Natural language processing is like a buzzword. Right now, more marketing agencies are excited about the potentials of natural language processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) because, for once, businesses of every size have access to NLP and AI for everyday uses.
From business automation to marketing automation, search engine optimization (SEO), and content creation, natural language processing can assist you in your content marketing efforts.
Whether you are a content marketing agency, a business owner looking to capitalize on content marketing, or a marketer, here are some of the ways that NLP can be used in content marketing:
What is Natural Language Processing?
Natural language processing is a model of AI that essentially teaches computers to understand and interpret human language. NLP is an algorithm that reads text, interprets the context of that text, and then is able to do something with that information.
The most commonly used form of the NLP technique is with Google’s Algorithm BERT. BERT is an algorithm designed to provide an optimized search result based on the search intent. In order to provide accurate results, BERT scans the text in Google’s indexing system and then is able to interpret the context and topic of that text.
NLP requires large databases of text in order to educate itself, and it also requires a significant amount of manual oversight to make sure that the program is learning effectively, especially in its growth stages.
Natural language processing tools focus on three core tasks:
- Natural language recognition: Computers can only read in numbers. Therefore, language recognition requires that the natural text is converted into a language format that the computer can understand.
- Natural language understanding: Algorithms are then able to conduct statistical analysis to determine the topics mentioned frequently together.
- Natural language generation: After these steps, the next logical step would be text generation. Using an interface, NLP computers can generate text that respond to a request. At an augmented level, artificial intelligence can provide actionable insight for use in creating expert-level content.
6 of the Best Ways to Use Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Digital Marketing
As you can see, NLP is actually something that marketers (and most people) use every day, simply because NLP is used in Google’s search engine algorithm. There are other protocols and uses for NLP, though.
For example, NLP technology can be used for content marketing purposes, to help content marketers to improve the readability of their content. It can also be used for business automation purposes, such as sending out automated email marketing campaigns to select buyer personas or setting up automated tasks.
Some primary ways that NLP can be used in digital marketing include:
Lead Capture and Qualification
There are billions of searches performed on search engines every day, and trillions performed each year. This means that there is a virtually endless stream of visitors all over the internet at any given second. These visitors are looking for problems to be solved, whether that is a product to improve their life or a life hack that makes them happier. Tapping into this potential means that your business is tapping into potential sales, leads, and brand-loyal customers.
NLP software can boost your ability to handle customer queries. NLP bots can handle customer queries instantly, allowing more people to seek problem-solving services from your business (for free) to feel rewarded and return again later.
Chatbots (cognitive automation) are useful in this regard, and they perform lead capture and analysis tasks on your behalf. Know if a visitor is a serious inquiry through lead capture and qualification chatbot for better lead management and better conversion rates.
Sentiment Analytics
Digital marketing campaigns are determined based on their effectiveness. If a campaign is effective, then it will be worth the money, and key stakeholders would be willing to use this campaign again.
Measuring your strategies and making sure you are using the right ones are critical to marketing success. NLP can measure brand sentiment with social listening tools. Track top-performing content to gain a clearer understanding of how that content is resonating with your audiences. This allows you to enhance popular content and focus on the drivers of that content’s success.
Use NLP for predictive analytics. NLP technologies can tap into positive, negative, and neutral terms around your business or content through social listening techniques. Know how your audience feels about your brand to improve, maintain, or shape good brand perception.
Audience Reach
Inspired by data powerhouses like Facebook and Google, the marketing team should recognize the value that customer data can be in a company. In fact, for many, customer data is the lifeblood of the business.
There are, of course, unimaginable stores of data already collected online, including both text and speech data. Tapping into that data will increase your chances of understanding your audience and targeting those specific audience needs.
NLP voice search capabilities can help you target consumers who use voice-activated devices for web search. NLP can pick up on specific words that are key in audio conversations so that you can better match audio needs, interests, and the stage of the buying cycle.
SEO Strategy
One of the best ways to use NLP is for improved SEO in content marketing. Since there are many, often messed up variations of how we search things, improving your SEO ranking as it relates to topical authority can improve your chances of Google recommending your page over others.
Targeting one keyword, or long-tail keyword is dead. Instead, content marketers need to reconsider how searchers are finding your content. It’s through topical authority, multiple related keywords, and addressing the topic thoroughly.
Using the right combination of words can lead to your page being rewarded because Google understands that your content will answer the searcher’s questions. After all, Google aims to be the more helpful thing possible.
NLP technology can guide you and tell you which variation of relevant keywords should be used based on your topic. For example, we use MarketMuse to perform SEO optimization. This article is optimized around the topic of “natural language processing and content marketing efforts.” For this article, MarketMuse guides us to terms like “machine learning,” “content intelligence,” and “machine translation,” and many of the key phrases used in the blog earlier.
NLP tech like Marketmuse is able to tap into these key predictors of content knowledge using AI science and key Google indexing data.
Content Generation or Content Marketing Strategy
Content and digital marketers need to produce quality content in order to drive traffic to your site and build a following.
Content generation in this context does not necessarily mean that NLP is actually producing the content, but this is also possible. Some companies believe that NLP might be able to replace content writing altogether. While this is unlikely to happen in the near future, it is a possibility given OpenAI’s GPT-3 algorithm.
Now, though, you can use NLP for content planning and content generation. Use NLP to perform a content audit or content assessment. You can see the gaps where your content is lacking or insufficient. Use it to create hot topics in your industry and contribute in a meaningful way.
Customer Service
No matter what products or services you provide, your business is only successful based on its happiest and unhappiest customers. Therefore, you need to tap into what your customers’ pain points are, what they are looking for from your company, and how you can better serve them.
NLP techniques can go through customer data through social media or search data to understand their feedback in various forms.
How to Implement Natural Language Process
If you want to work with the data as a content marketer, you can go about creating your own NLP tools. However, if you don’t have the time, you can always invest in an NLP tool like MarketMuse.
Once you have an NLP tool, you can include it as a value-added service that partners or clients can add to a service. Use NLP in content strategy planning to plan the topics that are being underdeveloped by your competitors and capitalize on that gap. The topic can be optimized based on that topic to grow clusters of topics and authority.
How you use an AI tool in your content marketing services will depend on the goals of your clients, your services, and the value proposition that you provide. In a way, you can always consider adding NLP as a revenue stream; however, note that it might be more expensive in certain industries and not fully developed.
