Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in digital marketing and business nowadays. It’s advanced so rapidly in recent years, so much so that companies are using it to generate content at scale.
It’s not surprising, considering tools like ChatGPT can churn out stories, scripts, blogs and articles almost instantly, and with minimal human input. It’s not surprising that businesses are enticed by this phenomenon, something that until recently was almost too good to be true.
Do We Need Content Writers in the Age of AI?
If AI tools can help your business produce vast volumes of relevant, engaging content that serves a purpose to your audience, why would you need to consult with a human writer like myself? Surely the signs are there that point to huge cost and time savings by using ChatGPT to deliver your website blogs and page content?
Well, I (rather gratifyingly so, if I do say myself) have found that there are quite a few downsides to relying solely on AI tools for your content.
Yes – We Still Need Human Writers
For starters, AI tools will often struggle to capture all of your business’s important nuances, unique selling points and quirks that you will have spent time crafting. You undoubtedly know your business and product better than anyone, so can you really expect a computer algorithm to generate content that’s going to accomplish all of the below goals?
- Address the pain points of your target customers
- Convey your expertise and market knowledge
- Provide legitimate, relevant examples and their relevance to your topic
- Capture your ideal target customer profile
- Provide up-to-date, accurate statistics to back up your arguments
- Exercise empathy and understanding of your audience’s needs
- Foster feelings of trust and recognition of your readers
- Help your site rank for your targeted keywords and search terms
- Capture your tone of voice and writing style
- Demonstrate emotion and creativity
If you do expect AI to do this, you may be in for a rude awakening.
Your content needs to resonate with your readers and accomplish multiple goals at once. Expecting an AI tool to do all of this will be, without being too hyperbolic, a pipe dream.
As an experienced freelance writer, it would be easy for me to simply recommend abandoning AI altogether. However, that’d be rather shortsighted. I truly believe the most effective solution for businesses and marketers is to combine AI tools and human creativity and input.
Blending AI and Human Creativity
You can benefit from the speed and cost-effectiveness of generative AI tools while still producing large quantities of content, and you cast a watchful and mindful eye over the legitimacy and validity of the text. The end result exhibits clear qualities of ‘authorship’ – in other words, evidence that a human has been integral to creating and shaping the content.
Essentially, you’ll be saying to your readers that a human writer, who crafts content based on real-world experience, creativity and emotion, has been involved in the process.
The Key Ingredient – Authorship
Why would authorship matter in this day and age? Well, Google lists it as one of its many ranking factors, for starters. Google has been upfront in stating that expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-A-T) are crucial qualities for content to rank well. Authoritativeness, incidentally, is rooted in content demonstrating good authorship. In other words, if you build up a solid portfolio of well-written, valuable and engaging content, while citing a credible author, you will be doing your site a solid favour in its rankings and traffic.
As a writer with SEO experience to my name, I always try to make sure my name and brand are clearly visible on any published pieces of content that I write for my clients. Yes, I want to help my clients’ websites rank for relevant search terms, but I want any content I write for them to demonstrate E-A-T principles. In turn, I want search engines like Google to (hopefully) associate my written content with a client’s solid authorship. I believe that content with a clear, authoritative voice and consistency to it will benefit a client’s site, and build authority with its readers.
In summary, for any business commissioning content, consider writers who are willing to attach their name and brand to the work.
AI-generated content is here to stay, there’s no denying it. It will also likely grow in influence and variety in the near future. However, it shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for human writers and their creativity. By combining the two, I truly believe that businesses can leverage the best of both worlds to make their content more engaging, authoritative and useful.
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