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Email marketing is one of the oldest and best tricks in the communication playbook, and newsletters are an excellent tool for brand awareness, audience engagement, and lead nurturing. But newsletter planning is challenging. Coming up with and delivering fresh ideas...
Sep 15, 2024
In today’s fast-paced digital world… Just kidding. Forget the clichés. I want to show you how to use AI marketing tools in a way that doesn’t make you (or your content marketing strategy) sound like everyone else.
When used strategically, AI platforms help you become more efficient and scale content marketing efforts. They also provide data-driven insights that enable faster and more accurate decision-making. All this leaves room for creativity, which, let’s face it, does not yet come easy to natural language generation tools.
An AI content strategy refers to using artificial intelligence technology to plan, create, distribute, and optimize content. It involves leveraging AI tools to research your target audience and relevant topics, analyze data, generate insights and ideas, and automate content publication. This approach streamlines marketing activities, enhancing efficiency, content personalization, and speed of execution — all while maintaining quality.
I’ve seen firsthand how AI-powered content creation can transform a digital marketing workflow.
One of the most significant benefits is the efficiency it brings. AI tools can do the heavy lifting for you, such as researching, summarizing, drawing insights, and writing initial drafts.
Let’s clarify one thing: AI does not (and should not) do all the work for you.
If you’re an experienced content marketer creating nuanced content strategies, an AI prompt alone won’t generate a satisfactory result. But it will help you move faster through certain steps and take over some of the more time-consuming tasks.
One of the main ways I’ve used AI so far is to help scale content production. There are specific tasks where AI is a no-brainer. For example, I can’t even begin to calculate the time I’ve saved by using AI tools to transcribe podcasts – and that’s just one of the ways I’m using the technology.
Analytical processing is another one of AI’s biggest strengths. AI tools can go through vast amounts of data at lightspeed, identifying trends and patterns that form the basis of great content strategies.
In essence, an AI content strategy is no different than your human-generated-over-many-cups-of-coffee content plan. If you’ve “been there, done that” before, you know what to request from AI tools to formulate a winning blueprint.
Let’s recap what the main elements of an effective content strategy are and see how AI can make your job easier and keep your caffeine intake at a healthy level:
AI tools provide insights that help you better understand and segment your target audience by analyzing demographics, behaviors, and preferences. Platforms such as Planable or HubSpot can integrate with your social media accounts, CRM systems, or other data sources to automatically access user data. Alternatively, you can input data manually in tools like ChatGPT, such as customer surveys or web analytics, to identify patterns and audience segments, ensuring your content is relevant to each group.
AI tools from platforms like BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, or SEMrush can help you quickly identify content gaps and generate new ideas. These tools perform keyword research, analyze trending topics, and evaluate competitor content. By entering your niche or target keywords, these tools provide you with a list of content ideas that are fresh and engaging. You can then use these insights to populate your content calendar for the upcoming months, ensuring that your strategy remains relevant and competitive.
AI writing assistants like Grammarly, Claude, or Jasper help with drafting, editing, and optimizing content. You can streamline the writing process, enhance readability and conciseness, and ensure you follow SEO best practices.
AI-powered tools like Planable, Buffer, or Hootsuite ensure consistency by automating content scheduling and distribution across multiple channels. These tools integrate with various platforms and allow you to set up a content calendar and automate posts, ensuring that your messaging is consistent and timely. Additionally, they analyze performance metrics, providing actionable data that you can use to continuously improve and refine your distribution strategy.
Imagine you’re launching a new fitness app and want to create a compelling content marketing strategy using AI.
Let’s break down the process into actionable steps.
First thing first: figure out what you want to achieve with your content. Define what you’re aiming for so you can plan your content strategically and measure results.
For the fitness app example, are you looking to increase app downloads, improve user engagement, or boost social media followers? You might set a goal to increase app downloads by 20% in six months. Establish KPIs like website traffic, social media engagement, and downloads to track progress.
Focus on setting SMART goals so your AI content strategy is focused and measurable.
The most popular and generic AI tools might not be the best fit for your particular needs, so don’t rush to pay the subscription only to be disappointed later.
First, understand the types of tools that work best for content strategy and creation. Popular categories include AI content creation tools, SEO tools, and social media planning and analytics tools.
For example, content creation tools such as AI writing assistants help draft and edit engaging blog posts and social media posts. Planning tools streamline content creation and publishing, while analytics tools provide insights into audience behavior and content performance.
Make a list of tools and include your team in the selection process. Ensure you’re supporting their activities rather than adding complexity to their tasks.
Understanding your target audience’s needs, wants, and desires is essential to creating relevant, engaging content.
Coming back to the fitness app example, you can use AI tools to gather insights about your fitness app users’ preferences, behaviors, and demographics. Social media analytics tools can reveal which types of workout content your audience engages with the most. You might find that morning workout tips and quick exercise routines are popular among your followers.
Leveraging these insights allows you to create targeted content, increasing engagement and helping you stand out from the crowd.
Coming up with fresh content ideas constantly can be challenging, but AI simplifies the process.
The best part of AI tools is that you can research ideas without running out of fuel. AI analyzes social media trends and existing competitor content and suggests relevant topics that you may not think of.
For example, get a list of the latest fitness trends, effective workout routines, and nutrition tips, which you can then develop into useful content with the endorsement of in-house or external fitness experts.
An AI analysis might highlight a growing interest in home workouts and suggest creating a series of home workout guides. This ensures that you remain relevant and competitive.
With your content ideas ready, AI can assist in the creation and optimization process.
AI writing tools help draft blog posts, social media updates, and video scripts. Just remember to edit them thoroughly to maintain a consistent tone of voice and quality standard.
