Chief Marketing Officer / Partner at Marketing 360®, overseeing all inbound lead generation strategies and partnerships.
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We all want to get more done, and many businesses are automating parts of their processes to achieve maximum efficiency. From ordering your guilty pleasure at McDonald’s to using the self-checkout at the grocery store, automation is everywhere. But does it belong in the world of content creation, too?
Marketers think so. According to a 2022 study by Capterra, 33% of surveyed marketers who use artificial intelligence and machine learning software are leveraging it to generate content. Creating content with AI content generators is faster and cheaper than hiring a writer to do the same job, but are the world’s best copywriters, writers and content creators about to end up on the unemployment line? Not yet.
AI content creation tools are powerful, but they’re not yet able to take the place of real, human experts. AI content generators won’t replace humans, but they can make them more efficient at delivering high-quality content.
How Does AI Content Creation Work?
The first step to using an AI content generator is inputting prompts about topics, tone, length and more into the software. Then, the generator uses those prompts to scan the internet, pull information together that it deems relevant, and use natural language processing to deliver a piece of content in just seconds.
Ways To Use AI Content Generation
There are lots of ways that AI content generation can benefit businesses and professionals alike.
Increase capacity: Writers, advertising agencies and small businesses that want to increase content creation capacity can use AI to create more rough drafts in less time. When professionals invest their time only on the most valuable part of content creation, polishing and editing, they can deliver more finished content in less time.
Idea generation: Hemingway called the blank page the “white bull” because there is nothing more intimidating to a writer than a blank page. If you have a general idea of the subject matter you want to write about, but need to find a new angle or innovative way of telling the story, AI content generation can deliver content that may spark ideas for brainstorming.
Beef up your current writing: Got a piece half done and feel stuck on where to go next? Plug your details into an AI content generator to fill in the weak spots.
Scale as needed without more hiring: Is your business growing and you need more marketing content, but don’t want to hire more employees? Bolting an AI content generator onto your current marketing team can increase productivity so you can scale your business at a lower cost.
Shortcut research: Writing a comprehensive magazine article, white paper or research paper can require hours of tedious research. AI can cut your research time down significantly by scanning content on the web in seconds. Then it’s up to you to decide which pieces of research are relevant and reliable.
Get online faster: New businesses need to get their websites live as quickly as possible so they can be indexed on Google and attract new clients quickly. AI content generation can create a full website of copy in seconds, so small businesses can get their website up and running at lightning speed. Perfecting the copy with the help of a professional writer is easy after the site goes live.
Save money: High-quality, experienced writers can command large sums for their work. If you’re a small business or on a limited budget, using an AI content generator can help you save money on content.
But It Won’t Put Real Writers Out Of Business
While AI can create content in seconds, it’s not a replacement for human writers. No piece of content should make it to readers without a check and polish from a human being.
AI can do a lot, but it still can’t compete with the creativity, wisdom and experience of a professional writer. If you’re using AI to generate marketing copy, the ultimate goal of that copy is to convert prospects into clients. That’s a job that’s too important to be left to automation. The nuances of words matter, as does intimately knowing what your audience will respond to. AI is a powerful tool, but it works best in conjunction with a knowledgeable human at the helm.
Downsides To AI Content Generation
No software is perfect. AI content generation has come a long way toward helping businesses create content quickly, but it still has some bugs to work out.
Plagiarism can be a problem. AI content generators pull bits of wording and copy from the internet, so there are concerns about plagiarism. To circumvent this, always run any copy from an AI generator through a plagiarism detector.
Translations can be clunky. Any software is only as good as the people who engineer it. Using AI to develop content in a language that’s different from the native language of the engineers can be a problem, as it’s not as likely to understand the quirks, colloquialisms and phrases of a different language/culture. Again, always have a real human who is a native speaker proofread any AI-generated copy before it goes live.
AI Content Generators Are A Powerful Tool For Real Humans
When efficiency is your goal, AI content generators can go a long way toward removing the tedious parts of writing so you can get more done. Like any tool, it must be used correctly to produce the greatest results. Combine talented writers and marketers with the content-generating power of AI, and you can discover a new level of efficiency that blows the doors off what you thought was possible.
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