“In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force in content creation…” That’s how ChatGPT started this article. Not too imaginative, wouldn’t you agree? That’s the huge problem with AI – it’s boring, repetitive, and lacks communication skills. Not that it’s not good at writing. On the contrary, AI generators have evolved to become great writers and even fake humor if you ask them. However, they lack imagination. AI lacks the experience of communicating with real people and giving the texts they write some additional value beyond information.

Despite all this, it’s naive to think that AI is not charging into the “rapidly evolving digital landscape.” On the contrary. We must accept that AI will only become bigger and better. So we might as well learn how to use it properly.

As a website owner, AI help is already invaluable to your business and growth despite its many imperfections. It saves you time, effort, and money, especially when it comes to content. So, instead of denouncing AI entirely, let’s find a way to use it and make sure it won’t do more harm than good. To help you with this task, we created a short but comprehensive list of Do’s and Don’ts. With its help, you will be able to utilize the power of AI without falling into the trap of overly relying on it.  

Do: Use AI To Streamline Your Work

First and foremost, let’s start with what you should do with AI. Of course, the most sensible thing is to streamline your work. AI can and will greatly help your content creation efforts, even if you don’t trust it to write your blog posts, copy, or other things. Well, AI is not all about writing, though. Content generation AI is helpful indeed, but a variety of AI tools can help you streamline your content work even further. For example, you can use AI to simplify the distribution process. Automating posting on social media at specific times alone will free you a significant chunk of time. Moreover, SemRush already allows you to utilize an AI tool (Keyword Magic Tool) to help you find relevant keywords, which can help you immensely with idea generation.

Furthermore, AI tools like Gemini can assist you with research, making content calendars, and even creating content plans.

While content generation AI like ChatGPT is still not ideal to use right out of the box, it’s a great way to create a preliminary draft. Many professional writers already use it to overcome their writer’s block. All you need to do is get an idea. Then, your line of thought may entirely divert from what the AI has generated. Still, just reading something generated by AI can make those gears in your brain start moving.

Finally, AI can significantly help pinpoint potential problems with your text. None of us is perfect, and we can’t follow any single Google advice like machines do. That’s why we have YOAST SEO, for example, which tells us which parts of our text need improvement so that Google would like them. Still, the refurbishing is all up to you, but at least you know where to focus.

Don’t: Rely Entirely On AI For Your Content

While AI can streamline your creative work, you definitely mustn’t overly rely on it. Leaving your entire content on AI is putting your business on a fast track to losing search engine position, authority, credibility, and even traffic. People don’t really care what a machine has to say about their problem. They are on your website because they expect expertise. Sadly, machines can’t provide any. Not that they can’t generate a text that’s essentially a collection of all the best solutions on the internet (or whatever you tutored the AI with). However, the AI lacks the experience to determine whether these solutions will work in the client’s specific case. That’s why we don’t trust AI with medical diagnoses (Yes, you shouldn’t ask Google what’s wrong with you based on symptoms).

Furthermore, Chat GPT, for example, has some seriously outdated data. Even though its knowledge base was recently updated to 2023, it still can’t generate accurate texts on time-sensitive topics like cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity business is changing by the day, so using six-month-old data to create relevant content is extremely discrediting.

Most importantly, AI lacks emotional connection. It can’t fake the urgency one feels when facing a frozen computer, and it can’t understand the emotional implications behind certain Google searches that lead to your page. Your audience has chosen you because they feel connected to you as a professional, not because there are no alternatives out there. So, you offer an additional value at least to them. It can be emotional support, a calming demeanor, or anything in between. Unfortunately, these can’t be faked by AI generators, at least not successfully. So, while using AI to make your work easier is fine, putting your entire creative work on autopilot is a recipe for disaster.

Do: Create An AI Use Protocol

Now, using AI is a slippery slope. Once you see how much time these tools can save, you will inevitably want to utilize them even more. You’d want to delegate as much of your mundane tasks as possible. However, that’s not a great idea. AI can be useful in healthy doses. So, to prevent yourself from slipping further and further, you need to establish some ground rules.

Setting protocols on how, when, and where to use AI will guarantee that you won’t go overboard with the whole automation process. These protocols will save you a lot of headaches in the long run, as they will help you mitigate risks, guarantee efficiency and quality, and prevent you from crossing any ethical lines.

Creating this set of ground rules can be a bit hard, so first and foremost, you need to focus on the risks. The most significant risk, of course, is losing your credibility and authority. So naturally, your first set of rules should be regarding the quality control of the AI content. Focus on fact-checking, language use, and biases.

Next, concentrate on keeping the messaging consistent. This means you need to keep your brand voice identical, something an AI generation tool like ChatGPT is incapable of doing completely. So, no matter what text it splurges, you will have to elevate it to your brand’s standards.

Next, you must set some rules on to what extent AI should be used. This is entirely up to your discretion, but keep in mind that, in the end, your work will make the difference. So, if you are more comfortable rewriting something the AI has already written, go for it. Or you can just ask it to outline your content.

The protocols are entirely up to you, but you should have them.

Don’t: Input Sensitive Data Into AI Tools

This should go without saying, but AI tools are not the most secure software. So, sharing personal data is definitely a huge no-no. This can lead to significant data breaches, causing you not just some sleepless nights but entirely ruining your business financially and reputationally.

Furthermore, using your client’s or partner’s sensitive data in AI tools will lead to significant credibility damage and, most likely, lawsuits, which you will lose. If you are working with EU citizens and clients, sharing their information with AI tools is a massive breach of GDPR, which can lead to costly fines.

