When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, marketers everywhere were talking about it.
News coverage hyped AI as the future—and it is, in some industries. You’ve likely heard buzz about jobs being eliminated and taken over by AI. Stories about content marketers instantly being fired describe companies that believed they’d save big bucks by using AI instead of humans to write.
The broad business landscape may not reflect the numbers. Some industries and smaller businesses can’t use AI to replace an employee. While layoffs are a reality in tech-heavy industries, AI technology will likely restructure and redefine most jobs in some way.
But what happens when companies decide to use AI tools for content generation? Will your brand tone and voice stand the test of AI? What about brand dilution?
Introduction to AI in Content Creation
On the BFT blog, we’ve chatted about how you’ve been using AI for years (even if you didn’t call it that) and how we use AI in marketing, especially for image generation.
We lean into AI tools when it makes sense. For example, AI can automate many manual tasks, help with data analysis, and synthesize large amounts of information with colossal computing power.
But while AI technology can work for you in specific instances, your brand voice still needs a human touch to avoid brand dilution.
Challenges of AI-Generated Content in Marketing
Companies spend significant time—and money—building their brand. Successful brands go beyond logo, color palette, and fonts. They lean into intangible aspects—feelings, intent, authority, building trust. Those intangibles are difficult for AI to support with content generation.
The biggest issues we see with using AI tools to help write marketing materials, social media posts, and advertising are:
- Prompts generate overused, tired, and repeated responses that can feel flat and just a bit off and robotic.
- Responses don’t focus on what makes your company stand out from the competition since AI pulls from existing data across multiple sources.
- The responses AI generates can be wrong. We’ve all heard of AI “hallucinations.”
- Using AI-generated content can begin to alter the company’s actual brand. The more AI content is used, the further off-course the language can get. This can confuse audiences and degrade your brand recognition.
How to Effectively Use AI in Content Marketing
AI can have a place in marketing, including content creation. The trick is to balance the technology with the human touch to truly support your brand. Determine whether the work to connect your brand tone to the generated content is worth it.
AI may be better suited to short copywriting tasks. Content creation tasks with character limits, like social posts, ad copy, and email subject lines, need to get to the point fast, so AI-generated content could work better in these scenarios. AI uses machine learning to produce prompts, so if you use the same tool over time, it can “learn” your brand’s nuances and get closer to producing more relevant, accurate content. But it also requires consistent review and thorough feedback to improve. This kind of attention may or may not be worth your time.
If you notice a sharp drop in web traffic, reach out to our BFTeam. It might be necessary to assess your content to adapt to the core update changes to improve your chances of being favorably positioned in the search rankings.
Balancing AI with Human Insight for the Best Brand Content
Editing AI-produced content is complex. First-round edits will check for accuracy, which should be pretty straightforward but perhaps more time-consuming than content written by an informed writer. The next review is for brand tone. This needs to be done by someone with a thorough understanding of the brand, using a lens that goes beyond accuracy and “good enough” content. This kind of review also may take more time than writing with the brand tone in mind from the start.
AI can also serve as an idea generator for content. Prompts can identify hot topics, market trends, and buzzwords that a content writer can adapt to a specific brand tone. AI can also be a starting point for outline direction and keywords.
At BFT, we have found that the bottom line with AI is that while it is a fast and inexpensive way to create content, it doesn’t remove the need for a person to ensure your brand remains strong.
As with any new technology, businesses need to determine the most effective and efficient ways to adapt the functionality of AI to their unique needs. Ensure your brand voice has a human touch.
