The Better Marketing Blog

TLDR: The rise of AI-generated content doesn’t mean marketers will be obsolete. While AI can help with certain stages of content creation, there are areas where human expertise is still largely required, and AI-generated content should be used as a starting point and refined by human editors and writers.

SO WHAT: As marketers, we must stay current on advances in AI and integrate them into our content creation strategies. We can continue to generate powerful and interesting content for viewers by embracing the potential of AI and using it to our advantage. Ensuring content satisfies user intent will remain crucial.

“27.58% of content created by organizations was written with the help of AI in 2020, a 186% increase from the previous year. Additionally, the study found that websites that use AI-powered content had a 30% higher click-through rate than those that didn’t.” – BrightEdge

What does this mean for us as marketers?

The emergence of AI-generated content requires marketers to adapt to new technologies and methodologies to remain competitive. While AI can help with aspects of content creation like research and editing, human creativity and expertise are still required in others.

To create high-quality content that engages with readers on a deeper level, we must learn to collaborate with AI tools. It’s critical to stay current on developments in AI technology and incorporate them into our content creation strategies as appropriate. We can continue to generate powerful and interesting content for viewers by embracing the promise of AI and using it to our advantage.

What AI Does Well

AI has revolutionized the way content is created and managed. It can perform certain tasks more efficiently than humans. While humans still have some advantages, AI’s strengths make it a valuable tool for marketers. The following are a few instances where AI does an outstanding job assisting marketers.

• Helps writers with initial research: With the vast amount of information available on the internet, it can be a daunting task for writers to sift through and find the most relevant and credible sources. AI-powered solutions can quickly and effectively collect data from a variety of sources like scholarly articles, news reports, and social media posts, and present it in a user-friendly style. This not only saves authors time; it also guarantees the information used will be accurate and up to date.
• Assists as a writing coach to improve quality: AI-powered tools can provide marketers with real-time feedback on their writing, helping them identify potential areas for improvement in sentence structure, grammar, and even tone. This helps writers in creating more effective and engaging content tailored to targeted audiences. By analyzing patterns and trends in successful content, AI can provide suggestions for headline and subhead creation, as well as other elements of effective content marketing.
• Improves production speed: AI can improve the speed at which content is produced, as automated content creation and other tools help writers generate large quantities of content in shorter periods. Content writers can perform more effectively, create higher-quality content, and ultimately deliver greater outcomes for their clients using AI-powered solutions.
• Optimizes content for search engines: AI algorithms can analyze search engine data to identify keywords and optimize content accordingly, improving content’s chances of ranking high in search results.
• Personalized content for specific audiences: AI content writers can use data to personalize content for specific demographics, interests, and preferences, making the content more engaging and relevant to target audiences.
• Generating content in multiple languages: AI content writers can generate content in multiple languages, making it easy for companies to expand their reaches and connect with audiences in different parts of the world.
• Automate repetitive tasks: Automating repetitive tasks is one of the biggest advantages of using AI content writing. Repetitive, mundane tasks can take up enormous amounts of time, leaving fewer hours to devote to creative and strategic tasks. AI can generate high-quality content fast based on a set of rules and guidelines, making it perfect for repetitive tasks that require similar formats and structures.

Additional reading: AI Prompt Engineering for Marketers (+ Sample Prompts)

What Humans Do Well

While AI has many strengths in content writing, there are still areas where humans excel. They include:

1. Understanding feelings and behaviors. Humans are more skilled at understanding the complexities of feelings and developing content that resonates on deeper levels with readers based on their unique, individual feelings.
2. Unique perspectives. Humans can create brand voices and tones, and thus craft content tailored to specific people by being able to tell legitimate stories.
3. Creativity and humor. Humans can inject creativity and humor into their writing, which can be difficult for AI to replicate.
4. Incorporating real-world experiences. Humans are better able to incorporate real-world experiences and knowledge into their writing, thus making content more relevant and relatable. Humans have real experiences and stories under their belts that AI, of course, does not, meaning humans can deliver more personalized and realistic perspectives and ideals through their content.
5. Down-to-earth method of speaking. Humans speak human, not computer. The same cannot be said for AI, which cannot do anything not pre-set in its programming. For this reason, human writing will always come off as truer to heart than material generated by AI, which tends to feature more algorithmic structures and styles.

AI vs Human

Will Google Penalize AI-Generated Content?

You’re probably thinking, “Should I use AI content writing?” and, “Will Google detect AI-generated content and penalize me for it?”

While there are no definitive answers yet, Google’s recent update to its EAT framework now includes a greater emphasis on “experience,” which evaluates a website’s ability to provide positive user experiences through factors like website design, ease of use, and engagement metrics. EAT stands for “executive, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.” It’s a system the search engine uses to determine which content is of higher quality and thus deserving of better rankings based on its algorithms.

This change highlights Google’s emphasis on providing high-quality and relevant information to users, emphasizing the need for creating content that not only meets technical SEO standards, but also satisfies user intent and offers excellent user experiences.

While AI-generated content has its advantages, we should use it as a “starting point” rather than as a complete content creation solution. Google will continue to prioritize engagement rates, time-on-page statistics, and bounce rates, so it’s important for AI-generated content to satisfy user intent to avoid negative impacts on search rankings. Ensuring AI-generated content is technically sound, and engaging to readers is key to leveraging its benefits while prioritizing user experiences.

“Despite all the hype and excitement about AI, it’s still extremely limited today relative to what human intelligence is.”

– Andrew Ng, computer scientist and global leader in AI

Can You Detect AI-Generated Content?

It’s sometimes hard to tell if an AI system created content or if it was manually written by a human, especially if the AI-generated content was polished by human editors or writers. A lack of coherence, repetition of some phrases or words, or overly complex language patterns are a few tell-tale signs that AI has generated the content. AI-generated content, on the other hand, is becoming more intelligent, so it may become more difficult to detect in the future.

Pros and Cons of Content Writing with AI

Because of its many benefits, AI content writing has grown in popularity. As with any technology, there are also downsides to consider. The pros and cons of AI content writing range from enhanced accuracy and productivity to the potential loss of originality and authenticity. When considering the use of AI in content creation, there are many factors to consider.

AI + Humans: The Better Solution

While AI-generated content has many benefits, it lacks the creativity, empathy, and intuition of human writers. Human writers are emotional creatures and can inject personality, stories, and personal experiences into their writing, which is crucial in creating engaging and meaningful content. AI-generated content may be efficient and cost-effective, but it works best when combined with the unique perspectives and creativity of human writers.

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