AI as a Co-Pilot: Integrating AI into Your Content Strategy

Are you overwhelmed by the never-ending demands of content creation?

Have you tried using AI tools but found the results inconsistent or lacking the human touch? Many marketers are grappling with these exact challenges, struggling to maintain quality and creativity while leveraging the latest technology. How do you effectively balance AI’s efficiency with the nuanced creativity that only humans can provide?

These common pains often lead to misperceptions about the role of AI in content marketing and the fear of losing control over the creative process. But there are ways to integrate AI into your content strategy effectively, using it as a powerful co-pilot rather than a replacement.

That’s where Kimberly Anderson-Mutch comes in. As a Senior Content Marketing Manager at Textio, Kimberly has over 15 years of experience in the field and has mastered the art of using AI to enhance content creation. Today, she’ll share actionable strategies on how to integrate AI into your content strategy, setting clear boundaries and maintaining the essential human touch.

AI in Marketing: Unpacked host Mike Allton asked Kimberly Anderson-Mutch about:

Setting Clear Boundaries: Learn how to balance human-led strategy with AI-generated content.

Enhancing Quality with AI: Discover practical ways AI can optimize content, from rephrasing sentences to suggesting SEO keywords.

Training and Involvement: Understand the importance of educating your content team on effectively using AI tools.

Learn more about Kimberly Anderson-Mutch

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

AI as a Co-Pilot_ Integrating AI into Your Content Strategy

[00:00:00] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: When it comes to human led content creation and development, the human always needs to be inputting basically a campaign brief. So you know your company, your organization, your brand voice, your audience, and your goal better than AI does. So when prompting AI, you should be using essentially a campaign brief.

You should, , also have your vision and goals defined and your brand and audience. And then when it comes to using AI, I would say,, there are endless uses, but when it comes to content creation, you can use it for versioning or what,, some people call atomization and data analysis.

[00:00:42] Mike Allton: Welcome to AI and marketing unpacked, where we simplify AI for impactful marketing. I’m your host, Mike Alden here to guide you through the world of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on marketing strategies. Each episode, we’ll break down AI concepts into manageable insights and explore practical applications that can supercharge your marketing efforts.

Whether you’re an experienced marketer just starting to explore the potential of AI, this podcast will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. So tune in and let’s unlock the power of AI together.

Greetings program. Welcome back to AI and marketing unpacked where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at keeping up with and integrating or layering artificial intelligence into social media, content, advertising, search, and other areas.

Digital marketing. And you get to learn to subscribe to be shown how to prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead. Are you overwhelmed by the never ending demands of content creation? Have you tried using AI tools, but found the results inconsistent or lacking the human touch?

Many marketers are grappling with these exact challenges, struggling to maintain quality and creativity. While leveraging the latest technology, how do you effectively balance AI’s efficiency with the nuanced creativity that only humans can provide? These common pains often lead to misperceptions about the role of AI in content marketing and the fear of losing control over the creative process.

But there are ways to integrate AI into your content strategy effectively, using it as a powerful tool. Co pilot rather than a replacement. That’s where Kimberly Anderson-Mutch comes in as a senior content marketing manager at Textio. Kimberly has got over 15 years of experience in the field and has mastered the art of using AI to enhance content creation today.

She’ll share actionable strategies on how to integrate AI into your content strategy, setting clear boundaries and maintaining the essential human touch. Hey, Kimberly, welcome to the show.

[00:02:36] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

[00:02:39] Mike Allton: So glad to have you before we actually get into some of the topics.

Let’s start by, if you wouldn’t mind sharing your journey when it comes to content marketing, how you begin integrating AI into your strategies.

[00:02:50] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah. So like you mentioned, I have been in marketing for about 15 years, specifically content marketing for the last 10. I think it’s important to mention that I am also a Of course, a writer.

I was a writing major in both undergrad and graduate school, and I’m also a former college professor. And so I mentioned that because I think it’s an interesting convergence of these two areas. I just absolutely love sharing information helping people find the answers to the questions that they have and providing them with.

solution. So that’s how I got into content marketing. And more specifically, when I started using a I actually started, like maybe many of the people who are listening tried to, you know, get into chat GPT as soon as it launched. One thing that I have always hated Doing is writing newsletter intros and I wanted to find out how chat GPT might be able to support me in easing the pains of newsletter intros.

