When Should You Use AI in Content Marketing (And When Should You Avoid It)?

Generative AI is hailed as the ultimate sidekick of marketing these days. But the million-dollar question is: when should you use AI in content marketing and when should you avoid it? Specifically in content creation, will using it add value or just remove authenticity from your content?

An explosion of different tools on the market means AI can churn out blog posts at lightning speed, whip up eye-catching graphics, act as a research assistant, and simplify video and audio editing.

But hold on, just because it can do these things doesn’t mean it should.

As content marketers, we need to be strategic with the content we publish. Creating content is hard work, and the lure of AI's speedy results is hard to resist. But let’s not lose sight of the most important thing – content effectiveness. 

An easy and quick route to creating content is more often than not an easy and quick road to creating weak, low quality content.

Is the content going to drive the results you want—whether it’s sales, website visits, or engagement? Will it increase brand awareness and position your brand as one that’s authentic and trustworthy? At what stage does it fit into the funnel? Are you speaking to people who are problem-aware, solution-aware, etc.?

So with that in mind, let’s take a look into what to use AI for in your content marketing vs. where to avoid it.

What to consider before using AI in content marketing

While content effectiveness is our main benchmark here, it’s not the only important thing to consider. We’ll look at the three stages of how to use AI in content marketing: planning, creating and editing. Before we do that, it’s important to quickly note overall the top things to consider when using AI in content marketing:

Quality: Does AI create quality results comparable to or even better than a human? Where does the quality bar sit for you with this particular content?

Speed and efficiency: Is using AI faster and more efficient? The answer to this is almost always yes at face value, that’s the point of AI in content creation, right? But, factor in the human edit and review on top of the AI output - sometimes this can take longer than using no AI to begin with.

Cost: Does using AI save costs?

Ethics/legal: Is there a risk that content shared by AI could be owned by someone else and infringe upon copyrighted or trademarked material? Have you got measures in place to check for this? Do you need to share your own IP with AI, and have you checked the AI terms and conditions related to ownership?

Accuracy: Is the research or written content accurate, or does it include false information? AI is known to make things up and you simply can’t take facts that it provides you with without verifying further.

Now, let’s take a closer look at where AI is most effective in the content marketing process. We’ll break it down into three stages:

• Ideation and planning
• Creation
• Editing and quality checks

1. Using AI for ideation and planning

Before you put pen to paper or even think of hitting record for your next video or podcast, good planning can help you save time later on. It’s also a stage to get clear on your goals for a piece of content.

But could you save even more time with AI?

AI can help spark new ideas for content – a big help when you’re stuck in blank paper hell and don’t know where to start. Pop details about your brand, audience, or content marketing aims into AI and ask for a list of blog post ideas with outlines, new video ideas, social media posts or brand-new content marketing strategies.

If you want to speed up the ideation and planning stages, AI can kickstart the creative thinking process. For instance, not only can you ask AI for brand-new ideas, you can ask it to suggest improvements to existing strategies or ideas too. Think of it like a little virtual assistant you can bounce ideas off.

For the best results, getting the prompting right is everything. The more specific you are when asking AI for help, the better the output because you only get out what you put in. Think of it like a recipe. You wouldn’t just use one ingredient and expect a feast. So don’t use a vague, one-line prompt and expect great results!

Our verdict: AI can be hugely beneficial when it comes to research, ideation and planning.

2. Using AI for content creation 

Now, this is where you finally get the ball rolling after all that planning and start writing, filming, recording, or designing all your content. It’s usually the most difficult and time-consuming stage of the content creation journey. So naturally, many of us are asking… should you use AI to create content?

We know that AI is capable of writing content, designing original images, and creating music and voices. The question is, how good is AI at these things? And how does it compare with human experts?

There’s no doubt that what AI is capable of today is impressive - and it’s improving by the day. In fact, who’d have ever thought just a few years ago that we’d be seeing stories, articles, images, and videos fully created by artificial intelligence with tools available to everyone.

Impressive, yes—but is it impressive enough?

Before you start using AI in your content creation, there are a few things to consider…

What to consider before using AI for content creation

Quality of AI-generated content is hit or miss

Now that generative AI has been around for a while, we’re getting pretty good at spotting AI written content on social media or in blog posts, etc.

AI-generated images and videos are everywhere too, and often very obvious. Those hands with six fingers are always a dead giveaway!

But sometimes it’s as simple as missing out context in written content or strange zooming on videos that just looks odd even if you can’t put your finger on what exactly is wrong.

The sentiment surrounding purely AI-generated content in B2B is often pretty negative.

Does anyone really want to read bland, robotic AI-written content? Do AI images and videos feel a little disingenuous?

The biggest risk here is that relying too much on AI will result in poor quality content. And trust us, that’s just about the worst thing you can do for your brand. Poor quality content harms audience trust, engagement rates, and makes driving results an up-hill battle.

Ethical and legal considerations

A big debate in the world of gen AI right now is what the legal and ethical implications are of using AI in content creation. Since the large language models that gen AI is built on are trained on other people’s work (taken from various sources all over the web), is it right to use that to create our own content?

It’s hard to know exactly what the datasets are based on, and whether copyrighted material is used to train an AI. Using fully AI-generated creative work in your marketing could land you in hot water if you’re not careful.

