Writing is a ton of work. It takes an average of three hours and sixteen minutes to write 1000 words. It’s no wonder that many marketers and content managers are wondering if an AI writing tool can live up to its promises.
In this post, we’re putting some of the main content-generating tools to the test. Can they improve your content creation process and content workflow?
Table of contents:
- TL;DR: Impressions after comparing 3 AI writing tools
- Putting StoryChief to the test
- Putting Jasper.ai to the test
- Putting Copy.ai to the test
TL;DR: Impressions after comparing 3 AI writing tools
- StoryChief, which offers both writing AI and comprehensive content collaboration and publishing features, is recommended for professional bloggers, content marketing teams, and content agencies. It excels in content quality and workflow efficiency.
- Jasper.ai is better suited for generating topic ideas and basic content planning but falls short in generating high-quality content paragraphs and social media copy.
- Copy.ai performs well in generating blog titles but struggles with outlining and providing informative content. It's not recommended for generating complete blog posts.
Tool #1: Putting StoryChief AI writing tool to the test
StoryChief is a content operations platform for content marketing teams and agencies. At StoryChief, we’re not just focused on writing. We help make content teams’ lives easier through content collaboration features, one-click publishing, and omnichannel promotion.
Video tutorial: Write a blog post with StoryChief AI Power Mode in under 5 minutes
Benefits of using StoryChief AI:
- Brand voice detection: Infuse your brand voice into AI-generated content
- Blog copywriting: Effortlessly craft AI-powered articles
- Social media campaigns: Generate engaging AI-powered social posts
- Strategic content planning: Build comprehensive AI-powered content calendars
- Content gap analysis: Identify and fill content gaps with AI assistance
- Performance analysis: Conduct weekly content audits to maximize impact
But the question remains...can writing AI really produce quality content?
Let’s find out.
Here are the different things we tested with StoryChief’s AI writing tool:
- Coming up with blog titles
- Generating an editorial brief and blog outline
- Writing blog paragraphs
- Creating a personalized content strategy
- Social media campaign from any URL
- Learn and apply your unique brand voice
- SEO optimize content
Test #1. Coming up with blog titles
If you’re new to writing blogs with AI, you might want to start out by testing how AI can help with titles. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
For this test, I used StoryChief’s title feature and entered “30 Marketing Trends” to come up with new ideas.
Here are my favorite outputs:
The Future of Marketing is Here: 30 Trends You Need to Know in 2024
Get Ahead of the Curve: 30 Essential Marketing Trends for 2024
Stay Relevant and Competitive with These Emerging Marketing Trends for 2024
Successes:
I love how creative these titles are. They make the content more emotional and interesting by poking at the readers’ desire to stay relevant and up-to-date.
Failures:
The last title is really enticing but it’s too long. However, you could easily edit it to stay under 63 characters (which is better for SEO).
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
AI can easily come up with more (and often better) headlines faster than a human writer can, so this is an excellent use case for AI.
Test #2. Generating an editorial brief and blog outline
AI is great at generating blog ideas, which is why it’s perfect for writing editorial briefs. All you have to do is come up with a topic. For this test, we went with “5 Steps to Implementing Marketing Automation as a Beginner.”
StoryChief’s AI Power Mode feature gave us the blog post audience, objectives, tone/voice, and key points to cover in the outline.
You can then insert the AI text generated into your editorial brief or try again to see another option. You can use this editorial brief to provide information for an AI writing tool on what to write about for what target audience.
Here’s the 5-step outline it generated:
1. Define your goals for using marketing automation
2. Choose an automation platform that meets your needs
3. Set up automated emails, campaigns, and workflows
4. Use analytics to track progress and optimize campaigns
5. Monitor results and adjust strategies accordingly
Successes:
The AI is super helpful for writing editorial briefs. Not only did we get 5 accurate steps to serve as the outline for the article, but we also have the audience and tone to guide the writing process (whether done with an AI writing tool, a human writer, or both).
Failures:
For this particular topic, we don’t see any failures. The editorial brief is accurate and knowledgeable. However, if you’re writing a brief on your proprietary process or new information that the AI can’t crawl through, then it might not be able to help you write your outline.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
If you haven’t used the AI writing tool to generate a blog post yet, this is an excellent first step.