So that’s when I started.

[00:03:59] Mike Allton: That makes a lot of sense. One of the kind of recurring threads throughout this series so far and all the people I’ve talked to is look for things that you don’t like doing and see if the AI could potentially supplement, replace, speed that process. I’m using it a lot for podcast production, certainly for the podcast editing, because I can’t stand to listen to my own voice.

I know a lot of people relate to that fact. So I’m curious, Kimberly, what are some of the first steps that you rather should take when we’re talking about integrating AI into this content creation process?

[00:04:29] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: I think it’s really important to understand what your end goal is. You know, are you looking to get support in creating more content?

Is there something that you don’t want to do? Do you need to synthesize information or do you want to learn more about how your content is performing? And when it comes to actually creating, I would say you should always be starting with a piece of content, removing any proprietary data or sensitive information and then prompting AI clearly and specifically, I think this is something that people struggle with is believing that AI will do all of the heavy lifting for you and you really have to be integrated in a part of the process in order to get the best output .

[00:05:14] Mike Allton: Totally agree with that. Again, another constant threat is the pre work. That has to go into using AI and helping it to understand not only who you are and what you’re looking for, but who you’re talking to. Again, many of our first experiences with AI. Well, I’d love AI to just write blog content for me.

That sounds fantastic. And then you just write, ask it to write a blog post. And if you’re not paying attention, it’s absolute rubbish. We had Andy Crestedina.

[00:05:47] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Like AI to write a blog post for them.

[00:05:50] Mike Allton: Right, right. Andy Crestodina who was on the show previously pointed out that AI could just as easily mean average intelligence because without clear guidelines and parameters and boundaries, it’s just giving us the average response, the average answer.

[00:06:04] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: I think that’s a really important point to make, right?

So I think something that a lot of people who are using generative LLMs are, are not fully aware that they are pulling from a data set that is the internet. And so you’re only going to perform as well as whatever content or information chat GPT or other. General LLMs are pulling from right?

[00:06:34] Mike Allton: Absolutely right. So that’s very important to know. So if we’re talking about boundaries in terms of output, how do we set some clear boundaries between human led strategy sessions and AI generated content itself?

[00:06:47] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, I think this is an important question. When it comes to human led content creation and development the human always needs to be in putting basically a campaign brief.

So, you know, your company, your organization, your brand voice, your audience, and your goals better than AI does. So when prompting AI, you should be using Essentially a campaign brief, you should also have your vision and goals defined and your brand and audience. And then when it comes to using AI, I would say there are endless uses, but when it comes to content creation, you can use it for versioning or what some people call atomization and data analysis.

[00:07:37] Mike Allton: I love the idea of atomization. Can you explain what that is?

[00:07:40] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah. So I love atomization. This is I get excited when people ask me to talk about this, but essentially I’ll give you an example of how I use AI to atomize content. I always start with a piece of content that is well researched by me. So I don’t let AI provide specific data. I always come to the writing process with my own data set. And typically I will use generative AI only after I have developed a piece of content.

And so that content has been researched. I’ve spoken to thought leaders and experts within my organization or externally. And that piece of content I have a lot of confidence in. And so I’ll take that piece of content and I might upload it to AI. And I will say, I need, you know, an email. I need a piece of social content.

And I’d love if you could create a second blog from this piece of content. And that’s how I use it to atomize and create additional pieces of content so that there is. Sort of this built in support system for creating more content without human resource.

[00:08:57] Mike Allton: I couldn’t relate more. We talked about this. A lot of different ways repurposing during additional snippets of content. I use it for this podcast. I’ve, I’ve created a custom GPT where once the podcast and the blog posts have been published every Saturday, I give GPT the link to the article, which has the full transcript so I can just read it and summarize it.

And then I’ve trained it to give me certain quotes, certain numbers of quotes, certain numbers of snippets, social media posts, an entire LinkedIn newsletter for that episode. It creates. An entire week’s worth of promotional copy for me in seconds. And all I have to do is review it and say, okay, yeah, that’s a great quote.

No, that’s stupid. That was me doing the intro. Don’t use that. Whatever, you know, whatever it came up with. Usually it’s really, really good because I’ve spent a lot of time in that pre work and I’ve helped it understand. I’m the host. I’m looking for information from the guests. This is the voice. This is the target audience.

