why does your blog suck? (and what AI has to do with it)
Remember running a B2B blog in 2019?
You weren’t publishing constantly, but when something went live, it felt considered because it had to be. Topics were narrower, and the point of view behind them was clearer. You were writing with a specific buyer in mind, not just trying to occupy space in a feed or a search result. SEO mattered, but it lived alongside judgment instead of replacing it. A blog post was something you were willing to stand behind in a meeting, knowing it reflected how the company actually thought.
Somewhere between then and now, blogging quietly shifted into a volume game.
AI didn’t cause that shift, but it accelerated it by removing much of the friction that used to force better decisions. Research stopped being the constraint it once was. Drafting no longer required the same level of commitment. Publishing became easy enough that the pause between idea and output all but disappeared. Over time, the question stopped being whether something deserved to exist and became whether there was any reason not to publish it.
That’s how most company blogs ended up where they are today. They aren’t broken, and they aren’t inaccurate. They’re just forgettable, interchangeable, and surprisingly empty given how much effort goes into producing them.
how AI actually fits into this story
AI is not the villain in all of this, but it is the accelerant. The deeper issue sits underneath it, and it has less to do with effort than with how content is understood inside most organizations.
Content marketing is often treated as a supporting function rather than a primary one. It’s expected to contribute to growth, but it isn’t always afforded the same seriousness as sales or product. Sales is allowed to be opinionated. Product is trusted to make hard tradeoffs. Content is frequently asked to keep things moving, fill the calendar, and adjust later.
That perception shapes behavior.
When content is seen as lower-stakes, the bar for decision-making drops. Publishing becomes something you do because it’s expected, not because there’s a clear belief behind it. Over time, the work shifts from intentional to habitual. The goal quietly becomes consistency instead of clarity.
This mindset existed long before AI. What AI changed was the speed at which it could be acted on.
By collapsing research, drafting, and editing into a much smaller window, AI makes it easier to publish without slowing down enough to ask whether a piece reflects something the company actually knows, believes, or has learned through experience. It doesn’t create the perception problem, but it amplifies it.
The result isn’t bad writing. It’s unowned writing. Content that technically checks the box, but doesn’t carry the weight of a real point of view. Posts go live without anyone truly standing behind them, because the system rewards output more visibly than judgment.
And when content isn’t treated as a high-stakes input, it stops behaving like one. Blogs become background noise instead of a body of work, even though they’re often the first place buyers encounter your thinking.
what readers notice, even if they don’t articulate it
Most readers aren’t evaluating your content strategy in real time. They aren’t thinking about tools, frameworks, or your broader content engine. They’re reacting to how the page feels while they’re on it.
When a blog isn’t anchored in real experience, readers sense it almost immediately. The language feels generic. The framing feels safe. Nothing signals that you’ve actually spent time with the problem yourself. Most people don’t stop to analyze that reaction. They skim for a few seconds, decide there’s nothing here for them, and move on.
What they’re responding to, even if they don’t name it directly, is a lack of ownership:
the post feels generic rather than specific
the perspective sounds familiar instead of earned
the brand doesn’t seem especially invested in what it’s saying
That reaction is subtle, but it compounds. Over time, readers stop expecting to learn anything from your blog at all. It becomes something they scroll past rather than something they engage with. The brand starts to blur into the background alongside everyone else saying roughly the same things in roughly the same ways.
This is where the cost shows up. When the free experience feels thin, everything downstream carries more friction. Asking for attention, trust, or time becomes harder than it needs to be. The blog didn’t actively turn anyone away, but it didn’t give them a reason to lean in either.
why teams default to AI-written blogs anyway
Most teams don’t default to AI-written blogs because they think it’s the best approach. They do it because of how content is treated inside the organization.
A strong blog program takes time. It requires coordination, editorial judgment, and a willingness to say no. It compounds slowly, and its impact isn’t always easy to point to in a dashboard. That makes it harder to defend when expectations are high and patience is short.
At the same time, content is still expected to perform. It’s supposed to drive traffic, support demand, educate buyers, and reinforce positioning. But it isn’t always treated as a primary lever. It’s something that’s meant to keep moving in the background while more visible work gets the real attention.
That tension shapes behavior.
When leadership wants activity, publishing feels like progress. A full calendar is easy to point to. Fewer, sharper posts are harder to explain. In that environment, keeping things moving often feels safer than slowing down to argue for better inputs.
AI fits neatly into that gap. It makes it easier to meet expectations without creating friction. It keeps the calendar full. It lets content move forward without forcing hard editorial decisions.
Over time, that changes how blogs get made. Posts go live because the system supports it, not because someone believes strongly in what’s being said. Ownership doesn’t disappear all at once. It just gets diluted. That’s why this pattern is so common. It isn’t about carelessness. It’s about how content is valued, measured, and managed. AI just makes that reality easier to live with.where subject matter experts actually change the outcome
The most effective blogs don’t start with a prompt. They start with people.
