Like gravity, another scientific force that cannot be defied is artificial intelligence (AI). It may be “artificial,” but make no mistake, its force is real.

Case in point: the recently released—and instantly famous—ChatGPT platform. ChatGPT launched to the public on November 30, 2022. Two months later (as of February 1, 2023) it was averaging 13 million daily visitors.

Like it or not, realize it or not, understand it or not, artificial intelligence is transforming marketing in numerous ways. Here, we’ll examine the contributions ChatGPT is beginning to make for content marketers.

Table of Contents

How will ChatGPT transform content marketing?
Does ChatGPT antiquate writers?
ChatGPT is a good student
ChatGPT is a good worker too
You make the most out of ChatGPT with smart prompts
Examples of the ChatGPT’s content marketing prowess
ChatGPT is powerful but not perfect
SEO pros are bound to benefit from ChatGPT
Learn more

How will ChatGPT transform content marketing?

Let’s allow the new platform to speak for itself:

Okay, the answer’s wordy, but it emphasizes: (1) creating helpful chatbots, (2) personalizing content, and (3) analyzing customer interactions.

Sounds promising, to say the least. But HEY! I’m a writer and the word on the street is with ChatGPT around, the marketing world won’t be needing writers around.

Does ChatGPT antiquate writers?

Our robowriter friend gave me this:

How about that? It plays nice. It says, “ChatGPT is tool that can help writers.”

Okay, clearly, in 2023, writers, editors, and content leaders have a heap of helpful tools at their fingertips, but this beast looks to be disruptive and has the potential to ascend to the top of the “tools to use” list.

Let’s look at what ChatGPT actually is and some of the things it can—and can’t—do for content marketers (so far).

ChatGPT is a good student

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a new language processing tool—currently offered for free. It functions as a smart, conversational chatbot to answer questions and respond to requests (a.k.a. prompts) with AI-generated content.

Where’d all the smarts come from? ChatGPT is a deep learning model that was trained on a diverse range of websites, books, articles, and other sources of written content.

How smart is it? OpenAI currently claims ChatGPT finished training in early 2022, so it’s been a year since it’s been schooled. But it absorbed 560 gigabytes of text and achieved a genius-level 147 IQ. It also aced some serious tests:

ChatGPT (circa 2023) would pass an MBA degree exam at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), the U.S. CPA exam, and the U.S. bar exam.

~ Life Architect research

ChatGPT is a good worker too

AI writing will indeed catalyze businesses process and is bound to change the scope of how HR is allocated in the workplace.

But no, it can’t do what you do. You have the ability to create new ideas and concepts and express them through writing. Machines do not.

So, like other tools you’ve embraced, ChatGPT can help you do what you do by improving your efficiency and freeing up time for higher-level tasks.

Marketing leader Ann Handley, the author of Everybody Writes, puts it like this:

(Image source: a MarketingProfs webinar sponsored by Writer.)

In a recent article on The Atlantic, author Annie Lowery claims, “No technology in modern memory has caused mass job loss among highly educated workers.”

She asks, “Will generative AI be an exception?” She then answers by saying:

“While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.”

You make the most out of ChatGPT with smart prompts

ChatGPT can do a lot of things for you. OpenAI provides a lengthy series of examples here to help you get started.    Learn about our ChatGPT training for Marketers →

Your input is all-important. In a Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup webinar featuring ToTheWeb’s Rosemary Brisco and Autodesk’s Rich Schwerin, they offered this insight:

See, ChatGPT may have read a gazillion publications, but it can’t read your mind. You must instruct it. That is, you supply prompts. Better input equals better output (much like a fruitful Google search). Some tips:

• Provide clear and detailed prompts.
• Enter additional prompts to refine the response.
• Start a new chat if you run into a dead end.

Regarding the second tip above, ToTheWeb offers an example of how you’d progressively refine a writing instruction:

1. Write an intro paragraph for an article on “content marketing strategy.”
   Refine above…
2. Write an intro paragraph for an article on “content marketing strategy” for B2B companies. Focus on how this strategy can help to drive visitors and leads to your website.
   Refine again…
3. Write an intro paragraph for an article on “content marketing strategy” for B2B companies. Focus on ROI and how this strategy will increase search engine rankings, drive visitors and qualified leads to your website. Article will include customer examples and a free template to create your strategy.

When I offered the final prompt above, ChatGPT responded with:

As you see, it definitely understood my request. Should you publish a result like this? Your human brain will have to make that call. I’d give it a very close inspection and sprinkle your writing style on it.

