On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, disrupting the pace of content creation and strategy. This content intelligence tool promised to produce a large volume of content at an impressive rate, reducing the time and effort needed for manual writing.
However, as the Internet became saturated with such content, it became clear that artificial intelligence (AI), despite its fast turnaround, may lack the depth and personal touch that search engines value. Critics expressed concerns about AI’s potential impact on content quality and whether it could replace human writers altogether.
In an era where AI is rampant, how do brands protect their integrity and ensure that, despite AI usage, a balance is maintained between quality and quantity of content?
Two words: deep content.
To elaborate: In-depth content that brings user value through well-researched, data-backed answers.
In this guide, we’ll explore the value of deep content in an AI era, best practices for creating it and how it can coexist with AI-generated content in a brand’s content strategy. By the end of this article, you’ll learn:
• What Is Deep Content?
• The Limitations of AI-Generated Content
• Best Practices for Creating Deep Content in an AI Era
• How To Balance AI and Human Content
What Is Deep Content?
Deep content is high-quality, evergreen material that offers real value to readers. Unlike AI-generated content, which relies on pre-programmed algorithms, deep content is crafted by human writers who can think critically, analyze diverse sources and present information in a way that fosters a deep understanding of the subject.
From an SEO perspective, deep content aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, which stress the importance of expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness. While AI can access online resources, it struggles to verify facts and assess their credibility. Google’s use of human search raters to evaluate content quality underscores the value of human insight — an area where deep content shines.
Essentially, deep content fills the gaps where AI often falls short, offering depth, nuance and emotionally resonant storytelling that can elevate your digital branding in an online world diluted with AI content.
To further grasp why deep content is so valuable for brand protection, let’s unpack the limitations of AI-generated content.
AI Limitations: Why Deep, Well-Researched Content Outshines AI
In the ongoing debate over deep content versus AI-generated content writing, it is essential to carefully evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
Brand Protection and Quality Control
AI-generated content relies heavily on training data and the algorithms behind it. If the model hasn’t been updated with the latest data, it can produce inaccurate or outdated content that can undermine the credibility of your content and, by extension, damage your brand reputation.
This is why, despite concerns that AI content intelligence might eventually replace human writers, quality control and human oversight remain crucial to catching errors, verifying accuracy and ensuring that the content maintains the high standards necessary for meeting Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines.
Presence of Human Touch
People crave content that strikes an emotional chord. Human-created content achieves this by weaving personal anecdotes, storytelling and a distinctive style that helps evoke emotions and build brand trust.
In contrast, AI content intelligence often relies on facts and figures but lacks the personal touch that brings content to life. This absence of emotional depth can make AI-powered content feel flat and disconnected, missing the opportunity to truly connect with users.
Creativity and Personalization
AI relies on existing web content and data to develop wording. The technology does not understand user intent for queries and may have difficulty interpreting cultural references, humor or complex emotional undertones, which can affect content relevance and appropriateness.
Moreover, AI-powered content can sometimes seem formulaic or repetitive because it draws from a set of predefined patterns rather than creating novel concepts. This limitation can result in content that, while technically accurate, may lack the depth and personalization necessary to engage users and establish strong digital branding.
SEO Performance
While AI excels at optimizing content for search engines, in-depth articles often achieve higher user engagement by incorporating human narratives, authentic voices and emotional depth — qualities that AI-powered content struggles to replicate.
As previously mentioned, AI content frequently fails to address user intent, a crucial factor in search engine optimization (SEO). Well-crafted, human-generated content prevails here, as it is better equipped to anticipate and respond to user needs through thoughtful research and articulate writing.
Moreover, deep content typically features expert insights and data essential for earning backlinks.
Backlinks — links from other websites pointing to your content — are a significant ranking factor for Google. They help establish content credibility and authority, helping boost your content’s visibility and ranking in search results.
8 Best Practices for Creating Deep Content in an AI Era
Experts predict that by 2025, 90% of online content will be AI-generated, marking a significant leap in content marketing automation. While the stage is still being set, one thing is becoming crystal clear: content marketers must adapt their strategies for a future where AI is more than an afterthought.
In this era, deep content may be the silver lining brands need to strengthen their digital branding. With that, here are tips for creating deep content that will help you shine in a sea of AI-generated material:
Tip #1: Audit Your Content
AI may generate content faster than humans, but search engines like Google are more interested in quality than quantity. Conducting a content audit can help you identify areas for improvement and ensure that your existing content is on par with Google’s quality rater guidelines.
A content audit can also help you:
• Uncover subjects that you haven’t explored yet to create fresh content opportunities.
• Make sure all content is consistent with your brand voice and style guidelines.
• Identify ways to boost audience engagement.
• Generate ideas to enhance conversion rates.
To start your audit, identify a goal (e.g., increasing SEO traffic, generating more leads) so you can align your audit results with specific business objectives.
In this case, you are looking for ways to leverage deep content, so your audit should focus on identifying where AI-generated content could be improved and how human-written content can fill the gaps.
For example, does your AI-generated content lack an emotional appeal? Does it struggle to incorporate diverse perspectives or personal anecdotes? Is it too repetitive or formulaic?
Once you’ve identified these areas, compile a list of important content pages on your site. This might include blogs, landing pages, white papers, etc.
Manually gathering all the links is quite manageable for smaller websites. However, if you have a larger site, utilizing a tool like Site Audit will help simplify the process.
Measure the current performance of all the pages against the goals you set earlier and implement an action plan to improve your content strategy.
