Leveraging AI Tools for Founder-Led Content: Our Year of Testing and Learning

In this article, I'll share our experiences of using AI tools to enhance founder-led content creation. Over the past year, we've been rigorously testing various AI solutions, and I want to discuss what we've learned, the challenges we've faced, and how we're using these tools to provide better services to our clients.

Now, if you read my last article, you’ll already know my position when it comes to AI; It’s not AI that will replace humans, it’s humans that know how to use AI that will.?

It will be useful to keep this opinion in mind when reading this, as our research and testing has been focused on how to achieve better outcomes, in less time, using fewer resources with the help of AI.

OK, let's jump in…

Successes and Setbacks

We've been putting several AI tools through their paces this year, and the results have been mixed.?

Some have proven incredibly useful, while others haven't quite met our expectations. What we've discovered is that success with these tools isn't just about the technology itself. It's about growing our knowledge, refining our processes, and developing our approach as we go along.

Through this process of testing and refinement, we've managed to create new content offerings and a new thought leadership content process for clients that we weren’t providing before.?

For some companies, our services may have been out of reach due to budget or their own time constraints for example, but now we're able to develop and make these services more accessible.?

Our goal is to make distributing founder-led thought leadership content accessible to all!

The Impact of AI on Our Business

Integrating AI into our workflow has been both exciting and challenging.?

As a business that's been growing steadily year on year, adapting to this new technology has required significant effort and learning.

This AI revolution isn't happening in isolation. Over our seven years in business, we've weathered numerous challenges - a pandemic, a cost of living crisis, a significant time investment in a start-up project last year that didn't pan out, and now we're anticipating the changes brought by a new government.

Despite these challenges, we've had our best financial year to date.?

It's been incredibly stressful and demanding, (a topic I'd like to explore in a future article), but I strongly believe that part of our success has been down to sharing our learning and integration of AI with our clients (they like to learn too you know) and, getting on board with the changes that AI has so rapidly brought to marketing as a whole.?

The Limitations of AI in Content Creation

I continue to bang the drum on this one - it’s really important to understand that content written entirely by AI, does not replace authentic, personalised content.?

If this is what your company’s content marketing strategy is right now, it’s unlikely to build that know-like-trust factor with prospects and customers, or significantly boost your brand presence in a positive way.

In fact, AI-generated content is becoming increasingly easy to spot. Recent research from TrendCandy from 800 B2B marketers (we love these guys) highlights this issue: 84% of B2B marketing leaders say AI is increasing content volume, but 79% say that the content is largely ineffective.?

Even more telling, 64% of B2B marketing leaders worry that their AI-generated content looks the same as everyone else's.?

I think this tells us a lot about how businesses will be looking to use AI for content marketing heading into 2025.?

I believe we will begin to see a shift away from largely generic AI written content, with businesses investing more time and effort into using AI tools to leverage their existing brand voice and values.?

Our AI-Assisted Process

So, how are we using AI to produce personalised thought leadership and founder-led content for our clients??

Let me walk you through our process in detail:

1. Recording and Transcribing: We use a tool called Fireflies AI to record and transcribe our client content planning sessions.?

With Fireflies, you can either invite the tool into your meeting to record and transcribe the meeting directly, or upload a recording afterwards.?

Being able to upload recordings has been really useful, particularly when using voice notes - this is exactly how I used it to assist in writing this article. I recorded my own voice note on what I wanted to talk about, and then got Fireflies to transcribe it.?

This tool not only provides a full transcription but also summarises key points, which is incredibly helpful. It allows us to capture the authentic voice, terminology, and insights of our clients and all of this information can then be fed into other tools like ChatGPT and Claude.?

I have noticed a few limitations with Fireflies - it doesn’t like .mov files and you also can’t transcribe YouTube videos via a link, which would be useful for some of our work with clients.?

There is another tool called Spinach.AI which I am currently checking out - I’ll report back!?

2. AI-Assisted Content Creation: Once we have our transcript, we feed this transcription into a tool like Claude or ChatGPT to help us write a blog article.?

At this moment in time, I prefer Claude. However, it's not as simple as inputting the transcription and expecting a perfectly written article in return.?

We've invested considerable ‘play time’ in refining the prompts and instructions we feed into these tools to ensure they capture the right tone of voice and help create a great piece of content.

3. Prompt Refinement: We're continuously working on developing the right prompts for the content we're writing. It's a process of trial and error, but we're making steady progress.?

I often find myself having detailed conversations with Claude, asking it to do something differently or not to include certain phrases. Sometimes it will include them anyway and I give it a right telling off!?

It’s not Claude’s fault but it makes me feel better!?

For instance, there are key phrases that we often see in AI-generated content that the algorithms have been trained to use.?

Words and phrases like "business landscape", "here's the kicker", "critical", "crucial", "foster", "bolster" - they're all words that I see across AI content all the time.?

4. Personalisation: When writing content for a specific client, we don't just input a transcription and say, "This is a transcription from a conversation we had. Can you turn this into an article?"?

We're so much more specific, and you have to be too.?

We provide context about who the content is from, what we want to be written, what the main points of the article should be, who will be reading it, how we want the tone and voice to come across, and importantly, what we don't want to be included.?

So, going back to point 3 on prompt refinement, if our client’s don’t use phrases like ‘here’s the kicker’, then neither will the content we write for them.?

5. Multiple Iterations: It may take several attempts, drafts before we feel like the content truly sounds and represents how our clients sound.?

And of course it does take a lot of human input as well. This is why I emphasise that it's about human and AI collaboration, not just AI alone to produce a great piece of content.?

AI helps refine the process, it certainly doesn’t replace it!

6. Content Expansion: So is it all worth it? Well, we believe so. From a single 30-minute audio recording or client conversation, we can usually create two or three articles or pillar-content pieces.?

We can then repurpose these articles into LinkedIn newsletters, SEO articles, several LinkedIn posts, sound bites and video clips for other social media platforms, a series of ‘tweets’, as well as infographics and other visual content.?

And of course, we can continue to use these AI tools to repurpose the original piece of content into other posts.?

Another great tool for repurposing social posts is Supergrow.?

You can share your article and ask it to help repurpose content for LinkedIn - posts, carousels, polls etc and then schedule the posts to be shared directly. I’m still playing around with this one!?

7. Continuous Improvement: We're always looking for ways to streamline this process and to create more output for our clients without radically increasing the cost of our services.?

For example, we're currently working on how we can build out client avatars so that each time we write new content for them, the information these AI tools has on their brand voice, audience, opinions etc is already there.?

We’re also exploring better and more time efficient tools for creating visual content.?

Personally, I’m a real perfectionist, so the potential to speed up and improve our client content process while maintaining quality and accessibility to our services is exciting.?

Speed and increased output will never be at the expense of content quality though. I can’t highlight this enough. This must be maintained, otherwise your content is likely to do more harm than good.?

Experience Our Approach

If you're a service based business and are intrigued by our approach we have an experiential offer for Q4.?

We're offering you the opportunity to try out our process for FREE.?

Here's how it works:

1. Book a 30-minute call with us (just send me a message on LinkedIn to arrange).

2. Come prepared with a topic you'd like to discuss.

3. We'll record the session and guide you through our content consultation process.

4. We'll then provide you with one founder-led blog article to share on your website and social channels.

5. You'll also receive our content repurposing guide to help you maximise the value from that one piece of content.

You get some free content and the chance to experience our content creation process, and we get to demonstrate our skills.?

If you're interested, please message me directly on LinkedIn, and I'll share the link to book in.