AI-assisted thought leadership has a lot in common with boxed brownie mix. The same rules apply for turning both into something that stands out from the crowd and makes you look good.

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The secret to mastering AI-assisted thought leadership lies in a box of brownie mix.

There are two ways, as you probably know, to prepare brownies using a boxed brownie mix.

You can follow the instructions on the box, which will tell you to add an egg, water, and vegetable oil.

Or, you can be creative and spice things up.

You can swap water for coffee or milk to add more of a chocolatey taste. You can use butter instead of oil, or add an extra egg yolk to give your brownies more density and flavor. And, of course, you can mix in chocolate chips, nuts, peanut butter, or Nutella, among other tasty things, to make your brownies even more delicious (and unique).

Depending on which path you take, you’re going to get two different final products.

If you merely follow the directions on the box, you’ll get a basic, bland brownie.

Yes, it will be edible. Yes, people will eat it. But there won’t be anything remarkable about your brownies. Anyone can produce the same quality of brownies following that same recipe.

You’re unlikely to impress most people, who will notice after one bite that your brownies likely came from a box, given their taste and blandness. Your decision to take the easy route might cause people to look down on you—or at least on your baking abilities.

But if you took the initiative to spice things up by making the brownies with coffee, milk, an extra yolk, or tasty mix-ins, you suddenly have something much more interesting than a boring, basic brownie.

You have a unique (and undoubtedly) tasty brownie. Even if you used a boxed brownie mix as the foundation, your creativity and tweaks transformed the brownies into your own creation, which will impress people much more than brownies made with the default recipe will.

That, my friend, is a perfect analogy for the two ways today to use AI to help you write thought leadership content.

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AI-assisted content: Bland brownies or Tasty ones?

One way to use AI to help you write a thought leadership article is by:

• Using broad prompts;
• Not giving much context in terms of what you want to convey in the article;
• Not providing your perspective on the topic you want the AI to cover;
• Not providing examples of your writing style;
• Not providing guidance on who the target audience is; and, most importantly
• Not spending enough time editing the AI-generated first draft of the article.

If you do two or more of these things, your AI-assisted thought leadership article will be the equivalent of brownies that came from a box. The article will be boring, lack depth, and read as if it could have been written by anyone else who does the work you do and who used the same AI prompts that you did.

Not everyone will know that you used AI, but many people may suspect it, including people you’re trying to impress, such as your current, past, and prospective clients and referral sources. Your decision to publish an article under your name that reads as though you leaned heavily on AI to produce it might cause people to look down on you and question your ability to communicate with and serve them.

In contrast, the other way to use AI to help you write a thought leadership article is by:

• Using narrow prompts;
• Providing context about what you want to convey in the article;
• Providing your perspective on the topic you want the AI to cover;
• Providing examples of your writing style;
• Providing guidance on who the target audience is; and, most importantly
• Spending a fair amount of time editing the AI-generated first draft of the article.

If you follow these steps, you’re going to get an article that’s closer to how an article you produced from scratch, without AI, would read. The article will read as if you wrote it because you gave your AI tool personalized “mix-ins” that reflect your thinking, your view of the world, and how you communicate both.

There might be some elements of your article that read as if AI wrote it, but it will be limited to a few passages. It will not be clear to your readers that you used AI to assist you with the writing.

If you understand how people take to brownies from a mix, you’ll understand how they take to AI-assisted thought leadership

There’s nothing wrong with using AI to create thought leadership, just like there’s nothing wrong with using a boxed brownie mix to make brownies. The issue becomes what you want your thought leadership—or your brownies—to say about you.

If you want your thought leadership articles to just be articles that carry your name and discuss unremarkable and undifferentiated thoughts about topics relevant to the work you do for your clients, go ahead and use AI to create thought leadership articles without offering it much guidance and without tinkering much with the output.

That’s the equivalent of bringing a dessert to a dinner party you’re attending, but not caring much about quality, so you make boxed brownies using the default directions.

If you want your thought leadership to be impactful, resonate with your target audiences, and discuss your thoughts in a way that positions you as an authority on the work you do for clients, you shouldn’t rely on what AI will produce without much input from you. You’ll need to invest time and some creativity throughout the process so that the final draft reads like you wrote it and reflects positively on you.

Just like how if you wanted to show up to a party with a dessert that impresses your fellow guests, you could still use a boxed brownie mix as a foundation, but you’d need to tinker with the mix so that the dessert is remarkably better tasting.

If you want to rely on AI to help you write your thought leadership, that’s your prerogative.

But understand that if you don’t spend a fair bit of time coaching AI through prompts and then improving on the draft articles it gives you, you’ll be at a disadvantage.

In as robust and competitive a market as the legal market is today, with so much thought leadership being produced, relying heavily on AI to write your thought leadership would be the equivalent of bringing boxed brownies to a potluck party hosted and attended by culinary arts students.

Thinking about bringing on an outside writer to help your law firm strategize and create compelling thought-leadership marketing and business development content? Click here to schedule a 30-minute Content Strategy Audit to learn if collaborating with an outside writer is the right move for you and your firm.