Test #3. Writing blog paragraphs
For our next test, let’s write some blog content. It’s time to start drafting those paragraphs.
We’ll use StoryChief’s Expand feature.
The way it works is you start a sentence, add the topic for that section of the blog, and then let the AI finish the rest.
We started with “DevOps engineers are in charge of,” and StoryChief’s AI finished the sentence like this:
developing and maintaining an organization’s IT infrastructure.
The AI provides 4 paragraphs in total, so there are plenty of options to choose from to complete your sentence and paragraph.
Successes:
This test is definitely a success. The fact that it provides so much text means that you can easily choose what information you want to cover.
And when we run the entire AI output through Grammarly’s plagiarism detection, we get a score of 100%, meaning no plagiarism is detected. Our AI scans millions of data sets to come up with unique, fresh content every time, so you never have to worry about another StoryChief user getting the same output as you. And you never have to worry about plagiarism.
Failures:
For this topic, AI is a success. But if you’re writing about current news or your proprietary information, the AI might struggle to generate text you like. The only way to know is to try.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
The expanded feature is the best way to generate blog paragraphs in StoryChief. You only need to give it a shot, a rough starting point.
Test #4. Creating a personalized content strategy
Get a tailored content strategy based on your content pillars, target audience, and company URL.
When you sign up for a free StoryChief trial, our AI content strategy wizard jumps into action, tailoring a content strategy aligned with your vision, audience, and content pillars.
This digital wizard analyzes your website, providing a personalized strategy with fresh ideas, targeted SEO keywords, and a meticulously planned content calendar – all in minutes.
Here is an example of the content pillars it generated for StoryChief.
Successes:
We love how easy it was to come up with these content ideas tailored to our company description, target audience, and content pillars. This research would normally take around 3 hours.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
As a content marketer, I love how easy this tool is to develop content ideas tailored to your target audience! With this tool, you don’t have to wonder whether a piece of content will perform - all of the content ideas are generated from real-time data that will help you outperform competitors.
Test #5. Social media campaign from any URL
It’s easy to transform your blog posts into captivating social media content and let StoryChief automatically generate engaging social posts as part of any content campaign or from any URL.
Successes:
The generated social media posts are engaging and captivating, making it easy to create a successful social media campaign. It even included researched hashtags!
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:StoryChief's AI content planner is a powerful tool that simplifies the process of creating an effective social media campaign. By automatically generating engaging social media posts, it saves time and ensures consistency across different platforms.
Test #6. Write in your unique brand voice
AI writing assistants like StoryChief's AI Power Mode can learn and apply your unique brand voice, ensuring that the content generated matches your tone and style. By inputting content from any URL, the AI generates a brand voice, making it easier to maintain consistency across all written materials.
In this short demo video, you can see an example of how it works:
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
With StoryChief's AI Power Mode, you can confidently use AI to create content without sacrificing your brand's identity or tone of voice. This tone of voice is factual and informational.
Test #7. SEO optimize content
When it comes to SEO optimization, AI can be a valuable tool. It can help you identify relevant SEO keywords and personalized suggestions to improve your content's rankings on Google search.
You can analyze your content for missing keywords, readability, keyword density, and other important SEO factors. This can save you time and ensure that your content is optimized for search engines.
For this test, we prompted the AI to suggest missing keywords related to ‘b2b content marketing’. Here are the keywords it came up with:
Successes:
These keywords are perfect for the article, and they are relevant to the topic. The StoryChief editor even offers SEO optimization tips and suggestions built into your article for optimal keyword placement.
Failures:
The majority of topics generated are of medium volume. Then again, generally speaking, targeting medium-level keywords increases your chances of ranking higher than targeting high-volume (and high-competition) keywords.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
We have tried different AI SEO tools that can generate AI Keywords, but none of them provide real-time data. And that is, obviously, very important when it comes to keyword research. 😉
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StoryChief gives you all of these AI features inside our content collaboration platform so you can plan, assign, approve, publish, and promote your content!
Tool #2: Putting Jasper.ai to the test
Next, we used a writing assistant named Jasper.
