Chatbot – what is it?

One definition gives:
A computer program designed to simulate conversations with human users, often over the Internet.

Chatbots have been around for many years. The first of them was created in 1966 under the name ELIZA. He was supposed to parody the behavior of the psychoanalyst, who mocked the patient, often repeating his statements in the form of questions. However, only recently have companies started to pay attention to the business benefits of their use. The real merit for popularizing chatbots, however, should be attributed to Facebook, which allowed them to be integrated with their messenger.

Depending on how the individual chatbots have been programmed, we can divide them into two main groups:

Simple chatbots
They operate on the basis of a previously prepared set of keywords that they are able to understand. Each chatbot reaction to a particular query must be designed separately by the programmer. If the user asks a question without using one of the known keywords, the robot will not understand the query and will usually respond with a “sorry, I don’t understand” message.

Advanced chatbots
Self-learning algorithms were used in their design. Instead of using pre-prepared answers, chatbot creates them on an ongoing basis, based on flexible rules and their knowledge. All customer queries are saved for later processing. Nevertheless, in this case artificial intelligence does not work perfectly, and preparing such a chatbot requires a lot of work. It must be admitted, however, that great progress has been made in this area. The proof is the world famous voice conversation of the Google machine with people who wanted to reserve a place at the hairdresser. It perfectly imitated even momentary reflection in the style of “mmmmm” or “eeee”. People were convinced that they were talking to another person. She definitely passed the Turing test.

What encourages users to interact with chatbots?

According to one study, the main factors are:
– Productivity – chatbots provide quick and effective help and access to information.
– Entertainment – chatbots entertain people by giving them funny tips, and help to pass time when users have no classes.
– Social and relational factors – talking to bots gives some people the chance to talk without being judged and helps work on conversation skills.
– Curiosity – many people are interested in the very idea of “talking programs”, which encourages them to interact with them.

Let’s move on to how chatbots can help your business grow:

Answering questions
The simplest and most popular chatbot application is to make it an interactive FAQ. Chatbot filled with answers to individual questions will be particularly useful in situations where customers use a particular jargon. He will be able to answer the most common questions, leaving the employee service for really demanding cases.

The introduction of a chatbot will also help you improve your visibility on social media. It is difficult to make the customer service team be able to answer any query on the platforms on which you are present. Even if you succeeded, it would be rather time consuming and, consequently, expensive. Chatbot, in turn, can be active 24/7. This will not only save employee time, but also maintain better communication with customers and improve statistics related to reply rate.

Reduction of operating costs
Service and contact with clients (current and potential) takes time and generates costs. However, according to Paraphrase-Online.com research, implementing virtual advisors or chatbots helps reduce customer service costs by up to 30%.
Of course, such solutions will not completely replace people. Chatbots will successfully deal with simple and repetitive tasks, so that employees can be assigned to more complicated jobs.

Collecting and analyzing consumer data
Your chatbot is a great tool with which you can collect customer information. If you don’t really have a specific reason for doing so, you won’t be willing to complete the survey. Chatbot approaches feedback collection in a gentler and natural way by entering relevant questions during the conversation.
Additionally, thanks to the use of machine learning algorithms, your chatbot can analyze opinions and other information that it collects from users. This will give you better insight into what they really want. It will also help you improve your marketing strategy to focus more on your needs.

Personalized customer contact
Customers don’t always know what to do to find information that interests them. In fact, they may not even know what they are interested in. Maybe they just heard about your brand and decided to take a closer look.

Therefore, chatbots integrate with social media, collecting data about each person with whom they interact. When a user enters a specific query, chatbot can respond by offering personalized advice based on purchase history and customer preferences.

Even if chatbot does not use such a solution, it can get to know the potential customer better with a series of questions.

Streamlining the payment process
Advanced chatbots use features that allow them to make payments. Customers can pay for their products without leaving the chat interface. Bots that store the payment details of regular customers significantly improve the ordering process for subsequent products.

Summary

Chatbots are undoubtedly a useful tool in business and their popularity will grow. They help to meet recipients, adjust marketing activities, reach new consumers and save employees time. It’s definitely worth using their options as soon as possible. Chatbots currently support businesses, but in the near future it may turn out that … they will be businesses themselves. An example is the movie “Her”, where the hero enters into a conversation and is connected with an advanced algorithm (woman’s voice) managed by a company that was established to provide satisfying, platonic relationships in a world in which interpersonal relations were qualitatively getting worse . Sounds familiar? Ha! Maybe the demand for such a service is just around the corner.

