Craft Beyond Code: 6 Paths to Surpassing Machine Composition

As artificial intelligence continues to invade creative industries, from creating art to writing, content writers are rightfully concerned about the future of their craft. How do you compete with an AI chatbot that doesn’t require a paycheck, gets tired, and churns out content instantly?

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Although you can’t beat AI at its own game, this technology is still somewhat limited, and there are a few skills that human content writers possess or can hone that AI can’t replicate, at least for now. Here, we will cover some ways good content writers can outperform AI writing tools.

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1. Provide Unique Perspectives and New Information

One of the cons of using AI writing tools to generate content is that it can often be formulaic, generic, and devoid of unique opinions or new ideas. This is partly because AI tools typically rely on pre-existing data to generate content, with some unable to access real-time information from the web.

On the other hand, you can rely on your expertise on specific topics and unique life experiences to bring fresh perspectives, innovative ideas, and new information to your writing. You’re also in a better position to stay updated with the latest developments in your industry. Keeping up with current trends and writing about them helps you ride on their popularity and boost your visibility.

You can achieve this by setting up Google Alerts for news or topics of interest, subscribing to news sources, or using relevant hashtags on social media. This puts you in an unrivaled position to engage, inform, and inspire readers.

2. Write for Your Audience

Although various AI writing tools can leverage their massive data sets and information from your prompts to generate content based on your target audience’s needs and interests, human writers still have an edge when it comes to understanding people’s emotions and motivations and tailoring writing to meet their needs.

You can take advantage of this skill by developing a keen understanding of your readers’ wants, needs, and desires. By learning everything you can about them, you can craft content that speaks to their interests, answers their questions, and solves their problems. This helps you create content that resonates with your target audience and builds a strong connection between them and your writing.

While it’s essential to incorporate some SEO hacks, like adding the right keywords to boost your content’s visibility, the most successful content is always reader-focused. So, you want to prioritize your readers’ experience instead of stuffing your content with keywords.

3. Fact-Check Your Writing

Writing well-researched content is essential to gaining readers’ trust, outperforming AI writing tools, and becoming a successful content writer . While the best AI chatbots can generate coherent sentences and plausible-sounding arguments, they are often inaccurate—and that’s one of the biggest problems with tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT .

Although an experienced writer can also make some mistakes, the key is to take your time to fact-check your writing before publishing it. You can achieve this by consulting experts in your field or verifying information from several reputable sources.

Checking the accuracy of the facts and arguments you present in your writing helps to reinforce your credibility and differentiates your work from AI-generated content.

4. Leverage the Power of Storytelling

We have been telling stories long before learning to read and write. From carvings on walls to epic poems and Hollywood blockbusters, storytelling has been a powerful and effective way to communicate ideas for centuries.

It’s hard to find a better tool to capture a reader’s attention, evoke emotions, and foster engagement than storytelling. You can leverage the power of storytelling in your writing to explain complex concepts, motivate readers to take action, and leave a lasting impression on them.

Even though AI is getting better at telling stories, it still doesn’t have the same emotional appeal as human storytelling. That’s because you can leverage real-life experiences, motivations, and feelings to craft relatable and compelling stories that resonate with readers.

To make your writing more engaging, you can use vivid language and descriptive details to create memorable mental images for readers. You can also mix facts and figures with metaphors, analogies, and anecdotes to add depth and color to your content.

5. Apply SEO Best Practices

Applying SEO best practices is essential for a successful content writing career. And as we mentioned above, one of the best ways to achieve this is to focus on writing readable, engaging content that meets the needs of your target audience.

This is also an area where you can outperform AI writing tools. One of the main reasons is that Google is not a fan of AI-generated texts, as it falls under thespammy automatically-generated content category, according to this post on spam policies for Google web search .

That said, you can follow the tips below to make your content SEO-friendly:

• Add relevant internal links from other pages on your website and external links from other reputable sources to provide more information and back up your claims.
• Use relevant keywords in your titles and throughout the content, where appropriate, to ensure search engines index your content. However, you want to avoid keyword stuffing to maintain readability.
• Craft well-optimized meta descriptions to help readers decide whether your content is relevant to their interests.
• Make your writing easy to scan and navigate by including headings, subheadings, paragraphs, and bullet points where appropriate.
• Add relevant images and videos to break up your text and provide readers with visual references.

These are just some of the best SEO tips you can incorporate into your writing to make it more readable for readers and visible to search engines. Taking the time to apply these tips can pay off in the form of loyal readers and higher rankings on search engines.

6. Edit Like a Pro and Be Ready to Adapt

Good writing is not just about getting your facts right; it’s also about following the grammatical rules of the language. That’s why it’s essential to proofread and edit your writing carefully several times before hitting the publish button.

This will help you catch typos and grammatical errors, improve the overall readability of your content, and outshine AI writing tools. You can use these self-editing tips and tools to improve your writing . In addition, you also need to be ready to adapt continuously to the ever-evolving technological landscape.

Whether it’s Google’s updates to its search algorithms or the emergence of new online AI tools for content creation , it’s vital to stay on top of the latest trends and learn how to make the most of them. Ultimately, even if AI tools can’t replace you at this time, chances are, savvy and adaptable content writers who learn to use these tools will thrive in this competitive market.

The Human Touch in Content Writing Still Matters

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve and encroach on creative fields, like content writing, it’s natural to wonder whether AI writing tools will soon become the go-to solution for content creation.

While these tools can make content production more efficient and cost-effective, human writers still have a few key advantages and tricks that make content more engaging, interesting, relatable, and SEO-friendly. You can hone these skills and continuously adapt to the changing landscape to stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant in a world where AI writing is increasingly prevalent.

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