Episode 326: Taking AI and Copywriting with Todd Jones

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns sits down with Todd Jones and talks about how AI impacts copywriting.

Show Highlights:

1. The impact of AI on business.
2. How does AI impact copywriting.
3. Does AI impact jobs?
4. What is the future of AI.

Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob here again today. I’m here with my good friend and guest Todd Jones of copyflight. How are you today, Todd?

Not too bad. I can’t. I can’t complain. So it’s muggy and we’re gonna have storms later, but pretty good.

Could you send some of that muggy weather north of the border so I can get rid?

Yeah, I figure you guys will get your share of it before it’s over with, but yeah, it’s coming across actually, I think from Texas right now, I I expect our friends in Oklahoma might get some.

Of the woody stuff.

To do so.

I I was kidding with my good friend Robert Rowley of Patch Stack this week that the last storm came up from Colorado and Robertson Colorado. So I said, what the hell are you sending me? I don’t need presents like this.

You don’t need the, you don’t need the code. You want the you know. I mean, we have the warmer weather, but it’s muggy. And I’ll tell you when in February or March, when you have 78 degrees and inevitably a drop comes. And often when that drop comes, it creates storms. Often bad storms, which actually if you saw the news. Earlier this week, Norman. Oh my God, had tornadoes and they had some pretty crazy pictures, and that’s what you get. Hail Storm tornadoes, high wind. And so that’s what happens when cold air clashes with warm air and we got the warm air right now. But right now, actually, what’s coming to the state, not really trying to do a weather report. There’s actually a warm front coming through, but it is going to create a storm. Some storms after a. While so but. That’s that’s typical this time of year and this part of. Country I know we have some friends in Oklahoma, Talisha and and. Yeah, those those folks are in Oklahoma and we got several in North Texas. I think Kathy Vanzetti is in Ditton area. So you know we all, we all understand that because we’re all in that target zone. And so we’re all checking on each. Other just come here.

I’m always. I’m over chatting. We should give a. Big shout out to those three because they’re such an integral part of our community and we’re so lucky to have.

I’ve already interacted with Talisha on Twitter this morning, so she said it’s March the 1st and something I said really is it? She said.

I had a. Cat I had to catch up with Kathy Zant yesterday, which I I rather enjoyed.

Kathy is a is a well, she’s just a gym and I I I keep moving more and more into cadence, which is my plan for Conway scene and so. But I I’m looking forward to doing that, but I have to say, you know, I’ve used more blocks and I know not everybody likes blocks in the WordPress community and and if you’re a developer it’s it can be problematic because there’s a lot of movement over some, you know, some people feel like PHP is not being used very well anymore. We’re using more jobs.

No question.

And that’s all beyond me because I’m not a ******** developer, so we’ve got some friends that are kind of. Not really pleased with that, but I will say for for someone who’s maybe not a ******** developer like myself, it makes building a website. I can almost say easier, but it could be so I did. You know, I did a project starting at the end of last year first this year for a new client and they had one of those themes from one of those multi-purpose themes. Theme force or whatever and we moved it to generate press and use one of the child themes and shout out to Mike Oliver who gave me some feedback on some stuff. But wow, I was very impressed with generate press. It took me a little bit to figure it out, but I’m sold on generate, press cadence and of course asked her. Those are themes that I’ve used asked her for a long time. Speaking of Aster Brainstorm forces, having like their 13th to 14th birthday right now. All three of those I think are really solid theme options and I don’t want to get into having 20 theme frameworks to pull from. Everybody’s got their favorite when I understand, but those three to me have been really good and I’ve been pleased working with those 3. Theme frameworks, so to speak.

So no, no question and now just to to shout out to my good friend Brian Gardner over at WP engine and. Sam Nunos they host a a group on Friday called the builder mode. So if you ever want to learn more about FSC or box and get in on that conversation, Mike McAllister or WP engines in on it as well most many.

