How AI and Human Collaboration Improve Content Discovery

How Do Product and Field Marketing Leaders Get the Most Value from AI?

Better together?

Today’s reality is not human vs. machine. Rather it is the immense value of human + machine, an equation that is more than the sum of its parts.

Without human insight, judgment, guidance, and intuition, AI can produce reams of data, analysis, content, and more. But does the result have meaning and consequence? 

We believe there’s no question here—humans and AI are better together. The real question is how do product and field marketing leaders get the most value from partnering with AI? 

Revolutionizing the Content Discovery Process

Philosophizing is all well and good, and it’s hard to translate that abstract thinking into the reality of engaging with AI. 

Product and field marketing have distinct roles and goals, but they also share several common challenges and opportunities, particularly when it comes to content discovery and leveraging AI. While product marketing focuses on positioning and promoting specific products, field marketing is more about direct engagement and driving local market demand. However, both can benefit from AI in similar ways, especially in the context of content creation and strategy.

To demonstrate AI’s impact on product and field marketing, let’s look at the current way marketers approach the discovery process for creating a piece of marketing content. You’ll be able to see how a “Better Together” approach supports greater insights and creativity.  

This blog will provide you with pragmatic guidance for teaming product and field marketers with AI to get the best results in the content discovery process.  

The Discovery Process for Content Creation: Human Version

The discovery process is ground zero in producing any compelling and impactful content. This is the first stop on the route from blank page to captivating content. Discovery is an iterative and investigative undertaking that leads to the fullest possible comprehension of what you’re creating. 

A human marketer or team starts with the most basic understanding of their goals: 

• What are we ‘making’?
• For whom are we producing it?
• What compliance and legal concerns do we need to address?
• How will this content be used?
• How will it be distributed?
• What action do we want the audience(s) to take in response?

To reach answers and determine the content of their marketing piece, they will:

• Explore customer feedback, surveys, interviews, and engagement data
• Use social listening
• Research industry forums and knowledge sites
• Read competitor information and more

Other factors in the mix are editorial calendars and collaborations with internal subject matter experts, sales teams, and other stakeholders.

Aligning Content Discovery with Company Goals

Aligning content with the organization's strategy is crucial for brand consistency and success. To optimize for this, the human team must apply the brand's messaging and positioning framework to the following:

• Target audience personas' demographics, psychographics, and content preferences
• Messaging pillars and themes
• Editorial guidelines and brand voice specifications
• SEO keywords

With this extensive list of considerations, human marketers move next to content ideation. Here’s where a brainstorming session may be in order, calling members of the team to come up with creative ideas and approaches that will bring the content to life.

The Discovery Process for Content Creation: Human Version + AI

Even as a solo marketing practitioner, adding AI transforms you into the leader of a mighty team. AI can exponentially enhance your output—without pausing for the coffee breaks that your human teammates expect. Here are just some of the many ways AI can help you as you move forward with your content development:

• Brainstorm: Use chain prompting to get AI to generate unique ideas quickly.
• Expand keywords into topic clusters: Generative AI can take a seed keyword and generate related topic clusters, providing a broader view of related content.
• Generate questions and topics: By analyzing existing content and conversations, AI can generate questions and topics that you are not currently addressing.
• Create scenarios to inform content ideas: AI can invent use-case scenarios in which users look for information during research or a buying process. (This can drive content ideas.)
• Support content strategy: AI can ensure that its ideas support your content strategy.

In addition to augmenting your creative solutions, you can take advantage of the deep analytical and processing capabilities built into AI to drive deeper engagement from your target audiences.

Master Content Discovery with These 15 AI-Driven Use Cases

Develop your content more successfully by tapping into AI proficiencies such as:

1. Predictive analytics: Use historical data and current trends to predict content performance.
2. Automated keyword research: Enhance the traditional keyword research by providing insights into the search intent.
3. Natural Language Processing (NLP) for SEO: Analyze existing content to make suggestions for SEO improvements.
4. Social listening: Evaluate large amounts of social data for context, sentiment, and emerging trends to inform content ideas.
5. Trend analysis: Utilize AI to analyze large datasets for identifying emerging trends in real-time, allowing marketers to create timely and relevant content that resonates with current audience interests.
6. Text analysis: Conduct automated sentiment analysis from customer feedback, forum posts, and social media comments to inform content ideas.
7. Content performance analysis: Sift through analytics data to identify patterns and correlations human analysts might miss.
8. Content gap analysis: Analyze existing content to identify topics of interest to the audience not covered by previous content, suggesting new areas for content development. 
9. Chatbots for audience insights: Interact with visitors and gather direct feedback to inform content decisions.
10. Personalization at scale: Tailor content ideas that match individual users based on their behavior, interests, and past interactions with content or products.
11. Automated content curation: Curate content from numerous sources across the web to be shared directly on social or inspire new ideas.
12. Competitor content analysis: Provide in-depth analysis of competitors’ content such as topics, sentiment, engagement, and keywords. By comparing that to industry data or your content, it shows opportunities to differentiate.
13. Automated image and video analysis: Analyze visual content and suggest improvements or identify gaps in your visual content strategy. 
14. Forum and discussion board mining: Review forums, discussion boards, and Q&A sites to extract frequently asked questions and hot topics.
15. Market research: Analyze market research data from reports and industry studies to show consumer trends and preferences.  

Once you’ve collected your AI results, you can apply your judgment to identify the best ideas, accept, reject, or modify the AI analysis, and decide how to move from Discovery to Creation.

The Future of Content Discovery is AI + Human Synergy

Better Together!

Yes! Integrating AI into marketing can supercharge your results. Agile marketers can apply their human touch, good taste, common sense, and critical judgment. You gain new capabilities for telling a cohesive and original story, reaching your key audiences, and aligning with sales, channel, and support to produce effective and compelling content.

Here’s where the synergy really makes a difference:

Creativity

• AI quickly generates ideas, virtually eliminating human creative blocks
• A marketer determines the best direction, based on experience and deep understanding of the audience

Curation

• AI makes quick work of amassing, prioritizing, and grouping
• A marketer draws inspiration from the cataloging process

Analytics + Insights

• AI can gather, sort, and analyze the data from current and predictive performance, text, and more
• A marketer adds insight to move the project forward

Optimization

• AI can suggest keywords for SEO, plus streamline personalization at scale
• A marketer builds on this by adding judgment to ensure the approach will succeed

Why take our word for it? Contact us to learn more about the advantages of the dynamic partnership between marketers and AI.