Artificial Intelligence won’t take your website or marketing to the next level immediately.
AI won’t take your site from 0 sessions today to 500,000 sessions tomorrow.
It won’t replace your content writers or your ad copywriters.
With the rise of the use of Artificial Intelligence for content writing over the past few years, there have been tons of misconceptions about how useful using AI can be. Many tools like ChatGPT and Rtyr.me could benefit the amount of content your team spits monthly.
However, as evidenced by Google and its various helpful content updates, you will likely need a human element behind the keyboard generating your content.
One positive that artificial intelligence brings is that you will be able to save some time brainstorming and creating frameworks for your writing to help make the content writing process more efficient.
However, using Artificial Intelligence as a crutch right now to help scale your marketing to a superhuman level might not be in your future any time soon.
This article will discuss some things you need to consider when using artificial intelligence for content writing.
It is Painfully Obvious to Tell Someone That Uses Artificial Intelligence for Content Writing
People are not perfect.
We make mistakes all the time. They are especially noticeable in our writing. Our choice of phrases, words and even languages are unique to the individual or culture.
For example, there’s a Portuguese idiom “pagar o pato”. If you were to translate that idiom to an English speaker, it means “pay the duck”. In Portugal, paying the duck means taking the blame for something you did not do. In English, it means to “pay a duck”. This is something AI might struggle with.
Most artificial intelligence content writing tools are not sophisticated enough to catch on to the nuances of writing. There will be spelling errors and grammatical mistakes that only a human can pick up on.
Also, there is a chance for factual errors.
Depending on the source your AI decides to pull information from, the accuracy of the content written is always suspect.
Behind artificial intelligence technology, there is a human element behind it. People need to code and collect data for artificial intelligence to aid artificial intelligence and its learning process. There is always a chance for human error.
Google Will Figure Out and Penalize Websites Using AI for their Content
Google Helpful Content Update
In September – October of 2022, Google released its Helpful Content Update that penalizes sites that write to rank on the search engines.
Instead, Google encourages you to write content that will benefit your website viewers.
If you rely solely on artificial intelligence for your content writing because it allows you to write lots of content at a time without much work, you will most likely suffer with Google’s Helpful Content Update.
Your content is likely very shallow, and not beneficial to any audience.
Learn more about Google’s Helpful Content Update Here.
There are trustworthiness issues with Artificial Intelligence
Google will have no problem figuring out which sites use AI to fuel their content distribution.
There is also a level of trustworthiness that leans against using AI for content writing.
Think of it like what they used to tell us back in school. Do not use Wikipedia as a source for your research papers. Anyone can go on Wikipedia and write whatever comes to mind about a subject. Cite only credible sources.
If you are running a website about medical conditions, do you think your reader will be more comfortable trusting your site if the content was written by a robot or by a world-renowned credible doctor?
Google has also added another acronym to its Search Quality Raters guide that alludes to this concept.
Before, a site that ranked well needed to have Expertise – Authority – and Trustworthiness.
They have recently added another E to the acronym. You will now need to prove Experience – Expertise – Authority, and Trustworthiness.
That same person running that medical website would probably rank better if they had a credible doctor with 30 years of experience writing for them instead of a doctor right out of medical school.
Artificial Intelligence Will Not Replace Copywriters or Content Writers
Copywriting and content writing are art forms.
Some professionals are better than others. These skills are acquired through experience.
With AI copywriting, you might be able to create large amounts of creative and tailor them to your audience very quickly.
If your AI notices that 55% of your converters from New York purchase a product with the phrase “no frills attached” in the offer, it’ll begin to programmatically serve copy with “no frills attached” to people that match the characteristics of someone who normally converts in New York.
But the idea of AI software writing an entire email or paragraph to get someone to convert seems a bit stretched. There is still a need for expert copywriters.
People will generally gravitate toward a human near the end of a conversion process.
Think of it like being on the phone with customer support.
Would you rather be on the phone clicking through all those prompts to finally get what you need? Or would you rather speak with a customer representative to solve your problem quickly and easily?
Artificial Intelligence is Best Served to Help Guide Your Content
The best use case for artificial intelligence for content writing is to use it to create frameworks for your content.
Instead of asking the AI tool to write an entire piece of content for you, utilize the tool to create the overall structure of the content you want to write.
Getting your thoughts on paper in a structure that makes sense to a reader is one of the hardest aspects of content writing.
AI tools can create headers and subheaders for the overall idea you are trying to write about.
All you need to do is write content that matches what the header demonstrates.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence will continue to grow and make lives much easier for all marketers.
However, when it comes to content marketing there still needs to be a human element.
You cannot rely on artificial intelligence to produce large quantities of quality content.
When using artificial intelligence for content writing, my recommended use case would be to let AI guide the direction your content writing goes. Let it build your writing frameworks. You write the content.
About the Author
Andrew McMenamy
A natural problem solver with 6 + years of marketing experience building audiences across numerous verticals. Specialties include content, email, and performance marketing. Andrew graduated from Dowling College with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration in Marketing Management. Follow me on Linkedin and Quora.