Artificial intelligence is a hot topic right now.
Gym owners in our private Facebook group are talking specifically about AI content producers as a possible solution to media problems, and it’s worth exploring.
AI can produce mountains of content—a blog, three social-media posts per day and 10 variations of ad copy could be cranked out in seconds. Let’s assume these prolific AI content producers can operate perfectly in optimal systems created and maintained by entrepreneurs.
With these great systems in place, you start using AI. So does the gym down the street. So do 10 others over there. And a bunch in Tallahassee. And 100,000 other fitness businesses, plus a million enterprises in other industries. What happens then?
The answer: Complete content overload.
Too Much Weak Content
Content overload is already happening even without AI. It’s behind all this stuff, and more:
- Facebook and other social platforms create complex algorithms to sift through the veritable mountains of content and find the good stuff you might actually care about.
- It’s hard to find anything—even posts from close friends and family members.
- Organic reach on some platforms is near zero, and you often have to pay to get any eyes on your content.
- Companies sponsor high-profile influencers in desperate attempts to cut through all the low-level noise.
- Governments pathetically try to regulate the geysers of content spraying from every mobile phone and building with an internet connection.
- Platforms themselves are taking an ever-increasing role in curating feeds, which some might call “censorship.”
- Platforms often prevent people from seeing content that will take them to a website or onto other platforms.
- Platforms are constantly weeding out bots that tell the world about “can’t-miss investment strategies” below your posts on macro tracking.
- Attention spans are now measured in seconds.
Here are some stats to support that:
- 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
- Google processes more than 40,000 queries per second.
- In a minute, 46,740 photos are posted to Instagram and 456,000 tweets go out.
- On Facebook, every minute produces 510,000 comments and 293,000 status updates.
- For more incredible stats, click here.
These numbers will only increase as people let AI crank out mediocre content.
So what’s going to happen to your AI-produced media? It will disappear online like a thimble of water poured into the ocean. Especially if it’s generic, copycat, fluffy content that doesn’t add any value for a consumer—Google hates that stuff and doesn’t rank it on its search engine results pages (SERPs).
No content is a problem. No eyes on your content is essentially the same problem.
Audience Building for Microgym Owners
Content is nothing without an audience.
For content to matter, it must reach people. To make that happen, you must create connections. Real connections. You must then strengthen those real connections with content that actually helps people in your audience. This is especially true for service businesses that involve physical and nutrition coaching.
Relationship building is best accomplished when humans talk to other humans. I’m not stodgy enough to suggest an AI bot can’t chat you up online and get you to click a link. But I would suggest that digital interaction is still weaker than a firm handshake, a smile and a conversation.
Proof: How often have you interacted with a virtual assistant and become enraged? I’d guess 50 percent of the time. To test my theory, call your bank right now and try to get its virtual assistant to do what you want it to do.
Two-Brain places affinity marketing above paid ads in our client-acquisition hierarchy for this reason: Human connections are more effective than computer-generated ad copy served to overloaded, fickle people on social media who really just want to see the newest gym-fails compilation.
Compare these two sentences:
“Click now to find out how easy it is to lose 15 pounds in 2 weeks with our new training system!”
“Hey Kim. I know this time of year is brutal on accountants. Want to bring your partner in with you to blow off some steam in your next session?”
Be Real
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use AI content generators. You can. But don’t expect your audience to grow just because you do. Machines might be able to create content, but they do it so quickly that their collective vanilla output will overwhelm people, not connect with them.
The best plan: Make personal connections and build your audience one person at a time. Create content that actually helps those people. Maybe use AI to save time in generating some ad copy or throwaway social posts, but don’t make a machine the backbone of your content strategy.
Try it right now: Get some coffee and head to a neighboring business. Start a conversation: Ask about that business and chat a little about yours. Get an email address and send an article that helps the person solve a problem.
Those simple interactions will do more for your business than 50 AI-generated blogs and 100 robot-written social media posts.
One more exercise: Imagine the catchiest line of Instagram copy ever posted to your account. Maybe it generates an extra 20 likes. Now pull out your phone and see what happens when you text this to a member of your gym:
“Hey! I was just thinking about you—how are you?”
