A year ago, generative AI was dominating the headlines. Meanwhile, everyone was chuckling at images of their future babies and algorithmic artistry that made them look like the Night King. Some even tried to ask ChatGPT out.

It was all fun and games, but let’s face it: At the back of our minds, everyone was wondering about these emerging glimpses of an uncertain future.

For content marketers in particular, this led to either an unparalleled state of panic or a sublime moment of relief. The latter was eventually stunted because who is AI anyway and why is “replacement” coming up so often these days?

To put it plainly: We’re all in the same boat. Except for Elon Musk. He is presumably on a spaceship with robots serving him coffee and suggesting best practices for his upcoming intergalactic gymnastics routine.

AI in Content Marketing: A Reality Check [Current Status + Best Practices in 2024] — Spotted! I knew it. Ironically, I generated this image (and the rest of the images throughout this post) using Canva Magic Studio. A fun endeavor indeed.

Musk isn’t a content marketer, though, so this should be irrelevant. At least I hope it is?

Exactly; even my words are dripping with anxiety.

The unknown has always been scary, and history is littered with disruptive inventions that initially caused unease before they became indispensable.

Even electricity didn’t have an easy beginning because people were worried about the potential dangers of this mysterious force. Eventually, the only justified worries remained those of poets who thought electric lights were less romantic than gaslights; because, seriously, aren’t they?

Generally, noteworthy technological advancements often trigger uncertainty and resistance at first. It’s this initial trepidation, however, that gives way to acceptance.

Over time, people become familiar with the side effects and the benefits these innovations bring to their lives and can ultimately use them to their advantage.

So, if you’re currently a skillful content marketer with AI-anxiety, you’re on the right path, and I’m glad you’re here to take it one step further. We’ll cover:

AI in Numbers: The Current State of Generative AI in Marketing
AI Best Practices: Turning Generative AI from a Competitor into an Ally
AI Beyond the Hype: The Real Deal

AI in Numbers: The Current State of Generative AI in Marketing

Seemingly overnight, AI is being deployed on an unprecedented scale today – and sometimes still outright dreaded on the same. Despite the dread, however, it's making its way through the noise and has become a vital asset for anyone involved in content marketing.

According to the 2023 State of Marketing AI report, here are some key statistics:

98% of the marketers surveyed said they’re already personally using AI in some way. That’s not exactly all of us, but it’s quite close. It also signals widespread willingness for experimentation and adoption in some capacity. In terms of using it beyond generating images of yourself in 30 years and taking ChatGPT’s advice on your next vacation, however, 29% of the respondents said it’s now part of their daily workflows, as well.
The overall sentiment is significantly optimistic, with 64% of the marketers affirming that they “have positive feelings about AI’s impact on marketing, business, and society”.
Surprisingly, 78% of respondents said their employers still offer no internal AI-focused education or training. Most marketers are learning how AI works on their own, with 35% at beginner levels, and 54% at intermediate levels. The remaining 11% are probably working with Elon Musk. That’s not a proven statistic, but it’s a pretty justified assumption to make anyway.

I find Hubspot’s State of AI Report quite revelatory, as well, as it offers key findings from 1300+ business professionals on the subject. Below are some of the most relevant statistics for individuals and teams in the content marketing realm:

Two-thirds of the marketers (63%) using generative AI to make content say it performs better than content created without it. 89% of them claim it improves content quality, and 83% say it helps them create significantly more content than usual.
Regardless of whether they use it or not, 82% of marketers say generative AI changed the way they intend to create content in 2023, with 69% deeming it crucial for their overall content strategy.

And some more truly soothing insights:

"41% of professionals in our survey are concerned about AI taking over their jobs."

I mean, isn’t it soothing to 1) realize that you’re not alone, and 2) recognize that the majority of professionals are still confident they won’t be replaced despite the jitters?

About one-third of generative AI users rely on it to get ideas or inspiration, while another third uses it to draft outlines. Meanwhile, only 25% use it to write a few paragraphs.

This indicates how to leverage this novel technology and that it can only go hand in hand with human creativity. Even using it to write a few paragraphs will require you to expand on the content generated to guarantee it’s slick and ready to strut down the content catwalk.

Based on my personal experience using ChatGPT to help me with my writing, I've found it works well to provide the bot with a paragraph I've written and ask for some rephrasing. This gives me some ideas on how to optimize it (if needed!) while ensuring it’s still infused with personality and creative flair. It also partially explains the following from HubSpot’s report:

“96% of marketers using generative AI to write copy say the need to make some level of edits to the text before it’s publish-ready."

