Tech Crunch has an interesting article about all the automation going on in the social media space. If you want a good sign that companies are starting to realize that they no longer control the conversation about their brand and feel overwhelmed with how to manage so many conversations, this article will point that out. Personally, I don’t see automation as a completely bad thing. How can a company interact in a variety of social mediums without automation. Can you imagine the social marketing department being large than operations? Without automation and great tools like hootsuite, Gigya, and Radian6 among a host of others; life in their world would be a lot harder.
There are at least four types of Social Media Performance examples which we can expect, among them include:
- Content Publishing on Timer: At a basic level, we already see dozens of social media management system providers like Hootsuite, Expion, Awareness, Argyle, Shoutlet enable brands to publish content on timer, many of these providers will climb into the following use cases.
- Social Content Optimization: Now, we’re seeing a few companies emerge that can optimize content by starting with analysis of content and developing intelligence, vendors such as SocialFlow, CrowdBooster, Prosodic, and Adobe Social that match what’s being said and time content to publish at the right time to the right people.
- Proactive Response: Soon, we’ll see vendors that will apply technology from Virtual Agent Software, like VirtuOz, who tell me they’ll launch automated tools beyond chat agents, and now deploy in Facebook and Twitter streams to support brand interactions.
- Human-like Relationships: While on the distant horizon, artificial intelligence agents will simulate human behavior and be a guiding agent, conversationalist, and act like a real world concierge, host, and for some, even a friend. Assume Wolfram Alpha, IBM, and others working on AI will seek to pioneer this front.
