Has Using AI Made Me a Better Writer?

Unexpectedly, yes. I think it has.

As I’ve said, many a time and oft, I’m not a trained writer nor hold any formal degree in copy creation beyond a module in scriptwriting when completing my MA. And, for the record, I don’t use AI to write things for my blog. I have been doing this for over 30 years, however, and do use Artificial Intelligence (AI) regularly for work (check out my interview w/ Skedler) and in creating imagery and copy for RP games and personal projects—daily.

AI has been a massive disruptor over the past year, revolutionizing fields including (but not limited to) brand journalism, marketing, and copy/design creation. As a writer, though I hate to leverage the title, integrating AI into my workflow has undoubtedly enhanced my efficiency and, surprisingly, sharpened my skills, making me a better wordsmith in directions I’d have never anticipated when I penned my initial feelings less than 12 months ago.

Here are a bunch of ways I’ve found that using AI has made me a better scribe, specifically within the arena of daily copy creation, as a hobbyist RPG writer, and as a head content marketer for the world’s leading zero-day protection solution.

Research

At advantage one, AI tools have drastically improved my research capabilities. I mean, DRASTICALLY.

AI has access to vast databases of content and can process information rapidly, meaning I can gather and sort relevant information quickly, providing a solid foundation and helpful reassurance for my daily output. I don’t have to constantly be hassling people for general facts, explanations, and figures, asking, “Is this right,” and cruising the Interwebz for assorted fluff to inspire and pad out my copy. It’s all a (curious) prompt away, all backed by accurate and comprehensive data, seriously elevating the quality and the speed of publication for the bulk of the content I produce. I mean, sure, I still double-check anything I’m not 100% sure about, especially in relation to our specific product or in reference to the AIs knowledge cut-off date, but (certainly for mostly top-of-funnel things like blog posts) it’s a game changer.

It's worth browsing around and adding a few bolt-ons and specialist plugins. I use Chat GPT with Wolfram Alpha, AskYourPDF, Advanced Data Analytics (to give me insights into CSV files, etc), Show Me plugin, WebPilot (super handy for rewriting and translating), and others.

Google Scholar, boosted with AI capabilities, is a great one for casual researchers and scholars needing up-to-date academic research, including scholarly literature, articles, conference papers, and theses. With the traditional Google interface (so we don’t cut ourselves) and the painless ability to find elusive publications and citations, I’ve found it indispensable for more academic learning.

Scite, another academic research tool, uses natural language processing to analyze articles and find definitive references and sources, assessing the dependability and “impact” of references, and offering visualizations and metrics for those of us with a more visual appreciation of things—which is often inspiring.

Grammar and Style

AI writing tools are excellent for refining style and morphology, and I’m a big Grammerly fan-boy. They provide suggestions for syntax, word choice, and sentence structure, letting me polish my work to a more professional level, or not if that’s the voice I’m using, inline and as part of the process. This constant feedback loop has honed my understanding of grammar and style, undoubtedly making me a more proficient writer, with and without AI tools.

Learning and Improvement

Having used copy assistants like this for a while, it’s had a direct impact on my initial output, meaning I now rely on them a lot less, but having a copy editor in my pocket is a serious boon. Being able to specify brand traits for voice, as well as general assistance with clarity and form, is a constant teacher of the best form and a reminder of best practices. I don’t need to know all the in-depth punctuation and grammar rules when Grammarly has my back, but having a constant tutor has significantly upped my personal and professional growth as a writer and content creator, and this kind of feedback is far harder to get outside of an agency environment.

Writing for the Audience

AI's can review large sets of data and have empowered me to tailor my content to the preferences of my target audience more effectively. By understanding trends, industry terminology, reading patterns, and engagement metrics, I can subtly adapt my writing style, tone, and content to better resonate with my readers, a notoriously skeptical and specialist audience of CISO, network engineers, and the c-Suite, undoubtedly making my writing more impactful and relevant.

So, in case you didn’t realize, on this blog, I write like I speak. I’m happy with that here, and it's purposeful. It’s very useful for scripting explainers and VO, but it doesn’t translate well to the likes of technical documentation, and I have to cater my wording accordingly. I also write in other voices, as appropriate for the forum in which I'm writing or the brand style for whom I'm writing. It's like being a creative sociopath. Chat GPT, bless its little digital heart, gives me (with a consistent and well-tweaked prompt) a consistency and readability that has shown me how to better present data for maximum readability and understandability, tailored to a technical and professional audience into which, very often initially, I only have casual insight. As a content creator who’s worked on subjects as random as sustainable fisheries and kids' history education, this is pure fried gold.

