Nearly everyone on LinkedIn is talking about ChatGPT—a currently free AI chatbot that generates written content in response to detailed prompts. It can spit out jokes, short stories, tweets, and even blog posts when asked. For cash-strapped businesses needing to fill their content calendars, ChatGPT seems god-sent.
As the old saying goes, however, you get what you pay for. Before you spend hours perfecting those content prompts, here are seven critical things ChatGPT won’t do:
1. ChatGPT won’t understand your brand.
ChatGPT pulls its information from a static dataset. Granted, its a big dataset. But it’s not taking in new information. So if you’re looking for ChatGPT to create content based on your unique brand, prepare to be disappointed.
2. ChatGPT won’t ask you about your marketing goals and frustrations.
ChatGPT may respond in a way that seems human, but it’s still a bot. It only mimicks human language. Your job is to poke, massage, and cajole it into spitting out the content you want. But how good will that content be if the AI doesn’t understand what you’re trying to achieve with it?
What if you don’t know? Who’s going to start that conversation with you? It won’t be ChatGPT, my friend.
3. ChatGPT won’t analyze your current marketing assets for quality.*
Wouldn’t it be great if you could show your flyers, brochures, annual reports, website, and social media posts to ChatGPT and get feedback on how good (or bad) they are? Well, you can’t. ChatGPT doesn’t do that, either.
*The free version doesn’t, anyway. Supposedly, the Plus and Enterprise versions of the chatbot, released in February and September respectively, have this feature. All versions, however, are still prone to the AI’s hallucinations, which means it can (and does) make up facts and false sources of information. So even if will analyze your assets, how do you trust its conclusions?
For someone who values accuracy in their work, this is a dealbreaker.
4. ChatGPT won’t tell you what you’re missing.
Is something missing from your brand messaging or marketing strategy? Something that, if employed, could make a huge difference in your company’s success?
ChatGPT won’t notice or tell you about it.
5. ChatGPT won’t give you unique content.
Let’s say you ask ChatGPT to write a blog post on how to find a great lawyer. And so do 300 other business owners. Do you think ChatGPT will generate a differently worded blog post for each of you?
Ha!
ChatGPT is a chatbot, not a copywriter or a marketer. It isn’t programmed with an innate understanding of publishing ethics or the SEO value of distinctive content. So when you ask ChatGPT for certain types of content, it’s often going to give the same answer to anyone using a similar prompt.
This is probably the second-biggest pitfall to using ChatGPT for content.
6. ChatGPT won’t improve your Google rank.
What’s the biggest pitfall to using AI-generated content? This one.
Over the past decade, Google’s search algorithm has come to favor content quality over keywords—and the trend is only increasing. Why? Because users value in-depth information. They don’t need 301 bland, identical articles on how to find a good lawyer. They want true expert knowledge that’s going to put them ahead of the game. In fact, marketing surveys show that customers are putting more emphasis on information source trustworthiness than ever.
So what do you think is going happen when you take mediocre content cobbled together by artificial intelligence using unidentified, likely plagiarized, and possibly incorrect sources and post it on the Internet alongside 300 identical copies?
I’ll tell you. You’ll spend the next decade digging your brand out of the Google search results sandbox.
7. ChatGPT won’t build a working relationship with you.
Every time you use ChatGPT, you must begin at square one. It doesn’t remember who you are, what your company does, or the long-term marketing goals you’re trying to achieve.
While you will spend a lot of time wording prompts to generate the best possible content from ChatGPT, ChatGPT will be doing…nothing. It will not be learning the nuances of your brand voice, memorizing your content preferences, interviewing your customers, growing its copywriting skills relative to your industry, or looking for opportunities to better position your company in a crowded marketplace.
It also won’t remember your pet’s name—or come to your office and explain, over lunch, the strategy behind all the words it chose for your blog.
In conclusion…
ChatGPT is a tool. It’s a cool tool, but it’s not a professional copywriter. If you really want to grow your audience, authority, and brand through content, invest in professional services.