|

AI Content Marketing: An Unfair Advantage for Savvy Content Marketers

Affiliate Disclosure: This post may have affiliate links, which means I get a commission if you buy using my link — at no extra cost to you. I never recommend products I haven’t tried and found helpful. (You have ChatGPT for that.)

AI content marketing header

Content marketing is all about creating valuable resources that engage and inform your audience. But it takes time and manual effort. That’s where AI content marketing comes in.

Remember Popeye, the one-eyed sailor Sailor Man, with his peculiar accent and enormous forearms? 

How he’d gobble up a can of spinach and then defeat the brutish Bluto?

Well, AI in content marketing is a bit like that.

Clever marketers use it to beat metaphorical Blutos like writer’s block and endless to-do lists.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss how you can leverage artificial intelligence to help your content marketing efforts. We’ll also list some AI-powered content marketing tools along with their benefits, like:

  • Increased productivity
  • Better user experience
  • Better decision making 

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence refers to a collection of computer algorithms that mimic human intelligence. Machine learning is one of these models, and deep learning is a subset of machine learning.

How does AI affect content marketing?

AI has revolutionized how we ideate, create, serve, and measure content. It helps us generate content faster, develop more effective content strategies, make better decisions, and target our audience more effectively.

How is AI used in content marketing?

Artificial intelligence is used in content marketing to help marketers become more productive and make better decisions based on data rather than intuition. It also helps to improve user experience and create content at scale.

AI for productivity

Here are some ways AI can improve your content creation process.

Brainstorm ideas

Challenges: writer’s block, lack of ideas

Coming up with creative ideas can be draining, especially on those days when you’re not feeling inspired. AI-powered tools can help you brainstorm ideas to spark your creativity.

Most content writers and copywriters write several headlines before settling on the perfect one. AI can help you write headlines that are more likely to be clicked on by your target audience.

AI to summarize your text

Challenges: hours wasted on manual research, time-consuming to create blog post outlines

Research is crucial for content marketing, but it can be time-consuming. AI can help you speed up research by finding relevant information quickly and efficiently. You can use it to summarize long content pieces or find data and statistics that you can use.

Automate repetitive manual tasks

Challenges: repetitive tasks and wasted manual hours

Artificial intelligence and marketing automation can automate manual tasks like internal linking, article curation, and social media post creation. It frees up your time to focus on more critical tasks, such as creating high-quality content.

Shorter content production cycles

Challenges: long production cycles

AI can speed up your workflow. AI content writing tools use natural language generation (NLG) to write like humans. While you can’t use AI content as it is, it can accelerate your first draft generation. AI content generation frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your digital marketing strategy. You can read my post on AI article writing to learn more about my writing process.

Scaling user intent analysis:

Challenge: manually identifying keyword search intent

Search intent is the overall goal or purpose a searcher has in mind when they type in a query. If you’re part of any passionate SEO group, you must’ve seen at least a couple of heated arguments about keyword intent. The importance of search intent is probably one of the few things most SEOs agree on.

The challenge is identifying user search intent manually for thousands of keywords. So some smart cookies came up with tools that use machine learning to identify user intent automatically. While there will be instances of mixed intent that trip up the algorithms, they generally do a good job of identifying user intent.

Content curation: 

Challenge: Manually curating information

Content curation is the process of finding and organizing content around a specific topic. AI can help you automate curation by finding relevant resources quickly and efficiently. It can also help you identify new trends in your industry so you can create content that is ahead of the curve. Tools like Buzzsumo, Curata, and Scoop.it can help you automate curation.

How AI enables better decision making

Artificial intelligence can collect data from different channels and give marketers a better understanding of customer behavior. It can also help marketers understand why their target audience behaves a certain way and what messaging resonates with them the most.

AI to analyze and get insights from data

Challenges: data overload; siloed data, manual errors, and bias

You probably already know that data is crucial for a successful marketing campaign. Data processing and predictive analytics are some of the best applications of AI. Here are some of the benefits of using AI for data processing.

  • Avoid manual errors: it helps avoid mistakes and biases that can creep into the human analysis. It can help you make sense of vast amounts of data and get valuable insights that you can use to improve your content marketing strategy.
  • Merging data sources: AI can compile disconnected datasets and automate data processing. You can use these metrics to improve your digital marketing strategy in real-time. AI can help you understand what’s working and what’s not so that you can make better decisions.
  • Avoid data overwhelm: in the modern age, we’re bombarded with data from all sides. AI can help you filter the noise and focus on the most significant data points. In short, AI can help you be more productive by helping you make sense of vast amounts of data quickly and efficiently.
  • Understanding data: many data platforms can understand natural language now. So it’s easier to make sense of tools like Google Analytics without being a data scientist. AI can help you make sense of your data and gain valuable insights that you can use to improve your content marketing strategy.