If you want to develop your content marketing strategy in a company, from scratch, starting from the blog, publishing content based on SEO or also establishing a company profile on social media, including on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or YouTube.

Why is it worth having a content marketing strategy?

Content specialists will surely give you many reasons. However, if no one has ever tried to convince you to create a content marketing strategy for your company – here we are!

Having a clear content marketing strategy is much easier to present and explain the activities of the marketing team to other teams in the company that often do not understand or see the benefits of strictly content activities. A clear strategy gives them the opportunity to engage in various initiatives and facilitates communication between departments, e.g. sales and marketing. If you still think that not everyone in the company may be interested in what will be published on the company’s blog or Facebook, I present an example:

A. Your company sometimes publishes something on a blog, usually when the copywriter had a moment off. The person commissioned to take care of the fanpage uploads a maximum of two posts per week on Facebook – but these do not collect much likes (and no one even dreams about comments). Your company on both Google and Facebook has a maximum of 5 reviews – three written by friends of employees and two negative (of course, no one answered) – does this remind you of something? This is a very common example of a company that does not manage its content activities and does not have any pre-determined content marketing strategy. This can be changed very simply. How several guidelines will improve communication that will positively affect the content delivered to your company’s recipients? – about this in example B.

B. With the help of the Content Marketing guide, step by step, or using other sources and your own experience, you create a content marketing strategy – you specify a group of recipients, audit existing activities and check what should be improved, and what went well, you dedicate specific people who will posted on social media and on the blog, you set the publication schedule and distribution method. Finally, this strategy is also presented to other departments, which will most likely add some of their comments and inspiration.

Effect?

People dealing with publications have in store ideas for content (in addition in various formats), what’s more, the sales department eagerly uses published content and uses the more interesting fragments, e.g. sharing them with potential customers who may be interested in given issues. The analytics department sends some nice data from which you can then create an interesting infographic or blog entry. Both the website and fanpages notice more traffic, and customers encouraged by the sales department write some positive reviews. It doesn’t stop there, of course.

Of course, the presented scenario only looks simple. To create a content marketing strategy, and then to enforce it and improve the published content over time, you need to work a bit. Nevertheless, you can start with small steps.

Benefits of having Content Marketing strategies in a company

We marketers are well aware of the benefits of our activities. We know perfectly well that thanks to our publications traffic on the site increases, and this translates into an increase in requests for an offer or an increase in purchases. We also see that the original texts on the site and communication tailored to recipients in social media brings an ever wider group of readers and gathers more and more active fans who read eagerly browse company profiles. It’s logical for us! However, for people who do not deal with marketing on a daily basis, our work often seems incomprehensible, and its benefits are often questioned and undermined. That is why we decided to convince the doubters, including this entry.

Here are the benefits for which you should have a content marketing strategy:

– building the company’s image and recognition (in a relatively cheap way),
– strengthening the position of the website in Google – by providing more content, well optimized for SEO,
– complementing other marketing and sales activities,
– positive impact on relationships with customers: brand fans, brand followers and potential customers,
– strengthening the company’s position as a leader among competitors (maybe your competition is still conducting its activities as in example A),
– as a result of these actions: increasing sales.

And a lot more! You can convince yourself of them only if you finally start acting!

Content Marketing – discussed forms of publication

Let’s start with the fact that content can take many forms. So we are not only doomed to simple blog entries, although these never go out of style. Definitely, in 2020 you need to be tempted to diversity and provide information to recipients in various forms, such as:

– blog entries,
– interviews,
– checklists,
– short entries, e.g. in social media,
– guides
– ebooks
– presentations,
– graphics,
– infographics,
– pictures,
– collages,
– Memes,
– short video formats,
– longer video formats,
– live video,
– webinars,
– podcasts,
– case studies,
– reports,
– sheets,
– reviews,
– diagrams,
– games and quizzes,
– competitions,
– UGC – that is all forms related to your product or service that your recipient / customer creates.
– and others that creativity will allow.

Since there are so many options, how to decide which channels and formats will be the most suitable for a given business and target group? Calm head, we are already answering!

Content Marketing activities

There is nothing to hide, this post is also a content marketing activity. We want to give knowledge, but also create a community of marketers around us. Maybe today they do not need our support, but maybe in six months they will go to a new company, they will be faced with new challenges and then they will remember us.

