Say your teacher wants you to write a 3000-word essay you must pass on tomorrow. The time pressure is getting through your veins, and you start worrying about the deadline. Or you are a newbie to content creation and need help writing. You want to write unique content that will impress your boss/client. So you resort to finding help online. There is a big chance that you will bump into ChatGPT, Jasper AI, YouChat, or the newest Google Bard. Those mentioned are called AI Chatbots. It was in 1966 that the first chatbot, ELIZA (named after Eliza Doolittle from George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion), was created by MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum. It was the first program to allow human-machine conversation.
AI chatbots have been a thing lately, and businesses are utilizing it. They are heavily used in today's marketing world and have given birth to a new trend called "AI Marketing." AI Marketing uses artificial intelligence technologies to make automated decisions based on data collection, data analysis, and additional audience observations or economic trends that may impact marketing efforts (Marketing Evolution, 2022).
This article talks about the potential of AI to change the creation and utilization of content in the digital world, its drawbacks, ethical issues, and how you can avoid it. AI is ushering in a new era of innovation that promises to change how we make, interact with, and get value from content.
AI as a Trending Marketing Tool in 2023
AI is a recent buzzword in marketing, and businesses worldwide have been drawn to this revolutionary technology. It has transformed marketing by combining human-like intelligence with powerful algorithms. With its ability to analyze enormous data sets with exceptional efficiency and precision, marketers can more accurately predict consumer behavior, spot emerging trends, and develop precise plans in under a minute. AI also lets companies better target their campaigns based on their customers' preferences, online behavior, and demographics. AI's ability to improve efficiency, give clear data insights, make marketing more personalized, and ease marketing efforts is the main reason why it is used by many today.
Small business owners to multinational companies know the potential of AI tools to help market their businesses. Companies that pioneered online shopping benefited the most from AI tools. One big brand knows its value and uses it for dynamic pricing. AI is also used in their check-out-free physical stores. One well-known content platform uses AI in the form of tailored quizzes. They utilize it by using an AI creative assistant that works with their writers to deliver personalized quiz results.
AI has increased the effectiveness of brands' marketing and operational strategies. It highlights how AI advancement is practical and improves every brand's potential.
The Drawbacks and Ethical Issues of AI Chatbots
While AI chatbots can be efficient, there are also drawbacks that marketers should consider. Human intervention is still needed to help AI tools along. It is important to highlight their disadvantages and ethical issues. AI chatbots require human supervision and cautious application to fully unlock their potential.
Sounding Too Machine-y
It is true that AI can write anything but never match the capabilities of an actual human writer (Noorman, 2023). AI chatbots cannot grasp and respond to complex human emotions and intentions. They understand the content well but need help to grasp sarcasm, nuance, or context. As a result, chatbot content may feel impersonal or neglect clients' emotional needs, which could make them upset or dissatisfy them.
Flawed Algorithm
Like any technology, AI chatbots have flaws due to their algorithm. AI chatbots may reinforce biases or discriminate. These AI chatbots learn from past data and may repeat biases in those datasets. This can lead to gender, race, and class discrimination. Human monitoring, testing, and proactive bias detection are needed to find and correct biases.
Data Privacy and Security
AI chatbots examine vast volumes of user data, including personal and conversation history, thus becoming a concern for data privacy and security. Customer privacy depends on competent data management. If a chatbot system is hacked, personal information can be stolen, and the chatbot can be used to spread malware or launch cyberattacks (Garkel, 2023). Businesses must be transparent and get consumer consent to build trust and ethically use data.
AI and Content Cannibalization
As AI chatbots learn through human online behavior, it tends to produce repetitive content. Marketers should be cautious of this flaw as it may cause content cannibalization.
What is content cannibalization? It is when there are similar keywords in the content of different pages that look similar to Google. Similar keywords from other pages become problematic since they appear to be copied.
Why is content cannibalization bad?
Content cannibalization depreciates the value of the content. The page loses its authority when there are multiple pages with similar keywords. When readers search for a particular topic, they look for pages with complete information about what they seek. Cannibalized content sends readers to pages with similar content that don’t deliver what they are searching for (Intuit Mailchimp, n.d.).
It also ruins website traffic. When you have multiple pages competing with similar content, traffic gets divided, each page gaining a lower CTR (clickthrough rate) and conversion rate instead of one page gaining all the traffic and having a higher CTR and conversion rate.
What you can do to avoid Content Cannibalization
Content creation and optimization must be strategic to avoid content cannibalization. Luckily, there are some techniques that you can do to avoid it.
Plan Your Content
Plan topics, target audience, and goals for each piece of content. This will ensure original, complementary, and user-specific content, reducing cannibalization.
Keyword Research
Find gaps and possibilities through keyword research. This will help you create content that targets distinct keywords rather than competing for the same keyword.
Audit Your Content
Check existing content for cannibalization. Redirect comparable or obsolete content to an authoritative page to consolidate relevancy signals and improve search engine rankings.
Optimize Your Content
Optimize pages for specific target keywords and ensure each item adds value and addresses a different topic area. This will differentiate content and lessen website competition.
Internal Linking
Use internal linking to direct search engines and people to the most relevant and authoritative page on a topic. This can improve website structure and relevancy signals.
Monitor and Analyze
Monitor key performance metrics, including organic traffic, rankings, and user engagement. Identify cannibalization tendencies and take immediate action, such as consolidating or repurposing content.
How To Be Not AI-dependent When Creating Content?
We do not discourage the use of AI in content marketing. We want to utilize it in the most innovative way possible without hurting traffic, maintaining creativity, and keeping the content unique.
Audit your content. As mentioned earlier, Content auditing is an essential part of content strategy. You must complete this step, especially if you obtained your content from AI chatbots. Watch out for the keywords and terms that are repetitive. Rephrase the sentences to prevent sounding like a machine. In this way, you can make your content unique.
Use a keyword research tool to avoid content duplication. This will help you identify the repetitive keywords you have in your content. Some tools will also allow you to determine if the content is from an AI chatbot. Marketers may also use plagiarism checkers to see if their content is copied from other sources.
Do not take the AI suggestion as is. Get the idea, different from the exact words. Many different companies utilize AI chatbots in their content creation. It will hurt traffic and the competition if we all take it as it is.
Conclusion and Important Takeaways
In today's digital age, it is clear that AI chatbots have become an asset for businesses seeking to stay ahead in the ever-evolving marketing landscape due to their exceptional capability to process data, personalize experiences, optimize campaigns, and improve customer service. AI Chatbots have become a strong ally in content creation; where too much information is the norm and people's attention spans are getting shorter, the need for exciting and relevant content has never been higher.
However, AI chatbots have limitations and ethical issues like any helpful tool. The correct balance between automated and human touch, data protection and security, and actively minimizing biases are essential measures to harness the potential of AI chatbots while maintaining the highest standards of ethics.
