I’ve been writing content for about ten years already. Crafting informative and marketing texts for small and medium business companies, I heard that buzz about AI content generation and how it would put all web writers out of work.
In recent years, AI has finally gone from rumors and predictions to reality, embedding in more and more aspects of our life:
Virtual assistance, automated machines, self-driving vehicles — AI technology seems to transform everything from manufacturing and medicine to financial industries and customer services. AI content generators are also here:
With ChartGPT launched in November 2022, the discussions about it making writers redundant have got a new lease of life. While only 15% of content marketers thought of implementing AI last year, many were so impressed with ChatGPT’s ability to provide coherent information and mimic human language that they started considering this tech for more cost-effective campaigns in 2023.
It’s particularly true for startups or small business companies with no opportunity to spend large budgets on content creation, optimization, and promotion:
I bet you hear and read about that euphoria on how fast and comfortable ChatGPT is for crafting SEO content, social media posts, and quick answers to customer questions. Indeed, why pay a writer if AI provides topical information in a conversational way?
The problem with AI-generated content for startups
AI content generators look so tempting and powerful to speed up the marketing campaign, automate the process, and save time and money for implementing other instruments or strategies.
They are super helpful, indeed.
But there’s a catch:
They can’t craft original content. Generators like ChatGPT collect information already available on the web within the parameters you give them. While such content will pass a plagiarism check, it won’t have original insights, research, and data — all are critical to meet Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines and win a chance to rank high in search for your startup website’s better visibility and higher traffic.
AI-generated content is average: It’s able to create simple texts, having no quality content features. Such content can’t share opinions or create thought leadership articles.
More than that, AI content still can’t write on subjects that remain controversial in society: religious issues, gun laws, abortion, politics, etc. If you ask a machine to generate content on these topics, you can get biased or inaccurate text. (Not that good to communicate for startups struggling for authenticity, transparency, and customer loyalty.)
So, long story short:
- AI content isn’t original but based on pre-existing information available to everyone. If most websites start using AI content generation tools, we’ll soon get tons of copycat posts that don’t provide any new info.
- AI content lacks narrative structure, original insights, and up-to-date evidence. It still can’t add anything new to the discussion.
Last but not least:
Google says AI-generated content is against their guidelines, comparing it to spam and the black hat SEO techniques known as content spinning.
Here’s what John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate says about it:
“For us, if you’re using machine learning tools to generate your content, it’s essentially the same as if you’re just shuffling words around, or looking up synonyms, or doing the translation tricks that people used to do. Those kinds of things.
My suspicion is maybe the quality of content is a little bit better than the really old-school tools, but for us, it’s still automatically generated content, and that means for us it’s still against the Webmaster Guidelines. So we would consider that to be spam.”
Using AI technology for good
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to demonize AI-generated content and say it has no point (or right) to exist. Despite all the above drawbacks, it still can benefit marketers, content creators, and website owners:
First, it’s great to answer “what is” questions, state facts, or tell about historical events. It’s okay to generate texts like those we have on Wikipedia.
Second, tools like ChatGPT are useful when content creators get stuck with writing ideas or facts to mention in their assets: AI can help generate a few quick ideas that will be the basis for content outlines.
Third, it’s truly time-saving for marketers struggling with many low-effort repetitive tasks: content ideas, titles, headings, meta descriptions, social media posts, and content briefs — AI can help here.
Or, some AI-generated tools are super helpful for analyzing ready texts: For example, I’m a big fan of Grammarly which checks my drafts for grammar mistakes and shares tips on my texts’ improvement. And while AI writers still have to go a long way to match human writers’ skills, they are a fit for automating low-effort content creation and saving professional writers’ time on more creative tasks.
Use AI content generators where you or your startup team need a helping hand. Set realistic expectations and think of AI as an assistant, not a full-time performer for all content-related tasks. When used right, it has the potential to enhance your marketing campaigns.
The post AI Content for Startups: How to Use It for Good appeared first on Datafloq.
