Chimps – As You Like It (pun intended)
Microsoft is devoting a lot of their research time to artificial intelligence. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella considers it a major breakthrough for the industry. Indeed the possibilities AI offers are vast and cover aspects of business and overall society. AI is already seeing use in several industries and software platforms. In particular, Microsoft has added AI features to their widely used Office 365 platform. This feature called Editor adds machine learning to word documents.
What Editor Does
In the simplest sense Editor (as its name says) is a real-time editing option offering advice concerning grammar, context, overused terms, jargon, misuse of tense, and other common writing errors. What makes this a more advanced AI feature is how it interacts with writing. Standard grammar checking software picks up obvious errors such as a misplaced or missed comma but lacks the ability to understand how a work reads. Editor’s AI understands more advanced concepts such as tone, incorrect voice (passive versus active) and if words fit the overall theme of a work i.e. casual compared to formal writing.
How This Helps Inbound Marketing
Using AI as an active editing program is a practical solution to improving inbound marketing. The errors that AI such as this can help with include writing issues and the unique challenges of the marketing industry.
- Writer Habits: no matter how good of a writer you are every writer has stylistic habits. These can include overuse of certain words, tonal issues, overuse of jargon or specific terms, and general flaws such as odd comma usage. Many writer habits or quirks develop early as you develop your own ‘voice’ as a writer and even education and experience may not remove them completely. An AI program can catch these bad habits making you more aware of them and removing them when needed.
- Inbound Marketing Content And Tone: inbound marketing is designed to attract potential clients to a company’s goods or services. Aspects of how marketing writing is structured, not just grammatical correctness, is of key importance. A lot of big clients can be quite picky when it comes to marketing materials and misuse of terminology or tone can have them seeking out other businesses. Related is overuse of jargon which can confuse potential clients who may need your services but not be able to understand overly specific terminology. AI based editing can detect tonal issues and overuse of jargon making for more consistent and easily understood marketing documents.
- AI Saves Time: a lot of writers edit as they write instead of using multiple rough drafts. While not necessarily a bad thing this slows down overall writing production. AI takes over some of the editing work finding errors so you don’t have to. This increases overall writing productivity. If you prefer active editing this makes the whole process far easier and if you favor rough drafts AI editing cleans up the first draft reducing the need for rewrites. In inbound marketing material has to be written fairly often to keep clients engaged and anything that increases productivity is a benefit.
Conclusion
Integration of artificial intelligence into Microsoft Word is a very practical tool and useful for not only business but the inbound marketing industry in particular. It could be leveraged to increase overall productivity, increase content consistency, and increase readability. All of which are very useful in a time sensitive industry that relies on communication.