Is there a good reason to use AI to write thought leadership?

In the race to put out more frequent, keyword-heavy content than the competition, many B2B brands might be tempted to turn to AI to help write their thought leadership. However, in pursuit of rapid-fire content generation, is there a risk that the value and originality of your thought leadership becomes diluted over time? Worse still, could relying on AI-written content alienate your audiences when they’re in need of unique insight and authenticity?

We’re here to give you the rundown on the advantages and pitfalls of using AI in thought leadership writing.

We’ll examine the current impact of generative AI and agentic AI tools in the B2B brand space, before offering some tips and best practices for improving your content writing process, with and without the use of AI.

Race against the machine

Generative AI has come to dominate the conversation around marketing content creation.
The rise of tools like ChatGPT has been heralded by some as a revolution, while others might see it as the end of originality and integrity in digital content.

Meanwhile, agentic AI continues to be integrated into our daily lives, as voice assistants from tech giants like Google, Meta, Apple and Microsoft become ubiquitous in our homes, phones and other devices.

Whatever your stance on AI tools, it’s hard to deny that they’re here to stay. And for B2B brands looking to thrive in regulated markets, it may feel like you’re now in a race to adopt AI quicker than the competition.

Put ‘thinking’ into your thought leadership

What separates thought leadership from informational or advice articles is the ‘thought’ element itself.
Readers aren’t just looking for quick answers, or a cobbled-together mess of backlinks and other people’s research. They want your insights, your unique stance on a topic, informed by your experience and brand voice.

Is there a new angle to a discussion topic that your competitors haven’t been talking about? How does your brand position itself in relation to the latest industry trends? What do you, as a business leader, think about new macro developments or research?

Generative AI certainly isn’t capable of this insight yet, and agentic AI would struggle to reach the same conclusions that a person might if asked for ‘thoughts’ on a particular subject.

Where genAI shines is creating content in seconds, as opposed to hours, which can be a boon if you’re looking to churn out highly optimised and keyword-dense articles for SEO purposes. But the same can’t be said if your goal is to establish your brand as a source of expertise in your industry.

These tools only have existing content to draw upon, so most generated writing reads as very generic without some significant editing.

Buyer perceptions and trust in AI

We’re not going to tell you that your audience will be immediately dismissive of your content if they detect it was written by AI.

The truth is it’s actually becoming increasingly harder to tell if a piece of writing is AI generated, which will potentially have wide-reaching implications for the worlds of journalism and book publishing. However, there is always the risk that your audience will guess, or assume, that your content was written primarily using AI (some generic, human-written B2B content has even been mistaken for AI when using certain patterns of punctuation or turns of phrase).

And if you’re trying to convince B2B buyers to trust in your expertise, that becomes a lot harder when people question if the insight is even your own, or simply something lifted straight from ChatGPT.

All substance, no style

By their nature, genAI tools learn from existing content, so are more likely to output thought leadership that lacks a distinct style or human-sounding point of view.

While there are ways of tailoring your AI prompts to output writing that follows a particular tone or style, we would argue that this further complicates an already convoluted process. A key reason for using AI to write marketing content is supposedly to save time: write one detailed prompt; AI writes your blog; edit and proofread. Done. Right?

However, once you take into account the time taken to write prompts, and the extent of editing needed to make AI-generated content read more human, the time saved can become negligible. In our experience testing genAI tools for copywriting, there is still a considerable amount of time needed to polish the output to make it either sound less like AI wrote it, or to make it sound like it comes uniquely from your brand.

Which begs the question, why go through this whole process when instead you could focus on optimising your own writing and content generation?

Taking your writing up a notch, without AI

Writing thought leadership yourself, rather than getting AI to do the heavy lifting, can help your human-led insight shine through. The end result will likely read as more authentic to your audience, and you might also spark your inspiration for future pieces while writing.

But as anyone who’s written blogs or LinkedIn articles will know, intent is only half the battle. The other half is the graft of writing a draft, proofreading, editing and then publishing thoughtfully as part of your wider content strategy.

