As more companies realize the necessity of organic traffic and strive to drive more customer engagement, the need for original content is bound to increase. But the good news is that machines are now available to help you keep up with the challenging content demand.

No matter what content you write or what stories your brand tells, there’s a good chance that robots can help you do it more efficiently. Here’s how you can incorporate AI into your content-creation process and save a ton of time and money (you’d have spent hiring the perfect writer).

Can artificial intelligence replace human writers?

The question of whether AI can replace human creativity has raised anxiety among some professional writers. But the truth is that AI has its unique limitations. Creativity, passion and empathy are strictly human traits that machines cannot replicate. Human writers will always have a place in content creation because they alone can present an experience in the most thought-provoking, engaging way. 

Granted, AI can scan thousands of web pages to perform research and fact validation needed for writing. But creating a joke or a fictional story would be a more challenging ordeal since these ideas have a cultural context. So instead of thinking of artificial intelligence as a competition, it would be more helpful to consider it a collaborator in the content-creation process.

Related: When Should You Not Invest in AI?

How does AI writing work?

The top AI writers in use today utilize natural-language processing (NLP) to predict text based on the input that you supply it. When you insert a query into the AI writer, it scans for data related to your entry from millions of websites. Then, the language-driven software processes the data into human language, applying grammatical and punctuation rules, sentence structure and other variables.

Five ways AI can enhance your content-creation process

Are you a writer with too much work on your plate? Or are you just facing writer’s block? Whatever might be the case, AI writers can help you save a ton of time writing — here’s how. 

1. Automate small content initiatives

A recent MarketsandMarkets report predicted that the application of AI in social media will exceed $2 billion by 2023. These numbers indicate how dominant AI has been in the social-media environment. Now with a little guidance, AI can develop usable content in your brand voice across social platforms to increase social-media engagement. However, don’t expect these pieces of content to be perfect — they are merely first drafts. A professional content writer will have to swoop in to edit the AI-generated write-ups to add a human touch to the final draft. The most exciting part of using AI for your social-media content creation is that it analyzes historical data to determine posts with the highest engagement. 

2. Get fresh topics and keywords

Some writers struggle to create content at scale because they don’t know what topics to write about next. But the good news is that AI can help you generate hundreds of content topic ideas and keywords in just a few seconds with a few clicks. You may wonder, “Why do I need a hundred topic ideas when I just need to write about one topic?” Well, having an endless list of topic ideas is an invaluable part of your overall content strategy. It allows you to screen for the ideas your audience anticipates the most. Also, it helps you visualize the internal linking opportunities you can explore for SEO benefits.

Some of the popular tools that can help kick start your inspiration include HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator, Portent’s Content Idea Generator and ContentIdeator. All you need do is feed the generator with keywords and voila! You have a near-limitless list of ideas. You can also try Link Bait Generator if you’re looking to create shocking or controversial content.

Related: This Is the Secret Sauce Behind Effective AI and ML Technology

3. Gather user-generated content

A recent study revealed that 90% of customers make their shopping decisions based on insights from user-generated content (UGC). Realizing how influential UGC is to your marketing campaign, you don’t want to miss any brand-related post or comment your customer makes on social media. Fortunately, AI can help you identify and collect customer feedback related to your products.

It accomplishes this task using visual-recognition technology and natural-language processing. Visual-recognition technology identifies images of your products while natural-language processing tracks tons of content from users about your brand on the web. 

4. Optimize your content for SEO

The competition to rank becomes fiercer by the day, and the burden of creating top-ranking content can be overwhelming. Thankfully, AI-powered SEO can improve your rankings and organic traffic by discovering hidden opportunities, like related keywords and backlinks.

With ultra-fast processing capabilities, the AI SEO algorithms can scour the web for content created around that keyword and reveal content gaps to exploit and the average number of sections (and words) to include in your new content. Even for existing content, the AI algorithm can boost the ranking by rewriting paragraphs to be keyword-focused.

Related: Here’s What AI Will Never Be Able to Do

5. Improve content for landing pages and campaigns

AI enables content creators to improve marketing performance with interactive landing pages that drive maximum customer engagement. It achieves this goal by learning proven copywriting formulas and applying them to create high-quality content and design for landing pages.

One of the ways it completes this task is by matching users’ keywords with tailored images that depict their interests. If the landing page is already existing, the AI algorithm can perform an in-depth analysis of the page’s content and provide design and wording recommendations for improvement. 

Now that you’ve learned about content-creation enhancement using AI, it’s essential to acknowledge that these tools are merely content-creation resources — not final resorts. Some of the tools out there are still in their experimental stage, and even the most developed ones may not understand your brand goals as well as you do.