Compelling blog content: what you can do that ChatGPT can’t

Corporate blogs are flooded with GenAI-written how-tos and explainers about how GenAI can revolutionize your marketing content – quickly, easily, and for free. Think it sounds too good to be true? We think so too.

If you’re a challenger brand, it’s not surprising that you’re attracted to these quick fixes and shortcuts to enhancing your marketing content and SEO. But all isn’t what it appears with GenAI-created outputs. ChatGPT can churn out blog content for you but it’s very generic stuff, more suited to search engine crawlers than for giving human readers something interesting and informative. As such, it’s also not really shareable content.

Granted, they are easy to do. Type in a prompt, hit Enter, do a quick edit and sanity check (probably using an AI tool), upload to your CMS, press Publish. Can all be done in the space of an hour. That’s compared to a carefully crafted op-ed or interview piece that can take a day or more to prep, write, review, and approve. So, it’s understandable that some marketers are drawn to this high-volume, low-cost approach, particularly as proving ROI from blogs can be difficult.

GenAI also writing other assets

On top of blogs, we’re seeing GenAI creation creeping into bigger, lead-generation assets. So, instead of well-planned and solidly-researched whitepapers that give unique insights and expertise, how-to PDFs are becoming common in multi-asset campaigns like supporting a hero asset from an analyst firm. From a marketing perspective this is a race to the bottom and doesn’t reflect well on your brand.

So respect your readers. If you’re in the business of selling complex IT solutions, content that’s been churned out by a GenAI won’t earn you trust or demonstrate your expertise. Any CIO who wants to know the difference between SD-WAN and SASE can put that prompt into any number of chatbots and search engines themselves and get a rudimentary response. They can follow that up with more specific questions and get plenty of basic information without having their inbox and LinkedIn newsfeed chock-full of articles cobbled together by ChatGPT.

What you can do – and ChatGPT can’t

You also need to respect your company and your brand. As a marketer, you are probably faced with reduced budgets and ambitious targets for increased numbers of likes, shares, and hits. But don’t be intimidated and pressured into taking the apparently easy option.

Because your company has invested time, money, and expertise in your products. You’ll have multiple teams that have worked on developing a new product or service and understand how it works, why it was developed, and what needs it addresses. Likewise, you have teams that work directly with customers to understand their challenges and have direct experience overcoming them in the real world. You have other teams dedicated to account and service management who understand what can go wrong with a product or service when it bumps up against real-life issues and bumps in the road.

All these valuable insights are locked into your company’s people, and your marketing content is more useful when you leverage it. GenAI doesn’t have access to this genuine insight and expert advice. ChatGPT hasn’t helped one of your customers iron out a product glitch in a practical scenario. GenAI can’t deliver authentic thought leadership from a 50-word prompt.

Aim higher

So, back to treating your audience with respect. If they’re giving you a few minutes of their valuable time to read your blogs and whitepapers or watch your videos, give them something valuable in return. Don’t take them for granted and fob them off with GenericAI outputs.

In much the same way a blatant sales pitch doesn’t resonate with informed professionals, a copy-and-paste from GenAI is disrespectful and will be spotted for what it is. In over 20 years of working in content marketing, we’ve pushed our clients to be original, innovative, thoughtful, and practical with their content – ultimately, to share their expert insights. It’s more important than ever now to think higher. Don’t take the lazy option; spend time planning and preparing your content, and ensure it is useful. Don’t just add to the deluge of inauthentic bot spew. Your brand image will thank you.

Build an arc

Once you have established your brand voice as genuine within your market, you’ll need to develop a process for extracting all those valuable insights from your experts. And that takes organization, planning, processes, and commitment. We’ve written previously about how to get started on a thought leadership program, how to make thought leadership a process, the process you need to put in place, and more. Please have a read and get something useful from them.