Read more about the legal and ethical risks of using in our blog Dangers of Using AI in Content Marketing.

AI may damage content effectiveness

Creating content is one thing and AI can do that, but creating effective content is a whole other ball game.

You want content that will be effective and resonate with your audience so that they share it, engage with it, or make a buying decision. That’s why it’s so important to keep your primary goal in mind throughout the content creation process, whether it’s boosting brand awareness, driving sales, or building trust with your target audience.

Before using AI in content creation, ask yourself if this is the most effective way to represent your brand and drive results. Or is it likely to do the opposite?

Using AI to create long-form vs. short-form content

With that all in mind, let’s look a little closer at the different types of content you may create. We’ll share our verdict on how effective AI is.

Can AI help with long-form content creation?

Here we’re talking blog posts, videos, podcasts, reports, ebooks, etc.

AI can write long copy for you, script podcasts and videos, and create audio for podcasts. It can do these things more quickly and cost-effectively than humans.

BUT - our verdict is that it shouldn’t be used for full content creation, especially in the case of long-form or thought leadership content. 

Check out AI vs. Human Writing: Who Writes the Most Effective Content for more of our views on this, and the distinction between using AI for thought leadership content and using AI for commodity/functional content.

Long-form content is where you can really make your expertise shine, solve problems, show industry authority, and encourage engagement from your audience. 

Quality plays a really important role in this type of content, so you should not outsource to AI.

Our verdict: Avoid using AI for long-form content creation. 

Can AI help with short-form content creation?

AI might not be able to replace humans when it comes to longer content, but what about short-form content like social media copy, video clips from longer videos, or podcast show notes?

Again, AI can write all your short-form written content like social media copy, podcast show notes, and YouTube descriptions. But the main thing to ask yourself is what do you want the copy to achieve?

For social media copy, you want to spark engagement, get people thinking, drive action, and position yourself as an industry leader.

In those cases, AI falls short of human-written content. It struggles with creating a good mix of long and short sentences, which disrupt the pace of a story and its effect on the audience.

For social media teaser videos that you pull from longer form podcasts or videos, yes, AI can select clips for you and even edit them. But a human will always have a better understanding of what makes an effective video clip on social media.

Humans can pick clips that work well on their own, offer value, and are professionally edited to remove things like mistakes, audio issues, or unnecessary pauses. On the other hand, AI results here can be a bit hit or miss. AI might cut the wrong things out, crop videos incorrectly, or pick clips of mindless rambling vs. strong, value-led content that sparks engagement. It might take out the sentiment of your content and even remove pauses that help with pacing and emphasis on key topics.

However, when it comes to “commodity content” or “functional” content, AI can be good. With something like a YouTube description, your main goal is to provide context and a summary. If you provide content that you have already created yourself, and ask AI to summarize it with a very clear prompt, AI usually does a good job.

Examples include:

• Creating meta descriptions/titles for blog posts
• YouTube descriptions
• Podcast show notes (with some human editing, of course)
• Planning blog posts including writing outlines or suggesting headings/titles

Our verdict: Avoid using AI for short-form content that seeks to drive specific results. Use it (with human editing and input) for functional/summary content.

For ideas on where to use AI for content creation and where to avoid it, check out our article on 10 Ways to Use AI to Create Authentic Content.

3. Using AI for content editing and quality checks

Whilst AI has its limitations when it comes to creating content, it can come into its own by reviewing content and making suggestions for improvement.

Obviously, it can help with things like spelling/grammar checks and reviewing tone.

You can ask generative AI to look at a blog post you’ve written and suggest areas for improvement to make it more engaging, more authoritative, more in a particular tone, etc.

You can provide your keywords and ask for ways to make it more optimized for SEO.

When editing podcasts, tools like Descript can cut out long pauses between words or remove filler words that disrupt the flow of a podcast conversation. Although we ask you to proceed very carefully with putting commands like this on autopilot, the results are rarely good.

There are video and image editing tools that use AI to detect things like noise, blur, or poor lighting and automatically adjust them to enhance the quality of the content.

Rather than manually adjusting content, AI can help to speed up this process significantly. And by using AI as a kind of virtual assistant, it can help you improve content where needed, even providing detailed reasons for its suggestions.

Just make sure everything is checked carefully by a real person!

Our verdict: AI is very good for helping you to review content.

In summary, there are lots of great use cases for AI in content marketing. It can help to streamline and speed up the content creation process, suggest new angles and ideas, plus help you check and suggest areas for improvement.

Where AI falls short is in the creativity and nuance of great content. Humans with a unique understanding of your brand can develop content that resonates with your target market, tells engaging stories, and builds trust.

That’s why we recommend an approach that combines the best of both worlds – the power of AI joining forces with the creativity and talent of a human content team.

We suggest you start by deciding what you will and won’t use AI for. Consider its strengths and limitations, and then design your process for using AI in content marketing, focusing on the planning and editing stages.

Another key part is training your team to use AI effectively. Prompting has become a bit of an art form these days, and it’s easy to get it wrong and end up with poor results. So spend some time researching how to prompt effectively and test out detailed prompts until you get results that really help your content creation process.

Thanks for reading. We hope you found this helpful, let us know on LinkedIn.

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