The Verge had published a complete satirical product review article written by ChatGPT and edited by humans – and is ranking 6th on the first page of Google. It has left behind serious, laboriously researched blog posts with minimal effort.

You can be in two camps here – either you criticize Google for its poor algorithm and call it doomsday or learn how you can work alongside Generative AI tools for your content publishing efforts.

If you’re in the latter one, keep reading about how you can develop systems for hybrid AI content writing that uses both Generative AI tools and expert human writers/editors.

Key takeaways:

• When to use Generative AI for writing and when to avoid
• How to make ChatGPT your low-paid content writing intern
• Tips from expert marketers on how they are using Generative AI tools

What is ‘hybrid AI content’?

Hybrid AI content is the result of mutual collaboration between Generative AI tools and expert human writers or editors to create and publish good quality content. Adopting AI writing tools helps reduce efforts across the writing process of a content writer.

Can I really use AI writing tools for writing well-researched content?

Yes, but only if your content team has a growth mindset such that you use it as a tool and upskill in prompt engineering.

“A tool is only as good as the hand that wields it”

This holds for Generative AI tools as well.

It’s garbage in, garbage out when it comes to using ANY tool out there. So ensure your content team know HOW to make the most of your investment in Generative AI tools.

Benefits of using AI writing tools (provided you use them right):

• No fluff: Reduces research required for creating content as Generative AI will produce content that is pin-pointed to answer prompt queries.
• Focus: Your writer/editor can focus on quality control, brand guidelines, and adding nuance to the content to align with Google’s E-E-A-T requirements
• Quotes: ChatGPT searches via social media platforms for its answers – thus reducing your time to scroll via social media for real quotes.
• Content experiments: you can experiment with tone, put out satire, publish scripts maybe? – just like The Verge did. You never know what sticks!
• More content: you can publish more blogs with the same time, effort and resources.
• Better writing systems: dear writers, you MAY overcome writer’s block. It’s better to ask AI than stare at your screen for hours.

All these benefits are only if you are good with prompt engineering. It is a fancy word for writing good prompts for AI tools to get good-quality results. Check out this article on top places to learn prompt engineering for free.

Pitfalls to avoid while using AI writing tools:

• Do fact-checking: AI can provide factually incorrect answers as its still learning
• Hallucinate: ChatGPT tends to hallucinate sometimes with its answers and produces incoherent phrases.
• Brand voice: it’s hard to ensure AI writing tools truly align with your brand voice and tone
• Thought Leadership: it is yet to produce original thoughts that come with usually are available with human subject matter experts.

I believe as we move into an AI-enabled future, the above pitfalls would be less frequent. OpenAI products will only get better from here.

When to use AI writing tools?

Using AI writing tools has its use cases where you can put them to use:

Top of the funnel content

Top of the funnel content includes:

• Answering frequently asked questions by potential customers on the internet
• Educate about your industry and the problem/solution your company works for
• Content formats like listicles, how-to blogs, guides, comparison articles, etc.

TOFU content is what people search for in search engines, and thus, ChatGPT is a suitable tool to write such content.

Here’s a must-read case study by a niche website owner who used ChatGPT to turn an Airtable database into a #1 ranking blog post:

Yesterday I used ChatGPT to write a blog post…

It went straight to number 1 in Google.

And got 3,500 visits in the first 24 hours 🤯

Here are the details so you can try this method yourself👇

— Niche Site Lady (@NicheSiteLady) February 17, 2023

People who run portfolios of authority sites usually optimize for TOFU content to increase traffic on their websites at a low cost. They have embraced AI like no other in the publishing industry.

Local SEO

You must have observed your search results include keywords of your location like city or country. That’s because Google produces search results that are usually closer to the person’s location.

Thus, if your brand is location dependent or serves only specific markets, then publishing local content makes sense. And ChatGPT will help you reduce your efforts to create local SEO content.

Here’s an example I found that shows you how to publish 100s of pages using an AI writing tool:

You can explore these local SEO content tools for the same:

• SEOmatic.ai is a perfect tool to create local pages via programmatic SEO. It comes with an AI writing assistant to make it much easier and faster to bulk publish pages.
• AI Writing tools like Jasper, and Copy.ai (no programmatic SEO solutions)
• Listing management tools like Moz Local (no AI writing assistant)

Create a content library using a hub and spoke model

Using the hub and spoke model for content strategy involves creating relevant, multiple content pieces using long-tail keywords that enable ranking for one high-volume keyword.