Here are the different things we tested with Jasper’s AI writing tool:
- Blog post topic ideas
- Blog post introduction paragraph
- Blog post outline
- Blog content improvements
- Social media promotional copy
- Email newsletter headlines
Test #1. Blog post topic ideas
First, we’re checking out how Jasper can help with blog post headlines.
Here’s an example of writing AI output:
12 Ways to Improve Your Content Collaboration
Successes:
The topic ideas are pretty good actually. The output of five headlines gives us three listicles that require little editing to be useful.
Failures:
The third output (What are some of the main content management issues that your company aims to solve?) seems more like an FAQ for handling sales objections. However, we can easily change this to read more like a blog post, such as How to Solve Common Content Management Issues.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
AI can give you some great ideas for blog posts, but you’ll need to change the “product description” to the general topic you want to cover, to generate new ideas each time.
Test #2. Blog post introduction paragraph
Next, let’s see how the AI writing tool does when we ask it to write our blog post introduction. We can select the number of outputs to get different options to choose from.
Here’s an example of writing AI output:
Starting a blog post with an interesting intro paragraph is tough. Writing one manually can be time consuming and tedious. Finding the right topic to write about can also be difficult if you don't have many ideas or don’t know how to generate more content ideas for your business. Fortunately, there are solutions that make writing easier and quicker than ever before - using artificial intelligence (ai) in the form of chatbots!
Successes:
The first three sentences in the above example are simple and to the point. Unlike common fears about AI, these don’t sound like they were written by a robot.
Failures:
While the first three sentences sound human enough, it is odd that all three begin with an -ing word. It creates a slightly unnatural flow.
Also, the paragraph includes “chatbots” which is totally irrelevant to the topic. And worse, there is an unnecessary exclamation point.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
When it comes to actual writing, the AI is less helpful than when it comes to ideating. However, with some quick editing, this intro paragraph is usable.
Test #3. Blog post outline
Next up, let’s see how Jasper does with ideating an outline.
An example of writing AI output for an outline is:
1. What is writing AI?
2. How does it work?
3. Why should I use it for my blog post?
4. Who can benefit from using ai-generated content on their website or blog?
Successes:
Between the five different outputs generated, the AI covers some basics, like the what, who, and why of the topic. The phrases are also pretty much ready to use.
Failures:
Each outline has only three or four points, so it’s disappointing that the outlines don’t get deep. You also can’t add more criteria as input, such as the familiarity level.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
All things considered, the outline feature can be used when writing a high-level overview or introduction to a topic. It likely can’t produce an outline for advanced content and thought leadership.
If you’re really stuck in the outlining phase, it does offer some quick wins to get your brain working again.
Test #4. Blog content improvements
While Jasper can’t yet write long-form content, it does offer content improvements. You can add up to 400 characters at a time, and have the text rewritten for you.
Here’s an example output:
Artificial intelligence has made its way into many industries, including the writing industry. Writing AI is artificial intelligence technology that analyzes large data sets in order to produce written content in desired formats. They require some direction; input is usually sentences and phrases meant to guide the AI’s output towards something relevant.
Most writing assistants today offer short form copy like headlines, bullet points, and short paragraphs.
Successes:
The writing AI has produced clear and informative copy. Unlike some of the other features where the outputs are very similar, the content optimizer produces very different options to choose from.
Failures:
Some sentences are a bit awkward or strangely worded, and the first option reads more like an introductory paragraph rather than an improvement on the input.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
If you have a blog post that you want to repurpose into a different post on a similar topic, this might help speed up some of the rewritings, so you’re not posting duplicate content.
Test #5. Social media promotional copy
So maybe AI can’t help you write an entire blog post. What about the promotional copy required to share the post on social media? Let’s see what happens when we use Jasper’s social media feature.
Here’s an example output (the only one somewhat usable):
Writing AI is very much in its infancy. Are you using a tool that will stand up to this brave new world? Or are you writing it yourself and hoping for the best?
Successes:
Unfortunately, this is the most disappointing use case so far. I had wrongly assumed it would be the best at writing social media copy, but alas, that’s not the case. The only good thing here is the ideas generated, not the copy. We can take this and use it to inspire posts with a definition of writing AI, what skills writing AI offers, and the cost-effectiveness of writing AI.
