I just lately met Jono Alderson, former head of search engine optimization at Yoast, at Advertising Pageant in Brno. He gave an enchanting speak on the state of content material advertising and marketing.
A number of of his observations resonated with me, together with the insularity of utilizing the identical SEO checklists as everybody else as a place to begin to create something.
The result’s a pool of lookalike articles, written for serps, not written for folks. The precise writing is commonly handled as an afterthought.
As Jono put it in an interview just lately:
“You might be recursively optimizing a really small corpus until it’s all simply phrase soup.”
Now that content material advertising and marketing is turbocharged with AI, the phrase soup is limitless. And as LLMs digest the prevailing phrase soup as supply materials, the longer term phrase soup is much more of the identical.
That jogs my memory of Ian Whitworth’s description of AI-generated content material as “infinite phrases no one desires.”
Jono additionally shared that the clock is ticking on this race to the underside, as serps reinvent themselves with AI to supply solutions to folks, slightly than limitless search outcomes. He urged folks to recollect who the actual viewers is, and the issues you’ll be able to assist them remedy.
I don’t know the way the way forward for content material advertising and marketing will look (and I’ve truly by no means actually been that loopy concerning the time period “content material”). However I nonetheless suppose that the misplaced artwork of writing is necessary in speaking with others. It may be aided by AI instruments. However the path of least resistance is to show it throughout to AI. And that seems like a race to the underside to me.
Every time I ponder concerning the state of writing, I flip to Ann Handley (who kindly wrote the foreword to my final e book). She has an insightful and refreshing publication on writing and advertising and marketing known as “Whole Annarchy.”
Ann has a number of options on methods to incorporate AI as a software that will help you write extra effectively, like asking ChatGPT what’s lacking out of your piece. However finally, she recommends AI is a software, not a substitute, for nice writing.
Ann’s newest recommendation was refreshingly analog: “Begin with Pen + Paper.”
As she explains:
“Don’t fear about “writing.” You’re welding the scaffolding for concepts that may change into writing.
“Why this works:
“You write slower than you sort. Working with analog instruments slows you down. Your high-speed locomotive mind isn’t screaming forward to get to Subsequent Sentence Depot. It has to attend patiently to your palms to catch up, like a automotive driver at a railroad crossing ready for the prepare’s caboose.
“That sluggish tempo finally delivers higher insights.”
And, finally, writing with out higher insights actually doesn’t have a lot of a cause for being.
Listed here are a number of associated cartoons I’ve drawn through the years:
“Work is extra enjoyable with framed marketoons in your wall”
