AI is here. We can either adapt and use the technology, or fall behind.
What a tired sentiment, right? I’m annoyed at myself for writing it. And yet…it’s true.
But I promise I’m coming at this from an angle you’re not used to. See, I’m a writer. A human writer. A human marketing writer. One who really wanted to sit here and tell you AI is useless, dumb. That it’s not helpful in creative processes. In fact, based on my early experiences with other tools, I would have told you just that.
I still believe those things about most AI tools. When it comes to punching out an article, ChatGPT’s got absolutely nothing on me. It takes more time prompting it to give me a semi-helpful output than it does just to write a dang draft myself.
There is an AI tool making a meaningful difference in my production, though. And the best part? It’s not going to take my job. It’s simply making me more productive in my job. And I strongly believe it can do the same for other kinds of marketers.
The Problem with ChatGPT and Friends
We wrote a whole article about what’s lacking with ChatGPT, so I’ll keep this brief and to my perspective. I spent a lot of time trying to make ChatGPT and other AI tools (Writer, Claude, etc.) augment my writing process — to no avail.
Here’s why:
ChatGPT cannot create novel, profound, specific content.
Newfangled built our content marketing service on the foundational principle that only novel, profound, and specific content can break through the noise. That’s still true — perhaps truer than ever as AI increases the amount of content online.
Every once in a while I’d get a usable output from an AI tool, but again, I spent way too much time prompting. And I have no interest in a career as a prompt engineer. Besides, even the usable outputs lacked originality. They never struck a compelling tone. They were (and are) never novel, profound, or specific enough to reach Newfangled’s high standards — my high standards — for content that will move the needle for my amazing clients.
Why Our Content Tool Is Different
Newfangled wasted no time on AI tools that didn’t make our jobs easier and our work stronger. Instead of fitting a square peg (hi, ChatGPT!) into a round hole (our time-tested, proven content marketing strategy), we created our own AI-driven content tool.
It’s different — and wildly better — than ChatGPT. That’s because we baked our decades of content marketing experience into the tool’s DNA. All the years we spent figuring out how to write content that addresses an audience’s pain points? That strategy is the engine of the tool.
And it doesn’t just write content. It ideates topics your audience will care about. It’s your own — my own — content marketing assistant.
The content this tool produces saves me time. It gets the nuances of my target audience and the strategic underpinnings of each topic, which enables it to provide me with a strong, well-structured draft I can then massage to perfection. It allows me to do more of what I love — write — for more clients more often, and faster.
How Our Tool Augments Your Job
Sometimes folks see a demo of our content tool and feel befuddled, wondering how it will fit into their workflows. Will it replace me or my teammates?
I don’t think so.
As a writer, it’s changed the shape of my job. It’s changed my workflow. That’s inevitable, regardless of AI. Jobs, processes…they change over time. But I am still needed. You are still needed.
Here’s how I see this tool fitting into various roles. The goal is augmenting your work, not taking it away.
Our Content Tool for Writers
I use this tool every day to draft content for my clients. Here’s what it can do:
- Serve as a thought partner, researching alternate ways to address an audience pain point.
- Draft content — blog articles, case studies, eBooks — aimed at a specific persona that accurately reflects their pain points.
- Spin up related content — emails, Google ads, social media copy — to promote the article or other asset it has drafted.
- Edit drafts given specific direction from me.
- Get me past even the most serious case of writer’s block with an article that’s 75% or more ready.
Here’s what it can’t do: Be a human.
These drafts are good. Really good. But you, the writer, are still needed to get everything across the finish line. These days, I’m a color-adder. A metaphor-maker. The quality and tone gatekeeper. I add the anecdote the CEO told me two years ago, the one AI could never know about but that makes the article shine — and my client smile.
(By the way, you know what I’m not? A prompt engineer. Thank goodness. Our tool does the prompting for me.)
This tool allows me to do more writing in less time. But I’m still a writer. My creativity and experience are still needed to make a good draft truly human.
Our Content Tool for Strategists
There’s a whole department at Newfangled devoted to content strategy. These folks are powerhouses. They know our clients’ audiences like the back of their hand. They come up with novel, profound, and specific content ideas in their sleep.
Guess what? They’re using our content tool, too. For them, it’s even more of a thought partner than it is for writers. Strategists are still needed to think through audience personas and services, but the tool helps them research these strategic parameters in real time.
One of the coolest and most unique aspects of our content tool is its content ideation abilities. Using the proprietary audience and services information, the tool suggests targeted topics at the intersection of your services and your prospects’ pain points. The strategists react to, add, and glean inspiration from these suggestions.
If you’re a content strategist, our content tool gives you bandwidth you desperately need to create more strategies, smarter, and in less time.
Our Content Tool for Editors
Our tool doesn’t hallucinate the way other AI tools do, so editors don’t need to cut entirely made up sections from drafts. And thank goodness for that. Still, here’s why editors are still needed: refinement.
You won’t find grammar errors, but you will find sentences that need fine-tuning. Your human, expert eye knows when a transition word is needed, or when a sentence is too long to please the SEO bots, even if it is technically correct.
You know when and how to add internal and external links to further boost SEO and provide a solid user experience for folks perusing the article at-hand. What’s more, you know which links are the most relevant and interesting. It’s these touches that mark the difference between AI content noise and a piece of thought leadership prospects will pay attention to.
Our Content Tool for Non-Content Marketers (Looking at You, Email and Paid Media)
Now, if you’re not a writer or content marketer of some sort, our tool is more of a magic bullet. Suddenly, you can get to a cohesive, solid article draft to feed your email, paid, social campaigns without having to (painstakingly) write it yourself.
In all of these cases, our content tool gives people time back to do more of what they love. Of what they’re good at. And giving them something new to react to and spark creativity.
Does this change the shape of your departments? Maybe. Does it change your workflows? Like we said, probably. Does it negate the need for creative humans? No.
Bonus: Our Content Tool for Solo Marketers
So far, I’ve leaned into explaining how I think our tool serves roles within an agency. This is the world I know. But what about solopreneurs and marketing consultants going it on their own? I can see this tool totally transforming what you do, too.
Imagine having a marketing assistant. That’s what our content creation tool can be for a solo marketer. It gives you the foundation of a marketing strategy and the basis for creating content. Get going faster and with the benefit of a strategic thought partner to collaborate and create with. Then, assess how your campaigns are performing in real-time with the Insight Engine so you can iterate and optimize for the best results.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Our content tool is literally getting better every day, which is awesome. Yet, I’d be lying if I said I’m never intimidated by AI and its increasing power. I have to stay grounded in what I know to be true:
- Thoughtful content marketing works.
- Effective content has to be novel, profound, and specific.
- Humans connect with humans.
Our tool makes our content marketing strategies more thoughtful by giving us a powerful research tool and something to react to and glean inspiration from. It allows me to create more content to iterate on campaigns nimbly.
It’s the last one that gives me the most hope. We will always need each other to inform, support, encourage, lift up, this work. Our roles as marketers will change again. They always do. But I don’t see a world where our human touch isn’t needed to make something good great.
It’s up to us to make new tools work for us, not the other way around. The best way to do that? Use the tool. Make it a part of your process before you’re told to. Make yourself indispensable with the tool as your sidekick. That’s what I’m doing. Let’s talk about how you can, too.
Want to see this content tool in action? We’re giving a free, live demo in a two-part webinar series starting Sept. 4th. Sign up here.