Productivity 

The automation of repetitive tasks, such as formatting and even initial drafting, has freed up more time for the creative aspects of my writing and for further content creation. AI's efficiency has not only sped up the writing process but also allowed me to focus on brainstorming, structuring narratives, research, and refining arguments—leading to richer and more thought-out pieces, leading to better traction and distribution.

I’m not joking when I say that AI has given me around two extra hours a day to produce two extra hours of output. This, alone, makes AI a must-have for any marketing team and sets those of us who’ve adopted AI working practices as stand out assets to recruiters and CMOs.

Inspiration

Finding creative and relevant inspiration is a common challenge, and I wrote more about this last year in my post on Staying Creative as a Content Marketer, but AI has been a help f’sure. 

AI-powered writing assistants can suggest ideas and prompts and even draft small sections of more ‘explainer’ content, kickstarting the creative process. This not only saves me time but also keeps the creative juices flowing, promoting a steady stream of potential posts and topic ideas for a given target audience. Admittedly, it’s not where most of my inspiration comes from, but it can help.

AI has also pushed me to explore new genres and styles of writing. With AI-generated suggestions and examples, I've been able to venture out of my comfort zone a little more, experimenting with different formats, narratives, and themes, thereby expanding my creative horizons. This has been especially true in my personal work when penning scripts for my fan podcast or intros for RPG sessions.

Supporting SEO

For digital content, SEO is key. Check out my post on Why SEO is Still Important for Content Marketing in 2024.

AI tools have equipped me with the ability to optimize my content for search engines more effectively. While I don’t use AI for integrating the right keywords, creating H2/H3 titles, or for structure to improve online visibility, I believe you can. Using AI to write SEO copy, for me, is a bit like putting parking sensors on a Smart car, and if you need parking sensors to park a Smart car, you probably shouldn’t be driving in the first place. After decades of writing SEO, I don’t need it and actually find its input frustrating. However, it’s fantastic for shortening copy and writing to word (not character) length.

I do use ChatGPT to some degree when streamlining keyword research, putting target keywords into the chatbot, and requesting related suggestions before heading to Moz for confirmation and further insights.

Plagiarism

Ensuring originality in writing is crucial, and the AI plagiarism checker in Grammarly has been indispensable. It provides peace of mind by ensuring that my content is unique and free from unintentional penalties while maintaining the integrity and originality of my work.

In truth, I’ve never seen a notification from Google Search Console that I’ve been penalized for duplicate content; however, an absence of alerts doesn't necessarily imply that a website is free from penalties for hosting identical or similar content across various pages or multiple sites. Better safe than sorry, and it’s a piece of black forest gatteux with AI.

Always on 

Unlike human editors and collaborators, AI tools are available 24/7, always on, in my pocket, providing that assistance whenever inspiration strikes. Invaluable, when one works in a different time zone from 80% of one’s colleagues, and this round-the-clock sounding tool has undoubtedly made my writing process more flexible and less interrupted. 

So am I a better writer?

Yes.

AI has not just been a tool; it has been a genuinely transformative force in my career and content output. It has made me more efficient, creative, and adaptable, allowing me to consistently produce higher-quality work. I spell, punctuate, and structure content better—having been led by my learning from the copy I’ve created with AI collaboration.

As AI continues to evolve, I’m genuinely excited to see how it’ll further shape the future of content marketing and continue to improve my abilities as a writer. It's only been a year, and I look forward to the year to come.

Why Content Marketing Should Embrace AI

At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how I was using AI, still pretty much in its content marketing infancy, as a collaborative tool in my daily work. It might be a good time for an update. 

I’m writing this by hand, not using any AI input, but I am using AI spellchecker because, well, that just makes sense.
 
I genuinely believe that artificial intelligence isn’t just a tool, but a transformative force in content marketing. It offers unparalleled personalisation, enhances creativity, optimises distribution, and fosters data-driven decision-making. While there’s ethical considerations that undoubtedly need to be addressed (should I be sharing the by-line?) and a wider conversation to be had, the gains for me have been weapons-grade.

