ChatGPT is all the rage nowadays, as are other AI engines such as Google’s Bard. There are a lot of general posts about how to use ChatGPT for this or that, but in this post I want to focus on using ChatGPT for a common marketing / SEO task: creating a blog post. Or, at least creating a “rough draft” of a post.
First and foremost, you need to conceptualize what ChatGPT is. How do you think about it? Is it a tool? Is it the singularity? Is it Genesys going to take over our world? Well, at least not yet. I like to think of ChatGPT as a “virtual assistant,” that is like a junior-level marketer and content creator that I’ve hired to help me with my job. Not to replace me at my job – but to help me with my job. And, like any junior-level marketer, it needs supervision. You can’t just let it do your entire job, 100%. Rather you need to “prompt” it, that is give it instructions and then work with it (a little back and forth) to get it to be more in tune with what you want or need.
ChatGPT is Your Personal Virtual (Marketing) Assistant
So think of ChatGPT / Bard as your personal virtual assistant.
Step #1. Identify a blog purpose and blog topic. In my world, blogs can be used for a few things. One big one is SEO / search engine optimization – ranking high on a Google search. Another one is for social media. Creating interesting content in blog format that you can link to / summarize on your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. And still a third is interesting content for your own email newsletter or other form of “supportive” content to help out your target customers and stay top of mind.
Step #2. Let’s take the example of a LinkedIn article / post on “Five Reasons Your Boss Should Send You to Industry Conferences in Social Media.” So we have a topic, and we have a purpose (social media), and we even have a platform (LinkedIn). What we’re using ChatGPT then is to create a “rough draft” that we can post as a LinkedIn article on why bosses should send their marketers to industry conferences.
Step #3. Write your base prompt. Just as with a virtual assistant, you need to give ChatGPT instructions. These are short, informative steps that it should take. For example:
Please write a 500 word post suitable for a LinkedIn article on the topic of “five reasons why your boss should send you to industry conferences in social media.” Use a formal but friendly tone suitable for professional marketers and include a few links to industry conferences in social media. Explain the ROI that comes from investing in employees’ knowledge and training as well as staying up-to-date with industry trends.
Step #4. Let ChatGPT write your first draft and then review its work. ChatGPT is “conversational,” which means you are carrying on a conversation with the AI “as if” it were a personal assistant. Thus, you can ask it to revise its work. For example, you can then re-prompt it by saying, “Rewrite this post but include some information on how real-world conferences have value after the Pandemic’s end” or “Rewrite this post using a few examples that are from B2B (business-to-business) industries.” You can also prompt it by saying, write a short, engagine headline for this post designed to attract the attention of LinkedIn readers.”
Step #5. Check ChatGPT’s work and publish. ChatGPT is famous for “hallucinations,” that is creating citations to things that don’t exist. Thus do some fact-checking and perhaps some of your own work. Revise the post as needed so that its tone and content fits your industry.
In sum, you can use ChatGPT as a fast, virtual assistant to write blog posts for Internet marketing, such as SEO, social media, and supportive content for your existing clients.
