Reducing the cost of Social Media – Interview with Autochartist CEO, Ilan Azbel

Hi Ilan, thank you for joining us today. It has been over a year now since you officially launched your ‘Automated Social Media’ product. We want to learn more about how things are progressing and get down to the nitty-gritty on the product offering itself.

Firstly how do you produce ‘unique’ automated social media?

We put emphasis on the word unique because we use a number of different components that work together to achieve this. First, we use your broker’s own OTC pricing data; this already gives one level of uniqueness. Next, we produce content that spans across statistical, technical, and fundamental styles of trading. And finally, we apply our Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology to give the content a unique human-like tone and the final result is ‘unique to broker content’. We have actually internally coined that phrase ‘unique to broker content’ because it ultimately describes what we are achieving for our clients.

What are brokers really looking for when they approach you about your automated social media product?

Let’s be honest for a moment and mention that brokers usually consider social media to be one of those things that they have to implement. What I mean by that is, they have to represent their brand online however really don’t have the time to deal with it, as it usually comes a bit lower on the priority list for a corporation as a whole. So we take that headache away for them, it’s really a no brainer.

Technology provides a broker with the power to maintain corporate identity at a fraction of the usual HR costs, such as the need for writers, translators and graphic designers.

Apart from receiving automated content, how else does a broker benefit from on-boarding your automated social media product?

I would say the biggest advantage of all is the astronomical cost saving that they achieve. This comes in a number of forms. Firstly and as touched-on earlier, from an HR perspective, a broker does not need to hire a specialized team of professionals to handle the process. Including analysts, content writers, graphic designers, social media managers and translators. Additionally, not forgetting that in order to deliver localised, native and current news at the right time to a specific audience in a specific region and timezone, a brokerage may usually require to hire a second social media content writer and social team.

Jurisdiction is also crucial to consider because, for example, a broker needs to distinguish differences such as China, whereby you have both Cantonese and Mandorin native languages. So our automated posts deal with all those issues, as well as assisting in the reliability of the content production in the consistent number of posts per day or week which traders may come to rely upon. It’s a cost-effective way of getting more unique content and presence online.

Another factor could be new audiences, if we consider that a millennium will not look-up your business through your website, they will refer to your social media pages first. This is a key reason to ensure up-to-date and engaging activity on your social media pages.

Do you think the pandemic had anything to do with the success of this service offering for Autochartist?

Over the past year, the global population has predominantly been locked-up in their homes. Digital usage has been our only escape from the repetitiveness of groundhog-day and has essentially offered eCommerce a captive audience and along with this has come to a huge uptick in social media usage, with a global average usage rate of 2 hours and 22 minutes¹ per day being spent on social channels. This matched with the volatility in the FX market, which meant that brokers experienced record-breaking highs. Volumes were up, leads were up. So naturally, our clients who are using automated social media have greatly benefited from the service. As their business grows, so does the demand for our service.

One of the strategies which we helped a broker implement was ‘look after your client to retain your client.’ This worked by providing their traders with frequent market updates and helping them manage their risk through volatility by not overexposing themselves. The client feels cared about which inturn increases traders lifetime-value and works as a win-win for both the trader and the broker.

What kind of results have your clients experienced after on-boarding your automated social media service?

We have been able to match existing click-through rates but at a fraction of the usual cost. The investment a broker saves HR costs can now be invested in digital marketing spend to promote their automated content to get an even more effective ROI

What are Autochartist’s plans for the future of your automated social media offering?

Because of the strong uptake of our social media automation services, we’re looking to significantly ramp up our investment into this product in two ways; first, to automate the promotion of posts on platforms like Facebook. And secondly, we are looking to leverage off a recent patent issued to us in the USA that describes our methodology for automating the production of video content. Watch this space!

About Autochartist

Founded in 2004, Autochartist is a leading financial content and analytics provider. Partnering with global Stock, Forex, Futures and CFD brokerage firms to serve them with thousands of unique content piece’s per daily, in more than 20 languages. The company focuses on research and development in order to consistently deliver innovative products which ensures not only their clients success but also assists them in delivering the most unique and current content possible.

¹statista.com

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