The Mistake Businesses Make Using AI for their Content Writing

AI relies on human input. What you put into it determines what you’ll get out of it. Also make sure to put in the time needed to construct the content to make it ‘yours’.

I’m not entirely against the use of AI, I think that AI could be a useful marketing tool to create briefs and generate content ideas.

What is AI (artificial intelligence)?

AI, or artificial intelligence, is exactly that: an intelligence model that’s been created to replicate the way a human brain may think.

The use of AI can have an amazing impact. It can be used to automate certain tricky processes, such as speech recognition over the phone. This can be useful for organisations that receive heavy call volumes – AI means it can field the call and pass it onto a relevant person who can really help.

But the application of AI models across the entire business world can be tricky. For example, within the content creation niche, it’s not really the solution that we, in an ideal world, would love for it to be.

While it can be useful for sorting through certain elements, such as SEO keywords, an AI’s ability to write in place of a human is precarious.

This is where the issue with AI content comes in.

What is AI content?

AI content is a form of copy generation that involves little input from a human. You open up your AI software, you input the initial prompt, keywords, and content length you’re looking for, and then you let the machine write something for you.

Have a slurp of tea, and there you go, you’ve written a blog.

On the face of it, it’s great. But once you start reading, you’ll notice errors, inaccurate information, and a tone of voice that’s… robotic!

AI suffers from being unable to think and feel for itself. And that lack of emotion is the biggest issue with AI content tools.

One of the biggest drivers in any decision making your customer makes is purely based on emotion and thought. So by simply having emotion, thoughts, and a personality, you have the potential to be a copywriter than an artificial intelligence.

How AI writers works

The AI will have scanned the web to find sources to write from as well as imagery to support the content. You’re left with a normal looking landing page or blog post in front of you.

This process does mean that your content will not be entirely unique as the information is from others sources online.

I have a confession to make

I have tried several AI writing tools… there I said it.

I wanted to see what it could do. I wondered whether it could take me and my little human brain on in a writing competition.

I gave it a good go. I put all the information in that was needed to write the content. It took me about 20 minutes to put the brief together.

I gave it a quick read back, and then I hit enter. Boom, brief done. The cursor started swirling.

Then moments later, just like that, the content was there. Introduction was pretty good (turns out it was my own content from the brief).

The main body, ok. It started taking elements of my brief. But as the content progressed, it got repetitive with no substance on the topic. Then it had sentences that just abruptly ended mid-sentence.

It was funny, because I wanted to write a blog about AI content, using an AI writing tool.

It failed.

I gave up reading and I felt dirty.

There you go. Confession time over.

Marketers are using AI wrong

With any content you create you want it to be yours, so using AI right isn’t just as simple as asking it to write a blog on a topic. You need to do a little more work with more entries into the AI to help you structure your content.

Those businesses who literally use it to write their content will struggle to truly connect with people. This is exactly the reason we are sticking to human writers for our own content.

AI content (having tested multiple AI writers) sounds robotic, has no tone of voice, and lacks personality. And because of this, your AI content will never truly connect with people, unless you know how to use AI to really delve into people’s emotions and feelings on a topic.

AI isn’t ready to be used as your main content writer

Marketing decision makers want artificial intelligence to be the cost effective solution to creating content consistently. It isn’t the solution.

Content marketing is hard work for a reason. It takes a lot of time and effort to do it effectively. It’s more than writing, it’s understanding your audience and knowing what message will get them to stay, read and convert into a customer.

Whilst business owners and marketers may think they’ve achieved something using an AI writing tool (producing content in a matter of seconds), what they fail to realise is that the content is of a poor standard and unlikely to perform for you.

It will not rank and it will not get any of your customers reading the content. Worse of all, you’ll never hit your goal.

There’s no shortcut to growing your business with content creation

To make content achieve your goals, you need to be writing high quality content that is not only written really well, but offers a new perspective. To do that, you’ll need a human writer. Sorry I, Robot.

Disadvantages of using AI content

Using AI writers comes with some heavy content disadvantages. The cons involved make AI writers entirely untenable, and even a waste of time and money for businesses trying to build their content marketing strategy.

Here are the top four reasons that should turn you away from AI content creation: 

The content is of a low quality

As we mentioned earlier, anything written by an AI will lack emotion, personality and any real substance. The information itself won’t be plagiarised, but it certainly isn’t unique either.

