very visible, even down to the truckers driving shipments cross-country having active Twitter accounts.”
Added Sofie Bedard, content creator at Cetaris, maker of trucking software: “Trucking companies that use social media and other mediums to tell their story in a compelling way do a better job of cutting through the noise.”
Others in the industry, such as Day & Ross Transportation Group, are taking a wait-and-see approach to AI-driven social media.
“While we may use these types of tools [in the future] to help ensure we are reaching our target audiences in effective ways, our goal will always to be provide our audiences with content that matters to them and adds value,” said Mark Osborne, vice president of human resources at Day & Ross, who noted his company “will balance the need for automation with our commitment to personal connections and experiences.”
Many of the new AI social media tools that trucking companies can leverage include sophisticated editors, which rely on machine learning engines to keep tabs on their competitors by continually reading the countless articles, posts, ads and other text they publish on the social networks.
Moreover, the beauty of these AI editors — when they work according to plan — is that once they go to work, they are designed to relentlessly keep an eye on what a company’s competitors are doing.
“The process of understanding your audience and creating content for them takes time,” said Michael Bibla, marketing coordinator for Atomic Reach, another maker of AI social media marketing tools.
In addition, the best-of-breed of these packages also includes several ancillary tools that social media marketers have come to expect from such tool kits, including recommendations for the best time to post, the best hashtags to use and the best influencers to “get to know,” among others.
Currently, literally dozens of AI-driven social media marketing suites are vying for your business. And now is the time to take more than a few for a test drive to determine which one will work best.
Essentially, to operate a business these days without AI-enhanced tools is akin to clutching the reins of a horse-drawn carriage and giving those new-fangled “motor cars” the wait-and-see.
That said, in the world of AI-driven social media marketing suites, here is a representative sampling of what you will find:
Sensai: Starting at $39/month, Sensai is an AI-driven social media marketing suite that includes an AI editor to help you create quick posts, longer text content and ads on social media.
The software’s AI engine studies the audience you are trying to target on all the major social media platforms and returns with daily insights, suggestions and other recommendations to help you create the best content for your specific needs.
It also produces regular reports and charts on how your content is faring on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — as well as all the other major social media platforms.
Sensai also comes with more traditional tools, including post scheduling, best-time-to-post recommendations and hashtag suggestions.
Cortex: Cortex’s suite also offers an AI editor, which analyzes each piece of content you create and suggests enhancements for expert polishing.
Cortex is designed to optimize 50 features common to any social media post, including, among others, keywords, hashtags and even the images to include with your copy.
Similar to Sensai, Cortex analyzes the posts and other content used by your competitors and ensures your stuff is just as good —or even better. It also will provide insights on how your competitors’ posts are performing and compare that performance to your own content.
The package, driven by AI machine learning, also is designed to learn over time. So, ideally, it will eventually improve recommendations on the content that will work best for you on any given social media platform.
SmartKai: SmartKai is similar to Sensai and Cortex, and is designed to optimize content. One major difference, however, is that it is free to use, given that the package still is in beta mode and not currently for license.
SmartKai’s machine-learning core also is programmed to get better over time. This includes discerning what content is working best for you, what social media platforms are working best for you, the best time to post on each network and similar metrics.
Atomic Reach: This is yet another AI-driven content editor, which closely analyzes any text you create and makes suggestions for enhanced clarity and readability. It also operates on a machine-learning engine and is designed to get better at recommending changes over time.
Concured: Concured takes a slightly different approach from many AI content editors. It focuses on using AI to study your target audience on social media and monitors what content they find most engaging at any given moment.
The online service then offers suggestions on the type of content you should create next, along with suggestions as to the best places to post that content at any given moment.
“Content is meant for the audience to consume so they’ll want to come back for more,” Concured co-founder Tom Salvat said. “Therefore, you have to know what your audience wants to eat.”
Concured also studies what content on social media is working for your competitors. And it’s able to identify content topics that are on the rise on social media that your company can cash in on before your competitors do.
MarketMuse: Another AI editing suite to check out, MarketMuse also offers search engine optimization for any text you create, including ensuring your content pops up high in Google and similar searches and ensuring people are linking to your content and sharing your content.
Insightpool: Once you’ve settled on an AI social media marketing suite, you will want to check out Insightpool. This service continually crawls the Web, monitoring the content of 600-plus million “influencers,” including bloggers, reporters, editors and YouTube stars, among others.
It can give your posts new legs simply by a mention or a link.
All told, Insightpool monitors 100-plus social media networks, enabling you to ferret out all the popular networks that will work for you as well as the more obscure networks that offer more specialized audiences that are a perfect match for your business.
You can use Insightpool to search for influencers and audiences based on demographics, topics, location and similar variables.
It also offers an ROI analysis tool, which you will be able to use to generate reports substantiating your social media marketing efforts to those people in the corner offices. Those reports include success metrics, such as total impressions, click rates and the number of influencers talking about your company. Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan. Voice: (631) 438-1142. E-mail: joe@joedysart.com. Web: www.joedysart.com.
