Content marketing has evolved into a necessary tactic for companies trying to draw in and keep consumers nowadays. Trust, expertise, and leads — that is what quality content does. However, creating high volumes of content is a time, effort and resource-intensive task. This is where AI comes in.

AI tools like an AI plagiarism checker or an AI content generator promise to provide faster, easier and cheaper content creation. But can they match the skill of a human writer? Will AI-generated content really engage audiences? Or does the use of AI lead to ethical and quality risks?

In this article, we’ll look at the pros and cons of using AI for content marketing (And more!) so you can make an informed decision about whether or not it’s right for your business.

The Rise of AI Content Tools

Before evaluating the impact, let’s look at some of the AI content tools now available:

• AI writers: With a few clicks, you can generate blog posts, social media captions, emails and more. Smodin, Jasper, Copy.ai, and Writesonic are all great top tools.
• SEO optimizers: Analyze content and suggest improvements to help rank higher. Examples are Frase and MarketMuse.
• Image generators: Create unique images and illustrations tailored to your content. Leading options are Canva, Deposit Photos and Getty Images.
• Analytics: Provide data and insight on content performance. Key platforms are Buzzsumo, Ahrefs and SEMrush.

These tools are being adopted faster and faster. Social Media Today reports that almost 80% of marketers are already using some type of AI to create content, and that number will keep climbing as the technology becomes more advanced.

Benefits of Using AI for Content Creation

So, what exactly is driving this growth? Let’s examine the main benefits of using AI for content marketing.

Increased Output and Productivity

The number one advantage of AI content tools is the ability to produce more high-quality content in less time.

On average, top human writers can create around 5-10 pieces of content per month. AI tools can instantly generate hundreds of blog posts, social posts, and more on almost any topic with just a few prompts.

This supercharges content production and gives brands more opportunities to attract and engage their target audience. More content means more leads and sales.

Lower Costs

Creating content in-house requires either hiring a team of writers or outsourcing the work to an agency. Both options are expensive.

AI tools allow solopreneurs and small businesses to take content marketing into their own hands without big budgets. For just $30-60 per month, you can access business-grade writing and design through leading platforms.

This makes quality content creation affordable for almost any company.

Consistent Brand Voice and Tone

Maintaining a consistent brand voice across different authors is hugely challenging when working with freelancers or agencies. This affects brand perception and trust.

AI platforms use advanced machine learning and natural language processing to mimic a company’s unique tone of voice based on previous content samples and guidelines.

This results in content that aligns much more closely with branding, style and messaging preferences.

Always Available On-Demand

Human writers have limited capacity and availability. Waiting days or even weeks for content isn’t always viable, especially when trends move fast.

AI tools eliminate bottlenecks. Once initial prompts are provided, you can generate fresh blog posts, social captions, emails, ad copy and more in seconds. This enables “always-on” content marketing to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

Data-Backed Recommendations

Creating content that actually resonates with your audience is hugely difficult, even for experienced marketing teams. More often than not, the content misses the mark.

Many AI platforms analyze multiple data sources – search trends, competitor content, social buzz, website analytics, etc. – to recommend high-performing topics and angles tailored to your brand and customers.

This takes much of the guesswork out of content planning to drive better results.

These benefits explain the rapid rise of AI content tools. However, integrating them isn’t without challenges…

Risks of Using AI for Content Creation

Like any emerging technology, AI content platforms also come with drawbacks:

Quality Control

While AI tools have come a long way, they still don’t match the skill of an exceptional human writer crafting posts tailored to brand voice and audience needs.

Often, the writing can feel disjointed or robotic, the storytelling lacks personality, and messages fail to land with the desired emotional impact. This may undermine branding rather than strengthen it.

Tight quality control is essential to refine and customize the machine-generated output.

Lack of Originality

A common complaint is that AI content is derivative, bland and forgettable. The algorithms rely heavily on analyzing and repurposing existing best-performing content.

This runs the risk of duplicated narratives around the same worn-out topics presented without a fresh take. The result is boring “commoditized” content.

Custom prompts and good editing is key to improving creativity. But human imagination and ingenuity is hard to replicate.

Potential Plagiarism

Closely related to lack of originality is the threat of plagiarism. AI tools are trained on vast datasets of existing content. While platforms have protections in place to avoid copying, it remains an area of concern.

Mimicking sentence structures and repurposing facts and figures from source content could enter gray areas regarding copyright infringement. This requires vigilance to guarantee 100% original writing.

Data Privacy Questions

Many AI platforms capture visitor data from websites, ads and social channels to analyze content performance and align with user preferences. This data can include email addresses, demographics, behavior patterns and more.

However, transparency around how this data is harvested and leveraged varies significantly. Marketers must vet providers carefully to ensure compliance with privacy legislation and avoid reputational risks.

Ethical Boundaries

As AI capabilities advance, we need clear ethical boundaries around appropriate use cases to avoid dangerous overreach. For example, using AI to spread misinformation or manipulate audiences.

