Facebook chat-bots are the new trend in Facebook marketing: for more than a year now players across all industries have invested in their development and promotion. recently Twitter launched a new bot system for support. How does this affect the future of online copywriters and Social Media Community Managers?
Well, for starters I expect all of us, digital marketers, will have to stop pretending our jobs are not subject to automation. Yes, our functions are pretty new on the market — my job title did not even exist 3–4 years ago! — but this is only the beginning of how digitalization is transforming products and services and their communication strategies, respectively. Will chat-bots end up replacing Community Managers? Will copywriters have to focus on getting just the right tone of voice for particular bots? These are all relevant questions. I do not claim to have answers, but I am optimistic when sketching out scenarios on how we could use them to make our jobs easier and more rewarding.
Community Managers Out There, Turn Your Know-how Into Content Marketing
Content was proclaimed king years and years ago, but then a king seldom thinks about his subjects. He rarely thinks of how to administer the kingdom, reply to complaints and grow the entire community. When we think of kings we picture some narcissistic, egocentric, golden-clad Louis in a big throne. Up until now, a lot of brands and services mostly identified content with that: fun pieces of visuals/videos/viral content(!) that engaged users in a relevant manner. I stressed out engaged users because the focus was in every user in the target. Any user. A true Community Manager will come in and want to address the customer — existing and potential. His knowledge of the customer journey, of the real issues customers face while interacting with both the product and the services the company provides are invaluable to a content marketing team.
Community Managers out there will need to step out of their comfort zone and learn a little bit more web analytics, a little bit more on content writing, a little bit more about new technologies and all, yes, about how bots actually work. And they will need to not only be able to brief development teams on how to actually program these bots, monitor them and use all the data/insight they can get out of these bots to instruct teams across all business functions, from marketing teams to traditional customer support teams and product managers.
Copywriters, Unite! We Need You To Make Our Bots Conversational
Chatbots need to…well, chat. And we need to give them the words for that. Copywriters, please step in! You’ll be responsible with providing the conversation scripts. Now turn your creativity into actionable dialogue, but beware, you’ll need to work with Community Managers, customer support, dev teams. And you’ll also need to learn a little bit of what they do and diversify your skills toolkit: how does the bot work? what are the customer concerns? You’ll have o switch from Key Message to Key Problem to Solve. And think about creative uses of bots to speak about your clients identity — how about a bot that teaches you about solar energy for Tesla? How would he talk, what kind of content would he deliver? Or a bot for Discovery Channel that helps children study geography/geology? Or a bot in charge with CV filtering for big players in the recruiting businesses? The startup I work with — Small Academy — has already built its own chatbot with the help of 40 children aged 7–14 year old that attend their courses.
Evolve Or Perish
Ijust talked of chat-bots. But the Internet of Things is upon us. So is VR, AI and other two letters acronyms that already transformed the present. In 5 years time my job might not be spelled out Social Media Analyst, but Social Customer Support Tech Marketer. Your job might be performed by a bot. How about we both learn how to make these new technologies work in our favor and make our professional lives more interesting/challenging?
What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below, I’d love to hear what you think about this.
Useful reading about chat-bots:
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