AI Adoption with Content Marketing: The Good, the Bad, and the Practical

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy – A Healthcare Marketing Podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am the CEO & Founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And I’m also very lucky to be your host. I’m thrilled to be joined today with Ben Riggs. He is the Content Manager at Kettering Health, and we’re going to talk a little bit about the current state of AI and content marketing.

 

So first of all, welcome, Ben. Thanks for joining us. 

 

Ben: Hey, thanks for having me. 

 

Jenny: And we’re going to get started by talking a little bit about a really fun AI tool that I stumbled across. It’s called Arcads. And I’m going to just play a quick little clip for our audience.

 

[Clip plays]

 

Jenny: Okay, so that’s really crazy, right? Ben, tell me your thoughts! That’s AI! What do you think? 

 

Ben: I so by way of admission, I’m still like when I, when I sit and think about fax machines, I’m still a bit mind blown. So that just for context, but I think you know, it’s it’s impressive. You know, I think we’re, it’s, it’s one of those touch points with AI that make us realize, like, we’re, we’re through this inflection moment where just like, slop is the guaranteed output, which is exciting. But also, gosh, there’s such a tension. And I know, like, that’s that’s where I feel like I exist most of the time with AI. Is this, you know, hearing both set like metaphorical angel and, and devil on your shoulder of like, here’s the benefit of it at scale.

 

And here’s what it’s going to mean for this population of people. But yet also you can’t help, you know, because of humanity’s resume in some ways. Think about like, oh, gosh, in the next 10s, what’s it going to be for someone who, doesn’t have the need that AI products trying to fill in a legitimate way, but maybe it has some other unsavory, motivations in life, I will put it. So so it’s I’m it’s it’s exciting. It’s mind blowing. It’s it’s also it’s, and like, alarming, but like, in that sense of existing in that tension, I know, like, what about you? 

 

Jenny: So I first stumbled across this actually on TikTok and it started as an influencer video. Like it literally looked like just a person talking.

 

And then the script itself said that it was AI, and then I–my jaw dropped because I did not realize that I was watching AI. So first I was embarrassed. I felt like a boomer, an old person. Sorry for boomers listening, but I felt yes, I felt, kind of a sense of almost fear, you know, like I’m very digital savvy.

 

And if I was just tricked? So I did what any smart marketer would do, and I immediately went and created an account with this tool, and I started playing with it. I was like, I need to know the extent of what can happen, and you can filter by gender, by, race, by situation. You can do medical and everybody’s wearing medical gear.

 

In order to be an actor that says, whatever you type into the script, you just type a script up and hit go in and a minute later generates this video for you. So I think it’s really important for us as marketers to understand where the technology is today, so that way we can be thoughtful in our applications within our own organizations.

 

I am also fearful because so many organizations are already facing distrust in the medical community, that information online. And so as you’re trying to create information to educate patients, we now have tools like this where it can have somebody wearing a, you know, a doctor’s white jacket talking about how, you know, X, Y, and Z is going to kill you.

 

And so it is just another hurdle for us to think about as we’re creating content about how we can make sure that our doctors have individualized reputations, and our system has reputations to really break through that clutter and noise. I’ll also say a funny aside, I have multiple people in my family because I am aggressive about notifying everybody about AI, like they’ll forward me a video and I’ll be like, that’s AI! How do you not know that’s AI?! I have multiple people in my family are like, I don’t care. It’s cute. I’m like, oh my gosh, really? Like you don’t, you’re fine with knowing that it’s AI? So an eMarketer study just came out today actually. And we’ll link to it in the show notes about how consumers’ trust with content online is decreasing really quickly because of the quick growth of AI generated content, whether it’s written or video form or images.

 

So let’s jump a little bit to the real application within a system, and talk to me about what you are finding useful, whether it is thinking about ways to integrate AI into your processes or, you know, generating actual content, like what are you finding valuable today especially, you know, compared to where maybe you were a year ago? 

 

Ben: Yeah, that’s the question, because I think we’re all just now that we’re starting 2026 is where we’re recording this and mid-January, I think we’ve all learned that things are going to be so different within two quarters, right? Six months or so. And so thinking about a year ago and what I was kind of poking around with AI and thinking like, you know, was on the cusp of, you know, cracking this nut of some frontier model, but, you know, it in some ways it like, I look back a year ago and, and, you know, I think I, you know, I’m a writer by trade and, and by profession still too. And so I think that I’m, you know, I’m always going to be sympathetic and have this fidelity to the sort of the cognitive relevance that the human brings to the writing process. The act of discovery, the messing with the blank page, the, credibility you win by making sure it’s accurate and and tussling with word choices to make sure it’s clear. 

