ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE vs CREATIVITY and the HUMAN CONNECTION in CONTENT MARKETING
Can we really trust AI to maintain and elevate our business without us in the driver's seat?
We are now living in a world where we have the most amazing tools and resources to simplify and streamline the process of building a business to leverage our time more than ever. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now capable of writing content and used to communicate with customers, AI automation can run complete marketing campaigns, so suffice it to say these new technologies can help you create tremendous success in your business and improve your lifestyle.
Does that mean this technology guarantees exceptional, infallible results for our business? Some will tell you it is, but here’s the thing…
All these modern marketing tools are great and definitely have their place, but consider this; the more AI automated your marketing becomes, the less human it can seem, and that is a big mistake. Will these machines undermine us as a species? Where do we draw the line?
A Collision Course: AI Marketing, People and Process
Using AI in every aspect of running your business stifles creativity and eliminates trust. Without creativity and a relatable person at the helm, your content, and advertising gets lost in the fiercely competitive market that has evolved today. Importantly, if you are not seen as a human being and be trusted as one, potential customers will look for someone else to do business with.
With all the different types of marketing at our disposal today, trust is still the key to success. So trust could be considered as the currency of modern marketing and creativity will be the method that builds trust. Creativity is more important than ever because it’s the attribute that separates you from the machines and everyone else.
Humans are emotional creatures. The biological hardware that produces emotion is millions of years old, and the desire to connect with other people will never leave us. The technology has changed drastically, but we haven't. AI falls short when it comes to creativity, trust, and the human connection.
Creative, Trustworthy, Curation Is A Thing
For years now it’s been expressed that “content is king” and content marketing, or blogging with an emphasis on original content is a must if you want to build your audience and personal branding. Content marketing is about providing valuable, engaging information to your audience which then puts you in a trusted position to be able to present that audience with your related offer, using messages that lead to the sale.
You develop an audience by providing unique value to your intended audience and a decade ago, creating lots of high-value content was the way to go, not so much today. In researching the history of all things marketing, particularly online, over the last 2 decades, I learned what used to work in 2008 or even 2016 is not as effective today, given the amount and in some cases, the nature of the content being churned out these days.
Things have changed, however with change comes opportunity. The saturation of content online has created a new niche in content marketing. A creative, entrepreneurial endeavor to bring more value to your subscribers, an extension if you like. Content is no longer king – The audience is.
A Shift In Content Marketing
In a world where we now have oodles of content, lots of noise, and for the most part less capacity for attention, people are wanting trusted guides who will connect them with what’s good, what’s important to them, and what’s real instead of fake or poorly researched. They also want content selected by trusted humans, not algorithms.
People are also looking to trusted sources for what to buy, what to watch, where to travel etc, and in an age where we have overwhelming information and choice, the relevant curation of the work of others (when done right) is the new wave and a great opportunity for entrepreneurs, editors, writers and the like to more easily command an audience.
Curation is the selection, organization, and presentation of online content, and even products and services, to a specific audience. So if you’re stuck for ideas to create original content consistently, this is now an accepted channel and notably, curators become trusted experts as much (in some cases more) than original content creators. The curation approach is a lot more sophisticated and powerful than most people think.
Curation At HBO
One example is Home Box Office (HBO) which is the oldest paid TV service around, but in light of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime that offer algorithmically driven on-demand platforms, also Disney Plus and Apple TV are making their mark, things have become extremely competitive, so HBO came up with a new segment called “Recommended By Humans”.
It’s not just a marketing ploy either. Recommended By Humans is a means that provides a colorful canvas you can drag around on your desktop or mobile phone, and features 36 unique video suggestions and over 150 curated recommendations from real HBO fans. They also deliver those recommendations through an email newsletter.
HBO is tapping into the current climate which is definitely pro-human, anti-algorithm, and all for a good reason… because it’s what people now want.