Finally, here is an evident AI red flag to pay attention to:

"Almost half of marketers using generative AI say they’ve received information that they know is incorrect. To make matters worse, only 27% are very confident they’d know if the information was wrong."

So, dear fellows, please hold your horses. Don't let a bot undermine the credibility you've worked hard to build just because Hollywood made it seem infallible.

To get down to the nitty-gritty of these statistics, I asked ChatGPT to sum it all up.

“Marketers are widely embracing AI, with a significant portion incorporating it into their daily workflows. The overall sentiment toward AI is optimistic, despite a lack of internal AI-focused education from employers. Generative AI is proving transformative in content creation, enhancing performance and quality for a majority of users. Despite concerns about job security, many users express confidence in not being replaced by AI. The utilization of generative AI varies, with users relying on it for inspiration, drafting outlines, and limited actual content creation. The need for edits before content becomes publish-ready is common, signaling the collaborative role of humans in the creative process. A red flag emerges with almost half of AI users encountering incorrect information, highlighting the importance of cautious engagement.”

Yes, I had to keep my inner storyteller glued to her seat to resist the urge to revamp this summary and make it less bland and more dynamic.

AI Best Practices: Turning Generative AI from a Competitor into an Ally

The given facts make the importance of integrating AI into your content creation workflow as clear as day. The real question, however, remains: To what extent do you do that?

Because when it comes to using a promising yet relatively new technology that everyone is still experimenting with, striking the right chord is key to optimizing your results. So, aside from consistent experimentation, below are a few best practices for using generative artificial intelligence that could help the tech-savvy content marketers among you unlock the full potential of their content strategy.

AI in Market Analysis: Uncovering Trends in Real-Time

The ability of AI to analyze vast amounts of data in real-time sets it apart.

When it comes to market analysis, this can save you the hassle of the time-consuming traditional methods. By using AI to analyze unstructured data such as social media posts, customer feedback, and online reviews, you can promptly uncover trends and gain valuable insights. This helps your business create targeted campaigns tailored to specific audiences more efficiently, resulting in higher conversion rates and improved ROI in less time.

A key concern, however, is data quality. AI algorithms rely on clean and accurate data to provide meaningful insights. Incomplete or biased data will simply leave you with a bunch of misleading results that could heavily impact the effectiveness of your work.

To maneuver this, remember that AI is only as smart as the information it gets and that ensuring data quality is crucial for optimal results. Even then, it is still likely to miss out on subtle nuances that only human researchers can notice and interpret, so you'll inevitably need to incorporate your expertise in the process.

In other words, despite its efficiency, AI still cannot keep up with human intuition, context, and understanding (take that, ChatGPT), so a hybrid approach is the way to go.

AI in Content Creation: Maximizing Efficiency

From ideation to optimization, generative AI is your newfound ally.

Ideation: Let the Bot Spark Your Brainstorming Sessions

When it comes to ideation, using artificial intelligence is like having a brainstorming buddy that adds a unique viewpoint to your creative sessions without the endless umming and ahhing.

So, if at any point you’re grappling with coming up with ideas, feel free to unleash your weirdest thoughts and share them with the bot like no one is watching, because no one is!

Leveraging AI-generated ideas can help you make new creative links you may have previously overlooked and come up with more solid content strategies based on the information you extracted.

Research: Navigate New Topics with Rapid Insights

As a perpetually curious writer, diving into new topics to write about them is one of my favorite ways to challenge myself creatively, and AI has recently been making this a thousand times easier. It can literally give me a crash course on any topic in a matter of a few minutes, helping me pave my way into more in-depth research by providing key terminologies and important outlines to look into.

It’s important – as previously stated in the facts section – to keep in mind, however, that AI can still provide highly inaccurate information. While it’s an amazing starting point, it cannot do the work for you, and in some twisted way, this should be soothing to read.

A good piece of advice is to let it help you summarize long research papers, transcripts, or articles you believe are relevant. By doing so, you get an invaluable overview of the most important information for the content you’re creating in no time. This helps you short-circuit the research phase and speed up your content operations without compromising on accuracy and correctness.

Drafting: Overcome Blank-Screen Panic with AI-Assistance

Drafting is often about getting past the blank-screen panic stage before getting to the actual content creation. Writers will relate.

Fortunately, generative AI can help with that, too, by providing you with several prompts for an outline to work from. And if you're stuck on an introduction, which is quite common, you can always ask the AI to generate it for you and work from there. You will need to do some editing to humanize it and infuse it with flair, but it’s a good jumping-off point to maneuver a stubborn block.

