Why Your Small Business Needs a Content Editor for AI-Generated Blogs
When it comes to AI, I find the world is divided into two camps: those who eagerly embrace it and those who cringe at the mention of it. Most small business owners, however, whether they’re raving fans or not, appreciate that it can boost productivity (without increasing costs) allowing them to keep up with their larger competitors.
For small businesses that embraced AI early, it has allowed them to churn out copious amounts of content to help their SEO rankings and content marketing efforts. But is the AI-generated content connecting with their ideal audience?
Many content editors are rightly concerned with the business world’s rapid embrace of AI for creating content. They are troubled by the flood of bland and frequently inaccurate content that AI produces and wonder whether AI is helping small business owners after all.
While AI has proven useful in certain areas, such as preliminary research, generating ideas, and speeding up time-consuming projects, it fails at adding “the human touch.” It fails at creating content in your brand voice or ensuring that the blog it generated is helping you to meet your marketing objectives. And it fails at creating a connection with your audience because it can’t quite stir people’s emotions.
Despite its shortcomings, AI does have a suitable place in the business world. You just need to fix some of the issues either on your own or by using a content editor before publishing your post. An editor will ensure that your AI-generated content is accurate, clear, and aligns with your brand voice.
Common problems with AI-generated content
Factual inaccuracies (aka, “hallucinations”)
If you’ve ever tried to confirm some of the statistics or quotes in AI-generated responses, you were likely confounded by what you found: AI will sometimes make things up.
Citing inaccurate statistics and quotes in your content can tarnish your reputation and trust among readers with consequences that may range in severity.
In the spring of 2024, you may remember the case of a Utah lawyer who learned about AI’s flaws the hard way. He was sanctioned by a Utah court of appeals for filing a brief in which he cited a nonexistent court case. Upon closer examination, several false citations were included (the brief was written by a law clerk).
The law clerk had used AI to help create the brief but did not bother to check the facts cited in the brief. The clerk’s negligence severely tarnished the lawyer’s reputation in the legal community.
You might feel that such an error in your small business would not lead to such severe consequences—and that certainly may be true for you. But if one inaccuracy could cause a customer to doubt you or worse, to lose that customer—why chance it?
As a content editor, I encourage everyone—at a minimum—to check AI’s sources. Confirm all the statistics and quotes from their sources (and make sure that the source is reputable). ChatGPT will usually provide links to the sources, however, frequently, when you click on the link, you will land on a 404 page not known.
Sometimes, I have gone down the proverbial rabbit hole trying to confirm a statistic, only to find that AI gave me an old number that is no longer relevant.
“One study in 2023, suggested that factual errors were included in 46% of the text generated. ”
At an editing workshop I attended in the fall of 2024, one speaker suggested that AI-generated hallucinations will continue to increase as AI creates new content based on earlier inaccurate, AI-generated information. Basically, it’s error-ridden content constructed from previously published error-ridden content.
All AI users need to be aware of this problem. Hiring a content editor to check AI-generated content for accuracy will help you avoid publishing embarrassing false information that could tarnish your reputation.
2. Generic Language
If you use AI frequently, you will notice that it follows patterns. The structure of the article, as well as the language used, will be similar. You may even notice that AI has a strong preference for certain phrases or words.
For example, when AI first came out, I would ask it to create several titles for my article that I would usually tweak for a better fit. At first, the suggestions were helpful, but I noticed that the titles started to sound the same because ChatGPT likes to use the same words to catch the reader’s attention: Discover….Explore…Delve…Embark, etc.
Since I don't want my titles to blend into a sea of sameness, I try to do most of the writing on my own. In the text, AI’s writing is usually bland—it lacks the personality and style that only humans can inject into writing. It reads, well… as if a computer created it. Informative? Yes. Engaging? No.
3. Lack of brand alignment
AI doesn’t know your marketing goals. It doesn’t know your brand voice. Or personality. Or style. It doesn’t know what sets your business apart from your competitors. And it doesn’t know your audience or the business environment you’re operating in. Yes, you can try to feed it some of this information, but it will never fully grasp your organization’s unique qualities and situation.
