3 Ways AI Is Changing Content Marketing (Scary Stuff and All)
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By Lisa Van de Ven
Hiding in the closet, shaking like the next-to-final girl in an old-school horror film.
That was the first reaction to AI for many writers and content specialists I know.
Ignore it. Avoid it. Stay as far away from it as you could.
In terms of content marketing strategies, it wasn’t exactly the best approach. Artificial intelligence is here to stay no matter how much you ignore it. And it threatens to change the face of content whether you want to recognize that or not.
Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t work for long. In fact, it may just put you behind in the long run.
I’ve known that for a while, on some level. For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing about the growing use of generative AI across all sorts of industries. I understood its value to businesses, as well as some of the challenges it introduced. And I understood that by avoiding it I only risked getting left behind.
I think that’s true of every content creator and marketer today. Some caught on early, embracing AI and all it can do. But others are still caught up in that fear cycle.
So let’s face those fears together.
Let’s look at the impact of AI on content marketing today—scary stuff at all. Because it’s true that AI is changing the content landscape no matter how we feel about it. But it’s also true that it can be a useful tool that supplements the skills content marketers bring to the table.
But only by acknowledging our fears can we get to the point where we can put that tool to use to create an AI content marketing strategy that stands out.
How AI Is Impacting Content Marketing
If you work in content in any capacity—whether you’re a corporate writer, journalist, strategist, editor or something else entirely—you probably have an idea of the impact of AI on content marketing already. And depending on what your specific job entails, likely one or more of the following is already having an effect on your day to day:
1) AI Is Writing Content
For those of us with a writing background, this was the first sign that AI was going to change the way we do things in content marketing. Because AI can write.
Can it write well? That’s still to be determined. But with the right prompt, it can provide serviceable content for certain use cases, in a fraction of the time a human writer can. What’s more, marketing teams have already caught onto this: according to research from Hubspot, 55% of AI users are already relying on it for writing.
As a writer with decades of experience, this is clearly scary in an “it’s coming for our jobs!” sort of way. But there are reasons businesses should be wary of AI-written content too.
The Scary Stuff:
For businesses that use content to build their brand reputation, attract prospects and inform their audience, AI-written content lacks the accountability and dependability of an experienced in-house or freelance writer.
I come from a journalism background, so “check your sources” is pretty ingrained in my DNA, but when you’re using AI to pump out content, you can’t always know where that content is sourced from. Sometimes, in fact, AI has been known to just make stuff up wholesale. (For example, have we all heard about that syndicated AI-generated article on “best summer reads” the Chicago Sun-Times published? Ten out of the 15 books it listed didn’t actually exist at all.)
And those inaccuracies are just the start. According to Hubspot:
42% of AI users say Gen AI sometimes produces inaccurate info
31% say the content created by AI isn’t always relevant to their goals
19% say Gen AI can’t create truly original or unique content
Even when you ask your AI tool to narrow down your sources to those that you trust, an AI content marketing strategy still needs someone to provide governance and ensure you’re pulling from reliable sources. And if you upload your own sources, you need to be careful you’re not letting the AI algorithm incorporate proprietary information into all of its answers going forward, no matter where they come from—something that can put your business data at risk.
And that can take time and attention to detail. Maybe not as much time as writing from scratch, sure, but if you want to protect your reputation it’s something you have to think about—and budget for.
2) AI Is Making SEO Less Effective
Search engine optimization (SEO) has been critical to marketers for years, bringing eyes to their sites and driving their content strategies. And for years we’ve been perfecting the methods we use to get search engines to notice our content.
We use keywords and structure content to ensure we show up at the top of searches related to our field. We optimize the backends of our websites to make them easier for search engines to index and look for backlink opportunities to build authority in our fields. And we make all of our content high quality, because that’s what Google likes best.
All to get people to our websites, so that they actually read our content. Because content marketing isn’t very effective when nobody sees what we publish.
So what happens when Google suddenly changes things up, and starts serving up AI-generated summaries with every search, amalgamated from across the web?
