The Human and Not-So-Human Touch: Balancing Online With Manual Work 

“AI is the way of the future!” 

“Soon, just about everything in marketing will be done manually!” 

We’ve read those quotes, too. 

They tend to show up in so many “what to expect in the new year” columns. It felt like there were more of them than ever before this year. That makes sense, as the pandemic forced so many of us to work remotely, out of the office, and far from each other. 

Technology is always advancing. What we’re able to utilize at our full-service digital online marketing company, for example, often consists of what would have been thought of as science fiction just a few years ago. 

That said, the “AI revolution” isn’t a straight path. It has many curves, stops and starts. By finding a way to merge technological advancements with good, old-fashioned manual work, you’ll be able to find what’s best for your business. 

Where Technology Is Heading 

I found this article fascinating. 

For one, “Autonomous A/B Testing” and “Natural Language Processing” certainly seem like they could help any business’s marketing. 

In short, “NLP” would be able to make it so that “AI can successfully imitate human speech, form naturally flowing sentences, and give human-to-machine interactions a personal touch.” 

Also from the article, “autonomous (A/B) testing is the ability to create test cases and executive them without human intervention.” In the context of the article, that would use “algorithms, data, and predictive models to analyze web pages and offer a complete breakdown of all well-performing elements. This (would enable) marketers to create a site that combines all the best-performing features and optimizes conversion rates.” 

That all sounds fantastic. 

One thing I did note, though: if you read the article, there’s no mention of what this technology is. No links to who’s doing it, explanations of where this is on the horizon, etc. 

As I read on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be impossible for me (or anyone here at Website Depot) to sign off on something that never had a human involved. 

As someone who writes and proofreads so much of the content here, I wouldn’t feel comfortable allowing something to go through that had been created entirely by the best “NLP” without reading it over. I imagine I’m not alone in that. 

What I’m saying is that these tech advancements, like so many others, really do sound great. That said, they’re not going to be at the point where marketers (or any business owner) can trust them entirely, not yet. I’m certainly open to being convinced (I’ve seen plenty of tech advancements just in the last year alone) but for now and the foreseeable future, Website Depot is going to rely on the human touch at the beginning as well as at the end of the process. 

Where It Can Help Today 

Of course, don’t take the above paragraph to mean I’m “anti-technology.” If anything, I’m the opposite. I’m all for trying as much new tech as possible to see how it can work. 

That’s going to be critically important, of course, as this article states. 

You don’t need to have a subscription to the service to get the gist of it. The headline says it all: “Marketing Execs Won’t Return to Travel Until at Least June.” 

So, it’s going to be just as important as ever to continue to expand what you can do online. All of those remote work routines and habits you’ve built, they’re going to continue to be important. Moreover, I personally believe that, even when the world does open up and we’re all vaccinated, much of what we’ve found during the “digital age” is going to stick with us. 

By balancing new technology with what you’re already good at, you can get the most from both the tech and your staff. 

For more about how our full-service digital online marketing company can help, you can reach us at (888) 477-9540.