Want Google to Manage Social Media for You?

Posted on by Zach Billings
Categories: Google Tagged: ,

At this point, I’m sure you know that social media best practice entails being active. That doesn’t mean just posting though, it means replying to everyone who interacts with your post. Sometimes you can get away with just a like or a Retweet, but sometimes you need to do a bit more. It can be pretty daunting to try and keep up with all the replies on all your accounts, but Google may have a way out for the lazy. Let’s take a look at their new patent and what it may mean for your social media marketing efforts.

The patent was filed by Ashish Bhatia representing Google as a company, it it details a social media robot, one that will learn from you and then act on your behalf on social media platforms. According to the patent, it would analyze the way you talk through social media, email, texts, blogging, and any other way you communicate online. Once the robot has a feel for your personality, it kills you and assumes your place starts posting on social media for you. To start, it will function only in reply to people who interact with you, it can’t make a post out of whole cloth.

Here is the important language from the patent:

The present disclosure is particularly advantageous because it provides a system and interface that automatically generate suggestions for personalized reactions or messages. There is no requirement for the user to set reminders or be proactive. The system automatically without user input analyzes information to which the user has access, and generates suggestions for personalized reactions to messages. The suggestion analyzer cooperates with the decision tree to learn the user’s behavior and automatically adjust the suggested messages that are generated over time. The present disclosure also describes a number of methods including a method for initializing a message suggestion system, a method for generating suggested messages or reactions, a method for sending suggested messages or reactions, and a method for updating a suggestion analyzer.

Is this the future of social media marketing? I don’t think so. There’s no robot in the world that can match the touch of a human. If you really don’t think you have time, you can use a company with a proven social track record (ahem Wikimotive ahem) and come out much better for it.