Let’s face it. Sitting down and writing a blog for your website can seem like a daunting task. If you haven’t been living under a rock you have likely heard of ChatGPT by now and if not, let me catch you up.
ChatGPT is an AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot that you can have a conversation with and the AI will answer your questions, talk back to you, and is able to grab you pretty much any information from any corner of the web that you desire – within reason, apparently, it’s programmed to reject inappropriate requests.
Can ChatGPT be used to write blogs and generate content for your social media pages, website and other content related needs?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: You might not want to.
Recently, I was asked to write a few blogs for a company that I am doing work for. No big deal, I LOVE to write. Give me any topic and I will research and write on it as much as you want. However, I was asked to try out ChatGPT and see if it saved me any time or made the blog writing process any easier.
What exactly goes into blog writing?
To put things into perspective, there is a lot that goes into blog writing. There’s research, notes, drafting, then writing, then plagiarism checking, then rewriting, then checking it over, creating any graphics or infographics that may be needed and then finally you are ready to schedule it for posting. If you are wanting a blog with at least 2000 words (in order to make the Google search algorithms blush and get excited) then that process will likely take around 6-8 hours for each blog. Yes, you read that correctly. It takes 6-8 hours to write a blog.
Think back to when you were in high school and you had to write essays or reports for history class or English class. You would be given the topic at the beginning of the semester and many, many hours to work on it through the semester and yet, if you were anything like me, you were still cramming it together at the last minute and praying your teacher didn’t notice – well let me tell you something, they did. They noticed.
My job is to make sure that the articles I write do not look like they were thrown together by an eleventh grader at the eleventh hour. That takes time, dedication and a lot of coffee.
Why would someone want to use ChatGPT to write a blog?
Simple, they want to cut down on the time that it takes to write a blog. ChatGPT is helpful in that area. If you ask it the right questions, in the right way, it claims to provide non-plagiarized content that you should be able to copy and paste into a blog. Voila! Blog written in way under two hours and ready to go! Or is it?
I tried using ChatGPT to write a blog. I timed how long it took me to ask the questions, get the answers, and format it into the blog style required (just under 2 hours). Then I ran it through a plagiarism checker. It came back as 85% plagiarized. Even though I asked the AI the right questions, in the right way (according to their examples), I still wound up with plagiarized content. So, that means, I had to go and rewrite almost the entire article from scratch. That article took me almost 10 hours to complete because I had to, basically, do everything twice.
Can you tell the difference between ChatGPT written blogs and blogs written by humans?
Yes. Even more so if you know the writing style of the person that puts out the AI generated blog. Every writer has a unique writing style – kind of like a fingerprint. Some people won’t be able to tell the difference, and that’s ok, but some will and that will drive those of us who can tell the difference absolutely nuts.
What is ChatGPT good for if not for writing content on its own?
In my opinion, ChatGPT is a good partner for writing, but it should not be used to “copy and paste” full articles/reports/blogs. If you are a student or employee thinking you can pull one over on your boss or professor, think again. They will know it’s not your work.
If you really want to use ChatGPT, my suggestion is to use ChatGPT to help gather information. Ask it a question you are stuck on for information or even to help point you in the direction of the information that you need. From there, work your magic with paraphrasing and if you can’t paraphrase the information, make sure that you quote your sources. No one needs be sued for plagiarism in 2023.
ChatGPT, in a pinch, could act as a good friend if you’re feeling down and lonely. Just don’t fall in love with ChatGPT, it’s not real and that would be awkward. In fact, if you’re that lonely, just send me a message because I am always looking for new friends and I won’t go all “I, Robot” on you.
In Summary...
If you want to use ChatGPT to help lighten your content writing load, yes, it can be used for this purpose. My suggestion is to make sure that you allow time to fix mistakes that the AI program will make. Even though it is AI, it will make mistakes because, after all, it was created by humans. Ensure that you read through your content in it's entirety, paraphrase as much as you can to make it sound more human, and run it through a plagiarism checker so that you don't get a knock at your door with some random person handing you a big envelope telling you "you've been served".
At the end of the day, the Dreamweaver blog and any other content that I create for myself and for my clients will remain created entirely by this human because I know that I am producing quality content that people will enjoy reading and it will have information that I can stand behind because I did the work, I did the research and I put in the time to ensure that I put out quality content from start to finish.
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