For years it was content that made you stand out in search engines and therefore it was content that instigated conversion a lot of times. But did you know that nowadays 4.6 billion pieces of content is created each and every day? Whether it is text, video or an image, there is an abundance of it and being visible is getting harder and harder. This also means that the original Inbound philosophy is becoming outdated. But what’s the alternative? And how should you evolve your inbound marketing playbook to be successful today?
Combined insights of INBOUND24
During HubSpot INBOUND24 I attended a few keynotes, like “Content is not king anymore” by SEO expert Neil Patel, that discussed this change in the world of content. The insights I gained during these sessions all showed that the world of content is changing, but there are ways to embrace this change and really uplift your strategy to stand out from all other pieces of content. In this blog I’m sharing what I learned during INBOUND, so you can step up your content game.
Why is content not king anymore?
Until a few years ago it was only search engines and social media that drove people to your website. But nowadays people also do search queries through GPT’s. It is also safe to say that the exponential growth in content has a lot to do with the rise of AI. Because it is much easier to create a piece of content with the help of AI and it is much quicker than doing it all yourself. This means that just creating a piece of content hoping it will rank well in Google or Bing, is not the best way to go. Search engines and GPT’s are answering search queries of users by scraping a piece of content from your website and displaying it directly in the search engine (which causes a decrease in clicks), but they are also combining information from different sources, so it sometimes does not even link to your website even though it is using your website’s information.
Focus on engagement instead of solely on content creation
Okay, now we know what the problem is, how do we change our strategy to improve online visibility again?
Neil Patel explained in his keynote that there is a new approach to create content that will still drive visitors to your website. Here’s a summary of what strategy he shared during INBOUND24:
- Test new content with your community by using X. Why? Because X does not lower your visibility if a post does not perform well, whereas on other social media your visibility will probably decrease. Also, you do not need to have a huge following on X to implement this strategy. You can also boost the post through paid advertisement, which is not costly on X.
- Expand your reach with short-form videos: turn your high performing X posts into TikTok videos, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts etc. You don’t even need to make fancy videos.. Even though people claim they want them to be fancy, the low key videos that have a more natural feeling, perform best.
- Create long form content based on insights.
- Turn winning blog posts into lead magnets and webinars.
Do not use AI-generated content
Content made with AI may spike your website visitors for a short period of time, but in the long run they do not perform. Also, conversion rates of content created with AI are much lower. Instead, use AI to ideate and brainstorm, but write pieces of content yourself. The insights an expert on a topic gives, are so much more valuable to a reader than what AI can create. This means that you should not create with AI, but co-create with AI. This also means that you should write different types of content. No more “how to’s” or “User guides”, but real opinions and expert information.
Kyle Jepson described this by saying: “With the rise of AI-generated content, it is easy to mass produce content. But, to be compelling, you have to have good, creative input. Creators that lack these attributes will never succeed because online audiences are craving unique and tailored content that deeply resonates.”
Note: If you do want to save time with AI when creating content. Use it to create an outline before writing it yourself or use it for performance analysis.
Implement the new way of making content
To sum it up, AI will not replace humans when it comes to high quality content, but it did change the way content is used. It also made the original inbound philosophy outdated. Adjust your strategy and use AI to co-create, but create content that has personality and insight into subjects that are really speaking to your audience. In other words: content that can only be produced by a human.
