As conversations continue around ChatGPT, you may wonder why I haven’t piped in sooner. Here’s the thing, I prefer to observe and educate myself before speaking up about something.
So, what are my thoughts?
Well, here goes.
Like all things in life, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, whether used for copywriting, recruitment, or in the medical arena, all have their pros and cons. Nevertheless, they’re a part of our lives, and it’s time to accept that AI is here to stay.
Before there was ChatGPT, other writing assistance tools already existed; only they didn’t manage to create the buzz that ChatGPT has.
That being said, if, as a business, you are considering using ChatGPT for your content marketing, then here are a few things for you to consider.
The pros, cons and limitations of ChatGPT
Before you make any drastic decisions about how you approach the written word and the tools and resources you use for copywriting, I recommend you take a moment to consider the following points.
Chat GPT limitations
When you sign up for ChatGPT, the first message you see is a notification highlighting the following limitations.
It may occasionally generate incorrect information.
May, occasionally, produce harmful instructions or biased content.
Limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021.
The good news is that you are forewarned of what to expect from the beginning. The bad news is that if you are solely going to rely on the content generated by ChatGPT without spending time to fact-check and research yourself, you’ll likely be giving your readers out-of-date, incorrect information.
Here’s an example - I recently wrote an article on the end-of-financial year (EOFY) 2023 legal salary trends. As expected, I had to do a fair bit of research and digging to provide accurate information; this meant looking at the most recent verified reports. If I, or the client, solely relied on the AI tool, the information provided to the readers would likely be out-of-date and incorrect.
Ok, so that’s a quick look at the limitations. Now here’s a quick rundown of the pros and cons based on observations, self-testing, and external learnings, including client experiences who have given it a shot.
The pros of ChatGPT and AI copywriting
Let’s begin with the good stuff!
Super quick content generation saves ample time otherwise spent writing.
It is a great tool to generate ideas if you struggle with what points to write about for a topic.
You can create a quick foundation on a topic to help build from and fill in the barebones with accurate, detailed information that sits with your brand’s tone of voice.
For those that are tight on budget or time and want a quick fix, it’s good to have around.
But for now, while acknowledging that it’s still early days, the pros end here.
The cons of ChatGPT and AI copywriting
Now it’s time to get real and face the cons!
It lacks human emotion (empathy) and personalisation to make the reader feel, connect, and act.
It lacks a conversational element, which is vital to connect the reader to the content and your business.
While it churns out the words, there is no element of storytelling to generate engagement. The copy provided is purely a short factual rundown.
Ai crawls through the internet, pulling together what is already there without deep diving into research. Hence, not only will the information be inaccurate, but it means you must invest the time to do the research yourself.
Touching on the point above, you risk providing readers with out-of-date and incorrect information.
There are several spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors that you will need to spend time proofing and editing or risk putting out content full of errors.
Ai will not sit down with you to understand your business, its audiences, its mission and values, and what you wish to achieve through your content marketing.
If you’re in a highly regulated industry, such as medicine and healthcare, there are guidelines that you must follow when it comes to marketing and advertising. Thus, when generating the copy, tools like ChatGPT do not take this into account and review the AHPRA guidelines, for instance.
As mentioned earlier, it only provides the bare bones. The rest you need to spend time working on.
It lacks a tone of voice (TOV). By this, I mean the tone you use to communicate with your audience - reflecting your brand and its values. In fact, the current TOV it carries is that of a chatbot.
Incorrect spellings - based on how we write words in different countries. For example, in Australia, we use ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ in some words.
ChatGPT does not write with Google and SEO in mind. In turn, the copy lacks key components such as keywords and backlinks.
AI does not know the inner workings of your business, its values, and its missions to draw them into the copy.
A common downside that has appeared a number of times – is plagiarism.
It lacks marketing psychology elements such as power words and call-to-actions.
It lacks human work experience and insider knowledge that only you know and can express.
Most importantly, you’ll spend more time doing double the work. First by feeding a detailed enough brief to ChatGPT to generate copy that is close enough to what you want to talk about and then reworking the content to
- suit your brand tone of voice,
- bring in the conversational human elements to make it relatable,
- create the right structure,
- research to ensure information is correct and add relevant data,
- add in your SEO elements,
- personalise it to suit your brand and bring in insider know-how, and,
- finally, proof and edit.
Hopefully, these points will help you in your decision-making processes when considering the use of AI tools for copywriting and content marketing.
In the meantime, I might have a solution for you.
A copywriting solution to save time and budget
There’s no denying that AI is only going to evolve and improve with time. But at the same time, it will never be able to have the one thing we humans have – EMPATHY.
In the meantime, the positive is that we can embrace and use such tools to support our work and become more efficient.
So, here’s a simple solution for you - work with a copywriter using ChatGPT to reduce writing time, thus saving money, and provide your audience with accurate, on-brand, engaging copy that will drive desired actions and meet SEO requirements.
Interested? Contact me today to discuss and get a quote today!