The Best AI Content Creation Tools: A Practical Guide

Kyla Ball May 11, 2023

Since November 2022, when developers OpenAI launched their Chat GPT product, global awareness and the use of AI for content creation has rocketed. Worldwide users of the tool went from 1 million in December 2022 to 100 million in January 2023. Concerns about plagiarism, particularly in the education space, and worries about the speed of development, have continued. But from a written content creation point of view, AI has been game-changer in simply allowing creators to generate more and better content at a much faster pace.

In this blog we take a look at the most useful AI tools for helping in the content writing process and suggest ways in which they can be used together to help you create higher volumes of content that will meet the needs of your audience, your organisation and your content marketing strategy.

What do we mean by AI content creation?

AI (artificial intelligence) content creation uses machine learning algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze and understand human language patterns. This then allows the software to generate content that is similar to what a human might create – at incredible speed.

One of the most commonly used AI models for content creation is GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3), which is capable of producing high-quality pieces of content that are almost indistinguishable from content written by a human. GPT-3 uses a large database of text to learn the nuances of language and generate new text that is similar in style and tone to the text that it has been given as its input.

Which sort of AI tools help in content creation?

There is a wide range of tools that come under the AI umbrella and which can help in the entire content creation process – from research and ideation to content management and dissemination. We have grouped these into five areas below.

Content generation

AI writing tools like Chat GPT, Jasper and similar can generate content based on the input given by the user. AI-generated content can be used to create articles, blog posts, and social media posts in a fraction of the time it would take to manually carry out the copywriting. However, it’s important to note that this technology is still in its relative infancy, and any generated content should always be edited, checked for facts and grammar and if necessary revised by a real person!

SEO optimization tools

AI SEO tools such as Clearscope are used to analyze competitors’ content such as landing pages, blogs or articles, to identify keywords and to suggest additions and changes to your own content to improve search engine optimization (SEO). Using their guides should result in increased traffic and engagement with your target audience.

Image and video editing

AI-powered tools can help content creators to create visual content quickly and easily. These tools can automatically remove backgrounds from images, generate custom graphics, and even suggest color schemes based on the content of an image. Canva launched their easy to use text-to-image tool in 2022. It’s even possible to create text-to-image 360 scenes using Skybox from Blockade Labs.

Content curation

Tools like BuzzSumo and Feedly can help content creators to find relevant and engaging content to share with their audience. These tools can analyze content from across the web and suggest articles, blog posts, and other types of content that are likely to be of interest to a particular audience.

Social media management

AI-powered tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social can help content creators to manage their social media presence more efficiently. These tools can schedule posts, analyze engagement metrics, and even suggest content to share based on the interests of a particular audience. In this way, AI tools have been used for many years in content marketing

What is the most effective way to use AI tools for content creation?

The most effective approach for integrating AI into content creation is simply to use AI tools to speed up the content writing process in the way that works best for you. Most professional copywriting agencies tend to approach the content creation process in stages, rather than expecting an AI content generator to produce an entire piece of work in one step.

• When creating long-form content it’s common for content leads to use AI to create outlines and templates, using keyword research. These will then be passed as content briefs to a copywriter, writing assistant or blogger to create the article section by section. The content lead will often act as final proofreader and checker before publication.
• AI is a useful tool to create lists, use cases and content ideas – perfect for the occasions when you might suffer from writer’s block!
• Content writers can also use AI to assist with copywriting tasks that are specific in nature and require specific structures – for example product descriptions, social media content, adverts on specific platforms (eg Google ads or Facebook ad copy), email subject lines, captions and so on.

In short, your aim should be to create an AI-assisted workflow for your content creation process that functions well for you, your team, your product or service, and the kind of content you need to create.

AI tools have become a valuable asset for content creators, enabling them to produce high-quality content more efficiently and effectively. However, it’s important to remember that AI tools should be used as a complement to human creativity and expertise, rather than a replacement for it.

Want to learn more?

For more on content creation, see our selection of article and blogs below.

What does storytelling mean in the 21st century?

What are the five stages of the creative process?

How to improve your creative thinking skills

How to create interactive infographics

Important note/disclaimer: The unprecedented speed at which AI tools are being developed means that any blog or article currently being written very quickly becomes outdated – sometimes within days! Information was correct at time of publication of this blog – 11 May 2023.