 

And then, you know, you know, I know this wasn’t just a skip a year ago, but even a few years ago, but, you know, trying to think about, all right, how does how do I apply AI to some of these places. And so I think, like, you know, a year ago it was pretty garden variety. It was research. It was data aggregation. It was trying to sort of make sense thematically of of big gobs of complicated figures and facts and that sort of thing. And, and I think what, you know, it’s, it’s gotten so much better in that regard to, you know, I think these, these platforms even are able to digest more, you know, the whole like, tokenization idea. Right? Like they’re able to process more. It’s that’s that’s gone. I think it’s gone better for us. I think because we’re able to take in that that much more content that feels intimidating, that we really want to sift through. And we’ve also learned, I think there’s, I would imagine there’s been an uptick in literacy about how to prompt and get the right stuff out of that content to, and how to verify.

 

So I think we we’ve got a lot of room to get better there, to say the least. But I think that, you know, more and more people are privy to, how to go about using these, these tools and these models for those garden variety ways. 

 

But I think compared to last year, too, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m using, you know, just kind of like squaring up with large language models, like, I’m using them to sort of investigate what’s already kind of out there.

 

So like I’m thinking specifically written content. And so playing to each one, strength to find out, you know, if this were to be written right now, you know, because these things have such a breadth of content now, we, you know, from from training data, you get a pretty good vibe about what’s, what’s already out there, how it’s being covered, but then also leveraging it with certain prompts to then find the the consumer gap with the content that’s out there.

 

And so that’s, you know, I think that’s not I’m not saying anything new to a lot of people, but if I could just like, go on record and say that I’m a little late to the party to speak, but I am, I love Notebook LLM like, I don’t know if it’s okay to siphon off one one product right here, but …

 

Jenny: Yes, go for it.

Ben: I think it has been such, a product, production booster for me, productivity booster, because, I mean, one, just for my own sake, like, the safety of it feels premium. You know, obviously, like you have the ability to get in there. I think if no one’s used it, this is, like, the most like, I don’t know how we’re not screaming about NotebookLM from the rooftops, but the interface of being able to source the material and then know that I can play around in this kind of aggregated material and just tap that material, but then leverage, the sort of, you know, the, the probability machine that is, you know, like an LLM to really investigate with it. And use that as a thought. A thought partner. I’m like on the side using it to help me write a small book, but I’m like in the very beginning of the investigative stage and it’s like you, you can home grow a really precise conversation, in a safe way with this stuff.

 

And then I don’t know if people know this, but like, you can also create a podcast. So, like what I’ve been doing just to even keep up with the AI arms race is, you know, ChatGPT Health dropped. And then we have Claude for Healthcare. And I’m not necessarily like I’m not a techie person by trade. I sort of did it by way of necessity over the last few years.

 

But, you know, I’ve gone to reputable sources who have covered it, and then I’ve put it in Notebook LLM, create a podcast, and then I’ve been using that to help me kind of digest the material on the drive home and just going to and so that’s another way that I’m using it just personally. But I could go on to about ways we’re using it in healthcare, but that I just keep going back to that video you showed and just keep thinking about what’s what’s what’s possible and what’s at risk.

 

Jenny: Yep, fully agree. Ben, I am embarrassed or proud, I don’t know to say that my 15 year old son introduced me to NotebookLM because he had created a notebook for each of his high school classes with all of the materials his teacher provided, and he used it to be able to create, podcast and learn the material and quizzes to quiz him before the tests.

 

So he schooled me on how to use it, and I was like, this is, I’m proud of you and I’m amazed. 

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Jenny: What a cool application!

 

Ben: I forget how I tapped into it. It’s clear they know their market, right? Like they really like they they know that, you know, a lot of schools have their laptops. We’re talking about Google here.

 

But I think when it comes to like, you know, I’m, I’m sympathetic to the fact of like, I think a lot of people feel like they’re chasing their tails when it comes to keeping up with AI, and just different facets of it, whether you’re, you’re more aligned and business savvy, whether you’re more tech savvy, whether you’re more content savvy, like like the AI conversation is ubiquitous and for for good reason.

 

And I think tools like that are so helpful because it helps you really start to like, mill around and you’re thinking about it and encounter, like, I think, just the necessity of repeated messages that are important to kind of get to get your head around. So yeah, so I, I love NotebookLM. And I think a lot of it’s for, I think for, for book writers or people who are working on long form content that you really have to bake with for a long time.

 

It’s a really good tool. But I know too, you know, there’s, there’s GPT you can build for that sort of thing, but right now, my, my, my bread and butter is NotebookLM. 

 

Jenny: Yeah, I love it. Talk to me a little bit about, are you and your team thinking about optimizing content for AI, or are you doing GEO, AI?

 

Ben: Kind of. Yeah.

 

Jenny: I’d love to hear about the evolution of that over the last year within your team and your approach. 

