How I Leverage AI to Write Content That Doesn't Suck
How to rapidly develop content with AI as your writing partner
This week, I’m publishing an update to my most popular LinkedIn article on creating compelling content. I hope you enjoy this one - it’s a fan favorite in my circles …
At a prior company, we developed a secret weapon for generating leads: rapid development of high-quality content. Not the stuff that Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools produce their own – solid content that piqued curiosity and delivered value to our prospects. It was the backbone of our lead generation strategy. As a data and analytics firm, we knew our content performed by measuring it and tracking activity on a real-time dashboard. We saw the number of leads and the value of opportunities grow as we iterated on the process. As our numbers grew, we realized we had something special.
But It Was a Heavy Lift.
Unfortunately, generating great content isn’t always easy. In full transparency, it was a very heavy lift in the early stages. Creating great content often takes a long time, even for the most experienced writers. And great content is usually expensive to develop when you look at the time commitment from the folks who contribute the knowledge.
We knew that the investment in great content was core to our marketing strategy, so we doubled down and created a system to help us simplify the process and pull some of the cost out of it. I call this process the Compelling Content framework.
We Built a Framework for Creating Compelling Content.
This framework helped us create unique content at half the cost and half the time we spent developing it. We created a significant competitive advantage by leveraging a combination of AI tools, like Chat GPT and good old-fashioned human intelligence. But, to be clear, the most essential part of our process is the latter.
This article reviews the Compelling Content Framework and explains how to leverage AI to gain a competitive advantage.
What is Compelling Content?
First, let’s define Compelling Content. For our Marketing team, Compelling Content was anything that delivered marketing qualified leads (MQL) or leads that met our target market personas. These leads typically required long-term nurture but often moved into sales-qualified leads (SQL) within a few months. Our Compelling Content took on many forms: Blog posts, social downloads, white papers, lead magnets, and articles. While we also created video and podcast content, the Compelling Content process focuses on the written vehicles that consume more time and cost to develop. We knew that our prospects consumed written content in various forms, so we focused on the ones that performed best.
Creating this type of content isn’t a novel concept. Most mature marketing groups include content development as a staple of their marketing plans. However, creating exceptional content takes most organizations a long time.
Think About the Process.
First, you have to find a Subject Matter Expert (SME). This is typically someone who possesses exceptional knowledge about the topic at hand. They always have a unique viewpoint, have spent years doing it, and have a very high level of competency. Finding this person is arguably the most critical step in the entire process.
These types of people are critical to the process and often don’t like to write or don’t have the time to write. And this is where the challenge lies for most organizations – getting the brilliance that SMEs possess from “noggin to screen" as quickly and effectively as possible.
But Don’t AI tools like Chat GPT Write the Content for You?
Not really. AI can help you clean up and augment your content. In fact, AI is included at a later stage in the framework. However, AI tools fall way short of creating compelling content.
Try using Chat GPT or your favorite AI software to help you write an article. Now look at the output and ask yourself these questions:
Did the AI come back with a unique response different from what others already say? If not, the content is not compelling.
Did the AI response match the tone and voice used across other content your organization has published? If not, you’ve got more work to do.
Does the AI response deliver something truly valuable to your audience? Again, if not, the content is not compelling and probably won’t perform well.
Here’s the response I received when I asked my favorite AI tool to write this article:
For our team, AI tools weren’t helpful for initial ideation. Instead, we created the Compelling Content framework to help us provide more valuable content. We then layered in AI to help us refine and speed time to completion.
The Compelling Content Framework
Here’s the framework that we used to create Compelling Content …
Step 1: Find your Subject Matter Expert (SME). This is without a doubt the most crucial step in the process. Without original thinking, proven expertise, and real value, your content will not deliver and is not worth the time invested to create it.
Don’t expect your SME to want to write or even have the time to commit to writing your compelling content. Instead, ask them to have a discussion, an interview, that will take 30 to 45 minutes.
Spend some time with your SME and brainstorm what the compelling content will look like. Answer some basic questions:
Who is your audience? Who will find value in this content?
What form will it take? An article, Blog, Lead Magnet or something else?
What’s the value to your audience? What will they learn?
What will it deliver? A guide, how-to, examples, helpful info, etc.
What are the internal objectives for the content? (Leads, Signups, etc.)
Step 2: Prepare an Outline. Take on the heavy lifting by thinking through what you want the piece's structure to look like. Put together a list of questions that you will ask your SME so that you can collect all of the information needed to form your first draft of the compelling content.
Consider using a tool like Miro to help mindmap the content blocks. I love using this tool during meetings to jot down notes and ideas in real-time with my SMEs.
This is the ideation process, and it’s critical to your success. Make sure that you are capturing more than you will use.
Step 3: Interview Your SME. Don’t ask your SME to write a single word. Schedule a meeting using your online meeting platform. Use a platform like Zoom that allows you to record your meeting.
While you can make this informal, capturing it with a professional background, good sound quality, and appropriate attire is often helpful so you can leverage video clips as digital assets to supplement your content.
Step 4: Transcribe the audio from your interview. If your conferencing platform supports it, download the transcription of your interview. If a transcription is unavailable, tools like Sonix.ai are very good at transcribing the audio files that can be downloaded directly from your conference platform. The transcriptions from clean audio are usually relatively high with 95% or better accuracy.
Step 5: Create your first draft. Using your transcription, drop your SME answers into each section. Don’t worry about grammar or even complete sentences at this point. We’re focused on the first draft at this stage.
Step 6: Leverage AI. Armed with your draft, go into your favorite AI tool and ask it to help you reword the content. The goal is to clean up apparent errors, complete sentences, and get to your second draft. Use AI for alternate titles. Go section by section to get ideas and ideate block by block.
This is where AI shines, saving you a ton of time while helping you iterate your content.
Step 7: Clean It Up. At this stage, you’ll want a human in the loop. You must align the piece with your style, voice, and tone. Some of the words that your AI chooses may not be on brand. Here, consider using a writer who knows your style. Or consider a service like Draft that can quickly clean up and turn your pieces. Typically, the hours required for this work are low given that the backbone and main value points are already present.
Step 8: Add Some Sizzle. You’ll want to visualize some of the elements in your compelling content to make it easier to consume. Leverage a graphic artist that is familiar with your look and feel. I’ve leveraged services like Upwork with a lot of success.
Step 9: Put It All Together. This is the fun part. Once the content is in place, drop in your images, tables, and graphics. We leveraged a designer for this step, but it’s also reasonably simple to use tools like Google Docs, Word, or even InDesign to get professional-looking documents.
Step 10: Measure and Benchmark. Based on the goals identified in Step 1, measure the results and compare them to your goals or existing benchmarks. Continue to refine your ideation process described in Step 2. The more you know about your prospects and clients, the better your compelling content will perform.
How to Use Compelling Content
Creating helpful, informative content was critical to our marketing efforts. Following the general framework above will help you get there. Once your content is ready to go, offer this content at no charge to your target audience. Gate it behind a form on your website to ensure that you get returns in email addresses. For your existing prospects, leverage your Compelling Content in nurture campaigns to help move marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads faster.
Reach out if you’d like assistance creating your compelling content. I focus on growth marketing and go-to-market activations, including Content Development, Email Campaigns, Social automation, CRM Optimization, and Analytics.