These are the things I need. One of the things that I love that you talked about was A campaign brief. And I’d love if you could expand on that a little bit more and even talk about maybe some of the AI specific guidelines that help you train the AI on brand, on editorial standards, you know, anything that you’re doing to help inform the AI so that it gives you great output.

[00:10:11] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think when you’re informing AI, you always need to come prepared to iterate just like you mentioned, right? So no, I, I don’t want you to use that piece of content or that sentence. That’s me introing the podcast. But you, you should definitely come with a campaign brief.

You should think of AI as potentially your, your, Copywriter, your built in copywriter, right? So you should, when having a AI version content for you, explain your vision, the goals what your brand is, what your tone of voice is and the audience you’re looking to speak to, even down to the platform that you would like AI to develop content for.

[00:10:56] Mike Allton: Love it. Now, one of the things I’ve heard people using a I for and it’s actually kind of two sides of the spectrum when it comes to content. On the one hand, you have folks saying you should only really use a I for brainstorming, right? Get over that white page issue where you’re not even sure what to write about.

Maybe help you build an outline, that sort of thing. Other folks have talked about using a I to actually Edit and optimize content. Have you used it on that end of the spectrum? Have you used it to optimize content? I’ve used it for keyword optimization or SEO or anything along those lines.

[00:11:27] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah. I have definitely used AI to, well, there are certain products out there that are fantastic for editing and grammar.

No one is better. Perfect when it comes to editing and grammar, and it’s wonderful to have a backup to take a look at your content to make sure that you’re expressing yourself clearly and that you’re, you know, using active voice, et cetera, all of those things. I have definitely used AI for, for keyword research, but I will say that with the caveat that I would always, always, always do the re do additional research to ensure that you’re getting an output that is accurate and that will be effective. I would say it’s great for offering potential broader examples of keywords that maybe other software and platforms that you’re using art Yeah,

[00:12:22] Mike Allton: that makes a lot of sense.

And it’s very corollary to the topic that we talked about with Andy Crestodino, which was content gap analysis. And so he was teaching us how to use AI to look at all the content we published on our website or maybe within a home page or the landing page and use the AI to identify, well, what haven’t we talked about?

What haven’t we addressed? Is there a specific article or topic? Is there some piece of information that’s Glaringly obvious to the AI that’s missing from a landing page that we overlooked. And he gave this terrific example where he was working with a chiropractic training program, and they did not mention on the landing page how long the program was, which is kind of important, and that it was accredited.

The AI picked those those things up. Immediately. And the brain next generation from the client was this is a three year accredited program to turn you into a chiropractor or whatever the language was. So I’ll link to that in the show notes cause you guys are absolutely going to want to pay attention to that folks.

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Don’t just market market smarter with Magai tap the link in the show notes. So Kimberly, first, I wonder if you could share a little bit more about what, what Textio is and does and the kind of work that you’re doing there. But also talk to us about how AI has kind of been implemented there. How do you.

that teams are using a I correctly. Do you guys have training anything along those lines?

[00:14:59] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, this is a good question. So well, text you as a generative AI company. Actually, we have two pieces of software, one that helps reduce bias in writing job descriptions and another in performance reviews. So the use of a I is pretty Is very welcomed at my company, but in order to ensure that we are using AI correctly and that we are informing one another about how we’re using AI and how to stay as up to date On best practices, we typically share prompts that work or didn’t work with one another.

And we do a lot of live workshopping. So what that means is that we might share how we’re versioning a piece of content and do that together so that we’re learning in real time, what’s working and what’s not.

[00:15:53] Mike Allton: I’m curious, do you have any kind of like a central committee or group or person who’s kind of responsible for thinking about AI within the organization?

[00:16:03] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: We have our, our chief technology officer who is the person that I always go to and defer to when I’m trying to understand data privacy in the age of A. I. Right. And you know what A. I. Is trusted that that you can really expect will give you quality output and how to use more of these general L.

L. M. S. And be safe about it.

[00:16:30] Mike Allton: That’s, that’s fantastic. I’m glad you guys are doing that. This is something that I’m, I’m preaching to every business that I talk to, that they’ve got to have at least an individual, if not a multi cross department committee, that’s thinking about how are they using AI, how are they.

trusting or not the different AI tools. That’s one of the core pillars. And how are they thinking about how AI is going to disrupt their industry in the future? Because it will, it absolutely will. If it’s not going to disrupt your business specifically, it’s disrupting your clients and your customers.

