Let’s be honest. Coming up with new content ideas day after day can drain even the most creative person faster than a smartphone battery scrolling Instagram. Creating fresh content for your brand’s digital assets is time-consuming (and quite frankly exhausting). You feel pressured to perform because you know the benefits of producing consistent high-quality content. Stop posting for even a few days, and the Almighty Algorithm punishes you for your insolence by downgrading your content in search results. AI content creation tools can help alleviate that stress. I’m not suggesting you use AI to generate new posts for you. As we learned in our last blog about best practices for AI content creation, you must review, edit, and customize the output before it meets the high standards for your brand. There’s a better way to use AI to reduce the time you spend creating content. Refreshing and reusing existing content is a task at which AI excels. Some of the ways AI can breathe new life into old content include:
Revive your best stories: turn top blogs into social media postsYou’ve probably figured out by now that your social media audience prefers a different style of content than visitors to your blog. Shorter, punchier posts tend to perform better on social. One of the easiest ways to repurpose in-depth content from your blog is to turn it into bite-sized chunks of compelling copy for your social accounts. Here’s where AI content creation tools come in handy. Pick the AI content generator you prefer and upload your blog post in its entirety (for the best results). Then, create a prompt that details how you want to use that information to create smaller social media posts. Get specific, right down to the tone of voice you want to use and the purpose of the content (drive more website traffic, generate more leads). Take it one step further by asking AI to generate attention-grabbing captions or questions for polls and quizzes to accompany your posts when appropriate. Adding polls and quizzes is an effective way to boost engagement. Blogs to social media carouselsBlogs with multiple talking points make excellent social media carousels. Visually pleasing carousels draw people in. Once they’ve found your post, you can impart the same wisdom from your blog in a more palatable format for social media scrollers. Remember not to put too much text on each carousel slide. Likewise, creating a 60-page carousel is overkill. Limit it to 8 to 10 pages maximum for the best results. A note of caution: never upload content that contains sensitive information about your organization or its customers to AI tools. Everything you feed to AI is stored in its database for reference later. You can get yourself in hot water if you overshare after signing a non-disclosure agreement. Repackage podcast gems: turn audio insights into viral blog wisdomAccording to the Pew Research Center, 42% of Americans over the age of 12 listen to at least one podcast a month. That’s a marked increase from the 12% who tuned in just one decade ago. It’s not difficult to see the allure. Podcasts are an engaging, amusing way to pass the time. You can use them to learn new information or explore topics in depth. They’re also an effective way to create a sense of community among your brand loyalists who feel connected to the podcast host and each other. If your small business has invested in producing a podcast, you can easily take episodes and turn them into blogs. Several AI tools specialize in performing this task. You’ll want to do some fine-tuning to the output to add links, images, section headers, and other elements that make blogs more engaging. Consider adding an introduction and conclusion in your brand voice to add some personality to the piece. Bring your content to life: transform written insights into viral visualsSocial media is the perfect opportunity to pack your content into snackable visual media bites. You don’t have to be a skilled graphic artist to take data from blogs, case studies, and even podcasts and turn it into an appealing chart, diagram, or other graphic. AI tools such as Adobe Creative Express, Midjourney, and Dall-E 2 can take text prompts and turn them into eye-catching social graphics, quotes, and charts. The image that accompanies this section was generated by using Adobe’s text-to-image generating software. For instance, a key statistic from a podcast episode can become a colorful infographic that educates and engages your audience. You can even use it to direct them back to the podcast to learn more. As with anything else AI produces, check the output for accuracy before publishing. Give your content the Hollywood treatmentYou don’t need fancy video equipment to repurpose written or audio content into video clips. Using an AI text-to-speech narration combined with royalty-free media gives your content the Hollywood treatment, red carpet entrance and all. Most AI tools that do this task work similarly. You input your existing blog post text or podcast transcript. Then, select visual themes, graphics, and music to match your brand style. When prompted correctly, the AI should spit out a video clip you can share on social media or use in digital ads. Touches that individualize the video can include an intro and outro of you or another brand representative. Always manually include captions to ensure your content is accessible to everyone. AI content creation repurposing saves time and moneyAI isn’t a magic wand for repurposing your content. You can’t just wave it and expect miracles. You must invest your time to learn how to breathe new life into old blogs, transform podcasts into long-form content, and create eye-catching visuals from written passages. With some strategic effort, you can get significantly more mileage out of your high-quality content. Do it well, and you’ll save time and money down the road while keeping your brand top-of-mind. Need help with AI content creation tools? The Write Reflection offers 1:1 content marketing training for entrepreneurs and small business owners that’s customized to meet your needs. Reach out today to schedule a session. Mention this blog to receive a 25% discount on your first session fee. About the Author - Shari Berg
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Everyone is talking about how to prompt AI for better content creation. At least that’s how it seems when visiting networking platforms like LinkedIn. You can’t scroll two clicks without landing on several how-to guides on the topic. Prompt engineers impart wisdom about how to get AI language learning models to do your bidding. Most of the advice centers around AI content creation and how to use the technology to replace professional copywriters and content creators on your marketing team. It’s possible to use AI like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Claude to create content with precise directions from a human. However, that’s not necessarily the best way to leverage the power of AI technology. Michael Goldrich offers a more effective way to use AI to achieve your marketing goals. The founder and chief advisor at Vivander Advisors LLC, Goldrich relies on a 5-step process to guide companies through an AI transformation. His new book, Too Many Hats, Too Little Time explores Generative AI and its transformative impact on the business world. Innovators and leaders can learn how to integrate AI while preserving human judgment and creativity. Thinking outside the AI content creation box“I see a lot of stuff online where people are selling tools for specific business problems, but I think it’s backward thinking,” Goldrich said. “You need to look at the entire company and see how people work before offering them specific solutions.” So, what exactly does that mean? When you understand the business's overall challenges, you can provide more robust solutions. Instead of prompting AI to create content for your brand, Goldrich suggests something more groundbreaking: AI personas. An AI persona is a character or identity created for an artificial intelligence system to interact with users. Creators give the AI persona a specific personality, tone, and style of communication to mimic a human-like quality. Think of the last time you interacted with a chatbot or virtual assistant on the website of your favorite brand. They were created with an AI persona tooled toward improving the customer experience. What Goldrich proposes cranks AI personas up a notch to serve a more innovative purpose. Last year, he spent considerable time experimenting with ChatGPT 4. He first learned the art of creating effective AI prompts. “One of the first principles of creating a good prompt is to create a role. For example, you are a digital marketer, or you are a social media manager. After the role is created, you write the prompt to provide enough context that is associated with the role to deliver the output you want. Writing good prompts is the key to getting the AI to do what you want it to do,” he said. “Once I had that down, I started getting specific with it and asking the role to persist through the chat.” Asking ChatGPT to persist means it maintains continuity and context throughout the conversation. Requesting persistence creates a more coherent and meaningful interaction between a human and AI. Goldrich then used what he’d learned to create two separate AI personas and directed them to interact through ChatGPT. Each persona had unique characteristics such as a profession and a tone of voice. After much experimentation, he succeeded in using the AI personas to solve a specific conflict by interacting with one another based on his prompts. He continued to experiment with creating AI personas until he had an entire “board” of them, each with an area of expertise beneficial to his business marketing goals. The personas could converse with one another and with him in a similar way you would expect to see a board of directors operate, Goldrich said. 5-step plan for AI persona successHe was so stunned by the results he decided to share them. In his book, Goldrich outlines the steps he took to tailor personas to align with company goals and have them interact in meaningful ways. He includes screen captures of real, unedited conversations he