Content editors, on the other hand, can learn these things through talking with you, asking a lot of questions, and exploring your website and past campaigns. They can ensure that each piece of content aligns with your marketing objectives and is created with a specific audience in mind.
Content editors also make sure that your brand voice and style are consistent across all platforms. They will check the small details—the grammar, punctuation, and capitalization—as well as the treatment of certain terms to make sure your content is consistent throughout your communications.
4. SEO and engagement challenges
In my experience, AI can optimize your content for search engines if you provide the keywords or keyword phrases to optimize for. However, inserting a few keywords does not mean that your content is fully optimized.
Google wants to see content that aligns with its E-E-A-T principles.
Experience - Sites with content that show unique insights and opinions on the subject matter, rank higher.
Expertise - Sites that create quality content that demonstrate a deep understanding of a subject, rank higher.
Authoritativeness – Sites that have a good reputation or are recognized as being reliable, rank higher.
Trustworthiness – Sites that are secure, up-to-date, and accurate, rank higher.
While AI can provide a solid framework for good quality blog posts, a content editor is needed to add the elements that will transform it into an engaging blog that people will find useful. An AI content editor will use reputable sources to create articles that answer specific user questions. In other words, the more an organization creates content focused on genuinely helping readers with their problems, the better it will do in searches.
“Over 50% of small businesses are exploring AI implementation in their operations, according to a survey from Reimagine Main Street. These findings reveal that the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) among small businesses has reached a tipping point—evolving from a question of ‘if’ to ‘when.’ ”
When editing AI-generated content, what does an AI content editor look for?
1. Relevance
The internet is saturated with AI-generated content that covers the same exact topic that you chose—are you providing your audience with a new insight that will help them solve their problem? If the content merely parrots generic content that can be found in other posts (as AI is prone to do), then you’re just publishing content solely for the sake of “getting content out there.”
Ideally, you should have the expertise and experience to show your audience a different perspective and make a strong argument as to why this is important to the reader.
2. Engagement
Your reader’s time is valuable, so you only have a short amount of time to convince them that your article will be worth it. An AI content editor will look to make sure that your post has a clear message and that it is conveyed throughout the article.
Your editor will pay special attention to the introduction. The introduction must get your reader’s attention or they will never go beyond that opening paragraph no matter how well-written it is.
3. Grammar and brand style
AI content editors will look for awkward phrasing, grammar, spelling, capitalization, etc., and ensure that it follows your brand style guide. They will ensure that all links work and create new links to relevant topics within your website. Editors also check to make sure that all sources are cited properly.
4. Hierarchy/Layout
Readers (and search engines) prefer content with a clear, easy-to-scan structure. There should be headlines and subheads to help guide readers to the information they are looking for. Paragraphs should have line breaks to chunk information and make reading easier. Long sections of text can become more palatable by inserting an occasional photo, pull quote, or block of bullet points to maintain the reader’s interest.
5. Fact checking
A content editor will ensure that the content you publish is clear and factually correct. All statistics and quotes cited by AI will be verified with reputable sources. Names of organizations, dates, events, etc. will also be checked for accuracy.
6. Call to action
Content editors for AI-generated blogs will ensure that your post finishes with a strong call to action that will guide your reader to the next step.
Overall, AI is an extremely useful and cost-effective way for small business to boost their content creation. While many small business owners (and editors) may scoff at AI and its failings, one of the things I think we can all agree on is that it’s here to stay.
You can choose to disregard it, but you do so at your own risk because your competitors are most likely using it to their advantage. As I was once told at a workshop for editors, we can either learn as much as we can about AI and figure out how to use it as a tool, or we can stick with our old ways of doing things, and we’ll likely be replaced by someone who does know how to use AI (a very blunt statement, but it was an honest assessment of the situation).
As a content editor who loves to help small businesses with their content creation, I am happy to help with your AI-written content. Contact me for a free 15-minute consultation.