AI-generated content has been a big topic in marketing over much of 2023. While there have been some tremendous advancements in capability, at VisionFriendly.com, we’re confident human professionals will remain a significant part of the marketing and copywriting processes. These platforms serve as tools that help create better content more efficiently. They’re not meant to do the job on their own.
We’re using AI as a content tool, which allows us to create content that grows our clients’ businesses. While there are several tasks that we use these tools for, there are still a few ways we won’t use this technology.
How We’re Using AI Writing Tools:
Generating Content Ideas
At VisionFriendly.com, we are creative people, and we are great at generating marketing ideas for our clients. But even the most creative people need inspiration from time to time, and quite frankly, we’d be silly not to use AI to help us generate content ideas.
We can tell the platform to generate ideas based on keywords so your content never loses that strategic edge. We can also search for ideas by subject matter and add keywords later. We’ll take the ideas generated for your content and adapt them to your company so they are more relevant to you.
Writing Outlines or Drafts
AI can give you a great start to your content. We use it to generate outlines or rough drafts for web pages, blogs, emails, or other marketing content. If we’re looking for a little creative inspiration or an outside source, the copy these platforms spit out can be invaluable. The critical thing to remember is that AI-generated content isn’t the finished product. It’s just a start.
Here’s more about why we use AI this way and not as the final, publishable content. There are likely thousands of businesses that do what you do, and they all have websites online. Most of your customers have likely been looking at those other websites as they complete the buyer’s journey, and the reality is they might seek out more after they leave your site.
Your goal, and our goal for our clients, is to differentiate. Give your customers a reason to choose you. That’s difficult to come by when you’re using content that sounds like everyone else’s within the industry.
When AI content is used for the foundation of your copy, we still add more about your business and your process. We’ll adapt it to your voice and your style. Your content and brand should be a reflection of your business, and that’s tough to capture solely using AI. We also have excellent SEO reasons that we’re not ready to use AI copy published verbatim on your website further down in this post.
Writing Meta Information and Image Alt Text
We save time and use various AI tools to write meta information and image alt text to optimize your web pages and blog posts. It serves as an excellent tool for optimizing your website. But even this content is rewritten because it needs to be original.
Rewriting Specific Content
AI can provide a tremendous boost if we want to rewrite specific content. We’ll simply enter what we need to be rewritten with the direction to do so, and new content will be spit out.
What We Won’t Use AI to Do:
Publish Content Verbatim
AI content isn’t meant to be the final publishable version. Publishing this content verbatim involves several risks. AI-generated content can be fraught with inaccuracies. Using this content without verifying it can spell disaster.
You risk becoming bland and losing your singular most competitive advantage in business – just being you, when publishing content generated by an AI. As mentioned above, you’re not doing anything to stand out from the crowd when you publish AI-generated content.
Google’s helpful content update stresses content for people by people. You risk eventually accruing a penalty by publishing AI-generated content to your site.
Publish AI Pictures
The look of many AI pictures can still be off-putting for your general audience. In many cases, it looks like it’s trying to be human and falling just short of the mark, causing unease. This is called an Uncanny Valley effect. The legality of where the platforms got their images is not yet known, either. It’s best to avoid using these until some of these issues are sorted out.
Keyword Research
Content-generating AI’s “learn” from various content already published. But the information that ChatGPT uses, for example, cuts off in September of 2021. (If you’re curious about this, ask it who won the Super Bowl last year.) In the context of keywords, it doesn’t have the latest search trends that Google would use to determine the most current keyword information.
Creating Content that Grows Your Business
Whether it’s blogs, website content, emails, ads, or something else, your content plays a significant role in growing your business. AI content tools can facilitate the creation of content that benefits your goals and help you to increase conversions and sales. If you’d like to discuss our web design, digital marketing, or content services, give us a call at (630) 553-0000 today!
