Blogging is a great way to bring in some extra income or generate a buzz around your brand. In 2023, 70 million new blogs are created every day and the global content marketing industry is valued at around $584.02 billion. 

However, capturing a piece of the blogging pie for yourself can be challenging. Boosting your SEO ranking is no easy feat, as you’ll face stiff competition from other bloggers vying for the same traffic.

Embracing the new wave of AI can sharpen your skills and boost your traffic. Strategic use of generative AI will elevate the quality and efficiency of your work, while analytic AI programs can help you better understand and predict user behavior. This can help you close the gap to your competitors and improve your blog’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Generative AI 

Generative AI models like ChatGPT have gained public attention this year. The open-source large language model currently boasts 100 million active users and generates over a billion hits every month. As a blogger, you can use these generative models to speed up your efficiency and improve the quality of your work. If you’re new to generative AI, consider using it for: 

• Preliminary Research: If you’re new to a topic, sites like Google Bard can give you a basic understanding. Start with a simple search query like “tell me about local SEO” and follow up with further research via a Google search. 
• Synonyms: Language models can help you find the phrase that’s been stuck on the tip of your tongue quickly. Just ask for a few synonyms or related phrases, and the model will generate plenty of potential options. 
• Images: If you can’t afford a graphic designer, sites like Midjourney may help you generate usable images. Just be aware of its shortcomings, lest you incur the ire of audiences who want to support real artists rather than AI. 
• Ideas: Blogging requires a massive volume of writing. Sometimes, you just don’t have any fresh ideas to work with. Generative models can help you brainstorm by giving you potential options based on popular topics. 

It’s important to note that generative AI cannot replace real writers. AI models are incapable of completing intensive research and are infamous for fabricating made-up resources and statistics. This can result in the spread of misinformation online and will undermine the authority of your blog. AI tools are incapable of understanding your brand persona, too, and will only produce generic content that is sure to turn your audience away. 

Instead, use AI to augment and improve your already-existing content creation strategy. Use programs like Grammarly to proofread your work in real-time and bolster your research by posing questions to ChatGPT. This will increase the quality of your work and may even free up time to spend on labor-intensive blog growth strategies. 

AI and Blog Growth 

High-quality content should form the backbone of your blog. Google Search Central privileges well-written content, and readers are far more likely to bookmark your page if you produce posts with genuine value. However, AI can improve the backend of your blog, too, which is almost certain to improve your traffic. 

Boost your blog by using AI to track your competitors. Effective blog management is all about slightly outperforming similar sites and rising through the ranks. AI blog management tools like Crayon use 100 different types of data to track competitors’ websites and suggest strategic changes. This can streamline your content creation and help you find topics worth writing about. 

If you use paid advertising, consider investing in programs like Pathmatics. Sites like Pathmatics use AI algorithms to identify how your competitors are spending their cash. This means that you can find out where your audience is by piggybacking on the insights of your nearest rivals. 

As your blog grows, you may want to bring in guest writers. However, bringing guests on board can dilute your brand image and undermine your voice. Use programs like Acrolinx to ensure that everyone stays on-brand when writing for your site. Acrolinx can use your guidelines to double-check the style of submitted pieces and make suggestions when it finds content that doesn’t align with brand standards. 

Common Mistakes

AI can speed up your content creation and optimize your website. However, growing content creators who fall foul of common AI mistakes may see their traffic tumble. 

You can use AI to generate ideas and proofread your work, but you should never publish unedited AI content. Audiences are not coming to your site to hear what a language model has to say. They want to understand your perspective and will feel cheated if you replace real writers with AI programs. 

Similarly, you should not become overly reliant on AI-generated visual content. This is particularly important if you’re trying to gain an audience in a creative industry. Folks want to support blogs that pay creatives rather than AI models. Using graphic designers instead of AI models shows that you understand public sentiment and are willing to invest in real creatives. 

Conclusion 

Content creation is all about melding quality and efficiency. AI can help by speeding up the idea generation process and minimizing the time you spend editing. However, you should guard against overreliance when using AI. Audiences want human-generated content and may resent posts that are AI-generated. Instead, use AI as a way to boost your current practices and improve the back end of your blogging business.