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Ultimate Guide to Your Chatbot Content Strategy

Illustrator: Jana Pérez
chatbot content strategy

Content has been one of the pillars of digital marketing for years. And, despite some shifts in shape and form, it’s role and importance has been unquestioned. Indeed, content proved to be the best way to go the extra mile, show that your care, attract engagement... The problem is, today, everyone knows that. Thus, we are faced with a stressful reality of oversaturation. That’s why we want to talk about chatbot content marketing.

Chatbot Content Strategy?

Yes.Why not?

We have all seen bots conquer the world of customer support solving issues one after another, helping agents manage their workloads.

Content, in a way, also exists to help users solve an issue whether the issue is not knowing what will be in this summer; where to get the best pizza in Rome; what series to watch next; which type of care to buy; how to negotiate with potential clients or simply entertained in a moment of boredom.In other words, content is just disguised support.

Free support available to anyone who comes across it, not just your existing customers.

Free support you hope will persuade those random visitors that you are the one who can help them for real.

Furthermore, in recent years we have seen consumers take their communication from social media to messaging platforms and messaging platforms loosening their focus on users and opening doors to businesses.The point?

With the messaging taking over and companies being allowed to participate, chatbots were freed from desktops and apps that nobody downloads anymore. Chatbots are allowed to enter right into the center of the consumer comfort zone.

Just imagine, the same chatbot that shares content with visitors on your web pages greets them on their favorite social network or, better yet, their go-to messaging apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger!

7 Key Benefits of Content Marketing Chatbot

So, let’s not lose more time and look at the benefits using a chatbot for content management, distribution and data collection can actually bring.

1. Provide More Customized Experiences

As mentioned above, content is great.Nevertheless, excessive amounts of it everywhere are detrimental to its ability to bring results. Some brands handle it by pushing more and more content… others try a variety of personalization techniques through gathering as much info as possible.

Chatbot, however, can customize EVERY experience from the very first touchpoint. Thus, it can influence potential clients in a very targeted manner by sharing only what’s relevant and so, saving time and positively affecting their user experience.What’s really great, chatbots enable users or buyers to find specific content quickly. By building a smart chatbot that can filter through all your existing content and give people what they need when they need it you are actually designing an intelligent content distribution strategy.

2. Offer Better Content & Improve Your Strategy

Another huge positive of chatbot driven conversation is the conceptualized data which can be used to improve your content model as well as an overall marketing strategy.

Chatbot eliminates the need for you to go out of your way to find out what kind of questions your target audience is asking.

Not only that!Conversational analytics let you see what type of content and in what sequence customers with different needs or in different stages of their journeys demand.

This information helps you not only to improve segmentations but also to create customized content packages and experiences outside chatbot conversations, e.g., in email marketing. Plus, you will also get an insight into HOW - in what words - people ask all these questions making key terms search a piece of cake.

Sure, you must be aware that as your bot evolves, customer expectations will rise… but so will their appreciation for your brand.

3. Humanize your Brand

Yeah!

Sarcastically enough, chatbots are a great way to HUMANIZE your brand.

Beware, though! Humanizing your brand with the help of fancy technology like artificial intelligence or machine learning doesn’t mean fooling your customers into thinking they are chatting with a human.

That’s not only unadvisable but also improbable. We (humanity) are simply not there yet. AI has a long way to go.

Still, even in its very obviously artificial existence, bots have the power to humanize virtual processes.

How?

Identity!

Just because they are not human, it doesn’t mean they cannot be programmed to reflect the highlights and failures of human personalities. In fact, it’s your bots character that can sell your brand values, image, and world view better than any campaign.

Cat Chatbot

Your bot can be jolly or even stuck-up. It can funny or sarcastic. It can be formal and respectful…Quick access to relevant content makes your brand useful, bot’s personality makes it memorable.

4. Increase Engagement

All online content from articles to images and videos is fighting to engage you. Don’t just look, click, don’t just click, read, view, comment, like, share…

But how do you catch someone’s attention if everybody is shouting all at once?

In today’s fast-paced virtual world, consumers seek out the commodity and interaction of an instant two-way communication. The times when they patiently sat in the audience waiting for you to make a move are over. Instant satisfaction, (inter)action and a sense of control rule the world of digital marketing today.

Chatbots cater to these cravings by default. Action-reaction dynamic is innate to conversations. Furthermore, chatting with a bot is not only instantaneous they also give users a degree of control over what direction the conversation will take and what kind of content they will be exposed to.