The Broader Internet
We all agree the internet is the most powerful source of information ever conceived, but social media has actually reduced knowledge and wisdom given the spurious information and self-serving echo chambers, reinforcing misinformation, and bias. In a world of click-bait, fake news, and “deepfake” videos, smart people are looking for other trustworthy smart people to let them know what’s worth their time and attention.
The trust component cannot be overstated. With the crushing amount of dubious data and fake news, the world needs more clarity, understanding, and meaning. People need you to separate the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise. And that’s why curation is being classed as a viable way to create a meaningful business if done correctly.
Now you may be thinking, why can’t the machines do this for us? Wouldn’t artificial intelligence and automation be better at this?
It has been documented that relying on algorithms to “curate” content has been a disaster so far. Facebook is a classic example where the algorithm is the reason for the echo chambers that spread disinformation and put a serious dent in democracy. Albeit these algorithms are manipulated by unscrupulous humans with an agenda to exploit and control other humans, this is not likely to happen if an editorially-focused human is in charge.
Curation requires very human qualities like communication, empathy, creativity, strategic thinking, questioning, and even dreaming. These are commonly referred to as “soft skills,” and they are the areas that computers can’t handle, but humans excel at.
It comes down to judgment and taste, which are the hallmarks of all great editors and curators. Artificial intelligence doesn’t have those abilities, so we as humans can work alongside machines to do better work than ever.
In other words, algorithms can aggregate and identify patterns, but they can’t interpret the specific relevance and deeper nuance of an article, podcast, or video lesson to an audience. That’s why people need other people to act as human filters for the technology that editors and curators use to sift through a mountain of information in search of truth and value.
I acquired some very insightful perspectives from Brian Clark, who is a pioneer in content marketing and veteran in the craft of content creation since 1998. He believes that organizing, collecting, preserving, and making sense of our collective knowledge is a critical task facing business and humanity in general, right now and well into the future. Algorithms can do a lot to help, but the “last mile” requires a human filter.
Although he started off authoring original content with his very successful blogging platforms he has now turned to various forms of curation, saying,
“I got my start with online publishing and digital marketing through email newsletters. And once the fall out from the 2016 election became clear with the manufactured news, devious data capture quizzes, and false narratives, people doing genuine curation looked like geniuses.”
Email Marketing – Undisputed Champion
Although we have all the tools at Markethive, such as a blogging and broadcasting platform, subscribing and swiping features, blog cloud, social and digital media platform, email broadcasting and autoresponders, along with ever-increasing traffic and audience, it is email marketing that remains the undisputed champion and 40 times better at converting prospects than social media.
It’s a way to stay connected and no matter what your preferred marketing approach, getting people on an email list is a priority according to smart bloggers, content marketers, curators, and podcasters. They have realized it is the core of effective marketing.
So if email is the central key, apart from posting, blogging, and creating content on the Markethive platform, the added advantage of Markethive’s email systems gives you the perfect medium to disseminate your creative and valuable recommendations that are so compelling, your subscribers look forward to receiving your emails.
Furthermore, curating content, even products, and services, could give you a much stronger value proposition (great for the affiliate marketer). Product and service curation can lead to large amounts of revenue without ever developing products and services of your own.
Curated Email Newsletters
When you combine a curation mindset with email, you have a winning audience-building strategy. The success of examples such as The Hustle, theSkimm, Morning Brew, and Dave Pell’s Next Draft are just a few examples of how email newsletters are helping people make sense of the things that are important to them. These examples are merely the pioneers of this mainstream media movement of curation.
Importantly, these entrepreneurs are creating media brands that can evolve into powerhouses if they so choose and Markethive has all the hallmarks of being just that and more with the entrepreneurs at their individual helms working collaboratively on this extraordinary springboard.
That, combined with Markethive traffic, scaled by automation and optimized with analytics allows you to ascertain valuable insight that guides your business decisions. You are in the driver's seat, not some machine.
So you as an entrepreneur, freelancer, consultant or other client-services professional will benefit from all the tools and services Markethive delivers now and into the future, whether it be the referral program, subscriber sharing, media coverage, blogcasting to many social media platforms, sponsored articles and guest posting which are all part of your traffic mix and assist in developing your email list.
