The rise of interest in ChatGPT and other AI language tools has been exponential. Suddenly, this ground breaking technology is available to the public, for free – to do with as they wish. However, alongside the concerns that it allows students to cheat in exams, or is even leading to the death of the copywriter, comes the opportunity to streamline processes and approach the art of copywriting differently.

ChatGPT should not replace your copywriter. The blog and social media posts it produces still require polish and a copywriter’s eye. It isn’t able to write to your brand’s exact tone of voice, and even when we tried to get it to write a ‘fun and light-hearted’ LinkedIn post, the results were neither particularly fun nor light-hearted. For content that doesn’t read like it’s been written with ChatGPT, you’ll have to use a human.

Similarly, the training data of the current version of ChatGPT cuts off in 2021, so the tool has no knowledge of events or trends beyond that year. Although this may well change with further updates and developments, as well as the other AI language models like Bard AI from Google and Bing AI from Microsoft, if you want to comment on contemporary events or trends, you’ll need to do the legwork yourself.

However, as a tool for inspiration, ChatGPT and AI language models are a game-changer for copywriters. Just like our design team with Transform Digital have been using AI art tools like Midjourney as inspiration for their illustrations, so our content writing team has been investigating how we can use ChatGPT in our day-to-day lives.

Here’s what we found out:

We asked ChatGPT

What better place to start than the horse’s mouth? We asked ChatGPT what it can do for content marketers. What content marketers can do for ChatGPT, we’d rather not ask…

ChatGPT can assist with:

• Content creation, in generating content ideas and writing content for social, blogs, and emails.

• Customer service via 24/7 chatbot support.

• Audience research and identifying audience preferences.

• Search Engine Optimisation, through suggesting relevant key words.

• Creating personalised content for their target audience, by tailoring messages to demographics.

• Social media marketing, such as content scheduling, post creation, and engagement monitoring.

That’s quite a list. The ability to automate your marketing sounds like a dream, right?

In the drop back to reality, however, you need to ensure that your ChatGPT prompts are clear and precise. I asked ChatGPT to write a LinkedIn post for a digital marketing agency, and this is what it said:

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It does the job, it sounds like a human – but it’s too generic. These are the services that any reputable digital marketing agency will offer. But here’s what I received when I tweaked the brief to ‘Write a LinkedIn post for a digital marketing agency, about why it’s important for clients to invest in their social media platforms’:

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It’s specific and tailored in-line with the brief. Although the tone of voice is not right for Transform, ChatGPT has offered a useful base template that a Content Writer or Marketing Executive can build on. Which is why we suggest…

Using ChatGPT for inspiration

You shouldn’t rely on AI language models to completely automate your job. I’ve not yet received a piece of content from ChatGPT that hasn’t needed to be worked on. But asking it for a list of ideas, like ‘blog post ideas for a digital marketing agency’, is useful as a springboard from which to work.

Although these ideas are the result of what ChatGPT has learned from its training material (books, conversations, and other pieces of content), which means that they may not be totally original, they provide a decent starting point. Which, in turn, is better than staring at a blank screen…

Unless ChatGPT decides to ‘hallucinate’ outputs or make up facts. Which it can do.

Using ChatGPT for SEO suggestions

There is a host of SEO tools, like SEMrush and Ahrefs, that help to optimise your content for search engines. However, if you have a generic content idea but still need to hone it, ChatGPT is ideal for helping you do so. Although it doesn’t – and can’t, yet – give contemporary data on the viability of each keyword, look at how it has expanded ‘how to use InDesign’ to ‘InDesign best practices’, ‘InDesign layout ideas’, and ‘InDesign workflow’.

Using ChatGPT for the tasks you don’t want to do

There will always be tasks that you don’t want to do. Whether that’s due to brain fog, burn out, or the intimidating nature of the task itself, it can be difficult to get into the right mindset to tackle it. By using ChatGPT to get over the first hurdle, it will be easier to build upon the inspiration it offers and reduce the mental load.

This can be especially useful for scary tasks that you don’t want to confront: an email pushing back on a client or co-worker, for example, or a complaint. If you’re unsure how to phrase it, AI tools can help you save time and mental energy.

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If you’re interested in using ChatGPT for your content marketing requirements, don’t expect it to replace your content writers. As with any tool, it’s only as useful as the person operating it. But, by embracing the technology and learning how to use it, you can streamline the content creation process and redirect your efforts to where they are most needed.