Likes counter

On another note, when a user reads your online article or views your video, shares your image, there is no guarantee they will ever come back. However, and successful interaction with a bot is more memorable not just for the help but also for the aforementioned factor of personality. Chatbot engagement is different from another type of online engagement because, like when talking to humans, it builds a sort of relationship.So, a chatbot content strategy can help you effectively funnel down your vast content database in real-time, create individualized content packages and so keep people more engaged and entertained than another tool other there.

5. Leverage Existing Content in a New Way

Implementing a chatbot content strategy doesn’t mean you have to forget about the great content you already have. In fact, the conversation allows you to repurpose the content in a new way.Evergreen content usually relies on SEO and occasional resharing.However, using a conversational approach to content sharing, you can revive the information by transforming it into conversation-friendly bits or by letting your bot pull it up when it’s relevant to the user’s request.

The same way you can leverage content from YoutTube or social networks where the trend is always novelty. Thus, even the newest leads/customers have access to the best of your content - not just the most recent.

6. Take the Pressure off Your Team

Promoting content organically is a time-consuming and often even mindnumbing process. Plus there is no way a human can promote all content anytime, on request. It's unrealistic.

Sure, scheduling automation tools do help a lot. But still, they only share what your team programs them to share. Plus they are not big on customization.

Having a content chatbot on your website, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, let's you share your content 24/7. Not only that it lets you share the content on request.

Hence using a bot to distribute your creative or supporting content can eliminate a significant portion of your team's daily, weekly, and monthly content marketing tasks, all while happily converting leads and boosting company revenue.You won’t have to spend extra resources on more tools or more hands and your team will have more time to dedicate to creating incredible content.

7. Accumulate Data & Connect Marketing Processes through Integrations

The last but not least benefit chatbots offer are integrations. With bots, you can pretty much integrate any tool directly into the conversation flow. Hence, when the user mentions a critical detail, the bot is able to translate it into structured data and send it on its jolly way to your CRM database, Google Spreadsheet, Mailchimp list, etc.

content-marketing-chatbot-integrations

Even better, thanks to integrations, you can let users purchase your content or your products/services recommended by the content without leaving the bot!

All in all, 3rd-party chatbot integrations provide users comfort while enabling you to noninvasively structure conversational data and gain priceless insight into user behavior.

Groud Rules To Maximize Impact of Chatbot Content Strategy

Now, for your chatbot content marketing to reach its potential, you should follow these three ground rules:

1. Have a Strategy

This one seems quite obvious, but you would be surprised how many marketers get swept up by the novelty of the technology and neglect the basics.

Just making a bot is not enough. The more strategy you put into the adoption of chatbot technology, the less work (and resources) you’ll have to invest later when your client based expect communication with your brand on their terms.In other words, when creating your content strategy, you need to take into account:

  • Compatibility: How the content will fit into the conversational technology
  • Availability: At what customer touchpoints will chatbot tech be most useful
  • Scalability: Will you be able to scale conversations without setbacks

The good news is if you have been in digital marketing for some time, structured content presents nothing new and your content marketing team might be more chatbot-ready than you thought.

The lesson here is, your content chatbot should complement an already successful content marketing strategy. Not serve as a distraction from the basics.

2. Design Bot Purpose & Personality Around User Needs

When building your content bot, don’t think so much about your content. Think about the users, the same way you do when creating the content you hope will engage them.

The beauty of chatbots in content marking is that they have the same privilege as the content itself - the privilege of going the extra mile, adding additional value without an aggressive sales focus.So, before you are off to build your first chatbot ask… What do your (potential) customers need? Who would they like to talk to at this stage of their customer journey? Do they need kindness or entertainment? Efficiency or distraction? Are they seeking objective assessment or niched advice?

All these elements help you shape a virtual content assistant your leads and customers find compelling, engaging and quite memorable.

3. Keep Up with Chatbot Analytics to See What’s Working

The third rule to follow with content marketing chatbots is all about keeping your eyes on the analytics.

Just building and throwing your virtual employee to the sharks is not the best way to go.

Take your time observing and analyzing the interactions. See where to bot succeeds and where it fails. Analyze if the failure is the result of the content or the shortcoming of your bot. Observe what types of content are best received, what themes most requested.Use this data smartly to design and effective content and overall marketing strategy across all platforms.

Do You Need a Content Chatbot?

Chatbot potential goes way beyond the scope of customer service.

It’s a perfect channel to accommodate demands for flexibility, customization, need for instant satisfaction and craving for more personal two-way brand-customer relationships.

If you think your content management system and distribution need a bit of a kick, going down the conversational path is the way to go. Alternatively, if you are using bots for other processes, you might as well use them in content marketing to help scale your marketing efforts. The more synchronized your experience across the stages of the customer journey, the better.

Whant to give it a try?