Where’s your brand’s personality? Where’s your recognisable style? Where are your clever insights that built your following in the first place? Nowhere to be seen.

And that’s a problem. A big problem. People today invest in business’s they can relate to and feel a strong likeness for.

Google takes a harsh view on the quality of content – don’t get caught!

Anything you write to publish online needs to have something that sets it apart. You can’t just write out old information in a new format. Something needs to be added that’s different and valuable. You need to satisfy your readers.

Why? Because Google puts ‘people-first’ content on the front page of search results. AI won’t help you to rank for this. It’s not a person and it can’t connect with them people.

And even though Google ‘technically’ permits the use of AI tools in content generation, it takes issue with this content being published as is.

You could publish content using AI, sure. But don’t be disappointed when you get zero results from your content.

A lack of human characteristics

YOU as a human will have a better chance of connecting with customers than an AI writer. I know you’re probably not a writer at all, but you yourself would do a better job. Trust me.

We look for the human element in everything. It’s why we pump so much money into the marketing world in the first place. We’re trying to appeal to our fellow people in the most effective ways possible. But an AI will be unable to add that kind of personality to your content pieces.

AI written content can also suffer from an ability to sort through context. Yes, an AI model can blink through banks of data in a second, but will all that data be relevant? It’s unlikely. The processing may be faster than a human brain, but it can’t have the same understanding that we do.

This can mean any sources used to write the content may be outdated, recently disproved, written by someone with little authority, or even outright wrong and useless. A human would be able to spot these issues in seconds, but an AI will simply comb through and regurgitate the information.

AI doesn’t understand search intent

Search intent is a big part of SEO. I’d go as far to say it’s one of the less undervalued areas of SEO, along with content. But it’s so important.

The intent of a keyword is actually really difficult to determine. If you make the wrong call on who you’re speaking to and what it is they are trying to achieve with a search, you’ll know about it. Lots of visitors, low engagement and high exit rate.

And there are search terms that have a lot of content that is actually not right or mismatched for the intent of that keyword. So think about that for a second – AI uses content that already exists online. It takes content that has the wrong or a different intent to what you want to do. You’re recycling crap content.

Check out search intent with SEO right here to learn more about it. It’s important!

Editing is hard work

Neil Patel gave some terrible advice. He said to use AI and then ‘HEAVILY’ edit the AI’s content. You could even hire an editor to take that pain away. Nope, not us. If you’re using AI writing tools, we don’t want anything to do with you!

Admittedly, the editing is what takes content from good to amazing. But you need that first draft to be good to really make the content a success.

And that original draft relies on a lot of leg work to make sure it’s good content with the right intention.

Typical writing process:

• Planning
• Research
• Learning a topic
• Pinpointing the key message
• Making that message clear as day to a reader
• Writing in the right tone of voice for the brand and audience
• Edit to correct errors in content and refine your message
• Editing again to double check content packs a punch
• Final proofread
• Publish!

You need to do the work at the beginning to understand what your content is, why it needs to be written, and who will find it valuable.

How long would a good and thorough edit take on an AI’s content?

It’s about putting in the right information and questions to form your content. There is still a need for human input when using AI.

I see AI as a useful tool to help you plan your content rather than write the content for you.

If you’re not a professional editor or copywriter, than you might be doing yourself business a disservice with quickly reading through and then publishing the content.

Don’t put yourself through the pain of editing AI work if you’re not an experienced copywriter. Do content marketing the way it should be done – connecting with real people. Don’t be that person who writes content just for the sake of it. It never works.

Could AI writing tools be good to use in the future?

I think AI can be useful to use now. By all means use AI to help you plan content, not to solely write your content.

Where I see AI’s future

AI is a smart piece of technology, it can grab all sorts of information from different sources and get you answers fast.

I actually think AI’s future sits more with being a new way of people gathering information vs a search engine.

Let our human writers bring out the best in your business

Don’t risk your website’s presence and authority with Google by using AI writing tools.

And don’t fool for the marketing of the AI companies, they all write convincing copy and always crack out, ‘AI wrote this’. No it didn’t, it’s been heavily reshaped and edited by their team to make the message resonate with you.

If you’re really serious about growing your business with content, get in touch and complete our online project brief form.