Since AI Writing tools work well to publish content that educates or are informative, you can use them to increase the speed of publishing.

For example, here’s a prompt I used to find long-tail keywords around the high-volume keyword ‘Generative AI tools’. It quickly gave me 10 keywords to get started on like magic!

Prompt:

Find potential long tail keywords around the keyword ‘Generative AI tools’ using hub and spoke content marketing strategy

Result:

You can then feed these to your AI writing assistant tool to generate blog posts.

When not to use AI writing tools?

ChatGPT is still nascent and learning – and cannot provide original thought, yet. So the limitations are mostly around any content format that requires too much customization or having an original thought process.

Research Papers

It’s not that easy to get published in the Scientific American of Nature yet using AI Writing tools. This requires you to work in real-time and publish original results. Though one may be able to use an AI Writing assistant for review papers.

But there are many AI software coming up that facilitate scientists with their research:

• Scite Assistant: answers questions with citations from published research papers
• Consensus: researches multiple research papers to provide a summarized answer to your question. It also shows you which research papers it referred to for coming up with its answer to cross-check.
• Lateral: upload multiple research papers and find out how they are connected
• ChatPDF: you can upload a PDF document and ask questions, while it will read the PDF and provide answers
• Evidence Hunt: answers clinical questions with citations from published papers
• Bit.ai: templates for producing whitepapers

Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing & Outreach Manager at PhotoAiD, shares her experience of using Generative AI for research purposes:

“I am strongly against searching for scientific background through the tool. It has happened to me more than once to receive responses with only residually reliable articles. And even there appeared non-existent titles with irrelevant links. Everything should be checked carefully, as AI happens to make up facts for the sake of the question.”

Natalia Brzezinska

Also found this insightful thread on how ChatGPT came up with fake papers!

Why does chatGPT make up fake academic papers?

By now, we know that the chatbot notoriously invents fake academic references. E.g. its answer to the most cited economics paper is completely made-up (see image).

But why? And how does it make them? A THREAD (1/n) 🧵 pic.twitter.com/kyWuc915ZJ

— David Smerdon (@dsmerdon) January 27, 2023

Thought Leadership

Want to build the next Harvard Business Review or The Economist for your brand? AI won’t be that helpful here.

AI tools aren’t that great with a frame of reference or context when it comes to their answers – something that is heavily shown in thought leadership blogs.

Thought leadership content requires you to interview subject matter experts, make them share their experience and put it into words. We may have a tool for that in future, but right now your writers have to do the ground work.

Creating content based on current events

ChatGPT is good for answering your prompts as long as there is existing content out there on the internet. It cannot give answers for something that is happening ‘live’ or ‘real-time’. So journalists who work on the ground won’t lose their jobs in the near future.

Creating content on specific products

ChatGPT is not so reliable when it comes to writing accurate product descriptions. Evander Nelson, personal trainer and blogger at evandernelson.com shares how ChatGPT gave outdated information for his prompt:

“AI writing tools are helpful for general information, but not very good at creating detailed content about specific products. This is because most AI systems are based on outdated knowledge from Open AI, which was last trained in 2021. 

For example, lately, I asked Chat GPT about the product specifications of the television I was writing a review about. It told me that I could stream Disney+ and HBO Max on the television but this was not the case. The measurements of the TV were also off by a few inches.”

While this is the actual product information:

– Evander Nelson

How to work alongside Generative AI tools for your content marketing?

Generative AI is magic, but only when you know what you want. Ensure you complete these prerequisites before you dump your ‘thinking’ part of the content work on AI:

• Do your homework by fixing content archetypes and having a clear content strategy in place.
• Know who your audience is
• Draft content and brand guidelines
• Most importantly – If you want good quality content published on the site, you WILL require expert writers and editors in your team.

If you mess up the above, you will put unclear or vague prompts and then boast on Twitter about how ChatGPT is dumb. You will have to learn how to put your requirements in words to make the most of any Generative AI tool out there.

Now, here’s how you can use ChatGPT for various aspects of content marketing:

Content Audits

Can ChatGPT help with content audits for you and your competitor’s website?

