Decreased Writing Time by 10x and Increased Search Traffic by 14x
Contently, a trusted content marketing platform used by Fortune 500 brands like Nordstrom and Spotify, partnered with NineTwoThree to develop an AI content writer that produces high-quality SEO blog drafts in minutes. Designed to help managing editors scale their output without sacrificing brand voice or editorial standards, the Contently AI Writer blends advanced prompting systems with fact-checking and tone-matching subsystems to rival human-written content.
CONCEPT
Scaling Editorial Output Without Losing Brand Voice
The Contently AI Writer was built to serve enterprise clients seeking fast, affordable, and on-brand content at scale. Managing editors within Contently oversee client relationships and are responsible for translating briefs into high-quality articles. The goal of the AI system was to create a seamless assistant that generates story drafts from briefs—saving time, cutting costs, and maintaining editorial excellence.
CHALLENGE
solving for several technical and experiential challenges:
Human-Level Quality
The AI needed to match or exceed the writing quality of professional, human writers with 10+ years of experience.
Workflow Integration
Managing editors couldn't be expected to prompt like AI experts. The system had to work effectively from standard briefs.
Voice & Brand Fit
Articles needed to reflect each client’s unique tone, brand identity, and editorial strategy.
Fact-Checking & SEO
Output needed to avoid hallucinations, pass SEO tools, and meet high standards for searchability and credibility.
Cost-Effectiveness
Drafts needed to be produced at a fraction of the cost of traditional writing while remaining high-performing
Industry specific knowledge required writers to spend hours manually writing outlines.
Designed AI flows that mimic the mental process of seasoned writers, starting with structured outlines and spiky points of view before expanding into rich prose.
Prompt-Agnostic Drafting
Using out-of-the-box AI tools, require users to write complex prompts that still lead to hallucinations.
Enabled editors to generate high-quality output from standard briefs without extensive prompt engineering.
Editorial Subsystems
Health-related content comes with high-risks if it’s incorrect. This makes simple AI tools un-reliable.
Integrated tone-matching, style control, fact-checking, and context processing to ensure the writing felt human and brand-safe.
A/B Testing Infrastructure
Humans have a level of context and nuance that is nearly impossible to replicate with AI alone.
Collaborated with managing editors to test AI vs. human drafts, identify areas for improvement, and train subsystems accordingly.
Flexible Quality-Speed Tradeoff
Often AI solutions will output low quality information in order to keep latency low.
Accepted longer generation times (~5 minutes per article) to optimize depth and polish—emulating the psychology of human-like effort.
9
9-part subsystem architecture for AI writing
10x
Decreased writing time for managing editors by 10x
14x
Increased search traffic from new articles by 14x
a user experience that fits their workflow
Integrated tone-matching, style control and fact-checking.
Frictionless control over key workflow decisions that impact SEO.
impact
delivered strategic And operational benefits:
Increase Revenue per
Employee
Managing editors can now support more clients with the same effort—unlocking new revenue potential for Contently.
Cost
Savings
Managing editors are able to product 5x more content per day while using Contently AI.
Brand-Safe,
Search-Ready Content
AI-written drafts pass internal rubrics for SEO, tone, and accuracy—often rivaling or exceeding human counterparts.
Built
For Growth
The modular subsystem design allows Contently to fine-tune the experience for each publication.
