There’s understandably a lot of discussion around ChatGPT and similar AI tools at the moment, and how they can create amazing content without needing a writer. While they are great in a lot of ways, if you just ask ChatGPT to “create a blog post about...”, you won’t get the best from it.
For starters, even the paid version of ChatGPT is restricted by the number of words it will put into a post, which means that you’ll pretty much always end up with less than 1000 words in your post. Asking it to create a blog post with 6000 words won’t make it create that number of words in one go. You can ask it to create a blog post outline, and then ask it to create each section separately, which can make for better results, but it doesn’t always.
Working with ChatGPT in this way – just asking it to create a blog post with a certain title – probably won’t give you a really strong piece when you’re finished either. It doesn’t have the ability to add real life human experience to the post – even though it tries, it always seems to miss the mark to me. You see, it is only as good as the information it has access to, it can’t provide true emotions and real experience to your post. I’ve tried to feed things like case studies into it, but it can’t really create a solid piece without editing from your writer, especially if you want to add certain quotes and so on.
Getting it to write in your brand tone of voice can be a bit of a challenge too. You can tell it to use a chatty tone, or to be informal, but I’ve found if you ask for that, it churns out pretty cheesy stuff a lot of the time. The way to get better output is to “feed it” – that is, to copy and paste content, or tell it to read a page of your website. That’s fine if you’ve already established your brand tone of voice, but if your website is new, or you haven’t focused on creating blog content before, then it is unlikely to write the type of content you want, to start with at least.
In addition to all of this, since ChatGPT doesn’t have access to current information, it can’t include relevant research, and can’t talk about the most recent news events unless you feed it pages manually. As I write this post in March 2024, ChatGPT only has access to information from before January 2022. You can get around that, of course, by feeding it pages that are already published, but if you’re looking to create a more balanced piece of content, you have to give it a lot of information before it starts writing. Depending on what you want the piece to be about, you might ask it to leave spaces for you to add links to research and so on, but that takes extra time too.
Finally, when you start creating a lot of content from ChatGPT, it is easy to spot patterns in the language it uses. I’ve been asked to use it at scale, and I did so for different companies for around six months solidly, and honestly, without editing, ChatGPT content is all pretty similar. I saw various iterations of “in the world of…” or “in the realm of” for introductory paragraphs, which gets really boring.
I don't hate ChatGPT...
... I just think it has to be used really carefully. I find that ChatGPT is a good starting point for creating blog posts for industries and subjects that I know little about; but once those posts are generated, I needed to edit them heavily so that the tone really reflects the brand voice and the wording isn’t too repetitive. Google prefers high quality content, that is written for your customers, and that demonstrates your expertise, your authority, and trust (E-A-T).
The reason that I’m really careful about the way in which I use ChatGPT when I’m working is that updates from Google are indicating that high quality content is going to be rewarded when it comes to SEO. Low quality, 100% AI generated content is likely to be marked as spam, and websites that feature a lot of it are likely to be penalised – which means your website won’t feature as highly on Google results pages. That, in turn, means customers are less likely to see your website, and ultimately, you see a drop in revenue. That certainly isn’t what you want!
keep in mind that ChatGPT is a tool
So, with all that in mind, how do I use AI to help me to support your business? Well, it depends, since I can use ChatGPT to create content for you, IF that is what you want. However, I see ChatGPT as a tool, rather than a replacement for a great writer.
If I’m creating a content plan for you, for example, then the first thing I’ll do is ask ChatGPT to create a plan. But then I’ll move on and use various other SEO tools to check on keywords, search volume, look at other relevant H2 examples, and so on. I’ll also consider your target customers, and the aims and goals of your business – these tools can’t do this on their own. ChatGPT content plans are simply a place to start, and I’d never simply provide a plan that was 100% ChatGPT generated.
In terms of writing blog posts, I’d also never send you content that was created by ChatGPT, unless we’ve discussed and negotiated that as part of your package. In some cases – particularly if I’ve only just started working with your industry – then I might ask ChatGPT to create a blog post outline, with relevant headings. But I’m unlikely to use this exactly as it is created; I’d use it to give me a head start.
Sometimes, when I’ve finished writing, or I’m part way through the post and I can’t figure out what is missing from it (that happens from time to time, I’m human!) I might paste the post into ChatGPT and ask it to suggest sections or topics that I could include. This helps me to round out the content, and ensures that I can create the best possible post for you.
Is ChatGPT going to put me out of a job?
I’ve been asked if I fear for my job because of AI and the way it could take over. My answer is always no, because the AI is only as good as what the human is asking of it. For now, I’ll keep using it as I’ve talked about here – as a tool that can help me to create even better content for my clients than I already do – but in my opinion, we’re a long way from it taking over from strong writers.
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