Our Guide to AI vs Human Blog Writing

It’s a brand new year, and as a business owner, you may be brimming with ideas to boost your business in 2025. If blog writing is on your list of things to try, great idea! But if you’re struggling to find the time or inspiration to write blogs, you may consider using AI-generated blogs.

We’re diving into the pros and cons and what we recommend if you’re trying to make monthly blogging a part of your marketing strategy this year.

Why should blogging be a part of your strategy?

Blogging remains a cornerstone of digital marketing due to its immense potential for driving traffic, building brand authority, and engaging with customers. It adds value to your website beyond selling, turning it into an enticing and informative hub for your potential clients.

Regularly updated blogs can significantly improve your SEO, as search engines favour websites with fresh, relevant content, but quality is considerably more important than more arbitrary markers, such as length.

The Rise of AI in Blog Writing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made significant inroads into content creation, offering a solution for consistent blog output. AI writing tools can quickly generate articles, creating content that can sometimes mirror human writing. But how does this stack up against the traditional, human-crafted blog post?

Pros of AI-Generated Blogs

Before we look at why we favour human-crafted content, we have to recognize that there are significant reasons why time-poor business owners who may or may not have content writing skills have been drawn to AI blog writing.

• Efficiency. AI can produce content rapidly, much more rapidly than a human could, which is particularly useful for businesses that need to publish frequently.
• Scalability. With AI, you can scale your content production without a proportional increase in resources or time. Once an AI model is trained, it can generate ten pieces of content almost as quickly as one.
• Low Cost. AI tools can be much cheaper than a professional content writer, especially if you are already subscribed to an AI tool anyway.

Cons of AI-Generated Blogs

For all the benefits of AI-generated blog content, there are many downsides, some of which we’re sure you’ve come across already (even if you haven’t realized it!).

• Lack of Nuance. AI has endless knowledge, but can’t fully grasp the subtleties of language and can miss the mark on tone or style that resonates with your audience. AI doesn’t understand emotional reactions, just psychological markers. This machine-learning approach does not come across in the same way in a finished piece of content.
• Generic Content. What we call AI isn’t truly AI yet. It can’t think on its own, which means it can’t generate completely fresh ideas, just model on existing content it can access and adjust it enough to not be plagiarism. This limitation risks generating content that lacks originality or a unique voice, making it difficult to stand out. For example, AI blogs tend to start in a very specific way, using this structure, “In today’s digital landscape,” “In today’s busy retail world,” or “In the dynamic world of X.” Once you start looking for this style of opener, you’ll find it everywhere! Add that to the telltale title format of “Topic with added buzzwords: what you need to know,” and you’ll start looking at content a little bit more skeptically! (If you’re curious, AI wanted to start this article, “In the dynamic world of content marketing, the debate between AI and human blog writing…” and wanted to call it “AI vs Human Blog Writing: What You Need To Know.”)
• Ethical Considerations: There’s an ongoing debate about the ethics of passing off AI-generated content as human-created. Whether you’re comfortable with it or not, it could impact the level of trust people have in your business if it comes to light.
• SEO Penalties: Although we don’t have exact clarity on this (Google never shares the details!), there is evidence that AI-generated content is marked down in search results. This could be because it is seen as AI-generated by Google, or it could be because Google values quality and usefulness above most other markers. AI content is unlikely to be uniquely entertaining or valuable, so even if it isn’t penalized for being AI, it is unlikely to get you as far as human-written content.

Blog Writing the Old-fashioned Way

Human blog writers bring creativity, experience, and personal insight to the table. They can craft stories, understand complex nuances, and connect with readers on an emotional level. They enhance the piece’s value for your readers and search engines, making them much more effective rather than just ticking a box.

Pros of Human-Written Blogs

• Emotional Intelligence. Humans naturally infuse emotion and storytelling into their writing, which helps readers connect.
• Unique Perspectives. Your journey is different from mine, and we both have very different experiences to that of someone even down the street, let alone across the country. Human-written blog content can lean into these unique experiences, making the end piece something that resonates but doesn’t just replicate existing information. I asked AI what it thought about this, and it said, “Human writers provide unique insights based on their experiences, offering a fresh perspective that AI cannot replicate.”
• Complex Topic Handling: Humans can tackle complex, nuanced subjects that AI may not fully comprehend. If there are multiple strands that come together, sensitive subject matters, a level of complexity that needs to be written in an approachable way, or information that requires niche knowledge, a human is the way to go.

Cons of Human-Written Blogs

People are great! But AI wouldn’t have come along if there weren’t cons to human-created content creation. Here are some downsides to using a person to create your articles.

• Time-Consuming: Writing quality content takes time (sometimes a lot of it!), which can be a significant investment for a business. As a small business, chances are time is something you are permanently short of, so this could be an issue.
• Higher Costs: No time to do it yourself? Hiring skilled writers is more expensive than using AI, especially for high-quality content. The results will speak for themselves, but it’s cost-benefit analysis time if the budget is tight!
• Scalability Issues: Human content production cannot match the speed of AI, which can be a bottleneck for content strategy. If you set out on a mission to write as much content as possible, that first burst might get you somewhere, but you’ll soon find yourself falling back to a max of one blog a week. If you are looking to put out a blog every day, anyone who is not a paid writer is unlikely to achieve this.

Our Recommendations for Monthly Blogging

We blog for ourselves and our clients… a lot! If you’re serious about online visibility, 1-2 blogs a month are essential to start getting noticed, so our team’s blog creation process never stops. That’s how we’ve developed a hybrid solution that can help accelerate your blog creation without sacrificing quality. And trust us, quality trumps output in Google’s eyes!

1. Initial Drafts: Use AI to create initial topic ideas and potential outlines for your blogs. This can save time and provide a structure for human writers to build upon. But don’t treat it as set in stone. While this is a helpful framework, you know best, so adjust as needed to cover the topic as you want to.

2. Human Drafting and Editing: Our very human writer drafts and edits her draft until she’s happy with the piece.

3. AI Proofread: While humans are great at adding depth and interest to a blog article, that doesn’t mean they spot every grammar issue or potential improvement. Using an AI tool is a great way to find possible improvements. However, once again, don’t take these as must-do! Our writer picks and chooses to keep the intent and voice of the article correct.

Human Writing for Small Businesses

Blog writing isn’t for everybody, but we’re yet to meet a business that wouldn’t benefit. AI tools have opened a lot of people’s eyes to the potential of blogging, but by creating AI-generated content, they are somewhat missing the point. Blogs work because they draw the audience’s attention, leading to higher rankings on Google. Search engines have said time and time again that their biggest priority is quality content that people want to read. At the end of the day, they don’t care if someone buys from you (that’s your job), but they do care if someone is enticed by your article, clicks through and stays to read it. And that is something that AI can’t master.

If you’re looking for support to create blog content that helps your business get seen by search engines and attracts the right crowd, we’re here to help. Grab a free call with us to discuss how our outsourced blog service could bring your business into the spotlight.

Cyber PR Army Solutions. Digital Marketing Made Easy.