Create and automate content in a constructive way
I spoke on Friday, March 3, as part of the “Analysis” track at the Women in Tech SEO Fest UK. Before I begin this article, I’d like to extend my warmest thanks to Areej AbuAli for selecting my topic—from what were surely dozens of submissions—and for giving me the opportunity to take the stage at the magnificent Barbican Theatre. I’d also like to thank Hannah Smith (MC) for her support, her encouragement, and for making sure everything was crystal clear for me. Special thanks also go to the Barbican Center’s production team and to the person who fitted me with my lapel mic.
This article is in French, while the conference was conducted in the language of Shakespeare. This is not an exact transcript of my presentation. For those interested, virtual tickets to access the recorded versions of the entire program are still available.
Before creating content, you need to plan it out
Content generation is one of the hottest topics, especially since ChatGPT became available to the general public. ChatGPT makes the technologies developed by OpenAI—including GPT-3, which has been very popular for several years—accessible through a conversational interface. ChatGPT has literally created an interface that allows each of us to communicate with the machine without needing any programming skills. After all, let’s not forget that an application’s source code is simply a way of giving instructions to a machine. Here, we have a space where we can interact with the machine under the illusion that it is an intelligent, artificial entity.
But before we think about creation and production, there’s the design phase. There’s the method, and there’s also what we want to do with the content we produce.
Another Story About Optimization
Have you heard of Dave Brailsford? Neither have I. He was the director of performance at British Cycling and is well known for his work as the director of Team Sky. 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 isn’t a great summary of what SEO is all about, 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. We have new ways of telling stories and new ways of sharing them at our disposal. That’s how I started writing a blog in 2009 and went on to work on other projects.
Finally, I realized I was already doing SEO!
I had:
ideas
a desire to share them
a trend toward building websites that take into account the content itself, its structure, its popularity, and so on.
Oh yeah, SEO—I know all about that.
In the end, 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 combine these skills in order to achieve my goals. Or at least try to develop a holistic view of things—one that was 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.
A well-known theory claims that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. It’s somewhat outdated, and it’s certainly not something to follow to the letter. You might need more. You might need less. But the number of hours spent really doesn’t matter.
What matters most are your sources!
I can't talk about automation in 2023 without mentioning ChatGPT. To be honest, ChatGPT is like that friend of yours who talks too much after having one too many.
On the one hand, ChatGPT is actually a pretty good writer. We understand it, and we find it plausible. That’s probably even the reason why it’s so easy to get the impression that it’s capable of reaching for the moon for us. But it has no idea what it’s telling us. It regurgitates information it has gleaned without taking the step back 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… fascinating?
But how can you write content that is both relevant AND interesting in this case?
Writing and storytelling skills are just as important as being an expert. If you’re not an expert but are a good writer, bring in one. It could be your client or a consultant hired for the occasion. And before you start talking about automation, remember: if you’re not an expert, don’t pretend to be one. It’ll show.
Photograph taken by Alizée Baudez
Use tools to save time
All the tools we use at ASSONANCE are just tools. You might have a very big hammer, but you could be holding it by the wrong end. That’s a shame. Tools like YourText.Guru, Babbar, OnCrawl, and KillDuplicate are great starting points for avoiding writer’s block. You have the cards in your hand to analyze and prioritize the information needed to create good content. But in the end, you’ll 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 the exact opposite of what a tool recommends, because I know what information is best to provide to website visitors.
But if your content isn't perfect today, that's no problem.
The magic of the Internet also lets you update anything you publish.
Why should we automate as many tasks as possible related to content creation?
Writing is merely the final step, once you’ve gathered the information you want to present and defined the message you want to convey. There are so many different steps involved in creating content that, to me, the pursuit of automating the simple act of generating written words is just a minor detail—a drop in the ocean.
But when you consider the entire process—from the initial idea to publication—there are many steps that can be automated (without artificial intelligence), not to mention text generation. Process optimization, automating conversions from one format to another, and developing scripts to streamline integration steps are all ideas that can help you easily take a step toward automation.
This allows you to:
spend more time on more interesting tasks, such as figuring out what you're going to talk about in this content,
protect your own and your coworkers' mental health by saving hundreds of clicks a day,
broaden your horizons with new methods, which may enable you to design other, even more efficient systems.
Let's put productivity at the service of creativity—not the other way around.
Bibliography
“Olympic Cycling: Marginal Gains Underpin Team GB’s Dominance,” 2012, URL: https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/19174302
Malcolm Gladwell, *Outliers: The Story of Success*, 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