[00:17:00] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Absolutely. And we also have you know, new policies about how we use AI. I’ve mentioned, right. Like never putting in inputting proprietary or sensitive data. Data. Another big thing and, and really important in AI and generating content is that the internet is a bias place. And so you don’t want to perpetuate additional bias.

So you need to be scanning for that. You need to be reading your content and, and checking it for some of those biases that slip in and also hallucinations, right?

So when you’re using general LLMs, like chat GPT, you want to watch out for hallucinations. And what I mean by hallucinations are there could be made up pieces of data or incorrect statistics that are slipping into your And you should always, always. Always be responsible for checking and ensuring that you’re sourcing data and information that can either back up of the content that you’ve developed, or you’re inputting your own data in order to avoid hallucinations at all.

[00:18:08] Mike Allton: And I think. Most of us by now are probably familiar with the hallucinations that the AI can generate. We’ve seen that. We’ve even seen it in the mainstream news when Google first released a AI overview, some of the ridiculous responses that a few people got made headlines, even though that wasn’t necessarily all the responses, they were crazy enough, like putting rocks and pizza.

I think that it was, it was noteworthy, but bias is something that I don’t think a lot of people know or What that is, they certainly don’t know enough about it. Could you share some examples of what AI bias looks like and how we can scan for and correct that?

[00:18:44] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah. So like I had mentioned, the Internet is a biased place.

And what I mean by that is that the content that is live and on the Internet is developed by human beings. And you know, innately we are biased. And so an example of a data set. Actually, that my CTO shared with me that was incredibly biased was hair types. So she was working on a product and the data input she realized, or I’m sorry, the data sets she realized were only for straight types of hair.

And so the software, the program wouldn’t be able to recognize that. like mine, curly hair. There have been a number of examples. We’ve done research at TXEO that, you know, where we’ve used general LLMs and the output has been typically more masculine for high paying jobs. Women in some cases, If people were using general LLMs to provide performance feedback, we’re getting more personality based feedback. So the list really goes on and on with all of the bias that can pop up in general usage.

[00:19:57] Mike Allton: Absolutely. In fact, this is actually something I wrote about in a recent newsletter. Those biases can span genders, races geography Yeah, wealth or lack of wealth. And so there’s, there’s so many areas where unfortunately it’s because of the data that that’s being put in to the system, to your point.

And it’s something we just simply need to be aware of and spend some time thinking about that. Now let’s take it back to the prompting. Cause this is also an important topic that we just briefly touched on and how important it is to do some pre work and make sure that the prompts are. Correctly framing what it is that you want from the A.

I. What suggestions do you have for how marketers can develop really effective A. I. Prompts that would really help them ensure like the best possible quality?

[00:20:42] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, I would say I have spent hours learning how to prompt A. I. I think you need to understand that if you let A. I. Do all the heavy lifting like I mentioned, you’re going to get a garbage output.

That’s just a fact. So you have to think of A. I. As your copywriter. And you need to brief A. I. On everything from tone to audience. to length to platform to goal. I think it’s also really helpful to provide examples. And like I’ve mentioned before, you always need to be prepared to iterate. So you can talk to AI.

You can tell AI that that maybe the tone is too formal or that you want to sound more pragmatic in a piece of content, or Or that you need something shorter or longer, or you know, that something isn’t right within the content. And you can continue to iterate on the output that you’re getting and eventually get to where you want to be.

[00:21:37] Mike Allton: I love that point about being conversational. Because I find a couple of things happen when you take that mindset. First, it’s a reminder that you can’t break. The A. I. They’re not gonna lose patience with you like a real person would if you keep asking them to redo it, redo it, redo it. After the fourth revision, a real human be like, you know what?

Find somebody else. I’m done.

[00:21:57] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, I’m

[00:21:57] Mike Allton: gonna do that for you. And I’ve noticed that it responds in kind to the way that you talk to it. So if you are conversational with the A. I. It is conversational in response. I mean, heck, the other day we were talking about something About Italy or something in Italian.

I don’t remember the context exactly, but in response to what it had said, I said, which is Italian for thank you. And it responded Prego. And then the rest of the sentence in Italian. So it just picked up on those little subtle cues, which just made me chuckle out loud, but it makes it a more enjoyable experience, which in that turn makes a more effective experience.

