Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT are taking the world of marketing by storm… more by hurricane, really.
It seems like everyone and their great-grandmother is using AI to write their content these days.
But is it really a good idea? Or is it a gigantic waste of time?
Are you actually making things worse by putting AI-generated content on your website?
The answer is… maybe. But like most tools, AI has its uses, benefits, and drawbacks.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- AI regularly makes up facts—this is called hallucinating
- Unless you’re paying for premium models, they may not have access to up-to-date information
- AI can often go off the reservation entirely, like the time Google’s AI told people to eat rocks and pizzas made with glue
While it’s likely these problems will be improved, the takeaway is that AI content needs to be carefully and closely edited before being published.
Here’s the most common question we get: does Google penalize AI-written content? This is only really important for folks creating content for SEO purposes (blog posts and social media posts).
AI-Generated Content for SEO Isn’t Explicitly Banned by Google
So, perhaps unsurprisingly for a business that is selling its own generative AI tool, Google isn’t explicitly banning AI-generated content.
However, they do say this:
“Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.”
They also say this:
“However content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T.”
You can read their entire guidelines here.
If you look at any output from most AI tools these days, they’re actually pretty good, but it’s questionable how original it is.
These AI tools are basically slot machines—every new word is just something the tool has predicted as the most likely next word.
It’s just writing sentences by predicting one word after another after another based on tons of data that’s been fed into it—it’s not actually thinking.
Which means that AI-written content will tend to follow patterns. If you have your AI tool write an article, and a competitor asks for basically the same thing, the outputs will be very similar… and NOT very original.
On top of that, it’s also questionable how interesting that content actually is. Boring AI content is unlikely to keep people on the page.
Which means that it might not have been worth writing at all.
Using AI for SEO-focused Content Probably Is a Waste of Time
If your goal is to rank on Google, and you’re using AI to put out larger volumes of content, you’re probably wasting your time.
The only way it really makes sense is if you have someone looking at every single piece of content, editing it to make it original and interesting, and only then posting it.
That takes time—sometimes, a lot of time. Most professional writers aren’t going to save a ton of time using these tools. It often takes as long for them to improve the AI-written content as for them to just write it well themselves.
But what we’ve seen over and over is that this is NOT what’s happening. Usually, there’s no professional writer involved at all.
Instead, a business owner is replacing a professional writer with AI. And they’re not taking the time to review or edit the content. They’re just posting it.
Which is almost certainly resulting in unoriginal, boring content that won’t rank.
However, there’s a deeper danger—your brand could be harmed by publishing this kind of content.
Protect the Brand… or Lose Customers
At the other end of everything you publish is a person who might buy from you (or who already does).
What is that person going to think if they see you suddenly pumping out a massive amount of low-quality articles or social media posts?
Or worse, articles that say things that aren’t true? Reference events or facts that don’t exist? Or just plain give bad information or advice?
They’re going to think less of your brand.
And they’re going to wonder why they should buy anything from you at all.
Not only is AI-written content that’s not closely edited and optimized to sound like you going to FAIL to improve your search rankings…
It’s going to actively push away existing customers who might actually like your human-written content.
It’s literally better to publish nothing at all than a ton of AI-written content that sounds boring, robotic, or frankly, just not like you.
That’s another danger—you rely on AI-written content, you stop writing yourself, and you start sounding like… someone else. Some other brand.
Some brand your customers don’t feel connected to or interested in.
Well, What the Hell is AI-written Content Good for Anyway?
Blog posts and social media posts aren’t the only type of content a business needs—you need plenty of internal-facing content too, and
AI can help you write everything from internal emails and newsletters to employee-facing FAQ pages, employee guidebooks, instructions, and more.
Employees are more forgiving, especially if your internal content isn’t great in the first place (or doesn’t exist at all).
It helps if you’re upfront about using AI to create this kind of content.
However, there’s another really great use for AI that many people miss…
Use AI to Generate Ideas
AI tools are actually really, really helpful as sounding boards.
For example, it’s not great to ask them to write an entire article, but what if you put this prompt into your tool?
“I’m writing an article about how to cut your grass in Texas in the summer, but I’m struggling with the headline—can you give me some suggestions?”
Or how about this?
“I have a tool that’s not selling. Here’s a breakdown of what it does, and here’s my target audience—what are some angles I could use to market this to them?”
Or even this:
“I wrote this email, but I’m not sure it’s speaking to my employees’ pain points—could you review it and give me some feedback on how I can improve it?”
Most people don’t have knowledgeable people around them 24/7 that they can just pin down and ask questions.
And if they do, they’re probably paying them to do something more valuable than answer questions.
AI tools do a fantastic job as sounding boards, giving you feedback and helping you move in the right direction.
But if you rely on it too much, you put your brand and your marketing in danger. It’s incredibly important to have content that sounds like you, that’s accurate, and that’s on-brand.
Anything less isn’t worth the time you saved by having the tool write it.
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