There’s no denying that ChatGPT is super smart and can be a huge help for your online business. But guess what? It’s not a magical fix for everything in your content world. Just like a superhero has limits, so does ChatGPT.
Right now, ChatGPT is free and used by millions of people. That means some sneaky folks are trying to use it as you’re reading this for some not-so-great stuff.
Who doesn’t like examples!
The moment ChatGPT came out, a number of marketers immediately jumped on the bandwagon, making ridiculous claims and repeatedly selling the same boring, drivel on freelance sites.
Imagine someone offering to write stuff for others and then secretly using ChatGPT to make not-so-great content that sounds the same every time and doesn’t have a unique ‘voice’. And almost worse, they’re selling the same content to numerous people (there goes your search rankings!).
But here’s the scoop: If you want to make the most out of this cool AI tool and really benefit from it, you need to avoid some common mistakes. These are the traps that many folks might fall into, but you can be smarter! This way, you’ll use ChatGPT like a champ without messing things up for yourself, your clients, and your SEO.
1. Never use ChatGPT generated content ‘as-is‘
Once again, context is important here. If you’re creating content for your blog posts which you’re hoping to rank with SEO, using AI-generated content is likely not the best way to go.
There are tools such as Originality.ai which can detect AI content. Assuming many other lazy marketers will resort to this method of ‘copying and pasting’, it’s inevitable for the major search engines to view content on these sites less favorably in time.
In fact, Google has alluded to this very issue.
When using content that you hope to rank for, you always want to rephrase and rewrite the content so that it’s not 100% ChatGPT-generated.
2. ChatGPT generates content that lacks personality, so you must add your own.
ChatGPT has no emotions and the content it produces will generally read like a robot.
Even if you ask it to write in a conversational tone, it’ll never really sound exactly like a real human. Your reader will just ‘feel’ it.
People come online to be entertained.
They want to hear about your experiences, stories, jokes and so on.
ChatGPT can’t do that yet. Only you can.
Always take ChatGPT’s content and infuse it with your personality and ‘voice’ so it resonates with your audience.
3. ChatGPT is notoriously bad with facts and figures, so you must fact-check your content.
ChatGPT can get facts wrong. It’s trained based on a data set. Here’s the problem – facts may become outdated over time. What worked in the past may not work now.
If ChatGPT isn’t updated by the time new facts are published, it’ll still be using the old facts in its content.
Always fact-check the generated content so that you’re not inadvertently including factual errors in your content.
4. You’re using ChatGPT prompts incorrectly or just plain, poorly.
While ChatGPT is great at what it does, it’s still not a human being. Many users create long-winded prompts with a bunch of interwoven requests, and they hope ChatGPT can produce a miracle and answer their requests.
The results given by ChatGPT may be wrong, misleading, or it just won’t understand the prompt. You’re better off asking one thing at a time – and letting the tool answer it.
Since ChatGPT works as a ‘conversation’, your next prompt can reference the earlier result you just got. By using new and different prompts repeatedly, you’ll be able to tweak your result and get ChatGPT to give you what you truly want.
5. Do not pass off ChatGPT’s work as your own.
As mentioned earlier, avoid trying to pass off ChatGPT’s content as your own masterpiece. This is especially true if someone is paying you to do the work.
If you use ChatGPT to create the outline or brainstorm some headlines, that’s fine, as long as you’re filling it all in with your own perspective, voice and stories.
But if a client is expecting something unique to stand above the sea of AI-content coming from everywhere now, don’t lie. You’ll get caught! ChatGPT generated content is all similar in tone, style and voice, and many tools exist right now to analyze for AI generated content.
If you give them more purely AI created content, chances are high that you’ll lose them as a client. Particularly if you’re being paid for SEO services!
6. Don’t rely too much on ChatGPT.
As useful as ChatGPT is, it’s not a one-stop solution to all your online marketing needs.
Keep in mind that it’s primarily a free service with tens of millions of users. Downtime is expected and does occur.
And if you think paying for the Plus plan will immunize you the next time OpenAI is down…think again. When ChatGPT is down, it’s down for everyone.
Over-reliance on ChatGPT will mean that if the tool stops working, you’ll be severely ‘handicapped’.
Make sure you’re prepared for the inevitability of ChatGPT going down for hours at a time, at any moment. You should know how to manually do what you’re asking ChatGPT to do for you. After all, without ChatGPT, you have to be able to rely on yourself, at least, for a while.
7. You’re not tapping into the full potential of ChatGPT.
On the surface, ChatGPT looks like a content creation tool. Many marketers wrongly believe that that’s all it’s good for. So they dismiss it without realizing just how powerful a tool it can be in their business.
ChatGPT can be used to create legal pages (which replaces plugins) … or it can be used to create chatbot sequences, onboard emails and much more.
It’s NOT just for writing blog posts or ebooks.
In fact, how you use ChatGPT is only limited by your imagination.
These 7 mistakes listed above are the most common ones when using this awesome AI tool.
Avoid them at all cost.
Use ChatGPT legitimately and creatively, and you’ll be amazed at what it can do. This tool will save you time and money when employed efficiently. Use it wisely.