And I think it’s really important, like you said, just to make sure that you’re training the AI. And one of the benefits we had today. And every single day after this is that the models have larger and larger memories and capacity. So the more time you spend talking to the AI, the more it remembers everything that you already talked about.

[00:22:51] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: And

[00:22:51] Mike Allton: it’s able to apply that to tomorrow’s conversations.

[00:22:55] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah. That’s a great point. And in some cases, if you’re paying for a certain type of AI, then you can ask that AI to refer to a piece of content or something you’ve uploaded or a tone of voice or something that you’ve used in the past. And remind AI what output works for you,

[00:23:13] Mike Allton: which I could not recommend more.

That’ll be the best 20 a month that you’ve ever spent in your life to invest in an AI for all the wonderful things that it can do for you. But I want with my last question, and this is one of my favorite questions, because I want us to kind of think ahead. And you and I talked in the green room about how fast is changing.

And so I can’t ask somebody to realistically tell me what they think is going to be like in 12 months, but like three to six months, you know how far ahead? I don’t know what you want to go. But how do you see playing a role in the future of of content marketing? And more importantly, you. How do you think marketers today need to prepare for these changes?

[00:23:50] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, that’s a great question and it’s almost hard to imagine what it’ll be like in three to six months, you know I’ve recently seen Ai a company produce a piece of software that will actually tell you what content is performing well and how to duplicate the elements within that content into your other content that either isn’t performing well or creating new content.

So obviously AI is becoming more and more intelligent. I think in, in the Not so near future that, you know, I will become more trusted than humans because it’s of its ability to be accurate. There will be no human error. And I, you know, I fully understand that it will touch all areas of content marketing.

Right. So it’s already able to automate tasks for us. We get predictive analytics. You talked about trend analysis, of course, content creation, right. personalization seo. But I would say it’s incredibly important for content marketers to have a growth mindset continue to use a I to practice with a I and learn about the tools As, as they change and iterate themselves.

I personally attend webinars, conferences you can listen to podcasts like this, just anything to stay continuously informed.

[00:25:12] Mike Allton: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I know one of the pieces of content I’m working on right now is, is a list of AI marketing podcasts. Cause this is not the only one.

There’s, there’s several other really fantastic shows out there that I’m discovering and I’m listening to, and I want the people in this audience to listen to and learn from. As well. But to your point, I think one of the more powerful, and I agree with this, one of the most powerful things that we’re going to see with AI is predictive analysis, because as humans, we’ve already talked about this many times.

It’s hard for us to really ingest all the possible data and comprehend it and come up with anything. Meaningful. I know I’ve written over 1000 blog posts, but I don’t have the capacity in my mind to remember all of them and understand how all of them are performing or not today. But an AI could look at my analytics could look at my WordPress archive and very easily understand.

Yeah. Mike, these articles are great. The rest of these kind of suck. Don’t talk about those topics anymore. That much I probably understood, but which ones to really lean into which topics. That’s the kind of thing I’m definitely looking forward to.

[00:26:18] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah. It’s a great way to find out, you know, what your audience prefers and what they don’t prefer and to lean into making that type of content for them.

[00:26:28] Mike Allton: Awesome. Awesome. Kimberly, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. I know a lot of folks are really going to appreciate having listened to this and thought very strategically about how they’re using AI in their content marketing strategy for those who want to learn more about you or text you. Where can they go to reach out?

[00:26:44] Kimberly Anderson-Mutch: Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn as Kimberly Anderson -Mutch, and all of my contact information is there. So I encourage people to connect with me.

[00:26:54] Mike Allton: Fantastic. Thanks, Kimberly. Thanks all of you for listening. Don’t forget to please follow the show on Apple, the AI in Marketing: unpacked podcast, and leave us review.

We’d love to know what you think until next time. Welcome to the grid. Thanks for joining us on AI in marketing unpacked. I hope today’s episode has inspired you and given you actionable insights to integrate AI into your marketing strategies. You enjoyed the show. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and consider leaving a review.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions. Any questions you might have, don’t forget to join us next time as we continue to simplify AI and help you make a real impact in your marketing efforts until then keep innovating and see just how far AI can take your marketing. Thank you for listening and have a fantastic day.

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