What AI Can’t Fix: The Human Side of Web Content

1. Strategy: Knowing What Actually Matters

AI is excellent at producing something. However, without a content strategy, that “something” often turns into bloated pages, redundant or inaccurate FAQs, or messaging that fails to advance institutional goals.

We’ve seen institutions with thousands of live pages where only a fraction drive traffic or conversions. Adding AI into the mix without a strategy? It simply accelerates the clutter. 

You need humans to:

Define the core narrative. Is your institution emphasizing access and affordability? Career outcomes? Research leadership? AI won’t decide that; leadership and marketing teams must.

Map user journeys. Prospects want different information at awareness vs. decision stages. AI can’t determine which content to serve when, but your team can.

Set measurable goals. Enrollment lift, inquiry form fills, campus visits — these define what “good” content looks like.

Take it further: 

Tag each page with a primary purpose (recruit, inform, reassure, convert) and a success metric. If a page can’t earn its keep, it doesn’t belong in your ecosystem.

2. Governance: Guardrails in the Age of Acceleration

AI makes it easier than ever for decentralized teams to produce content, which is both a blessing and a risk. Without governance, you’ll end up with multiple versions of similar content, contradictory program requirements, and accessibility and SEO problems.

When every department experiments with ChatGPT, it can lead to wildly different tones and even factual conflicts. AI won’t stop that; governance will.

You need humans to:

Define approval flows. Who reviews copy for brand alignment? For accessibility? For accuracy?

Create content standards. Even if AI writes the draft with help from a custom GPT, style guides and plain-language principles must steer the voice.

Use governance as empowerment. Don’t think of it as a “no” system; think of it as training and templates that help distributed authors do their work well.

Take it further: 

Establish a central “content clinic.” Once a month, invite decentralized authors to bring drafts (AI-assisted or otherwise) for coaching and alignment. Think of it like office hours for content creators across campus, only instead of grading papers, you’re helping them avoid creating new content debt.

3. Alignment: Humans Talking to Humans

AI can smooth out language, but it cannot reconcile the competing agendas of admissions, academics, advancement, and leadership. Misalignment is one of the biggest drags on web projects, and no tool can mediate those politics for you.

You need humans to:

Facilitate stakeholder workshops. These aren’t about “what copy goes on the homepage,” but about surfacing goals, conflicts, and compromises.

Translate institutional priorities into web realities. If leadership says “emphasize research,” the content team must decide: which faculty profiles? Which impact stories? Which numbers?

Define your authoritative content. Determine the pages, data points, and stories will serve as the single source of truth for your institution. Without clear ownership, the same information gets rewritten—and contradicted—across multiple sites. Humans must identify what’s definitive, who maintains it, and how it’s surfaced across the ecosystem.

Revisit alignment regularly. We all know priorities can shift quickly (enrollment cliffs, presidential initiatives). AI doesn’t sense that. Humans do.

Take it further: 

Run periodic “message calibration” sessions across departments. Focus less on words and more on themes: what’s rising, what’s fading, what must stay consistent. It’s less about rewriting copy, more about making sure admissions, academics, and leadership are still humming from the same songbook.

4. Management: Content as an Ongoing Responsibility

AI can help you generate content faster, but it won’t raise a flag when program requirements change, or when outdated tuition info undermines trust. Long-term content management still depends on people.

You need humans to:

Audit regularly. Don’t just create; track freshness, accuracy, and performance.

Plan for maintenance. Flag mission-critical pages (tuition, admissions deadlines, financial aid) for frequent review cycles.

Staff for the marathon, not the sprint. A site launch is a beginning, not an end.

Take it further: 

Assign ownership at the page level. Every high-stakes page should have a named owner responsible for quarterly review. AI can draft updates, but only people ensure they’re correct, on-message, and accessible.

The Takeaway

AI accelerates, but it doesn’t align. It drafts, but it doesn’t decide. It generates, but it doesn’t govern.

The organizations who see the most impact from AI will be those who combine its efficiencies with clear strategies, strong governance, ongoing alignment, and disciplined management.

Because at the end of the day, AI can’t fix content problems that only humans can solve.