AI Content Creation

What is AI Content Creation?

AI Content Creation is the use of artificial intelligence to create content in any shape or form.

This technology has completely changed how content is made.

By leveraging machine learning algorithms and natural language processing (NLP - more on this in the Basics of AI SEO section of this guide), AI content creators can develop unique, human-like content with a few prompts. 

Because of the quality of output, AI tools have quickly become an essential tool in the tool box for marketers and content creators looking to scale their creative processes, without compromising on consistency.

From blog posts to product descriptions, ads to metadata; AI has streamlined just about every writing task we have.

In this section we're going to cover all aspects of the content creation process (that come after the Keyword Research which was in the previous section).

Here we'll cover:

• Content Types
• Topic Clusters
• Blog Articles
• Idea Creation
• Metadata
• Social Media Content
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Quality vs Quantity

Let's go!

Content types

Before we get into the creation of content, we need to break down the various types of content, as well as how we group content.

Content type refers to the format or structure of the content created. The choice of content type will depend on the goals of your content marketing strategy, the preferences of your target audience, and the type of message you want to convey.

Each content type has its own strengths and weaknesses, and choosing the right type can help you reach your audience more effectively and achieve your marketing objectives.

Examples (continuing on with our pasta theme):

• Blog posts: A written article on a particular topic, such as "10 Best Ravioli Restaurants in Rome."
• Videos: A visual and auditory presentation, such as a "How to Make Pasta At Home" tutorial video.
• Infographics: A visual representation of data or information, such as a chart or diagram about the different types of pasta, or the difference between a linguine and tagliatelle.
• Podcasts: An audio-only program, such as a pasta-themed podcast discussing the latest in home pasta news.
• Social media posts: Short-form content posted on social media platforms, such as photos of the endless stream of Italian Restaurants’ in my area that dominate my Instagram feed.

AI can help identify the most suitable content type for a particular topic. For example, if the topic is best explained through a video, AI can help identify this and suggest video content creation. 

If the topic requires a more detailed explanation, AI can recommend long-form content, like blog articles.

Buyer's Journey

The buyer’s journey is the process that customers go through when researching and making a purchase decision, and ties in closely with search intent that we covered earlier.

It typically consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision:

• Awareness - TOFU (Top of Funnel): During this stage, customers are searching for information about a product or a service. Because intent is Informational, content that is generally more educational and focuses on building brand awareness.
• Consideration - MOFU (Middle of Funnel): This is the part of the buyer's journey where they are evaluating their options to determine which product or service best meets their needs. This content is more focused on converting prospects into leads. 
• Decision - BOFU (Bottom of Funnel): Now they are ready to pull the trigger. Here we normally target more specific, long-tail keywords that attract more qualified traffic with higher buying intent. Converting our leads into customers.

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It's important to have content that covers each stage of the buyer’s journey and lead them to a successful purchase, but knowing where to start, or how much content to produce is a tougher nut to crack.

We cover this in more detail here.

Topic clusters

Topic clusters are groups of content around a central topic or theme.

They're essential for helping search engines recognize the order of pages on your website and to recognize your expertise on a particular topic.

A topic cluster typically consists of 3 parts:

• A central Pillar page that provides a comprehensive overview of a particular topic. These normally target general, high volume keywords. For example: The Ultimate Guide to Pasta.
• A Cluster of sub-pages that take a deeper dive into the sub-topics. These topics focus on specific, long-tail keywords. For example: How to Make Incredible Pasta at Home, or Making Pasta without the Calories.
• Hyperlinks that connect the pillar page and the cluster pages to each other

You put all 3 elements together and you have a tasty web of SEO goodness.

It will look something like this: 

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Choosing Your Pillar Page

When choosing your Pillar Page, remember to think big:

• Find a big, broad topic: Choose a big topic or theme. This opens up a wide range of related sub-topics, giving you more opportunities to capture your target audience. It also helps to create an SEO-friendly structure - and Google loves that
• Remember who you are looking to reach: Remember how we defined our target audience in The Basics of AI SEO section? Use this understanding of their interests, pain points, and search behavior, to identify topics that are relevant to them and that they are likely to search for.
• Conduct keyword research*: Use keyword research tools to identify high-volume keywords related to your chosen topic. Look for keywords that are both relevant to your audience and have a reasonable level of search volume.

