AI for Content Marketers: 5 Smart Ways to Elevate Your Content Strategy

One of the best applications of generative AI today is AI for content marketers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks AI will take over much of marketing. In a quote reported in March 2024, he said AI will handle 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today.

While the idea that AI will handle most marketing tasks is an overstatement at this stage, there’s no denying that AI is making substantial inroads into content marketing. It’s become an indispensable tool for content marketers who want to work smarter and faster.

In this guide, we’ll show you the five effective ways to use AI in content marketing, the pros and cons of AI in content marketing, and the best AI tools for content marketers. But first, a brief introduction to AI for content marketers.

What’s AI in Content Marketing?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems designed to mimic human cognitive functions. This involves programming computers to process and respond to information in ways that are human-like.

Examples include understanding and generating natural language, recognizing speech patterns, self-correcting based on past errors, and interpreting visual data.

In the content marketing industry especially, AI has proven exceptionally valuable. This is primarily due to:

• Repetitive tasks like keyword research have long relied on automation to save time.
• Content generation is one of AI’s most celebrated uses, and today’s models write coherent, on-topic drafts.
• Repetitive social media work, like drafting posts, is easier to manage with AI social media tools.

Despite these advancements, being a successful content marketer involves more than just the ability to write well.

At RightBlogger, we believe that while strong writing skills matter, effective content marketing comes down to building and executing a solid content strategy.

Then you can use AI to maximize productivity while overseeing campaign execution to ensure alignment with strategic goals.

In Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2024 survey of 1,290 marketers, 69.1% said they had already integrated AI into their marketing operations. If you aren’t using AI in your workflows, your competitors probably are.

Does Google Penalize AI-Generated Content?

Many marketers share the concern that AI-generated content could incur penalties from search engines like Google. This apprehension is understandable given the importance of search engine optimization (SEO).

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However, Google itself has stated that it rewards “high-quality content, however it is produced.” This indicates that your method of content creation, whether AI-generated or human-written, is not as important as the quality of the content itself.

The way we see it, Google aims to provide its users with the best and most relevant results, focusing primarily on the value and relevance of the content. That cuts both ways: Google’s spam policies treat generating many low-value pages mainly to manipulate rankings as scaled content abuse, no matter how the pages were created.

Therefore, the key to success with content, irrespective of its origin, is ensuring it meets high-quality standards that serve users effectively. When preparing to publish any article, consider the following criteria to align with Google’s expectations:

• Is it helpful? Does it answer the questions your readers actually have?
• Does it show experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)?
• Is it clear, well written, and easy to read?
• Is it written for people, with engaging, relevant material instead of keyword stuffing?
• Is it optimized for search, with sensible keyword use, a meta description, and image alt text?

If you can answer “yes” to all of these, your content is ready to publish.

Pros of AI for Content Marketers

While this list could be a lot longer, I’ve boiled the benefits down to three main categories.

• AI speeds up content creation. Handing off outlines, research, and meta descriptions helps you hit deadlines and scale production, one of the main benefits of AI for content agencies and marketers.
• It makes you more efficient. You can automate repetitive work like metrics tracking, content distribution, and workflow management, and AI analyzes data far faster than you can, which frees up time for strategy and creative work.
• It supports data-driven strategy. Faster tracking and analysis mean you can draw conclusions sooner and let data guide your next moves.

Cons of AI for Content Marketers

While AI offers numerous benefits, there are also drawbacks you should consider when incorporating AI into content marketing strategies, including:

• Creativity can suffer. Leaning too hard on AI tends to produce uninspired, monotonous content, so let AI help with execution while you own the creative work.
• Content can start to sound the same. AI output gets formulaic, especially when many marketers use the same tools, and overdependence can make your content blend in with the crowd.

The key to effectively implementing AI into content marketing campaigns is striking a balance between the use of AI tools and the human touch.

Therefore, the success or failure of your content marketing strategies in the AI era depends on whether you truly know your onions.

