The AI Content Leverage Matrix

AI removed the barrier to content creation entirely. Now you can generate infinite content, which means most marketers are drowning in perfectly mediocre work that sounds exactly like everyone else's.

Today, we're showing you the exact framework for deciding what deserves your brain, what needs your approval, and what should run on complete autopilot.

This free weekly edition will show you the AI content leverage matrix and how you can scale your content production with it, effective immediately. Designed for marketers, it can be applied by agency owners or even solo creators. Basically, anyone who’s creating professional content.

So buckle up. We are also quite pumped because of January, so excuse us for the level of directness today. Anyways, go:

Let's start with the basic painful truth. You can now create infinite content. AI removed the production barrier entirely. A decent prompt gets you a blog post in 90 seconds, a month of social content before your coffee gets cold, and enough email variations to A/B test until the heat death of the universe.

The barrier to content creation is zero. Which means most marketers are now producing an avalanche of perfectly mediocre content that sounds exactly like everyone else's perfectly mediocre content. Comformity on scale. Yawning.

Captain Obvious:

We wrote about this extensively in our "Taste Gap" series (start part 1 here). The conclusion was brutal but clear: AI makes content abundant, free, and infinite. That's precisely why human judgment became a scarce, valuable commodity.

The data backs this up. McKinsey found that 88% of organizations now use AI regularly, but only 39% see a material business impact. The gap exists because marketers optimized for speed without understanding what deserved to exist in the first place.

It has many reasons why, of course. Marketers aren’t the most tasteful people on the planet, sorry. But more importantly, our job is measured by volume. And when all the incentives are lined around volume, it’s kinda hard to sell quality internally.

Research shows consumers can identify AI-generated content and trust it measurably less than human work. Brand consistency drives revenue, but consistency requires editorial judgment. The one thing AI systematically can't deliver.

When search algorithms trained on human judgment still prefer human-crafted content, and when only 13% of consumers trust fully AI-created ads versus 48% for human-AI co-creation, the message is clear: humans need to stay in the loop.

Some content requires your full strategic attention. Some needs review and approval. Some just need you to pick the best of five AI variations. And some should run on complete autopilot while you're on vacation.

The problem is that most teams treat all content equally. Your senior strategist spends the same mental energy on an FAQ update as on a thought leadership piece. Your best writer burns hours on social posts that could've been automated.

Everyone's drowning in production work instead of focusing on what actually moves the business. So how do you know what to do with AI and what to do yourself?

It's dead simple. Two axes:

Plot your content on this grid, and you get four quadrants that tell you exactly how much human involvement each piece deserves.

This is your monopoly content. What only you can create. What competitors can't copy and AI can't generate.

Your job: create this yourself. Pour your expertise, strategic judgment, and unique perspective into it. AI can help with research, formatting, citation checking—but the thinking and writing? That's you.

Critical move: everything you create here becomes training data for the system. Feed these pieces to your AI stack. This is how you teach the system what "sounds like us" actually means.

Resource allocation: 1-2 pieces per month. 20-30 hours each. Your absolute best people work exclusively on this. Nothing else.

This is your money-printing template content. You've cracked the format. The structure works. Now it's about scaling execution.

Your job: AI generates 3-5 variations based on your templates and Crown content. You pick the winner, edit for 30-45 minutes, and approve. You're the editor, not the writer.

Why this works: you've already done the hard strategic work of figuring out what converts. Now you're industrializing it. Like a film director picking the best take, the creative direction is yours, and the execution is scaled.

Resource allocation: 4-8 pieces per month. Senior marketers spend 5-8 hours per piece total (mostly reviewing AI output).

Your voice, everywhere, without burning out.

Your job: provide the insight in 2-3 sentences. AI adapts it to 5 platforms with appropriate formatting and hooks. You batch-review 15 options, pick the 5 best, and approve in 20 minutes.

Why this matters: staying visible is table stakes. But writing 25 original social posts a week is a criminal misuse of your brain. This is how you maintain omnipresence without sacrificing time for strategic work.

Resource allocation: 20-40 pieces per month. Mid-level marketers and AI operators collaborate. 15-30 minutes per batch of content.

Infrastructure that runs without you. The necessary but commoditized work.

Your job: set it up once with clear rules and brand guidelines. Review quarterly to catch errors. Otherwise, forget it exists.

Why automate this: because paying someone $80K to update FAQs is financially insane. This content has to exist, but it doesn't require strategic thinking. Ghost content runs on autopilot, so humans can focus on Crown and Engine.

Resource allocation: 100+ pieces per month. Zero ongoing human time after setup. Junior AI operators handle initial automation builds and quarterly audits.

This isn't four separate content operations. It's one interconnected system where quality flows downward.

Crown content trains the Engine. Your thought leadership pieces, research, and executive POV become the source material for case study templates and product messaging.

Engine content trains Feed. Your proven frameworks and successful campaigns inform how AI adapts your voice across platforms.

Feed content trains Ghost. Your approved social posts and commentary set the tone for automated FAQs and standard communications.

The system learns what "sounds like us" by consuming what you create at the top.

This compounds.

Month one, you're heavily editing AI outputs. Month three, you're mostly approving. Month six, the system anticipates your edits before you make them.

You can't run this system with your current org structure. Traditional content teams are built for manual production. This requires specialization by tier.

Crown Team (1-2 people)

Your absolute best strategists and writers work exclusively on Crown content. Nothing else. They don't touch Engine. They don't review Feed. They create the 1-2 pieces per month that define your brand and drive your biggest opportunities. These are your most expensive resources. Allocate them accordingly.

Engine Team (2-4 people)

Senior to mid-level marketers who understand your frameworks and can make editorial decisions quickly. They review AI outputs, approve variations, and ensure Engine content maintains quality while scaling. Their job is curation and quality control, not creation from scratch.

Feed + Ghost Operations (1-2 people)

AI operators. They're not traditional "content creators." They build prompts, create automation workflows, set up approval systems, and ensure the AI stack is producing on-brand content at scale. Hire for this or retrain juniors who are already AI-fluent. This is the new growth role in marketing.

What Goes Where? When anyone pitches content, run this quick test:

It takes 60 seconds. It saves weeks of wasted effort.

Let's be specific about the benefits, because aspirational bullshit without practical outcomes is worthless.

Here's the math that matters: traditional model has 5 people at $400K producing 30 pieces per month at $13K per piece, most of which perform poorly.

This system: 3-4 people at $300K producing 120+ pieces per month at $2.5K per piece, with the high-value content getting disproportionate attention and budget. $100K savings. 4x output. Better performance on what matters.

You're paying senior strategists to do work that AI can handle for $20/month. You're spreading your best talent across commodity tasks instead of concentrating them on Crown content that actually differentiates you.

You can run the internal version of this without the outsourcing drama.

The answer will piss off everyone who's invested in the old model. It will also get you budget approval for the new one.

Because the Content Leverage Matrix isn't about doing more with less. It's about doing what matters with exactly the right level of human involvement, and automating everything else so your brain can focus on the work only you can do.

— Torsten & Peter

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