Examples of the ChatGPT’s content marketing prowess

I’m a content marketing consultant and writer. ToTheWeb is a B2B digital marketing agency with a variety of search engine marketing practices atop their list of services. Separately, and together, we’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT to see what it can and can’t do.

Let’s touch on some of our conclusions. ChatGPT can:

Explain topics

We asked, “What is the difference between content marketing strategy and content marketing?” It nailed it. Try a query along these lines for yourself.

Create article outlines

You might find this to be a massive time-saver. Pick a topic and ask ChatGPT to “write a content outline for an article on (blank).” The result may not be what you would have done without the tool, but it’s bound to be useful. After you get the results, you can request for it to expand or consolidate the outline, add or subtract ideas, or change its context.

Analyze SEO strategies

We asked our AI friend to help us think in terms of keywords with the question, “What are the 5 most frequently used keyword phrases for an article we collaborated on about migrating to Google Analytics 4. It nailed it:

Consolidate research

ChatGPT can be a TL;DR machine when you need one. Prompt it to summarize content with the text of the content you’re trying to consolidate and ask for a summary.

Looking for a shortcut to extract text from webpages? This handy tool converts web content to plain text.

ChatGPT can also extract and analyze data. We copied and pasted the text of a white paper and asked it to extract and summarize the data. It nailed that request too. In fact, its summary provided what could be a great shortcut for creating an infographic.

This list could get seriously long. Our experiments have already revealed ChatGPT can:

• Answer questions.
• Conduct research.
• Create creative briefs.
• Generate outlines and copy for blog posts, press releases, white papers, headlines, product descriptions, videos, you name it.
• Edit and improve copy.
• Develop ad copy.
• Write social media posts.
• Create email campaigns.
• Create presentations.
• Analyze sentiment.

You might be wondering if it can do something more? Try it.

ChatGPT is powerful but not perfect

ChatGPT responses are not always right. If you’re using it as part of the process of publishing content, you’ll want to examine every sentence and conduct some fact-checking. Also, you need to understand:

• Currently, ChatGPT’s knowledge cuts off at the end of 2021. (I suspect that will become untrue sometime in 2023.)
• It doesn’t have real-time access to the Internet or other sources.
• It doesn’t yet generate images, videos or other forms of media.

And today, in its free “research preview” format, you’re bound to run into this issue:

Yeah, it’s a busy bee and at present the chat machines are often overloaded. If you check out and back in, you’ll get your answer eventually.

Even more cautionary tips come from this examination of ChatGPT for content marketers, from Rock Content:

• ChatGPT requires human oversight, curation, and editing to deliver the expected outcomes.
• It delivers lower quality than handmade content and is less effective at engaging audiences.

SEO pros are bound to benefit from ChatGPT

Rosemary put ChatGPT to the test for some of the SEO tasks she often performs. Her list, which is bound to expand, includes:

• ChatGPT can deliver keyword ideas for content planning.
• You can copy content from a web page as ask it to list the top keyword phrases used on a page (so it’s a strong tool for competitor research).
  ChatGPT will write title and description tags.
• What’s next for ChatGPT?

The last prompt I gave ChatGPT while wrapping up my research and writing for this article was, “What is the future of ChatGPT?” I thought it might refrain from making predictions, but I was wrong.

It gave me a response of 200+ words including a list of “potential” future developments, including:

• Accuracy improvements—With further training, the platform is likely to become more accurate and capable of handling more complex language tasks.
• Growing usage—ChatGPT is off to a blazing start in customer service, content generation, and SEO. Its adoption into new areas is inevitable.
• Tech integration—ChatGPT sees itself at the core of new applications and use cases as its integrated with other AI technologies.

I’ll leave you with the words of David Bowie from his 1972 hit, Changes:

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange).”

“(ChatGPT) is every bit as important as the PC, as the Internet.” This will change our world.

Bill Gates, Business magnate, Author, Investor, Philanthropist

Learn more

Help yourself to the following resources:

• Learn about our ChatGPT training for Marketers 
• Webinar: ChatGPT: The “Idea Machine for Marketers
• Slides: ChatGPT: The “Idea Machine for Marketers
• Use our Convert a Webpage to Text for Use in ChatGPT

Sign up for The Prompt

Learn how to write the best ChatGPT prompts.

Author: Barry Feldman, Feldman Creative