At Paraphrase Online, we’ve focused on several transmission axes, the key to providing industry knowledge.

We create customer guides, blogs and educational entries, we share infographics, we are transparent as a company. Of course, each form also has preferred channels. For example, about transparency, payroll and results are best shared on Linkedin, where the business environment involved is particularly interested in such data. Infographics are great sellers on social media (including on Facebook), and e.g. blog provides us traffic straight from the search engine.

You can use our knowledge and experience, their cumulative dose has been made available on our blog.

1. A negative approach to marketing in social media itself

If you think social media is not suitable for your industry and its associated demographics, then you are probably wrong. Many people still think that social media is only interested in teenagers and technology fans. However, this situation has changed a long time ago. For example, one study found that the fastest-growing Twitter age group is between 55 and 64 years old. In turn, the fastest-growing demographic group on Facebook is in the range of 45-54 years. Social media has penetrated all layers of our society. That’s why you can use them to reach virtually any target groups that are relevant to you.

2. Lack of goals and target group arrangements

Knowing who your audience is can be the biggest challenge you face. When creating a campaign, it is important that you identify your target group and tailor your activities to it:
– Who did I create this product for / I offer the service?
– Do I try to reach adults, adolescents, men or women?

All these questions are important from the point of view of identifying the target group, so you can set your initial campaign goals. Once you have defined your group, you should determine how to measure the success of the campaign. To do this, set parameters and define your goals and KPIs:
– How many customers do you want to reach and with what commitment?
– Is your attention just focused on increasing brand awareness or do you want to direct traffic to the company website?

The more you specify your goals, the better!

3. Lack of measurement of results

Social media marketing is a powerful way to promote your brand. In addition, you can track all your activities and progress in real time. This allows you to make strategic changes to your campaign over time. You can stop inefficient advertising to save your budget until it is re-optimized. Expecting amazing results from the first post or campaign is a bit too optimistic. To succeed, you’ll always need a series of patches and tests to get the results you want.

4. Vague and overly general actions

Should you be on all social platforms? Probably not.
If you want to conquer all platforms, it will be rather difficult for you to create unique and high-quality content on each of them. The mere handling of profiles and interaction with the target group also takes time. You also need to choose your marketing channel accordingly. If you operate on one platform, but your target group is on another, you won’t do much. You can choose to choose only one or combine several. Remember not to overdo it and consistently generate good content for selected platforms.

5. Avoiding, deleting and counterattacking negative comments

Negative comments give you the chance to improve the quality of services and build trust in your brand’s community. When a customer is dissatisfied with the service and makes a sharp negative comment, many brands decide to ignore it, and some even try to remove it or respond with even harsher statements. Look at it from a different perspective.

This situation is an opportunity to turn a complaining customer into a satisfied customer – one who will remember your culture and patience.
Therefore, take negative comments seriously and try to solve the problem the client is facing. Reply directly to the comment, and then move the matter to a private channel.

6. Too many self-promotion

– Buy it.
– Download it.
– We were here.
– Wait for our latest offer.

Imagine you are following a brand that publishes only this type of content. Each individual post is self-promotional – it adds no value to you. Nothing fun, nothing motivating, no interaction with customers.

Would you be honestly interested in such a brand?

Social media is a fantastic place to build and develop your community. This is where you can get feedback and establish long-term customer relationships. Therefore, follow the 20/80 rule, where 20% of your posts are self-promotion, and the remaining 80% is a specific added value for your recipients. This balance will help you subtly promote yourself while not overwhelming with your messages.

7. Not using different content formats

Is your fanpage not like a boring history book?
Large blocks of text without graphics make the content monotonous. The text itself is not engaging enough. If you want to effectively attract attention, in addition to text, place photos, infographics and videos. Facebook users watch over 100 million hours of movies a day. Individual content formats also have different results in terms of engagement. In a survey prepared by Paraphrase-Online, marketers determined which forms of content brought the best results:

– 40% – original graphics (e.g. infographics).
– 23% – movies and presentations.
– 20% – charts and data visualizations.
– 12% – stock photos.
– 5% – gifs and memes.

People love graphic content because they are easier to learn than just reading text. Therefore, try to combine it with photos and videos.

Summary

Promoting your company on social media is an activity that will definitely bring benefits. Therefore, avoid the mistakes listed here, and you’ll see the results you want much faster.