It feels like yesterday that we were all eyeing the first social media posts announcing launches of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Cut to only a few years later, and everyone is already asking their models to develop an AI content strategy.
One can’t help but think of the early days of jogging when it first became popular in the 1960s and 70s. People ran around in sweatbands and neon sneakers. Today, if you’re even considering a “couch to 5K” program without a hydration and nutrition plan, you better think again.
AI content strategy is at a similar inflection point. What once felt like a curiosity — content creators experimenting with AI technology to tweak content performance — has matured into a system. Organizations now look for structured plans, clear workflows and governance. If you’re in one of those organizations and don’t want to trust your model of choice to generate it all, you’re in the right place.
Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Has To Account for Platforms Like ChatGPT
You may be thinking, “Who cares if the kids ask AI models if HUNTR/X is real? They don’t buy from me.” To that I have two responses.
- I’ll sign any petition that says we should bring back the days when people grew their hair long and sang about the devil.
- Just because that kid doesn’t buy your product today doesn’t mean he or she won’t become a customer very soon.
See, we as humans are often susceptible to projection bias. We assume that our own preferences and experiences are more representative of the general population than they actually are.
And if you’re debating who was the greatest musician at the dinner table, that doesn’t matter as much. But when you’re developing a content strategy, ignoring 8.5 billion daily searches through SearchGPT or the 77.23% of marketers using some AI algorithm to plan their content strategy, you’re falling behind.
The fact is, search-first content creation is no longer the full story. Increasingly, your target audience will engage with your precious quality content after it’s been processed into AI-generated answers — in ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. That shifts marketing teams’ strategic target from “rank a page on a search engine” to “be the source for AI-generated content.”
The good news is that, at the same time, AI-driven tools also change how your team can solve these new-found challenges.
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Key implications
- Answer-first visibility: Create canonical definitions, quotable facts and micro-explanations that assistants can lift verbatim, ideally with on-brand phrasing.
- Operational advantage: Don’t chase single-hit virality or the latest market trends. Use AI to systematize briefs, drafts and repurposing into structured experiments — 10 iterations, two keepers.
- Governance as moat: The repeatable review and iteration loop becomes your true differentiator, not a lucky post.
Before we spread out all the specifics behind marketing automation, though, let’s get one important clarification out of the way.
Two Things People Conflate When Discussing Artificial Intelligence and Marketing Strategy
This is the point where I should apologize on behalf of all marketers blasting their “actionable insights” into the ether. If you’ve read anything about AI marketing and how it relates to your content strategy or marketing campaigns, most likely, you’ve seen the experts blur two very different conversations.
1. Using AI To Generate Content Strategies
- What it is: Treating large language models as strategists or something akin to a content calendar — asking them for opportunities for backlinks, content gaps, briefs and audience engagement hypotheses.
- Benefits: Rapid option generation, especially for markets you don’t know well.
- Traps:
- Convergence risk: Output reflects the same SERP (and persona) competitors see.
- Snapshot bias: Plans mirror training data windows.
- Governance gap: Without a fact library, errors can scale as fast as output.
2. Developing a Strategy That Accounts for Where Your Brand Appears in Model Answers (GEO)
- What it is: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is optimizing for visibility and attribution in AI answers across assistants.
- Benefits:
- Capture exact phrasing (and conversion rates, to a degree) when assistants describe your category.
- Influence linked mentions (which translates to trust, a coherent customer experience and referral traffic).
- Resilience to SERP volatility. Since structured, citable content travels well across engines.
- Traps:
- Ephemeral tuning: Assistants evolve quickly — you need regular audits to ensure your content plan reflects the latest changes in LLM development.
- Zero-click reality: Winning the answer may satisfy users without sending clicks, so you may have to upskill your team, so they can track downstream lifts (demo requests, branded searches).
Now with that out of the way, let’s address the silicon-driven elephant in the room.
“I Already Subscribed to AI Tools. Can’t They Take Care of the Planning for Me?”
Counter question: What is it that you want for your brand and content strategy?
If I had to guess, you probably want to show how your brand differs from competitors. Your first hunch may be to streamline copywriting or keyword research for more high-quality content, because Google has conditioned us to consider that “effective content.”