For content marketing professionals like myself, who seek continuous innovation and efficiency as part of the process, the integration of AI has a lot of benefits. Its power to revolutionise the way we approach marketing is not just promising; it's already here. And I use it daily.

Using AI Day to Day
 
Just about everything I’ve written at work since last November has had some level of AI collaboration, be it ideas, data, explanations from ChatGPT, or images and visuals from MidJourney. As I said in my early thoughts and finding on AI, I am not now and never will be, any kind of an aficionado of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I’ve found a level of usage, however, that suits the way I work and has put my productivity level through the roof. If there were KoolAid, I’ve drunk it.

Here's a few reasons why:
 
I can’t spell for Jack: Or punctuate, really. I get by pretty well and always have, but most of that is from practice and I don’t have an English degree. I’ve worked with journalists who have nothing but my deepest admiration. I don’t naturally write in US English, for starters. On the most basic level, AI tools (like Grammarly and Wordtune) are indispensable spelling and grammar checkers that can be tuned for brand voice and stop me rambling on with run-on sentences and comma splices. They do this in-line while I’m writing, across assorted applications, with zero friction. If we get one decent solar flare, I am so screwed.

Explaining concepts: Most content markets are biblical at trivia – especially those of us in an agency who flit from topic to topic. We have to write and create fresh ideas around everything from pet food to the socio-economic impact of retail robotics. Immersing myself in a topic is one thing, but I work in cybersecurity, and sometimes, working from home as I do, I need to ask someone to “explain, like you would to a graduate student, what are the core concepts behind user and entity behavior analytics” without (once again) hassling our product marketing manager in Teams. I don’t have time to wade through pages of weak Google results. Thank you, ChatGPT4.

Fresh ideas: Being creative on demand, daily, is what I do. Some days, at the risk of using the phrase “writer's block,” it’s not a natural state to be in. Sometimes I need some inspiration. AI is one of the options I turn to when I’m staring at my screen like a goldfish in a strobe light.

Above and beyond ChatGPT, which is my default for most things, platforms like ShortlyAI, Jasper, and others provide creative writing environments with useful prompts and suggestions. Websites like Reedsy offer writing prompt generators that can kickstart the creative process. If we have some programming skills, and it’s actually not rocket science, we can use AI models (including OpenAI) to create customised prompts based on our specific needs and interests. 

I recently wrote a whole other post on the creative content marketing process, including the use of AI, but tools like MindMeister or Lucidchart also allow us to create mind maps and visual prompts to help brainstorm and ideate.

Talking to the audience: I’m not the Chief Information Security Officer of a billion-dollar Fortune 500, but the CISO is the main target of the bulk of the output I produce these days. What do they actually care about that will be of genuine value to them? What are their concerns? What is the CISO community talking about? Much as I love them, this is the new Yahoo Answers (alas, no longer with us) and Quora. 

Using AI for inspiration, I recently crafted a post on “How can Busy CISOs Avoid Occupational Burn-Out?” Sure, it’s low-hanging fruit. It was, however, “syndicated” by Cloud Security Alliance, who published it to their site, giving us a ton of retweets from their share and some juicy PageRank from linking. This has happened more than once, because the professional cybersecurity community found real value in my writing.

Making it pretty: Back in the 80s, before I ventured into the world of film production and before the advent of the Internet, I studied graphic design at college. I can turn my hand to a reasonable infographic, airbrush a burnt-out car out of a corporate image (true story), and I’m something of a Photoshop veteran, but, MidJourney is now my go-to for basic imagery. Sure, there’s beautiful original art for free at Pixabay and Upsplash, and many a time I still make use of these invaluable assets, but I have deadlines and things to get done. While always enjoyable, I don’t have the capacity to wade through thousands of images that are “almost” right for the job – not when I can cut and paste a prompt I know will give me exactly the brand look and consistent style we use, add a few new words that reflect my copy, then spend two minutes in Photoshop to round off the edges and apply (in our case) a corporate duotone. And this for $15 less month than Shutterstock and with no limits on volume.

