Think of AI content creation like flying an airplane—autopilot does a lot of the work, but there’s always a human in the cockpit making flight adjustments.

1. Use AI content generators as a guide, not a strategy

First and foremost, you must understand the purpose of AI content generators. While many wonder if AI content generators may replace human writers, Draft believes that AI content tools can help human writers produce more content, at a higher quality, faster. 

AI content generators can be a brainstorming tool, helping overcome writers block. They can provide a rough first draft of the content that can then be improved with keywords, research, and personalization.

Think of AI content creation like flying an airplane. Sure, the autopilot does a lot of the work, but there’s always a human or two in the cockpit course correcting and making flight adjustments when necessary. The same goes for AI content generators. They can help with the heavy lifting, but they will not be able to do everything on their own.

Most AI writing tools work by writing sentences word-by-word based on the initial prompt and the previous sentence. As such, they’re great at stringing together words and phrases, but they fail to see the bigger picture—such as economic trends, personas, and product-market fit. That’s where human writers come in.

2. Use niche AI content tools for each step of the workflow

There isn’t a professional writer out there who jumps directly into writing the final draft from the start. Seasoned marketers and content creators know there are stages to the content creation workflow and for good reason. Working with AI should look similar. 

• Use an AI-powered content idea generator first to generate topic ideas. 

• Then, use an AI content outline assistant to create the skeleton of what the article will look like

• Make adjustments before submitting your outline to your AI content writer

Taking a moment for these steps will ensure you feed your AI content generator a quality prompt so that you get a quality first draft in return.  

3. Proofread and edit your AI content

One of the most crucial things to remember when using an AI content generator is that you will need to edit the generated content. Artificial intelligence can write solid content but requires reviews for fact-checking, brand alignment, and more. Remember, AI content tools are best at providing guidance and a rough draft. 

As such, you should expect to do a lot of editing to the generated text. This might include things like:

• Fact-check everything: One of the biggest issues with AI right now is that it can’t always be trusted to produce accurate information. It might be able to string together a grammatically correct sentence, but that doesn’t mean the details in that sentence is accurate. As such, you’ll need to go through and fact-check everything before you hit publish or risk looking like a fool.

• Delete entire sentences or paragraphs: You might find that the AI tool will sometimes generate sentences or paragraphs that don’t really fit with the rest of the content. When this happens, it’s best to delete them outright.

• Fix grammar, spelling, and syntax errors: The generated content will likely have some errors as it sources its information from various databases. Not all sources will be error-free, so you’ll need to go through and fix any errors you find. 

• Rewrite sentences for clarity: Your AI tool might occasionally generate a sentence that is hard to understand. When this happens, you’ll need to rewrite it so it is clear. You can use a tool like Hemingway to help you with this. It will estimate your text’s readability level and suggest how to improve it.

• Add sentences or paragraphs to improve the flow: The flow is important in any piece of writing, and the AI tool might not always get it right If you find yourself losing the thread or feeling like something is missing, don’t be afraid to add your own sentences or paragraphs to improve the flow.

• Change words or phrases to improve clarity or add personality: Robots are infamous for their lack of personality, and the AI tool might sometimes generate a rather bland piece of writing. You can inject some personality into it by changing words or phrases to better fit your brand’s tone and voice.

• Add supplemental research or statistics you might have access to. Data and research are among the most impactful ways to drive content engagement. 

Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and really dive into the generated text. Since artificial intelligence has done the heavy lifting, you can spend more time in this phase really elevating the quality of the piece. With a little effort, you can turn something written by a machine into something that sounds like a human wrote it. Save time on this step with affordable, vetted, human proofreaders and editors.

4. Optimize your AI content for SEO

The main goal of any AI content generator is to produce content at scale. Its focus is on quantity over quality. However, as a marketer or entrepreneur, you should be focused on quality too. After all, it’s better to have one great article that drives tons of traffic than it is to have ten mediocre articles that barely get any views.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your content more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). The better optimized your content is, the higher it will rank in the SERPs. And the higher it ranks, the more traffic it will get.

Optimizing a blog post, article, or other pieces of content is a complex process that AI simply cannot handle on its own yet. That’s why you’ll still need to optimize your content manually, even if you’re using an AI content generator. Once satisfied with the generated output, go back through and optimize it for SEO.

Here are a few things you can do to optimize your content:

• Add relevant keywords: One of the most important things you can do to optimize your content is to include relevant keywords. These are the words and phrases that people are searching for in Google and other search engines. Including them in your content tells the search engine that your content is relevant to those queries.

• Use keyword-rich titles: In addition to including keywords in the body of your content, you should also use them in the title. The title is one of the first things people see when they find your content in the SERPs.

• Include links to other relevant (internal) content: Linking to other relevant content on your site (known as “internal linking”) is a great way to optimize your content. Not only does it help people navigate your site, but it also tells the search engine that your content is relevant to the linked-to page.

• Link to high-quality, external sources: In addition to linking to other pages on your site, you should also include links to high-quality, external sources. This strategy shows the search engine that you’re knowledgeable about your topic and are not afraid to link to other authority sites.

• Include meta descriptions: The meta description is the short description that appears under your title in the SERPs. It’s important to include because it gives people an idea of your content and why they should click through to read it. Note that you can use your AI content generator to help you write meta descriptions. However, you’ll still need to tweak them to ensure they’re optimized for SEO.

Related content: The SEO Playbook

The bottom line

As you can see, a lot of work goes into making AI-generated content readable. Don’t expect to hit the “Generate” button and have a publish-ready product. To stand out, you’ll need to make some effort to ensure that your content is up to par. 

Fortunately, with a human editor’s assistance, you can create high-quality content that engages and converts your readers. Here at Draft, we have both robo-writers and human writers on staff. So if you’re looking for a hassle-free way to get high-quality, engaging content for your website or blog, we can help!