Artificial intelligence is going to have a big impact on content marketing and all of its various forms (like social media). But in order to discuss that impact, we have to first discuss what a content AI is. Actually, we really need to start by talking about what it's not.

Not AI for Content:

• An analytics software that shows you your best performing images over the past month/quarter/year is not artificial intelligence.
• A tool that notifies you when a competitor's content is performing better than normal is not artificial intelligence.
• A system that recommends user-generated content for you to share based on a hashtag search and a filter for only users with large audiences is not artificial intelligence.

AI for Content:

Now, none of the things I have listed above are bad. They just aren't AI or machine learning. Sometimes tools like I described above can be extremely helpful. Anyone who has used excel a lot knows that sometimes the simplest macro can save the most time.

But this is where we need to reframe the way we talk. The way you talk about a tool and the way you talk about a content AI will not be the same. An AI is not just another thing you log into each day. It's another brain on your team. You wouldn't (usually) call your colleague a tool, would you?

The point here is that AI isn't going to be something that content marketers use, it's going to be something they work with.

A content artificial intelligence is going to do things like:

• Use neural networks to study your brand and other brands like you in order to receive guidance on what content to make during your next photoshoot.
• Use machine learning to compare thousands of potential times and social media channels to post to arrive at an optimal strategy for your brand and your content.
• Use real-time information to find your goldilocks hashtags - the ones that are popular enough to be worth using, but not so popular that your message will get drowned out.
• Know your business goals (clicks, reach, sales, etc.) and automatically make adjustments to future strategies without you ever having to touch a spreadsheet or analytics dashboard again.

The Best Part:

The best part about this is that we are not talking about what's going to possible in 10 years. We're talking about what's possible now. We have been working on our content AI for years and we have seen what's possible when we deploy it into the world of social media marketing, where content is so important.

I doubt you are sitting in a quarterly meeting with your team thinking, "Dudes, we really need to get an AI system to help us out." But you probably are thinking things like, "Content is getting out of control. We've got to figure out a better way to plan, produce, and publish because we are getting buried under the workload right now." You have a problem that needs to be solved. AI is your solution.