Editing: Streamline Perfection with Precision Tools

When it comes to editing, AI can be a valuable scrutinizing sidekick. While it's certainly still not as proficient as a seasoned human editor, well-versed writers can use it for suggestions on overlooked areas or perspectives. This is especially true when working on technical or highly specialized subjects.

Additionally, even for the adept grammar police officers among us, typos or errors still find ways to sneak into content. Thankfully, tools like Grammarly, GoodContent by SemRush, and Hemingway now make conquering this a piece of cake.

Video and Image Generation: Leverage a Playful Pivot in Multimedia Content Production

A foolproof marketing strategy involves more than just text, of course, and generative AI has made experimenting with multimedia content easier and more enjoyable than ever.

Tools like Bing Image Creator and Stable Diffusion, for example, can create images based on text prompts. Established platforms like Canva (my all-time favorite, obviously) and Adobe Creative Cloud have image generation tools in their latest releases, as well.

For marketers looking to generate audio-visual content, a tool like Synthesia can be of tremendous assistance. Use it to create AI-generated videos and voice-overs for explainer videos, webinars, courses, and more; it still blows my mind every single time!

Please do note, however, that these tools can only do so much. They work well if your primary focus is on the text content, but they do not compensate for human creativity and the artistry they can breathe into life with their talents and expertise.

SEO Optimization: Unveil the Power of SEO Tools for Better Ranking

Tools like Google, Semrush, and Ahrefs provide marketers with efficient means to identify high-traffic, high-interest, and easy-to-rank keywords. Some tools even go the extra mile and link you to your competitors' top articles for chosen keywords and even predict keyword trends. By utilizing this information, you gain a competitive edge by approaching topics from a fresh perspective.

“Great, now I don’t have to do the tedious work anymore!”

Well, first off, if you consider this tedious work, feel free to delegate it to me because 1) I find it pretty stimulating and 2) it is by no means a substitute for good ol’ A/B testing. While it can simplify the process of getting Google to love you, constantly experimenting and tracking metrics is crucial to achieving optimal results.

AI in Data Analysis: A Hybrid Approach

After putting your content out there, you want to analyze how it performs to adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Fortunately, AI can be a pivotal tool when it comes to that, especially due to its unique ability to analyze vast amounts of data in real-time. This makes analyzing key metrics that help you identify your audience’s preferences, and behaviors a breeze - literally.

Uncovering data like bounce rates, click-through rates, and average time on page with the help of AI can help you speed up the process of tailoring your content. This allows you to keep up with your audience’s needs at every stage and stay ahead of the competition. The result? More engagement, more sales, more promptly!

“The speed and scale of these operations, combined with the team’s intrinsic customer knowledge allows us to refine messaging with a unique perspective and understand what resonates best with customers”, says Esther Flammer, chief marketing officer at Wrike.

AI Beyond the Hype: The Real Deal

It’s fair to say that AI has somewhat of an image problem, and it’s well-deserved. I mean, Hollywood had us believing for ages that robots would soon take over the world, and now these indestructible assassins are suddenly on the rise and might ultimately end up leading us to an earth-shattering apocalypse of humanity.

So, if you’re in any way a robot reading this in 2089 after the collapse of humankind, screw you.

Okay, anxiety aside.

Generative AI is NOT a replacement for human creativity. There I said it; loud and clear.

Instead, it can be utilized to enhance our creativity by providing data-driven insights and automating repetitive tasks. This can (and does by now) empower us to push the boundaries of what is achievable in content creation and content marketing. Eventually, we can deliver even more impactful campaigns in a much shorter time and drive better results with a little less stress.

A report by Gartner sums it up well:

“AI’s capacity to transform marketing is obscured by a fog of hype, but the breakthroughs are real.”

In other words, the gradual switchover or redeployment of responsibilities will eventually enable marketers to do their jobs better, but it won’t take them away.

However, the boom is just starting, and it is yet to slowly but surely transform the marketing industry. Hence, wisely integrating AI in content marketing will be determinant to your success in today’s era; and how you position yourself for this opportunity right now is the investment you’re making in your future as a content marketer.

Keep an eye out for plagiarism, AI detection, and ethical issues, and always stay in the loop with the latest updates. If you’re integrating AI into your content marketing workflow, do it thoughtfully and with caution to avoid costly mistakes.

Remember, AI is not slowing down, and that can be scary, but you aren’t slowing down either. Through constant experimentation, you will be able to elevate your content marketing strategies and workflow and use this groundbreaking technology to your advantage.

AI in Content Marketing: A Reality Check [Current Status + Best Practices in 2024]