How to be an Effective Digital Content Creator with the Help of AI Tools

We all want to be effective digital content creators, don’t we? AI tools might just be the answer, but we still need a people-centric approach when developing our content marketing strategies.

 

Building buyer personas that put the audience first, and provide the right context, should first start with our target audience in mind and then work backwards.

This ensures we’re always creating and sharing content that our online visitors most want to see.

 

 

It makes sense right..?

But the truth is that buyer personas are really only half of the story.

One of the biggest content marketing mistakes being made today is that businesses are creating content that makes them appear distant. Audiences are absorbing content, yet feeling no more connected to the organisation than they did prior to reading.

Even when content is created specifically to meet the needs of the buyer, it’s still ineffective if it doesn’t draw the reader any further into the funnel.

This is now being further compounded by the use of AI tools such as Copy.ai, ChatGPT-3, Jasper, Writesonic and many other generative natural language AI models. The speed at which content can and is being produced sometimes means that the quality of content in the output often suffers.

 

Disconnected content = ineffective content

 

Ask yourself if you’re creating content solely for your audience, shaped exclusively by the buyer persona you’ve built. If the answer is yes, then you’re probably going to fail to achieve your goal of becoming a highly effective digital content creator.

Why is that?

It’s because you’re not forming a solid link between what you’re saying, and who you are. You’re giving readers the information they need to take the next step, sure – but you’re not giving them the contextual confidence to do so.

Today’s customers don’t just need to know that you have the solution that they need (i.e. the product or service). They also need to know that you’re the right choice for them. Effective content should cover both aspects.

 

The solution: building an online persona for you or your brand

 

While a buyer persona is a personification of the combined characteristics of your target audience pool, an online persona is a personification of your own brand. It’s a blend of how your business would think, speak, and act if it was a human being.

There’s a lot that goes into developing an online persona, such as:

• Language
• Tone of voice
• Images and visuals
• Brand values
• Publication channels
• Preferred linking domains

… and more.

 

By creating content that’s not only shaped by your buyer persona but also your brand persona, you’ll find it much easier to create effective content that’s relevant to your audience, and to your business.

This method ticks all the necessary boxes for becoming an effective digital content creator.

You’ll be presenting buyer-centred solutions in your own voice, with your own personality, and with your own message that connects the content firmly with your brand.

Utilising both the buyer and brand personas, you’re successfully giving readers the critical product and service information they need. You’re also providing them with confidence that they’re moving forward with a brand that embodies the elements important to them.

Ultimately, an online persona gives your brand an identifiable voice that audiences recognise as delivering effective content that’s valuable to them. They trust this content, and they’re keen to see more of it.

 

AI tools to the rescue..?

 

As mentioned, there are now many new artificial intelligence machine learning tools for content creators to freely access. Whilst not the first, OpenAI's ChatGPT-3 is probably the most well known of these tools to become available.

Utilising text datasets from the internet, the model was trained on a staggering 570GB of material that was collected from books, webtexts, Wikipedia, articles, and other online literature. Even more precisely, the algorithm was given 300 billion words.

It can predict what the following word in a phrase should be using probability as a language model. The model went through a step of supervised testing to get to a point where it could accomplish this.

Content creators are able to use the AI tools to generate blogs, articles, social media posts and much more, but the output can be lightwieght and sometimes contain factual errors or bias if the right inputs are not used to query the tools.

The key is in the prepping first (i.e. defining your brand persona), before defining prompts for the required output. This will provide much more accurtate, informative content that is also more SEO friendly and aligned to get best results for your call-to-action.

 

Here's an example for good prepping and prompting:

 

For creation of a new blog article, we need to review search intent - in other words; what are people searching for..?

But first, in a few instructions, I need to tell the AI tool about our business...

(Note: I used ChatGPT-3 but quickly found that there is a word/token limit to the conversation thread in the free version, so you will need to strip down from the following suggestions with your own brand, service or product - I used the highlighted prep and prompts below...)

 

Let's use a low-carb bakery in this case and the brand LoCho who are growing sales of their new healthy low-carb bread (this is one of My Cloud Media's live customers for whom we manage ecommerce channels and create content to help drive sales).

I can use 2-3 of these prep questions for a more refined article:

1. "Our business is a family-run established Yorkshire bake-house with 50 years of baking experience. Do you understand?"
2. "Our business has recently launched a new all-natural low-carb bread product that contains less than 6g of carbs per 100g. Do you understand?"
3. "The product is suitable for vegetarians, low in sugar, high in protein as well as low in carbs. Do you understand?"
4. "The brand name for this product is LoCho. Do you understand?"
5. "The LoCho products can be purchased exclusively online at www.locho.life and via www.amazon.co.uk . Do you understand?"
6. "The core audience for the products are as follows; people on low-carb diets, people on keto-style diets, people who wish to reduce their dialy carb intake, people who wish to reduce sugar in their diet such as diabetics and people who wish to live a healthy lifestyle. Do you understand?"
7. "The main characteristics of the LoCho buyer persona include; female, 30-50 years old, family-orientated, health-conscious, gym-goer, aspire to play sport or exercise regulary, seeking weight-loss, seeking low-carb food products. Do you understand?
8. "I want you to write a "x" word article with a normal layout, including paragraphs, bullet points, h2 and h3 titles. Do you understand?"

You'll notice that I ask the AI "Do you understand?" after each prep question. This ensures that I know that the model is being trained to give the answers I expect at each prep stage. It also prevents it from pushing out all the content before you are ready.

Now let's focus in search the intent and see what people typically ask when looking for low-carb bread - I did this in Google search, but I could have also used other tools like Answer The Public or BuzzSumo.

9. In this scenario, I then tell ChatGPT-3 to use a particular topic - I like the first one. (I could also use the selection of questons as section titles in the article - these come from searching the term "low-carb bread" and not all are going to be relevant for my article):

• Can I eat any bread on a low carb diet?
• What type of bread is lowest in carbs?
• Which bread is lowest in carbs UK?
• What supermarkets sell low carb bread?
• What bread can I have on keto UK?
• What is the healthiest bread to buy?
• Is there a no carb or low carb bread?
• What bread has least sugar?
• How many carbs should I eat a day to lose weight?
• How many carbs should I eat a day?

 

10. Next, ask ChatGPT-3 to give you a working title and description for the article.

11. Then a blog outline.

12. Finally, ask ChatGPT-3 to get writing.

13. Now it's time to review the article after cutting and pasting into a Word document or Notepad.

14. Edit as required, add links and images.

15. Publish to the website when approved.

 

 

Developing your online buyer and brand personas, and using AI tools effectively?

 

Struggling to build an online persona and utilise it in your marketing campaigns? We can help...

At myCloud, we specialise in helping businesses better connect with their audience through the creation of effective content that informs, educates, and instils trust.

We can create AI Enablement solutions for your business that drive quick and cost effective results, whilst at the same time, helping to train your team with the latest available tools.

This article just gives one case study example - there are so many other ways that people are finding to get the most out of Chat GPT. Prep and prompt engineering is brand new and evolving quickly, so will change as new and more sophisticated AI models become mainstream.

Keep an eye on our blog for more information on creating effective content, or schedule a meeting for tailored advice and guidance.

 

 

For a new directory of AI Tools, please head over to www.appsandwebsites.com