I need to actually go to one of those. For one I. Mean I’ve actually had a conversation like a. Zoom call with Brian. He was really cool. We we had a conversation a couple of years ago. Sam is of course, super active on Twitter, and that’s my only interaction with her, so I really need to show up sometime just to kind of take all that in. I don’t quite grasp the full. The FSE what full site editing thing just yet. So thankfully, they’re not like throwing everything out and saying you. Have to do. This I get the idea that it can be very helpful. I’m pretty comfortable using the, you know, the generate press cadence Astra model and I’m OK with that, but I don’t quite get the full site editing, but it would be nice to sit in and listen. And and and maybe learn a little bit because that’s really, I mean when it comes to Gutenberg, that’s how I kind of learned. I I would, I would hop on Wednesday mornings with Joe Casey. And he’d do his little live thing, and I would watch him. And he was using generate. I’m sorry, he. Was using Cadence actually. So it was like, OK, that makes sense. I can do that. And so I started playing around with it, build a couple of sites using Gutenberg and I already had Aster and asked to work with Gutenberg out-of-the-box, so I was. We’ll just use ask.

That’s that’s the best way to learn that. I mean, I moved to a live site as many people with this podcast know. And one of the things I’m working on right now, because I went down the rabbit hole. Is I’m about to change the color scheme of the website and the background colors and all of that, and with Gutenberg it’s such a breeze to do so. So that’s my.

Make sure you check with Colleen Gratzer to make sure you’ve got your accessibility with your colors. Before you do that.

Here we go again. It says and.

I love Colleen and Amber Hines, who, who kind of spearheaded the accessibility, and I’m I’ve learned a lot from those two as well, just sitting and listening to them so.

So today I thought we’d talk a little bit about AI, but before we get there. I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you. I know you’ve done some work in the WordPress space and you do some a lot of work in the copywriting space. How did you get into the copywriting space? What kind of precipitated that?

Ohh my goodness, it’s an evolution man. You know, I I was always more of a. Website builder. Not really a developer or even a designer for that matter. You know, some people like our friend Ryan kind of come from the design. You know, he did a lot of design before he ever got into development, and he’s way better at developing than I. I didn’t really. I don’t have a design degree. When I first did any kind of website building. Actually the first website I built was on front page Express which was bundled free.

You’re dating. You’re dating yourself, my friend. That’s a long.

Which which? Yeah, that was on. It was bundled with Internet Explorer. Four and I got tasked to do finish a website for the church. Was that? And so I learned what I was doing and did that. Eventually I switched to. We called it the poor man’s dream. Weavers called name a web editor. I think out of Japan, it was off the shelf. You could get it for about 100 bucks. I’d go to CompuServe, right.

There’s a chain, there’s a chain. That’s again dating yourself. That’s not around anymore, I don’t think.

Well, yeah, and and a lot of that time I was working at Borders Books again, doesn’t exist anymore. And actually so anyway, I did the web editor I got into blogging right for football sake. I had a college football blog, started out doing that on Blogger Blogspot.

Focused on the Arkansas Razorback center.

Yeah. Well, I was doing college football in general, I think I originally called it collegefootballtopten.com. I top college football top ten because I when I was a kid I would. This is something I like to do. I I did polls, I call them Todd Jones, posted polls and I would do songs and I. Do I guess I would do sports? I don’t remember what all I did. But you know, I did these polls, so I as I had my top 10s. Like everybody’s got an opinion. Right, I’ll. I’ll just throw my my opinion in there and I was in the backyard of TCU, which was rising at the time as a football powerhouse before they ever made. National GIMP chip game. And now, watching what they were doing, and of course, I. Was a big Razorback fan and at that time. They had, the backfield, was chopped, was loaded with you. Know Darren McFadden, Felix Jones and. Peyton Hillis. And so you know, there’s a lot. Of good football going. On between my probably my 2:00. Favorite schools at the time when? It came to, you know, college football. So I did. The college football I decided, you know, I want to put all. This on one website. I don’t want it to be, you know, black spot and then have the rest of it somewhere. So I’m trying to figure out how to integrate blogspot into my website. And I realized it just was probably going to be too much of A hassle. One of the sites that I read regularly blogs, was called Razor bloggers. It was a Razorback Arkansas Razorback football, mostly blog, and they were on WordPress. And I’m like, well, I have this account. I don’t remember some. It was a, it was like a blue host or something at the time. But it was it was before, way before Blue host, but some other, you know, I have this account and it had push button install for WordPress. So I installed it and.

So you start, you started with the push button install.

Yeah, I.

You never did the famous 5 minute manual install.

Well, I did later when I worked at the agency.

Which I’ve done.

