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AI for Content Briefs: Perfect Partner or Hard Pass?
In 2022, a survey from Podia listed the top three challenges experienced by content creators of all experience levels. Having enough time for everything was number two, second only to growing one’s audience.
So as someone charged with writing content briefs, ask yourself, “If there was a tool that could help me streamline my entire content creation process, including helping me write better content briefs faster, should I use it?”
Yes. Yes you should. And the tool you should use isn’t a content brief generator, one with templates that can crank out content outlines, headlines, and such. The tools you should be using to save tons of valuable time are AI writing tools, like Jasper.
Here’s how.
Using AI for Content Briefs to Save Valuable Time
Despite all the buzz, we’re a long way off from AI being able to handle creative, strategic tasks
(like writing content briefs) all on their own. But tools like Jasper can be invaluable working alongside us, simplifying and accelerating a lot of the aspects of brief writing that can bog us down. For instance:
Inspiration Gets Easier
It takes work to crack a good idea. For content briefs, this often entails writing variations of what you're thinking as you drill down into your inspiration. AI tools like Jasper make creative iteration easy.
By prompting AI to generate variations on pieces of your writing quickly, you spend less time tinkering and more time thinking, strategically deciding which unique angles and approaches fit the task at hand best.
Research Gets Enriched
For a while, AI tools have been good at analyzing large amounts of data. However, recent AIs are getting great at deriving insights from data and providing content marketers with the insights needed to tailor a content brief to an audience.
The fact that tools like Jasper can now assist with keyword research and topic research also benefits both content planning and content strategy. Furthermore, chat functionality makes analysis like this much more accessible to those who don't happen to have a research background.
Your Style Stays Established
While often related to the creative aspects of content marketing, tone of voice is vital for good brief writing because part of what makes a brief good is cohesive and recognizable writing, and this can be even more challenging when business and/or brand standards come into play.
Jasper excels here specifically because its training data is intentionally based, in part, on the world's best marketing content.
This means while Jasper can certainly write in different tones of voice, it’s actually learned what makes those voices different in the first place. That’s key for helping you apply them in a business or marketing setting (even if that setting is helping you apply your own tone of voice to, well, yourself).
You'll Reduce Errors, While Increasing Output
Error reduction is another benefit of an AI that learns how you want it to write. While content briefs should be brief, the occasional error can slip in there, especially when deadlines are breathing down your neck.
In addition to catching and correcting grammatical errors in your briefs, tools like Jasper help you keep your writing consistent, especially at scale. Writing better briefs faster means your output will naturally begin to scale, but when you've partnered with the right AI tool, these gains in output won't come at the cost of consistency.
So, with an abundance of potential benefits, it’s clear that using AI for content briefs is a smart way to optimize your workflow. But to maximize these benefits, you must know how to partner with artificial intelligence.
The Ins and Outs of Using AI for Content Briefs
Using AI for content briefs isn’t much different than using any resource that can help you do your work better—understand how to use a given tool both ethically and responsibly, and you can be sure you’re not “cheating” your way to success. For using AI tools like Jasper, this means the following:
AI Usability to Keep In Mind
- AI writing tools have a lot of capabilities. But each will also have limitations, some inherent to partnering with any AI, and some unique to the tool itself. Be prepared to review the work AI contributes to your content briefs. Always provide oversight, ensuring the different aspects of the brief come together cohesively.
- As with other aspects of assisted content writing, think of what the AI provides as a starting point. Tools like Jasper accelerate the time needed to get initial ideas in the mix. And the faster you can get a brief going the faster you’ll be adding your own ideas and insights.
- Best-in-class AI tools help you maintain utmost focus on your audience. Some AI writing tools allow you to enter important audience info as part of their brief templates or writing workflows. Use them.
- In the world at large, professionals give proper attribution when it's needed and respect the intellectual property of others. AI is amazing, but it can’t tell right from wrong. It’s on you to keep your brief-writing-buddy above-board, ethically.
Overall, remember that you’re inviting AI tools into your world, which means they need to work the way you do, not the other way around. And keeping the above in mind as you work together on your briefs will ensure that’s exactly how things go.
Speaking of “go,” let’s get your first AI-assisted brief moving.
