Automation of processes, data analysis, and improved service to customers are only some of the current applications of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to provide greater leeway for company owners and marketers by speeding up data retrieval, enhancing interactions with clients, and reducing the need for human intervention.
Accessible technologies such as social media bots, which are essentially AI-powered virtual robots, allow even small enterprises to take advantage of and profit from this development.
The purpose of, and the mechanics behind, social media bots have long been a mystery.
Social bots can engage in conversation with humans and respond to their questions without tiring, while lacking a body or a face like Sophia. They have the ability to appear quite human while actually being automated accounts managed by programming.
Algorithms, or pieces of software equipped with artificial intelligence, social media bots automate jobs and carry on interactions with humans with the goal of providing assistance. By presenting relevant material and anticipating user responses, they may aid in strengthening relationships with clients.
Depending on their target audience and the social media platform, social bots can be instructed to perform a wide variety of tasks, including but not limited to: responding to and sending direct messages; assisting human users in their search for information online; liking and following content; and so on.
Social media bots attempt to carry on a “conversation” in order to aid human users, whereas applications can accomplish such functions but often do so via a menu with numerous answer alternatives.
Exactly how can bots help social media expand?
The goal of using AI and social media bots in online marketing is not to completely replace human interactions, but rather to aid business owners and marketers in making more meaningful connections with clients.
Social bots may serve as helpful helpers in many different industries, including retail, travel, entertainment, healthcare, and even banking. You may expand your social media following with the help of bots by streamlining the purchasing process and offering instantaneous assistance to your customers.
If you own a shoe company, for instance, a bot might help you streamline the ordering process by walking clients through the various options and making recommendations in a matter of seconds. The bot can readily discover the goods the user is looking for and facilitate the transaction, even if they are looking for a certain type of shoe but in a different size.
The same bot may provide order-specific support and link customers to helpful blog posts about leather shoe maintenance and other topics. If you own a hotel, a social media bot can help customers book rooms and provide useful information about the area they’ll be visiting or the upcoming weather.
A airline ticketing company can benefit from having a bot confirm purchases, remind consumers to check in, offer backup plans in the event of flight cancellations, and more.
As a result, social media bots can propel the expansion of profiles by doing the following:
- Serving as front-line support, responding to users’ inquiries
- contextualised information delivery and targeted messaging
- Promoting Sales
- communicating account or purchase updates
- analytics reports in real time
- consumer data collection
In addition to driving visitors to your site through the delivery of tailored content, bots may be coupled with email marketing platforms for nurturing programmes. They can help increase sales by being utilised for upselling and cross-selling items.
Is there really any way that bots used in business may go wrong?
The usage of social media bots is not completely risk-free, despite how fantastic it all may seem. Badly designed and coded bots can cause more difficulties for their users than they solve, frustrating them and wasting their time instead of helping them.
It’s important to remember that bots lack human context awareness when automating tasks such as following new people that engage with your social media sites or retweeting comments marked with a specific #. Your brand’s credibility and reputation might suffer if they liked or retweeted content that doesn’t align with your brand’s positioning and voice.
In addition to manipulating your follower count, bots may also flood your website with fake visitors, distorting your analytics statistics. Buying likes and follows may seem like a good idea to some company owners, but they aren’t nearly as useful as chatbots, which are designed to assist clients directly.
Last but not least, bots may help disseminate misinformation, and their volume of work might potentially change how people view a major social or political event. Deceptive bots can help propagate malware and steal information from other users’ accounts. Naturally, a social bot’s function and behaviour will be determined by its code.
Software for making your own social bots
Facebook’s Messenger platform provides a tried-and-true environment for developing your first social media bot. There is a lot of online material and tools to help you through the procedure, which is a little more involved than with other providers.
Some platforms that let you make social bots are:
- With Chatfuel, you can create bots for Facebook Messenger without needing any coding knowledge. Companies like Adidas, MTV, BuzzFeed, and even British Airlines utilise it.
- Botsify – may be set up quickly and easily without the need to learn how to code.
- FlowX O is helpful for making chatbots that can evaluate order data and provide personalised responses.
- This bot tool, called Wit.ai, is better suited for programmers because it has more advanced features and capabilities.
- Conversable is another potent tool with features like conversation flow modelling, training, and analytics that make it ideal for use in large organisations. Marvel, Whole Foods, and Pizza Hut are just a few of the companies who use it.