You're reading one of the top use cases for AI...
Writing.
Businesses all over the world want to use AI writers to create blog posts.
There's a good reason for that.
Done right, blogging attracts and converts prospects for less money than traditional methods.
But, done wrong, it is a huge investment that produces little actual ROI.
That means brands need a way to blog quickly, consistently, and at scale, without a loss of quality.
They also need to blog intelligently, writing about topics that actually produce results.
That's a tall order for even the most adept of firms.
And it's why only 34% of marketers say their content marketing strategy is very effective, according to Content Marketing Institute.
AI can help.
AI can vastly simplify your writing efforts.
It does that in a few different ways, all related to AI writing:
- AI can augment human writers by making writing and editing faster and easier.
- AI can help you build content strategies that get better results, making your writing more effective.
- AI can actually partially or fully write content for you.
This post answers some of the top questions you might have about AI blog writing—and offers some tools to start writing better content with the help of AI.
To do that, let's discuss what AI can and can't do for your blog writing.
Can AI write a blog?
First off, can AI actually write a blog for you?
Yes and no.
AI tools exist today that can write full sentences and paragraphs. Depending on the blog topic, these tools can actually write most of a simple blog post.
This is extremely useful. Using AI, you can cut down the time you spend on basic content creation. You can also help defeat writer's block by having AI help you when you're stuck.
However, AI can't just write any blog post at the click of a button. Today, the topic needs to be well-defined and narrow in scope. That could change. AI writing tools are rapidly becoming more sophisticated.
But it really doesn't matter if AI can write some or all of a blog post. What matters is that affordable AI tools can be used to create more content, faster. That saves your business time and money.
Can AI replace content writers?
We realize it can be scary to hear that AI is able to write some or all of a blog post. Does this mean content writers are going away?
Not really.
Content specialists are still an essential part of the blogging process. Even when a machine writes a post, a human needs to write the machine an outline.
In all other cases, human writers need to be involved to flesh out basic content and add the depth and expertise that makes content truly unique.
It's possible, however, that the job of content writers will change. But we think it will change for the better.
Instead of spending hours on outlines or basic research, AI can do this for you better and faster.
That leaves you free to deeply understand topics and think about the best way to write about them. You also have more time to write truly great copy.
Even when machines write content for you, content writers will be free to focus on higher-value thought leadership, rather than surface-level posts.
Not to mention, cheaper and faster content creation frees up more budget to spend on higher-caliber content strategy and intelligence.
In short, AI is going to free content writers up to do the work that is highest-value and most creative—which is usually the work content writers prefer to be doing anyway.
Best AI blog writing and strategy tools
So, what tools do you actually use for AI blog writing and to support blog writing?
Below, you can find several use cases for AI in blog writing, as well as some recommended tools to help.
Tools to write blog posts
Let's get right to it...
There are a couple tools that can help you write blog posts.
HyperWrite is an advanced AI tool that writes entire sentences and paragraphs for you based on a topic and title you give it.
Just give the machine a little information and HyperWrite does the rest. Human writers then approve HyperWrite's content, dramatically speeding up blog writing.
Copy.ai is another tool that can write some blog content for you. Specifically, Copy.ai can write you a compelling blog post intro automatically once you give it a topic.
Tools to write blog posts in search
AI tools can provide insight into the best topics to blog about. That takes some of the guesswork out of content calendar creation. And it speeds up the process of brainstorming blog post ideas.
Not to mention, it can help you identify successful topics you might have overlooked in the past.
One tool that can help is Crayon. Crayon uses AI to provide brands with competitive intelligence. The tool tracks competitors websites in real-time, noting changes.
It also analyzes more than 100 different types of online data from seven million sources. Then, it tells you the most important findings, using AI to surface insights.
Crayon has many uses for marketers beyond blogging. But one immediate use case is using the tool to identify content gaps and opportunities.
You can see what content your competitors are publishing and what messaging they use. In turn, you can improve on their strategies or address gaps they've missed.
BrightEdge can also help you produce content that converts.
BrightEdge is a global leader in enterprise organic search and content performance. Its platform is powered by an AI deep learning engine that improves the traffic, conversions, and revenue produced by your content.
The platform provides real-time, web-wide measurement of content engagement across all channels, including search, social, and mobile.
Marketing automation platform HubSpot also offers a valuable AI-powered topic planning tool. HubSpot's Content Strategy tool uses AI to identify content themes and topics.
These are entire content categories you can own in your industry. Each one also has information on competition and relevancy to your market.
Last, but not least, MarketMuse uses AI to advise writers, editors, SEO specialists, and content strategists what to write about to rank for certain topics.
In the process, the platform offers recommendations on topics to target, ranking opportunities you might have missed, and automatically generated content briefs that guide writers on how to craft a particular post.
Tools to improve blog quality
Grammarly offers marketers an AI-powered grammar checking tool to improve blogging. The tool's language model automatically flags typos and grammatical errors.
It then suggests ways to correct your errors. Grammarly also has a Chrome plug-in, so you can use it almost anywhere you're creating content.
Editing can become a full-time job if you're not careful. And when it does, it can feel like you're doing more rewriting than producing new content. Grammarly helps lighten the load. It'll catch pesky errors even when your human editors miss them.
AI can also improve the quality of the content you're produce. Acrolinx uses artificial intelligence to help large organizations create content better.
The platform uses a linguistics analytics engine to read and analyze content. Then, it gives you guidance on how to make it better.
What's more, Acrolinx will standardize content quality across teams and offices. That means it'll help each writer, even if there are hundreds, stay on-brand and consistent.
Tools to improve blog performance reporting
In some cases, AI can even write blog content for you. Automated Insights uses natural language generation (NLG), an AI technology, to automatically write stories using data. Humans need to configure Automated Insights' templates.
Then, the tool takes a spreadsheet of properly formatted data and uses that data to write an article.
Now, you may not be able to write a whole post start to finish just using this tool. But if you write articles about data, it could significantly shorten your writing process.
With the right data, you could use this AI tool to generate most of your post, then rely on human editors to add color, write compelling introductions, conclusions, and transitions, and layer on insights.
Mike Kaput
As Chief Content Officer, Mike Kaput uses content marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing technology to grow and scale traffic, leads, and revenue for Marketing AI Institute. Mike is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business (Matt Holt Books, 2022). See Mike's full bio.