As text-generation technology has improved dramatically, content creation has undergone many changes over the last two years. For many organizations, the ability to deliver high volumes of articles, guides, and reports in a short time has become a key differentiator. But as with any change, there are many operational challenges to address. In this article, we will explore how organizations can protect their content standards in an automated age.
The Cost of Diluted Standards
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As a company ramps up volume, trust in a brand’s content generally falls. Even if someone has read a given article, upon re-reading another article by the same brand, they may not even recall that the first existed. Decreasing trust in a given brand leads to decreased engagement with its content, and ultimately search engines lower the ranking of that brand’s content in favor of content from other brands that appear to have a greater inventory of quality.
In a world in which every organization has the same generative tools at their disposal, generic copy has reduced in value to a mere commodity. Instead, what sets an organization apart is meaningful, insightful, and thought-provoking content of real value that solves real problems and adds value for audiences.
Establishing Clear Editorial Guidelines
Set clear quality standards for your team. What does “high quality” mean for you and your company? Do you have sufficiently defined editorial guidelines for writers and freelancers and for automated content?
A modern editorial guidelines document can outline all the necessary quality criteria, and these then need to be checked in the workflow before publication. Key areas that should be covered by editorial guidelines are:
- Brand Voice: Define the overall writing style and ensure that it aligns with your company’s brand. Be sure to include examples of preferred language usage and provide a list of prohibited terms and phrases to avoid.
- Fact-Checking Requirements: Every claim, statistic, and other data must be checked against the original sources. Secondary reporting or even mere assumptions and speculations must not be published under your company brand.
- Originality Expectations: Outline rules for writers to research and create content and set clear standards to differentiate generated content from other copies found on the internet. Prefer research-based, unique insights that deliver greater value to readers.
Integrating Technical Verification into the Workflow
A publishing program is only as strong as the verification tools integrated into the editorial department’s daily workflow to enforce published guidelines.
To ensure all published work is technically sound and conforms to specified guidelines before layout, it is advised that all submissions be technically verified before scheduling for publication. In addition to verifying facts and determining whether a piece meets specified style criteria, it is crucial to verify a submission’s authorship. A plagiarism detection tool should be used to check submitted work for originality and to determine whether proper use has been made of any source material referenced within the work.
Use your verification tools to help your editing team work more efficiently. Ensure that the technology you use will enable your team to focus on issues such as structure, nuance, and alignment with the organization’s goals.
Emphasizing Subject Matter Expertise
Information can be aggregated by AI, but no AI can interview an industry expert or write about personal experiences. Complex proprietary case studies also cannot be written by AI tools. For high-quality content that really stands out from automated text, there must be expertise behind it.
Organizations can elevate their publications by shifting their strategy toward expert-led content creation:
- Conduct Internal Interviews: It’s easy to bring in outside expertise. Instead, pair your writer with your internal Technical Leads, Product Managers, and even Executive Team members to get original perspectives on topics relevant to your readers and your business.
- Incorporate First-Party Data: Share insights derived from company research, customer surveys, or internal analytics.
- Include real case studies: Allow authors to present real-world scenarios and explain how the information in the article is applied.
Your published articles contain rich, unique insights when human involvement is integrated into your development process.
Elevating the Role of the Human Editor
While a draft can now be created in a matter of minutes, the hours spent by the human editor will be better spent reworking a piece that already has a solid foundation into high-quality content, rather than struggling to develop low-quality first drafts from scratch.
This means shifting the focus from drafting content at speed to high-value activities such as editing content to improve sentence structure and the depth of the argument, reducing ‘filler’ words and including more relevant information, and ensuring that the final product delivers the messages and supports the organizational goals and objectives.
Much more can be achieved with quality editorial than simply rephrasing information to have it published in good style, quickly and intentionally.
Building a Culture of Accountability
Maintaining standards for quality content will require an agreement among all individuals involved in the content publishing process: writers, strategists, and/or managers.
Promote a culture where team members feel confident in questioning a claim that hasn’t been fact-checked, challenging subpar writing, and pushing back against quota-driven production that doesn’t result in meaningful engagement and business value. Celebrate writing that drives meaningful engagement and business value, rather than focusing solely on weekly word count.
Combining clear guidelines, the best verification tools, specialized expertise, and high-quality human editors, companies can master the digital transition while upholding the highest content standards and truly honoring their audiences’ time and need for valuable information and services.