Stop Relying On ChatGPT to Write Your Content (Do This Instead)

So it appears that businesses and organisations are still using ChatGPT to write all of their content. Copy and paste, done and dusted, too easy. Despite all the conversations on why we shouldn’t be doing this, it is still happening. So today we’re going to explore the limitations of using AI-driven tools like ChatGPT for content creation, and why they aren’t the silver bullet for creating authentic, engaging content that will actually resonate with your audience and actually make your brand stand out. Plus, we’re going to look at some ways on how to actually strike the right balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the authenticity that’s truly going to connect with your reader.

By the end of this episode, you are going to walk away with actionable insights on how to use ChatGPT or similar tools effectively, while ensuring that your content remains uniquely yours. As always, my name is Jordan McFadyen. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. This podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing and challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategies.

And today we are back on that hot topic of AI, content creation, ChatGPT. We’ve got so many different articles and podcasts around this from the past. And I want to just revisit an experience that I’ve had recently, which is kind of what’s brought this topic back up to the forefront for me. Maybe it’s just me that there’s a lot of content and a lot of conversations and people telling us online around being aware that ChatGPT is not your content creator. But I just don’t think that this message is quite sunk in just yet, because it has still come to the forefront in a lot of conversations.

So, just revisiting on an experience I had recently, where I went to an event discussing different things around marketing, around AI in particular. It was very interesting. It was great to learn how different businesses were using AI tools within their business. And there are some great tools. There are some great ways for us to increase our productivity. And I speak about some of the tools that we use here at Done By Nine, our marketing agency, all the time, that have revolutionised the way that we work and increase our productivity.

Some of those tools, including being able to record your Zoom meetings, provide not only transcripts, but actual actionable items and lists that you can take away from those meetings, and be able to provide them straight to the clients or to be able to provide straight to your team. And we use an internal system called ClickUp. Now, ClickUp is a task management system. And what that can do is that can take all the tasks that we have for certain clients and be able to write summaries about where they’re all sitting at. So we’re able to give our clients fantastic summaries of where their projects are kind of sitting at any given time.

But then at this discussion, there was also a lot of talk around the reliance on being able to use AI tools, specifically ChatGPT, for content creation. And it still blows my mind that it is still heavily relied on to use ChatGPT to be able to write and produce blog posts that businesses and brands will then confidently put on their website, or put on their social media, or put on their LinkedIn, as something that they have written about their product and service to try and encourage people to use their business.

I see it as so risky in terms of your brand voice, your brand reputation, and just not being able to truly connect with your audience. So I’m pretty positive that most of us now can tell whether something has been AI-generated versus what has been created by an expert, an actual expert with an authoritative voice who knows what they’re talking about.

So that’s what I wanted to discuss today, using ChatGPT for content creation, because I don’t want you to sit here and think, A, that I’m bagging on the people that are still using ChatGPT for writing blog posts, because I’m not. And I think it just comes down to education, around that they just don’t truly understand that there are different ways to use ChatGPT to enhance your content creation. And that’s something we’re going to have a look at today.

But first, I just wanted to rewind just a little bit as to why we don’t use tools like ChatGPT to write our blog posts for us. And a great reminder of this is what has just finished, kind of still rolling out at the time of recording, the Google spam update, which is their latest massive update that they have released. Google estimates that through this update and its prior efforts, they will be able to reduce low-quality and unoriginal content across the web by 40%. Google has told us, and we’ve read this, that ranking changes will directly address low-quality AI-generated content that’s designed to attract clicks, but that doesn’t add much original value.

That is what this Google spam update has been focusing on. So that in itself is a massive wake-up call to all of us who are potentially using ChatGPT to write your content. Google knows. All these big companies know. And we as humans, we know when we see it on LinkedIn. As users of platforms, we can see what has been carefully crafted and thought about from a business or a person, versus what was chucked into ChatGPT: I don’t know what to post today, can you get me a good LinkedIn post? We can tell the difference.

