Thanks to AI, content creation and optimization have become more effective than ever! Generative AI, especially, has lifted the burden of producing quality content that once was highly time-consuming and energy-draining.
Speaking of generative AI, this technology has helped beyond creating written content. Some advanced AI video tools can also generate video outputs like simple animations, motion graphics, and presentation videos.
However, many content marketers make mistakes when using AI tools, leading to poor results. These mistakes range from relying too much on automation to forgetting the importance of a human touch.
The following discussion will highlight ten common mistakes content marketers make with AI and offer tips on using AI appropriately to maintain content quality. But first, let’s find out the impact of AI-generated content on a business image.
Can AI-Generated Content Harm Your Business Image?
It’s reported that 34% of companies are currently using AI, while an additional 42% are actively investigating its potential. While AI helps with content creation, not using it properly may impact your brand reputation.
This technology sometimes produces content lacking authenticity, emotional resonance, and a deep audience understanding. Results may also sound robotic, leading to customer disconnection.
Such content within your brand marketing channels can damage your brand’s credibility, engagement, and reputation. You must consider potential risks when generating content with AI. Here are some potential harms AI content can bring to your business:
- Loss of human touch where content can feel impersonal.
- May consist of inaccuracy and misinformation.
- Automated responses may result in a negative customer experience.
- Lack of creativity and originality.
- May lead to SEO penalties and lower search engine rankings.
- May lead to breaches of data privacy.
However, proper AI use can prevent these pitfalls. That’s why it’s necessary to understand some common mistakes and the correct use of AI for content marketing.
Common Mistakes When Using AI for Content Marketing
Even though using AI has risks, that doesn’t mean we can’t leverage this technology. You can still use it to discover copies, write copies, or create presentation videos. All you need to do is watch out for some common mistakes and find a balanced portion to use automated tools.
Below, we’ve handpicked ten common mistakes content marketers make when using AI, along with tips to prevent them. Let’s explore the details.
Mistake 1: Over-reliance on AI-generated content
Relying too heavily on AI-generated content can lead to a number of issues. While AI can produce large volumes of content quickly, it often lacks personalization. It may fail to add a depth of emotional nuance and can feel very generic.
Your brand must avoid content that lacks depth because it won’t go anywhere. It won’t engage audiences or drive conversions. Worse, over reliance on AI can stifle your brand’s unique voice and make it harder to build connections with audiences.
For example, if you create an explainer video with AI, the output can be very basic and may generate unnatural motions. Meanwhile, AI-generated content in written form can be very noticeable to readers due to generic structures.
Tips: To avoid this mistake, use AI only during the initial stage of content creation. For example, you can ask for idea suggestions, content outlines, or general information. At the end of the production stage, always do manual or human checks to ensure your content’s overall quality.
Mistake 2: Poor quality data input
We all know that AI algorithms rely on data to generate content. If the input data is of poor quality, outdated, or biased, the resulting content will reflect those issues. In this case, ChatGPT is a perfect example.
ChatGPT was trained on a dataset of 45 terabytes but has limited knowledge up to 2021. In other words, it was trained using information from the internet up until that year. If you ask about recent news or trends after 2021, ChatGPT may produce inaccurate results or can’t even answer your prompts at all.
When using AI, you must ensure that your tool is capable of understanding recent information. Ensuring that AI systems are fed high-quality, diverse, and up-to-date data can help you create accurate, relevant, and engaging content.
Tips: Accurate AI tools are mostly paid. If you take this issue seriously, investing in paid AI tools for content creation can be a solution. Reliable AI tools are often trained with up-to-date knowledge and will be consistently trained for further improvement.
Mistake 3: Ignoring ethical considerations
Sometimes, many are still confused about what is meant by ignoring ethical considerations. When the content consists of biases and lack of fairness that hurt a specific group, you may have ignored ethical considerations.
AI may generate biased outputs, which can be related to race, gender, age, or other demographic factors. If you don’t address this issue properly, your content may come across as controversial to audiences, leading to a loss of their trust.
Your brand must consider the ethical implications of its content to avoid damaging its reputation. In the worst cases, you may be facing potential legal consequences. So, ensure your content follows ethical considerations.
Tips: Before finalizing your content, monitor the output generated by AI. Manual or human monitor is preferable as we understand whenever content consists of controversial or biased statements. The rule of thumb is never to take AI results for granted!
Mistake 4: Lack of human oversight and evaluation
It’s necessary to always evaluate your content generated by AI, whether written or visual. Sometimes, AI produces mistakes, including punctuation and information. You may also find plagiarized content from AI.
Regular review and adjustment by human experts can catch and correct mistakes that AI might miss. This is also a way to ensure quality control by aligning content with your brand’s voice, values, and standards to maintain consistency.
Tips: Invest in writing tools like Grammarly or Writer. These tools help you avoid plagiarism and ensure your writing is readable and free of grammatical mistakes. Meanwhile, enhancing content with human creativity would be best for visual content.
Mistake 5: Failure to adapt to changing algorithms and trends
Each online platform has its algorithms and trends. These two aspects define the platform’s content preference. However, we all know that the digital ecosystem is constantly changing.
Search engines and social platforms frequently and consistently update their algorithms. If you fail to keep up with these changes, your AI-generated content might not perform well. Similarly, adjusting AI content with social media trends is no less important to stay relevant.
