Generative AI has had an incredible impact on the way that businesses are approaching content creation. AI can be used by marketers for everything from generating new content ideas, creating initial content drafts, summarizing existing documents, generating variations of existing copy, to tailoring messages for specific audience segments.
However, there’s a crucial distinction between creating content faster and creating better quality content.
While AI tools will increase efficiency in content workflows, human creativity and strategic thinking are still needed to guide the process.
The content marketing challenge
Modern marketing departments are faced with creating content across a number of platforms – including blogs, social media, emails, landing pages, product communications and much more. Each requires a different style, format and focus, resulting in a high demand for new content.
Generative AI will take on many of the repetitive tasks inherent in creating such volume, but simply using AI as a method to do more of the same may simply flood attention spans with an avalanche of generic, low-quality content. Ultimately, the goal should be creating quality at speed, not just a higher volume of content.
Where generative AI is helpful
AI can be implemented to enhance most areas of the content lifecycle. Marketers can leverage these capabilities for:
Brainstorming initial ideas for content
Developing content outlines
Generating initial copy drafts
Creating multiple variations of content
Summarizing documents and articles
Repurposing existing content into new formats
Supporting personalization of content
Streamlining time-consuming and repetitive tasks
By using AI in these ways, marketers will find they can dedicate more of their time to strategy, creative thinking and understanding their audience.
AI doesn’t understand your audience like you do
Perhaps the biggest issue with AI generated copy is its inability to incorporate the contextual elements of communication. A piece of copy is not necessarily effective because it is grammatically sound and well structured. It also need to suit the context, brand, industry, audience and communication goals.
These are the elements human marketers bring to the creation process. They understand the purpose of the communication and are able to tell if a message fits or feels contrived. AI will assist with the mechanics of creation but the direction and rationale still needs to come from a human.
Human creativity and AI working together
A hybrid approach will be the most effective. A marketer might ask the AI to generate a number of content ideas for a particular topic, and then select the strongest suggestion. An AI-assisted first draft may be written for content but a marketer may then refine, enhance and add value based on their personal experiences, industry expertise, brand context and provide concrete examples.
AI can also be used to transform content from one format into several to reduce marketer effort. The resulting increase in efficiency gives marketers more capacity to invest in the message itself and deliver truly persuasive communication.
Avoiding the pitfalls of content overload
The ease and availability of generative AI tools means that it will be incredibly tempting to ramp up content production. Content volume, however, should never be the end goal.
A strong content marketing strategy should begin with key questions such as:
Who are we trying to reach?
What problem do we want to solve for our audience?
Why should anyone care about what we are trying to say?
What useful insight are we offering them?
While some of these answers might come into play as part of the creative process, the strategy for all this content creation needs to lead the generation.
The technology and communication aspects of AI assisted content
The technology behind generative AI tools allows for all kinds of workflows such as language generation using language models and structured prompts, content transformation, classification, summarisation and even personalisation. Businesses can build these capabilities directly into existing communication workflows without treating AI as an isolated standalone solution. This opens up a number of possibilities for creating, governing and systematically deploying AI generated communication.
Best practices for creatingAI -assisted communication
Here are a few steps your organisation might take to develop AI-assisted content creation workflows:
Understand the intended audience and objective
Develop the core message
Use AI tools for ideation and initial drafting
Review AI-generated output critically
Enhance with expert human insight, knowledge and context
Validate and verify crucial information
Optimise for intended channels and audiences
Publish and measure performance
By incorporating human checks at critical points, businesses can ensure a more targeted, authentic and impactful output.
The future of content creation
AI isn't about to replace human creativity in content creation. It is, rather, about reimagining the nature of that creative process. Marketers who know how to leverage the capability of generative AI and marry it with their own expertise and insights can drive content creation more efficiently while also producing compelling and original work. CommCon AI is working with many forward-looking organisations to explore AI powered communication, content creation and helping companies understand how AI fits into the broader picture of modern communication workflows: https://commconai.com/ The future of content marketing is not more AI written, but smarter, more meaningful use of the technology to support the brightest ideas and most engaging communication campaigns.
Top comments (0)