Back in my day, you used to have to hike up hill, both ways, in the snow to get a high-quality piece of content. These days?
[Enter, stage left] Generative AI.
You’ve heard both sides of the story. On one hand, AI content is drivel not even worth reading, and on the other, it’s a budget-friendly, time-saving dream come true for companies hoping to rapidly accelerate growth.
With AI content coming out of our ears, what’s the best way you can make more content—and, frankly, better content—to keep up?
Introducing the content creation spectrum
This isn’t a new idea. Your strategy likely already accounts for the fact that not all content is made equally. It’s produced in different ways and for different purposes.
For most marketers, a truly effective content strategy contains a mix of content: some top-of-funnel general education posts, more in-depth expert industry analysis and thought leadership, and everything in between.
AI can be a powerful tool for creating content at scale. But (and it’s a big but) your AI-human mix should look different for different things in that mix.On one end, you’re heavily using AI for most of the creation process. On the other end, you’re almost exclusively using humans. Most stuff will fall somewhere in between. That’s the spectrum.
Whitepapers? Probably not a good fit for the left side of that scale, but social media posts might be.
Don’t expect AI to remove the need for a competent, energized content team. You’ll be disappointed. But in the hands of curious marketers willing to test the waters? AI can unlock huge potential for exponential growth.
Should I use AI or humans to write my blog posts?
Well…yes.
Let me explain.
We all know that content is a crucial pillar of a marketing strategy. You need to publish content, and that content has to get created somehow. Both human SMEs and generative AI can (and should!) contribute to that content creation process. Whether you should use AI or humans to write your blog posts isn’t the right question.
The real question you should be asking is: How should I use AI and humans to write my blog posts? That’s where things get interesting.
So, where should you incorporate human experts?
Rely on writers for content that requires lived experience, nuanced opinions, and true authority. AI can help pick up the slack—generating initial briefs or drafting early content—to create sustainable workflows for your SMEs. But it’s real, human knowledge that makes it meaningful to your audience.
The top three places humans should step in?
- In-depth industry knowledge: No matter how well-trained a large language model is, nothing replaces years of industry experience.
- Product usage: The how, when, and why (all the interrogative words, really) of using your product is better from the mouth of a human who’s actually used it.
- Personal anecdotes: How many times has an AI ever been so busy it’s missed a meeting?Or juggled deadlines, product releases, and a stacked personal calendar? Let your writers step in to add the heart and soul to your content.
General rule of thumb: The farther you get from top-of-funnel content, the more you should rely on human expertise for that deeper, more convincing expertise that’s required to push your audience towards a conversion.
How to leverage AI differently for different projects
While creating content may look different now than it did a couple years ago, we’re jazzed about the opportunities AI has opened up. For our clients, we offer tiered plans, fine-tuned to their exact content needs, to get high-quality content at a scale that suits their business.
High AI, Low Human
For short content on evergreen topics, AI can do a lot of the heavy lifting.
This does not mean throwing briefs to the ChatGPT wolves and hoping for the best. For our clients, we’ve established a set of parameters that ensure content meets client requirements, including style specifications and compliance standards.
With the right programming and prompting, we’re able to create local SEO content at scale by allowing the AI to generate a local landing page according to both a brief and the customer’s unique tone of voice. Add in human oversight for linking, quality control, and a couple hyper-local references, and you’ve got one fine-looking landing page.
50/50 AI and Human
Sometimes, it’s better to work collaboratively with the AI.
We do this with our newest content creation service. We use a custom AI flow to draft an outline based on a client’s initial request, and the client reviews that outline to make sure we’ll cover the information they need. Then, our writers create the article section by section, using Verblio’s own internal AI tools we’ve built specifically for this type of content. Every step of the way, the writer is editing for tone and accuracy, so the next section the AI generates is even better aligned with the client’s goals. Finally, after the writer reviews the full article, it goes to a separate proofreader for a second set of (human) eyes.
This collaborative, hybrid approach means your content is completed faster than if it were human-only, but you still get the benefit of a human touch through every step of the process. There’s greater control over the content, so instead of having to spend time doing heavy edits, you can move onto the next blog!
Low AI, High Human
Here, our writers take the wheel. They create blog posts on their own, however they prefer to write them, as long as they’re the ones doing the writing.
When our clients get 100% human content, we go to great lengths to ensure every written word comes from the brain of an actual human. However, there are still ways for AI to speed up the process.
Templatizing your briefs, for instance, allows you to use AI to generate briefs faster than ever before. That way, you can send out more assignments and scale your content output. Or, next time your team preps for a content calendar brainstorming sesh, invite AI to the table. Use its building blocks to ideate wholly original new ideas. Either way, you’ll get the full benefit of human expertise and authority plus a content engine that chugs along with less friction.
The bottom line on AI content
AI content isn’t wholly good or totally bad. Much like broccoli and cheese soup, AI can be two things at once. It’s what you make out of it that matters. And if you want help creating content for your business, Verblio’s really amped about content—in all its forms.