Tip #2: Focus on Human Stories and Emotions
As the saying goes, “Facts tell, but stories sell.” Incorporating personal anecdotes, storytelling and emotional depth into your content can make it more relatable and engaging for users.
To incorporate human stories into your content, consider using customer testimonials or success stories to showcase how your product or service has positively impacted real people’s lives.
Don’t be afraid to evoke emotions in your audience through descriptive language, humor and cultural references. Emotions are powerful drivers of consumer behavior. They affect how consumers view, assess and select products and services, as well as how they respond to marketing communications and experiences.
Tip #3: Conduct Thorough Research
As mentioned earlier, AI-generated content often lacks depth and personalization due to its limited ability to understand user intent and incorporate diverse perspectives. To combat this, conducting thorough research on the topic you are writing about is crucial.
Start by researching your target audience, their pain points and interests and use that information to develop unique angles for your topics. When conducting research:
• Analyze what other brands in your niche are doing well with their deep content strategies.
• Identify industry trends and any data-backed insights from credible sources.
• Use customer interviews and surveys to gather first-hand insights.
• Utilize tools such as Google Trends, Buzzsumo and SEMrush to identify popular topics and keywords related to your subject.
Tip #4: Use Data to Fuel Your Content
Deep content is thoroughly researched and backed by data. By analyzing your website analytics, you can discover which topics resonate most with your audience, what questions they’re asking and what keywords drive traffic. This information can help you focus on developing more in-depth material around your top-performing content.
Additionally, use tools like Google Trends or BuzzSumo to identify trending topics in your industry or uncover gaps in current content coverage. Doing so can help you create compelling and relevant deep content that will stand out from AI-generated pieces.
Tip #5: Plan Content for Different Stages
Every stage of the buyer’s journey — awareness, consideration and decision — requires a different type of content to nurture leads effectively. While AI-generated content may be suitable for the top-of-the-funnel (e.g., blog posts), it can lack depth and personalization when it comes to bottom-of-the-funnel content (e.g., case studies).
To stand out in all stages of the buyer’s journey, plan a diverse mix of deep content for each step. A sample content plan could look like this:
• Top-of-the-Funnel: Informative and engaging blog posts, infographics and videos.
• Middle-of-the-Funnel: In-depth white papers and eBooks that provide insights on industry trends or pain points.
• Bottom-of-the-Funnel: Customer testimonials, case studies and product demos.
Planning deep content for each stage of the buyer’s journey will help your brand consistently provide value to potential customers and nurture them toward a conversion.
Tip #6: Add Style and Flair
Each writer has their unique writing style, which sets their content apart from others. AI-generated content, while technically sound, may come across as robotic.
You can add a human touch to your writing by injecting humor, analogies, foreshadowing, inserting quotes and storytelling techniques. These elements make your content more engaging and help establish a personal connection with your audience.
Tip #7: Insert Expert Insights
Thought leaders and expert insights can add credibility to your deep content. Although AI pulls out data and statistics, it cannot provide subjective opinions.
Reach out to industry experts, influencers or even your team members for their thoughts on the topic you are covering. Users are more likely to trust and engage with content backed by expert opinions.
Tip #8: Create Content on ‘Deep’ Topics
AI-generated content often produces shallow topics that lack depth and originality and fail to provide value to readers. They outline what to do but seldom offer guidance on achieving it.
Deeper topics require deeper answers. Since AI can’t provide that, you need to look for sources from someone with experience on the subject matter. These are the kinds of topics that brands should champion in their content strategy.
Finding “deep” topics requires industry knowledge and common sense. However, you can also use keyword research to identify popular, high-volume topics.
Then, go a step further and dig into the subtopics within subjects typically not covered by AI-generated content. Be sure to exclude keywords that trigger featured snippets.
After all, if Google thinks a query can already be answered well with a featured snippet, AI-generated content will likely provide answers similar to those produced by Google.
Balancing AI and Human Content
AI tools have always had a poor rep in content marketing, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that AI-generated content is all bad. For one, it helps augment the work of human writers.
A good example is GrammarlyGO, an AI-powered tool that enhances writing by offering editing suggestions and improving overall quality. It checks for grammar, spelling and style issues and ensures clarity and conciseness in your work.
Similarly, Surfer AI offers powerful features for content creators and SEO professionals. Thanks to its data-driven approach, it can identify content gaps, uncover lucrative keywords, plan content strategically and assist in crafting articles that rank highly in search engines.
What is the role of human content creators in this AI-driven landscape?
As AI continues to evolve, content creators should embrace the role of curators and editors rather than rely solely on marketing automation technologies.
By steering AI’s capabilities rather than letting it dictate the process, brands can elevate their creative output, uphold brand trust and ensure brand protection, even amidst the challenges of content marketing automation.
Establish Brand Trust With a Robust Content Strategy From Thrive
Artificial content intelligence will only become more sophisticated over time. The full extent of its capabilities remains unclear, but it’s a disruptive enough force that warrants close attention, especially if you want to protect your brand reputation.
Given this, digital marketers, content teams and everyone involved in the creative process must remain open to adapting their strategies. Embracing AI as a tool rather than a replacement for human content writers will be key to protecting brand reputation and ensuring authenticity.
If you need help adapting your content strategies, Thrive is here to assist. We take a “How can we use this to our advantage?” approach to seamlessly integrate the latest AI tools and technologies into your marketing efforts.
Every strategy we employ is guided by results, ensuring that your content is effective and aligned with your goals. Connect with us today to speak with our content marketing experts.
We also offer other digital marketing strategies to complement your content efforts, including web design, paid advertising and social media marketing.