Just this week I’ve been dabbling with PikaLabs, to give our corporate Twitter pics some movement - because it’s our job to experiment. I also use MidJourney for ideas, like showing me graphical suggestions for infographics (using specific data) that I can then exploit in Illustrator. It’s not the whole process, far from it, but it’s a part of the process.
 
Analytics: AI’s not just useful for producing content, it’s also a godsend for analytics and decision-making. Statistics and data analysis leave me cold, but content is born of good data. Original data insights make bankable PR, and getting those insights is now a whole lot easier. Also, trend analysis affords inspiration. I have to give Tableau some props. It's great for anyone who wants to play with data and make it come alive visually, and I’m no tech wizard. It can handle complex calculations, mix different data together, and getting started with the free trial was a breeze. Again, I then add brand and other elements to the output, but it’s damn helpful for ideas and for pulling out the unseen. Being able to dump a load of web analytics onto OpenAI and ask it who our most engaged visitors are, then create me a few personas for those visitors, all within seconds, is useful, enlightening, and inspiring.

Saving time: Rolling all the above together, how much time do I save on a full production day? I’d estimate an hour, maybe two. What do I do with that time? More work. 

I can produce two 1200-word blog posts, or a blog post and solution brief, plus my other work, between 9-5. That’s probably an extra case study and an explainer script in a week – and good value content at that. Harsh, perhaps, but with a level of productivity like that why would future employers consider a candidate who hasn’t embraced AI collaboration?

 
Will AI Take Our Jobs?
 
Obviously, I think of AI as a boost for my creativity and efficiency. It is, right? 

Well, yes and no. Unless we’re an undertaker or a hairdresser, we’ll have to embrace the possibilities of AI, or yes we’ll get left behind. Proofreaders and translators, copywriters, video producers, graphic designers, audio editors, analysts… I do elements of all these jobs in my content marketing role and all jobs in the AI firing line. But is my job in the firing line? 

No. AI isn’t creative without the right promps and actions by a human agent. Ps Beta now has AI image generation built in, and it’s now part of the creative process. Digital artists are training on this in Universities around the world, right now. The likes of outpainting and process-driven AI image creation are a massive time saver, and now a part of the creative process. Augmenting imagery with AI is now normal and part of the job, but it still needs a creative operator – well, at least for now. As you can see from the above, I’m still pretty hands on. AI is not the creative in creative content marketing, it’s a means to an end.
 
We can’t afford to put our heads in the sand and ignore AI, and we need to make it a part of our day-to-day or, frankly, get a new career. Isn’t it a part of our jobs to be experimenting with new tools and mediums? In the future, AI will turn one creative person into a polymath, an individual into a team, and continue to be a fantastic collaborator for outstanding creative output. Embracing AI as a collaborator, now, means we’ll be a part of that future.

Let’s not get left behind.

If you’d like to follow up with me on this post, please grab me on Twitter (though I’m shadow tweeting these days), Threads (where I’m happily get my book geek on), or LinkedIn for a chat.

Using AI for Content Marketing: Early Thoughts and Findings

I write for a living.

I am not now, nor ever will be, any kind of an expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

I write ad copy, technical documentation, and scripts for explainer content. I create infographics, edit videos, produce podcasts, and run the full content marketing gamut from social media to PPC advertising. I've been doing this for over 25 years, and I currently work in-house for a well know cybersecurity provider.

Since November last year, my output has changed dramatically; I’ve been using AI tools to support our content marketing efforts.

However, using AI is a bit like editing sound: You put shit in, you get shit out.

Words

AI has come a long way in the last few months. No longer just words of caution from the pen of Heinlein or Gibson, AI can produce high-quality content virtually indistinguishable from that of flesh and blood writers. This is down to how one uses AI and how we create prompts (instructions) rather than a natural ability for AI to write in an approachable way. I hear a lot of people say that AI (I use the new ChatGPTPlus) is instantly recognizable because it talks in a passive voice. There’s an answer to this, as with pretty much all current gripes about AI textual output. Tell it not to.

Here’s an example of the most basic and first prompt I use in ChatGPT for creating text content for work:

“Please act as a B2B copywriter. You will write in a positive and active voice. Your copy will be <brand trait>, <brand trait>, and <brand trait>. It will also be original and innovative. It will be targeted at experienced <target persona> and <target persona>, and should be of genuine value to this audience. It will use terminology with which they are accustomed. Each article or post you write should contain sub-headings of major points, and bulleted lists of sub-points or actions. Please expand on any content with real-world examples and/or citation (as appropriate), providing URLs to further reading if possible. Please write in American English, and finish your writing with a fleuron.”

One can even afford a few affectations: Notice how I always say “please,” just in case it’ll spare me during the AI/robo uprising? I also ask for an indicator that the AI has finished writing because, in longer-form content, it’s necessary to type “please continue” to get past character limits, so I like to clearly know when it's come to an end.

I’d consider this the very basic of prompts and start every new chat with something along these lines. Then I go into what I want the AI to do after giving it its “mode of operation” and voice. “Create me an 800-word blog post worthy of Mordor,” etc. Usually, this will include additional instructions like SEO keywords I want it to cover, topics or solutions I want it to touch on or consider, specific industries I want it to research, or whatever. Yes, I do edit any output - pretty thoroughly. I insert more brand voice, add product value to blog posts on general topics, sprinkle in a bit of appropriate levity, add hyperlinks, further relevant information based on my general topic knowledge, I might play with the tense, add a bit more SEO glitter (if needed), and often whole paragraphs of additional content where the AI has inspired me to do so. I sometimes turn back to ChatGPT to “please expand on <blah>,” “please explain <technical term/concept>,” or “please rewrite this in <blah> number of characters,” and I’ll always fact-check any references, technical output, or legal standards that it provides. AI has become my collaborator and writing partner, and (right now) that's definitely the way to get the best results. If you’d like to see more prompts like the one above, I heartily recommend the splendid work of Maximilian Vogel, and there's tonnes of stuff on GitHub (including prompts for writing code, etc.). Remember, any copywriter won’t be able to give you what you want if the brief is poor, so learn how to prompt before you expect usable results. You can dip into anything written on the TrueFort blog since January to see some examples.

Also, try things like “Optimize <sentence> to 75 characters to use as a LinkedIn ad description,” "Please give me some ideas for blog posts targeted at <persona>, discussing their most important professional concerns,” or once it already has your traits and targets (and maybe even existing sample messaging) “Please create six attention-grabbing call-to-action messages, and buttons, for a landing page on <blah> where we want visitors to <action>." The functionality is only limited by your input. Even if it’s not immediately what you’re looking for, I guarantee some of the output will be a catalyst for other ideas. Seriously - go play - the basics are free, and my new “Plus” plan is only $20pcm. Plus is available during peak traffic (which seems to be all the time of late), has a much faster response speed, and I get priority access to new versions and features.

I’ve started using it in other ways to help my day-to-day, such as asking it to summarize a page of web content or “Please rewrite <text, or even a URL> in a more accessible or more targeted way.” I’d estimate that using ChatGPT is already saving me around two hours every day, and that’s valuable time I need to get my job done. As anyone in content marketing will testify, short of time travel or cloning, there can never be enough hours in the day. If the ROI of using a tool like this has a productivity saving of two or more hours on a writing day, and you show that ROI and the optimized output to your CMO, I guarantee they’ll find 20 bucks a month in their budget. Mine did.

In support of any output, I also run everything through Grammarly. Mainly to check I’m using American spelling (which doesn’t always come naturally) as I go along, and to check for duplicate online content for SEO purposes.

Already, I’m more inclined to use ChatGPT as a point of reference rather than Google, as I can ask it specific questions about, for example, controlling lateral movement and adopting zero trust best practices, rather than rely on Google pulling back other people's marketing content or, more annoyingly, my own. I’ve actually added a simple web link to my iPhone home screen.

Pictures

Again, check out our blog. Every single header image (since November) has been generated with MidJourney. 

This text-to-picture artificial intelligence service empowers users to create art, from (virtually) photo-realistic to the work of Hieronymus Bosch, based on text descriptions. It’s far from intuitive to use, with a plethora of optional fields and seemingly zero instruction manual. It also uses Discord as an interface, so it’s all new unless you’re fourteen years old or an online gamer (which, thankfully, I am). I dipped into MidJourney a while ago to generate images for our online D&D games but soon ran out of the credits needed to make more artwork. A small investment, however, has meant my VTT players now have the perfect graphical representation of who or what I’m thinking.

More recently, I've begun to use this for work.

