Content Strategy in the Age of AI

Content Strategy in the Age of AI

The forthcoming AI-enabled ubiquity of knowledge will ultimately impact every publisher’s visibility. But focusing on your differentiators and gaining first-hand knowledge of AI will enable you to continue promoting your brand’s unique value to your readers.

By Ed McKinley & Jeff Joseph

In April 2023, two German creatives used the generative AI platforms ChatGPT and Midjourney to create a 136-page publication called PANTA RHAI. In just five days, they produced the first print consumer magazine created entirely by AI.

It won’t be the last.

Since the dramatic November 2022 debut of ChatGPT, the OpenAI platform’s user count has grown to more than 180 million. Thousands of generative AI applications have materialized in the past year, and the technology has placed the business of content on the cusp of an unprecedented realignment.

In June 2023, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company reported that generative AI applications stand to add up to $4.4 trillion to the global economy—annually. Their 2024 follow-up report posited that within the next three years, anything in the technology, media, and telecommunications space not connected to AI “will be considered obsolete or ineffective.”

McKinsey’s report offered a key takeaway: “If companies are to remain competitive and relevant in the coming years, it is essential that executives understand the potential impact of generative AI and develop the strategies necessary to incorporate it into their operations.”

Consultants habitually pepper their reports with words like “essential,” but we believe magazine publishers should heed this advice. From creative ideation through distribution, AI is transforming every stage of content workflow—for text, voice, music, imagery, illustration, video, and film.

So, cast aside the cynicism about so-called “disruptive” or “transformational” technology and listen to the testimony of the head of the largest media and technology firm in the world, Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

After ChatGPT’s debut, Pichai described the changes he expects to be “more profound than fire or electricity.” Google subsequently declared a “red alert” and is reconfiguring its business model to integrate generative AI.

A behemoth like Google is pivoting to embrace this revolutionary new technology. You will, too.

GOOGLE PIVOTS TO GENERATIVE AI & SEARCH

Content discovery is poised to evolve. Say goodbye to the normative online (Google-dominated) content consumer search that has dictated online content discovery for the past 25 years: Enter search term, get back a list of resource links ranked by relevance (and advertising sponsorship).

A great migration will occur in the next few years as AI-based, multimodal, personalized, conversational chatbots replace traditional search. Chatbots will answer questions instead of directing users to third-party resources. The switch is happening quickly.

Meanwhile, more companies—including Micro- soft, Google, and Baidu—are refining their use of AI-powered search. Billions of dollars in institutional and venture capital have flooded the sector in the past year, making disruption inevitable.

Yesterday’s search engines will remain important to publishers, journalists, researchers, scientists, and nostalgia buffs, but the tailored responses of generative AI are destined to replace most search queries for the masses. Think of it as the way calculators replaced pencil-to-paper long division. In his blogpost “Is SEO Dead in 2023?,” Neil Patel explains, “With a zero-click search, users can find their answers right on Google’s search page rather than using Google to find additional pages with those same answers.” This has already reduced the traffic Google drives to organic listings (SEO results), he notes.

Convenience spurs the adoption of new technology, and the AI revolution is no exception. The public will prefer the immediate gratification of ready-made answers. They’ll no longer have to scroll through a list of links, choose what sites to visit for information, and then digest and analyze a blizzard of facts. Consequently, publishers should recognize that the value of SEO will decline in direct proportion to decreasing use of traditional search.

Late last year, a team at The Atlantic researched the likely impact of Google integrating AI-generated responses into its search results. They determined that users would find AI text responses sufficient 75% of the time. But with 40% of the publisher’s web traffic attributed to traditional Google search, The Atlantic foresees an inevitable loss of readers.

To our thinking, Google’s rapid response to generative AI is an omen publishers cannot ignore. If this technology is so profound it’s causing the largest tech/media firm in the world to pivot, every publisher should reassess content strategy in the Age of AI to maintain visibility, readership, engagement, and relevance.

