Now for a change of pace from my usual articles on this site. Besides managing educational product development at Cambridge, I’m a regular blogger. A few years back, I started an education-focused website with colleagues, providing news and opinion about the South African education scene. It’s been plodding along, growing its user base steadily. But this was before I jumped into learning all I could about Generative AI, which I have used successfully to increase the monthly users by over 100,000.
The internet is bustling, every corner filled with information vying for our attention. Businesses face the daunting task of ensuring their content isn’t just another drop in this vast ocean. But it’s also full of data, which you can use to your advantage. As audiences evolve, so must the strategies to engage them, and simply keeping pace isn’t enough.
I started by taking a deep dive into the website’s current content. Here I suspected I could identify strategies for underserved topics by understanding what users were currently interested in.
Here’s what I did and how it worked.
The foundational technology utilised includes:
- Google Search Console Data: Validated against WordPress Jetpack Statistics data, it provides insights into how users interact with the current website content.
- Generative AI (ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis mode): Employed to analyse data, generate article ideas, titles, and even draft content.
- Grammarly Editor: Used for refining and polishing the AI-generated content to ensure quality and coherence.
I followed this process:
- Developed a content strategy based on real-time search data.
- Generated article ideas tailored to identified core topics.
- Produced drafts of these articles using generative AI.
- Enhanced and refined AI-generated articles to ensure quality and relevance.
The development journey involved analysing existing content on the website to determine current search rankings and impressions. This analysis helped identify core topics around which the content strategy was built. Generative AI was crucial in ideation and drafting, while Grammarly Editor was used for content refinement.
The primary motivation was to learn more about how generative AI can be used to analyse and generate content, to understand and respond to user needs more effectively. The process aimed to increase user engagement and website traffic by creating content that users genuinely want.
The value proposition of this process is evident in the quantitative metrics. From February to September of 2023, the website saw an increase in visitors from 7,600 to 124,000, marking a significant uptick in user engagement. This surge underscores the potential business value of a data-driven, AI-enhanced content strategy.
Potential Use-Cases
While initially developed for an educational website, this process can be adapted for various industries. It holds promise for:
- Building content marketing plans for e-commerce platforms.
- Strategising content for online products across diverse sectors.
- Enhancing engagement for online platforms seeking to improve user interaction.