How to use AI to get ahead in your content planning

In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is the trending topic on every single platform and every conference, it’s no wonder people are searching for the best and shiniest of ways to use it to their advantage. Part of that is finding ways that AI can best help your specific industry, or role. 

In communications, however, AI can be a touchy topic! With the potential for content creation to be overridden by AI, and both the negatives and positives that arise from it, plenty of professionals in the comms world are a bit wary of what AI means for them.

But … What if you could use AI to leverage your own work, rather than have it created for you? 

One way we’ve found is the use of AI to get ahead in your content planning! What we mean by that is, using tools, like Google Bard and ChatGPT, to forward plan your content, rather than actually ideate it. 

Here are five steps to use AI to help with your content planning.

1. Determine your channels and content pillars

   AI is great for plenty of things, sure, but AI cannot replace creativity and authenticity when it comes to the content you ideate, and how you intend for it to resonate with your audience. Remember, AI is ‘creating’ content based only on what it has been taught or knows. 
   
   That means that what it’s producing may look shiny and amazing, but it’s been done before! We talk a lot about personalisation of content and how important it is, and this still applies with AI.
   
   Which is why it’s important that you come up with your own content concepts, and plan these out to suit your audiences and the seasonality of your intent. Of course, you can use AI to give you ideas to get started - for example, asking Google Bard for a list of all the key dates that relate to your industry.

   
   If you’re not sure how to determine your content pillars, we’ve also covered that for you here (plus, there’s a free content plan template). And if you’re wondering how to choose the best channels for your business, check out this blog post.
   
   

2. Find your seasonality insights

   Seasonality insights are the popular topics for specific times in your content cycle. 

   For example, if you were writing blog content for most industries, Christmas content would be most popular in the lead up to Christmas - not during it. So if you run a company with products for sale, during November, you may feature content like “9 gift ideas for the hard-to-gift person” because you know it would be most searched for during this time.

   Regardless of your industry, seasonality insights provide the reason behind your content, while you provide the context. Take note of these and list them month by month, because you’ll need them when we get to step five!

3. Connect the flow

   Even if you’ve got your seasonality insights down pat, you’re going to need to make it flow. You don’t want one blog one week to be discussing a serious topic, and a podcast a day later to be about varying cool dog pictures! 

   Much like any brand, you should try to keep your content flowing and with relevance to your audience (i.e. if you’re a company selling dog treats, you’ll most likely lose critical audience members if you release a blog about your favourite cloud formations!).

   So look at your month-by-month list of seasonality insights, and make any adjustments necessary so there’s a logical flow.

4. Plug it into AI!

Now for the fun part! Find your AI tool of choice, such as Google Bard or ChatGPT, and plug in what you’d like to see. A basic example query (for a foodie blog) could include:

“Create a content plan with the following monthly themes:
January - Healthy food for summer
February - Snacks for back to school
March - Air fryer recommendations
April - Slow cooker ideas”

You’ll receive a content plan with tonnes of great content planning ideas.

5. Human-ify it!

However, this is where human intervention is most important. Like we said before, AI provides the content concept, you provide the context behind the ideation. You’ll need to go through the end result from your AI source, and contextualise it to fit your audience, requirements, brand, tone of voice and more. 

An example from ChatGPT may be: 

Week 4: "Seasonal Delights: Spring-Inspired Dinner Dishes"
Showcase recipes using seasonal ingredients and flavours for April.

While this is a great idea in theory, there are a few key things that would immediately need to change. Such as the season, the ingredients themselves, the dishes and what your brand is aiming to achieve. Your context is key!

Remember, AI is a great tool that can help leverage your work and your business - but it’s not something that can do it all for you. Always remember the risks and the current limitations of AI because it is nowhere near perfect, and everything needs review and fact checking - and context!

Learn more about the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in comms!

Listen to podcast episode 21, where we shared six ways you can use these tools to boost productivity and reduce time spent on tedious work, particularly if you're a resource-poor comms team!