So how do you utilize AI to improve your systems and processes while still producing human-led, high-quality content? Here are ten practical tips to help you use AI to create authentic content while keeping your unique voice.

1. Functional vs thought leadership – know when to use AI to create authentic content… and when to stay clear!

There’s content that at Content 10x we call functional or commodity content – e.g. a YouTube video summary, podcast show notes, or a meta description.

It’s informative content and it’s fairly undifferentiated. Often it’s in the form of summarizing long-form content that you have already created.

AI is great for writing a first draft of this type of content.

But then, there’s thought leadership content – this needs strong well thought-through points of view, it often evokes emotion, maybe even divides opinion, and it’s usually based on knowledge and beliefs.

Please don’t get AI to write this content! 

Thought leadership pieces can be in the form of blog posts, papers, social media posts that share insights and stories, but they require a human touch to truly resonate. Leave this content to be written by humans (but AI can help with the research, ideation and copy review, more on that soon).

2. Always edit AI-generated content

No matter how advanced AI becomes, it’s crucial to have a human review its output. Just as you would proofread a colleague’s work, ensure that any AI-generated content undergoes a thorough edit. This step helps align the final product with your brand voice and maintains authenticity.

3. Use AI for content review, but don’t let it rewrite

AI is a helpful resource for reviewing your already written content. It’s great for picking out spelling, grammar, and punctuation issues. It can help with reviewing tone and structure too, as well as helping to improve SEO.

However, we suggest you avoid allowing AI to make direct changes; instead, ask for suggestions and explanations so you get to preserve your original voice.

4. Provide detailed prompts

The quality of AI-generated content is directly linked to the input it receives. When using AI tools, create specific briefs that outline your brand voice, target audience, and content goals. The more context you provide, the more tailored and human-like the result will be.

Many generative AI tools will let you share examples of ‘what good looks like’ – where it will try to mimic the tone, structure, and so on.

5. Avoid robotic language

This is stating the obvious – but as well as editing the robotic content that AI creates after the fact, you can try and make it sound less robotic to begin with, before it goes to work.

AI-generated content can often fall into predictable patterns or use clichéd phrases, you can help it break this pattern. Create a list of “AI-sounding” words or phrases to avoid in your prompts—classic examples are “leverage,” “delve,” “craft,” or “elevate.”

AI-generated content can also have unusual or overly complex sentence structures, repetitive use of specific vocabulary, a lack of depth in analysis, and dramatic and flowery language. You need a human to review the final outputs to get away from this or the result will sound robotic, but you can ask it not to do this to begin with as well (the result will not be perfect, but it might be a touch less robotic!).

6. Emphasize storytelling

Humans will always be best at storytelling! AI-generated content lacks personal experience or emotion – for obvious reasons, it’s not a person! So to sound more human, make sure to emphasize storytelling. AI can churn out data, but it can’t share a story that paints a picture or tugs at the heartstrings. So, focus on weaving compelling stories.

7. Include human touchpoints

Things like personal anecdotes, interviews, and testimonials are the elements that add that special human touch that AI can’t replicate. Within the human touchpoints, focus on empathy. It’s so important that we tailor content to address the specific needs and concerns of our audience.

8. Engage with your audience

In our episode with Ian Anderson Gray, he discussed how he thinks more people will be doing livestreams – like LinkedIn lives, Instagram lives, and live webinars. This is because you can engage with your audience in real-time and they can engage with you. Live content ticks so many boxes – transparency, authenticity, engagement with each other. It doesn’t get much more ‘human’ than that!

You don’t have to create live content, that’s just one example, but think of ways you can create content that allows you to engage.

9. Use AI to streamline routine tasks

When we talk about AI in content creation, it doesn’t have to be the actual creation process itself, let AI handle repetitive tasks like data analysis or scheduling. This will help you to focus on the creative aspects of content creation that require a human touch. Think of AI as your handy assistant!

This is where we blend AI and human creativity: if you can nail combining the strengths of AI with human intuition and insight, you can end up with really innovative and engaging content – in less time!

10. Stay informed about AI developments

The landscape of AI is constantly changing. Keep yourself in the loop so you can use AI to enhance your work, not replace it. Look for ways to get assistance with the content that doesn’t require as much creativity, so that you can focus on creating content that is by humans for humans – when it needs to be!

Balancing AI assistance with human creativity

As you integrate AI into your content creation process, remember that finding the right balance between the bots and human insight is essential. By following these tips, you can use AI to create authentic content that resonates with your audience while still maintaining your unique voice.

Ultimately, the goal is to view AI as a powerful tool that complements your content strategy, rather than a replacement for human creativity and understanding.

Link to Original Source

The post 10 Ways to Use AI to Create Authentic Content first appeared on CMB.