*More on Keyword research in the previous section.

Creating Your Cluster Pages

Now we're on to identifying specific subtopics related to your pillar page to dive a little deeper in:

• Brainstorm sub-topics: It may sound obvious, but start by brainstorming a list of subtopics related to your pillar page. These subtopics should be more specific and focused than the broad topic covered by your pillar page. Think about more specific pain points your audience might have.
• Evaluate content gaps: Identify any gaps in your content library that need to be filled. This can help you identify areas where you can create specific content that offers new insights or perspectives.
• Plan your cluster content: Once you have identified your subtopics and relevant keywords, it's time to plan your content out. Keep in mind the various content types available to you- it's a good idea to try and grasp your audience's attention in more than one way.

Start Linking!

Use hyperlinks to link your Pillar content to your Cluster pages, and vice versa. This does a few things:

• Establishes hierarchy: By linking pillar and cluster content, you are establishing a hierarchy of information that search engines can use to understand the relationships between the different pages. This helps search engines to index and rank your content more accurately.
• Increases visibility and traffic: Linking content gives your audience clear pathways to explore related topics in more detail. This can help to increase engagement and encourage visitors to spend more time on your website, which can lead to increased traffic and conversions.
• Enhances user experience: Being able to easily navigate between related topics and find related information easily, helps build trust and credibility with your audience.

Overall, topic clusters are a useful SEO strategy for improving the visibility and authority of a website by organizing its content in a logical and strategic way.

AI can be used to automate large parts of creating digital marketing campaigns. Helping to identify the right keywords and phrases, understanding user search intent, and recommending the most suitable content types - saving a huge amount of time and effort.

How to scale your content creation strategy

Now onto the good stuff. Now that we have done our keyword research, found the intent behind the keywords, and the best content type to present this content, it's time to get cooking.

This is where this AI does a lot of heavy lifting.

AI-powered tools can generate written content on anything – and I mean anything. These tools use NLP techniques to create unique, high-quality content that at times is hard to differentiate from content written by humans. 

Though we always recommend employing a human touch to add your own unique flavor, point of view, etc. Without this, there is little point in creating what you are making.

AI is not intended to be a replacement for a subject matter expert.

Mark utilizes the latest ChatGPT technology to create SEO-optimized content, utilizing your keywords at incredible fast speeds – no matter the text content type.

Blog articles

Because more than 80% of search queries are Informational in their intent, let's start with blog articles that (alongside videos) typically aim to answer users "how", "what", "why" questions, tutorial guides, how-to guide, etc.

SEO Blog Article Workflows

Creating a full blog post can be a time-consuming exercise. Research, creating your structure, optimizing your content for SEO, adding images, backlinks, internal links; there are so many pieces of the puzzle that can make the creation of an article post a painstakingly slow process.

A less experienced person can easily spend 5-6 hours on a 1,000-word blog post.

This is why we wanted to create a workflow that helps create an SEO-optimized blog article, built with your keywords, catchy title, and structure in mind.

Step 1: Choose your topic and tone of voice

The topic in this case is the title of your article. The tone is going to set the overall tone of the article, including the outline, talking points, and paragraphs.

You can of course change the tone per paragraph if you wish, once we get to the Full Blog Editor, which you are taken to automatically once the Blog Article AI Workflow has been completed.

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Step 2: Configure your SEO

Based on the title of your article, Mark will generate suggestions for keywords to include. The recommendations will show you the keyword Average Search Volume, Trend, and competition for those keywords.

You can always add your own from our keyword research done earlier. This will ensure that content created is built with your SEO goals in mind.

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Step 3: Generate your SEO-optimized outline

The importance of an outline cannot be overstated - this is what guides your reader through the story. H2 subheading suggestions are generated from your primary keyword, as well as your title. In the next step, H3 sub-heading suggestions will be generated from your H2 subheadings - keeping your content structured and easy to read.

Remember, if the outlines aren’t quite what you are looking for, don’t hesitate to regenerate!

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With this structure in place, Mark has structure to write its first draft around - ready for you to add your expertise to bring to life.

Step 4: Review your first draft

This is where you can edit, rewrite, or modify your SEO optimized article in our Full Blog Editor, to turn your first draft into the next piece of your content marketing puzzle.

This is how we can create a first draft in no time – leaving you as the product expert to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. Adding your own unique perspective, references, and tweaking the content to match your tone of voice as you go.

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Creating SEO-optimized blog articles (with AI doing the heavy lifting) means your content is able to get in front of your ideal customer in a fraction of the time. Resulting in more organic traffic, brand awareness, qualified leads (you're welcome sales), and revenue.

Skyrocketing your demand generation strategy.

Metadata

It's easy to underestimate the importance of Metadata. I get it. It seems far less interesting than creating videos, social media content, blog articles, et al.

But it's important not to overlook it. Metadata is an important component of content creation as it helps to ensure that a website and its content is easily discoverable and accessible.

Metadata provides information about the content which is used by search engines to index and rank sites for search results.

The two most important ones are:

• Title Tag: Title Tags are the titles of web pages, which are displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs). They should be descriptive and concise as they are intended to describe content and purpose. Unlike blog article titles which are designed to attract readers.‍

• Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions are brief summaries of the content found on a webpage. They should be written in a way that accurately reflects the content of the page, while also being interesting enough to encourage users to click on the link.

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AI tools can help with generating title tags and meta descriptions by automatically creating them based on the content of the page. This can save time and ensure consistency in terms of SEO.

Mark can help create both - in 3 different ways:

• In Bulk: by using our Bulk Import Workflow, you can create title tags and meta descriptions at scale. Perfect for a backlog, or when a refresh is needed.
• Automatically: when using our SEO Blog Article Workflow, title tag and meta descriptions are generated when your first draft is completed. Ready for you to export directly to WordPress (or your favourite CMS).
• One click: if using our AI Writer, you will be able to create title tags and meta descriptions once you are satisfied with the content you have created. Metadata forms part of your SEO score - so this is vital to include.

Metadata is part of the SEO puzzle. AI tools make this part of the puzzle particularly easy.

Social Media content

Social Media does not directly contribute to search engine results pages (SERPs).

But link sharing across social media sites does help increase brand visibility, which can impact SEO.

Social metrics, such as shares, likes, and comments, help build credibility, customer loyalty, and brand awareness. 

These metrics also boost online visibility and activity, which search engines take into account when assessing a brand's online presence and SERP rankings. 

With this goal in mind, let’s look at the different ways we can help feed your content calendar.

Create Social Media content in our AI Writer

From the AI Writer hit '/' on a new line to bring up our prompt options. From here, select the platform you would like to write for first, and enter your prompt. Ask Mark to write multiple options at once, or regenerate content as needed.

AI Workflows

From our AI Workflows, select the platform you are looking to write for. This workflow will guide you through all of the elements of creating your social media post, allowing you to have greater control of the first draft output.

Repurpose

Repurposing Workflows will take content, and repurpose it. Either taking a log form piece of content (for example a blog post or podcast), and changing it into social media content; or taking an existing piece of social media content and rewriting it for a different (or the same - do your thing) platform.

Distribution

If content is king, distribution is queen.

No social media strategy is complete until you have a content calendar bursting at the seams with quality content ready for your audience to feast upon. And we all know how hungry they can be...

Mark has you covered there too.

Once content is created, connect your social media accounts (in our Integrations section) and start scheduling and publishing social media content as you create it.

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Videos

People can't get enough of videos.

• 66% of consumers find short form social media videos the most engaging type of content on social media
• A study from Wyzowl shows that 91% of consumers want to see more online video content from brands.
• 82% of the global internet traffic came from video streaming and downloads. 

They can be funny, educational, emotional - you name an adjective - they can be it.

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To help content creators satisfy this increasing demand, AI can help out in a bunch of ways:

• Scriptwriting: AI-powered tools can help content creators generate scripts for their videos by repurposing content. For example, taking a blog article and repurposing it in a script format for YouTube or short form video (Tik Tok or Instagram Stories). Saving content creators a lot of time and effort, allowing them to focus on other aspects of video creation.
• Voiceovers: AI-powered text-to-speech tools can be used to generate voiceovers for videos, creating eerily human-like voices that sound natural and expressive - making videos more engaging and interesting for viewers. This can save content creators the time and expense of hiring voiceover artists. As to which one is the best for you, there are a bunch in the market. Murf.ai and Lovo are both highly rated, and come with free plans if looking to dip your toes in the Voiceover market.
• Video editing: AI-powered video editing tools can help content creators edit their videos quickly and efficiently. These tools can analyze the footage, identify the most interesting and engaging parts, and suggest cuts and transitions to create a cohesive and compelling story. The best AI tool for video editing depends on what you are looking to do, but Adobe makes incredible AI video editing products, and newcomers Synthesia and Nova.ai make powerful, simple to use software as well.
• Content optimization: AI-powered tools can help content creators optimize their videos for search engines and social media. By analyzing data on keywords, trends, and audience engagement, these tools can suggest changes to the video title, description, and tags to increase its visibility and reach. With Mark's SEMrush integration, finding the right keywords to target, and metadata to write becomes a lot easier.

YouTube vs. Short Form Video (Tik Tok or Instagram Stories)

The best use cases for using video depend on the purpose of the content. For example, YouTube is great for educational tutorials and product reviews, while TikTok and Instagram are great for creating short, shareable videos that can go viral quickly.

Both channels offer great opportunities to reach potential customers, build relationships, and drive a demand generation strategy.

Podcasts

Podcasting is becoming increasingly popular with over 82 million people listening to podcasts in 2021. This number isn’t slowing down either - podcast listeners are estimated to number over 100 million listeners in 2024.

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In a similar way to video content, AI should also be in any podcast creators toolkit. Helping out with:

• Transcript generation: AI can transcribe podcast episodes into text, automatically. This can be useful for repurposing your podcast into blog articles or social media posts - furthering its potential reach. This also makes your podcast more accessible to people who prefer to read rather than listen. oTranscribe and Happy Scribe are both great transcript generators.
• Editing and post-production: Removing unwanted sections, and enhancing audio quality becomes much easier with AI. This can save content creators time and effort in the editing process, allowing them to focus on creating high-quality content. Both Podcastle and Resound.fm have great feature sets to help out with this.
• Content optimization: Similar to video content, AI-powered tools can help optimize podcasts for search engines and social media.

AI is becoming an increasingly important tool for podcast creators who want to create high-quality content quickly and efficiently. Helping out with more menial work like transcript generation and content optimization so creators can focus on creating the best content possible.

Infographics

People are in general visual. Not on purpose though - our brains just take forever to digest info and numbers.

So the best way to get your point across to your audience is to use visuals that make it crystal clear.

For example, check out the infographic on pasta production, consumption, and pasta types below:

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This makes information much easier to visualize than words and numbers alone.

But how can AI tools help out?

• Make them pretty: design tools like Canva and Piktochart can help content creators create visually appealing infographics quickly. These tools use machine learning algorithms to analyze user preferences and design patterns to generate suggested color schemes, typography, and layout. Creating infographics that are both attractive and effective.
• Make them easy to understand: AI-powered data analysis tools like Tableau and Google Charts can assist content creators in presenting complex information in an easy-to-understand manner. Taking data and generating visualizations such as graphs, charts, and maps, to break down complex information into digestible pieces.
• Save Time creating them: infographic generators like Infogram and Visme can create infographics automatically by analyzing data and generating visualizations based on predefined templates. Saving content creators time and effort, allowing them to focus on other aspects of content creation (or distribution). 

