Guide to Thoughtfully Using AI to Generate Content

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TL;DR:

• To create thoughtful content with AI, provide detailed descriptions of your company and feed it current marketing material.
• Repurpose content by using AI to generate transcripts from webinars, podcasts, and videos.
• Use AI tools to assist with writing, such as expanding on talking points and finding synonyms.
• Use AI in programmatic SEO to generate unique keyword-targeted pages based on proprietary data.

Every company is looking to do more with less, especially in a tough economy. With AI, you can take mundane tasks off your hands and offset labor costs. On the surface, it seems like the perfect solution.

But as you're probably very aware, blindly using AI can cost you if it's done poorly. It can make you lose credibility and seriously hurt your business.

That's because pure AI-generated content is not defensible; long-winded and nonsensical tangents aren't any help to your customers, making it unlikely you'll even get close to converting. Instead of reading your AI-generated piece, anyone can just ask ChatGPT.

You need to be thoughtful in the way you use AI and add genuine value to articles — and for that, you need a strategy.

First — What Is Content Generation in AI?

AI content generation refers to the process of using artificial intelligence technology to create written content. This includes various types of copy such as blogs, marketing materials, articles, and product descriptions.

To generate content, an AI content creator requires input from a person. This input typically includes information such as keywords, phrases, and topics that the content should be focused on. The AI algorithms then analyze this input and generate the desired content accordingly.

AI content generation has become increasingly popular due to its ability to automate the content creation process and produce large volumes of content quickly. It can be a valuable tool for businesses and individuals who need to generate content at scale, saving time and resources.

But purely AI-generated content does come with risks.

Why Is Most AI-Generated Content Bad?

A lot of people still mistake AI engines like ChatGPT as having genuine "intelligence." But they're not at the level of those machines from The Matrix or Skynet from Terminator. They use Large Language Models (LLMs) to predict the next logical "token" given some context. At some point, this ability got confused for intellect.

With this in mind, here are some reasons why AI content is often poor quality:

1. AI is trained on context using the Internet, which, as we all know, contains some really bad and inaccurate writing. And not just bad writing, but writing that's not constrained by authority — the value of a random Reddit post is weighed the same as an authoritative answer from a Nobel prize-winning economist. So, it's not really surprising that a lot of AI output is shaky and imbalanced.
2. AI doesn't have any context on your business. It doesn't understand your goals or have any concept of who your ICP should be, which leads to completely useless tangents.
3. AI training data is outdated, which leads to inaccuracies. ChatGPT is only trained on data up to 2021, which will change as new models come out, but this database will likely never be reflective of "real time."
4. AI is prone to hallucinating, making up facts, and repeating information that's already been said. Your credibility can take a huge knock because of this.

AI-Generated Writing vs AI-Assisted Writing

There's a distinct difference between AI-generated content and AI-assisted content — or in the words of James Zayner, our Head of Marketing, AI-generated writing and AI productivity.

• AI models simply copy what's out there on the internet already, and are unable to produce original or truthful insights. Regurgitated information is of no help to your prospects (or your business)
• Using AI to help you build the foundation of outlines (and automate other mundane tasks), on the other hand, is a very practical and useful application that can actually help move the needle

To make the most use of AI in marketing, let it automate the necessary but tedious tasks, and leave the thinking to the humans.

Here's Parthi Loganathan and Rick Koleta discussing how to leverage AI the right way without compromising content or trust with customers.

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4 Useful Ways to Use AI in Content

If you don't want your content to get lost in the sea of terrible AI drivel that's out there, there are four approaches you can take to create pieces that are genuinely helpful to you and your readers.

AI Use Case #1: Give It Context On Your Business

AI LLMs need context to generate information that's actually relevant, which is why you should:

• Feed it detailed descriptions of your company, your product features, and your offering
• Feed it current marketing material so it learns your writing style and tone of voice

For example, there's a dedicated space for writing samples and company information in the Letterdrop settings. The AI can also index your existing content for context.

AI Use Case #2: Repurposing Content

You don't need to go back to the drawing board every time you want to send out content or need to sit down and repurpose content for other channels yourself. Repurposing is an avenue where AI can really come in handy.

