ChatGPT – friend or foe? I have to ask myself this question because, after all, much of my business time is devoted to writing copy for my clients – blogs, websites, newsletters and social media posts. In fact, any marketing material that gets them noticed by their audience and leads to sales.
So, with the saying ‘keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer’ in mind, I thought I’d better get to know the competition. I tried it out!
This was my mission for ChatGPT; I asked it to create a blog, answering the question ‘What is copywriting’ and I was pretty impressed with the result.
ChatGPT penned me a 317 word blog, with an intro, five valid points about copywriting, and a conclusion. Not a bad effort – but only in so far as it went.
Here’s what it lacked:
- A headline – an essential place to add in key search terms
- Sub-headings – again, good for search terms
- Variety – all the paragraphs were of similar length, as were the sentences, which was ironic, since the blog itself pointed out the importance of variety
- Kerb appeal – by which I mean, at first glance, is was just a chunk of text, which no bullet points, pithy phrases, or nice one-line paragraphs to appeal to the eye
- Call to action – what did it want the reader to do next? No clues were given
- Enough words – Google likes a chunky 900-1,000 words to rank a blog. This was way too short
- Colour – it was a dull, and no examples were given to illustrate the points; no similes, no metaphors, no engaging phrases.
However, it’s main fault, in my opinion, was it was so bland. A good copywriter will get under the bonnet of the client and produce text which reflects that client’s personality, or that of their business and team. There is no one-size-fits-all.
As a piece of writing, this was own-brand vanilla ice cream, whereas really good marketing copy should be more salted caramel Haagen-Dazs.
I’d love to know your thoughts on ChatGPT. Have you tried it? Will you use it? Has it worked for you? I may end up eating my words (Haagen-Dazs ones, of course!).
And if you would like to chat about copywriting for your business, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.