Ryan Kelly:
Hey and welcome back to AI on the Fly. I am Ryan Kelly, your host, and today is a very special day. I have in my chariot my good friend Ciarán Fae, who happens to be our full-time content writer, strategist extraordinaire. Say hello.
Ciarán Fae:
Hello.
Ryan Kelly:
OK, and here’s the deal. When I got asked, I got peppered with questions about content and AI and how to write it and format it and why. I thought, just like other shows where I’ve had guests, well, I’m not really the professional. Let’s get the professional on the show. That’s Ciarán.
OK, so here we go. We’re going to crack right into it. I have a bunch of questions. I’m kind of going to pepper you with them. The first question is, should we even use AI to create drafts or to write content for us? Should we use it?
Ciarán Fae:
Yeah, I think AI can be a useful tool to help you generate ideas. Obviously, you want to be the expert in whatever you’re talking about, but you can use AI, and especially a specially crafted GPT that kind of knows your business and what you’re talking about, to help you draft outlines so that maybe it helps you come up with ideas you hadn’t thought of before.
Ryan Kelly:
So you mentioned custom GPTs. I love custom GPTs. Guys, if you don’t know how to build one, I’ll film an episode soon and teach you how verbally, but it’s so easy. The first step is to go to ChatGPT and say, can you help me create a custom GPT? And then it’ll say, sure, what do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? Just start answering questions and boom, it makes it for you.
I digress, though. You’re saying that AI is good to create seed content and kind of ideation, but maybe not from concept to completion for a whole piece of content.
Ciarán Fae:
I think you can use it to help you generate your drafts if you go in and humanize it. It’s really important.
Ryan Kelly:
OK, what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to just say, make me a blog, and then just take it straight from GPT and throw it up on your site. OK, so let’s say I just went and said, make me a blog, but of course I used a very long prompt. It was well thought out and talked about tone and tenor and strategy and the reason why and all the things. Let’s say that I did that. How much human editing would need to come in on the backside of it?
So I’ve got this output. Now how much do I need to edit that so that AI can find it and so that I’m not going to be penalized for not having my own human thought content?
Ciarán Fae:
So you want to make sure that it’s readable. First off, when you’re looking at humanization, what I do mostly is I’m humanizing so that if I put it through an AI detection program, it’s coming up lower or at 35%. But some new data is coming out too that says if it’s a little bit higher than that, like up to maybe 50%, you’re not going to be penalized for it.
So Google is still going to scan your stuff. You still have a likelihood of being surfaced by AI overviews. But yeah, you want to try and get it low, probably lower than 50%. I would also say AI and Google’s number one goal is to provide the best answers to questions being asked. So I think that they’re going to be flexible on how much of it is AI in an article that somebody has written or edited.
Ryan Kelly:
There you go. I just want to mention, we noticed some Google rankings change in our content. We noticed pages falling away from Google. I know that we were talking in the office the other day about how important it is to have authors named in blogs and on your website. Can you talk about real quick the importance of why you would have an author named and maybe a tip or trick around that?
Ciarán Fae:
Yeah. So having a named author is just going to help you build authority. That’s a big one. When you’re looking at your E-E-A-T on your site, having a named author helps boost that. It’s also going to help if you have an author bio. So if you’ve got your name on there, that’s great, but also if you’ve got somewhere where if you click your name, you’ve got more information about who you are and some more credentials or your education, that kind of stuff is available.
Ryan Kelly:
I love it. Is it better to go deep on one subject or wide on many when you’re blogging or writing content?
Ciarán Fae:
Kind of both. One thing you can do is utilize what’s called a pillar-cluster strategy with your content so you can do both. You can go deep into one subject with a couple of blogs, and then you can spread that out over multiple subjects in one pillar blog and tie those back to those cluster blogs.
Ryan Kelly:
Yeah, I love it. Think of it like a spider where you’ve got that main blog in the middle and then you’ve got all these legs coming out to other pieces of content that support that blog and feed back to it. Totally. Cluster content marketing.
Why don’t you give me about 20 seconds on style and tone and the importance of it?
Ciarán Fae:
Style and tone are really important for helping your content sound human. The tone should match whatever your business is. Obviously, if you run a sunglasses company, your tone is going to be a lot different than if you do HVAC.
Ryan Kelly:
It’s going to be cool versus comfort-driven.
Ciarán Fae:
Exactly. Maybe your client is younger or older or more serious or more playful. Whatever it is that you’re doing, you want your tone to match that. I think that’s also going to help with your E-E-A-T. The more human and authentic you are in your tone, the more helpful it is for building authority.
Ryan Kelly:
I want to know about structure because when you look at the way AI gives answers, it’s very structured in question-and-answer formats. When we’re writing content that we want to be more digestible to AI, what are some formatting tips or tricks?
Ciarán Fae:
An easy way to format almost any blog is to start with a TLDR. Have your intro and the TLDR, and then end with some FAQs. Having that Q&A format makes it easy to scan. Bullet points and summaries make content easier to digest.
Ryan Kelly:
Tell everyone it’s like speech class when we were kids. Tell people what you’re about to tell them, tell them, and then summarize it again at the end. It’s the same way blogging has turned into humanizing AI content.
Ciarán Fae:
Yeah, pretty much.
Ryan Kelly:
You’ve mentioned E-E-A-T a few times. Let me give some examples. When we talk about E-E-A-T for content marketing, it’s critical that you show experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. A great example of experience might be case studies. Expertise might be storytelling and emotional connection. Authority could be author bios and credentials. Trustworthiness could be reviews and testimonials.
Final question, then we’ve got to go. If you could give one quick win that somebody could do to make their blogging better, what would it be?
Ciarán Fae:
A lot of times, especially when people write their own blogs, it turns into big blocks of text like a school essay. What you can do instead is reverse engineer it. Think about the questions you’re answering and structure your content around those. Break it into bullet points and use answer-focused language.
Ryan Kelly:
OK, if you enjoyed this video, please like it. Subscribe to the channel if you want to know when new videos come out. If you have a question, direct message me. I’m looking for great content to answer real-life questions for real-life brands. Thanks for watching. Until next time, buckle up.