5 Strongest AI Use Cases for Content Marketers

With the pros and cons covered, here are the five places AI helps content marketers most:

1. Long-form Content

It may be surprising, but AI has advanced to the point where it can generate long-form content that closely mimics the quality of human writing. However, you should note that while AI can draft substantial and coherent text, relying solely on AI for final drafts is not recommended.

AI should be viewed as a tool to assist with content creation, overcome writer’s block, accelerate the translation of research into structured text, and increase content production volumes without sacrificing quality.

Using AI effectively means maintaining a balance between quality and quantity, ensuring that your outputs meet high standards while also scaling up your publishing velocity. This approach can help you win the quality vs. quantity argument that always seems unresolved among content marketers.

Despite its capabilities, skepticism about AI replacing human writers entirely is well-founded.

AI-generated content can sometimes miss the mark, producing results that may seem nonsensical or off-topic, depending on the complexity of the subject and the AI tool’s design. So, if you want to succeed using AI, here are some strategies:

• Use AI for the tasks it handles well, like first drafts and outlines.
• Pick a platform that fits your content needs and handles your niche’s topics well.
• Treat AI as a co-writer, then edit its output to match your editorial standards and brand voice.

For example, our AI blog automation tool, RightBlogger, offers useful features that can complement traditional content creation processes, such as:

• Outlining articles
• Integrating links (internal and external)
• Incorporating unique viewpoints, which can enrich the content and provide more value to readers.

2. SEO

AI has plenty of uses in SEO, from automating keyword research to improving content quality and tracking performance.

Below are some examples of how AI can enhance your SEO efforts:

Content Idea Generation

Generating a continuous stream of content ideas can be daunting. But AI tools can expand a single thought into multiple content ideas, thus fueling your content marketing strategy with a variety of topics that attract different audience segments.

For instance, RightBlogger’s Blog Post Ideas Generator turns a basic topic or keyword into a list of post ideas. This saves time and improves your creative process by offering diverse angles on the same subject matter.

Topic Cluster Building

Creating topic clusters is an essential SEO strategy that involves developing a series of content pieces around a central theme. This approach helps establish site authority and improves search engine rankings by providing comprehensive content on specific topics.

Traditionally, building topic clusters could take hours or even days of manual research and organization. However, AI tools like RightBlogger’s Keyword Cluster tool streamline this process, allowing you to develop well-structured topic clusters more efficiently.

This tool analyzes related topics and suggests the optimal way to group them, thereby enhancing your site’s architecture and user experience.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is critical for planning your content strategy and prioritizing your articles to target the most effective keywords. AI-driven tools simplify this process by automating the heavy lifting involved in keyword analysis.

They provide insights based on search trends, keyword competitiveness, and relevance that help you make informed decisions quickly.

For instance, RightBlogger’s Keyword Research tool turns a seed keyword into a list of related keyword ideas, so you can pick your targets faster.

3. Content Optimization

AI can analyze how your content performs, pinpoint what to improve, and raise the overall quality of what you publish.

Tools like RightBlogger’s Content Gap Analysis Tool, and others like Surfer SEO & Clearscope can deliver actionable insights that fine-tune content strategies and increase the likelihood of your visibility on Google.

These tools offer in-depth analysis of essential SEO elements that can enhance your content’s placement on search engine results pages (SERPs).

For example, they guide you on incorporating semantically related keywords and entities, which help search engines grasp your content’s context.

Depending on the tool, you also get SERP analysis to size up the competition and site audits that flag technical SEO issues.

To maximize the benefits of these AI tools, here are several actionable steps:

• Run periodic content audits to find pages that aren’t performing and could be improved.
• Work the related keywords and entities these tools suggest into your content to add relevance and depth.
• Use the SERP analysis features to see what top-ranking competitors do well, from keyword use to content structure, and adapt it.
• Prioritize and fix site audit findings, such as broken links, slow pages, or mobile issues.
• Track rankings, traffic, and engagement after you make changes, so you learn what’s working and can refine your approach.

4. Email Outreach

Personalized email outreach campaigns are essential for engaging with prospects and leads effectively.

When done on a large scale and frequently, the time cost might quickly build up and block you from attending to other, more demanding tasks.

