AI Case Study: Leveraging Generative AI for Cost-Effective Content Creation

Background

In an effort to stay competitive and increase their content production, Holmes Organics, a small cannabis online company, aimed to boost their blog output from 10 posts per month to 30, while also reducing costs. Traditional content creation methods were proving both time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, their competitors were flooding the market with daily content, further pressuring the company to scale their efforts.

They envisioned a long-term solution capable of generating various types of content, including social media posts and emails, all while adhering to the voice of their brand and avoiding robotic, impersonal outputs.

The Challenge

The company faced several challenges: 

Budget Constraints: They had a limited budget of $1000 per month for content creation.

Turnaround Time: They wanted faster content production but were currently waiting up to 30 days for a first draft.

SEO Optimization: The blog content needed to adhere to SEO best practices to boost search rankings and increase traffic.

Brand Consistency: Maintaining the brand's voice and avoiding robot-like output was crucial. "I don't want it to sound like a robot wrote the articles"

Ethical Compliance: The content had to avoid making any medical claims as the business owner is not a medical professional and should not give medical advice. This also will warrant negative press and a letter/fine from the FDA.

Scalability: The system should be able to expand to generate social media posts, email content, and more in the future.

The Solution

To address these challenges, the decision was made to develop an advanced purpose built Generative AI system for content creation. Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how it was accomplished:

Data Aggregation and Preprocessing: We collected a diverse dataset comprising existing blog content, SEO best practice guidelines, company videos, and other relevant data. This dataset was cleaned to remove any questionable medical information and irrelevant content.

Data Organization and Tagging: The cleaned data was organized in a structured format to optimize comprehension by the AI system.

Model Training:

• Fine-tuning: We fine-tuned a pre-trained language model, lowering the temperature parameter to produce more focused and coherent text.
• SEO Integration: Keywords, meta descriptions, and other SEO best practices were integrated into the training process.
• Brand Voice: We ensured the AI mimicked the brand's unique voice and style, making the output indistinguishable from human-authored content.

Ethical and Responsibility Checks:

• Conducted thorough responsibility and ethics checks to ensure the system did not make medical claims or produce biased content.
• Implemented a data labeling exercise to help the AI distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate content.

API Integration: We leveraged APIs to seamlessly integrate the AI system into the company’s existing business processes and applications, enabling automated content generation and approval workflows.

Scalability Planning: The system was designed with scalability in mind, enabling future extensions to generate social media posts, email campaigns, and other content types.

The Results

The implementation of the Generative AI system yielded impressive results across multiple fronts:

Cost Savings: Operating costs dropped significantly to just $24 per month for running the AI system. If we were to hire an expert blogger to write an SEO optimized blog every day at $100 per blog (30 blog articles per month), it would cost the business $36,000 per year. With Generative AI, it costs less than $300 per year.

Content Volume: The company achieved its goal of increasing blog production from 10 to 30 posts per month.   

Turnaround Time: First drafts were generated much faster, effectively slashing the waiting period from up to 30 days to just a few hours.   

Brand Voice Consistency: The content produced by the AI maintained the company’s brand voice, ensuring a consistent and engaging reader experience.

Ethical Compliance: Strict ethical guidelines were followed, reducing risks associated with medical claims & inappropriate content.

Scalability: The system proved easily adaptable, ready to be extended for generating social media and email content, among other types.

Increased Traffic and Sales: SEO-optimized content boosted website traffic from Google Search Engine, translating into higher sales and business growth. 

Conclusion

This case study shows the transformative potential of Generative AI in content creation. By investing in Generative AI, Holmes Organics not only met but exceeded its content production goals while drastically reducing costs. The success of this project also highlights the importance of maintaining ethical guidelines and brand voice, ensuring that AI-generated content remains authentic and reliable.

The scalable nature of the solution promises future benefits, allowing the company to leverage the same system for various other content needs, thereby continually enhancing productivity and reinvesting saved capital into other vital areas of the business.