Everybody is talking about it. It’s easy to think that this AI tool is the silver bullet, the game changer. The problem is that sustainable content creation is tough. And secretly we all desperately want to be saved. 🙂
But is ChatGPT our content creating saviour? Is it going to enable us to spread our digital marketing wings with confidence and see some success?
Pop a panadol and read on.
Powerful idea generation
ChatGPT is great at generating ideas. No doubt. At the simplests of prompts you can create tens of ideas for posts and articles. And if you craft your prompt with the right context and specificity, the results can be quite wonderful.
But the truth is, ideas for articles have always been readily available on SEO platforms such as SEMRush and AHREFS. And the topic ideas that come from those platforms are based on very specific historical keyword searches, the volume of which is readily viewable. So does ChatGPT add much more value in terms of ideation? I can’t see it.
If you’ve been engaging a good marketing agency, you already have access to lots of good and relevant ideas. There was never a shortage of ideas on the internet. As far as idea generation goes, ChatGPT is not really solving a new problem.
You might need a second panadol for the next bit.
Exacerbating sameness & a noisier internet
Before ChatGPT, the abundance of ideas had already created a situation in which similar businesses were creating the same types of articles and posts. They may not have been written by an AI, but the content was generally the same. No new perspectives, no unique information.
Take accountants for example. “How to do estate planning?” is a topic that hundreds of Australian accountants have already published on their blogs. And these are just the ones that HAVE had the resources to compose those articles.
Being a free service, ChatGPT will only now remove the barrier to entry (resources) and enable hundreds more accountants to recreate that very same article (albeit with minor changes as to not be plagiaristic).
Simply put: there’s going to be more of the same noise!
On top of that, the generated content will require heavy editing and fact-checking. Especially if the stakes are high and you are delivering content as an expert in your field. Because AI doesn’t always tell the objective truth. For example, in researching the best networking groups to join in Melbourne, the AI missed out some of my favourite organisations and was incapable of anything more than a surface level comparison. Never mind that it was relatively unhelpful, it had huge blindspots that would adversely impact decision making. It was also convinced that it had attended 2 different networking groups in the past! Doh!
So while it may help businesses fill blog pages, ChatGPT is not going to suddenly transform the performance of their marketing assets. As far as silver bullets go, ChatGPT is more of a North Korean dud. A lot of sizzle but no bang.
Proof: confessions of a dangerous mind
Don’t just take my word for it – I asked two AI programs whether they were ready to transform businesses.
This is what ChatGPT admitted:
This is the clear conclusion from Playground:
While it’s early days yet, I believe that brands that pivot from using copywriters and instead lean heavily on ChatGPT for content creation are not going to get better results in terms of marketing performance. Not yet.
The real problem that needs solving: Winning Trust
Trust building does not happen via information rich articles. Especially since everyone is touting the same information.
There comes a point in the buyer journey where users are comparing service providers and are looking beyond their mere expertise. They are searching for the answer to this question: which brand can I trust the most?
Users don’t trust a brand because of what it says, but because of what it has done. Brand hiSTORY. Brand stories is what best facilitates trust. Whether it’s testimonials or case studies, content that tells a story builds trust. And storytelling case studies is not something AI can do. Yet.
Caveat: How are the content generating AI platforms amazing?
AI is nothing short of mind-blowing. But truthfully, I’m just scratching the surface and not qualified or capable to appreciate the full breadth of its capability. The list of current applications is impressive, long and diverse:
- completing code in various languages
- calculating time complexity
- recipe creation
- translation
- analogy generator
- grammar correction
- and so much more…
Here are some of the wonderful immediate applications that I can comment on.
Procrastination. AI is a LOT of fun. I especially love the text generators. My favourite thing to do is to start a story with Playground and see how they expand on it. Wonderful, enriching surprises. Most entertaining and a possible solution to writer’s block?
Basic Research. I needed some information on cancers – which were the most survivable and what were the survival rates and reasons behind them. The AI saved me lots of painstaking Googling and compiling. It delivered the required information accurately and at the speed of typing. As long as I’m not writing an authoritative article on whatever I am researching, it does a brilliant job of educating me on the basics.
Personal Assistant. I needed some help picking frames for my glasses. Across a 4 prompt conversation, the AI gave me fashion advice that was suited to my skin tone, compared trends across two countries of choice, and social objectives. As a fashion-blind person, it made a compelling argument that I would be confident to make a purchase decision on. Hologram assistants are not too far away, surely.
Image Generation. I love some of the AI art that’s being generated (like the one at the top of this section plus the featured image on this page). While to get the best results, a lot of editing and prompting is required, current AI tools are already yielding incredible results.
The following conclusions was generated by AI based on the article above
ChatGPT: AI like ChatGPT has its limitations in terms of digital marketing. It is great at generating ideas but the same topics have been discussed repeatedly by many businesses. ChatGPT may only add to the sameness and noise of content creation and require heavy editing and fact-checking, which can impact its reliability. Building trust with users is crucial in the buyer’s journey and cannot be achieved through information-rich articles. Storytelling and case studies are crucial in building trust and is something AI has yet to master. AI is more effective in applications like procrastination and basic research, but its impact on marketing performance is limited.
Playground: So while it’s not yet the answer to your digital marketing problems, it is a super helpful tool to have when you need it.
Take a third panadol and consider bringing your ideas to life with AI if you think it can help. But if you’re looking to differentiate your brand and build trust, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
