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Writing with AI β¨ what's the hype all about?
Is it going to replace writers? Which tool should you be using? And how can you get the most out of it? Let's dive in.
These are questions you may have asked yourself β and they are also the questions the Say it right team is asking themselves in real-time. It's early days, but what we do know (as a content writing agency for tech & SaaS) is that it definitely makes sense to leverage it.
At the same time, writing with AI brings up new challenges like plagiarism and SEO friendliness. So is it really more efficient? The answer is: it depends what you're writing, and who's writing it.
Side note: As I (Olivia) wrote this piece, I started off with AI and quickly switched to manual writing β because prompting was costing me just as much time as writing. Plus, this is an opinion piece. This is our unique perspective. And generally speaking, that's what sets high-quality content apart.
Anyhow, back to AI writing. This is what we've found it's great for (so far):
π Getting rid of writer's block & idea brainstorming.
π Rough first drafts.
π Finding synonyms or inspirations for editing. (In the screenshot, you'll see a recent brainstorming for our new client's web copy)
π Repurposing a long-form piece into drafts for shorter, snappier social media posts.
π Writing an email/ simple and straightforward stuff that's not highly complicated. We've used it to write Ad copy, and that my friends it can do Ββ and it can do incredibly well.
What it's not so great for (so far):
π Writing unique high-quality content, the content AI produces is generic β it's based on content that's already out there, not what you want to put into the world. To get it to a high level of quality, create a unique brand style and add value that goes beyond other brands: a human will still need to rework and contribute to the copy.
π Prompting AI (telling it what and how to write) takes time too.
π It's unclear how AI-written content affects SEO; some experts say Google is not a fan of AI-written content, and others say it just needs to provide value. But what definitely needs to be checked for is: plagiarism, and that just adds another work step.
π If you don't prompt it correctly, it spits out a very formal and inconsistent tone & style β so if you have a team of people writing with different AI tools and different prompts, thereβs your consistent brand tone & style gone out the door. AI-driven writing needs a strategy.
So our take right now: AI won't replace high-quality content writers and copywriters anytime soon. But it will replace those who are not willing to use it in the long term. It will get rid of repetitive tasks, help us work quicker and is definitely a technology we will be leveraging to deliver even higher-quality work to our clients.
And just like if youβre not a professional writer and write your own copy, if you write it with AI, we recommend having a professional check it. They'll ensure the tone & style, grammar, and spelling are in check and someone not working at your company β gets it.
We're currently testing a couple of tools. Here are our favourites:
β‘οΈ Notion AI because we're already using it as our main project management tool and way of collaborating with clients at Say it right. But its content writing game isn't all that strong.
β‘οΈ Our main go-to for content writing, ideas & inspiration is Copy.ai, as it's specifically targeted to the needs of a content writer and copywriter. You set tone & style and select writing formats like a social media post β plus, they just launched a chat function, which is just like ChatGPT with no wait time β¨
β‘οΈ ChatGPT: the classic allrounder.
From what we gather, most of these tools are all based on the same basic technology β OpenAI's Natural Language Model. Which, interestingly, doesn't make them all that different in the end.
Let's see what the future of AI-driven writing holds. We're excited. π₯³