THE UBIQUITY OF EXPERTISE

The use of AI tools on the editorial side of publishing invariably increases efficiency and helps publishers remain competitive. It is therefore true that many of your peers will soon incorporate generative AI platforms into their editorial workflow. They’ll use it to improve their content and create more of it.

Unfortunately, regardless of your brand’s reputation or your staff’s niche expertise, more content alone won’t be enough to ensure a publisher’s visibility, access, or prominence. An AI-fueled ubiquity of expertise will eclipse your brand’s reputation for subject-matter authority, reduce your online traffic, and shrink your print subscription base. This is why we need to look ahead and anticipate how AI will evolve.

Currently, generative AI content search responses synthesize information available on the internet and presents it to users in easily digestible format. As AI evolves, it will be increasingly capable of scrutinizing this information, even inferring intent; aligning it with our personal preferences; and distilling or encapsulating it for us. Consequently, the “information” we encounter will be transformed, ushering in an era when computers offer ideas, provide conclusions, and make decisions. The core elements of our digital consumption will evolve once again.

We’ve already witnessed an internet-enabled shift that fueled an Information Age. Now, we’re moving beyond information and instead reaching for knowledge, signifying the onset of another new epoch. Unfortunately, many will enter the Age of Knowledge by fiat, skipping the search, discovery, research, and “learning” stages that have until now been nurtured by academics and informed by internet technology. This AI-driven realignment begs the question: How do we maintain our platforms’ relevance?

DIFFERENTIATING CONTENT IN THE AGE OF AI

As personalized AI co-pilots become common, the public will soon rely on a handful of AI platforms for most queries. As trusted AI brands emerge, users will become less inclined to seek specific niche resources for information. So, the question becomes, how will content creators differentiate themselves as knowledge, expertise, and accuracy become ubiquitous? The answer has three parts.

Unique voice – To break through in the new era of AI, magazine publishers will need to develop or strengthen their unique brand voice.

Whether a brand’s distinctive voice is pointed, provocative, personable, outrageous, satirical, humorous, snarky, confident, authentic, entertaining, or approachable, the strength and consistency of its character and its appeal to readers will determine whether it will have a fighting chance of staying relevant and maintaining market share.

Compelling design – Across content platforms, the way content looks will gain greater importance. To compete and grab attention, content must look nothing short of great. It needs captivating graphics and design, high production value, and user-friendly interfaces.

There’s a potential pitfall with these first two differentiators. When we think of unique voice and compelling design as critical ways to stand out, that bodes well for “influencers,” who are often derided for relying on style over substance. That assessment might be fair, but there’s a lot to learn from influencers as AI search becomes dominant, knowledge and expertise become commoditized, and proprietary branded content struggles to break through.

In a 2023 survey of consumers conducted by brand agency Matter Communications, 69% of respondents are likely to trust “influencers” over information coming directly from a brand. We shouldn’t be surprised. The average adult spent 95 minutes a day on TikTok in Q2 2022, indicating a preference for entertaining content.

Influencers are positioned to survive the coming AI-induced content apocalypse. While we may bemoan the triumph of style over substance, content creators and marketers can’t ignore what there is to learn from their success—namely, that unique voice and compelling design become imperative when quality, expertise, and accuracy become normative.

Engaging formats – Wrestling attention from a soon-to-be-trusted personalized AI chatbot will require continued creativity with content format and platforms. In the digital realm, consider every format available for your content and try them all to see what resonates with your audience: video, surveys, white papers, e-books and guides, industry indices, social media. Content in print will stand out for its tactile nature—solid in your readers’ hands—so, leverage printed brochures, magazines, and books. And then there’s the personal, interactive experience of live web seminars and in-person events. These will remain highly valued opportunities to engage with your readers.

While you’re assessing and packaging your content, consider allocating resources to producing evergreen content (educational, historical, or other content that continues to be relevant long past its initial publication) as part of an AI-aware, forward-thinking content strategy. Evergreen content, recognized as “authoritative” by search engines, is more likely to receive source attribution when cited in AI search results.

