Sarah Damron - Express Writers

How AI Content Creation Complements Human Writers but Doesn’t Replace Them

September 24, 2024 by Sarah Damron

You can buy mass-produced pens in stores for less than $1 each, yet people are still willing to spend $50+ for handcrafted pens. Even though technology offers ways to mass produce products, services, and content, audiences are still drawn to the magic of human craftsmanship. Even with the appeal of human-created products and services, content consumption will be led by AI, just not in the way most people expect. AI isn’t in competition with human writers but will instead help readers discover and consume content more efficiently, making the role of human writers even more crucial to the content-creation process. Here’s a look at one potential future of content consumption that combines human writers with AI content creation. What Does AI Not Do Before diving into the potential of AI, let’s step back a second and look over where AI falls short. AI Is Limited by Current Content AI does not create content out of thin air. It requires a starting point, prompt, and data to produce results. From the prompt, the AI content creator can scour its database to pull responses and generate content from that prompt. However, the content it creates is still limited by what information is available to the AI tool. As a result, AI struggles to produce original ideas. Human writers can pull new ideas and topics without being prompted. Human creativity and experience is enough inspiration to craft thought leadership. AI Does Not Have the Full Story AI follows patterns to deduce the next step. Think of it like the game of Clue. Throughout the game, you try to guess the primary suspect in the mystery. However, you only have part of the story. As people show you their cards, you get closer to narrowing down the suspect. AI works the same way. When you ask it a question, it can only provide an answer based on the cards in its hand. Sometimes, those cards are from unreliable, outdated, or biased sources, resulting in a biased or inaccurate AI tool. Human writers know when they only look at some of the cards and can take steps to discover the rest of the information before making claims. For instance, most journalists know that a front cover story of a gossip magazine does not equate to hard facts. Yet, most AI wouldn’t know the difference between an exaggerated human-interest story and a researched fact. AI Does Not Use Critical Thinking One of the most challenging parts of AI is its inability to use critical thinking. It cannot correct itself other than looking for variances in patterns. However, it misses small nuances in writing that might not match a usual or natural pattern. It also struggles with empathy. Humans can identify powerful opportunities to publish timely content or identify times to hold back on making statements that might be in bad taste. These are just three of the top reasons you cannot replace human writers with AI content creation. The Relationship between AI and Humans AI was never meant to shine in the creative arts. While many people demonstrate AI’s ability to write, create art, and compose music, this is not where AI was meant to be most effective. Placing AI in the role of people is like using a snow shovel to dig in your garden. Yes, a snow shovel may look like a garden shovel. It even digs like a garden shovel. Despite the similarities, a snow shovel was not built to dig dirt, and a garden shovel is highly ineffective at shoveling snow. Just because AI content generators can create content like people doesn’t mean that’s what you should use. Not when you have highly effective human writers that can infuse so much heart into content. You should also not throw out AI based on its ability to write any more than you should call a snow shovel useless because it can’t dig an effective hole in the garden. Instead, before incorporating or rejecting AI, you need to dive into what it was built for and its potential to transform how humans interact with content. How to Use AI for Content Creation without Removing Human Writers Let’s look at the future of content creation and how AI will play a valuable role in doing what it does best: analyzing and summarizing vast amounts of data. 1. AI Connects Audiences to Relevant Content Google has used AI for years, helping readers find the most relevant content. Its algorithm can identify subtle differences in searches and user behaviors to identify what each user would find most relevant. That’s how Google search pulls different search results for someone in Canada and someone in Florida looking for coffee shops near them. Google can also use its algorithm to understand what someone wants when they search for a driver. For instance, it can distinguish whether they mean someone who operates a vehicle, computer software, or golf equipment, based on past searches, user behavior, and context clues. Thanks to AI, marketers have search engine optimization and can create content that their audience might find. To take advantage of AI, writers should create optimized content that uses keywords, context clues, and relevant links to associated topics to help Google’s AI-powered algorithm match your content with an appropriate audience. 2. AI Summarizes Longform Content Have you ever sat in a meeting that took over an hour and left thinking, “That could have been a one-paragraph email?” That’s how some people feel when they’re looking for information online. Think about the last time you searched for a recipe online. Before seeing a list of ingredients, you had to read through paragraphs of the author’s backstory. You don’t have time for that. Many recipe authors understand that not everyone wants the backstory of their family’s famous green bean casserole. That’s why you can often find a button that allows you to jump straight to the recipe. While that button is not AI-run, Google offers a much more complex “jump to recipe” button. It … Read more

