Blogging and content marketing have seen a paradigm shift in the past two years. Familiar parameters that gauged the success of a content piece like word count, keyword density, publishing velocity, do not seem to matter anymore.
With the rise of Large Language Models (LLM) and Generative AI (GenAI), the rules of the game have evolved significantly.
What is LLM and GenAI
Large Language Model and Generative AI are two components of Artificial Intelligence that have proven to be the most disruptive technologies as far as digital marketing and blogging is concerned.
Generative AI is a form of Artificial Intelligence that makes it possible for computer systems to generate and produce their own content. The way they do it is with the help of Large Language Models (LLM) which is basically the use of a massive database of pre-existing content to interpret and base this content on.
These technologies have helped businesses produce large volumes of new content without the need to invest in human resources to produce this content in the first place. In addition to text, this can also include generative AI images and videos.
At the same time, GenAI has also allowed search engines like Google and Perplexity to directly answer the questions asked by users on their platforms – thereby making a large number of blog content unnecessary.
Under these circumstances, there are two issues facing businesses today. Is corporate blogging still necessary, and should corporate cut down on costs by making use of GenAI to produce this content.
The Need for Corporate Blogging
Blogging is not merely an SEO activity. Although, in the past, search engines did enable businesses to easily secure top of the funnel visitors through publishing large volumes of content, that phase of digital marketing is over.
Today, search engines serve a very niche role, which is to answer questions sought by their visitors. Any traffic spilled over from search engines to the listed websites is either because of branded searches (search queries where a visitor is looking for specific websites to visit), or because of the need to dig deeper into a specific topic.
This is where corporate blogging comes into picture. According to Scott Chow from The Blog Starter, “a corporate blog serves three main purposes: to be the brand face of your organization, to demonstrate authority in the industry, and to help convert bottom of the funnel visitors into customers.”
Building brand using corporate blog and GenAI
Websites help serve as the digital face of an organization, and corporate blogs act as the conduit to make this happen. Generative AI tools help enable this branding exercise in a number of different ways.
Automate routine content: GenAI can help businesses create regular blog updates based on the latest announcements. They can also help repurpose these blog updates into newsletter content that can be used to drive traffic back to the blog. These tools can further be used to create insightful social media updates that can be published on the various popular social media channels like Twitter (X), Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Demonstrate topical authority
Generative AI has a vital role to play in terms of scaling up the content creation process. These tools can help define the niche or subject to build authority in. In addition to this, they can help produce insightful and authoritative content pieces through an inquisitive approach.
LLM tools can help form questions that may be shared with subject area experts in the organization. These interviews can then be the source of new content that can help a business establish their authority.
In addition to this, generative AI tools can also help personalize content by tailoring content to suit the various segments of your prospective customer base.
Convert BOFU visitors with LLM
Traditionally, corporate blogs were intended to drive top of the funnel visitors to the website. These visitors could then be nurtured through different marketing channels, including remarketing, and email marketing to convert them into buying customers.
While the rise of Generative AI has brought down the efficacy of using blogs to target TOFU visitors, they can still be used to nurture BOFU visitors in a big way.
One of the key elements to converting a lead into a customer is by establishing a personalized nurturing mechanism. And this is exactly what Artificial Intelligence is capable of. In addition to blog content, the same content can be repurposed to be used in chatbots, knowledge base, and with other marketing assets.
With GenAI and LLM, it is possible to build hundreds of different variants of the same content – each targeting specific use-cases and user behaviors. By mapping customer behavior with the right content, GenAI can help nurture these leads adequately to help in the conversion process.
Blog Performance Analysis With LLM
Unironically, one of the key criticisms that generative AI tools have is their tendency to not seem ‘human written’. This can have a big impact in the way readers and potential buyers perceive your brand and topical authority.
According to Anand Srinivasan from Rafrador, “one way to overcome this is to use GenAI as an enabler instead of relying on them completely for content production”.
For instance, LLM and GenAI could assist the business with identifying content gaps and areas of interest among potential buyers. They could also help with generating content outlines and briefs that can then be expanded into real content by human writers.
Furthermore, GenAI could help edit the content, and optimize it for better readability. This way, while AI-assisted technologies continue to make the corporate blogging process better, they do not completely take over or replace the human element.
Future of Corporate Blogging
The digital persona that every business owns today in the form of websites, blogs, and social media accounts is here to stay. As such, blogs continue to play a vital role in shaping customer perception, and driving conversion.
However, while Artificial Intelligence can seem to be disrupting the current processes, they are in no way replacing or removing the existing setup in the corporate workplace. It will be interesting to see how AI tools evolve to make the content production process better and more suited to the corporate workplace.
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