Putting this in the context of ROI again, MidJourney is $8 a month and takes me 30 seconds to get what I need (content, aspect ratio, angle, depth of field, etc.). In contrast, Shutterstock is $19 a month, takes at least 20 minutes to find what I need, and that will invariably be a compromise. UnSplash and Pixabay have limited assets - and are even worse time vampires. MidJourney is the very definition of disruptive innovation.

For the imagery on our blog, I augment the results with Photoshop to get that distinctive duotone that is our ongoing brand style, but otherwise, the output is perfect. We use a lot of perspectives and patterns in our imagery, and it replicates and topic in this style seamlessly. I’ve also used it in other ways, such as asking for suggestions for convention badges and custom art for mood boards (after uploading our logo and existing brand imagery) or asking it to suggest layouts for infographics.

Learning how to prompt isn’t immediately intuitive, and at first, I had to trawl around forums and communities, hoping someone would throw me a bone. I found the work of Lars Nielsen, Kris Kashtanova, and Guy Parsons very helpful. MidJourney will also test your visual chops above and beyond the subject matter itself, and I've found that my experience with photography, graphic design, and film work has helped a lot in creating prompts. It responds best to camera directions (symmetrical, low-angle, full-body shot, cinematic still shot, etc.), art movements (minimalist, film-noir, brutalist, pop art, etc.), F/stops, lighting types, and styles of photography (landscape, underwater, tilt-shift, still life, etc.). It even responds to prompts detailing the different types of camera you want to replicate (Nikon D850, disposable camera, Polaroid, Canon EOS R, etc.) with added lens types (telephoto, wide-angle, 85mm, neutral density filter, etc.). You also try directors in the prompt, such as “in the style of Sergio Leone” or “in the style of Wong Kar Wai” for that elusive mise-en-scène, so that quinquennial paying off loans from film school might have been worth it after all.

Predictions

AI video is still in its infancy, but it’ll probably be as early as 2024 when we start to see script-to-explainer video content hit the market. Text to AI-voice and AI audio leveling/editing are already commonplace. I expect us to see a lot of content support-specific AIs turning up in the next few months as the industry realizes the potential and the developers who were victims in the recent spate of Silicon Valley redundancies get to grips with the associated APIs. Expect a crop of low-budget filler, but watch out for the unexpected coming from home developers - building their own Jarvis on any old skip-scrounged kit that’ll run Python. 

Also, expect some serious low-quality copy and a fall in news standards in the form of “black hat journalism.” It’s a simple matter of linking a few APIs to automatically write and publish magazine-style content to a cobbled-together portal for skimming off those referral link dollars. Without good prompting and some appropriate manual editing, we’re going to see some mediocre bollocks that’ll put a black mark on AI's journalistic copybook - and the real press will (justifiably) rush to point fingers and scoff.

Quality content is king. Google has already made a statement about this, but clearly says it has no problem with AI if the copy is of genuine value and will “reward high-quality content, however it is produced.”

Nation-state bad actors and hacktivist are going to ride ChatGPT like a pony, all the way down the misinformation highway to QAnonville. Now anyone can write copy and code, at volume, and the code side of AI functionality is bound to grow even faster as code writes codes. Brace for automated factual disruption on a Brobdingnagian scale. Throw in a couple of Deepfakes, and the 2024 US election is going to be a disinformation masterclass.

Obligatory call to action

Honestly, I think our industry needs to get on board, or we’ll be left on the dock.

I’m not saying human-generated content is dead, far from it, but a human/AI collaboration in a business environment feels productive, and creative, and it’s already happening.

We should look at AI now and consider how it can make what we do more efficient. It’s the copywriters, PR peeps, and content creators who don’t take an interest and don’t integrate AI into their workloads who will find themselves on the sidelines in favor of the people who do. I have a couple of extra hours of additional capacity a day because I know how to use the tools; why would you give my job to someone who doesn’t? Have we reached the point where we should be sharing the by-line with an AI? No, not yet, but I bet we're only a year away from Elon trying to charge us for a tick to prove we're flesh and blood. Expect "prompting" (or whatever they'll call it) to become a part of media courses in the very near future, but those joining University courses in '23 may well be training for jobs that won't exist when they graduate. Things are moving fast, the ball is already rolling, and we can’t stand by like print journalism once did, denying the inevitable.

❦