Can I use ChatGPT to write my blogs?

One of the most common marketing questions I'm hearing from our clients lately is, "Can I use Chat GPT to write my blogs?"  I thought I'd share my response with you as well.

There's no denying that generative AI is the biggest technology disruptor we've seen since the internet, and we've only just begun to experience its impact.  I'm sure by now you've played around with ChatGPT (or Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, or your other favorites), asking it to respond with anything from the serious to the completely offbeat.  It's pretty incredible.  So logically, you might think you can use it to crank out a bunch of blogs each month and outrank your competitors on SEO.

Well according to Google, the answer is sadly an emphatic, NO.  At least not if you just get AI to write something based on a topic you feed it.  The issue is that so much bot-like content is being generated these days Google has tuned its algorithm to reward value.  The clearly AI-written content is viewed as spam.  Remember that the LLMs were trained on available web data, so if your content isn't sharing something new and interesting to humans, it won't be interesting to Google either.   

But wait!  Isn't this like having a Ferrari in the garage that you can't drive? 

Not exactly.  Think of ChatGPT (or your favorite Gen AI tool) as the cure for writer's block.  Ask it to come up with possible topics, an outline, or even an entire article.  Just edit and rewrite it, rewording, adding examples and specific facts.  Note that if you're using an AI checker on your content, they aren't 100% accurate either.  I know someone who wrote an original poem and was told by the AI-checker that it was AI generated!  But the idea is to follow Google's guidelines for E-E-A-T, or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.  So you can start with AI, remove the bot-language, and write thought-provoking and original paragraphs.  What is getting traction is frequent long-form content (think 1500-2000 words), embedded videos that have been optimized on YouTube, and original perspectives.

We've only scratched the surface of what AI will do to make us more productive.  It just needs to be overseen by humans.  At least for now...