You don’t need more content, you need more conversations and knowledge
Lately, I’ve caught myself being less and less tolerant of AI-generated text. I don’t like the experience of reading, editing, or working with AI-generated text. Not because I reject AI or large language models outright. But because I reject them when it comes to communication, poiesis, dialogue, and differentiation – the pillars of good marketing communication. And also because I don’t like the experience of text, communication, and dialogue through the skewed lens of statistical patterns.
Recently, my friend Peter Nikolow sent me an article that felt like a welcome reality check. A reminder to myself and to all of us that the discomfort we feel when reading and working with AI-generated content is not just about being rigid, old-fashioned, and not open to change. It is about the deprivation of experiential meaning.
In a recent piece covering Google’s Search Central event in Toronto, Danny Sullivan brought that point home by making a distinction between commodity and non-commodity content. The core idea was simple: content that is generic, reproducible, and interchangeable is becoming less valuable, while content rooted in unique experience, perspective, and authenticity matters.
And this has always been the case – in the times of keyword-flooded texts, in the times of SEO tricks and black-hat linking strategies, even back in the days of misleading commercials.
Because on a deeper, archetypal level, communicating with your audience is not about spitting texts and printing an endless number of brochures. It is about the knowledge exchanged and the experiential meaning co-created.
I already feel old 🙂
AI-Generated Text Vs. Meaning-making and Semiotic TRAILS
But then again, AI-generated text is, fundamentally, pattern generation based on statistical probability. It predicts what usually comes next. It assembles language from what has already been said.
Unlike writing, meaning-making, and semiotics.
Knowledge, knowing, understanding, feeling, living is happening from the encounter between you and me, not from prediction. Content is the artifact of a dialogue; it is something born in the moment where, here and now, two perspectives meet and something new emerges between them.
What I am trying to say is that meaning is something co-created, not merely transmitted; oftentimes, it is a lot more than just something to be transferred. it is something to be born.
And don’t tell me marketing communications are not supposed to be dealt with through such a deep lens. Because they are!
How will your message reach your people if it is statistically similar to all other messages?
Marketing communication and its content on the Web is not about broadcasting polished (AI-generated) messages. They are about the dynamics between the stakeholders and the potential of the organization to create a space of exchange which is relational, contextual and dialogic.
Meaningful marketing communication is not about producing more content faster. It is about creating spaces where authentic exchange can happen. AI might help us structure, refine, and accelerate, but wait! This is way after we have worked to clarify what it is that we want to say, how we want to say it, where, and when.
Two Triads of Content Thinking and Inking Cues
That said, here’s something that might be useful if you decide (because it is a choice) to write on your own, to increase friction and not to save yourself the encounter with others, in this Web increasingly flooded with synthetic text.
Here’s my answer to the question: what it is that, in practical terms, can make a content piece matter – internally within the enterprise and externally – to external stakeholders?
It is the thinking behind the inking 🙂 – yes, that’s trivial. But lovely and nice to experience. That said, here are two triads 🙂
THINK:
- Think interconnectedness (vs. blank page, single piece, what should I write now…)
- Think concepts (vs. topics/tags/keywords)
- Think knowledge retrieval (vs SEO, website architecture, visibility)
INK:
- Start with a net, the nodes of which are the business goals, the content goals, the actions/intent involved – try to connect the dots 🙂
- List the concepts you want to work with (SEO research, important matters you want to cover, your people’s pain point – the way they call their problems) and begin finding their dynamics
- Write but also manage knowledge – connect concepts, standardize language, and organize content (both creation and consumption) for better discovery and reuse.
Hope that helps. And btw: it is the machine in the hermeneutic circle, not the human in the loop 🙂
❤️
Image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/black-fountain-pen-on-white-paper-IcT8l8DDek8
p.s. If you want to experience content writing perceived and practiced as an ecosystem, consider joining my course: Content Writing For the Web of People and Machines
Also, for thoughts on the poetics of coherence, the situational nature of understanding, and the pleasure of text. I invite you to join my LinkedIn Newsletter: Content <3 Dialogue