Let’s find out.

Prompt:

Perform a detailed content audit on [Product Website] – include keyword opportunities, content archetype, topics covered, content gap analysis, and backlinks.

Result:

I tried going from comprehensive to simple prompts – but since it requires good data, you cannot perform any content audit using ChatGPT.

Competitor Analysis

Can you use ChatGPT for competition analysis?

Prompt:

Define the product + Please share a list of competitors for [Product Name]. List the name of the company, the location, the size of the company, the target audience, direct or indirect competitors and estimated monthly paid search ad spend.

Result:

You can keep using the ‘regenerate response’ option to get more details. Bing tends to have a better answer regeneration experience where it starts from where it left off.

You can also get a starting point when it comes to positioning your content based on your competitor’s customer complaints like this:

Prompt:

[Product Name and description] +  What are the common customer complaints about [Product Name]?

Result:

Keyword Research

It’s better if you do keyword research using professional tools like Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush, etc.

Then, you can enter your main keyword and ask your AI writing tool to suggest the rest of the keywords. This is easily done on tools like Surfer SEO, ClearScope, etc.

If you don’t have access to SEO tools, here’s a keyword research prompt you can try:

Prompt:

Provide top long tail keywords based on the main keyword [add the main keyword]’ for [add location] audience

Result:

You can keep doing this for each long tail keyword as well to get deeper – but then it doesn’t show you search volume to help prioritize. You can feed these keywords into Google Keyword Planner for deeper analysis.

Content strategy

Can ChatGPT create a content strategy?

Yes – for this, you should create good prompts. It gives good answers to get started with. For more creativity and nuance, you should approach a professional content strategist. Nevertheless, great for anyone to get ideas and brainstorm.

Prompt:

[Details about your product] + Create a content marketing strategy for this product. Include its target audience, content formats, blog topics, and content distribution channels.

Result:

Can you find out your competitors’ content strategy?

Yes – but it lacks depth, which in turn requires professionals and tools. You can use ChatGPT if you’re a solopreneur or a non-marketing person who wants to analyze their competitors and get ideas on what kind of content you can create:

Prompt:

What is [Competitor Name] content marketing strategy?

Result:

You can make this better by adding more nuance to your prompt:

Prompt:

What is [Competitor Name] content marketing strategy? Include its target audience, content formats, popular blog topics, content distribution channels and tools used.

Result:

Create outline

Can you use chatGPT to create content outlines?

Yes – ChatGPT is great to provide simple content outlines to get started. You can add nuance to your blog posts by adding real-life examples, subject matter expert quotes and relevant resources to make them more useful and authentic for your readers.

Prompt:

Prepare a 1000-word blog outline on the topic – ‘Productivity tips for busy readers’. Include examples, tools list, and meta description

Result:

I had asked for an outline, but I got a full 1000-word blog post instead! I put the blog on my medium for the fun, took me like 5 mins to publish! – Productivity for busy readers

Create content

ChatGPT is a quick way to create short copies and then use your expertise to make them better:

Prompt:

Expand these services offered by Merrative into 1 line benefits:

• Hire content writers
• Create publication
• Build content library
• Hire full-time content writers
• Hire content writer interns

Result:

Well, not bad!

Content editing and proofreading

Does ChatGPT help with content editing?

Yes – you can edit your content with ChatGPT by rewording for certain voices, making it more creative, adding more content, summarising, getting a call-to-action and much more. Here are a few use cases:

Write catchy blog titles

Prompt:

Suggest 5 interesting blog titles using the keyword ‘productivity for readers’. It should have a maximum character count of 70.

Result:

The results aren’t good for this one – it didn’t include the keyword properly and some seem meaningless. 

Change content tone

Can you use ChatGPT to change the writing tone or align with the brand voice?

Yes – if you write your prompt where you properly explain your brand voice, it can indeed give you good results. Here’s an example of changing a boring paragraph into satire:

Prompt:

[Add paragraph or blog post]

Make the above paragraph’s content satirical

Result:

In my personal opinion, this is a brilliant result – enjoyed reading it!

Repurpose content for social media

Can you use ChatGPT to repurpose your blog post into a Twitter thread, Instagram captions, etc?

Yes – you can copy-paste your blog post and convert it into good Twitter threads and captions. Let’s use the same 1000 blog posts that ChatGPT wrote in the previous sections.

Prompt:

Repurpose this blog post into a Twitter thread: [Add blog link]

Result:

Prompt engineering tips for content marketing

Writing better prompts requires you to have the necessary knowledge in that field. So if you’re a non-marketing person reading this thinking you can completely outsource your content marketing to ChatGPT – I just want to say, good luck.

Unless – you learn to write unique prompts. That’s how powerful knowing this skill is.

Here are some prompt engineering tips for content marketing:

1. Add a brand voice or writing style sample: Provide a sample of your content style to ChatGPT before the instructions. This will help it produce a result that aligns with your brand’s writing style.

2. Provide context: The more context you provide, the better it is able to align with your expectations. You can do role-playing, include references, response length, etc.

3. Don’t push non-related or too many questions: Instead, focus on giving context – and end with one simple question. Think of how your professor drafted the exam questions you must have encountered during college times.

4. ChatGPT does not have access to search engine data: It cannot access data and does not crawl the web. Remove any requirement in your prompt that requires ‘accessing’ data. Although, you can provide it with data for coming up with insights or content.

5. Follow up on your prompts: It’s always better to follow up by asking for sources or criteria for ChatGPT’s output. It can remember your past conversation in the chat window, so try circling back to get better output.

Tips to edit AI written content to align with Google’s E-E-A-T model

As per Google’s latest Quality Rater Guidelines, it will assign the quality of your content based on Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust it demonstrates.

Here’s how to edit the AI-generated content to align with the E-E-A-T:

Ideas to showcase experience:

• No more ‘XYZ Team’ tagged as blog author – Google wants to see a real person publishing the blog post and how authoritative the writer’s own brand is on the topic. You must add your team’s face and author bio, even if it’s ghostwritten by someone else.
• If you are writing a product review or tutorial – add actual screenshots and text that shows you used the product
• For travel blogs, add real photos, curated itineraries and genuine reviews
• Collaborate with influencers for writing your blogs.
• Ensure you write to solve the search intent query

Ideas to showcase expertise:

• Interview subject matter experts on the blog topic and include their quotes
• You can approach experts via platforms like HARO, HelpAB2BWriter, Terkel, etc for quotes
• Your blog design should be professional and not scammy
• Add sources of your data and facts shared from authoritative sites only
• Link to the credentials or certifications of the blog post author in their bio
• Fact check your blog post
• Ensure your blog post has a specific angle and flow for the topic. Here’s a useful thread by Erica Schnieder on the same:

A checklist for self-editing like a pro:

🖼 Check the big picture

-Intent (does it answer what, why, and how?)
-Sections (is the narrative ordered logically?)
-Angle (is the perspective reflected?)
-Audience (is targeting on point?)
-Action (are CTAs strategic?)

And…

— Erica Schneider (@ericasmyname) October 8, 2022

Authority and Trust are built over time as you consistently publish good quality blog posts and build your brand authority. Dive deeper into the rabbit hole to get a perspective for your editing skills – Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

Check your final blog post for AI Content:

OpenAI has released an AI text classifier for detecting any AI-generated content. You can also explore tools like Originality.ai, Writer.com, Copyleaks, etc for the same.

How are content marketers using AI writing tools for their brands?

I dived into the rabbit hole of YouTube and Podcasts to find good examples of content marketers using Generative AI for their workflows:

Here’s Rob Walling from MicroConf sharing how he uses alwrite.ai and Typefully to repurpose his blog posts into Twitter threads. Overall, the process took him 1 hour, which includes editing, imagery and linking:

A very insightful webinar by Verblio and Superpath on how to optimize your content marketing strategy to include Generative AI tools:

How to Use Hybrid AI Content

I found this interesting use case of using ChatGPT to extract useful content from PDFs – this would make adding original insights from research publications much easier:

A webinar I found by Harbinger Group which teaches how to use ChatGPT for content automation and opportunities it presents:

Let us know how you use Generative AI for your brand

Do you have an interesting way in which you’re using ChatGPT? Let me know, happy to include your case study to further improve this guide.

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This blog post is written using resources of Merrative – a publishing talent marketplace that helps you create publications and content libraries.

Get in touch if you would like to create a content library like ours in the niche of Applied AI, Technology, Machine Learning, or Data Science for your brand.