I did. I did. Later I learned how to do it, but at this point it’s like. I mean you you’ve. Clicked in C panel with Billy Host has a C panel and even if you use site ground or hostinger, they all have some you you click the button and the script runs and installs it right all of them. All of them have that now so it’s like. Why do it unless you want? Install something completely clean, which I understand because almost every host when they install something has some must use plug-in that you never wanted, so they all have it. I mean, I guess the the C panel doesn’t really install anything like that. I don’t I you know, we did the migration. Billio’s last week and I don’t recall there being something I didn’t want in there so.

No, they don’t. They don’t add anything but little secret if you’re doing. Something clean. Create a clean install, create it with all your standard plugins and themes and all that stuff, and then save it and then you can just migrate that install to whatever Dev site working so that makes it easy.

Yeah, I mean. You you create a blueprint, create a blueprint. Basically is what you’re doing and when I worked at the agency, that’s what we did. We we were using Genesis, the Genesis framework and I think eventually before I left. They chose one of the child themes that we used the most and kind of created that as our and so whenever I took over a project had already been installed and the theme we wanted and then we just started doing the front end development but anyway. To to make. Anyway to go on? I did the website using WordPress which was you know new to me. I had to go buy I. Was at borders at the time I could get 33% off of most books. So I went and got Lisa Sabin Wilson’s, you know, dummies WordPress for dummies. The big one, not the she had a small one and there was like 1. One was 8. And one books. And I bought that, started learning how to use WordPress. All of that was for me to to do the blog, which I did. I did. Then I launched another blog. Called DFW Football and it was about football and and Dallas will work anyway. So I did that for a while and then of course I went into development or whatever you want to call it, working for agency and whatnot. But I felt like all along my calling card was probably more content. Developers at that time just wanted to develop and move on, right? But I’m like, well, you got to do something as a business owner, you want to make this website work and and content adding content regularly. That was pretty much the secret sauce 12 years ago, adding content regularly, and I felt there was a. A opportunity there for me. And then somebody told me about copy bloggers and there I go. I start reading copy bloggers. I also had read pro bloggers. I think you Darren Rouse. I think his name.

Karen is Karen used to do a course back in the day called Write A blog for 30 days and. And sold it quite successfully because at that time piping, he was ahead of the game and.

He was ahead of the game. And and so was Brian Clark with the copy bloggers. They were ahead of the game. They were all like content marketing before most people were. They weren’t even books out about content marketing at the time, but, but also at the same time I was. Exploring social media marketing a lady from the Dallas area named Shama Hyder, I bought her. She’s got two books, at least two books out now, maybe three. I bought the first one. Literally as a PDF offer website eventually was published in a book I’ve got I had.

OK.

I bought two or three versions of that one, but it was originally a PDF. I bought it off her website for about 30 bucks trying to leverage social media to grow my blog whatnot. All that comes together and. That’s all under what I would call the copywriter umbrella. Then I started. Like, well, I want to learn more about copy copywriting, actual copywriting, cause you know when you read copy bloggers, they would talk about copywriting even though it was the, the, the, the core was kind of content marketing. There was a lot of talk about copywriting and and over the years, they had copywriters. Like Ben Settle and Joanna Weeb and some other folks to write a guest blog post. So yeah, I started following Ben settle and I bought some of his books and was in a Facebook community. He had for a while get his emails. Then I then I started learning about conversion, copywriting, which is probably another thread of copywriting. And of course that is Queen Joanna Wiebe, who’s also from Canada. And went down that road, learned a lot about conversion, copywriting. Conversion rate optimization Tally Wolfe friend of mine works for Talia. Been where? Actually there was a lady who ran. Who she still runs this riding community, who she didn’t call it copyright. She called it riding cause all the writers are all different kinds of writers in there. And I cannot remember her name right now for nothing. But I was in that community for a while, paying 25. Bucks a month or whatever. And met my friend Sophie and we were she. She’s she reached out to me and. Said hey, you want to be? You know, riding buddies or whatever she called it. And like, sure, we actually got, we would meet at least once a month and talk about what we’re doing, that kind of thing kind of keep each other on pace. And now she works for Talia Wolf, who’s probably one of next to Pep Lahara probably the one of the foremost conversion rate optimization. I call her the Queen and cop code version rate optimization. Sophie works. Or and just went down that whole route and figuring out what what I am. You know, what does it mean to be a copywriter? Everybody’s got a opinion about that as well, and I have an opinion. Copywriting to me is anything that basically is business writing, so could be long form content, marketing, content writing, it could be. Conversion copywriting, which you do for landing pages or pages on your on your website and then it can also be PPC copywriting. Print copywriting. Actually, Neville Madura put out a I’ve been I think I saved it somewhere but he put out a Neville. Another guy that I started following in this process put he he worked with the the Appsumo guys, sumo and all that. He did a lot of copywriting for them. If you’re wondering about Neville. And he put out a really good definition. And I thought, and it does include, in my opinion, everything that is done for business sake and also non profits as well. But anything that basically copywriting in my opinion is any content copy that. Seeks to influence or persuade someone to take an action, and pretty much any medium. So it could be. It could be mostly most copy and stuff is done digitally. Now it’s just in nature where we are in our economy, but you still have brochures and you still have Flyers. They’re put out so anything even signs on the on the road, you know, there’s copywriting in that so. There’s kind of my evolution. I don’t know if. That really answer your question, it’s kind. Of a long story, but.

