Mary Hart

We're supposed to be logical? Well, shoot, I missed that memo, AI-generated article. Now I have to get Spock to write copy for me... But, seriously, there's a place for logic in content through data and statistics. However, you must add in humanity as well because otherwise you wind up with articles like this.

Content is going to emotionally resonate with your audience if you use their terminology. What does that mean? Talk to your customers -- which is pretty much the way to succeed at almost any content. That way, you'll pick up on the terms they use, how they phrase things, AND their own pain points and challenges that you can then incorporate into your messaging.

Style guides are a must to keep brand and corporate tone of voice consistency. Without them, you can have your website and communications list one of your own products or terms in three different ways, which winds up looking like you don't have your act together.

To catch someone's eye -- and attention -- as they're scrolling down their feed, include a visual. That could be a timely pop culture meme that you've made about your industry (love those, because they generate a lot of interest and views) or a video snippet. Text can also have its place if you're telling a story, but make sure it's *your* story and not some random anecdote you found online that you're saying is your own. We've all seen them and they're easy to bypass.

AI in the form of ChatGPT and the like is a huge help in writing the first drafts of SEO meta descriptions, social media posts, and emails for a blog post or article, etc. The key part here is "first drafts" because, especially for social media posts, ChatGPT has a tendency to add in a whole bunch of unnecessary emojis. Keep in mind that the end result will be entirely based on the prompt you give it.

To get started making content marketing videos, you don't need to spend the money on a video camera or anything like that. You have a video camera on your phone, and from what I've seen, the best content marketing videos are ones that capture personality and have that human touch (like a walk-through of an innovation center video) rather than ones that are perfectly edited. You're only just starting to create these videos, so take them on your phone and edit them in iMovie or CapCut or the like and promote them and see what happens.