The post 10 Ways to Use AI to Create Authentic Content appeared first on CMB.

We took some time out to review ours and made some meaningful changes off the back of it… keep reading to find out how, or click below to listen to the episode.  

The importance of regularly reviewing your content strategy  

In the super fast-paced world of content creation it’s easy to get caught up in the cycle of producing content after content without pausing to assess its impact and relevance.  

Now, you’re obviously not chucking content out there without consideration, but it’s easy to get stuck in a tried and tested formula for years, without taking a step back and saying ‘hey, is this even working… or do we need a content strategy update?’ 

We’ve certainly found ourselves there.   

It’s so important to regularly review and adapt your content strategy because your audience demographic may have changed, people’s preferences change, platforms and algorithms certainly have changed, and trends are always shifting.  

How to prep for a content strategy update: 3 key considerations  

Now we’re aware of the potential of repurposing UGC (user generated content), let’s delve into three strategic avenues to maximize its impact.  

1. Data Analysis 

First and foremost, data is your best friend! Collect and analyze all the important data that you can get your hands on, and review how your content is performing.  

Dive deep into the metrics from page views to video views to social media likes and shares, in order to identify what’s resonating with your audience and what’s falling flat.  

The numbers won’t lie and will guide you towards making informed decisions.   

2. Gather feedback 

Your team and your audience are invaluable sources of insight. Have conversations with your content creators and see what they think is working. Similarly listen to your audience. It’s important to go beyond the data. 

3. Stay informed about industry trends 

What’s working for others in your niche? What emerging platforms or content formats are gaining traction? Staying informed about industry developments and what’s working for others is crucial to staying competitive.  

Changes we’re making at Content 10x 

Now, let’s look at some of the changes we’re making to our approach. Because we believe in practicing what we preach and we love a good content strategy update!  

1. Podcast timetable shuffle 

We’re shaking up our podcast timetable. We’ve recorded a mix of guest interviews and solo episodes (1 guest interview followed by 3 solo episodes) for the past year. We’ve seen that our audience value the guest episodes so we’ll step it up a notch and now feature one guest interview followed by two solo episodes.  

All three episodes in a cycle will be based on a central theme that comes out of the guest episode. This will allow us to go deeper into valuable topics. We hope this change resonates with you! And we believe having themes will help us add even more value to our content.  

2. Eliminating ineffective content 

It sounds really obvious, doesn’t it?  But, we’re getting rid of content that takes up a lot of time but doesn’t engage our audience.  

A big part of our assessment was how much time does it take and how much return do we get. So it’s goodbye twitter threads, memes, certain episode graphics and things like our posts on international repurposing news stories.  

Sometimes you have to recognise when it’s time to let go! Although, we’ll still share the odd meme but only when we believe we can jump onto a popular viral meme and do well with incorporating a repurposing angle. 

3. Streamlining social media posts 

We’re continuing with image carousels on Instagram and LinkedIn because we think they are a great way to visually share our thoughts and ideas, but we’re simplifying our design. 

After examining what works we decided they have previously been a bit on the wordy side and there’s been a bit too much focus on adding design elements.  

We will spend a little less time on our carousels and see if in turn engagement goes up. Wouldn’t that be nice!  

4. Doubling down on social media videos 

Expect shorter high-quality videos with eye-catching captions, B-roll footage and expressive emojis! It seems everybody loves short-form vertical videos – so let’s make ours look amazing. 

5. LinkedIn remains our priority platform 

We’re continuing to focus most of our attention on LinkedIn and we’re putting more effort into engaging with others in and around the industry. Building meaningful connections on LinkedIn remains a top priority. 

6. Changes in social platforms 

After reviewing the metrics, we’re stepping back from Facebook almost completely and are going to pull back from Twitter, but we’ll start to engage on Threads for the time being and monitor how that goes.  

7. Increased focus on YouTube 

We’re increasing our focus on YouTube. Expect more ‘how to’ videos, along with our continued commitment to Shorts and featuring guest episodes. YouTube is such a versatile platform, and we’re excited to make the most of it!  

There’s plenty of other changes that we’re making, we had a pretty big to-do list at the end of our review, that spanned not 1, not 2, but 3 meetings with the team, but they are 7 of the key changes all aimed at refining our content strategy. 

This blog post is not suggesting you make the same change at all, every content strategy update needs to be unique. But I hope by sharing what we looked at, and what we’re doing, it’s a  good reminder that evolving your content strategy is not a one time effort. It’s an ongoing journey.

Link to Original Source

The post 3 Things to Consider When Updating Your Content Strategy first appeared on CMB.

The post 3 Things to Consider When Updating Your Content Strategy appeared first on CMB.