Utilise AI to save you time with your content creation

Isaline says: “Content marketers and SEOs: let’s start using AI to save time.”

Does this apply to all content?

“It applies to most content. Basically, I’d like to share my experience testing a tool called Reword. It claims that it is designed to empower content marketers. It’s not trying to take your job but to help you with your job. I wanted to see how much it could help me, how much time it could save, and how successful it would be for the long-term clients I work with.

How it works is you feed the tool with either your idea or the URL of your website, and you can connect it to Google Search Console. If you connect it to Search Console, you have the advantage of keyword data as well.

First, I’ll start with how the tool is helping me. The first thing I noticed is how it can help when you have a new idea, but don’t know exactly where to start. For instance, I had the idea of starting a podcast for clients in French, and it was really hard to find a good title and make sure that I had the right content for the episodes. Reword gave me a succession of ideas. They weren’t all 100% good ideas, but I had 5 to 10 title ideas that I could rewrite and use, which is easier than starting from a blank page.

The second way that it helped me was by giving me a list of titles and blog post articles that I could compare to the content of the episodes I had already planned to see if I was going in the right direction or if I had missed something. That gave me confidence to know that I was moving in the right direction. When I fed the tool with what I was doing and the audience it was for, it went in the same direction that I was going. That sped up the process, in that case, when I didn’t want to spend hours researching, carrying out customer interviews, etc.”

Should you tell your clients that you’re using AI to augment content? If you’re connecting the tool to their Google Search Console, should you be transparent about what you’re doing with their data?

“There is a distinction between when you’re working for the client and when you’re gathering ideas and trying to make a plan. Before I work directly for the client, I’m making shiny new ideas and trying to move quickly. Onboarding a client and getting that lead to become a client takes a lot of time, so I need to be fast. In that case, I think it’s okay to not inform them because it’s just a tool for me and my workflow.

When it comes to connecting the tool to the Search Console, I would not do that for a client without asking them. That data doesn’t belong to you. For some tests, you can insert the URL, which is public information. If there is an existing blog, for instance, instead of connecting the Search Console you can insert all of the URLs for a topic on the blog to show you if there are any content gaps or how their articles can be improved.”

Do you feel that SEOs should incorporate their intention to use AI as part of everything they do for the client within their contracts?

“Since I’m still testing, I don’t 100% have an answer for that yet. For my own contracts, I intend to include the fact that I use the tool but be really specific about which tool I would use and in which scenario I would use it.

Presently, I’m not comfortable using Reword to generate content because, as far as I have seen, the quality of information is not adequate. You would expect that, since you feed the tool with the URL of a website, the tool would produce high-quality content. That’s not exactly the case.

I have been working with many of these clients for a long time, so I know the industry. When I read some of the auto-generated content, I don’t trust the key facts. I don’t think this is a function I would use. I would rather use it to generate ideas and check what I have already written, which is the third interesting capability of the tool.”

Do you have a process for creating articles before using Reword to optimize them?

“At the moment, I’m using AI to check that I’m going in the right direction. I use Reword like a colleague who would read what I have done so far and give me ideas. Either it gives me more ideas, or it will quality check the content and highlight what could be improved and how.

This functionality is a little bit like Yoast. When you use Yoast, you have highlights in the text that tell you very basic information that a human could tell you if you had someone re-reading your work. It’s saving you time because it’s doing the quality check for you. My job is to balance the suggestions. The tool gives all its suggestions at the same priority level. You need to balance which of those are really important.

It will give ideas about the style, it will highlight a sentence that may be confusing and could be more precise, and it will give ideas about further content you could add or what you could explain in more detail. As a human, you need to prioritise these.

Before, I would write the text first, then pause for a day and come back to the text with fresh eyes, a fresh brain, and a little bit of distance. The tool saves me that time because I can ask someone (the tool) to quality check and proofread the text for me, and then I have suggestions that I filter and choose to follow or not. This is the second feature I find very interesting: the idea of having a colleague proofread your work. It’s a very thorough colleague, too, who is highlighting a lot of things, so you have to filter.”

Have you used AI detectors to check AI-assisted content? If an article is mistakenly perceived to be 100% produced by AI, is that a concern?

“That’s why I don’t get the tool to write for me, and why the writer needs to filter. Most of my clients are established brands with established branding, so they have ways of saying things that I have to use when I write the article. They always use specific words for certain things, for instance, so I wouldn’t write what the AI tells me to write.

It’s more about using the tool as a hint for where it could be better, but really filtering the suggestions that it gives. When we write an article, we write a certain way that is correct for the brand. When I tested the auto-generated content, I found that the quality of the text sounded off. It’s not only the information, but something is wrong. That’s where I think it’s really important that a human manages the content and filters what is necessary and what is not. You need to navigate a tool according to the brand universe of the clients you’re working with.”

Does Reword produce facts and do you have to verify the accuracy of these?

“At this stage, I wouldn’t trust the tool to write for you. I have tried it and it’s not something I would propose. If you actually use an AI tool to create content, that is something that you should discuss with the client.

Right now, I’m using the tool to help me quality check and benchmark. It is like an exterior pair of eyes. At the beginning of my career, I used to work with my dad sometimes. He’s retired, and it was really helpful for me. In French, we say, ‘Four eyes are better than two’. When you’re a solo consultant, you are often on your own, and content is expensive. You might not have four eyes. I used to ask my dad for his help and take him out for lunch in return because it would give me confidence and because he’s really good at spelling. That is how I would use the tool. It does not replace my dad (nothing ever could, of course!), but it gives me an extra bit of confidence by highlighting what is good and what is bad.

It is similar to when a client comes to me and says, ‘In your text, I can see that you have/have not done such and such.’, which does sometimes happen when the client starts using tools themselves. They will do an automatic audit in Ahrefs and ask me why I haven’t implemented what it suggested.

Reword gives suggestions like this as well, but it’s really a question of prioritising what is good, what is not, and especially what is suitable for that client in that context. You need the human brain to do that.”

Why did you choose Reword as the tool that you wanted to test?

“Through word-of-mouth, mainly. Someone I knew was trying it out and said that they were having fun and I decided it was worth a try.

I have been testing it on several projects and I feel like, if I want to have a good overview, I need to test it for a while on different topics to better understand its shortcomings. We need to understand the shortcomings in order to manage them. I need to test it for long enough to understand it before I test another tool.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what’s one thing they can start doing now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“This is particularly a tip for consultants who have to create offers. For offers, you need to feed your clients with something interesting and something shiny. Sometimes, you don’t have an awful lot of time to do research. Depending on the clients, you need to be fast. In those cases, this tool is useful for getting things going so you’re not sitting in front of a blank page.

It will give you suggestions. They may not be 100% perfect, but it is something you can start working with. It’s a way to unblock, sometimes, and it can save time – especially in idea generation. Other tools can help in the same way too; you don’t have to use Reword for that.”

Isaline Muelhauser is an SEO Consultant at Pilea.ch.