Want a better way to engage with your target audience? Content marketing can work if you can make it relevant and engaging. So, you might write an article about quick recipes for a busy soccer mom. You might, instead, create a video about how to do washing for a student leaving home for the first time.
And that’s the problem. It’s hard to churn out good content. Which is why many brands are turning to AI. What could be easier; you type in a prompt and the machine spits out an article in minutes?
Except that it’s not as easy as all that. AI’s not perfect and you have to know that going in. Which is why we created this article about the pros and cons of using AI in content marketing.
Other Options
Your Own Writers
You can have an in-house writing team. This is the very best way to get the specific content you want and you can be sure that they’ll meet your standards. It’s the gold standard with a price to match.
Freelancers
Paying someone project by project is more cost-effective. It’s tough to find the right person, though.
Content Moderation Service Outsourcing
The more modern approach is to get your users to generate some content for you. This saves you time and money, and acts as a great ad for your company. However, balancing this strategy with other costs, such as content moderation, platform management, and website translation price, can help ensure effective resource allocation.
But it can have some sticky issues. What if someone puts something harmful or abusive in their content? How about if the work is inaccurate? Can you even be sure you know who’s posting?
Content moderation service outsourcing keeps things straight for you.
The Benefits of AI in Content Marketing
How do we use artificial intelligence here?
Faster Content Creation
Think back to the last viral video you watched. Was it some lucky happenstance or was it carefully crafted? A lot of things that go viral today are happy accidents, but most aren’t.
Great content doesn’t usually happen overnight. You need to carefully plan and work on your ideas. AI streamlines this process by suggesting ideas and creating images.
Hang on, don’t download ChatGPT just yet. AI makes mistakes. It doesn’t actually logically understand what it reads like we do, but rather looks for matching patterns.
So, it considers what’s been written before and fills in the gaps. Sometimes it makes leaps that don’t make sense. Say, for example, you want to write about a herbal treatment for cancer.
A machine might decide that there’s a lot of information about lavender being a useful herb. It might then assume that this makes it a good cancer treatment, even if there’s no science to back it up.
For this reason, it’s better to fact-check anything the machine spits out. Better yet, use the tools to brainstorm topics or outlines.
Stronger SEO Strategies
Are you looking for attention online? Who isn’t? If only there was a way to see what the hottest new topic is. AI can help by finding trending keywords. It can also optimize your content and improve its readability.
Want a real shortcut? Ask ChatGPT to create your metadata so you rank better.
Smarter Content Distribution
You’ve finally got a great article to share. Now’s where the hard work starts; you need to get it in front of the right people at the best possible time.
AI crawls through huge amounts of data to work when and where you should share. It can also schedule your posts and email campaigns, creating a consistent image across every channel.
The Challenges of AI in Content Marketing
While AI in marketing offers incredible benefits, it’s not a perfect solution. Here’s what you have to think about.
Missing the Human Element
AI can generate content quickly, but it literally just strings words together. A human puts some feeling into it and let’s their creativity shine through. Machines try to imitate this but they can’t quite get it right.
Privacy Concerns
Do you know how AI learns what it needs to? You feed in a bunch of labelled examples to tell it what’s what. It’s like using flashcards to teach a child to read.
Here’s the problem. You have to anonymize the information, or the AI might inadvertently spit it out later.
Say, for example, that you want the AI to learn the difference between a Visa and a Mastercard. The starting digits of both are different, so it makes sense to feed in thousands of numbers so it can understand this.
Until, that is, that it has to give an example of its own and uses a client’s real credit card number.
Your customers expect you to protect their personal information. They want to know what you’re using it for. A lot of people don’t like you using this information for marketing purposes.
If you’re not careful with the data, you’ll lose your customers trust in you.
Built-in Biases
AI learns patterns for existing data. The better the source, the better the application is. On the other hand, if the data is full of biases, you have a real problem.
Just as an example, I’ll never forget when I was at high school. I found an old embroidery book from the 1950’s. Naturally, I was familiar with a lot of the stitches. It made me laugh when they said I should wear an apron to sew. It shocked me to read that I must leave enough time to make my husband dinner.
If I used that book to train AI today, the machine would believe that women belonged in the kitchen.
Of course, you can go too far the other way too. Google’s Gemini image generator showed what can go wrong when AI becomes too “woke.”
Some examples of the mistakes it made were depicting a:
- Female pope
- Viking as a person of color
You need to make sure that the AI’s output aligns with your brand values.
Potential Copyright Issues
As we’ve seen with image generators, there’s a lot of controversy about AI generated content. AI scours the web to create articles and posts for you. If there’s not a lot of data out there, you might run afoul of a copyright claim.
While AI doesn’t directly copy content, it collects facts and rewords it.
Cost Barriers
Investing in AI tools can be expensive at times. They become a lot more so if you decide you want a custom tool for content creation. It’s great to be able to customize the AI exactly as you need to, but it takes a lot of data and processing power.
Conclusion
AI’s changing everything and it’s a good time-saving tool. But don’t rush in. AI can’t replace your human team. The writing’s technically perfect, but it’s soulless. And AI, no matter how clever it is, makes mistakes.
Knowing this going in puts you in a strong position. You can find workarounds that allow you to balance AI’s capabilities with human oversight.
To read more content like this, explore The Brand Hopper
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