Communicators should connect every AI-generated message to a specific goal and audience.
AI can help comms teams work faster and more cohesively, but it also makes it easier to publish content that has no clear purpose.
Karen Freberg, professor of strategic communications at the University of Louisville, said a clear content strategy still needs to guide what teams produce, regardless of which tool helps you get there.
“If you don’t have a strategy that kind of ties everything together, it’s just viewed as AI slop,” Freberg said during Ragan’s Writing Certificate Course for Communicators. “There’s no purpose, there’s no goal, there’s no audience in mind.”
Before publishing AI-assisted content, teams should answer three questions, she said.
- Who is this for?
Avoid writing for a broad or undefined audience, Freberg said. Identify the specific employees, customers, media or other stakeholders who need the information. Then adjust the examples, level of detail and language for that group.
“If everyone’s using AI, we’re all sounding the same,” Freberg said. “How do we distinguish our voice compared to everyone else that’s potentially using AI?”
- What goal does it support?
A piece of content should connect to a communications or business goal, she said. A post might explain a change, build trust or answer a common question. But if the team can’t name the reason for putting it out into the world, the content probably doesn’t need to be published.
“Every post, every press release, every piece of content that you create, every message has to align back to your overall goal and purpose for your audience,” Freberg said.
- What should the audience do next?
Decide what comes after the message or content is live. This could be clicking a link, a behavioral call-to-action, sharing feedback or help understanding a decision. Make that next step obvious instead of forcing the reader to figure it out, Freberg said.
“With any kind of writing, you want to motivate audiences to do something, whether it’s buying a product, signing up for a service or donating to a specific cause,” she said.
Do not measure an AI tool only by how much content it produces. Measure whether that content reaches the right people, supports a clear goal and gives the audience a next step, Freberg said.
“If we let all the tools do our work, we miss the fundamental elements of how to come up with a key message that really does resonate,” she said.
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