Failures:
The first post isn’t related to writing, the second is incomplete, the third is falsely confident, the fourth is so-so, and the fifth is completely crazy.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Writing AI can’t generate social media copy for you (sorry). But it can offer some ideas. However, the cost of the subscription might not be worth it, since you can easily find prompts and ideas online.
Overall thoughts on Jasper’s capabilities
Jasper has several useful AI writing features. However, if you’re looking to use AI to write blog posts specifically, you’ll be disappointed by Jasper because you’ll have to do a lot of copying and pasting. When you use StoryChief, you get an AI writing tool directly inside of the same platform you’ll use to publish and promote your content—saving you a lot of time on your workflow.
Tool #3: Putting Copy.ai to the test
Now, we’re going to test a different AI writing tool in order to gauge its effectiveness and see whether or not its outputs are any better.
Let’s test the AI-generated outputs of Copy.ai, another popular tool.
We’ll still write about AI writing, partly to be super meta and partly to better compare the tool with Jasper.
Test #1. Blog title
For our first test, we’re generating some blog titles. I input this as the description of the blog topic in order to generate the titles, “AI writing, all about AI writing, everything you need to know about AI writing, how to write with AI.”
Here are some of my favorite headlines:
The AI Writing Companion: How To Write With AI
5 Things You Need To Know About AI Writing
How To Write With AI For 80% Of Your Writing Tasks
How To Get Started With AI-Based Writing Tools
Successes:
I was pretty surprised at how great some of these titles are. I like how it threw in that 80% stat. While not accurate, it does make for a great headline.
Failures:
There are plenty of silly titles here, like “Who I Am and What's the AI Writer,” which just proves that AI writing tools are unpredictable.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Titles are probably what AI writing does best. It doesn’t matter that some of the titles are garbage. All you have to do is pick the ones you like best. But when writing paragraphs, the garbage text can take longer to edit than writing from scratch.
Test #2. Blog outline
For the blog outline, I used a similar input as above, except that I added steps in as well: “AI writing, all about AI writing, everything you need to know about AI writing, how to write with AI, steps to writing with AI.”
Here’s an example of the output:
Section: AI, or artificial intelligence, is a computer program that can solve problems or complete challenges.
Section: We are in a transition period, the transition from human writers to AI-powered writing.
Section: To get started with AI writing, you need to know your topic and tone.
Section: You can use artificial intelligence to write marketing copy about products and services for your business.
Section: You can use artificial intelligence to write blogs for your website.
Section: Come up with a topic.
Section: Brainstorm ideas for sections.
Section: Go to ContentStudio's AI Writing feature and enter the topic, tone, and sections.
Section: Click the Write button at the top of the page.
Successes:
There’s not much to celebrate here. Copy.ai generated 4 different outlines for my query, but none were usable.
Failures:
I was surprised by how poorly Copy.ai performed for the outline test. I would’ve thought that the output would’ve more closely resembled an outline, but most sections look more like sentences rather than headlines.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
You may get some ideas from the outline generator, but this AI assistant can’t actually write your outline for you.
Test #3. Blog intro
For this test, I used the same input as Test #2.
Here’s an example of the output:
What is AI writing? If you don't know, you've come to the right place. We'll cover different aspects of AI writing in this article. From how to write with it, to what AI writing actually is. Whether you're interested in using AI as a writing tool or just want the basic details behind it, this article will give you everything you need to know about AI writing.
Successes:
The above output certainly isn’t terrible (well, depending on who you ask). It does a great job with simplicity, ease of writing, and positive sentiment.
Failures:
The intro paragraph is pretty cheesy. It also doesn’t include any facts or statistics, which is commonplace in B2B blogs to establish authority and set the stage for a high-quality article.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
If you’re writing B2C content or your brand doesn’t really have an established brand voice and you prioritize productivity over style, you could use AI for writing a blog intro. Just be sure to not overdo it for paragraph text, otherwise, the whole article will read like copycat content.
Test #4. Blog paragraph
For this test, I used Copy.ai’s Freestyle feature, which can be used to generate longer paragraphs.
For the prompt input, I wrote, “Why AI writing is helpful and what it can be used for.” I wanted to see if it could write a paragraph about the benefits and use cases of AI writing.
