10 min read

Liz's Human-Powered AI Content Framework (Processes + Examples)

Picture of Liz Moorehead Liz Moorehead Jul 10, 2024 10:06:02 AM

Inbound Strategy Attract Engage Content Strategy AI HubSpot Content Hub

Over the past year, as inbound marketers became increasingly hyped about the promise of AI — specifically, how it would "streamline content creation efforts"— I, on the other hand, started feeling increasingly ill. Much like a small, pale Victorian child coming down with something vague like "consumption," I could feel myself wasting away the more excitement around me built.

I'm a writer and content strategist, with more than 10 years experience in the inbound marketing space. For years, I have been an unhinged army-of-one, banging the drum about what truly authentic, human content looks like, and why showing up as your whole-ass selves in your content is the secret weapon to making your content profitable, magnetic, and unforgettable.

So, when folks started talking about how much "time they would save" on content, I started to panic. Don't get me wrong, I also see the promise of AI — that's why this article even exists. And, more holistically, I'm an inherently lazy person, so I love hearing about tools that make it easier to work smarter and more efficiently at the same time.

But with content already being such a hornet's nest of dysfunction for so many companies and inbound marketing agencies, the introduction of AI (without purpose or intention) will create more problems than it solves ... without many organizations realizing it. And, in some ways, it's already happening.

"Ha! This Is Clearly Written by AI..."

We talked about this on a recent episode of the HubHeroes podcast, but I'm hearing this more and more as AI-powered content has become more ubiquitous. Sure, you've got AI now at your fingertips to make "content creation more streamlined," but if you're cutting corners with content using AI, your audience isn't dumb.

Your audience knows your "ever-changing landscape"-laden AI content is robot-driven rather than human. And it's making them turn their brains off whenever they come across whatever it is you have to say. This is even more true today than ever before, because post-pandemic consumer trends of your buyers being more feisty and less trusting aren't getting better.

In this economy, are we that surprised?

But I'm not here to tell you not to use AI; duh, the title of this article likely gave that away. Quite the contrary! Once more with feeling, sure I'm a devoted content strategist who will never shut up about the importance of the craft of content, but I am a lazy person who loves efficiencies.

Even though some of my industry colleagues like to poke fun at my aversion to AI — hi, Paul Schokker — I actually use AI every single day, with it fully integrated into virtually all of my processes for content strategy and creation. I have found ways, however, to use AI without compromising my voice, my authenticity, and my humanity. Yes, it is possible. You can do it, too — and I'm going to teach you how.

What This AI Content Guide Will Cover

That's exactly why I created this guide for you. Together, we're going to cover:

A quick, but essential reminder of the purpose of your inbound content
How you need to think about (or rethink) your relationship with AI tools
How I use AI as my content assistant every single day
My super-duper top secret, sneaky tricks for making content production more efficient

With that, let's dig in!

Wait, Why Inbound Content Is Important?

Ok, I'm going to keep this part short and sweet. If you're here, you're likely on board with what inbound content is all about. There's the whole organic traffic growth piece of it, by creating optimized content that answers the most frequently asked questions of your buyers, right? That's why we have content strategies and perform keyword research, and all of that fun stuff.

But content, at least in my mind, is also like a digital handshake. It's your chance to not only show up as an authority who has all the accurate answers. You can also showcase your humanity and memorability. Remember, this isn't 2015 anymore, where you stand out in the crowd just by publishing content, no matter how mediocre it is!

Your content is a vehicle for building trust, and not just by means of your authority. You build trust through your humanity, your relatability, and your memorability.

By infusing your content with these human elements, you lay the foundation for meaningful relationships long before any direct interaction takes place. Embrace the opportunity to not just inform, but to engage, inspire, and leave a lasting impression through the unique voice and personality you infuse into your content. It's this blend of expertise and humanity that truly solidifies your position as a trusted authority in your field.

The AI Content Mindset That Changed My Life

Now that we're all on the same page about why content matters, let's dig into how we start integrating AI into our inbound content processes in ways that don't suck. We don't begin this work together, however, by opening up ChatGPT or another AI tool.

Instead, I want to tell you a mindset that completely shifted my thinking around AI and how I can put it to work for me. And it's something that George told me when I was expressing some of my initial hesitancy:

"Think of AI as an Assistant, Not a Replacement"

I know, I know. It sounds crazy simple, but the impact this had on me cannot be overstated. You see, my issue has always been with this idea of how so many people look to AI to replace what we do as humans. "We don't need to spend as much time on storytelling or crafting compelling content — AI can do that for us now." Ugh, no! NO!

That's not how any of this is supposed to work. But with that shift in perspective from George, he nudged me in a much smarter direction. If I leverage AI as my Content Assistant rather than my Content Replacement, it would free up a ton of time for me to work on more high-impact content activities, where my storytelling superpowers are most needed.

But what does using AI as my Content Assistant actually look like in practice? Let's talk about it.

How I Use AI as My Content Assistant Every Day

Congratulations! You've slogged through all of my big, messy feelings about AI and content. You will now be rewarded with oodles (yes, oodles) of tactics and tips served up to you in the most direct and blunt way. Are you ready? Of course, you are!

Content Interview Transcript Reviews

This is probably one of the most impactful ways I've started using AI as my Content Assistant. One of my superpowers as a content strategist is my ability to ask great questions of subject matter experts to get the goodness I need out of them to make content magic. These recorded interviews cover:

Messaging strategy workshops
Brand voice and tone workshops
Website copy interviews
Pillar page content interviews
Blog article interviews
Strategy sessions
Podcast transcripts

Each week, I spend hours and hours talking to people, verbally shaking them until they fork over what I want from them. This is where I cannot be substituted. I've spent years cultivating my interviewing skills. More than that, these interview interactions I have with clients are also where our relationships are forged. It's in these interviews where we become humans who enjoy working together.

But you know what takes time? Synthesizing the outputs of these interviews. You see, after each interview, I feed my audio recordings into Rev.com's AI transcript service. And, up until a few months ago, I had to manually review and synthesize every transcript — some of which could end up being more than 100 pages long. Yikes.

Now, it's a much different story. The first thing I do when I get a transcript is load it up in ChatGPT, like this:

content-ai-example

Because these interviews are so dense, this step helps me reduce my review time of these transcript by hours. Do I still dig into my transcripts manually to pull out what I need? Absolutely. I don't ask the AI to do my work for me. Instead, I ask ChatGPT to give me an overview that acts as a compass for when I need to dig in and get to work.

In cases like the above example, I don't want to miss anything requested by a client. And sometimes, if I'm manually skimming a transcript ... well, I'm human. I may miss something. This way, I can create little checklists based off of the AI review of my transcript. Once more with feeling, I'm still doing the content and copy work, but I've cut the amount of time it takes in half (if not more) with this one simple step.

Also, I'll admit, sometimes I'm a bit more ... well ...

Screen Shot 2024-07-10 at 8.53.41 AM

Look, sometimes I just forget things. And I know it's in a content interview transcript somewhere. In this case, I forgot immediately what we were supposed to talk about after we hopped off the phone. Don't judge me, this is my way. Whatever. Moving on!

Examples of Other Things I Ask ChatGPT to Do

If I'm preparing for a podcast interview, I'll feed it raw materials from that guest or on the topic and ask for ideas on questions I could ask. I use some of them, I don't use others, and I find inspiration for my own questions in what it offers. I also ask for inspirational quotes about a specific topic.

If I'm working on a content draft, I'll ask it to review the pages that rank for the top 10 for a particular keyword and give me insights on content structure for a particular piece to help it rank better.

If I'm creating social media posts for a podcast, I'll ask it to review a podcast transcript for quotes and soundbites that can be turned into graphics, with name attribution.

If I'm building out a content strategy, and I want to shorten the time it takes for me to perform keyword research, I'll feed exports of raw Semrush data on a particular keyword set:

chatgpt-content-ai-keyword-research

In all of these cases, I'm still steering the content ship from a strategic perspective. It's all about reducing the extremely time-consuming administrative burden that often accompanies my job.

HubSpot's AI Content Helper

Have you seen HubSpot's AI Content Helper inside your blogs, landing pages, and website pages?

hubspot-content-helper

I use this little guy all the flippin' time.

Now, here's where I consider this more of a AI Content Assistant rather than a AI Content Replacement tool. I have yet to ever use anything HubSpot's AI Content Helper gives me without significant revisions or cuts. But what it does help me do is expand thoughts with the raw material I need to shape it into what I want. I'll write a sentence or two about what it is I need more of, let HubSpot's AI engine do its thing, and then I mold and refine the output.

This is a huge time saver. Sometimes I know I need to go deeper, and I want to get to the content refinement stage faster. Even if the HubSpot AI Content Helper spews out total garbage (which happens quite a bit), it's still insanely helpful, because I'll think to myself, "That is completely wrong, but now I know exactly what I want to say." Even when it's bad, it still makes me more efficient!

My AI Content Tips, Tricks, and Hacks

If you're looking for AI to help you develop a raw rough content draft that you can shape up into an absolutely authentic, human masterpiece, I've got you covered.

Content Development

DO NOT expect clarity in your results if you don't have clarity in your ideas. George and I had a situation once where we knew we wanted to create a piece of content about a particular topic, but we were unclear on the direction we wanted to take. George ran the initial prompt with the idea of "seeing where it would go."

The result? A hilariously confusing mess that left us both scratching our heads and laughing at our new lesson learned with AI. Neither of us could really tell what the AI-generated piece was about, but one thing was clear — because we were confused, our robot outputs were confused. You get out what you put in.

DO spend time feeding your AI drafting tools TONS of strategy for a content piece, and when I say "tons of strategy," I mean more than a title, keyword, and a goal:

Who is your audience? Be as specific as possible.
How do they feel about this topic? (Proactive? Stressed? Skeptical?)
How would they define their problems?
What do they want, in their words?
What are the goals you have (as the content creator) for this piece?
Are there specific links or resources that should be used as inspiration?
Are there any specific "don'ts" of what shouldn't be in your piece?
Do you have any thoughts on outlining or structure of the piece?
Do you have any examples of the voice and tone you're looking for?
What are your content pet peeves? (Words, phrases, style, and so on.)
Do you have specific ways you want particular sections structured?
Do you know exactly which questions particular sections should cover, and in what order?

Does this take time? Yes, it does. But, again, the goal with AI shouldn't be to replace all of your efforts. If you cut corners strategically with your inputs, you're going to see cut corners in your outputs. Your robots are only as smart as you make them.

Content Production + Editing

DO NOT expect AI to be able to tell very human stories, even with tons of strategic inputs. As helpful and robust as some of these raw AI drafts are, I have the same challenges with them every single time:

The introductions lean heavily on aspirational, solutions-oriented rhetoric. They often fail, even with direct prompting, to "paint the picture" of the problems, pains, or challenges of the audience, which is critical when you're trying hook your readers by making them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is often where I expect to do most of my rewrites.
Your AI robots are literal in how they follow directions. They do not have your years (if not decades) of stories and experiences. They don't have light bulb moments where they can get creative or draw upon your stories, your quirks, your idiosyncrasies, and so on to make your content more human. You have to go out of your way to add in your special flavor, even if you get your AI content robots well-trained in all other aspects.

DO accept that the draft you're getting from AI is like a lump of clay that is waiting for you to shape it into art ... or like a really dope mug or lopsided bowl that at least wins points for "made with heart" if not for overall structural integrity. You know what I mean?

Yes, you still have work to do as the overall architect and visionary for your content. But if you're smart in how you feed your robots, you're cutting down the amount of time it takes to produce great content significantly. And the time you are still spending on content creation is on higher-value tasks — storytelling, humanizing, and infusing your work with the radical expertise only you possess.

Content Post-Production

DO NOT only look to AI for help when you're producing content drafts.

DO ask tools like ChatGPT to review your human drafts for:

Errors and mistakes
Optimization opportunities based on specific keywords
Feedback on content structure based on best practices
Recommendations improved search rankings
Opportunities to link to other high-value content on different sites
General feedback on readability and clarity

This is an extra step in your workflow, but it is so worth it! It doesn't remove any of the humanity, but it gives me an extra set of robot eyes on my work to make sure I'm maximizing the effectiveness of what I'm creating.

Remember, AI Is All About Efficiency

I've had a ton of conversations with folks asking me if I'm worried about my job now that AI has become so commonplace in this industry. And I answer the same way every time:

"Absolutely not."

This is due in part to the fact that I've learned how to use AI to my advantage, making me a more effective and efficient content army-of-one. On top of that, however, AI has actually made my expertise, experience, and human-forward approach even more in-demand with those who understand what great content actually looks like, and what it takes to create it.

It's kind of like when the iPhone was released, and professional photographers became worried that they would be replaced. For photographers who truly understood their craft and offered meaningful value, they were actually able to charge more of a premium — their art, talent, and brilliance stood out even more against the backdrop of the new crowd of "photographers" with phones in their pockets.

Your content will only remain your greatest asset if you continue to lean into and amplify your humanity through it. Yes, AI can help you do it, but remember, it is your assistant toward greater efficiency. If you look to AI as a replacement, all you'll do is scale-up your ability to be mediocre, forgettable, and boring — the kiss of inbound death.

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