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The Gist
- The end of writer’s block? Hootsuite announces the launch of an AI-powered content generator for social media.
- Social media management rapidly incorporates AI. Salesforce, Adobe and others announce their own AI integrations.
- Social market ready to blast off. The global social media management market is estimated to reach $70.6 billion in 2027.
As top social media management companies race to incorporate AI, Hootsuite, one of the market’s original players, has announced the launch of its AI-powered content generator, OwlyWriter AI.
According to Natalia Williams, Hootsuite’s chief product officer, the new tech is powered by generative pre-trained transformer technology (GPT) and prompt engineering/variance to ensure that no two users generate the same content on a similar topic and was developed as a step-by-step tool that requires very little information to generate post ideas and captions tailored to various social media platforms.
“Social marketers are pumping out content with agility, every single day — accompanied by the inevitable challenge of creative block,” Williams said. “We knew anecdotally that social marketers constantly struggle with a lack of ideas and readily-available content to post on social, as well as a lack of time to find inspiration — and polled our customers on social media to see if we identified their pain points correctly.”
They did. Hootsuite customers overwhelmingly selected “coming up with content ideas” as a top pain point.
“OwlyWriter AI’s magic sauce is in the prompts and formulas we’ve developed to generate quality social content you can use on your next post,” Williams said. “OwlyWriter AI and our other AI content creation tools layer in our years of social media expertise to help address the unique challenge of coming up with and creating compelling posts on social media.”
In addition, Williams said content generated from OwlyWriter AI can be integrated into other parts of the Hootsuite experience such as Hootsuite Composer and the scheduling post functionality. Eventually, the company plans to embed OwlyWriter AI into the full Hootsuite experience.
Hootsuite originally launched in 2008, as a free, cloud-based tool for desktop users to manage all their social accounts from a single dashboard. Company officials made the new offering available today as an open beta to its customers free of cost, for a limited time, in the hope of collecting feedback that will inform the tech’s continued innovation.
Related Article: Hootsuite Joins TikTok’s Marketing Partner Program
Social Media Management Market Races to Adopt AI
Hootsuite is certainly not alone in the AI race.
Just today, Salesforce announced new Einstein GPT and Data Cloud capabilities for Flow, its portfolio of automation tools. In March, Salesforce launched its own generative AI CRM technology, Einstein GPT, just one day after HubSpot founder and Chief Technology Officer Dharmesh Shah publicized his company’s latest foray into generative AI with the alpha release of HubSpot’s ChatSpot.ai, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Adobe unveiled its new generative AI arsenal during the Adobe Summit last month with the beta release of Adobe Firefly and a new array of Sensei GenAI services, that will be natively integrated into Adobe apps.
In January, Emplifi launched AI Composer, incorporating OpenAI’s GPT-3, to generate ready-to-publish social media content. And Sprout Social, another big player in the market, announced the acquisition of RepuState, an AI-powered natural language processing and machine learning platform. According to company officials, the acquisition would allow the company to offer more advanced AI abilities and expand its capabilities in sentiment analysis, intent detection and chatbot automation.
“Sentiment analysis and artificial intelligence are key to managing social media at scale and with the addition of Repustate technology, we’re excited to bring an even deeper set of capabilities to our customers,” Justyn Howard, CEO and co-founder of Sprout Social said in a statement. “We believe the addition of Repustate’s AI, domain expertise and talented team will accelerate our technology roadmap across core Sprout products including aspect-based and industry sentiment within our social listening capabilities and enhanced functionality for inbox messaging and social customer care.”
Last month, Aaron Rankin, CTO and co-founder of Sprout Social, penned a blog about investing in AI, and to assure customers that “safety and accountability will continue to be paramount.”
“Tools like ChatGPT may exhibit human-level performance at many tasks, but (like humans) they have their flaws, among them perpetuating biases and ‘hallucinating’ misinformation,” Rankin said. “AI is not ready to represent your brand or business culture on its own. It’s on us to ship products that keep the user accountable and in control, while eliminating the manual effort required to sift through thousands of messages or the fear of a blank compose window.”
Explosive Growth Forecast in Social Media Management Market
According to a recent social media market forecast from Research and Markets, the global social media management market — valued at 16.2 billion in 2021 — is estimated to reach 70.6 billion in 2027, with a CAGR of 26.17%.
Growth is attributed to three key factors; companies are compelled to stay ahead of their competitors, there is a significant increase in the use of the internet and analytics, and of course, the rise in social media users. Further, they say, companies are “seeking cutting-edge technological solutions to maintain their edge.”
However, concerns over privacy present a challenge. With news of data breaches, some users are “rethinking their social network activities.”
“There are dangers of integrating AI incorrectly. One potential danger is relying too heavily on AI and losing the human touch in social media interactions,” Williams said. “Social media is ultimately a platform for social interactions, and highly automated content can feel impersonal to audiences.”
The forecast cites Adobe Inc., IBM, Salesforce.com Inc., Oracle Corporation, Cognizant, Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Google Inc. as key players in the social media management market.
Related Article: Deciding on the Best Social Media Platforms for Customer Connection
Finding the Right Social Marketing Manager
Gartner’s Market Guide for Social Marketing Management advises that “as brands support multichannel marketing and customer experiences, digital marketing leaders need social marketing tools that connect their data across channels and initiatives.” And Gartner suggests a three-step process for marketers looking for a social marketing management solution.
- Develop a list of business goals that your organization is trying to achieve and how social media supports achieving those goals.
- Include at least three suitable vendors in your selection process to maximize your negotiation leverage.
- Select a social marketing management application that can evolve with the needs of the business.
According to the 2022 Gartner CMO Strategy and Spend Survey, the largest spend category for chief marketing officers is social advertising.
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