Create and automate content in a constructive way
I spoke on Friday, March 3rd in the Analysis cycle of the Women in Tech SEO Fest UK. Before starting this article, I would like to thank Areej AbuAli very warmly for selecting my topic among dozens, certainly, and for allowing me to go on stage at the splendid Barbican theater. I would also like to thank Hannah Smith (MC) for her guidance, encouragement, and for making everything absolutely crystal clear for me. Special mention also to the Barbican Centre's stage management and the person who set up my tie microphone.
This article is in French while the conference was conducted in the language of Shakespeare. It is not an exact transcription of my presentation. For those interested, virtual seats to the filmed versions of the entire program are still available.
Before creating content, you have to design it
Content generation is one of the hottest topics, especially since the release of ChatGPT for the general public. ChatGPT makes the technologies developed by OpenAI, including GPT-3, which has been very popular for several years, accessible with a conversational interface. ChatGPT has allowed the introduction of an interface, in the literal sense, that allows everyone to communicate with the machine without having any development skills. Because let's not forget that the source code of an application is only a way to give instructions to a machine. Here we have a space in which we can communicate with the machine with the illusion of an intelligent and artificial entity.
But before thinking about creation and generation, there is design. There is the method and also what you want to do with the content produced.
Another optimization story
Do you know Dave Brailsford? I don't either. He used to be the performance director of British Cycling and is well known for his work as the director of the Sky cycling team. His theory on "marginal gains" has become famous. In short, if you optimize a little bit of this and a little bit of that, your project will be significantly improved. If that's not a great summary to define SEO, then I'll eat my hat.
At first, I thought I was an editor, a journalist. Then I discovered that what we could do on the Web was even more interesting. There are new ways to tell stories, new ways to share them. That's how I started writing a blog in 2009, and then led other projects.
Finally, I realized that I was already doing SEO!
I had:
ideas
a willingness to share them
a tendency to build websites taking into account the content itself, its structure, its popularity, etc.
Oh yes, SEO, I know.
Finally my conclusion was simple:
Being a good writer wasn't enough for me.
Being a good technical SEO wasn't enough either.
I had to merge these skills in order to achieve my goals. Or at least try to have a holistic vision of things, accurate enough, not to hold me back in my projects.
Google E-A-T, E-E-A-T, Helpful Content Update, etc.
E-A-T or E-E-A-T, that is the question. But the idea is the same.
There's a well-known theory that says it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. It's rather outdated, it's certainly not something to follow to the letter. You may need more. You may need less. But the number of hours spent is really not important.
What is important is your sources!
I can't talk about automation in 2023 without mentioning ChatGPT. To be honest, Chat GPT is your buddy who talks too much after drinking too much.
On the one hand ChatGPT is a pretty good writer. We understand him, we find him plausible. That's probably even why it's so easy to get the impression that he's capable of going to the moon for us. But he has no idea what he is telling us. He takes information gleaned without taking the distance that a human being is capable of.
On the other hand, unfortunately... being an expert doesn't stop you from being extremely boring. Have you ever found a text written by ChatGPT... exciting?
But how do you write relevant AND interesting content, then?
Writing and storytelling skills are as important as being an expert. If you are not an expert but a good writer, call one. It could be your client or a consultant hired for the occasion. And before you talk about automation, remember that you're not an expert, don't pretend to be one. It will show.
Photograph taken by Alizée Baudez
Use time-saving tools
Any tool we can use at ASSONANCE is just a tool. You can have a very big hammer but hold it by the wrong end. Too bad. Tools like YourText.Guru, Babbar, OnCrawl, KillDuplicate are great starting points to avoid the blank page syndrome. You have the tools to analyze and prioritize the information needed to create good content. But in the end you have to ask yourself: do I want to follow what the tools tell me to do? Or do I have the ambition to innovate, to take a different path?
I never hesitate to do exactly the opposite of what a tool advises me, because I know what is the best information I want to provide to the Internet users.
But if your content isn't perfect today, no problem.
The magic of the Internet also allows you to update everything you publish.
Why best automate all tasks related to content creation
Writing is only the final step, once you have gathered the information you want to expose and defined the speech you want to make explicit. There are so many different steps to climb to get to content, that the quest to automate the simple generation of written words is just a detail for me. A drop in the ocean.
But when you think about the whole process from idea to publication, there are many steps that can be automated (without artificial intelligence) without talking about text generation. Optimizing processes, automating conversions from one format to another, developing scripts to facilitate integration steps are all ideas that allow you to step into the automation mode easily.
You can thus :
Spend more time on more interesting tasks, like asking yourself what you're going to talk about in this content,
preserve the mental health of your colleagues and yourself by saving hundreds of clicks per day,
broaden your horizons with new methods, which may allow you to design even more efficient systems.
Let's put productivity at the service of creativity. Not the other way around.
Bibliography
"Olympics cycling: Marginal gains underpin Team GB dominance," 2012, URL: https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/19174302
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The story of sucess, 2008
K. Anders Ericson et al. "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of Expert performance," Psychological Review 100, no. 3 (1993): 369-406