The changes that lie ahead won’t always seem pleasant, but publishers who adjust to the new reality will survive and even prosper.

USING AI IN YOUR OWN EDITORIAL PROCESS

If the Google story, combined with your own research and instincts, lead you to embrace AI, we can offer two ideas as to how you might get started. The first is a simple tactic you can adopt immediately. The second, a more strategic initiative, will help your brand survive in the new era by focusing your resources on attributes that will survive the commoditization of knowledge.

Let’s begin with the first idea. It’s an internal tactic we can call “first draft.” Simply mandate that your editorial team use a generative AI platform such as ChatGPT as their initial step in creating any story. Wired magazine recently acknowledged on its website that while they “do not publish stories with text generated by AI … [they] may try using AI to generate story ideas.” Adopting this strategy will become increasingly important in your goal to compete with, and stand out from, content already out there.

Your staff writers prompt generative AI to write an article with approximately the same word count as your intended finished story. This first draft nudges them into using AI as a research platform to produce ideas, data, arguments, and sources. It brings your late movers to the game. They experience first-hand the value of generative AI as a writer’s research assistant and co-pilot.

Requiring writers to turn in their queried results helps editors see alternative story lines. Together, the editorial team chooses to use or ignore what AI provides.

A word to the wise: While generative AI offers efficiency at the front end of content development, full editorial participation and review remain essential. Regardless of the extent of AI assistance, the editorial process must include the essential, distinct stages of fact-checking sourcing and accuracy; locking in narrative structure; copyediting; finessing SEO; and finally, ensuring voice. At Luckbox, for example, our review process ensures that our uniquely irreverent, provocative, authoritative yet informal, approachable, and idiosyncratic voice is unmistakably present in every final draft.

The ubiquity of AI-enabled knowledge is imminent. To survive, you will need to continuously remind your audience of the value of the content that only you can provide.

The second idea is more consumer-facing. Let’s call it “prop bot”—a proprietary chatbot developed for your publication and populated by your unique content. This is a prime opportunity to help remind your audience of your brand’s unique perspective, domain knowledge, and expertise. Your stakeholders, management, and marketing people teach the bot your company’s specialized information, data, and insight—everything that differentiates your brand from your competitors or highlights the value you provide to your audience.

After digitally curating your unique content, everything you need to know about developing a proprietary chatbot, or identifying a developer to do it for you, is a simple Google (or Fiverr) search away—no coding required. Development costs for proprietary bots are surprisingly affordable.

Your prop bot is informed by your unique voice, compelling design, proprietary data, and distinctive formats. It would know your audience’s demographics, opinions, and behavioral preferences. At a university publication, it would draw upon your alumni database. At a regional magazine, it could gain perspective from local restaurant reviews. At B2B publications, it might rely on profiles of vendors and industry participants. After internal beta-testing to insure that your prop bot is properly representing your brand’s values and your platform’s domain knowledge, you would add a simple user interface to your digital homepage and promote it with a QR code in your print publication: Ask [Your Brand] Anything! [XX] years of [specialty] knowledge at your fingertips.

Continue to develop your propriety chatbot so it becomes the one that readers turn to for your specialized content.

The bottom line is this: The ubiquity of AI-enabled knowledge is imminent. To survive, you will need to continuously remind your audience of the value of the content that only you can provide and make it easily accessible in the manner they will soon come to expect from other platforms.

Ed McKinley has been editor-in- chief of the print and digital formats of Luckbox magazine since its 2019 debut and through 23 subsequent editorial achievement awards. Jeff Joseph is North American Head of Content at tastylive, a financial media firm within the IG Group, a global financial services firm. He also serves as editorial director and publisher of Luckbox and director of the firm’s video-on-demand content strategy. He oversees digital content and the integration of generative AI into editorial workflow from ideation through distribution. Connect via [email protected].