Everyone knows that content is the crackers and cheese of your marketing drive. Everything from your on-page content to the blog posts and white papers you upload is there to help both drive traffic and create evangelists. Sure, social media and so on are important, but content is where the real sales tend to happen.
Unfortunately, content is also one of the most time-consuming marketing formats. Forget quick uploads and fishing for likes; long-form content like white papers tends to take weeks to produce. Even a good-quality blog post requires a few hours of hard creativity.
Hence, you might have given a cheer of relief when AI content generation entered the arena. Here is a solution that promises to provide you with great content in literally seconds. What could go wrong?
Well, considering that 70% of consumers recognize this AI content, while only 20% actively like it, we would say quite a lot. In fact, a surprising amount of brands find that even minor pieces of AI content on their pages is costing significantly in sales, and even undoing marketing efforts elsewhere.
This has led to an uptake in the amount of brands actively choosing human-led content, and even running submitted pieces through AI writing detection software to make sure AI doesn’t sneak in. But why is AI content causing so many problems for brands at large? Keep on reading to find out.
# 1 Compromising on Trust
While marketing does stand to boost sales, that’s not its only purpose. With content, regular, reliable uploads are also one of the best ways to create customer loyalty, and also the shares/recommendations that come with that. Customers love to find engaging, interesting content online that teaches them something new, and they typically grow to trust the brands that provide it.
But, imagine being locked in an intimate conversation with someone you respect, only to find that they’re talking to you from a script written by someone else. A machine, no less! You would feel robbed, right? You would certainly question whether that person is genuinely someone you respect or not.
Well, that’s precisely what customers feel when AI enters the content sphere. Suddenly, they won’t know whether you’re reputable and trustworthy or not. This is especially the case if you lie about your use of AI and put human faces on AI-written pieces. Your customers will feel blindsided, and with good reason. And trust us when we say that blindsided customers probably won’t give you another chance when your deceit inevitably comes to light!
# 2 – Questioning Your Expertise
As well as helping to drive new customers your way through the use of keywords, relevance, and so on, content is in place to show that you know your brand and your industry. Thought pieces are especially effective for setting you apart as an industry leader, and that proof of expertise can be the thing that helps you win customers instead of your competitors. This is one of the best reasons to make content a priority within your marketing plan. But, guess what? You entirely undermine those benefits when you use AI to write your content for you.
Why? Because a piece that’s clearly written by AI (remember, customers can generally tell!), sends the opposite expertise message from the one you’re hoping to achieve. In fact, it makes it look like you don’t have the first clue about what’s happening in your industry. Why else would you need a computer to write this stuff for you?
# 3 – The Risk of Errors
Following on nicely from that last point, AI content can also undermine your expertise by including errors that will be glaringly obvious to anyone who knows even a small amount about the topic in question. While you might assume that this happens rarely, so-called ‘AI hallucinations’ are so common that they’ve already been at the center of 490 court filings. In the content sphere, particularly, AI hallucinations have proven problematic due to a reliance on outdated information, and incomplete or incorrect information when working within specific niche fields.
Obviously, cross-checking all content should be a key element of your processes, but that process will become even more intensive where sometimes questionable AI facts are concerned. As such, rather than streamlining your business as intended, AI content could actually make your processes a whole lot harder. Not to mention that you simply can’t guarantee you’ll catch all hidden errors. And, posting something incorrect under your brand name is embarrassing, undermining, and could even leave you legally liable.
# 4 – Switching off Enjoyment
Let’s say that you have a foolproof fact-checking method, and you’re confident in the trustworthy quality of your AI content. Unfortunately, you still won’t be home and dry, because AI content is also notoriously lacking on the engagement front. And, engagement should ultimately be what drives your content strategy.
After all, the entire purpose of everything from your product descriptions to that downloadable ebook is to get consumers interested enough to not only buy from you, but to share those things with their friends and, importantly, to come back themselves.
This is where brand tone of voice (TOV) comes in, and we’re sorry to say it, but this can be entirely lacking when you use AI content that’s always trained to simplify. For instance, if AI had written the first paragraph of this section, it might read a little like this – ‘AI content often lacks the engagement that customers enjoy, and that can be a problem.’ It’s shorter and spikier, that’s for sure, but where’s the heart? Where’s the soul? Where’s the drive to keep on reading? We’re afraid to say that it isn’t there, and your customers would probably agree.
Takeaway
AI content might seem like an easy solution, but it rarely is. In fact, it can cost your entire marketing drive if you aren’t careful. That’s not to say AI tools like grammar checkers can’t still be helpful for content creation, but you do need to use them carefully, and prioritize human voices, to avoid major marketing mishaps!
