A little look into Chat GPT and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create marketing content for your business
For the first time in my seven years in business, I co-wrote a blog post - this one. I worked with a free-to-use online artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Chat GPT. You’ve probably heard of it or one of its predecessors - Jasper (you know those ads about a tool writing content for you 😅). Before I get to why I say ‘co-wrote’, let me give you a little rundown on this particular tool and how it could be relevant to your business.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a language generation model developed by OpenAI - it can write things for you super quickly using what it ‘knows’ and ‘learns’ from public information and from what is programmed into it. This model is currently capable of generating human-like text in a variety of languages, across a number or formats (think blogs, social media posts, articles, websites, poems and more). At the moment it’s free to use so it’s a great time to test it but be mindful that being free, of course they are retaining everything you put into it.
What are the advantages of using AI like ChatGPT to write your content or help your customers?
One of the great things about ChatGPT is its ability to generate text that actually sounds like it was written by a person - conversational and with some nuance. This makes it great for use in chatbots, virtual assistants and other applications where an understanding of a more ‘natural’ way of speaking can be helpful. Also where you might not want your customers to realise they are talking with an artificial help desk.
ChatGPT currently offers over 175 billion parameters, making it one of the largest models currently in existence. This allows it to understand complex requests and generate text with a higher level of nuance than most similar programs.
It also has the ability to fine-tune on specific tasks and domains. This means that it can be trained to generate text in a specific style or on a specific topic, making it more accurate and relevant for some use cases.
I’m a small business owner, how can AI like this help me?
There are a lot of ways that you can incorporate AI or something like ChatGPT into your small business. Here are a few examples:
AI can help you create more accurate content by providing an editing and proofreading function. Language models like this can be fine-tuned for specific writing styles and can help identify grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. This can save you time and embarrassment.
As a small business owner, you will be constantly looking for ways to improve your operations and boost your bottom line. One area where something like ChatGPT or AI can make a big impact is in your customer service and in your content creation.
If you could get back the time you spend responding to frequent queries or creating marketing content or product/services specs, then it would certainly be a worthwhile addition to your operations. Chatbots can be programmed to give quite personalised responses, and can be trained to understand your business’ specific product range or service information. They also run 24/7, which frees you up and allows greater accessibility for your customers.
If you have a small team, adding AI into the mix can be an extra set of hands
If you get it right…
What are some of the drawbacks of using AI like ChatGPT to write content or help customers?
I know I just painted a pretty picture, but it’s important for you to educate yourself further and to really think about implementing a tool/s like this into your business. You must remain customer-focused, so be sure you are going to get it right before launching. These language models are super smart and have access to an incredibly huge amount of information but they are not perfect. Here are some drawbacks:
Significantly ChatGPT can only reference information up to 2021 at the moment so keep that in mind when it’s doing research for you.
You don’t know where the information is being drawn from so you cannot be sure it’s accurate or that it’s not plagiarised.
The content, whilst nuanced, can still be subject to biases and errors. You must review any content generated with that in mind - particularly when dealing with important facts and figures or complex ideas.
People - your customers - are also nuanced and, despite your best efforts, you may not be able to create the perfect experience for them. You’ll have to prepare contingencies for those situations.
It won’t yet help you to create ‘personality’ so if you’re looking for more descriptive, flowery or fun language then you’ll definitely still need a copywriter. On that note, you can run the risk of sounding the same as everyone else as more and more people use this tech.
Further to that point, I’ve noticed while testing it that you can get quite similar responses to topics that are different or angles that are different, but the responses come back very similar and very ‘flat’.
In conclusion I’ll say it’s hard to stop talking about this technology as it’s advancing so quickly, so instead of a conclusion it’s more of a watch this space. I think ChatGPT offers some fabulous opportunities right now and will be sure to do even more into the future. Don’t ignore this, it’s worth looking into and perhaps finding the right person to help you implement some AI into your business. Keep in mind that this is just one option and I’m using it as an example because it’s free so you can tinker with it and see what you think.
Now let’s circle back to the start where I said I co-wrote this blog post. How? I used ChatGPT to form a base - to do the research part of the article and then I fact-checked, removed irrelevant sections, and revised it into my style of writing, which is more conversational. I also put the information into context for you - my audience.
I estimate it halved my usual writing time so I’m calling it worthwhile BUT I also have the skills and experience to adapt and change what the machine gave me.
So what do you think? Was this article helpful and did it sound like me? I’d love to know your thoughts in a comment, or head over to my social media to pick up the conversation or DM me.
❤️ Hi I’m Erika ✌️ I’m a marketing specialist with a BA in Media and Comms, Masters of Marketing, Certificate in CX (Customer Experience) and over 25 years experience. I’m well placed to help you navigate the sometimes overwhelming world of marketing and social media. I work with you one on one or create fun and action-oriented workshops and webinars for groups, organisations and businesses. Book a free discovery call with me or simply email me to get the conversation started.
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