So I think what we need to do is we need to take Google’s latest spam update, and we need to rethink how we are producing content. How are we using ChatGPT and these AI-driven tools to help us produce content, instead of go to ChatGPT with an idea, copy and paste what it spits out, chuck it on your website, and hope that people are going to read it, that people are going to connect with that content, and that people are going to actually then do business with you or your product and service, and that Google isn’t going to look at your website and go, well, that’s just full of shit, so we won’t rank it on search engines?

So we need to explore that balance between utilising ChatGPT for content creation and ensuring that your content will remain authentic and engaging for your audience, because there are so many different limitations of ChatGPT within content creation. It is great for certain things and it is terrible for others. It’s great at generating ideas, but it lacks things like the nuanced understanding of your specific audience and your specific brand voice, that you’ve taken a lot of time and effort to craft over the years, and you don’t want to just throw that away because it’s a quick and easy solution to be able to get some content out nice and fast.

So great content shouldn’t be reproduced easily and fast. It needs to have thought put into it. It needs time put into it, and we need to be able to get that across to our audience. So what I’m trying to say is there are some right ways that we can use ChatGPT, and there are definitely some wrong ways we can use ChatGPT as well.

So let’s go through this in a process, and I’m going to share with you some of the right ways of how you could be using ChatGPT to help enhance your blog or your content creation process right now. And part of the strategy that we’re going to talk about here is also part of the strategy that I use to even produce some of our content, produce some of these podcasts.

So firstly, using ChatGPT as your research buddy. So essentially, I get it that trying to sit down to an empty blank screen, trying to figure out what type of content am I going to come up with today, that can be really tough. I was at a conference in San Diego about a month ago, and we heard a lot of talks around AI, how to use AI in content creation. One of those main things that kind of came across is when you’re using ChatGPT for content creation or any type of productivity, try and speak to ChatGPT as you would a human, as you would a research buddy.

So try and build up those ideas. Ask it to come back and do some research, search the web, try and find articles that I can use to learn more about this particular subject, to help give us more credibility and things like that. Talk to it in a conversational language, and help it to come up with that brainstorm and help do that research. Ask it questions about what your customers or your clients may be asking about a particular product or service that you offer.

Try and help it brainstorm. It’s not going to have the answers, but it’s going to list out different options that you can have a look at and go, actually, that in itself is a fantastic idea. So I’m going to take that. I’m going to be able to turn that into a piece of content. And then you can start using that as the brainstorm.

Then you should always write the first draft. I’ve said it. That’s it. That’s the main thing I want you to get away from today’s podcast. Use ChatGPT as a source of brainstorming and researching across the web. But you need to write the first draft. You can use ChatGPT for ideas on how to format your blog or your content, to format your LinkedIn post or to format things. But always, you should be the one writing that first draft.

And then once you get that first draft, then you can come back to ChatGPT. And I think this is where a lot of brands and people go wrong, is that they think that ChatGPT is going to magically be the silver bullet that’s going to write them this incredible piece of content that is exactly for their customer or their customer’s situation at any given time. It’s just not going to do that.

You are going to write that first draft. And then what you do is you go back to ChatGPT, and you take your first draft and you ask it for editorial advice. Literally go in and say, can you look at my piece of content that I’ve created? Help me format it in a better way that is easier for readers to read on my blog, or for notes for recording my upcoming video. Use it as an editor to be able to help you format your first draft into something that is much more easier to read.

Make sure that you tell ChatGPT very clearly that you want the content to remain as you’ve written it, but you’re just looking for formatting help. You don’t want ChatGPT to go off on this massive tangent and come back with all these different ideas about how you could write things. Make sure it’s still in your voice, but it’s just formatted in a slightly different way.

And then literally ask ChatGPT for any suggestions that it has for improvement. Are there any inaccuracies that it can spot? Are there any spelling mistakes? Is there any better ways that you could write some sentences to make it clearer? Are you missing some key parts to your article that you should be including, like a call to action, or proper keyword usage for a particular keyword? Literally tell AI, this is the keyword, this is the brand, this is the topic, this is the audience I’m writing for. Tell me, where am I going wrong? What suggestions do you have for me to be able to improve this piece of content? But always provide it with the first draft which you have written.

