Ashley Carr, managing director of Neo PR.
Any salesperson will tell you… You only get one chance to make a first impression. Please, implores Ashley Carr, managing director of Neo PR, do not let that first impression be AI-generated.
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GENERATIVE AI is giving the false impression that it is easier than ever for brands to create thought leadership content. As audiences become familiar with giveaway AI-generated words and phrases and frustrated with reading iterations of the same old article, businesses will need to produce even higher quality content if they want readers to trust and engage with it.
As Chat GPT would say, generative AI is a rapidly evolving landscape. From analysing data and forecasting to streamlining customer service activities, new applications emerge every day.
But what is one thing that AI cannot be relied upon to generate? A positive first impression of your brand.
Original, authentic, meaningful content has always been at the heart of brand communication strategies. Without it, businesses have the channels but nothing of substance to say on them.
Prospects will not read beyond the first line of your blog. Journalists will not recognise your PR articles as newsworthy. Yet generative AI has entered the mix and basic principles of good content have become lost.
AI is exciting but the opportunity in generative AI does not come from writing PR and marketing content, especially where thought leadership is concerned.
Thought leadership forms the basis for many PR and marketing activities: blogs, webinars, presentations, media interviews, articles… the list goes on. Significantly, it is all content that sits at the top of your sales funnel, content that needs to resonate with your target audience, speak to their challenges and position your business and its leadership team as the authority when it comes to solving them.
Thought leadership is all about brand building. It is intended to create a positive first impression, then another and another until your brand is one your prospects know and trust. The last thing you want is for that first impression to be generated by AI and risk putting your prospect off.
I understand the reasoning. For one, it can feel like there is an unending demand for new content. Websites and blogs need to be updated frequently for SEO purposes, social media accounts need feeding, media partners need exclusive articles, resource centres need white papers, videos, presentations and other helpful content to support a prospect’s decision-making.
We are already well versed at using AI in our everyday writing tasks with the likes of autocorrect, for example. Plus, generating all this content takes time but, with marketing budgets stretched and squeezed, time is a scarce commodity.
AI offers considerable benefits as a tool for handling hundreds of tasks more efficiently but writing thought leadership content cannot be one of them. Already, the prevalence of AI-generated content online is a concern for 73% of the UK public, according to YouGov. More than a quarter would block or unfollow an account with content labelled as AI-generated.
AI cannot be a thought leader. AI cannot create original thought or opinion and AI cannot capture the nuance, experience and examples of your argument in the same way a human can. Businesses need to up their thought leadership game if they are to cut through the increasing amount of AI-generated ‘grey’ on the internet and not be tarred with the same brush.
This means shifting focus away from the ‘what’ and towards the ‘why’. Why do you create the products you do? Why is this significant from the customer’s perspective? Thought leadership should focus on the challenges you solve for your customers as well as fit into the bigger picture and provide a narrative on the direction of the industry.
You need a narrative that talks about the issues experienced by your customers now or in the future. Understanding your audience’s pain points and resonating with their thinking is the really important place to start. And that is another reason why AI cannot help you. Do an AI search today and the result might describe the answer beautifully. But there is no original thinking to it. There is no ‘why’.
You are the expert. Your observations and opinions on the industry are original thinking and are forming the direction of travel. Gen AI does not know what those thoughts are and, even if you give it all the right prompts, it is very challenging to capture your personal tone of voice and avoid the giveaway AI phrases that are turning readers off.
People often see PR as a single channel. It should be considered as part of a brand’s overall marketing strategy but content created for PR use can also be very useful to feed your other channels.
Thought leadership should start in the PR world but it needs to marry to the messaging being used across other sales and marketing content as part of one holistic and harmonious campaign. It takes several touchpoints or more to turn a lead into a sale and those touchpoints need to deliver a consistent message. That way, by the time you are in contact with a prospect, they understand clearly why they need your services and they have done their pre-qualification.
PR not only feeds your other direct channels with content; it also expands the reach of that message beyond your own channels and on to those of influential and independent publications and professionals in your industry.
Content may be king but relying on AI wins you no favours. Original thought leadership is key to building your sales pipeline and that means talking to the market about the issues in the market, having an original perspective and a unique voice. Your voice, not a voice generated by AI.
Do not compromise on quality by using AI to create content quickly. Instead, work with your PR team and subject matter experts to create fewer pieces of very high-quality thought leadership content that you can maximise across your other channels, leaving a lasting impression with your target audience for all the right reasons.
Neo PR is a specialist B2B technology PR agency based at Nash near Milton Keynes.
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