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In marketing, authenticity builds lasting connections. This means creating content that matters to your audience. But what happens when we introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) into this equation? Can we really maintain authenticity while leveraging AI for content creation?
To understand the topic better, Sam and I interviewed Anati Zubia a seasoned marketing professional with stints in tech startups and, most recently, Quora.
What are the rules for using AI to bolster your marketing efforts? Here’s what came out of that conversation.
Remember Your Goal: Create Content that Matters
Technologies and fads change, but meaningful content will always build relationships. Don’t lose sight of this, because it’s your job. Anati stressed the importance of crafting content that truly resonates with your audience and addresses their core problems.
Know your audience’s pain points. Content starts with understanding the customer’s problems. If you know their problems—and how they speak about them—you can cut through the clutter.
- What are their needs?
- What are their goals?
- What’s between them and those things (that you can help with)?
AI doesn’t understand these things. It doesn’t grasp the complexity of human problems and changing preferences. The dynamic nature of customer needs and market trends adds a layer of intricacy that AI is still evolving to navigate accurately.
This affects the ability to write strategy (understanding problems) and to write copy (to connect with people).
AI can certainly aid in content creation, but authentic human insights into customer pain points and desires remain at the core of content that resonates. As businesses integrate AI into their content creation strategies, the alignment between AI assistance and human understanding becomes the key to producing content that genuinely matters.
So how do you align those things? Keep reading.
1. AI Can’t Generate Original Content, but It Can Help
AI tools like ChatGPT aren’t innately original, but they boost your creative process by leaving you lots of energy to put toward other things, like editing and asking questions.
You can use AI-generated content as a springboard for your marketing materials. By merging AI-generated ideas with your human insights, you can craft standout content while retaining authenticity.
Why can’t AI create new ideas and connections? Because at the center of creativity is the ability to connect with people by connecting ideas that aren’t explicitly related to ideas.
And how do you train AI to see the funny side of something if the idea of “funny” is different in every situation?
The human brain possesses a unique skill in linking seemingly unrelated concepts. Effective content sometimes pairs ideas that initially appear unrelated, resulting in a perspective that conveys a sense of discovery.
Only the human mind can do that. And AI can free up more of your time for things like that if it can act as your secretary, doing the simpler tasks for you.
Where AI is strong: Using tools like ChatGPT can serve as a compass to gauge language trends and content styles. These outputs give us insights into current usage and style. In a way, it shows us what everyone else is doing.
2. Use AI to Create Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
We mentioned using AI to do the more menial tasks of marketing and content creation. Creating an FAQ is a great use and one that Anati recommends.
Since AI-powered tools can aggregate and organize industry info, it’s great at generating, organizing, and refining FAQ content to provide web content.
Here’s how AI can help with building FAQs:
- Make it generate initial content. AI can analyze large volumes of data, including customer inquiries, industry-specific information, and existing FAQs, to generate an initial set of questions and answers.
- Find relevant topics. AI algorithms can analyze website content, customer interactions, and industry trends to identify the most relevant and common topics.
- Make it write your answers. AI can be clearer than many human writers and can help craft clear and concise answers.
- Ask it to write in other languages. AI can translate FAQs into multiple languages.
- Ask it to improve your SEO. AI can optimize content with relevant keywords, improving search engine visibility and helping users find answers more easily.
Be careful though. Don’t lean on AI like a crutch. Remember, FAQs grow with your input. Is your sales team getting the same questions over and over again? Update the FAQ. And with the mistakes AI has made with data, don’t publish without reading and verifying the answers yourself.
3. Learn the Art of Effective for AI Content Generation
If AI doesn’t know what you’re really asking, it can’t answer your questions in a helpful way. This means asking well-worded questions.
Anati points out the difference between a search and an AI prompt.
- Search is typing in what you need and then reading through the results and, if you don’t see what you need, writing a better search term.
- AI prompts get right to the point, “Using this, do this with it and give me this type of action or this evoke emotion this way, or do that.”
Other ways Anati uses ChatGPT:
- What is the tone of this that I just wrote?
- How do I improve the tone, or how do I make the tone sound this way?
- Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old.
4. Make AI Teach You about Content Topics
AI can analyze your conversations to find customer preferences, pain points, and interests that you might not see. These insights could point to a deeper understanding of the customer’s pain points and the kinds of messages that resonate with them and get them to see you as a great solution.
Things Anati does:
- Simplify processes – consider the effectiveness of listicles. Using AI, she often curates top 10 lists, generating potential campaign ideas or discussion topics.
- An intriguing aspect of ChatGPT is its knack for crafting templates. You can request an ABM (account-based marketing) campaign template in well-established formats.
But you still need to know what you’re doing. Not only does AI lack creativity, it’s sometimes wrong or irrelevant. Remember that no company is really the same, and best practices need to be adapted. So you still have work to do.
The good news: AI isn’t replacing you anytime soon.
5. Build Personas and Characters with AI
AI can build customer personas and even fictional characters. These personas guide content creation and help you tailor your messaging.
Anati mentioned her favorite method of persona development—the Character Diamond. A four-quadrant system often used by storytellers, the character diamond helps establish a character’s relatable identity by identifying strengths, weaknesses, core values, and potential challenges in their personality. Using this, you can create a brand voice guide.
Understanding your brand’s identity is key. By defining brand personalities, archetypes become effective in content creation. For example, matching one of the twelve archetypes to a client’s personality traits provides keywords and real-world examples that inspire content generation.
For example, Jeff Goldblum’s “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” focuses on curiosity and learning, rather than the individual. It’s more about how he thinks than who he is. This approach exudes warmth and authenticity, reflecting a genuine excitement for knowledge without ego.
Integrating AI-generated content and character-building processes can help brands develop resonant personas and stories that connect.
Embracing AI for Authentic Content Creation
In the final analysis, AI is good for some things and not for others. But it can be a part of your content creation process if you keep it in its place.
By using AI to generate content, answer FAQs, and develop personas, you can save time and get more done. And when you oversee this content creation, by adding your experience, you can craft marketing campaigns that feel genuine and build meaningful connections with your customers.
AI is a powerful tool, but your unique insights and creativity remain the cornerstone of creating authentic marketing content that truly matters.
And it’s not gonna replace you anytime soon.
