How AI Can Help to Crack the Code of Digital Communication
Since its inception, digital communication has evolved at a rapid pace. With the advent of artificial intelligence, that pace has increased to breakneck speed.
The best example of the exponential growth of AI-enabled communication has been ChatGPT. The generative AI chatbot reached 1 million users just five days after launch. Within two months, it broke the 100-million-user mark—making it the fastest-growing digital application in history.
Against that backdrop, digital communication tools like social media and email are forever changing. AI holds undoubted promise, even and especially in the localization realm. But at the same time, its applications continue to be limited in other ways.
Finding the balance between using this technology as a helpful tool and avoiding over-reliance on it is crucial to cracking the code of digital communication in 2023 and beyond.
The Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Communications
With technology as potentially game-changing as AI, it only makes sense to start with the positives. Through the last year, AI has shown the potential to impact how brands and businesses communicate significantly. More specifically, this technology has demonstrated its promise in several communication-related fields, including:
Content generation: including the ability to rapidly create content for email, social media, and websites
Content editing: reviewing existing text to ensure accuracy and relevance for your intended audiences
Conversational content: most commonly in the form of chatbots able to hold human-like conversations with your audience
Most importantly, though, AI has leveled the playing field of digital communication. Where small businesses may have previously hesitated to enter the fray on channels they needed to gain expertise in, artificial intelligence tools can build entire online presences with comparatively limited resources. That trend becomes especially evident in the ever-present concept of localization.
Applying AI Techniques to Translation Localization Efforts
Frequent readers of this space are already familiar with localization, the concept of adjusting your strategies, marketing efforts, and messaging specifically to different local audiences you might target. This goal is to increase relevance, allowing you to attract attention and build credibility with local market segments more efficiently.
In that arena, AI has the potential to be especially powerful:
Simplify your content to ensure reading levels are what your local audiences are used to.
Personalize your content to your audience in relevant and familiar ways, even as preferences may shift in different markets.
Localize non-written content, like videos and images, to translate the text and ensure that the imagery matches local preferences and nuances.
Host multi-lingual chatbots that can hold natural conversations with your audience in their native language while drawing on a single internal knowledge base.
The goal of all of these examples is to simplify the content creation process. By moving the more routine but time-consuming tasks to AI, you can focus on more strategic aspects of building your digital communication and localization efforts.
That arena, it turns out, is precisely where artificial intelligence still tends to fall short.
The Importance of Cultural Nuances in Social Media and Other Digital Communication
Expanding internationally is never easy. Digital communication has to be a part of the strategy, and its reach is growing. In our increasingly connected world, 50% of developing nations' population now has access to technology.
But technology has also introduced the possibility of a potentially fatal error: the assumption that, because audiences in different markets tend to use the same channels, they will also accept the same content. Instead, the opposite is true. Cultural nuances are a core reason why AI can be a helpful tactical tool but still falls short on the strategic side.
Email Localization as a Sportswear Opportunity
Take email localization as an example. There are more than 4.3 billion email users worldwide, accounting for more than half of the world's population. But different populations around the globe will approach this same channel very differently.
For example, American users will welcome promotional emails sent after signing up on the website or visiting specific pages. In Germany, however, consumers tend to be more concerned about privacy. They could find evidence of a brand knowing about their online activity off-putting.
On the messaging side, consumers in many Asian countries expect even promotional emails to be addressed to their last name as a sign of respect. On the other hand, European consumers are much more casual and will expect their first name to be the focus. But these are broad generalities, and strong campaigns will go deeper into localization.
Building Localization Into Your Social Media Strategy
Similar nuances also apply to other digital communication channels. Social media has to be a part of the consideration, especially for businesses looking to expand into new markets. But how that social media effort is executed can make all the difference in building a successful localization strategy.
That process begins with channel selection. For example, you cannot assume that channels like Facebook and Instagram will be as popular in countries like China as in the United States and Europe. Adjusting your channel strategy to your audience is vital.
Cultures also differ in how they consume visual content. Visual media has become the predominant type of social media content over the years. For example, studies have shown some Asian cultures find background-heavy visuals extremely important. However, consumers in some Western cultures will pay more attention to the foreground.
These are the types of nuances that AI communication, as sophisticated as it has become, will not successfully catch. Strategic adjustments in channel, message, and visuals will require a more nuanced approach that leverages (but does not rely on) generative technology.
Cracking the Code of Digital Communication in 2023 and Beyond
In today's fast-paced and connected world, it is impossible to reach audiences—locally and globally—without an emphasis and priority on digital communication. Technologies like artificial intelligence have made that process easier. They enable businesses and organizations of all sizes to build and distribute relevant messaging to their prospective customers effectively.
From translation to content generation, the potential benefits of AI can be immense. But those benefits are constrained by its inability to catch the strategic nuances and adjustments that localization will always require. It is a tool to help execute a strategy, not to generate that strategy from the ground up.
Within those constraints, though, AI has the potential to help any business crack the code of digital communication. Its ability to help organizations of any size make their digital communications more efficient can be immensely valuable when content generation needs multiply due to different audiences' varying demands.
Across the world, organizations in all industries are looking to gain insights and exchange information about the rapid changes in digital communication today. Joining a community of experts enables you to join that conversation. Subscribing to VTQ Magazine keeps you in the loop on all the latest technology and communication trends.