On the other hand…
you’ve got the funnel fanatics. Who needs to build a real brand or make a genuine human connection? Just create an automated funnel with a lead magnet and some shady affiliate offers, and watch the cash roll in, especially now that the term AI has come into play.
I don’t think so. I must agree with Brian Clark when he says,
“This is just the latest version of the perpetual “Internet Marketing Get That Money!” scam that has been fleecing “get rich quick” folks from the beginning. Most of the people who buy this funnel software never do anything; some create a small side hustle at best.
But then, what happens? The funnel technique of the day stops working. It always does, because tactics don’t last forever, especially online, and strategic brand-building takes the kind of effort that business opportunity seekers seem unwilling to invest in.”
It’s about building lasting brands, about the over-delivering value to the audience, about the foregoing short-term profit in order to build a truly powerful business. Human brands that establish themselves now will be trusted for much longer than it takes for artificial intelligence to greatly improve. And I beg to differ that AI will ever be able to take on the human element. There’s more opportunity now than ever because emerging technology will amplify the creative person, not replace them.
AI and Blockchain
Where AI is really important is in the Blockchain industry. It has had its fair share and suffered high levels of malware, phishing, and other corrupt endeavors such as fraud and scams.
AI-based cybersecurity systems are designed to identify threats in real-time, understand the nature of the threat, and prevent future attacks by blacklisting its source. This is a great improvement on traditional cybersecurity systems as AI is designed to improve with every threat because of its ability to detect patterns, study them, and become better at dealing with them.
This is the real AI and critical to the security and smooth running of any online business, company, or even a platform like Markethive, driven by blockchain, that uses and employs it to discover fake accounts. Also helps to reroute faster processing, removes email that is not deliverable but keeps emails that fail to deliver due to a full inbox issue. So in this sense, it makes Markethive friendlier, and most importantly maintains the human connection.
Another Feather In The Cap Of Humanity
So here we have another avenue to explore that will bring more value to the people you serve and bring forth the creative, curative genius in you. A human editor to curate the web, filter out the garbage, rise above the noise to deliver reliable information to people who are drowning in and being driven mad with the mass of disinformation and propaganda.
That’s not to say we forgo creating original content. We still need and want to write about what truly matters to us and our audience. By curating content that is relevant to our topic connects the points of the larger narrative that matter to your audience and in all probability fills the gaps. Instead of agonizing over what next to write about, if there’s nothing necessary or compelling to address, you simply work on other aspects of your business instead of creating content just for the sake of it.
Conclusion
The Markethive platform can help you achieve your goals as it’s a multi-dimensional, social organizational integrated system with deep level linking dynamics. Integrating vast social networks reaches, internal social network connections, unlimited interconnected WordPress blogs, and APIs to news sites like NBC, Wired Magazine, Bloomberg, Western journal, and 1000s of others, that will continue to expand due to the power of your own Markethive network and the collaboration of separate Markethive groups all working in union with each other. Now that’s what I call real traffic and is reflected in Markethive’s Alexa rank.
Currently, live in Beta, Markethive is the world’s first Market Network with a social media interface built on the blockchain. This is the next-gen of all things from the past where all the marketing tools are free to use.
We are moving closer to the release of the Apprentice membership which is designed for the masses and will allow users to take advantage of more services, increasing the ability and potential to earn a substantial income by just being active on the platform. After we launch the Apprentice program our attention then focuses on delivering the Markethive wallet app along with KYC.
Markethive is transparent from the ground up and dedicated to upholding users’ privacy, autonomy and free speech which correlates perfectly with entrepreneurs who wish to use the art of curation “clean up” the web, so to speak, thereby giving a much-needed service to the people exposed to overwhelming, contradictory content, victims of tyrannical tech giants and fraudulent scams. It’s an absolute jungle out there!
Markethive is Not Just About IDEAS. It’s About Making Ideas HAPPEN!
Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals.