Ever have that aha moment when someone shows you a trick that shortens the time it takes to do a task? Or have a lightbulb go on when someone explained how a tool could do something you never realized it could?

Generative AI presents lots of opportunities for those discoveries. After all, how can you know all it can do, given it gets smarter every day and no one has the time to learn it all?

Sure, you could ask the AI tool, but we brought in some human help. The experts presenting at Content Marketing World share their best advice and tips on incorporating generative AI into your operations. They talk about its partner role, practical applications, strategic implications, and the need to use AI ethically and responsibly.

1. Sow the seeds

Who needs which reusable prompts and automations? This is one of the most important questions for marketing leaders today. The answers vary widely across roles and processes. But finding the answers, getting new tools set up, and getting people trained is critical. It’s about quality and performance, not just speed and efficiency.

Strategists, designers, writers, editors, analysts, managers … they all need different prompts, automations and agents. One evolves into the next.

Two years from now, you’ll look back in amazement that your team didn’t have any digital labor in place. We are still living in the primitive before times. When you evolve is up to you. — Andy Crestodina, co-founder and chief marketing officer, Orbit Media Studios

2. Use what you have; create what you don’t

Start with what’s already in your stack. Many platforms — like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Asana — are already embedding generative AI into their workflows. Test them out on what they can automate for you. Build your own mini assistants. Use ChatGPT or other AI tools to create custom bots that handle repetitive or time-consuming tasks. — Pam Didner, founder, Relentless Pursuit, LLC

3. Expand your subject knowledge

Content marketing operations offer many opportunities for automation through AI. One of the best ways to make use of current AI models is for deep research on thought leadership topics. Many content marketers are brought in for their writing expertise, but we often lack deep industry knowledge of our audience. If we’re going to write a
respectable piece that our educated buyers will accept, we need stats, quotes, and real-life case studies.

AI tools with reasoning capabilities and real-time access to the internet can significantly bolster what you write, or at the very least, reduce your time to topic proficiency. You can take these one step further through API automations with tools like Zapier or Make, and set up automatic research reports every day, week, or month on a topic and create an automated research assistant, like Notion or Monday.com, which can build a database for you in your CRM or WorkOS. — Jack Meeker, content marketing team manager, Healthee

4. Make AI your production assistant

Custom GPTs and AI workflows are amazing for automating the execution work, especially once you’ve built and documented a repeatable playbook that AI can follow.

For example, we’re using a custom GPT (and hopefully soon an AI agent) to automate our podcast, newsletter, and online playbook production and publication process. It’s such a huge timesaver (and it ensures no steps get missed!) — Ali Orlando Wert, director of content strategy and brand, Databox

5. Go for custom integration

One of the most impactful ways we’ve integrated generative AI into content marketing operations is by building and calibrating custom GPTs tailored to clients’ content workflows. These models significantly accelerate content production by handling drafting tasks and adapting to brand voice and guidelines. We’ve also found deep research capabilities in tools like ChatGPT invaluable. They dramatically reduce thetime needed for pre-production research.

That said, human subject matter expert review and quality assurance remain essential at every stage to ensure accuracy, relevance, and trustworthiness. We continue to examine all marketing operations and processes at our company, with the goal of automating where possible and scaling with AI. — Chad Gilbert, vice president, content marketing, NP Digital

6. Make it an editor and brainstormer

One of the most helpful ways to incorporate generative AI into marketing operations, especially for social media, is by using it as a real-time editor and brainstorming partner. For example, once a brand voice is well-established, AI tools can help fine-tune captions to better match that tone. You can drop in a rough post and ask for edits that make it sound more confident, more playful, or more in line with how your brand actually speaks. It’s like having a second set of (very fast) eyes on your copy.

AI is also incredibly helpful for streamlining repeatable content. Think weekly social posts like rate updates, reminders, or recurring promotions — anything that follows a similar structure week after week. — Ashley Baker, owner, Coastline Marketing LLC

7. Review your standard operating procedures

Look at your marketing operation’s standard procedures. Anything that implies “if this happens, then do that” is a prime candidate for automation. Then, within that automation, give any repetitive or single output tasks to AI. Now, you’ve optimized existing processes while at the same time possibly improving consistency in quality and brand standards.

There are also creative tasks that fall in the good enough category. When productivity is more important than artistic achievement, generative AI tools should be the go-to, even for creative projects. — A. Lee Judge, co-founder and chief marketing officer, Content Monsta

8. Multiply your content versions

Marketing teams focus too much on how to use AI to generate static content. That’s likely to become a race to the bottom as more undifferentiated content hits consumers. The real opportunities come in two places: personalization and speed to market.

In the personalization space, the opportunity is to take high-impact, credible content that delivers real expertise and scale it for each individual by using AI to version everything from the content to the imagery to the calls to action.

From a speed-to-market perspective, AI can be an engine to automate manual processes, streamline reviews, edit for clarity and grammar, generate ideas, test and learn, and connect data, insights and actions to market better, faster and with better results. However, while AI is a good tool to help with automating manual processes, a human must be part of the process to ensure that the content is reliable and accurate. — Tiffany Grinstead, vice president, Nationwide

9. Dig into the data

I’m loving AI's ability to analyze large data sets to find relationships between data points that my team previously labored to identify. Autodesk’s global State of Design and Make study of nearly 6,000 leaders has limitless permutations of insights by industry and geography, not to mention hours and hours of interviews to dig into. Plugging the transcripts into AI rather than reading and rereading them is obviously a huge improvement. And having a tool to create traffic drivers and other derivative content is
also a game changer. — Stephanie Losee, content leader, Visa, Autodesk, and Salesforce.

Want to learn more? Click here for ten more tips.

Content Marketing World 2025 is produced by the experts at Content Marketing Institute, and brings together forward-thinking marketing leaders and creative.

CMWorld is jam-packed with so much world class education, fresh inspiration,
meaningful networking, and FUN, you’ll leave with your mind buzzing with all the
expert secrets and new ideas to inspire your work.

Mark your calendar for September 15-17, San Diego, California.

Register today and use BONUS CODE AMASF100 to save an extra $100 on your registration.

A version of this article was originally published on the Content Marketing Institute website.