If you've got webinars, podcasts, videos, and Zoom recordings with real experts, you can use AI to generate a transcript. You can use this transcript to help you structure blog posts. Plus, it's harder for the AI to hallucinate because what you're feeding it is so grounded in facts from real experts.

Letterdrop makes this easy for you. The AI can extract transcripts from audio or video files and takes it a step further by generating it into your chosen output — including a structured blog post, for example. Here's a short video demonstration.

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You're also able to:

• Repurpose long-form blogs into social media posts for channels like LinkedIn using your tone of voice.
• Generate original sections from the SERP so that you're covering necessary topics.

AI Use Case #3: For Writing Guidance and Assistance

There are obvious problems with using purely AI-generated material, but there's nothing wrong with using AI to help you write.

Use AI in tools like Notion, Google Docs, ChatGPT, and Letterdrop to help you:

• expand on talking points
• summarize text
• rephrase text
• find synonyms

But you need to be able to prompt the AI (and your writers) the right way. The Letterdrop tooling makes use of frameworks from some of the best content writers out there and democratizes it by bringing it to everybody. People do the thinking, and the AI just helps you stitch everything together.

AI Use Case #4: Unique Programmatic SEO Pages

If you're not familiar with programmatic SEO, it's a way to generate hundreds of thousands of keyword-targeted pages with the goal of ranking on the SERP.

Companies like Fair Square Medicare use this method to create categorized pages with variations in data — for example, Medicare plan prices for Alabama versus Medicare plan prices for Arkansas.

With AI, you're able to make those pages even more unique — especially if you pair it with proprietary data. Letterdrop's programmatic SEO tool lets you do all of this for free. You'll receive an email containing thousands of uniquely-generated AI pages based on your specific data points.

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4 AI Content Generation Tools

Here is a quick overview of some popular content generation tools to consider. Follow the links to read more detailed breakdowns of their capabilities (and where they may fall short.)

1. Jasper.ai

Overview:

• Jasper has an image generator, writing templates (for product descriptions, social media copy, and more), a long-form AI assistant, a chatbot, and an API.
• It's built on OpenAI's LLM technology and developing proprietary NLPs.
• Uses basic business context and real-time Google data for improved outputs.

Target Users:

• Ideal for smaller content teams, marketers, and bloggers.
• Versatile utility for scalable content creation beyond blogging.

2. Writer.com

Overview:

• Full-stack platform combining LLMs, NLP, and Machine Learning
• Allows you to give context on a brand
• Features a suite of editorial tools, access permissions management, and collaboration tools.
• Secure, private, and entirely proprietary, including LLMs.

Target Users:

• Best suited for teams of writers.
• Its advanced editorial tools, Govern, and Analyze features make it ideal for large content teams, including SEOs, product marketers, and content marketers.

3. Copy.ai

Overview:

• AI model agnostic, built on LLMs, including OpenAI's GPT-4.
• Switches models if needed, accesses real-time Google data, provides content storage, supports collaboration, and offers templates for various use cases.

Target Users:

• Suited for smaller teams focusing on fast short-form content scaling.

4. Letterdrop

We've already showcased some of Letterdrop's capabilities, but to summarize:

• Letterdrop was developed by former Google Search PMs for people-centric SEO.
• It automates the entire content workflow (ideation to publishing across platforms) for 32% faster content creation.

Key features:

• Condenses research from the SERPs to help you target complete coverage for SEO.
• Repurposes blogs and videos.
• Automates idea collection, first drafts, and content distribution.
• Real-time content calendar syncing.
• Auto-fixes and publishes SEO best practices.

The content generation tool you choose should help you do more than just push out drivel. It should help you do more with less and cut down on tedious tasks in your workflow.

Work Smarter with AI To Actually Reap the Benefits

Most people think AI doesn't take any extra work on your part — but those are the people who end up with unremarkable AI drivel. You have to strategize and tweak your approach to AI or you won't generate material that actually ranks on Google.

We're focused on the future of AI and SEO at Letterdrop and developing our tools to put the user's search intent first. If you want to streamline your content ops with AI that's actually useful to you and your customers, feel free to reach out to us.