Hello Reader,

Let's wade into the hot topic of artificial intelligence (AI), shall we?

AI is exploding in public awareness right now, despite being around for quite awhile. A lot of it I have some serious issues—especially when we talk about their terms of use (they own your images) and the way they exploit artists. I won't wade into these issues too much as others have covered it thoroughly.

👉 With AI there are a lot of ethical concerns that you need to consider and measure against your own values. 👈

What I'd like to talk to you about today, however, is the narrower question of whether or not you should use AI to write blog posts. To a lot of people this may appear to be a shortcut to creating content for their websites that could potentially bring in more traffic.

The thinking here is if they create more content they will show up more in the search engine, get more clicks, then get more business.

Now, the first mistake here is a misunderstanding of how marketing and sales pipelines work. I've talked about this previously, and you can read that here. The search engine leads to discovery—which is the first step in the process.

Remember, it's not more content, it's better, focused content that truly gets results in the search engine.

Even if Google wasn't going to penalize AI-written articles, the chances of artificial intelligence crafting an article that is emotionally resonant is slim—at the moment. Now, I'm expect that as these bots learn more about human tone, they'll improve. Each time I test them I see more and more human-sounding language.

And yet, I still don't believe AI is truly on track for replicating individual human's tones.

And that's the bit that's irreplaceable. In my marketing framework, I refer to this magic as "Pinpoint Your Perspective." Your stories, experiences, and insights are what makes a connection with other people. And AI can't replicate that.

Does that mean that AI has no purpose in blog creation?

Not necessarily. If you do struggle with writing (it's a common challenge) and don't have an experienced copywriter on your team, you could flip your thinking about AI and view it as a tool to help generate ideas and structure.

For example, I asked Canva's MagicWrite for three ideas for posts about content marketing and here's what it generated:

Those are actually decent jumping off points that I could work with and create something unique with my specific perspective and insights.

Next, I asked MagicWrite for blog three headlines about SEO, and it produced:

• How to Improve Your SEO Rankings by Leveraging Content Marketing
• 3 SEO Strategies to Help You Outrank Your Competitors
• Expert Tips for Improving Your Website's SEO Performance

These are less great AI generated prompts because I know—and the machine does not—that it would be incredibly difficult to rank for any of these headlines, but it still has some value as, again, each could be a jumping off point. In this case, I'd likely take these ideas and narrow them to specific audiences or specific challenges.

(Note: I used Canva's tool because I already have a subscription so it was easiest for me to access without having to wade through a new app's terms of service and create another login.)

An AI tool I use often is MissingLettr, which uses AI to extract and write captions for content resharing campaigns.

This is a massive time-saver and, again, while I tweak the captions it generates from my own content, it's a great starting point and saves me loads of time each and every month.

While I realize that's not specifically answering the question of whether or not you should use AI to write your blog posts, it's a great use of AI to further leverage what you have already (something we don't do enough of).

Key takeaways about using AI to write blog posts:

1. Google says it will penalize AI written content;
2. Your perspective is the most valuable thing you bring to your content—AI writers will never truly capture that "you-ness;"
3. If you think of AI writers as tools to unlock ideas they could be useful;
4. Simply creating more content isn't the answer to your marketing challenges, despite what you may have been told.

Have you considering using AI tools to help you generate ideas for your content? I'd love to hear about your experiences—just hit reply to this email and it'll land in my inbox.

Warmly,

Sarah

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