During the 2024 B2B Marketing Exchange, I hosted a panel discussion featuring some of the industry’s sharpest minds. One of those speakers was Dana Harder, Partner at Unreal Digital Group, a demand generation agency. As Harder and I worked with our fellow panelists to put together a comprehensive discussion, some pertinent topics fell to the cutting room floor — particularly those surrounding AI.
To remedy those gaps, Harder joined me on the B2B Marketing Exchange podcast for a deeper discussion around AI and content. While the full episode won’t air for a few more weeks, check out a quick preview below:
Kelly Lindenau: Can you quickly share an overview around how they content creation landscape has changed, and what role AI plays in it?
Dana Harder: There’s a fair amount of discussion these days around what content assets are truly resonating, and in B2B, we get tied to static formats. We love our E-books and white papers, but they just get downloaded and we don’t know if anyone goes back to them.
We need to start looking at formats that are shorter and easier to digest: Everything doesn’t have to be this long soliloquy of what buyers need to do. Those longer-form content pieces have a place, but we also need to mix it up with short-form podcasts, social posts, video, interactive pieces and web-based content so it’s easier to find and for gen AI tools to pick up.
Lindenau: Let’s stay on the topic of creating content that’s optimized for gen AI tools — how can practitioners conduct an audit of the content to determine how it’s resonating?
Harder: Gen AI tools — both paid and free — are amazing for research and finding out information, but they’re only as good as the data that’s going in because they just regurgitate the same information back. When we conduct an audit for our clients, we start by putting ourselves in the mind of their buyers and ask ourselves (and the AI), ‘what do we want to know about this company? What are our pain points?’
And as we’re having that conversation with generative AI, we start to see a data progression — and sometimes our clients are nowhere to be mentioned and their competitors come up instead. Once you can identify those gaps, you can create content that’ll start to surface on those engines.
Lindenau: The other side to AI is its content creation capabilities — what’s your take on the current ‘AI is taking my job’ phase?
Harder: AI is not the enemy; it’s going to help us become more efficient in content creation. However, you must ensure that you’re keep your content original and aligned with your brand and voice. A lot of content marketers are using AI for research and to create an outline, which is great because it cuts down on hours of research — sometimes, we just need a starting point.
However, if you have a small marketing team or writing just isn’t your thing, you must be prepared to edit the AI content and make sure to incorporate your voice into it. It generates a lot of fluff and repetitive words, so you’ll have to pare down the word count, too.
Lindenau: How do you see content creators and marketers working alongside gen AI tools in the future?
Harder: We have to become experts in how we talk to AI and understand prompting — i.e., what’s going to come up — because that’ll be most effective in helping content marketers understand where their gaps are. Anyone can ask generalized questions, but you need to understand how to get deep into the AI weeds.
We couldn’t fit all the insights from this podcast into one blog, but don’t worry! We chatted with Harder on the B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast, and that episode will be airing in just a few weeks. For a recap of the panel discussion itself — and more a comprehensive view into content creation — check out our latest feature.
