Should you turn to AI to produce content for your brand?
Since the launch of the ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022 – a development spurring a boom in generative artificial intelligence (AI) – intense debate has prevailed about the role that AI can, does, and should have in online content marketing.
Getting your own brand’s content marketing right will be of critical importance in supporting your business’s success and growth online. So, if you are looking to incorporate AI into your content production, you won’t want to make avoidable mistakes.
You might have heard suggestions that AI definitely should or shouldn’t have a place in a brand’s content marketing. But if you’re considering drawing upon tools like ChatGPT for your own business’s content, the full picture may be more ambiguous.
Below, we have set out examples of what we mean.
AI content can’t produce its own original perspectives – but you can
A frequent criticism of AI-generated content is that it effectively regurgitates other content that already exists and has already been indexed by search engines. This is a valid concern, given that much of what attracts human users to high-quality online content is the original perspectives and insights that the leading industry experts and renowned brands can provide.
This is one reason why, if your brand does use some degree of AI content generation, you should still have an element of human editing and overview.
If, for instance, you do enter a generative AI prompt to create content on a topic that you have your own direct knowledge and experience in, the results could jog your memory about certain aspects of the subject. You could then edit this content to help provide the original and individual insights that both human users and search engines crave.
Generative AI tends to be better suited to some content types than others
On the basis of the above, you might understandably decide it is best to arrange for a human to write your brand’s expertise-based or experience-driven content, rather than necessarily giving AI a role at all. However, there may be other types of content that your brand needs to produce, that AI could be more useful for.
Consider, for example, press release writing. Given that press releases are largely about restating the features and benefits of a product or service that may already have been mentioned elsewhere, generative AI could be great for instantly producing well-written press releases for your business. It could mean being able to say goodbye to the time-consuming back-and-forth communication that often characterises work with human press release writers.
Or what about using an AI content generation tool to create a first draft of your company website’s “About Us” page? We say “first draft”, because generative AI can also be susceptible to inaccuracies and exaggerations. So, having a human carefully look over, proofread, and edit this content will help avoid any embarrassing discrepancies.
AI isn’t necessarily an SEO ‘no no’, but you should still be vigilant
If one of your reasons for hesitating to use AI content generation is the fear that Google would detect and penalise your site for using such content, here’s some good news: in the search engine’s own words, “appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines.”
In other words, Google won’t penalise your brand’s AI-generated content simply because it happens to be AI-generated.
However, you should also bear in mind that search engines are likely to rank content higher if it demonstrates expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). So, simply taking the output from a generative AI tool and putting it straight on your website, without any further editing and refinement to ensure these qualities, might not help your brand’s efforts to rank strongly.
There you have it; there is evidence that AI can be very useful for content generation and research, but it also has its limitations that you will need to account for in your brand’s marketing.
To learn more about our expertise in such fields as website design, ecommerce, search engine optimisation (SEO), and custom software development services in Gibraltar, Spain, and the UK, please don’t hesitate to contact the Piranha Designs team today.