had with his team of AI personas to demonstrate how the process works. “A quarter of the book is these back-and-forth conversations,” he said. Goldrich expresses in his chapter on strategies for engaging with AI personas that how you choose to engage with the digital entities significantly impacts the quality of insights they provide. He provides basic and advanced techniques for prompting and AI persona creation so you can get the results you need. Goldrich likens AI language models like ChatGPT 4 to a remote employee on the first day of work. “You can get them to do what you want, but you have to be clear and concise on what you want,” he said. One of the challenges of prompting with AI is drift, Goldrich warned. “You can’t use the same prompt over and over because you won’t get the same response each time.” You must give it adequate context. For instance, you can’t just say, “be a copywriter” and expect it to understand your input and produce quality output. “One of the reasons people get so frustrated when prompting AI is because Google has trained us to type a series of keywords into a search bar,” said Goldrich. “ChatGPT is the exact opposite. It’s not 3 or 4 words but three or four comprehensive sentences. The more thoughtful you are, the better the output is going to be.” His step-by-step guide makes understanding the purpose of AI personas and creating ones to suit your needs easy. Whether you’re seeking specialized advice from a legal AI persona or want a panel of AI collaborators, following his instructions makes it possible. Goldrich’s plan is ideal for startups and small to medium-sized companies that lack the resources to hire expert advisors. “You can have a sandbox environment of advisors to help you identify the ‘gotchas’ with ideas for growth or other business operations,” he said. His book includes a cautionary note about using AI personas. “It’s important to remember these AI personas draw upon training data to respond in a way that’s consistent with an expert’s public persona,” said Goldrich. “It’s emulation, not impersonation. They can’t capture the full scope of that person’s knowledge, experience, or consciousness.” AI’s take on AI personasPerhaps the most entertaining part of Too Many Hats, Too Little Time is the conclusion. It features book reviews from each of the AI personas he created. “Some of them liked it, some of them didn’t,” Goldrich said, laughing. “The lawyer (persona) was concerned about privacy, while some of the others were concerned about losing the human in the loop.” You can find Goldrich’s book on Amazon. Interested in learning more about how his company helps organizations transform with the power of AI? Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn or send him an inquiry via email. About the Author - Shari BergIs it possible to write a book in one weekend? Sure, it is. Just ask children’s author Ammaar Reshi (although he probably wishes you wouldn’t). Reshi, a design manager at Brex, used popular artificial intelligence (AI) tools ChatGPT and Midjourney to create and publish a story called “Alice and Sparkle,” over a weekend. Reshi claims the book is the first of its kind because it was co-created with AI. He gives his writing and illustration partner full credit in the book synopsis. But wait…it gets weirder. The book is about a young girl named Alice who creates her own AI named Sparkle. In the book, they go on fun adventures, combining their knowledge to change the world for the better (or so the synopsis promises). Customer reviews give it a 3.1 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Some reviewers took pot-shots at the fact Reshi relied too heavily on AI to write the book. However, a few others said they were less bothered by the AI involvement and more concerned with the complete lack of storytelling throughout the book. “I’ve seen some amazing stuff that was made using A.I. tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT,” said a reviewer with the handle Hamsteroid. “This is not that.” Hamsteroid goes on to say the book lacks an arc in the storytelling and just abruptly ends. Fellow reviewer Langue Master said, “This is what happens when AI is used to write a story with no human writer behind to guide things. This story is quite empty in terms of its story arc and content and the illustrations are poorly made/generated.” Ouch. Besides the possibility of garnering blistering reviews for AI-generated content, there are other reasons why you probably shouldn’t rely on it to write that dystopian novel you’ve had brewing in your brain for the last decade. Before you make nice with ChatGPT or another AI tool, take some time to discover: What the heck is an AI content generator?Technophobes (and those living under rocks) may have zero clue what AI content generators are all about. For the uninitiated, AI content generators are technology programmed to use Natural Language Generation (NLG) to turn thoughts into words on a page. Since AI can’t think like humans, engineers train them to learn how to engage in human-like conversations. They rely on vast amounts of information gleaned from