How to maintain your brand identity with AI-generated content
With the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing capabilities in natural language generation, content creation has taken a significant leap forward.
AI-generated content promises to revolutionize the way brands approach content marketing, offering increased efficiency, scalability and cost-effectiveness. However, as we start to use AI more in our content creation, one question keeps coming up: How can brands leverage this technology while still maintaining their unique brand identity and core values?
After all, a brand’s identity is the very essence that sets it apart from competitors and resonates with audiences. It encompasses the personality, tone, messaging and values that shape the brand’s narrative and boost engagement – how can AI integrate with this?
The theme of this year’s National Creativity Day is perfectly captured by artificial intelligence and integrating your own brand identity into AI’s creations.
By striking the right balance between leveraging AI’s capabilities and continuing to infuse content with human creativity, brands can unlock the productivity AI affords them while still ensuring their core values shine through every piece of content they produce.
Develop clear guidelines
The first step to integrating AI into your content creation processes is to develop a clear overview of what you want your brand to look like, both visually and in terms of tone and style. Brand guidelines pave the way for consistent communication, and it means that anyone coming into the team will instantly be able to replicate that same style again and again – whether manually or via AI.
That’s not to say you can’t experiment – in fact, when it comes to marketing materials like videos or photography, experimenting can yield great results. “Even if you have a favorite lighting setup or confidence from a YouTube video, it’s always great to move your setup around just to see what happens” explains the team at MPB, “What do I notice?” and “What do I wonder?” are two questions you can ask yourself to get curious”.
However, with the guidelines there, you can be confident that what you produce is still reminiscent of your brand and values. From the words and phrases you use in blogs to the colors you use for graphics, every detail should tie in with how you want your business to appear. This then ties in with the next step…
Train AI to mirror your voice
Now you have set guidelines on what you want your content to look like, you can work with AI tools to help them emulate that voice or style. Immerse AI in a range of your existing content which captures this tone and look, from social media posts to articles, product pages on your site and marketing materials. From here, AI can analyze patterns and understand your style, tone and messaging approach more easily.
This makes it easier for it to craft content in the future that aligns with your brand identity. The digital worker concept becomes particularly relevant here, as it represents the seamless blend of AI capabilities with human oversight to maintain authenticity and consistency in your messaging.
Adam Villaume suggests tailoring your prompts for the best results: “you want to prompt the AI correctly so it understands to analyze all of the texts you paste into the chat. It’s the combination of more data and specific prompts that make this method more advanced, but the results are also better and more consistent”.
Maintain a human eye for detail
AI is fantastic for boosting productivity and streamlining tasks like optimizing content for SEO but it still requires a human editor. All content produced by AI should be checked by a member of the team to make sure that it aligns with your values, messaging and the overall tone you’re hoping to put out to your audience.
It’s also important to check the content produced for accuracy, making sure that the stats it’s included or the references it’s used are up to date and genuine. AI hallucinations are a real problem with AI tools, since they’re still in their early stages of development, so in order to check for authenticity and truthfulness, you should be fact checking what’s produced.
Not only does human-editing the content ensure accuracy but it also gives you an opportunity to check for anything that doesn’t align with your brand identity. AI content generators such as text-based tools can produce reams of content in seconds, all of which may well be grammatically correct and free from clunky sentences, but it might not necessarily fit the mold of your unique brand. If there are certain words you want to tweak or a phrase you want removing, editing it yourself gives you the chance to do so.
Monitor content marketing trends and analytics
While AI may be garnering attention from many companies, it’s important not to neglect the evolving trends in content marketing. You don’t want to get stuck in a routine of crafting the same type of content simply because AI makes it easy to do so. With AI progressing swiftly, companies need to align the content they produce with Google’s algorithm and stay current.
Employ AI in a broader framework to safeguard against any content that could potentially jeopardize your website’s rankings. While utilizing AI for efficiency or idea generation, be sure to monitor your analytics closely and check in with your target audience to ensure they’re still resonating with your content.
There’s no benefit to be found from streamlining your content creation with AI if your audience aren’t finding it as valuable or entertaining as they did before. Maintaining your brand identity means striking that balance between innovating with new software and making sure you’re retaining what’s already working for your business.
AI should never replace human creativity
The key to success lies in recognizing that AI-generated content shouldn’t be treated as a replacement for human creativity, but rather as a complementary tool that enhances and speeds up the content creation process.
By customizing AI tools to align your brand guidelines, infusing them with brand-specific data and inspiration for words or styles you use in your marketing materials, brands can reap the benefits of AI-powered content generation while ensuring that their core values and messaging remain intact. Coupled with a rigorous process of human editing and refinement, it’s a recipe for speedier content creation that still represents your business’ identity.