Here’s an example of the output:
AI writing is a tool that can be used to automate the process of writing. It uses algorithms to generate content according to a set of parameters, which allows it to be used for many different purposes.
AI writing can help you improve your website's SEO, it can allow you to predict customer behavior, and it can even help you write your next novel!
Successes:
The writing sounds mostly natural, although it’s clearly not super high-quality writing.
Failures:
The second paragraph isn’t factual. While AI can help you predict customer behavior, writing AI cannot.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
The results of the test were better than I expected, but a lot of the content came off as really salesy and cheesy. I would recommend not using AI to write paragraphs, unless you’re stuck with writer’s block and would rather edit a few paragraphs than write them from scratch.
Test #5. Sentence rewriter
For this test, I asked the AI to rewrite its own sentence, “AI writing is a tool that can be used to automate the process of writing.”
Since that’s a short sentence, I was curious to see if the AI would produce anything more detailed or longer.
Here’s an example of the output:
AI writing is a tool that can be used to create writings that are indistinguishable from those created by humans.
Successes:
There are many options that match the sentence input in style and length.
Failures:
The outputs are pretty bland, but again if you care more about saving time than writing with style, you may not mind.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Rewriting is one of the better uses of AI. But be careful when rewriting someone else’s content as it likely won’t pass plagiarism checkers. If you do use AI for rewriting, you should only do so for 30% or less of your blog. The majority of your blog should still be unique.
Overall thoughts on Copy.ai’s capabilities
Copy.ai could be used for AI-generated blog posts, but we wouldn’t recommend it. By far, the outputs have the lowest quality in terms of writing style and informativeness. Jasper and StoryChief both offer far better blog content quality. However, we’d recommend StoryChief for professional bloggers, content marketing teams, and content agencies because you get writing AI, SEO optimization, content collaboration and publishing in one place.
The best AI writing tools
There are many AI-powered writing assistants on the market today. Here are some of the top AI tools for writing:
- StoryChief - AI-powered content marketing assistant for blogs, social posts, briefings and press releases
- Grammarly - Grammar and spell checker
- ProWritingAid - Similar to Grammarly, but designed for academic papers
- Skillroads - AI-powered resume writing and LinkedIn profile editing
- Textio -Augmented job listing writing
- AI writer - Gathers resources and information for writing articles
- Articoolo -Helps with researching and rewriting articles
- Essaybot - Social media writing tool
- Frase - Analyzes search results to help when writing SEO content
- TapRecruit - Revises job summaries and listings
- WordAI - Writes article paragraphs
- WrittenLabs - Writes AI content at scale
What can an AI writing tool do in 2024 and beyond?
AI can...
- Identify content gaps and high-potential keywords
- Offer ideas to help you write better content.
- Finish your sentences and paragraphs.
- Help speed up your research with (mostly) accurate information.
- Rewrite sentences and paragraphs for you to re-use.
- Revive existing content and make it look like new.
- Double your content output.
- Optimize your content for SEO.
- Perform automated content audits.
What AI absolutely can’t do is write all on its own. It needs your fresh ideas and proprietary knowledge to feed it great prompts. It also needs your keen editing for fact-checking and brand voice.
In the future, AI writing tools will seek to improve upon their ability to learn each users’ unique brand voice, so it can write in your brand voice from the jump. AI platforms might also allow users to upload their proprietary thought leadership content, in order to feed the platform with their own knowledge so that it can repurpose that content into more blog posts, social media posts, etc. It’s certainly an exciting time and there will be new changes happening frequently.
StoryChief is one of the first to add these possibilities to its content marketing platform. Try StoryChief free for 7 days and get access to these features:
- AI writing tool: Generate blog articles, press releases, job descriptions, and many more content types. Create outlines, editorial briefs, or full articles.
- Brand voice studio: Stay consistent, sound authentic. Let AI learn and apply your unique brand voice.
- Social AI planner: Turn notes, URLs, or stories into social posts and schedule with ease.
- 24/7 AI Content Assistant: Get instant help from our AI assistant, who's always on hand to brainstorm, answer questions, and generate engaging content.
Free tool: Analyze your target audience, brand voice, content pillars and competitors. Try it now.
Looking for more tool comparisons? Check out these resources:
