ChatGPT for Content Creation – Curse Or Blessing?

Let me start with a little story how I came to learn and master ChatGPT for content creation:

It was already past dinner time, and here I was, staring at my blank screen, feeling the pressure. Skipping a post? Did that yesterday.

Now, I needed something, anything, to post today. Desperately scrolling for a shred of inspiration felt like trying to find a lost sock in the laundry mountain of doom.

Been there? I sure have. I started my journey as an entrepreneur thinking social media marketing was my free and easy ticket to make my content and ideas visible and been seen by all the gorgeous ladies that are waiting for me to show up.

Spoiler: it’s not that simple. The daily grind to churn out content was real – but ChatGPT popped up. Looking for ways to make the execution of my marketing strategy easier, I made my first steps.

At first, using it felt like fumbling in the dark—copy, paste, cringe, repeat. But hey, who said learning to leverage AI for your business would be graceful? If you’re eyeing ChatGPT, wondering if it might just be your content creation sidekick, you’re in the right spot. Let’s dive into making it work for you, minus the cringe. Start mastering ChatGPT for content creation today!

Love it or hate it, ChatGPT and other AI tools have become omnipresent and widespread in content creation. While this is just one of the many ways small business owners and online entrepreneurs can utilize AI, it’s a prevalent use case.

But the question is: Should you use ChatGPT for content creation?

The accessibility of this technology is still new, and many of us have yet to fully grasp its potential, as well as its downsides. We often rely on our own experiences, the knowledge gained through following advice (and using prompts without fully understanding how they work), and the audience’s response to the output we generate.

Denial or fear won’t shield us from the rise of AI. It’s natural to feel concerned about potential implications, misuse, and job displacement. However, human authenticity and interaction will not disappear, and we must be prepared to adapt. While some jobs may be replaced in the long run, we can grow into this new area and create, develop, and offer something that AI will never be able to replace.

Automated content will soon become monotonous, and businesses that understand the interplay between the human touch and leveraging technology to their advantage will shine. While AI, especially ChatGPT, is already being used—sometimes very successfully—in the content creation process, it can also cast a negative light on your business or brand if used incorrectly.

To help you make the most of ChatGPT for content creation and, hopefully, encourage you to learn more about it and enhance productivity and efficiency in your content creation process, I aim to shed light on the hidden or unclear facts about ChatGPT, along with examples of how to improve.

What about your personality. Your writing style? The way you personally love to speak to your audience.

Concerns about losing your “voice” by using ChatGPT for content creation are justified!

And you will come across this problem: people copying the AI generated content as it is. And it sounds awful and is obvious – you don’t want that. Especially if you have used ChatGPT yourself, you will easily spot the content that is created in that way, and it really makes a bad impression!

If you want to go a step further so you may not have to add or edit too much of the output you get, you can choose to give it more information in the form of examples, content to include, your statements, facts, and style you want for this content.

You also can create templates that you ask ChatGPT to fill with information generated or added from you. The possibilities to create content that aligns with your brand are there, but most people don’t use them because they either don’t care, or they have no clue.

Having a partner that helps you make quick drafts or outlines of content you want to create can save you time and effort. If you put in your ideas (and don’t forget the context and additional information) it can serve you with outlining articles, writing first drafts, and generating additional input about a topic you consider.

Example: Let’s say you want to start writing a blog to provide deeper information and help your clients with information they are looking for.

You can use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas, by giving some insights into what the general topics are, you want to cover, your business and brand (like we covered above) and let the AI help you to come up with ideas that are relevant for your target audience.

And if you want it can provide you with a structure (an outline) for your articles as well.

It also can handle tedious or repetitive tasks like changing a word throughout a longer text, finding other/ better expressions for words, order content, format content (table, list etc.) pronouns in a longer text or rewriting / summarizing texts for you.

You can create separate chats for different tasks and have a warmed-up version of ChatGPT (that already has the context for your task) for recurring tasks in your business (for example a chat for creating video scripts, a chat for helping you with blog content, a chat for product development etc.).

Example: We assume you’ve started to write your article, and you are looking for different expressions for a word, you want to include a table with information, find better keywords related to your business – ChatGPT can assist you with all of these tasks more effectively than relying on google or doing it manually.

All of this gives you more time for the strategic aspects of your business, content marketing, or audience analysis – or just free time for yourself (we’re always busy and could use some extra time to refill our cups) because you don’t have to start with a blank slate every day.

And what about the information it provides? Is it really relevant today, can I rely that I am up-to-date? ChatGPT as a LLM (Large Language Model) relies on the data it was trained on.

I don’t want to go deep into what’s behind ChatGPT, but basically its “guesses” its answers based on the data it has been trained on and the context you provide. If you are using the free version of ChatGPT for content creation this means its knowledge ends in 2021. Which might not give you the best output if you want to cover relevant data from today.

Even the model ChatGPT 4o (that comes with the subscription, the paid version of ChatGPT) relies on data that is not up to date (October 2023), it has access to fetch actual relevant data from the web, but you must be very careful and again fact-check and access the data yourself because of the limits and false outputs you sometimes get from it.

Again, thinking of ChatGPT as your assistant, that helps you brainstorming ideas, will ease your process and help you to feel less exhausted.

Use it to help you come up with content ideas around specific topics, applying a different tone or style to content you provide or creating funny memes.

Even if not every idea will suit your needs, you won’t have a problem finding one or two to use for your content. No more “blank” when you desperately need some new ideas.

Don’t forget to ask follow up questions or alter the output by giving alternative instructions.

Discuss your ideas: that is something I love doing! As a solopreneur I don’t have people around all the time to bounce my ideas. Here ChatGPT can be a valuable partner that gives you feedback or adds to your own ideas.

So, another “con” that is also a “pro”, doing research with ChatGPT can be very effective (if you check for relevance and correctness of the sources). I wouldn’t base my exam on the data gathered but it is enough for a quick overview of a topic.

Example: Ask ChatGPT for a summary of recent studies on a specific topic, or to compile a list of key points from various articles about an important theme in your niche. (The results will be better with ChatGPT 4, because it can look up new data by browsing the internet in addition to its training data).

You might let ChatGPT also help you with organizing your thoughts and content. For instance, if you’re writing about “The Future of E-commerce,” you could ask ChatGPT to outline the main areas to cover, such as technological advancements, consumer behavior changes, and regulatory impacts.

This helps in organizing your thoughts and ensuring your content covers all necessary aspects comprehensively. Combine these 2 (research background information about the topic + adding structures or areas to cover) and your content will improve.

I hope you already found some useful information to use ChatGPT effectively. Here are additional “quick tips for ChatGPT” for you:

1. Specify a Persona: “Write as a seasoned financial advisor explaining cryptocurrency to beginners.”
2. Adopt a Tone or Style: “Create a humorous take on common SEO mistakes.”
3. Target Audience Level: “Explain the importance of hydration in layman’s terms for children.”
4. Content Format Request: “Draft a listicle on top productivity apps for 2024.”
5. Use of Specific Examples: “Include examples of successful small businesses in the skincare industry.”
6. Incorporate Keywords: “Focus on keywords ‘sustainable living tips’ throughout the blog post.”
7. Desired Length: “Generate a concise 150-word product description for an eco-friendly water bottle.”
8. Call to Action (CTA): “End with a CTA encouraging readers to sign up for the newsletter.”
9. Comparative Analysis: “Compare traditional marketing to digital marketing, highlighting pros and cons of each.”
10. Creative Storytelling: “Create a short story involving a time-traveling marketer visiting various marketing eras.”

1. Define Your Goal: Start with a clear objective for each content piece to guide ChatGPT’s output.
2. Be Specific in Prompts: Detailed prompts yield more targeted and useful responses.
3. Use Iterative Refinement: Refine prompts based on initial answers to improve accuracy and relevance.
4. Incorporate Brand Voice: Inject your brand’s style and tone into ChatGPT-generated content to maintain consistency.
5. Leverage for Idea Generation: Use ChatGPT to brainstorm content topics, headlines, or angles.
6. Optimize for SEO: Ask ChatGPT for keyword suggestions and to structure content for SEO.
7. Customize Content for Different Platforms: Tailor ChatGPT outputs for specific social media or web platforms.
8. Humanize AI Content: Add personal anecdotes or insights to AI-generated drafts to enhance relatability.
9. Use for Content Repurposing: Transform existing content into new formats with ChatGPT’s help.
10. Regularly Update Content: Utilize ChatGPT to refresh old posts with new information or perspectives.

Can ChatGPT increase your efficiency and help you with creating content? Yes, absolutely. Is it possible to automate content creation with ChatGPT? It is, you are able to let it write all of your captions, articles and other scripts or texts for you – but it is not AT ALL recommendable in its current state!

It can play an important role for you, as a small business owner, because many of you are out there alone, not having the means to hire assistants, yet – so using ChatGPT’s to your advantage to reduce your stress and workload is helpful and effective. A never-sleeping, always friendly and creative buddy that comes in handy for solopreneurs!

We have covered in this article that you will want to keep the control and oversight on the content you put out there, add your personal spark to it, as well as your expertise in your field.

I highly encourage you to explore ChatGPT for yourself, give it a shot, start learning more about it, and to make the best use out of it for your business success and ease of overwhelm with your daily tasks.

You already agree that ChatGPT opens up incredible opportunities for small business owners and content creators to boost their productivity and unleash their creative potential?

I hope this was helpful! Don’t forget to download your free guide and to let me know what you think about ChatGPT in the comments!