A simple example is using AI to analyze your competitor’s Facebook posts. You can see what they post, how often they post, when they post, and what works best for them. You can then use this insight to improve your social media strategy.

Understand audiences

Challenges: deriving insights from customer reviews, non-actionable personas

One of my pet peeves is customer personas with only superficial information like age, gender, and interests. There’s not much you can do with that information. AI can help you create more actionable personas by providing data from different channels.

  • Understanding customer pulse: artificial intelligence can help content marketers understand their audience better. You can use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze and understand customer reviews.
  • Data-driven personas: meaningful personas are a great way to get actionable insights into your audience. AI can help you gather data from different sources and make more accurate personas. Data can indicate why customers behave a certain way. Content marketers can use this valuable information to guide their content creation content.

AI for content intelligence

Challenges: manually planning and prioritizing content creation, lack of insights into content effectiveness

AI SEO tools identify trends and patterns of top-performing pages in search engines to guide your strategy and planning. 

  • Site architecture and planning: site architecture and content planning go together. AI-powered keyword research can help you plan your editorial calendar and site architecture.
  • AI Content strategy: AI can help with your strategy by providing insights into what’s working and what’s not. You can use AI to understand topics and content that resonates with your audience. It can also recommend keywords to go after and pages to optimize. These insights can help you develop a smarter content strategy.
  • AI for optimization: AI can help you optimize your text for better performance in search engines. Most AI writers use natural language processing to recommend topics to cover on your page. This information is valuable to a content creator.

AI for better customer experience

Challenge: lack of tailored resources

In a 2017 online survey of 1,000 consumers between 18 and 64, 80% said they would be more likely to do business with a company that offered personalized experiences, and 90% said they prefer personalized experiences. 

Personalized customer experience is the best way to increase customer loyalty and conversions.

Personalized content: 

Artificial intelligence can help you create customized messages for your potential customers. It can help understand customer data, behavior, and preferences. You can use the information to create relevant content to assist your digital marketing strategy. There are AI-powered newsletter tools that automate newsletter personalization. It tailors the communication based on each subscriber’s interests, resulting in higher engagement.

Chatbots for customer service

Chatbots are AI-powered programs that can help you provide a better customer experience. You can use AI chatbots to help customers, answer their questions, and make product recommendations.

Consistent brand voice

A consistent voice and tone will help you establish your brand as reliable and trustworthy. Artificial intelligence can help you maintain a consistent voice for your brand. 

AI content marketing tools

There are a lot of AI tools marketers can use, but the ones listed below are some of the most popular and useful.

The following articles provide a deep dive into various AI tools:

What skills do content marketers need to stay relevant in an AI-driven world?

Even with AI tools, content marketing still needs that human touch. Here are five core skills every content marketer needs to stay relevant:

  • Strong editorial skills: AI content generation poses its own set of risks because it cannot be trusted to write factually accurate articles. AI-generated content must be fact-checked, reviewed, and edited by a human for accuracy and style. Don’t even think about publishing AI content until you have a robust editorial governance process in place. Every piece of content should be checked for plagiarism to ensure you publish only original content.
  • Strong writing skills: high-quality, unique, engaging, and shareable writing will always be in demand. AI can help generate ideas and topics, but content marketers still need strong writing skills to create truly great content.
  • Strategic thinking: AI can help you analyze data and make better decisions, but it can’t independently develop a content marketing strategy. You need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve before you start using AI tools.
  • Critical thinking: AI can help you analyze data but cannot make decisions independently. You must evaluate AI results to ensure they are accurate and relevant.
  • Basic understanding of AI algorithms: you don’t need to write code or create the next GPT3, but a basic knowledge of AI algorithms will go a long way in using AI tools efficiently.
  • Basic understanding of analytics: AI can measure the performance of your campaigns, but you need basic data skills to make sense of it.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) knowledge: AI can provide content optimization tips, but you must know which ones to follow.
  • The ability to adapt: as AI technology evolves, marketers must adapt and acquire new skills to use the latest AI tools.
  • The ability to communicate effectively: despite all the things AI can do, it’s still essential to have strong communication skills. Good communication includes compelling copy, clear explanations, and an understanding of how to present data when conveying new concepts.

By learning these skills, you’ll be able to use AI more effectively in your marketing.

FAQs

Will AI take over content marketing?

No, artificial intelligence will not wholly take over content marketing. It’ll eliminate repeatable tasks and change how we do things, but it can’t replace human creativity, emotion, and critical thinking for now. AI can improve our productivity and augment our workflow to produce better results.

What is AI content marketing?

AI content marketing is the process of using technologies like AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to ideate, create, serve, and measure content.