What I find particularly useful are AI’s editing features that improve correctness, readability, and conciseness. It’s not about standardizing content but about bringing it to readers in its most efficient form.
AI tools also analyze your content and suggest improvements to boost search engine rankings because, at the end of the day, discoverability is key to content success. AI helps with keyword optimization, meta tags, and structure enhancements so your content rises to the top.
AI streamlines content distribution and helps you measure performance more accurately.
Let’s say your fitness app isn’t yet generating revenue, so you can’t afford a big team to support content publishing and analytics — but you still need to build a consistent online presence and understand results to improve. Luckily, you live in the AI era.
AI-driven scheduling tools automate the posting process, ensuring your fitness content goes live at optimal times across various platforms.
Once your content is live, AI analytics tools monitor engagement, track performance metrics, and — the best part — provide actionable insights. For example, you might discover that workout videos perform better on Instagram Reels than on YouTube Shorts or TikTok, allowing you to focus and get the best results even with limited resources.
AI can greatly improve marketing efficiency and help you stand out — when leveraged effectively. By effectively, I mean that you must match the tools to your purpose and use them to support, not replace your efforts.
Below are a few of the best tools I’ve used that can streamline any content marketers’ workflow, boost productivity, and ensure a constant flow of relevant, engaging content.
Planable is an excellent tool for social media marketers, offering a range of features designed to simplify and enhance social media management.
One of its standout features is the AI writing assistant, which can generate text based on existing images or videos, fulfill specific requests, or improve existing copy. This includes using AI prompts for social media to create engaging captions and posts quickly and efficiently, even on your least creative days.
Instagram caption generator in Planable
In addition to its AI capabilities, Planable offers robust scheduling features, allowing you to plan and automate your social media posts across multiple platforms. The content calendar feature provides a visual overview of your posting schedule, ensuring you maintain a consistent and well-organized presence online.
Content calendar in Planable
Collaboration is another key strength of Planable. It enables team members to work together seamlessly, with features for comments, feedback, and approvals integrated directly into the platform. This streamlines the workflow, reducing the back-and-forth that typically comes with content creation and approval processes.
Content collaboration and approval in Planable
Planable also offers useful analytics to track the performance of your social media content and get insights into what works and what doesn’t.
Social media analytics dashboard in Planable
You can continuously refine and optimize your social media strategy without switching platforms because Planable is a comprehensive tool that covers all aspects of social media management.
Jasper is a powerful AI tool specifically designed for creating long-form content.
Jasper uses advanced natural language processing to produce coherent, well-structured blog posts, articles, and reports.
The platform works by users selecting a template, providing a topic, setting parameters (tone, audience), and generating content.
What sets Jasper apart is its adaptability in terms of tone of voice and ability to create detailed, informative content that resonates with readers. Its AI-driven insights help identify relevant keywords and optimize content for SEO, enhancing visibility and reach.
This AI content creation tool isn’t perfect (none of them are), and the content still requires editing, but it reduces a lot of the effort that goes into first drafts and improving SEO performance.
ChatGPT, the First of Its Name, is still AI king in terms of popularity. It’s a versatile platform that excels at researching and brainstorming ideas, supporting various parts of the content creation process.
Its conversational AI capabilities make it a great assistant for generating concepts, outlines, and rough drafts. You can use ChatGPT to explore different angles for your content, ask questions to gain new perspectives, and refine your ideas.
While it might not produce polished final drafts, it can help jumpstart human creativity, and that in itself is not a small task.
Whether you’re working on blog posts, social media updates, or banner ads, ChatGPT can save you time, provide valuable insights quickly, and create content you can improve.
Notion AI is a tool that helps content creators with planning and organization.
It was created as an all-in-one workspace that combines notes, databases, and task management and collaboration tools. With the addition of AI capabilities, Notion has become more effective in managing content processes.
Notion AI assists with planning by generating content outlines, organizing ideas, and setting up workflows. It can analyze notes, provide summaries, and automate repetitive tasks, such as tagging and categorizing content.
Its collaboration features, such as real-time updates and progress tracking, help content teams work faster and better.
While Notion is great for staying organized and productive, it’s not a tool dedicated to content marketing, so you might be missing some features like direct content publishing and analytics.
In your daily struggle to produce high-quality content, you’ll probably need more than one tool to fulfill your needs. Luckily, most tools offer a free version or trial, so you can test them and see for yourself which one helps you most.
Don’t make the mistake of relying too much or on too many AI platforms. Favor tools that have multiple capabilities while still allowing you to remain flexible and scale as needed.
Implementing an AI content strategy comes with challenges that we as content creators are still figuring out how to solve. But being aware of them is an important first step.
Keep these challenges in mind and address them proactively to avoid common pitfalls and successfully leverage AI to create a great content strategy:
AI-generated content may lack the nuance and creativity of human writing. To overcome this, use AI for initial drafts and ideation, then refine and edit the content to add a human touch.
Introducing AI tools can disrupt established processes and can be met with resistance. Train your team on new tools and gradually incorporate AI into your content workflow. Choose AI tools that are intuitive and seamlessly support existing activities without burdening your team.
AI’s efficiency depends on the data it analyzes. Poor data quality sometimes leads to flawed insights and inaccurate content. Be sure to double-check sources and data and edit AI-generated content with a critical eye.
AI writing tools are powerful assets to accelerate your business growth. By mastering prompts, experimenting with different tools, and aligning AI capabilities with your marketing goals, you can use them to their full potential.
Want to see AI in action for your social media planning and execution? Try Planable’s AI features for free and see how easy it is to create and distribute your first 50 engaging posts.
Sabina is a freelance writer with 15+ years of experience in the MarCom industry. Her to-do list includes helping people write better and businesses sell more through content. She is the host of Zest, a podcast that brings writing within listeners’ reach.
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