the internet – articles, blogs, news stories, Reddit threads – to respond to prompts. One of the most talked about technologies in this space is ChatGPT. It’s dominated the news cycle since the beginning of the year. However, AI content generators existed long before ChatGPT hit the scene. Some of the most popular technologies for creating written content include Jasper AI and AI Writer. DALL-E and Midjourney currently covet the top spots for AI image creation. How is AI disrupting the publishing industry?While most organizations are figuring out how to use AI to replace their marketing teams full of humans, there is another group of people coveting its so-called power to generate words quickly. Wannabe authors have turned to generative AI to make their dreams come true. As we discussed earlier in this blog post, using AI to write a novel can backfire. Some publishers have publicly admonished writers who used AI to generate bland content. Science fiction publisher Clarkeworld Magazine took to its Twitter account in mid-February to proclaim it was closing submissions because of the sheer volume of AI-generate content it had received. Of the 1,200 submissions it received in February, Clarkesworld founder Neil Clarke claimed more than 500 were AI-produced. Another publication, Science, has outright banned content generated by AI in any of its journals. Its policy states, “text generated from AI, machine learning, or similar algorithm tools” is considered scientific misconduct. On the image side of things, Getty Images has banned the upload and sale of AI-generated illustrations because of fears over future copyright claims. We’ll talk more later about whether you can copyright AI-produced content. What are some of the common problems with AI content?AI language models like ChatGPT can assist with content generation. However, they’re not a substitute for human creativity, critical thinking, or subject matter expertise. Beyond lacking the emotions of a human writer, relying on AI to write an entire novel (or any other content, for that matter) comes with risks.
Who holds the copyright for AI-generated content and illustration?The short answer to who holds the copyright for AI-generated content and illustration is not you. Herein lies a huge problem with organizations relying on AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney for creating all their written and visual content. Images and text 100 percent generated by AI don’t qualify for copyright protections, according to the U.S. Copyright Office. In late February, the copyright office ruled in the case of the comic book “Zarya of the Dawn,” whose author used illustrations produced solely by Midjourney. Since non-humans created the images, author Kristina Kashtanova gained copyright protections for the story, but the images were excluded. The same holds true for text written by AI that humans have not altered in some way. When AI makes all the decisions about how something is written or designed, it bypasses the human creative process required for copyrighting. Choosing humans over machinesIt’s tempting to turn to machines over humans to produce content, especially when you’re looking to cut expenses. Aspiring authors can fall into this trap along with organizations. Choosing humans over machines is a better option. Not only does it get you higher-quality content, but it also ensures you own the rights to that content once it’s completed. We hope you make the right decision. AuthorShari Berg has known she wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil in her hand. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and it’s her job to discover it. Shari owns The Write Reflection, a Pittsburgh-based copywriting and content writing company that empowers small business owners to wield the power of words. AI content writing is not a new thing. Up until now, I admit that I have not given it much thought. The AI content marketing tools I had seen before now did not really intrigue – or worry – me. I had zero fears of my livelihood being replaced by a nameless, faceless automaton that cranked out copy at a customer’s behest. Most AI-powered content marketing tools were inferior to the quality copy a human trained in wordsmithing could produce. I would go so far as to say most of it was laughable nonsense. Anyone who would pay for it was wasting their money, in my humble opinion. Flash-forward to now and using AI for content marketing is becoming a hot topic among my fellow copywriting professionals. Some, like me, debate the value of using them. Others fear they are just one AI-generated piece of content away from losing their jobs. I think the truth of AI content marketing tools lies somewhere in between. What is AI-generated content marketing? Since Alan Turing first posed the question, “Can machines think?” in the 1950s, man has been obsessed with artificial intelligence. AI has advanced the medical and industrial fields, to name just two of its profound impacts. Digital marketers started leveraging AI-powered content marketing tools as far back as 2017. According to the 2020 Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 84 percent of marketers admit to using AI. This is a 186 percent increase from the number of marketers using AI in 2018. Most of the AI tools marketers use focus on data collection and analysis. There were no specific data available for the number of copywriters who use AI content marketing tools to assist with their writing tasks. AI tools for content marketing AI copywriting tools use natural language processing (NLP) to spit out copy. If you are wondering what the heck NLP is, no worries. Let me explain. NLP is nothing more than the automatic manipulation of our natural language patterns for both speech and text. When NLP works as intended, it bridges the communications gap between humans and computers. The goal is to help computers understand – mimic, even – the speech and language patterns of humans. Most AI tools for content marketing work like this:
Real copywriters dish on AI content generators What do real copywriters think about AI content generators? Some leverage their power to increase their output and the number of clients they can serve. Others refuse to use them, citing a lack of quality and mediocrity in the content produced. Yker Valerio of Bon Vivant Caffe uses Conversion.ai to improve content quality and boost his writing process. “It’s like having a writing partner. A weird writing partner, but productive nonetheless.” He said he has tried a few other AI content generators but prefers Conversion.ai. Kyle Vine, the marketing director at CKLU Radio in Ontario, Canada, said he had the privilege of meeting the person who runs the IBM Watson program for AI a few years ago at a conference. “I discovered that (AI) can be good for proofreading, but the main way it can be good is with speak.ai or other apps that transcribe speeches to use for SEO applied to your copy. Otherwise, I’ve found there aren’t many options to use AI in copywriting because it’s 75 percent experience and word flowability. AI comes in with the last 25 percent for tiny things just to suggest better SEO/conversion words in my experience.” Archana Karthikeyan from The Marketing Vogue has used AI copywriting tools for about four months. The benefit is that it sometimes helps her with a new direction for her writing if she is experiencing the dreaded writer’s block. Another advantage is it can help save her time during the writing process. The biggest drawback is it is written by AI, not a human. She and her team have discovered facts need to be rechecked any time the AI program she uses creates content to ensure accuracy. My personal experience with AI content marketing tools is mixed. Like Valerio, I have found Conversion.ai to work well for generating titles and content ideas. I am not as impressed with its other content. Depending on the topic, it can be clunky and needing a human touch to make it more readable. I also am beta testing a new AI writing tool now that is not very impressive. In a recent topic I gave the generator for a sales description I was writing about stand mixers, it generated this gem: “The item is circular, about six inches across. It has a lid.” Factually, the tool is correct. Stand mixers are circular and have lids. Does knowing that make me want to buy one? Nope. This was an epic failure. Another time, I asked the tool to generate a direct and adventurous headline for an article about first-time surfers in Australia. Here is what it gave me: “Surfing is a fun and easy sport to learn.” Once again, I do not consider this a success. While the statement is true, there is nothing adventurous about it. The tool still is in the early stages of development, so these results are expected. I will not mention it by name in this blog, but I will provide a more detailed review of it once the beta testing phase is over. How copywriters can leverage AI tools While I respect their opinion, I do not understand copywriters who fear AI-powered content marketing tools. I personally do not think AI will ever get to the point that it will totally replace humans for writing. Humans must teach AI software how to be more, well, human. Computers only know what we teach them. The success or failure of AI content generators rests on the capable shoulders of copywriters like myself willing to serve as teachers to AI. Computers do not understand – nor can they convincingly mimic – brand voice or persona. Humans are very much still needed to finesse any copy an AI produces to improve engagement and tone. My fellow copywriters can breathe a sigh of relief and embrace AI as a teammate rather than fearing it as a competitor. Need help humanizing your content? Reach out to The Write Reflection today to schedule your hassle-free consultation to discuss your needs. AuthorShari Berg has known she wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil in her hand. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and it’s her job to discover it. Shari owns The Write Reflection, a Pittsburgh-based copywriting and content writing company that empowers small business owners to wield the power of words. |
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