As content marketers have become more familiar with generative AI (GenAI) and the many tools available to leverage its power, they’ve come up with a wide range of business applications and efficiency- and effectiveness-gaining opportunities.
While some have decried the disruptive impacts of this technology, others are embracing it and finding increasingly creative ways to save time and gain efficiencies.
Embracing the Potential
Larry Namer is a notable example. Namer is the co-founder of E! Entertainment TV. Prior to the advent of AI, he says, “If someone were to ask me to write up a development plan for a subject that could be a series—TV or streaming—it would take me about five days to do the research, determine economic viability, and create an interesting series that would draw audience attention.”
But generative AI (GenAI) has changed all of that for Namer and others. He’s been using GBT, and now GBT 4, since they first became available and says, “What used to take me five days now takes me about an hour—30 seconds to prompt and get results and one hour to edit and clean it up.”
Namer says he’s been preaching about the good that AI can do to some members of the Writers Guild who are still fearful of the technology.
Others have also found both practical and innovative uses for these new tools.
Idea Generation
“Whether we like it or not, AI is here—and it’s here to stay,” says Lauren Richardson, senior account executive at Marketing Signals. In her case, she says, AI has helped with various aspects of her day-to-day work, from repetitive administrative tasks to idea generation.
Working in digital PR, Richardson says, “requires me to be fairly creative a lot of the time, and it can be hard to come up with fresh ideas consistently.” She’s found that turning to AI can help. “If I’m struggling before an ideation session for a client, I can input information about the client along with general topics of interest, and it will bring up some fresh PR ideas that I can then look into further. It doesn’t always work, but it can help give my brain a nudge when I’m feeling a bit stuck.”
Richardson has also found that AI can help to minimize writer’s block. “I’m forever writing content from campaign landing pages and press releases to expert comments and pitches,” she says. “Sometimes, especially if it’s a complicated topic, I can struggle with knowing where to start, which results in the process taking much longer than it normally would.” AI, she says, can both help with research and break down complicated topics to make them easier to understand, which helps with writing the content.
“If I’m struggling for an opening, for example, I can input the topic or story and ask AI to provide me with an introduction to help make the rest of the process easier,” Richardson says. “It’s also really great if I have a lot of data to comb through—I can paste the data in, and then it can bring up a list of key points to help with any angles or hooks for my content.”
Personalized Target Marketing
Josh Neuman, a graphic designer, marketing professional, and the founder of Chummy Tees, says: “On the personalization front, we trained an AI model on our vast customer data to segment buyers into meaningful persona profiles. Now we can serve targeted marketing messages across different channels that are tailored to resonate better with individual groups. For example, we promote family-focused t-shirt designs and graphics to parents browsing our site, while humor-related prints tend to engage other audiences more. This personalized approach enabled by AI has led to improved conversion rates on our website.”
Markus Schaal, a tech expert and the Managing Director & COO at PLITCH, a PC mod software company, also uses AI to create personalized content targeted at “extremely detailed consumer personas.” He also uses AI to optimize content, refining ad text and email subject lines with tools like Phrasee. “All of a sudden, our messaging is spot-on and well-researched to increase interaction and conversions. It’s like having a group of expert copywriters working nonstop.”
At SmartBear, marketing and communications manager Pam Larsen says, “We are constantly finding ways to infuse GenAI into our marketing efforts to both increase efficiency and amplify our creativity.” For instance, the agency built out a custom GPT inside of ChatGPT that gives its marketing team a content generation and copyediting tool that allows the team to quickly create and improve content in alignment with brand guidelines. “We’re also experimenting with using ChatGPT to translate sales materials into different languages as our global footprint and needs expand,” she says.
Like Richardson, Larsen also uses GenAI “as a brainstorming buddy, helping us dream up new ideas for content, like social media posts, or to generate new and enticing CTAs.” She’s found, she says, “that CTAs created with the help of ChatGPT are high-performers, which has encouraged us to think outside the box as we craft new ad copy.”
Graphic Aid
GenAI doesn’t only aid in generating written content. It’s also very useful for creating images and graphics.
In addition to using AI for research and targeted marketing, Neuman has also found it to be beneficial for creating graphics. “By simply describing graphic designs or visual concepts in text form, our AI partner is able to generate high-quality mockups and designs that we can then refine for social media or other marketing collateral,” he says. “This has been a huge time-saver compared to designing graphics from scratch, allowing us to post more engaging visuals across platforms. Customers seem to really respond to these AI-generated graphics as well.”
Content Audits
Mariela Azcuy, with Carve Communications, Inc., says that one of her favorite ways to use AI is to supplement content audits. It’s an effort that has paid off through boosted results. “A smart way to drive more traffic to your site is improving your existing content,” she says. She uses AI to help figure out strategic ways to expand articles with new information, for instance.
“We prompt it with questions like: ‘After reading this article, what questions would in-house marketing and PR professionals have?’ Then, we will answer those questions in the updated articles. We also use AI to help with new keyword optimization for the audited articles—opportunities we might have missed before or new ones that sprung up since we posted the article.” These efforts, she says, have resulted in several of their audited blogs seeing a 1400% jump quarter over quarter in pageviews.
GenAI is still relatively new; its potential is still being explored. But, despite its newness, it’s easy to see that GenAI holds a wealth of possibilities for content marketers to streamline workflows, create efficiencies, and boost results.
How are you incorporating GenAI into your content creation?
(Note: a version of this article previously appeared in Information Today.)
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