Every company already has individuals who understand the problem space far better than any model ever will. They’ve seen deals stall, customers churn, implementations fail, and internal assumptions break. That lived experience is the raw material good editorial content is built on.
When teams skip this step and ask AI to invent insight, the content inevitably feels hollow. When they take the time to extract thinking from the people closest to the work, the difference is immediate.
why subject matter experts change everything
The reason most company blogs feel thin has very little to do with writing ability and almost everything to do with where the thinking starts.
When a post begins as a keyword, a trend, or a loosely defined topic that needs to be “filled in,” the work is already constrained. You’re forced to generalize early. You explain before you understand. You smooth the edges because there’s nothing concrete to hold onto. Even with a strong writer, the result tends to feel careful and complete rather than sharp or lived in.
Subject matter experts quietly change that starting point.
When content is grounded in someone who has actually spent time with the problem, the thinking arrives with weight already attached to it. There’s context, not because anyone added it deliberately, but because it’s unavoidable. Tradeoffs surface naturally. Assumptions get named. The conversation doesn’t drift toward what could be true, but toward what has been true in practice, which immediately narrows the work in a useful way.
That narrowing is where editorial quality comes from, and you can usually feel it even as a reader skimming the page. The post tends to carry a few signals that are hard to fake after the fact:
the framing stays tight instead of trying to cover everything
examples feel concrete rather than hypothetical
the guidance acknowledges constraints and tradeoffs instead of pretending they don’t exist
What’s actually happening in those moments isn’t better writing. It’s better inputs.
A subject matter expert isn’t valuable because they can draft a blog post. They’re valuable because they’ve already done the thinking the blog needs to reflect. When you start there, the job of content shifts. You’re no longer inventing insight or padding out an outline. You’re listening, shaping, and deciding what deserves emphasis.
That’s also where ownership starts to show up again.
A blog that comes out of a real conversation carries an implicit sense that someone stands behind it. It doesn’t feel like marketing commentary layered on top of a topic. It feels like an articulation of how the company actually understands the problem. That accountability raises the bar quietly, without needing process or permission.
This doesn’t require turning SMEs into writers or asking them to produce polished drafts. In most cases, it works better when you don’t. A focused conversation, guided by a small number of intentional questions, usually yields more usable material than a week of solo writing ever will.
Once that thinking exists, the rest of the workflow becomes much easier to justify. Editing feels like editorial work instead of cleanup. Structure feels like clarity instead of control. Even AI has a clear role again, helping organize and refine what already came from experience rather than standing in for it.
Subject matter experts don’t make blogs more impressive. They make them feel real. And in an environment where so much content is technically correct but emotionally weightless, that realism is often the difference between something that gets skimmed and something that earns attention.
how to work with SMEs — without overcomplicating it
If your blog feels generic, it usually isn’t because the writing is bad. It’s because the work didn’t start with anyone who actually owns the problem.
Most teams don’t struggle with SME-driven content because experts are unavailable or unwilling. They struggle because they assume this needs to be formal. A program. A process. A thing that requires buy-in, prep, and polish before it’s worth doing. By the time it gets that heavy, it stops happening altogether.
What works in practice is much simpler and much more constrained.
You’re not trying to extract everything an expert knows. You’re trying to understand how they think about one specific problem your buyers already care about, and to do that well enough that the thinking shows up on the page. That’s it.
A workable version of this usually looks like:
choose a narrow issue that sits close to your product and close to real buyer pain
talk to someone who deals with that issue as part of their actual job, not someone who just speaks well about it
come in with a small set of questions that surface friction, tradeoffs, and common misunderstandings
let them answer in their own words without steering the conversation toward a prewritten angle
record it, transcribe it, and treat that transcript as raw material, not something that needs immediate cleanup
The value isn’t in sound bites. It’s in judgment. Where they hesitate. What they qualify. What they dismiss quickly. Those moments are hard to manufacture and almost impossible to prompt for. They only show up when someone has lived with the problem long enough to have opinions about it.
Once that thinking exists, the rest of the work changes shape. Writing becomes an editorial exercise instead of a creative one. You’re deciding what to emphasize, what needs context, and what should be cut entirely. The goal isn’t to preserve everything that was said. It’s to shape it into something coherent and worth reading.
This is also where AI actually helps, if you want it to. It’s useful for organizing the transcript, tightening language, and spotting gaps in flow. It’s far less useful when it’s asked to invent the perspective in the first place. By the time it’s involved, the thinking should already be there.
When teams get this right, blogs stop feeling like outputs that need to be constantly fed. Fewer posts go live, but each one carries more weight. The content starts to read like a body of work instead of a backlog.