For example, Google prefers content that demonstrates first-hand experience. If your AI-generated content doesn’t fulfill this preference, you have a low chance of ranking on Google search engine results.
Tips: Not all AI tools understand recent updates on algorithms and trends. You need to make the ecosystem work, such as by adjusting prompts to demonstrate first-hand experience or include specific keywords naturally.
Mistake 6: Not considering the target audience in AI-generated content.
Why is understanding your target audience so important? If you deeply understand who you want to target, you can make content that resonates with them, such as addressing their pain points and aligning with their content preferences.
Some paid generative AI tools have personalization features where you can adjust your target audience, writing style, and tone. These features can help you create relevant and more personalized content to drive engagement.
It would be difficult to implement your target audience preference with free AI tools. However, it’s still possible. For example, you can use specific and detailed prompts when using ChatGPT to generate a copy for your product.
Tips: Resonating with your target audience is essential. Investing in writing tools like Jasper.AI can be a solution to include the audience preference in your content. Such tools also help you create specific copies, like those intended for product descriptions, video scripts, CTAs, etc.
Mistake 7: Using generic or repetitive content generated by AI
As mentioned before, AI can produce large volumes of content quickly, but it often lacks creativity and originality. The answers are often very repetitive, meaning they use the same words or sentence structures over and over.
If you use AI tools for a while, you’ll understand this issue. Meanwhile, repetitive content can make your brand appear dull and uninspired. This type of content can be very noticeable to audiences and may fail to drive engagement.
They may also lose interest in your brand because it lacks creativity. If this is done in the long term, it may lead to more fatal results, such as low conversion rates and sales.
Tips: To avoid this, you must add a human touch by injecting creativity. It’s always exciting to have fresh copies for your brand or campaigns. You can add emotions by adding jokes, inspirational stories, or first-hand experiences.
Mistake 8: Neglecting the importance of storytelling in content marketing.
AI can create a one-page-long story within seconds, but will it be engaging? As a marketer, you can check whether AI-generated content is engaging. Sometimes, AI tools use a similar way to start a story, which can be boring and impact the whole storyline.
To begin a story, you need a punchy beginning. Try not to be reliant on AI tools, as they cannot often weave compelling narratives that resonate on a personal level. Neglecting storytelling can make your content feel flat.
Tips: You can still use AI to develop your story, but make sure you add storytelling elements, such as personal anecdotes, relatable scenarios, and emotional appeals, to make it more memorable and impactful. Use AI to support storytelling efforts, not to replace them.
Mistake 9: Not aligning AI-generated content with brand voice and tone
Every brand has a unique voice and tone, as does your brand. Your brand voice, through choice of words and a specific tone, reflects your brand’s personality and values. You also designed your brand voice based on the target audience’s demographic.
AI-generated content might not always align with this voice, which can lead to inconsistencies. Meanwhile, not being consistent with your brand voice can confuse your audience and disrupt their experience with your brand.
Tips: To prevent this issue, it’s essential to fine-tune AI tools to understand and replicate your brand’s specific voice and tone. Regular review and editing by human team members can ensure the content remains consistent with your brand identity.
Mistake 10: Ignoring the need for SEO optimization in AI-generated content
SEO practices are always evolving. An optimization strategy you use today may no longer be relevant tomorrow. At the same time, your generative AI can’t always catch up with the recent trends, making your content lack optimizations.
Ignoring SEO can result in challenging situations, such as lower website rankings and visibility on search engines or social media. Your brand may also fail to drive organic traffic, generate leads, and make sales.
Tips: As a content marketer, you must be aware of the latest SEO strategies. Moreover, you must ensure that AI tools are equipped with up-to-date SEO guidelines so your content is regularly reviewed and optimized for search engines.
More Tips
76% of AI-skilled marketers leverage generative AI to craft content and draft compelling copy. While you can always allocate a budget for AI tools to create content, also always monitor the position of your keywords to understand how users are finding you in high positions in search engines. With TrueRanker you can easily track your SEO efforts and see the position of your posts or articles.
Meanwhile, a top-tier content management tool helps you optimize your content on online channels, whether finding the best time to post or conducting keyword research. Even though you need to spend more on budgets, they can positively impact your business in the long run.
Also, consider these more tips on using AI for content marketing:
- Train AI models by providing AI tools with specific examples of high-quality content from your brand.
- Blend AI with human creativity to drive strategic visions and storytelling.
- Make sure AI usage complies with all relevant legal and ethical guidelines.
- Regularly review and analyze the performance of AI-generated content.
- Always verify the facts and data provided by AI to avoid misinformation.
Takeaway
While AI presents exciting opportunities for content marketers, it also comes with its share of challenges. Avoiding pitfalls like inadequate customization, overlooking performance analysis, and ignoring ethical considerations can significantly improve your content strategy.
Understanding the common mistakes highlighted above can help you refine content strategies and leverage AI technology to its full potential. Always check the final output before publishing, and monitor analytics to assess your content’s performance.
These efforts are necessary to refine your strategy. Besides, always pour human creativity into your written and visual content. Nothing can beat human minds when it comes to finding fresh and innovative ideas!
Author Bio
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning animation video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