AI tools can automate this process by helping you craft personalized emails, send them on schedule, and respond to emails based on recipient preferences, behaviors, and past interactions.

This leads to highly relevant and engaging emails that resonate with individual recipients, increasing the chances of conversion and customer satisfaction.

Personalization pays off, too. Campaign Monitor reports, citing Aberdeen research, that personalized emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.

If you want to use AI for your email outreach, we recommend:

• Skrapp.io to find leads’ email addresses
• RightBlogger’s Cold Email Generator to draft personalized email copy

5. Chatbots

AI chatbots are essential for giving instant responses to customer inquiries around the clock. This functionality is key for achieving high levels of customer satisfaction, as it ensures that every question is addressed promptly, no matter the time of day.

As a content marketer, building AI chatbots can save you time, allowing you to concentrate on more creative marketing endeavors rather than regular inquiries. Moreover, the data gathered from these interactions can enhance your audience segmentation strategies, leading to more focused and efficient marketing efforts.

AI can also help with feedback collection, which every marketing strategy needs. AI chatbots make collecting this feedback easier and more interactive.

Through surveys and instant feedback mechanisms, chatbots can provide real-time insights into content performance and audience preferences, which can be incorporated into future content strategies. This instant feedback loop allows for agile marketing practices, enabling quick pivots and adaptations that can save otherwise failing campaigns.

Some tools to create chatbots of your own include:

• Zapier Chatbots
• Landbot
• Collect.chat

3 Best AI Tools for Content Marketers

AI tools aren’t all built for the same job.

For example, general-purpose assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are built to span multiple contexts and tasks, whereas others, such as ResearchRabbit, are tailored for academic research.

Here are three built with content marketing in mind. For a bigger list sorted by category, see our roundup of AI marketing tools worth using.

1. RightBlogger

RightBlogger is our own AI platform for bloggers and content marketers, so weigh this pick accordingly. It was built by longtime bloggers and puts the core content marketing jobs in one place: keyword research, content gap analysis, keyword clusters, and an Article Writer that lets you set the point of view, tone, and primary keyword, then edit the outline before it drafts.

There’s a free plan with 2,000 AI words a month. Paid plans are $49/mo (Solo), $69/mo (Pro), and $199/mo (Agency) billed annually, all with unlimited AI words. If you work with multiple clients, Projects in RightBlogger let you save each client’s audience, language, tone, and brand defaults.

Skip if: you mostly write short copy like ads and product descriptions, where a lighter tool like Rytr costs less.

2. Rytr

Rytr started as an AI writer for short-form content like ad copy, emails, product descriptions, meta descriptions, and blog sections. It still covers 40+ writing use cases in 30+ languages, and its newer features lean into everyday communication, like a daily briefing, meeting prep, and follow-up tracking.

If you’re working with a tight budget and need a reliable AI tool for handling smaller writing duties, Rytr is an excellent option. It’s cost-effective and user-friendly, perfect for anyone looking to streamline their writing process without a significant investment.

Rytr’s free plan includes 10,000 characters a month, and paid plans start at $9/mo for unlimited characters.

Skip if: you need full long-form articles or built-in SEO research.

3. Jasper AI

Jasper AI is an AI marketing platform for producing on-brand copy and content at scale. In recent years it has shifted toward enterprise marketing teams, layering in AI agents and GEO/AI-search optimization features alongside its writing tools.

Pricing reflects that audience. Pro is $59/mo billed annually or $69 billed monthly, with a 7-day free trial, and the Business plan is custom-priced.

Skip if: you’re a solo marketer on a tight budget or mostly write long-form blog posts.

Final Words on AI for Content Marketers

Content marketing is significantly enhanced by AI because the industry is naturally inclined towards automation for tasks like keyword research, analytics, and content scheduling, areas where human reach is limited.

The challenge now is using AI strategically: give it the jobs it does well, keep a human in charge of strategy and voice, and check whether your results actually improve.

Explore the features of RightBlogger today. There’s a free plan, and paid plans start at $49/mo billed annually with a 30-day money-back guarantee.