If you’re struggling to find new ways to attract leads, grow your email list, keep up with content demands, or generate more sales – Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can be an asset. These algorithms pull data from across the internet, giving marketers the ability to pinpoint trends and insights at light speed.
Even with all this computing power, the technology behind AI are still like calculators with limitations. Just as you must enter the right numbers into a calculator to get correct results, the same applies when using AI tools. The information (or prompts) you enter into AI software to “calculate” or write content must be relevant. At a minimum, this generally includes a title or headline, introductory summary, keywords, and the tone you wish to convey.
Yet, that’s not where it ends. You shouldn’t take the output AI produces and use it as your final product. It’s up to you to personalize it, and give it a voice that aligns with you or your client. Let’s look deeper into how to make machine learning algorithms work for you.
5 skills that will get you the most out of AI
These skills are the same professional writers should already possess – that is if you want the best results.
1. A creative bent
The primary skill for any writing in any industry is, and always will be, creativity. AI can boost creativity by providing fast access to a multitude of viewpoints on your subject matter that you have not considered.
AI writes by reading what you give it and comparing it to what it has read before. So, true originality depends on marketers being imaginative to fully leverage the potential of AI, and expand on ideas that it suggests. AI cannot formulate specifics for your product, service, or brand unless you tell it what to incorporate.
The biggest mistakes that marketers make when crafting inputs are:
- Feeding inaccurate or flat information into the software. Your results won’t be magically engaging if you’re phoning it in.
- Being too specific or not specific enough will also hobble your search. AI needs to know what you mean, but you can’t restrict it so much there are not enough search parameters.
2. Active interaction and listening
Marketing is about getting in front of the people interested in your product or service and fulfilling their wants and needs. To do this, you must know who they are. There are two primary ways to listen to your audience and gather valuable information relevant to them, your industry, and your competitors:
Digitally: Study customer reviews and social media comments. Edit the messages precisely before introducing them into an AI writing algorithm. Monitoring your platforms to summarize the insights offered there are key skills in any marketer’s toolbox.
Personally: Personal touches will amass even greater returns. We’re always inspired when forging a partnership with clients over a shared vision. It’s isolating when interacting with software instead of real people if that’s all you do. Your edge over AI is understanding your audience and having a relationship with them. AI isn’t going to sit down and have a brainstorming session with your client, discover common interests, or bond over a shared love of calamari.
3. Flexibility
A willingness to embrace change doesn’t always come easy, especially after you’ve invested years or even decades honing your craft, paying your dues, and amassing experience.
It’s natural to feel defensive about a software tool that can conjure up anything for a potential client like a wizard with a wand. It’s time to accept the fact that this genie in the sky can now generate stories and not just do spell check, even if it makes you hyperventilate just a bit.
The marketing industry changes constantly, and many of those shifts are driven by technology. Even if you don’t care to embrace AI, know that others are, and it’s important to understand its benefits and limitations as it relates to your business.
4. Data analysis
Writers engaging with AI have the power to create content at scale, including ads, emails, and landing pages. You don’t need to be an analytics wizard, but a basic understanding of how to use performance results to improve your craft is important.
5. Strategic planning
If you use AI to create content for a campaign funnel, you’ll benefit from a strategist’s skill to put it all together as plans continuously re-adjust depending on those analysis results. And, it should come as no surprise that good strategists should also possess badass professional writing skills.
What does the future hold for content marketers?
There’s good news and mediocre news. We’ve seen that AI software can enhance your abilities to create content fast by referencing more data for statistical information, offering a broader field of ideas, and aiding in visualizing different ways of combining them.
AI is a tool, but not a replacement, for humans
What AI hasn’t quite mastered is the ability to understand the meaning or sentimentality behind concepts. Try feeding your AI software prompts to write about the human experience, and you’ll see what we mean.
These tools will get better at mimicking humans – but creators shouldn’t pack their bags just yet. Rather, expanding skill sets would be wiser.
It would be naive to say AI will never impact the number of marketers or writers being hired. Now AI can help a non-writer become a decent writer, but it doesn’t replace an excellent writer. And, even at its best, we’ve seen AI spit our typos and non-sequiturs.
In the future? Content marketing jobs may favor strategists and copy editors who specialize in creating parameters, then manage and optimize the content AI produces. AI currently depends on the user to introduce clever and specialized ideas, and stellar copy editing that runs with ideas in a unique way. That will continue into the foreseeable future.
As AI becomes more sophisticated, the challenge will be upholding the creative spark that makes any writing worth reading in the first place, and allows us to relate to each other as human beings.
Using AI or humans in real-time is still a decision and a choice. Where do you fall on this spectrum? However you choose to work – in tandem with AI, humans, or extraterrestrials – Avenir can help you remain nimble and not just co-exist, but thrive, with emerging technologies.
Post written by Jonna Jerome // WordsWerk.