And if you can follow this kind of format of using AI to help with the brainstorming, getting you off that blank page, getting you moving and getting you inspiration to be able to create content to solve some of your customers’ problems, which will then help you get off that blank page and be able to help you write that first draft, then taking that first draft, giving it back to ChatGPT, asking it to be the editor, asking it to help you spot what mistakes, what inaccuracies you’ve got within that article, you’re always going to be able to get much better content that is still written in your voice, written for your customers, written for your audience.

But it’s going to be formatted in a way that’s going to be easier for them to be able to read. It’s going to make sure that there’s no inaccuracies in there, that you’re not saying something that is completely false or untrue. And it’s going to be able to help you to create better content.

So look, I just don’t want this to come across as though I am shitting on that person that has made a comment around how they use AI for content creation. Because it’s not what I want from this podcast. What I want is for those that are still using that easy option of going to ChatGPT saying, I need a blog, this is my product and service, can you write me one? I just want you to stop and to rethink about how we can use the tool for better. And I hope that the people in that room, or the people listening to this podcast, can start to rethink about how we could potentially be using this tool better.

ChatGPT, powerful tool. It’s great for content creation, but it is not that one-stop solution. And it’s crucial that we strike this right balance between leveraging the AI technology, but also maintaining the authenticity and the uniqueness of our content. Remembering that as a research buddy and a brainstorm buddy, as an editor, ChatGPT is awesome, but the heart and soul of your content needs to come from you. You’ve got the expertise, you’ve got the authority, you’ve got the trust in your audience and your customers, and you do not want to lose that.

So here’s your action plan. Step one, we want to use ChatGPT, because it’s a great tool. We want to use it for idea generation. We want to use it for research. The main thing we want it for here is to take you from a blank page to at least having some content and some ideas that you can start to build your content from. We’re not all writers, but we can use ChatGPT to give us that right step so that you can start writing.

But step two, always write your first draft yourself. Always make sure that it reflects your voice, who you are, and your brand’s voice, and it reflects your audience’s needs and their pain points and their wants. We’ve got to make sure we get that bit right. You write the first draft.

Step three, then we can go back to ChatGPT. Use it for an editor. Refine your draft. Check for inaccuracies. Format it for better readability. Make it turn from a piece of content that you’ve written into a piece of incredible content that is going to be read, hopefully, by hundreds and thousands of customers.

And so by following those steps, you can honestly start to create content that’s not only going to resonate with an audience, but it is, hopefully, then going to be able to stand out in this ever-crowded digital space, which is getting more and more cluttered with poorly written, AI-driven content. But hopefully, Google’s spam update is going to remove a lot of that. So how is your story, how is your article going to be able to come through that clutter and make sure it doesn’t get caught up in that spam update? Don’t let AI write your story for you. Just use it to enhance the incredible story that you have to tell, and your incredible expertise in a particular product and service.

And hopefully, that gives you a better framework of how you can use ChatGPT for your content creation, whether you’re new to ChatGPT or whether you’ve been using it for ages. This is something that I’ve been testing for a while, and it works really well. Especially having it come in as an editor works really well, just to help with being able to format things in a much better, easy-to-read type of scenario.

And again, thank you so much for joining me on another episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast. Hopefully, it’s given you a little bit of inspiration to go and open up a blank document and hopefully create some content that’s actually going to resonate with your audience, and using AI to just make it that little bit easier.

If you do need any assistance and anything like that around your marketing strategy, that’s what me and my team do best. I run an agency called Done By Nine. You can find us at donebynine.com. On our website, you can find all our other articles and blogs and podcasts that we’ve created over the years. But also, if you do need to sit down and actually think about your content strategy, think about how you could be using these tools in a more effective way, that is exactly what we do with our clients. So feel free to get in touch at donebynine.com. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast.