How a Content Marketing Guru Is Rocking AI After 47 Years in The Field

The AI revolution is transforming businesses, and even seasoned professionals are taking note.

Here’s one story of a content marketer with 47 years under her belt, now leveraging ContentShake AI to elevate her content writing game.

It's where old-school expertise meets new-age tech, and the results are outstanding.

“There’s a lot of advantage to [ContentShake AI] in every aspect of a business. For example, you can forget about writer’s block”

— Barbara Ferrigno, CEO at Concept Marketing Group

About Barbara Ferrigno

Barbara Ferrigno is the definition of a content marketing industry veteran.

She has held the title of CEO at the full-service marketing firm Concept Marketing Group for an astounding 47 years.

Ferrigno saw an opportunity before many others.

She readjusted Concept Marketing Group to change with new technologies to help her clients succeed.

That change?

The rise of strategic marketing focused on creating and distributing valuable and consistent content to audiences, aka content marketing.

Concept Marketing Group has always provided a vast list of services and products, including writing. Then Semrush’s ContentShake AI came into play.

The Problem: A Long and Tedious Content Creation Process

At first, Ferrigno thought AI writing software was another gimmick that would peak and fall just as fast.

She and many other content marketers were unsure how it could apply to their businesses.

But then she tried Semrush’s ContentShake AI, which transformed her life and her business.

Before, Ferrigno’s process was tedious and vastly different: She followed this process:

1. Create a blog topic herself after conducting thorough keyword and competitor research online, using that to brainstorm her topic ideas
2. Research other articles, identifying about 10-15 for a common theme
3. Outlining: With multiple screens always open, she’d create her central points, expand on them, and reread them from another perspective

“It was a big process,” explains Ferrigno. “From research to writing drafts and everything all the way through, you can easily spend four to five hours on one article.”

Due to the length of the research and writing process, Ferrigno could sometimes only produce one article a week, even though she needed at least three to drive sales.

The Solution: Using ContentShake AI to Create Content 12x Faster

Ferrigno began using Semrush’s ContentShake AI several months ago for her website, blogs, and client sites.

And it produced “stellar results.”

First, it immediately cut her research and writing time, letting her write articles 12x faster.

It made the process much simpler.

The tool generates content ideas, creates articles in one click, and provides a full list of target keywords.

It also helps you assemble and optimize your content with competitive SEO insights.

This is what it looks like:

“All of a sudden, my articles were … filled with good content and the keywords I needed.”

She also began to see more comments than ever on these articles—many expressing how informative and fantastic the pieces were.

Readers were such fans that they asked how much she charges for the service.

The Results: Two Times More Readers

Concept Marketing Group currently has about 2,900 articles on their site. The team reviewed data from articles created using ContentShake AI, and readership doubled.

Not only that, Ferrigno explained, but her clients were also getting more traffic: 60-70% of the articles getting comments are those from ContentShake AI.

The best part?

Ferrigno mentions that ContentShake is extremely simple to use—making it a great option even for beginner users.

“It’s very simple for people to use. Because there are many people out there who are not writers. And they’re clueless. But they also keep hearing that ‘you need to create content.’ And sometimes I’m looking at that content, and I think, ‘Oh my God, you need ContentShake.’”

But there’s more to it.

Using ContentShake AI, Concept Marketing Group (unintentionally) increased their business by 10-15%.

They aren’t looking to expand, but if they were, Ferrigno could see that number doubling to 30% or more.

The positive feedback from readers and improved results allowed her to see the sheer power of using AI for content writing.

Now, Ferrigno receives at least five to 10 emails about specific articles daily.

AI: Friend or Foe?

With so many new AI tools coming out into the market so fast, it’s easy to see how some content creators might shy away from testing them out. But Ferrigno has some advice to offer other marketers about AI:

• Have an open mind
• Take time to explore it and understand it
• Recognize that AI is a time-saver and go in without judgment

Pro tip: If you work with clients, test it on your own content first.

Another trick to AI is to always combine it with human oversight (a stance we at Semrush support).

When you have ContentShake AI generate an article for you, read through every section and add little touches to make it sound more personalized.

Personally, Ferrigno likes to include humor here and there.

She quickly shares that AI “...is not a replacement; it’s an enhancement.”

ContentShake AI by Semrush

Use ContentShake AI to get content ideas, instantly generate unlimited articles, and optimize them for users and search engines.

It combines AI with Semrush’s powerful SEO data to boost your chances of ranking.

And it helps you improve the quality of writing and publishes blogs directly to your WordPress site.

Try it for free today!