Maximise the promise and minimise the pitfalls of AI.

Love it. Hate it. Haven’t got your head around it? Yeah, snap. Except for Chat GPT. That’s a no-brainer. It just writes you a whole blog. Just like that.

But there are pitfalls.

Yes, yes, I’m a writer and content creator - you’d expect that from me. But if you manage the pitfalls, I believe AI can still be an incredible resource.

Let’s start by recapping on why we create content in the first place: we want good SEO, GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and we want to persuade our customer to buy from us.

The good news is that any content that is helpful to your customer will be good for SEO. Google’s algorithm can see if you’re writing relevantly and helpfully, and it ranks you for it. Even better, Google tells us that it does that by searching for EEAT: Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trust. For your blog to achieve your content goals, you need to demonstrate YOUR Expertise, Experience and Authority that you are using to build Trust with your customer.

How do we use AI and still manage to do that?

You get out what you put in

Getting the prompts right is key. The tighter your set of prompts, the more useful the outcome. But to create that tight set of prompts, you need to bring your understanding of your customer and your expertise to bear. Where in the buying funnel will they be when they read this, what will they need to know?

My tip:

Handily, this is where I share that Content Strategy is a core part of what I do. A strategy will identify all the content you need and how the customer will use it on their buying journey. You can then use AI to support the content creation (or ask me to do it).

Can your customer navigate through the noise?

There’s a risk that if creating a blog is the work of minutes, you’ll create lots and lots of them just to up your word count and maximise your keywords. But your human customer will never see through the noise and it’ll undermine your authority. What you want is content that will drive business for you by helping your customer buy from you. And nothing else. 

My tip:

Working out what you need to say helps you to create valuable content. But it also shows you what content you don’t need. It saves you time creating pointless noisy content nobody cares about.  

We can all tell when something’s not right.

We can just tell. It's about authenticity. We’ve been reading (sorry, consuming content) for years and our radar is good. Google’s getting good at it too. It will and does penalise you if it thinks your content is AI.  And humans will penalise you for breaking their trust.

My tip:

Take the structure AI has given you and rewrite it in sentences a human would write. Or write your blog yourself first and then ask AI for their version. See if it suggests something you’ve missed.

If you haven’t read your blog, why should your customer?

It’s about connection. Your customer sees hundreds if not thousands of messages a day. To connect, you have to cut through all of that with relevance and humanity. Whether you like my blog style or not, you can tell I’ve written it. You can tell I know what I’m talking about.

My tip:

Be genuinely helpful. That’s what your customer will take away.

Is it accurate?

AI is drawing from all the internet everywhere. The internet is not, shall we say, 100% accurate. So can you be sure your blog is?  The minute your customer sniffs it’s unchecked AI, they’re going to immediately distrust the information and then you.

My tip:

Fact check like crazy. And talk about your experience, your numbers and your perspective.

Higher word count does not mean better SEO

We’ve got 8.25 seconds before our customer’s attention wanes. We’ve got to hit our customers between the eyes with relevant, meaningful solutions. Customers want value without the word count. SEO is no longer about filling pages with keywords. The goal is no longer pages and pages of low-quality writing.  

My tip: Get to the point. Make it punchy, action led and human. Write less, say more.

What did I miss?

I asked AI for a version of this blog which I can’t post for comparison because I’m scared it will damage my SEO! But it suggested two things I didn’t have. Firstly, AI will lack nuance so complex ideas might be poorly explained. Secondly there’s the risk of plagiarism as it may draw exact excerpts from other sources.

Very few businesses have an entirely unique offer. But the people who deliver the business and the people who buy from the business are unique. Every one. If you want to cut through with what your business does best, by all means let AI do the grunt work, but

you have to bring the humanity.