Can you use AI to create content? Yes, of course you can. But the real question is: can AI create your authentic content? Only if you brief it properly. After all, AI isn’t clairvoyant.
Authenticity; that’s what matters. This article isn’t an anti-AI rant. Far from it. This is a plea for you to create your authentic content so any copywriter – be it human or artificial – can write something of value to your business.
Why does authentic content matter?
You communicate for lots of reasons: to attract new customers, encourage loyalty, recruit new staff, etc, etc. So it makes sense that what you communicate (your content) helps you achieve these goals. Your content needs a purpose and your copywriter needs a brief.
One of the reasons you use AI to create content is its speed. AI is very, very fast at finding information and data, and writing content. However, it could be on the wrong path completely. In this respect, it’s no different from a badly briefed human.
You want your target audience to take notice of you, then take the appropriate action: enquire, buy, share… It’s going to be nearly impossible to achieve any of that that with the wrong content. It would be like giving your sat nav the wrong address but still expecting it to take you home.
AI needs steering in the right direction
In the absence of a brief, AI will make it up. It will find information from other countries – which could be irrelevant. It will fall back on hackneyed phrases such as “dedicated to excellence” (a given, surely?). Then it will always claim you have “state of the art” technology when your equipment might be 5 years old but absolutely suited to the job. AI will adopt a cheery, salesy tone unless you tell it otherwise. Unless you can tell it what you’re looking for, AI is never going to deliver anything useful for youto communicate.
In my experience, there are two issues to address:
- Distinguishing between content and copy.
- Acknowledging how and when to use AI, and when there’s no substitute for your input.
Content vs copy
Content and copy are often used to mean the same thing. Yet, for me, they are different. Think of content as the overall key to your brand; everything you do, show and say. Copy on the other hand, refers to the words you use to explain this content. The right images will simply illustrate your copy.
Different channels and means of communication require a different approach to copy and images. For example, effective social media posts are short and to the point while articles and blogs take a deeper dive. Images and videos are ideal for most channels but work particularly well for Instagram and TikTok. This is all part of the brief for your human and artificial copywriters.
So, I don’t use AI to create content; I use AI to write copy to my brief.
Easy to get lost in the crowd, even if it is a luxury one.
You create the content – the bigger brand picture. Then you work out the individual communication pieces – blogs, web pages, flyers, socials, etc, and write the brief for your human and AI copywriter.
When to use AI, when your input is vital
‘Can you use AI to create content’ is like asking if AI can recruit people. Yes, but it needs some parameters to work within. So many business people hate their communication role. The thought of passing the whole thing over to AI is such a relief; now they can get on with the day job, the really important stuff.
Communicating is the really important stuff.
With your input, AI can take a huge amount of work off your shoulders. But not without guidance from you. Coming up with the content – ideas and topics to write about and the tone / angle to use how – that’s not for AI. That’s for you, the business owner. You create your authentic content and brief the copywriter to write the copy.
Otherwise AI is just adding data (noise) to your online presence but not necessarily value. Unless you feed it a precise brief, the resulting copy will be ‘vanilla’ – copy that will do just as well for your competitors. Maybe even a business in another sector, if it’s really generic.
Google won’t be taking much notice either. So any traffic driven to your website is unlikely to become worthwhile leads. Basically, if your writing isn’t targeted, your leads won’t be either. So you take care of the targeting and let AI do the production.
Don’t use AI to create content; use AI to write copy to your brief.
Use AI to work to your specific pattern.
You create the content, get AI to write it
AI is a support system not a substitute for you creating your authentic content and using that to guide the kind of copy you need written. Ultimately you must have a purpose in mind and preferably one you can fulfil consistently across all your communication activity. If you don’t know where to start with your content, get in touch with me.