However, the answer isn’t always to rely on AI – here are some of our tips to help you streamline your process, get inspired and keep your momentum to write compelling content, quicker.

1. Writing exercises – Kick off the writing process with ten minutes spent writing something unrelated to your chosen topic. This could be writing what you see around you, describing an event from your life, or giving your thoughts on a book, movie or tv show you enjoy. There are plenty of sites with techniques and prompts to help start your writing process. And it helps to keep these up daily, or whenever you have downtime, so when you next sit down to write thought leadership content, you’re in the right headspace.
2. Done, not perfect – When you’re highly knowledgeable on a subject, it can be difficult to take a step back and look objectively at your writing. This makes it harder to get a first draft written as you might feel the need to ‘get it right’ first time, or find a compelling hook from the outset. However, it can also be far easier to edit than it is to fill a blank page. Focus your energy on getting a rough first draft down, leaving errors unchanged, then move to editing.
3. Content production pipeline – It can also help to establish a pipeline between idea generation, research, drafting, proofreading, editing and publishing. Each stage could be handled by a different person or department, or for instance, you could run a group brainstorming session to generate ideas and pool insight from across your organisation before jumping into the writing stage.
4. Shake things up – The dreaded ‘writer’s block’ can come as a result of sitting in the same place, at the same desk, going through the same process you always do. Variety is great fuel for creativity, so try writing your outline, notes or first draft by hand before typing up, or record yourself talking through your first draft to then transcribe into your rough outline (more on this later). Even just picking a new spot to write in can make a huge difference to your writing productivity.

AI as part of your writing toolbox

Even when using effective copywriting techniques, bringing compelling thought leadership to life can still take a while. If you need your content to stay timely and relevant, this is where AI tools can be used to speed up the process.

When you want to launch your next piece of thought leadership quickly, here are some ways in which AI might get you there.

1. Use AI for prompts, not the other way around – Many copywriters using AI might spend ages trying to crack the perfect prompt to generate compelling content. But why not instead ask agentic AI for ideas and inspiration to inspire a piece you could write yourself? Voice assistants like Gemini or Siri could help you pool interesting news stories or industry trends, or provide you with a selection of potential headlines to kickstart your writing.
2. Narrowing your search for sources – Another area where AI can shine is in aggregating dozens of data points and sources from across the internet. There are several AI-powered market research platforms available that can be used to build a bank of links based around a relevant topic or industry keyword. This could be an excellent starting point for thought leadership. However, if you want to take this research further, hiring a brand strategy team will help you draw out key insights and trends.
3. Human errors, checked and fixed – Many copywriters already use tools like Grammarly for accurate spellchecking and grammar suggestions, or even to tailor content to a particular style (i.e. formal, professional). One potential use of agentic AI might be to proof a piece once you’ve written it, asking it for suggestions on missing sentences or points to cover. This could give you an extra level of quality assurance to strengthen your content.
4. Dictation in the age of AI – As we mentioned previously, changing up your approach to notetaking, outlining and drafting can help your productivity massively. AI transcription tools can quickly generate accurate transcripts of audio recordings, meaning you could run through or brainstorm your thought leadership piece out loud and very quickly have copy typed up to kickstart your first draft or outline.

Insight in the age of automation

Despite valid criticisms, AI tools can still offer benefits that many brands might want to take advantage of when writing compelling thought leadership content.

While we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room, we’re not here to scaremonger. Rather, we want to show that AI is just another tool in the marketing toolbox and can fit comfortably into the thought leadership writing process.

Human-led insight is still at the core of thought leadership, and AI is far from the ‘magic bullet’ some might claim it is. After all, the danger of B2B brands overly relying on the same AI tools to write their content is that it will all start sounding very similar.

And the last thing you want is to waste time creating content that fails to engage your audience and let your unique brand voice be heard. This is where a brand and content agency like Rationale can step in to ensure that however you’re choosing to implement AI in your content strategy, you’re doing it with good reason.

Our team of strategists and copywriters can help you develop compelling thought leadership built on a foundation of strong industry research and insight. If you’re looking to create impact with your B2B content, get in touch and we can chat through our approach.