“It’s a total reimagining of Search,” Google’s CEO announced in May of the new AI Overview feature. But for companies that have been spending years optimizing for the old way of searching, that comes with challenges.
Studies have shown that these AI summaries reduce website traffic by 30 to 70%, depending on the search terms used, and that around 60% of Google searches are now “zero click.” In other words, users don’t end up on any website at all.
So you can do everything you’ve always done to be ranked high in searches, but the clicks still may not come in. At least not in the same numbers you’re used to.
The Scary Stuff:
If you’re a marketer, suddenly top- and middle-of-funnel content—the type that builds brand recognition and addresses prospect challenges and questions, setting up your business expertise—is going to be answered by Google’s AI summaries instead. Many prospects will have no reason to click on your site at all.
That means you have less control over the narrative, and fewer chances to build brand awareness. And there’s less chance of someone stumbling upon your brand when searching out solutions to their problem—even when those are the very solutions you provide.
Instead, prospects will do their research using AI-summarized content, coming to your site only for bottom-of-funnel content to find out specifically how your product measures up—but only if their AI-generated overviews tell them about you first.
But there’s also the same risk that comes with every AI tool today: that the information users are served up is inaccurate, outdated or ineffective. And that can put your prospect on the wrong path from the start.
3) AI Can Make Content Less Effective
So here’s the rub. With less engagement on your website, thanks to less effective SEO, your content may not be generating as many leads. So maybe you’re leaning on AI to write more, to save on budget, or just in hopes that if you put out more some of it will stick.
But is that approach to Generative AI content marketing going to have the effect that you want it to? Will it bring prospects to your site, and once they get there is it going to inspire them to stay?
The answer to those questions, to be honest, is still unclear.
The truth is, AI is still new and we’re still in wait-and-see mode on a lot of these things. But remember those Hubspot stats from earlier? Those are relevant here as well.
When AI produces inaccurate information, and you publish it, that can damage your reputation as a brand. When it creates content that’s not relevant to marketing goals, you’ve wasted an opportunity to build towards those objectives.
And when 19% of marketers say Gen AI doesn’t create truly original or unique content, they’re right to be concerned. AI tools like ChatGPT, when presented with the same or similar prompts, can give the exact response over and over again. If you publish that content as is, and someone else does too, Google will decide your content isn’t original. And when that happens you risk sinking in the SEO rankings even further.
The Scary Stuff:
That means that without proper human oversight, AI content can damage your brand and set you back on your marketing goals. And it can negatively impact your SEO rankings just when the rules of SEO are changing and potentially setting you back already.
That’s not to say AI doesn’t have its uses. There are places where it can be a truly helpful assistant to the content process, and types of content where it thrives (I’ll get into those in another blog post). But how you use AI is just as important as where you use it. That is, not as a replacement of content creators, but as a tool they can use to add to an effective, productive AI content marketing strategy.
A tool that still needs humans to make sure it’s doing more good than harm.
So What Does It All Mean?
So what does that mean for your content marketing efforts? Now that we’ve faced the scary stuff, how do we take what we know and create a Generative AI content marketing strategy that’s effective in this new environment?
I think that’s still going to involve some trial and error. Gen AI, as it exists currently, is still relatively new, after all. But some best practices have emerged that can help marketers optimize for AI. (I’ll dig deeper into some of these tactics in my next post.)
At the same time, though, it’s just as important to create content that will actually appeal to people—specifically, your target audience—not just search engines. By creating content that stands out to your audience, with a strong voice and purpose, you’ll have a better chance of engaging your prospects and customers.
That means answering the questions they’re asking, addressing the challenges they face and offering real-world experience and subject-matter expertise. It also means creating content that doesn’t sound like all the rest.
Because AI is changing content marketing, definitely. But the way people make decisions is still the same. And content plays a pivotal role in helping that decision-making process.
You just may need some new tactics to get you where you want to be.
Find out how Type A Communications can help you build out a content strategy that works for your business. Explore the services we offer.