It’s 2026, and unfortunately, many businesses are haphazardly using AI as a marketing tool for making creative decisions.

If you’ve recently used AI, and it has suggested that you create blogs, please hold off. Creating content can be immensely helpful for improving online visibility, but like anything in life, it has to be done right if you want good results.

The key to building good content is understanding:

• Who the content is for
• The “So what?” aspect of it, or rather…why should your readers care?
• The overall goal of the content piece. No, “getting more leads,” doesn’t count. From the reader’s perspective, what do you want them to get out of it?
• What information already exists online, and what unique opinions or thoughts you can add to the discourse?

Every business is different, and even if two businesses are in the same industry, that doesn’t necessarily mean they need to produce the same content.

TL;DR: Stop using AI to create your content plans for you and start focusing on the following:

Who Is Your Target Audience?

If your position within the company is more “behind the scenes” and you don’t actively talk to clients, talk to someone within your company who does.

• What are they coming to your business for?
• What problems are they coming to your business with?
• How old are they?
• Where are they located?

For some businesses, audiences vary, and maybe if you’re just starting out, you don’t have too many clients to work with, so figure out who your ideal audience is. Is it a 54-year-old man named Ted who thinks he’s something of a handyman and attempts to fix everything in the house? Or is it Ted’s frustrated 49-year-old wife who just wants Ted to stop and let the professionals handle it?

Everyone’s needs are different, start figuring what your ideal person needs.

What Problem Are You Attempting to Solve?

I don’t know your company, and neither do new website visitors. What problems are you attempting to solve that your competitors aren’t focused on?

• A skin care brand → Focuses on making skin care more accessible and less confusing; they don’t immediately jump on the bandwagon and start telling people that they absolutely need bakuchiol.
• A landscaping company → Emphasizes that they’re not just mowers who will rip up everything on your property that they suspect is a weed.
• A preschool/learning center → Highlights their staff-to-student ratio.
• A library → Markets their free online courses for people looking to jumpstart their careers.

Every audience has a problem. In the above examples, the problems could be:

• Skin care brand → There are too many skin care ingredients available on the market and buyers are becoming overwhelmed.
• Landscaping company → A homeowner has been burned too many times by their HOA’s current landscaping company and distrusts all landscaping companies.
• Preschool/learning center → Competing against bigger, profit-forward centers that overbook without hiring enough teachers.
• Libraries → Their communities don’t understand that they do more than offer media for checkout.

What Topics Do You Plan to Cover?

The topics you plan to cover are largely influenced by your industry. For instance, if you’re in the automation and robotics space, maybe you want to talk about the merging of industrial robots and co-bots; if you’re a landscaper, maybe you want to talk about invasive plants or common pests in your area that homeowners should look out for and your pest control solutions.

Again, every business is different. Will you be developing how-to guides, in-depth product reviews, thought leadership/opinion pieces, none of the above? Think about what you actually want to write about.

How Will You Distribute the Content?

Content doesn’t have to just be posted onto your website. Other options include:

• Email newsletter
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• BlueSky or X
• Guest post on a different website
• Newspaper (yes, those still exist)

Who you’re trying to target influences how you distribute your content. For example, 54-year-old Ted may not be on TikTok, but he’s definitely on Facebook, may read his emails, and likely reads the newspaper every now and then.

Are You Outsourcing the Content?

How involved can you be with content? If the answer is “not at all” and you don’t have a dedicated in-house team to handle your content, that limits what you can write.

Outsourcing content can be incredibly helpful, but if there’s not a dedicated subject matter expert that can aid in the content creation, that rules out more in-depth content pieces, such as thought leadership, eBooks, and whitepapers. An agency can understand your industry, but they won’t know the ins and outs of your company without input.

Putting It Together: Sample Content

Why does all of this matter?

Let’s go back to a few of those examples:

Skin Care Brand

Problem: Their buyers are confused and overwhelmed by the market.

Goal: Make skin care straightforward.

Content Ideas:

• Product line breakdowns on their website that include the main, active ingredients and their purpose.
• YouTube shorts or TikTok videos briefly explaining active ingredients (e.g. how retinol works, what skin care you shouldn’t mix, etc.).
• Infographics for Instagram, BlueSky, and other image-based or short-form social media platforms that breakdown the meaning of each ingredient.

Landscaping Company

Problem: Homeowners are exhausted by their current landscaping company.

Goal: Establish authority and earn trust from potential customers who’ve already been burned once before.

Content Ideas:

• Clear before-and-after photos (not tailored and not AI-generated) on their website.
• Informational articles highlighting best native plants, identifying invasive species, etc. to build authority/highlight that they know what they’re talking about.
• Walkthrough videos of a property (with the homeowner’s permission), pointing out some of what the previous landscaping company did that they shouldn’t have done.
• Our Team section so potential customers can put faces (and qualifications) behind the people who will be servicing their properties.

What Should You Create?

Marketing is challenging because there’s no clear-cut solution. You can’t visit your competitor’s website and say “Let’s do that” because you’re not them and they’re not you. There’s also no how-to guide that’s going to tell you exactly what to do, and I hate to say it, you can’t use AI to tell you what to do either. It’s a language learning model, not an expert, and 99.9% of the time, it doesn’t understand what strategies you’ve already attempted to implement or what your overall goals are.

Many variables impact what your marketing strategy looks like, including the type of content you create. If you have an in-house marketing person, work with them, but if you don’t, it’s time to either hire someone or outsource your marketing to an agency.

Get Started

Founded in 2010, Momentum helps businesses in a variety of industries, ranging from manufacturing and construction to consulting and logistics, develop and execute digital marketing strategies. During your initial discovery call with us, we’ll review your competitors, determine your ideal audience, discuss the goals you have for your business, and from there, find a strategy that aligns best with your vision.

Visit our website to learn more about our results-driven approach, or contact us today to get started with your free discovery call.