After all, AI tools retain everything you feed them to improve their performance. This means that any sensitive data you feed them will be stored. That wouldn’t be a problem if AI tools had good cyber security, but as language models, they don’t need it. So, naturally, one can’t really trust them to protect your personal data.

In short, keep sensitive data away from AI tools.

Do: Give Specific And Clear Instructions To Your AI

Using AI for content creation isn’t that easy. If you ask Chat GPT to write a blog post about cybersecurity, for example, it will do a horrendous job. It will splurge some generic nonsense that everyone knows and won’t add any value to the text. However, if you give the AI enough instructions, what to focus on, who it is for, what keywords to use, what content plan to use, how many words each segment should be, and anything else, it will produce a much better result.

Usually, for content to be good, the explanation should be about 20% of the length of the text. That’s without the information feed. We’re just talking about the instructions on how to write a specific piece of content. Furthermore, you need to be careful with the language that you use. For example, if you ask for an article, it will be vastly different than if you ask for a blog post or an essay. The genres matter.

The same goes for image creation, information searching, and even keyword research. The more specific you are in your request, the less work you will have afterward.

So, take your time to learn how to communicate with the AI before you start utilizing it in your content tasks.

Don’t: Trust That The AI Won’t Make Mistakes

Even when you give ultra-specific requests, never fully trust the AI. While they advertise that it doesn’t make mistakes, it does. They even make rare grammatical and spelling mistakes. True, that’s not something you see every day, but it happens. Furthermore, ChatGPT is not very well educated on where commas go. In its defense, most people aren’t, so that’s not a huge problem per se.

The much bigger problem is the logical connections the AI makes. Even if you feed it information from a source, it can still interpret it the wrong way. It can alter facts to fit its narrative despite you telling it what it should add. That most often happens with numbers. For some reason, the AI is not too good with numbers, especially when it comes to word count. For example, if you ask it to write you a 400-word text, it will write a piece of content with anywhere between 250 and 1000 words. If you ask it to count how many words it has written, it will show you a random number close to what you asked it to write. But if you count the words yourself, you will see it’s way off.

So, make it your job to fact-check everything the AI says. That’s hardly a problem if you are already familiar with the topic and you’ve done your own research before bestowing it on AI.

Do: Experiment With AI

Not every interaction with AI should end up on your website. Experimenting with one or all modules will give you a clearer picture of how much they can help you with your tasks. This can enhance your experience immensely. Learning an AI tool’s full range of capabilities will unlock many doors. More importantly, it will allow you to create content that needs little post-creation interaction.

Sticking only to Chat GPT or Gemini will stagnate your creative output, especially since “the rapidly evolving digital landscape” often offers new AI modules on the market.

So, be open-minded. Give new modules a chance to surprise you, and take your time experimenting with the ones you already utilize. This will allow you to find a better solution and learn how to communicate your needs to the AI better.

Don’t: Neglect Quality Control.

Regardless of how well you communicate your ideas with the AI, always put its work under the microscope. This will save you a lot of embarrassment in the long run. Moreover, it will save your SEO efforts, credibility, and, most importantly – authority. No one is willing to read a generic, robotic voice trying to explain something as if you’re first landing on Earth.

So, ensure the content you create offers value to the right target audience, assumes precisely the right level of knowledge, and only spreads verified information. A single slip-up in any of these directions will cost you a lot. Indeed, your reputation won’t be tarnished forever, but you will experience a significant withdrawal of trust if you ever mess up your quality control.

Do: Take Time To Teach The AI What You Need

Finally, when using AI, take your time teaching it what you need. You’d never throw a new recruit in the deep, telling them to write you an article about something and leaving it at that. You will take your time giving them instructions and materials to learn. You will provide them with your brand voice and persona documents to study, learn, and think about how they can implement it. Otherwise, the new content writer will just write something.

That’s precisely what the AI will do as well. Just like a new recruit, it has some basic knowledge and understanding of your business. However, the devil is in the details. If you want to have content that’s not complete garbage and you won’t have to rewrite from the very top, you need to invest some time in teaching the AI module how to write, how to communicate with your audience efficiently, and, most importantly, how to never start any piece of content with “In the rapidly evolving landscape of… .”

Feed your AI module (once you find the one that will fit your needs) all the necessary documents and rules of engagement so it can learn and evolve over time. Sure, at the very beginning, its work will need a lot of supervision, but over time, the end product will only need some polishing, adding some personal experiences, and reducing repetitive behavior, which is prone to almost any AI module.

Don’t: Let AI Lead Your Content

The most important advice you can take from this blog post is never to let AI lead your content. You are the one in charge, and delegating the lead to a machine won’t end well. You need to establish the rules of engagement, feed it the information, and analyze the results. Letting the AI lead your content efforts will inevitably ruin your SEO score and your authority.

So, take charge of your content plan, creation, and delivery, and let the AI be an assistant. That’s its role anyway.

Conclusion

Utilizing the power of AI will allow you to enhance your performance, better your work-life balance, and help you with tasks you are not that good at to begin with. For it to work, however, you need to use AI the right way – as an assistant. You must create some rules and follow them strictly. More importantly, however, you must find the best AI module that fits your needs. In a sense, that’s much like the first step in creating your website – finding a reputable, reliable, and robust website hosting provider.

HostArmada is just that. We give you the opportunity to build your website upon a state-of-the-art cloud hosting infrastructure. This will allow you to create a lightning-fast, heavily secured, and unwaveringly reliable website. So, before you start your search for an AI module, make sure your website is up to the task. Ensure your audience will enter your website in the blink of an eye while keeping your data protected in our servers. Check out our plans and choose the one that will fit your needs perfectly.