 

Ben: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ll be honest. I went from like this position of I got to get my head around this as fast as possible and jump at it, and like, I felt like I was sprinting to as things have kind of progressed, you know, there’s different opinions that have emerged, right? But I think where I’m at right now is, I mean, the user data is there. I mean, you know, ChatGPT’s healthcare as an ally study job just before ChatGPT Health, you know, 200 million people globally using it a week, 40 million people were using it, in the States for health stuff. And, you know, and that’s that’s just GPT, and so I think it’s, it’s a conversation that we have to have, and I’m curious about it. But at the same time, too, I’ve kind of have cooled off a bit because I think there is this, this ethic of whether it’s with AI or anything technological, you know, up to this point of like it’s really important to have the basics figured out and make sure that, like, you have really good like practitioner practices in place, whether it’s, you know, keywords, whether it’s schema, whether, you know, and because I think a lot of people right now, they’ve been creating content for a while.

 

They’ve been trying to figure out how to do that well. And here comes GEO. And now they’re like, oh my gosh, what do I do now? And they’re racing to go make updates and make changes and do this and that. And that was me. I, I drank the Kool-Aid and I was running hard at it, and I was creating a prop library for my team of like, when you’ve written something, you know, put it through this to create, you know, like a people often ask section at the end and all that.

 

And I think those are well and good. But I, you know, honestly, it might be sort of a cheap answer, but I think it’s really worth asking yourself, like, do you know, the basics of pulling this off well? Do you feel confident? Do you feel confident that your team has what they need to do to write and I’ll, you know, say it this way to write both for humans and for humans using AI?

 

That’s kind of the phrase I have with my team, because interestingly enough, I really believe that, so like from a search perspective, it’s it’s interesting too, because, you know, ChatGPT indexes off of Bing, obviously something like Gemini indexes off of Google. And even those have there’s the their nuances about, how they’re going to be found. And so you have to even ask yourself the question, you know, do I would I prefer shooting my shot, trying to when it can to show up in ChatGPT or do I need to kind of optimize for zero search and for Gemini.

 

And so I think and, and and those require spending time with what are the distinctions between what Bing’s looking for, what Google’s looking for. So but again, I think a lot of it comes down to, you know, do your homework, figure that kind of stuff out. Like for us, we’re, we’re prioritizing Google and Gemini, just because right now still, even though we’ve got this burgeoning growth of users around LLMs, fact the matter is, most Americans right now aren’t using them.

 

They’re still turning to Google. Like that’s where their habits are. But that means that many more people are likely encountering zero search results. So. So I think for right now, we’re kind of leaning into making sure we’re doing everything we can to show up there. But what’s fun, frankly, is like some of the stuff that’s, that’s encouraged, like we’ve been doing like …

 

Jenny: That’s awesome.

 

Ben: We’ve been, right? Like we’ve been trying to just write for, a human reader who’s in a little bit of a hurry, but not a dummy and trying to front load the right information, but, you know, keep it for human readable, scannable and, and and having, you know, the through line of the right keywords without, you know, keyword mashing, so …

 

Jenny: Exactly. 

 

Ben: Yeah. So that’s a little bit of a frenzied, answer to your, to your question 

 

Jenny: No, I love it. That’s great. We have the benefit here at Hedy & Hopp that we work with, large systems, so …

 

Ben: Mmhmm

 

Jenny: … state wide and multi-state. And then on the practice side of the house, we work with, say, like an eight location orthopedic group, right?

 

Ben: Yep.

 

Jenny: So we can test new strategies on our smaller practice sites way faster. We don’t have to go …

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

Jenny: … through lots of rounds of reviews. Then as soon as we find out what works, we can move it upstream to our system clients. 

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Jenny: And then have guaranteed results because we already know. You know …

 

Ben: Yeah, totally.

 

Jenny: … what we need to do. So it’s been really fun kind of doing the test, repeat, test, repeat, implement process …

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

Jenny: … on that side of the house. It’s very similar, as you know, to the philosophy of SEO, anyway. 

 

Ben: Right, mmhmm. 

 

Jenny: It just is a slightly different interface. So organizations that already have SEO down, it just as a slightly more enhanced or comprehensive way to think of it. So I fully agree with you. 

 

Ben: Right, yeah. I think at the end of the day too, it’s like it’s a matter of, you know, I think with, it was true of SEO, I think it’s on steroids now of, I mean, really doing it well means like, you got to really be thinking like your consumer.

 

Jenny: Yes. 

 

Ben: Which is like I that’s the, the writing adage for for an eternity now, right? Is like, you have got to be really audience-oriented. And so it’s a little I mean, it’s it’s going to sound, a little too casual, but like in some ways, I think the, the barrier to entry is, a little lower or higher. I forget how that phrase goes, anyway. But like, I think because now with search, things are so much more phrase based and they’re so much more, specific. I think it’s really given a lot of energy to the persona concept again. 