How to Get Started Using AI Tools to Creating Content Briefs
First off, make a list of AI tools you'd like to demo for your content brief writing. And if you want to save a little extra time, we've got a good list you can use (with pros and cons, pricing, etc.). On that list, we recommend diving in with any tool that offers a free tier or a free trial. By doing so, you can better audition how each works as you learn what it can and can't do as part of your workflow.
Then, follow some basic best practices to ensure you're writing content briefs that will lead to high-quality content:
Clearly Define Your Content Goals
Every piece of content needs a relevant, clearly defined goal. Sure, writing briefs can be fun. But what do we want to actually accomplish in the end? Prioritizing goals in your briefs is additionally important when using AI tools like Jasper—because all that iteration and ideation we mentioned above needs a pivot point to remain relevant, and, in your briefs, that pivot point should be the goals of your content.
Practice Entering Clear Input and Instructions
With a given goal in mind, now practice providing the AI tool with relevant information and context. As noted above, experiment with how the tool allows you to enter and retain information about your target audience. For example, do you have to enter and re-enter this info each time you generate a brief (common with templated approaches)? Or, does chat functionality allow the tool to "remember" audience details as you work on each section of your brief?
Work to include any other details you feel are important, including specific points you want covered, the industry the brief is referring to, the type of content to be generated, etc. Remember, despite being trained on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pieces of content, AI can't really "know" anything. All it has to work with is what you prompt it with, so if it's important to your brief, make sure you've got a way to tell your AI about it.
However, just as in traditional brief writing, questions will pop up along the way. That's why we'll send you off by answering the most common ones we hear:
AI for Content Briefs: Questions We Hear Frequently Asked (FAQs)
Q: Are AI-generated content briefs reliable and accurate?
A: There are tools on the market that claim to be able to generate content briefs for you, completely on their own. While modern AI is both advanced and rapidly advancing, it will never be wise to trust AI to fact-check itself. Again, think of tools like Jasper as hyper-efficient creative partners, not autonomous members of your team. And, as such, always endeavor to fact-check yourself.
Q: How do I make sure the content I create with AI is unique and not plagiarized?
A: Always make sure you have an understanding of how a given tool does what it does. But reputable AI tools like Jasper are specifically built to ensure the content they create is original. However, this is another excellent reason to always review the content your AI tool creates so you can be completely sure.
Q: How do AI tools make sure the content briefs they help produce will lead to high-quality content that engages my target audience?
A: No content brief, human-created or AI-human-created, is guaranteed to lead to engaging content. And buyer beware when reviewing any AI tool (or human, for that matter) that claims every single brief produced will lead to ground-shaking work. That said, tools of Jasper's pedigree employ natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) as part of their training. In doing so, they can work out why language works, not just what has worked in the past. This means the language you partner on to put in your content briefs should be inherently engaging.
Q: Do NLP and NLU allow AI tools like Jasper to understand brand tones of voice?
A: Yup, thanks to NLP and NLU, advanced AI tools like Jasper can learn how a specific brand sounds in writing. And it can employ that understanding to write in said tone of voice while creating completely new and unique content. Again though, the ability for AI to learn relies heavily on the inputs we provide it with. This is why providing clear examples and guidelines in your prompts is essential.
Q: What sort of learning curve is involved in using AI tools for content brief creation?
A: Mastering any new tool takes a bit of time, and AI tools are no exception. More than most, AI tools may require more time and experimentation before you settle on the one that "feels" right for your content workflow. That said, AI tools like Jasper increasingly prioritize user-friendliness (e.g., intuitive chat interfaces). So while it still takes time to learn how to use them for content brief writing, the best AI tools are easy to jump into and start using.
Q: Is it worth the costs to use AI tools for content brief creation?
A: Well, the costs of using an AI tool will vary depending on which you feel suits you best. Again though, look for tools with free trials and tiers. But also explore which tools offer value adds, like free browser extensions that bring AI to wherever you're doing your work, and ongoing training to help you get the most out of the tools you do choose to invest in.
Our Conclusion, In Brief…
Even by focusing just on using AI for your content briefs, you'll quickly discover how much potential these tools have in the business world at large. In the meantime, though, you can enjoy learning how to do what you do well, better—not to mention faster than you would have thought possible.
And remember, tools like Jasper make jumping in and starting to learn easy. In fact, sign up for Jasper for free, and you'll also get your first 10,000 words at no cost, which can be helpful because we know as well as you do that the first draft of a brief tends to be anything but.