AI tools can help content creators create visually appealing infographics quickly and easily - providing design, data visualization, and infographic generators that save time and effort.

How much content should I create?

Ahhh the age-old questions - how much is enough? How much is too much?

Unfortunately there is no magic formula for this question - be wary of anyone that says they know the answers without knowing your business as there are so many variables to consider.

If you're building brand awareness, you may want to create more TOFU content. If you're a smaller team wanting to generate a bit of traffic early, BOFU content that targets low competition, long-tail keywords with higher intent might be a better strategy to start with.

So if asking yourself the question "How much content should I create?", start with your goals. Do you wanna be the next Hubspot? Are you looking to launch your personal business in a niche area? 

No prizes for guessing which goal requires more content.

Instead of thinking how much, start with the question "What content does my audience need?".

This is going to be a good indicator of how much is needed, as well as where to start.

When thinking about what your audience needs, and how much content to create to satisfy that need, it's good to keep the following in mind.

Be consistent

The only thing people like better than great content, is consistently great content.

Consistency does a few things:

• Builds Trust & Engagement: When you consistently deliver high-quality content, it establishes trust between you and your audience. Keeping them engaged and hungry for more.
• Establishes Your Brand: When your content has a consistent look, tone, and feel, it helps your audience recognize and remember your brand. This helps you stand out from the competition and creates a sense of familiarity and loyalty among your audience.
• Improves SEO: Our digital overlord Google loves websites that regularly publish high-quality content. Their ranking on search engine results pages (SERP's) reflects this. By producing high-quality content consistently, you'll be more likely to attract organic traffic to your website.

So worry less about frequency, and more about keeping a regular schedule. Using a content calendar is a great way to help get in the habit of delivering regular content.

Quality beats Quantity

There are so many ethical and personal beliefs we could put here. Content for the sake of content (or black hat SEO techniques - a.k.a: cheating for the uninitiated) is garbage, and rightly penalised by Google.

If it doesn't add value - don't write it.

But as far as SEO is concerned, let's highlight a few of the reasons why quality beats quantity:

User Experience

Google wants to deliver the best results to their users. This is their shiny north star.

This means websites that are deemed to provide valuable, relevant, and high-quality content will always get priority. By focusing on producing high-quality content that satisfies user intent, you're more likely to rank higher in search results.

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and click-through rate help determine the quality of your website. If your website provides low-quality content, users are more likely to leave quickly, resulting in a high bounce rate.

On the flip side of that coin, people love high-quality content, and are far more likely to engage with your content, spend time on your site, and click through to other pages.

And Google loves that.

These engagement metrics are signals to search engines that your website provides a positive user experience, which can help you rank higher in search results.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website (we cover this in more detail on the Off-Page SEO section of this guide). 

They're incredibly important in SEO, as they help prove your website's authority and credibility.

However, backlinks from low-quality websites can hurt your SEO, while backlinks from high-quality websites can improve it. By producing high-quality content, you're more likely to attract backlinks from great websites, helping improve your SEO.

Repurpose content

This ties in closely with creating topic clusters. By creating pillar content, and repurposing it into content for promotion, you can turn one piece of content into many - quite quickly. 

This satisfies the demand of producing high quality content, consistently.

AI tools can help with repurposing content. Simply enter your content, tell it what platform you would like to repurpose it for, and let AI do the heavy lifting.

Key Takeaways

• AI Writing tools are helping content creators write great content at unheard of speeds.
• There are many different types of content - make sure you choose the right type of content for what you are trying to say. A guide on how to make pasta probably comes across better in a video than it does in a podcast.
• Consider what stage of the buying journey the customer is in when creating content.
• Topic clusters are important for helping search engines recognize relationships between content and improving website visibility and authority, improving SEO
• AI can help speed up and improve all areas of content creation - no matter the content type.
• When thinking about how much content to create, think about what your audience needs first.
• It's more important to be consistent with creating content than it is to be frequent.
• Quality beats quantity (nearly) every time.