But really, your goals probably lie elsewhere, and this latest wave of digital marketing advances simply allows you to show more of your brand without worrying about your landing pages’ setup all the time. Sure, you still have to create accessible content, but since we already know your readers will leverage AI to access your site, why not take a few liberties?
You may want to show off your founder’s story on LinkedIn, your unique workspace culture that evolved due to a weird mix of intuition and lived experience. Maybe your brand story is strongly rooted in local heritage and doesn’t match the usual startup tonality, or you just want to ensure accountability and traceability in your strategic decisions.
All of these still require real-time metrics, but more importantly, human guidance. And if you don’t want to believe me, have a look at OpenAI’s job postings for content strategists.
Buying access to Jasper, Copy.ai or contentmarketing.ai is not the same as developing a strategy. These tools help you map out the details and amplify intent, but they don’t substitute it.
Whichever solution you pick, you’ll always rely on humans to:
- Guide campaigns so they reflect brand values and tone.
- Apply editorial judgment — deciding which of AI’s 10+ ideas is worth pursuing.
- Prevent convergence into “AI-scented sameness.”
The goal isn’t to say no to automation, though. It’s to keep humans in the loop so AI accelerates good decisions, not just fast ones.
Does Using AI-Powered Content Negatively Affect Rankings?
OK, now for the other extreme — fearing AI might take down your entire brand, automating nothing but the next batch of negative customer reviews. And it’s a valid question, but the short answer is: No, it won’t hurt your rankings.
Google’s stance is that the method of creation is not a ranking factor. What matters is whether content is helpful, original and valuable, which goes back to your goal of standing out or showing off your unique spin on the niche. Risks arise not from simply using AI but from bad practices like:
- Thin, scaled content with no human editing: Think of a site that reads like it was written by a bored intern armed with a thesaurus and a “Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V” addiction. Thousands of pages saying essentially the same thing: “Apples are tasty. Please buy apples.”
- Manipulative keyword stuffing: Picture a recipe blog where every sentence is “Grandma’s best lasagne recipe is the best lasagne recipe if you want your lasagne to stand out as the best for lasagne lovers.” (Grandma would disown you for this.)
- Publishing without governance (index bloat, duplicate pages): Like accidentally inviting 300 clones of yourself to a party. Now no one knows which one is the “real you,” and Google certainly isn’t going to stick around long enough to figure it out.
So, how can you show our new automated overlords you’re one of the good citizens of the web? Simple, really:
- Demonstrate E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness) and share true thought leadership.
- Use noindex for thin variants.
- Let AI handle research, drafts and outlines — but keep humans responsible for claims, proof and final polish.
Sound good? — OK. Then let’s get you off the ground and running. Last step …
Pick an Algorithm: 4 AI Tools To Automate Your Workflow
This one you won’t want to leave to chance (or ask an AI model, for obvious reasons). I’m not telling you anything new when I say the AI tools ecosystem is exploding. So, here are four worth including in your strategy, if you’re looking for reliability and ROI:
1. contentmarketing.ai
- Anchor your work in brand briefs to stop AI from playing copycat karaoke.
- Spin up workflows for competitor ideation, SME interviews, keyphrase brainstorming and more, without breaking a sweat.
2. Jasper
- Flag off-brand phrasing with its Brand Voice feature before your copy goes rogue.
- Coordinate multi-assist campaigns so your emails, ads and web pages sing from the same hymn sheet.
3. MarketMuse
- Prioritize keywords by your own authority (finally, a popularity contest you can win).
- Weigh your existing content stash to uncover quick wins and cluster gaps faster than a librarian on energy drinks.
4. Perplexity Pages
- Turn research into publishable pages with citations so transparent they could moonlight as glass.
- Win at GEO by giving assistants (and humans) content they can actually trust and attribute.
Having an AI content strategy does not mean plugging tools into your workflow and waiting for magic. It means deliberately designing systems where AI accelerates ideation, iteration and governance — while humans ensure originality, attribution and voice.
When you:
- Shift from “rank the page” to “win the answer”
- Differentiate between AI-assisted strategy vs. AI-distributed visibility
- Keep humans guiding automation
- Anchor in SEO best practices
- Pick tools that support governance and brand control
… you end up with a strategy that doesn’t just scale content, but scales trust.
