Introduction
Did you know that most marketers spend almost half of their time creating content?
Here’s the proof:
In a typical workweek, marketers spend 45 percent of their time creating marketing content:
Luckily, by using AI in your writing workflow, you can:
- Maximize productivity.
- Save time on brainstorming content ideas.
- Speed up your content creation process.
- Optimize content for organic search.
No wonder, over 60 percent of writers are already using AI in their writing workflow according to a recent HackerNoon poll.
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By using AI in your writing process, you can streamline your content workflow from planning to content creation and publication in the following ways:
- Brainstorming ideas around a certain topic.
- Researching a given topic to write about.
- Coming up with the outline and draft.
- Editing and proofreading your content.
- Optimizing your content for SEO.
- Repurposing your content to distribute on social media.
Here's how:
1. Brainstorm topic ideas
The first step for using AI in your writing workflow is to identify the topic idea.
Often, when it comes to identifying a topic, many marketers waste a lot of time trying to find unique topics that haven't been written about.
While this is a great idea in theory, it makes the whole process take so much longer.
The idea is to identify a topic that will resonate with your audience. Learn from what's already out there, and see what gaps you can fill.
Let’s say you're into manufacturing. You can write a series of posts on how AI is revolutionizing your industry. Right from 3D printed plastic to robotics, there are plenty of ideas to engage your target audience.
There are many easy ways to find interesting content topic ideas, including:
- Google search.
- YouTube search.
- Google Search Console.
- Competitor analysis.
But when you're stuck, you can use AI content creation and workflow software like Narrato to generate topic ideas.
2. Identify target keywords
Keyword research is one of the most important steps for launching a successful SEO strategy.
Optimizing your content not only helps to rank it highly in search engines but also enables you to improve customer experience.
But picking suitable keywords for your content can be a tedious process when done manually.
The good news is that with an AI-powered keyword research tool, you can generate tons of keywords in seconds.
Here, you can leverage powerful tools like Semrush to simplify the keyword research process.
Not sure how the tool works? Read this Semrush review post by Attrock to know how to use the tool efficiently. You can even insert these keywords into your content with ease using AI tools.
3. Create the content brief
Another important step where you can use AI for your writing workflow is creating the content brief. This is especially helpful if you plan to assign to freelance writers.
The content brief gives the writers some guidance on what they are expected to deliver, including what keywords to use, word count, the tone of the content, target audience, etc.
But creating a good content brief can be hectic and time-consuming when done manually. This is especially true if you have a lot of content briefs to create.
Unfortunately, assigning writing work to writers without a good content brief can lead to many revisions — and this can eat up a lot of your time.
Luckily, with an AI-powered writing assistant, you can easily create good content briefs in less time. The tool can also help you rephrase certain words in your brief to make it great and also structure it appropriately.
Furthermore, you can auto-populate certain sections such as product FAQs, product descriptions and more to save time.
4. Assign the brief to a writer
When you work with a pool of writers, it’s always important to ensure you assign the content brief to the right writer.
The last mistake you want to make is to assign the wrong brief to the wrong writer. This doesn’t only waste a lot of your and your writer’s time but can also confuse them.
Here, you can leverage workflow planning tools like Slack, Trello, etc. to assign briefs to writers and keep the workspace clean while working on the same page.
Some tools can also help to suggest the right content writer for your briefs.
5. Create an SEO-driven outline
The next step in using AI for your writing workflow is to generate an outline for your content writing.
Creating an outline not only helps when you’re giving assignments to your writers but also helps speed up the content creation process.
An outline forms the foundation for your content and can give your writers a headstart before they start writing.
While you can still generate your content outline manually, it can take more time and a lot of effort.
The good news?
With AI-powered writing software like SurferSEO, you can generate awesome outlines for your blog posts or articles that are optimized for your readers and search engines alike.
What’s more?
The software will also create a list of headings and subheadings based on the top-performing content and ranking sites on the web. This will help you break down your content into sections to improve readability.
6. Craft a compelling introduction
One of the most challenging parts of the content creation process is crafting a compelling introduction.
With tens of thousands of pieces of content out there, you must ensure you grab the audience’s attention immediately after they land on your page.
The idea is to get the point across in the first few sentences of your content. Otherwise, you might lose potential leads.
The beauty of using AI for your writing workflow is that the content generated by AI or ML software is as good (or even better) than human-written content according to 82 percent of marketers:
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Additionally, you can leverage an AI writing tool like ChatGPT to craft an introductory paragraph that you can then fine-tune to match your site’s tone and audiences.
7. Edit & optimize your content
No matter how good you are at writing (or your writer is), it’s impossible to write grammatically correct pieces of content every time. And given that content is a contactless marketing method, you need to come up with great content to create a good impression on your audience.
Make sure to edit your content thoroughly so that it's on brand, achieves your goals and is free of errors.
Even though you need your work edited by human editors, sometimes editorial reviews can be time-consuming, especially if you write long pieces of content.
For quite some time, editors have been using AI-powered tools for content editing to detect and correct errors.
With the help of an AI content editing tool, you can catch and correct errors and also boost the overall writing quality.
Using an AI content editor can be beneficial in many other ways, including:
- Saves time by automating content editing.
- Helps you to accurately place your keywords in the content.
- Ensures consistency in writing style, tone, formatting, etc.
- Boosts creativity by providing alternative suggestions to your writing.
- Detects plagiarism.
- Optimizes your content for search engines.
- Personalizes your content accordingly.
Overall, AI content editing tools can save you time by automating laborious tasks allowing you to focus on more important things in your business.
8. Distribute your content across multiple channels
With the help of AI content publishing and distribution tools like Hootsuite, you can effortlessly schedule and publish your content across multiple digital platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.
Furthermore, some tools can also help you analyze the performance of your content on each platform.
Conclusion
Using AI for your writing workflow not only helps you save the total time you spend creating marketing content but is also a great way to boost your overall content quality.
Many marketers are already using AI to automate parts of their content-writing process. So, if you’re not leveraging any kind of AI, you’re probably giving your competition the edge over you.
About the Author
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Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.
Social Accounts: Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram & Facebook
