I’ve been writing professionally for years, so I wouldn’t say AI taught me how to write. What it has done is make me a much more productive writer. Research that used to take hours is faster, technical subjects are easier to unpack, and when I’m stuck on an angle, I now have somewhere to bounce ideas around.
But interestingly, the more I use AI, the more I realise that speed is only part of the equation. The actual writing still depends on experience, judgment, marketing strategy and knowing where the real story is.
I was reminded of this recently while Googling topics we had written about for clients, mainly to see how the articles were performing. A few ranked well, which always gives me a little satisfaction. Then I noticed something else: some of our content was also appearing in Google’s AI-generated answers.
My immediate reaction was, Wah, okay. Not bad lah!
And then I had another thought. Here I was using AI to help me research and write, and now AI was picking up the very articles we had produced. AI was suddenly sitting on both sides of the writing process.
That got me thinking about how much my own writing process has changed and, strangely enough, how using AI has made me appreciate the human side of writing even more.
It also got me thinking about my own relationship with AI as a writer. I use it almost every day now. There! I said it and and I am quite happy to admit that.
AI is a life-line especially with the technical stuff
I write for clients across very different industries, and some topics can get rather technical. Engineering, inspections, regulations, specialised services… definitely not subjects I wake up in the morning naturally knowing everything about.
In the past, I could spend hours researching before I even felt confident enough to start writing. This could take up to a week. Fast forward today, AI helps me get there much faster. I can ask it to explain technical concepts in plain English, summarise background information, identify terminology I should understand and suggest areas I need to research further.
It doesn’t replace fact-checking or speaking to the actual experts, and understanding engineering doesn’t suddenly make me an engineer. If only qualifications were that easy! However, it does give he useful head start.
If I had to put a number on it, AI probably contributes about 20 to 30 per cent of my writing process today. Research and ideation have become much easier.
The remaining 70 to 80 per cent? That’s still very human and a hell lot of experience!
Actually, we don’t start with writing
Ok before we continue, I want to make a point that good content doesn’t start with content. It starts with marketing strategy. Before we decide what article to write, we need to know what the business is trying to achieve. Who are we trying to reach? What do we want to be known for? What questions are our customers asking? What expertise does the business genuinely own? And importantly, where does this piece of content sit within the larger customer journey?
A marketing strategy and a fractional CMO give us that direction.
Without it, we can happily produce four articles a month, 20 social posts and a beautiful newsletter and still wonder six months later why none of it is doing very much.
This becomes even more important with AI because producing content is now incredibly easy. The danger is that businesses start producing more simply because they can.
Strategy tells us what is actually worth producing.
AI can suggest an angle. Experience chooses the story.
Once we know the strategy, then I put on my writer’s hat.
I’ve always believed experienced writers develop a nose for stories. You can give five writers exactly the same interview and probably get five completely different articles.
AI can give me ten possible story angles in seconds, and some may actually be quite good. But experience tells me which one has legs.
Sometimes the story is hidden in one sentence somebody casually mentioned halfway through an interview. Sometimes the statistic everyone thinks should lead the article is actually the least interesting part.
And then there is flow. I move paragraphs around, delete things, put them back, read something again and think, No lah, this doesn’t sound right.
That instinct comes from years of writing. AI hasn’t replaced it.
Now we are writing for humans and AI
Seeing our clients’ articles appearing in Google’s AI results made me realise something else.
Search behaviour is changing. We still want articles to rank on Google, of course. SEO keywords, useful answers, good structure, authority and relevance still matter. But increasingly, we also need to think about whether our content is strong enough to be discovered and referenced by AI-powered search.
That doesn’t mean stuffing articles with keywords or trying to write for machines. In fact, I think the opposite may be true.
If AI can generate an average article in seconds, then original experience, expertise, perspective and useful information become even more valuable.
Perhaps that’s the funny part of all this.
AI is helping me research and write faster. AI is also helping people discover the things we write. Yet the thing sitting right in the middle of that relationship is still very human: marketing strategy, experience, judgment and storytelling.
So yes, I will continue using AI. Happily.
It can have its 20 to 30 per cent but before we write anything, I still want to know why we are writing it. And once we know that, I still want a human deciding what the story should be.
Because in a world where everyone can create content, simply creating more isn’t going to make us different.
Having something worth saying will.
And if you’ve got something worth saying but simply don’t have the time to write it, that’s something we can help with too.
Through Tin Communications’ Marketing Assistant On-Demand, businesses can tap on us for ad-hoc marketing and blog writing support whether you need help with one article, a few blogs or simply an extra pair of hands for a short period.
Support starts from just $75 an hour. No long-term commitment required.
Sometimes you don’t need another agency retainer. You just need someone to help get the writing done.