6 Ways B2B Marketers Use Generative AI for Marketing

July 22, 2024 by Sarah Damron

Most B2B marketers use generative AI, even many of our clients. That’s right – our clients use generative AI and still hire a content writing agency. Generative AI has more uses than generating entire blog posts. Most B2B marketers don’t even use generative AI for writing final drafts of blog posts. Learn six ways B2B marketers can benefit from generative AI for marketing to their high-value clients. Pros and Cons of B2B Generative AI for Marketing Generative AI tools like ChatGPT use prompts to generate responses. Using these tools is like having a conversation with a robot. You must use precise language. The tool will create responses based on the content it studied. Most tools study online content, such as leading websites and blog posts. Because it studies what has been written, its answers tend to have a pattern and reflect what is popular. The pros to using generative AI are it can scour much more data than a human writer could. The downside of generative AI is that it can only pull ideas that others have already had. And since it relies on content already out there, it can often be biased if the leading content is biased. In addition, it can also be inaccurate if it pulls information from a site that doesn’t use accurate data. Because of the cons, brands must be careful when using generative AI. B2B brands need to take extra precautions since they often work with clients with a much higher standard of accuracy than B2C brands deal with. Just because generative AI has several shortcomings doesn’t mean you must toss it out altogether. On average, 71% of B2B brands use AI B2B marketing to manage the sales process, including nurturing their clients through content. Image from HubSpot 6 Generative AI Use Cases for B2B Marketing We will explore six ways that generative AI can help B2B marketers who want to keep their content on a higher level to relate to their business clients. Image from Content Marketing Institute 1. Brainstorming New Topics According to the Content Marketing Institute, over half of B2B marketers use AI to brainstorm new topics. This is the top use case for B2B marketers. Often, coming up with ideas is the hardest part of content creation. Once you have an idea, you can research what others wrote for inspiration and perform keyword research to find a unique angle. However, you can’t move forward until you first have a quality, traffic-driving idea. Generative AI can be a valuable source of new topics. It can search thousands of ideas floating around online based on what your audience is looking for. It can then collect those ideas into a convenient summary for you to review. While AI can brainstorm ideas, you will not want to remove your content strategist from the mix. Generative AI is like your Instacart shopper who brings all the ingredients to your house. You still need someone to unload and organize those bags on the shelf. In the same way, AI brings the topics to your strategist, but the strategist must run those ideas through research tools to find which ones relate to the audience and bring in the most valuable traffic. Generative AI just improves the efficiency of the process by giving the strategist a starting point. 2. Researching Content Components Since we are talking about SEO keywords, let’s dive deeper into that topic. Did you know generative AI can also help with finding keywords? It doesn’t replace keyword research tools but can summarize topic ideas into root keywords. You can then search these keywords to find more specific keywords with a higher traffic potential and less competition. In addition to aiding in keyword research, you can use it to help generate headline ideas. When you input your keyword into a tool like ChatGPT, it will generate several headlines around that keyword. We don’t recommend using those headlines exactly as AI provides them. Most of those headlines are generic and use similar syntaxes. Instead, you can use those headlines as inspiration. Flip a few words around or switch them out for synonyms to create a strong, optimized headline that stands out from others on a search results page. 3. Writing Drafts About 45% of B2B marketers use generative AI to write drafts, according to the Competitive Marketing Intelligence (CMI) report. AI is most effective for the first draft, not the final drafts. About 27% of marketers don’t trust what AI writes. Even if they don’t trust the output as a final draft, that doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful for the brainstorming draft. This is the draft where you spew words out as fast as you can think just to add words to a page and provide a framework for writing. This stage is rough and should never see the light of day. However, you must put your ideas on paper before you can organize them into a coherent whole that your business readers will want to read. AI can help with the spewing of words onto paper. When you type a topic into generative AI, it provides an outline and may even write some great starting points. If you want to write industry-leading content, you shouldn’t stop there. Those points will reflect what others in your industry already covered. You want to add originality. More importantly, you want to add industry expertise and personal experience (review Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines to see why personal experience is crucial to Google ranking). Because you want that added depth and originality to your content, you will take your AI-generated rough draft and rewrite it into a 100% fresh draft. The final draft will only have a shadow of the original AI in the form of the outline or a few ideas it suggested. 4. Outlining Assignments Outlining assignments ranked lower than writing drafts for how B2B marketers use generative AI. Marketers often write their outlines based on what they want covered. Those outlines are what they input into AI to … Read more

Learn to Write: The Ultimate Guide to Get You Started

June 17, 2024June 17, 2024 by Sarah Damron

The debate rages on… Is it worthwhile to learn how to write in the face of surging AI popularity? Artificial Intelligence has reduced writing anything from blog posts to white papers to a few clicks of a button. A few well-prepped prompts, and you’re off to the races. Rather than slog an entire day to write a measly thousand ones, AI can spit out tens of blog posts an hour. So, should you learn to write after the AI revolution? Unsurprisingly, the answer is a resounding yes! Learning to write remains a worthy pursuit for anyone looking to communicate with fellow human beings in any capacity. Whether you’re an executive, a business owner, or a freelance blogger. AI may have lowered the entry bar and given everyone the words, but they’re only a tool. They are instrumental in sourcing and organizing ideas. Still, they can be a hit or a miss when writing compelling pieces. That’s because despite sponging off immense quantities of data, AI tools can’t quite connect the dots like humans do. They can’t feel the gravity of a profound moment and express it like you would. They can’t bring to the table your lived experience, the granularities, the simple nuances that resonate with the readers and keep them riveted to the page. Simply put, AI tools miss out on the granularities that make us human. And therefore, the capacity to capture them in the written word. As such, AI may replace some writing while accelerating your capacity to write professionally. Why Learn How to Write Writing is hard, and for most people, a hair’s breadth is shy of a Herculean task. That’s because writing is an art. There’s more to the craft than stringing words into sentences. Or wielding your semicolons and colons with the skill of a Samurai. The core purpose of the written word is to drive communication. To create a resonance with the readers. To draw the reader’s attention not to the words on a page but to the underlying message. In fact, the best writing is invisible. It fades into the background while sucking in the reader with its compelling message. The best writing persuades and compels the reader to act. A well-written page can move a reader from a curious onlooker to a fastidious consumer who buys tens of thousands of dollars of your products annually. It can persuade tons of customers to pick your products over the competition because they resonate with the message. But what if you’re not running a business? Polishing your capacity to write professionally can skyrocket your career chances. A survey covering 120 of America’s top employers found poorly written applications a “figurative kiss of death.” One Human Resource practitioner termed them “extremely prejudicial.” Large corporations are unlikely to hire applicants with poor writing skills because over 60% of their salaried employees have some writing responsibilities. These companies use written communications to make business decisions. The survey estimates that companies spend billions annually to correct employee writing deficiencies. With smartphones and social media encouraging people to be more expressive, you can turn everyday escapades into a compelling read with polished writing skills. How to Successfully Write for the Web While learning to write professionally is an all-around important skill, writing for the web is an entirely different beast. With web content, you’re wading into an uber-competitive landscape. Google estimates there are about one billion websites on the internet — all competing for eyeballs. As such, you must adhere to the rules of the web to stand a chance of connecting with your ideal readers. Faced with limitless choices, online readers are a picky bunch with low attention spans. You have precisely 8 seconds to grab the reader’s attention, or you’ve lost them forever. That’s why online content — web pages, blogs, landing pages — play by different rules. The traditional magazine writing style has no place in this highly dynamic and super competitive landscape. Besides making sure your content is factually accurate and informative, you must tailor it to cater to the needs of your audience. It’s simply not enough to lay out the facts. You must weave them into gripping stories that compel and persuade. And that takes patience and practice. The adage goes, everything worth doing is worth doing well. Much like great novelists, great content writers aren’t born — their horn their skills the old-fashioned way — through sweat and tears. It’s the equivalent of becoming an Olympian. You join an elite group of people who can shape opinions and build empires with their written words. But first, you must painstakingly hone your skills and perfect your craft amidst mind-numbing setbacks. For a rookie, learning to write is the equivalent of becoming a figure skating champion — you’ll endure many a fall along your journey. But the rewards are well worth it. Once you’ve proven your writing chops, you become a renaissance man. You can apply them everywhere and profit from them for life. Learn to Write Like a Pro Professional writing is radically different from what they teach in school. School essays are more about showcasing your vocabulary and writing skills. In a word, school essays are all about you. Conversely, online writing is all about the reader—you’re out to solve a problem for the reader. And that takes a while to master. You may need to unlearn your previous writing skills and internalize the new approach. That takes practice and dedication. A labor of love — you must go all in and give it your best. Luckily, perfecting your writing skills doesn’t falls under the 10,000-hour rule purview. Your writing style will improve drastically if you consistently and diligently put in the work. Writing is a multifaceted process. Breaking it down into components makes learning to write less daunting and more manageable. 1. Set Yourself Up for Success with the Right Tools Your writing environment matters a great deal. Set it up properly, and it’ll help your flow and get you … Read more

50+ Blogging Statistics to Guide You Beyond 2024

June 11, 2024June 9, 2024 by Sarah Damron

Data takes the guesswork out of strategies. You can go from “We should try this and see if people respond” to “Most people respond favorably to this strategy. Let’s also invest in it.” We are bringing you the latest data on blogging. As you move through 2024 and beyond, use these blogging statistics to keep your blogging strategy current and focused on what users want most, optimized for the most popular devices. General Blogging Statistics Blogging is popular globally. Blogs account for 31.6% of 1.9 billion websites. Here are a few statistics to help you understand how popular blogs are and how people use this effective platform in marketing. There are over 600 million blogs in 2024. 93% of online experiences begin in a search engine. Blogging is your way to appear in search engines, attracting part of that traffic to your website. Google holds 85.55% of the global search engine market. They have roughly 83.79 billion visitors monthly. Every day, people publish over 2 million new blog posts. Blogging is very alive and active. About 77% of internet users engage with blogs. 80% of bloggers see strong marketing results, and those who publish regularly see the best results. Blogging Growth Statistics Not only is blogging alive and active, but it continues to see growth. Here are some projected growth statistics as we move through 2024 and beyond. Between 2024 and 2031, experts predict the SEO industry will grow at a CAGR of 25.54%. By 2032, the global content marketing industry should reach a $2 trillion market size. In 2024, 45% of B2B content marketers plan to increase their marketing budget. Blog post length has increased 42% over the past five years, showing the need for longer, more insightful content. B2B Blogging Statistics B2B blogging is a unique strategy as your audience tends to be more discerning and expect higher quality content. About 71% of B2B buyers read blog posts before making a purchase. 61% of B2B content marketers regularly meet with their content creation team, usually meeting daily or weekly. This additional alignment is crucial for B2B marketing as marketers often employ strategies such as account-based marketing that rely on a well-aligned team to craft personalized experiences. 58% of B2B marketers were able to increase their sales and revenue from content marketing in 2023. 66% of B2B marketers prioritize audience needs and pain points above conversion because B2B marketing builds relationships with loyal clients rather than make quick sales. B2B blog posts tend to be 12% longer than other blog posts. Image from HubSpot Blogging and SEO Statistics Organic search is one of the main reasons marketers add blogging to their list of strategies. SEO prepares blog content for search engines to rank well in search results, generating higher traffic rates. Here are a few statistics that give you insights into the interactions of blogging and SEO. Active blogs are rewarded with 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links. The indexed pages and inbound links significantly improve a website’s search engine ranking, demonstrating the importance of keeping your blog active to generate consistent traffic. Blogs with 6-13-word headlines drive more traffic than shorter or longer ones. Google prefers updated, relevant content. That is why 34% of bloggers update their blog content regularly to strengthen their traffic results. About 75% of search engine users don’t look beyond the first search engine results page. In addition, 31% of users click on the first organic search result. Because of this startling number, marketers strive to snag one of those top search engine spots to see a healthy traffic stream. Image from DemandSage Blogging Content What do people use their blogs for? These statistics will give you insights into how you can design your blog posts for the most engagement. The average blog is 1,416 words While most blogs have a higher word count, 75% of readers prefer blog posts that are 1,000 words or under. Yet, articles with higher word counts tend to lead to better results. Only 3% of bloggers regularly publish posts over 2,000 words. Despite the longer word count, the average reader only spends 52 seconds on a blog post. Consumers read blog content three times more than emails. About 44% of bloggers publish 3-6 times monthly. The most popular blog niches are food, lifestyle, and travel. The average blog post that does not use AI takes two to three hours to write. Half of bloggers publish weekly or more. About 61% of marketers host their blogs and websites on WordPress. Images are essential for engaging readers. Three-quarters of bloggers use between one and three images in their blog posts. When bloggers use images, they receive 94% more views than posts with no visuals. Video content is growing in popularity. Videos can drive 50 times more organic search traffic than text posts. Embedding videos into your blog posts to see the best of both worlds. Image from SEMrush Blog Readers Statistics Who is writing and reading blogs, and is your audience among those readers? We gathered some of the most telling demographic details about blog readers and a few about blog writers. The average age of bloggers is 21 to 35 years old. The average age of Google users is 18 to 34. About 26% of Google traffic comes from the US. 59% of Google users are male and 41% are females. Blog Marketing Statistics While some bloggers use their blogs to generate income, it’s often just one of several content marketing strategies to promote a business’s products and services. About 90% of marketers use blogging in their marketing strategies. Blogging is a valuable source of new leads, with companies that blog generating 67% more leads than those that do not. Blogging is the third most popular marketing strategy. Video and eBooks are the first and second most popular strategies. ROI of Blogging One of the biggest blogging challenges is accurately measuring ROI. Because blogging often doesn’t produce direct results, such as leading to a sale … Read more