 

Jenny: Yes, totally agree.

 

Ben: I think a lot of people before were chasing those, but they weren’t sure kind of how to, like, make sense of them.

 

But now that you’ve got people who are learning to to put in their age, their location, you know, various things like, you know, the persona conversation has really been energized again. And so I think if you were doing those things, it’s great. And if not, then it’s a good time to kind of revisit that. 

 

Jenny: I fully agree. We were saying, had a conversation yesterday with a group that were helping with some Epic implementations and it was fun explaining to them: It’s basic marketing. 

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

It is user journey messaging, it’s persona development, messaging strategy. And then just the last 20% is whatever technology we’re talking about, right? 

 

Ben: Yep, yep.

 

Jenny: Whether it’s the AIO, Epic and Cheers, whatever it is …

 

Ben: Mmhmm.

 

Jenny: It’s a marketing best practices on the front end …

 

Ben: Yep.

 

Jenny: … to make sure that you’re talking to the right person at the right time with the right message, so.

 

Ben: Yes, come on now. Yeah. Absolutely. 

 

Jenny: Yeah.

 

Ben: Absolutely. I, I sort of, I, I did a bit of a like a fist bump to myself when this was all kind of like coming out in the wash after ChatGPT, I think 2 or 3 launched in November. It was like, like 22 and we all kind of had our whatever freak out moment you had, whether it was excitement or fear or both.

 

But once it started coming out, like in the wash that like to, to be sort of included in the, the adventure of being like, scraped by an LLM, it like being included in that meant that you actually were, weren’t writing in order to be scraped, like, if that makes any sort of sense.

 

Jenny: Yes.

 

Ben: Like you weren’t writing for the AI, you were writing for, you know how people talk, how people read, how people listen up, people think. And that that was being prioritized. And so I it’s just for so then for me as a writer who really values this, this sort of notion of, again, like the human reader and this fidelity of not just kind of writing to play the game, but writing to be helpful, like writing to add value, it’s kind of cool. Like for someone who went from wearing a tinfoil hat, like when when he read his first headline about ChatGPT to being this, kind of where I’m at now, I think, you know, one of the sort of the benefits and interesting conversations is kind of how it’s brought back what makes for preeminently effective writing back into the conversation—especially storytelling like that’s a whole different hours-long worth of of a conversation. Just how like storytelling has entered the the chat in a big way because of, generative AI.

 

Jenny: Yeah, I fully agree. Well, Ben, to wrap us up, I’d love to hear if you could look into your crystal ball … We went so far in the last year. 

 

Ben: Mmhmm. 

 

Jenny: Where do you think a year from now you and your team will be …

 

Ben: Mmm

Jenny: … or us as an industry will be as far as AI utilization?

 

Ben: Well, I hope there are more disclosure statements. I—because of the just I can understand the you know, the desire from leadership on down to you know, make the ask for, for AI applications. But you know I’ll, I’ll take the approach of just, you know, maybe not being able to look downstream at what’s currently happening, where that’s going to lead. I, I think what I’m hoping for is, you know, again, this kind of as things are moving forward, that the right things are in place to help enable teams to use AI well and responsibly. So making sure that there’s not just the ask and the pressure, but that there’s the infrastructure, there are conversations happening carefully about what adoption looks like, where the limits are, you know, and I just. Yeah. So I hope that what’s, what’s going to happen, not maybe at the risk of slowing us down, but is just having a more, and a definitive posture toward having AI, which has both feet on the ground where we’re, we’re saying, here’s how, how we’re going to use it, this kind of confident stance of this is what responsible engagement looks like with this. Because to your point, I’ll just kind of wrap with this, I think because at the end of the day like it’s always been about trust, right, with health care, like it’s always going to be about trust, whether it was when the internet dropped, a while ago, or it’s AI now.

 

And so I think the conversation is, how are you going to leverage AI and encourage adoption in a way that’s going to cultivate trust with the people that you’re asking to use it. And how are you going about, doing it to where trust is such a high premium with the consumer? And so I think, you know, making sure that that’s, that’s done well, and keeping quality and, value add being the best thing.

 

Jenny: I love it. Well, thank you, Ben, for joining us and sharing all of your insights. It’s really exciting to have somebody that is actually in the trenches, as I’ll say on the system side, doing this, thinking about it, living that healthy tension, you know, to join the conversation and get your perspective. So thank you. 

 

Ben: Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

 

Jenny: Awesome.

 

And if you want to learn more about Ben, connect with them, his LinkedIn profile link will be in the show notes. And on that note, if you found this episode helpful, please like it? Share it with a colleague, shoot us a note and let us know what sort of content you would like to see moving forward. And that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. We will see you next week! Cheers!