Content marketers must take responsibility for how these technologies are integrated, especially when generating copy for sensitive topics like health conditions, financial services and political issues.

While risks exist, educating teams on AI best practices, establishing oversight protocols and reviewing output can help mitigate the downsides.

AI Content Marketing Strategies and Tips

Here are some proven ways brands should consider deploying AI tools right now to take their content game to the next level:

Supercharge Content Pillars & Funnels

Most content strategies are structured around key topics and customer journey stages. For example:

• Pillar 1: Attract – Beginner’s Guides
• Pillar 2: Convert – Product Benefits
• Pillar 3: Retain – User Tips & Tricks

AI platforms can rapidly generate content across all these buckets to accelerate production.

The key is to provide detailed instructions upfront, explaining tone, types of posts needed, preferred angles and content length per pillar.

With clear guidelines, machines can instantly create unlimited posts to fill out inventories for months ahead and plug gaps. This leaves writers free to focus on high-value hero content.

Expand Social and Digital PR Content

Social posts and digital PR pitches have become hugely important both for organic community building and earning backlinks from news sites.

But constantly creating unique and engaging tweets, Instagram captions, Quora answers and HARO responses is challenging.

AI tools have mastered short-form copy tailored to each channel. They can also identify trending topics and break news hooks to embed content into.

 

This provides a constant stream of shareable social and PR content to unleash.

Refresh Evergreen Lead Magnets

Most companies rely on lead magnets like ebooks, whitepapers and tip sheets to capture emails and push visitors into the funnel.

However, outdated assets that haven’t been updated in months damage credibility and conversion rates.

With AI, refreshing this evergreen collateral is simple. Just plug the existing content into the platform, and instantly, a revised draft with new stats, examples and messaging will be generated.

This allows lead-gen content to stay relevant indefinitely while saving resources.

Boost Multimedia Content Volumes

Video, podcasts, webinars and other multimedia garner great engagement as they resonate visually and verbally. But they require significant effort.

AI platforms can analyze transcripts from existing recordings and suggest related topics to produce more based on performance.

Scripts generated by machines serve as starting points for fleshing out new multimedia content faster without starting from scratch. This increases output exponentially.

Expand Localization and Translation

Translating content is essential to engaging non-English-speaking audiences. However, managing this manually across multiple languages is hugely time-consuming.

AI translation services integrate directly with sites to localize blogs, pages, videos and other assets programmatically. This breaks down language barriers at scale.

Translation quality continues improving dramatically, reducing the need for human proofreading before publishing. Expect localization volumes to boom.

Optimize With SEO Recommendations

Creating SEO-friendly content that targets buyer keywords and answers searcher intent is hugely valuable. But tough to consistently achieve.

AI analytics tools assess website pages, blog posts and other content. They then make specific wording and structure recommendations to improve findability and traffic.

This transforms good content into great content optimized to rank high organically and drive qualified visitors.

 

Implementing these strategies requires an experimental mindset. Test different AI platforms and input various samples to compare the output. Refine prompts over time per content pillar to improve quality.

Combining machine creation with human oversight ensures you scale content production exponentially while avoiding potential downsides.

5 Best Practices For Leveraging AI Content Tools

Let’s wrap up with 5 core best practices to integrate AI effectively:

Manual Review Process

Automated approval workflows are tempting but risky. Instead, manual sign-off protocols should be implemented where humans screen all machine-generated content before publishing.

Checking for plagiarism, grammar errors, brand alignment and engagement value is essential to guarantee quality control.

Custom Guidelines

Generic AI output won’t accurately reflect branding. Develop a set of custom instructions covering voice, word choices, sentence styles, format, imagery and more to tune algorithms specifically to your business.

Hybrid Approach

Based on resources, find the optimal mix of human and machine effort. Allow AI creation for raw content, then have writers refine and finalize high-value posts to add personality.

Governance Standards

Agree on ethical, creative boundaries for AI usage across teams. Also, transparency and privacy should be built around data collection to avoid compliance issues.

Continuous Improvement

Leverage analytics to assess the performance of AI content against benchmarks. Feed insights back into platform prompts and custom guidelines to progressively enhance quality over time.

Adopting these best practices will help your brand maximize the value of AI content tools now and in the future.

Over to You!

AI-powered content creation is here to stay. These groundbreaking technologies promise to make building high-quality at scale achievable for virtually any company. Marketing is forever changed.

However, risks around originality, ethics, and oversight mean striking the right balance with human creativity remains crucial. Brands can reap immense benefits by augmenting writers rather than replacing them completely.

We highly recommend experimenting with leading AI platforms like Jasper, Copy.ai, Canva, SEMRush and more with an open mind. Follow the strategies, use cases and best practices outlined to accelerate results exponentially.

Just remember, content is about resonance and relationships, not just volume and velocity. Technology supports that, but ultimately, your ability to connect with customers authentically drives long-term growth.