Most of today’s content is arbitrage, simply moving information from one place to another.
Very few blog posts are created new information. Most work to remix, curate, and copy existing content to transfer the same core information from one website to another.
If your content just muddles common sense, we have bad news. A robot will eat your lunch. Generative AI is the ultimate arbitrage machine, capable of churning out thousands of copycat articles faster than ever before.
To stand out in a sea of commodity content, you need to find other ways to add value beyond mechanically copying and pasting information.
Thankfully, there are three unique ways you and your squishy human brain can add value beyond AI. experiment, experienceand effort.
The best way to add value beyond AI content is to experiment. That means going out into the world to test ideas and gather new information that has never existed before.
LLM is trained on an incredibly large dataset and continues to consume new information every day. But they are not omniscient. There are gaps in their knowledge. That is, information for which they have not been trained, or more importantly, information that does not yet exist.
When you experiment, you create something new and unique to you, unlike anything you’ve seen before. If someone wants to know the information you provide, there’s only one place they can get it. It doesn’t exist (at least not yet) in the data available to LLM. This is something only you can do.
how do you do it
It may sound scary, but experiments can be large or small, and they can be important projects in their own right or simply add value to everyday topics.
you can Conduct thorough industry researchlike Aira’s link building status report:
Analyze data generated by your company and its productsas in a benchmark report I co-authored using 150 million pageviews of Google Analytics data:
Run tests to understand how things workas Patrick Stox investigated the impact of blocking top pages with robots.txt:
Collect data to prove (or disprove) well-known ideas.like Rand of SparkToro, have given receipts to the idea that email is the most reliable marketing channel.
This has always been a good marketing strategy (and a good link building tactic too; as the backlink data in Aira’s report shows, everyone wants to link to the original data).
But in an era of near-perfect information, where the marginal cost of content creation is virtually zero and answers to common problems can be called up instantly, it’s even more effective.
Sharing basic information no longer has lasting value. The days of being the first brand to share basic “how-tos” and tutorials and reaping great rewards are long gone.today you must create As well as sharing information.
Anything created solely by generative AI is confined to the realm of theory. It will always be less valuable than the same advice from an authoritative source – someone with clear and relevant experience.
In a world where questions are easily answered, readers care more. sauce of the answer. You can stand out from faceless AI content by proving to your readers that you got your hands dirty. experienced what you are writing.
If you have 50 websites, or Five hundreds—Providing answers to questions allows readers to be discerning about the sources they choose. If I wanted to learn about budgeting, I’d choose an experienced financial advisor over some faceless girlfriend CRM solution or a blog post written by a “content team.”
If you want to buy a new camera, you’ll prefer reviewers who have bought, used, and compared real cameras.
For brands that have excerpted product descriptions from popular e-commerce stores or written theoretical statements:
The more crowded the topic, the more important first-hand experience becomes as a way to differentiate. Your job is to prove the origin of your advice.
how do you do it
This is something I try to do regularly on the Ahrefs blog.
you can Write about topics you have first-hand experience withlike Chris, an experienced agency SEO who writes a beginner’s guide to SEO reporting.
interview people about topics you don’t knowwhere Mateusz surveyed real marketers about their favorite metrics.
Please provide specific evidence of your experience. Whether it’s a screenshot of a tool, filming an interview, or sharing a photo of a book you referenced.
Share anecdotes and stories Provide context to information, including SQ, which reflects on my experience writing over 100 articles.
Get skins in the game, For example, like my attempt to read and evaluate every SEO newsletter available:
The reverse is also true. You should avoid writing about topics for which you lack experience and cannot justify gaining experience.
Most of the companies I see scaling AI content are focused on cost. They are not using generative AI to create new and innovative experiences. They are trying to save money and are willing to sacrifice quality for speed of publication and reduced staffing.
This provides a clear route of differentiation. Build better, spend more energy, and create content that’s more than just words on a page..
how do you do it
Many of the brands I follow (and the products I pay for) got my attention through big, strong content campaigns.
There is web comicLike Postmark’s Email Deliverability Guide (featuring Dunning the Super Owl):
video seriesa Netflix-like documentary series about Paddle’s acquisition of the company:
Booklike Ahrefs’ beautifully illustrated children’s books:
free toolslike Veed’s TikTok downloader:
Unique on-page experiencelike Typeform Star Wars Guide to Net Promoter Scorecomplete with handwritten AT-AT:
Content like this is rare. They are expensive and difficult to create, requiring specialized skills and collaboration between different departments. However, difficulties are a moat. Something that is difficult to create cannot be pumped out instantly by older companies using older AI tools.
It’s often difficult to justify the effort and expense of these projects, but it’s getting easier with each passing day. Thanks to generative AI, publishing functional “vanilla” content (words on a page with a stock image or two) is no longer a differentiator.
The more effort you put into building a tool, publishing a book, or creating a unique experience, the more real people will remember your brand, be interested in your company, and ultimately buy something from you. more likely.
final thoughts
Generative AI makes it very easy to share very well-written and fairly accurate information on a vast number of topics. A human will never beat his AI in this game, and frankly, we shouldn’t even try.
We need to accept the increasing polarization of content. Let AI handle the low end of your content (basic information content, definitions, summaries and summaries, lists) and focus your skilled human energy on the high end.
In the age of generative AI, edges cannot be found by simply shuffling common sense around. We need to find new dimensions of differentiation and rely on our unique strengths. That means creating new information through experimentation, getting our hands dirty and sharing first-person experiences, and striving to create something that others don’t.