AI For Small Businesses: Help or Hindrance? (Part III)
With more and more features of AI coming to light, society has become more accepting of AI and has begun utilizing its help in various industries. Whether it's for healthcare, research, or business, AI has proven time and time again to help employees save time, develop strategies, and work more efficiently. However, one entity that has consistently been supported by AI is none other than social media. Before discussing the last AI tool that helps small business, let's discuss how AI assists the previously mentioned industries on social media.
AI for Social Media: Healthcare
While we have covered the topic of AI's uses in the Telehealth industry in the previous blog, let's take a look at how AI helps workers in the healthcare industry with social media marketing (SMM). Social media allows medical professionals to share and manage health-related information within online social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Meanwhile, AI-enhanced social media gives companies and organizations the tools to identify, evaluate, and predict issues using digital health data (Liu et al, 2275). These advancements have been beneficial for both patients and healthcare providers. Based on research, "83% of patients used social media to find out information about their diagnosis or test results, 73% of them read posts from rare disease groups or organizations, 67% of them engaged in conversations about their diagnosis and 58% of them used social media to connect with others to seek help (Liu et al, 2275). In other words, social media has become a new medium for patients to learn about the status of their health and get help from health professionals if necessary.
AI for Social Media: Research
In the research industry, AI has been utilized to combat the negative effects (e.g. deepfakes) that AI has had on society. Researchers have invested a large number of resources into developing advanced AI systems with the ability to swiftly identify new threats on social media platforms (Yanoski et al, 119). These actions taken by AI include creating text-based hate speech detection systems that can screen and flag harmful content (Yanoski et al, 119). Another example is that a researcher has focused on generating "complex algorithms for detecting manipulated images, ensuring that doctored photos can be identified and addressed swiftly" (Yanoski et al, 119). Also, to combat deepfake videos, AI-powered detection systems have been created and designed to recognize inconsistencies like irregular noise patterns and mismatches between the emotional cues in the audio and the visuals of a media item. Essentially, these AI systems are needed to maintain the authenticity and safety of information shared on social media platforms (Yanoski et al, 119).
AI for Social Media: Business
The importance that AI has in the business industry, specifically marketing, highly valued and at times dumbfounding. As we discussed before, AI has the potential to analyze target customers, communicate content, and deliver it via customized marketing campaigns (Black and van Esch, 2021). However, in today’s hyper-competitive stage, companies utilize AI to promote and market both their products to entice new customers and market themselves to prospective employees (Black & van Esch, 2021). Through AI, businesses can examine insights from marketers and deliver the data for managers. Finally, research shows that "social media can increase technology use motivation in an Al-enabled recruiting context and that trendiness and biometrics act as fist-stage and second-stage boundary conditions, respectively" (Black & van Esch, 2021).
Hootsuite
By understanding the benefits that AI brings to a company's social media presence, we can now look at the last AI tool of this blog series, Hootsuite. Founded in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite is a SaaS (Software as a Service) social media management platform that helps manage social media channels, interact with new audiences. and grow your brand (Hootsuite). Hootsuite integrates with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media platforms. Let's take a closer look at several of its features to better understand what it does.
Social Listening
Recently added to all Hootsuite plans, the social listening feature allows users to create new social media strategies and create more informed decision through the help of social media monitoring. The three sub-features that the social listening feature is comprised of is Blue Silk AI, Quick Search, and AI sentiment analysis. With Blue Silk™ AI it examines data and customer conversations to simplify them into clear, astute summaries that are easy to read. Next, with Quick Search, users can search when their brand is mentioned, trending topics, and more from a seven day timespan and compare two searches side by side. You can also view sampled results from "news sites, newsletters, blogs, forums, Reddit, X, and Quora" (Hootsuite). Finally, with the AI sentiment analysis feature, you can boost engagement and satisfy customers by using AI to learn their wants, needs, and preferences.
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Publish and Schedule
Moving on from social listening, the publish and schedule (PS) features allows users to generate, build, and upload content across all platforms using Hootsuite's dashboard. The PS feature informs you of the best time windows to post on social media to get the highest engagement and appeal to your audience's needs. Users can automatically create engaging captions and creative ideas for posts with the help of advanced AI systems. Through said AI, it is easier than ever to prioritize your content creation process while ensuring your social media presence remains dynamic and captivating. Also, you can follow current trends to best cater to your audience and provide content that they value.
Where do we proceed from here?
We now have reviewed three major AI tools (MailChimp, Salesforce, and Hootsuite), it is now understood that AI has the power to completely change the way your small business operates. Whether it's social media marketing, data analytics, or even research, AI completely revolutionizes how quickly and efficiently your business operations take. Thank you for reading this segment of the blog series and please tune into the next blog post for the last key benefits you need to change the way you run your small business!
References
Hootsuite Inc. (2019). Hootsuite Amplify: Employee Advocacy Platform. Hootsuite Amplify: Employee Advocacy Platform; Hootsuite. https://www.hootsuite.com/platform/employee-advocacy
Inc, H. (2024a). Social Media Calendar and Scheduler. Social Media Calendar and Scheduler. https://www.hootsuite.com/platform/publishing
Inc, H. (2024b). Social Media Monitoring Tools and Software. Social Media Monitoring Tools and Software. https://www.hootsuite.com/platform/listening
Inc. , H. (2024). What does Hootsuite do? Hootsuite Help Center. https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/6024181624603-What-does-Hootsuite-do
Liu, R., Gupta, S., & Patel, P. (2021). The Application of the Principles of Responsible AI on Social Media Marketing for Digital Health. Information Systems Frontiers, 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-021-10191-z
van Esch, P., & Stewart Black, J. (2021). Artificial Intelligence (AI): Revolutionizing Digital Marketing. Australasian Marketing Journal, 29(3), 183933492110376. https://doi.org/10.1177/18393349211037684
Yankoski, M., Scheirer, W., & Weninger, T. (2021). Meme warfare: AI countermeasures to disinformation should focus on popular, not perfect, fakes. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 77(3), 119–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2021.1912093
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