It’s a good story. So let’s kind of jump into speak of it. We have this thing called AI artificial intelligence running around. I was listening to last week’s Tech News Weekly podcast with Jason Holland, Michael Sargeant, and then we’re talking about the number of books that are now being written by ChatGPT. There’s actually books in the Amazon. Store that, say, written by ABC and Co, written by ChatGPT. And then there’s this big discussion. Is that ethical, or is it not? And Micah made this really good point in their podcast that some of the writing is worse than the stuff that AI puts out. So is that ethical? What is your whole feeling? And let’s start with how do you feel about? Something being written by AI if it’s disclosed that it’s written by AI versus if it’s not disclosed, it’s written by AI.

Oh, you know that. Is a that’s a totally different concept, I. I think here’s here’s the thing. You know when. You OK? I I like to. I like the like in business writing to some degree to writing your college term paper. Now that does not going to be something everybody’s excited about. Nobody really likes writing term paper. But you know your professor always told you if you’re expressing a thought or quoting somebody, you always cite your source that is going to be a downfall. They are because I don’t think that they’re now. They may train it someday to actually do that. You know, and if they do, that’s great. But but what you’re doing and you? Know the guys from grow and convert. Talk about. Content AI only going to speed up content that’s not as good. That’s popping. You know when you’re talking about doing long. I don’t think you should ever use AI for long form content. Personally, if it’s not going to cite the source to tell you where it comes from, then you know you’re just regurgitating information. So there’s articles that when you, when you, when you do a topic research. This is how the process people go through to write an article. Sometimes I I’ve distinguished between an article and A blog post. Now, because in my opinion, businesses should almost always do an article, and I say that because I want people to equate it more to doing like you do when you’re right a college paper. Because you need to have that kind of quality in there as much as you can, it’s not always possible, but the guys that grow and convert call it a Google research paper and so that’s what people do. Typically they take a subject like say A I and they’re going to, they’re going to put their keyword in there and then you’re going to pull up the first page of the search. The search is your result. Age and you’re going to go through there and there’s probably 5 or 6, maybe organic articles about a whatever your topic is. And then you take and you start lifting ideas from those articles and you shape it into. That is what they say and grow and convert and what I believe is a Google Research paper a I can do that probably better than you and me and probably faster that is.

I would. I would, I would agree. And if it’s a research paper, it’s really easy. I did an experiment which I haven’t posted yet. And I went to ChatGPT. So let’s go down that road, which came out in November. And I said to ChatGPT, who is Ken Dryden? So for those who don’t know, Ken Dryden’s, a legendary Hall of Fame hockey player, played for the Montreal Canadiens. He’s an author. He’s a lawyer. He’s been a politician, a cabinet minister in Canada. He’s been kind of all over the map since he retired and believe it or not. In this case, ChatGPT got most of the facts pretty well because are well documented on the web. I also went to ChatGPT and I said. Which I have published on my business bargas stunning digitalmarketing.com I said tell me how to secure a website using WordPress secure. And what I’ll tell you is because that’s a pretty detailed topic ChatGPT got the basics really right, but didn’t get any of the in-depth stuff really right.

I remember that. Yeah, if you want to do some comparison comparison, compare it to some of the articles I did at main WP about the same topic where I use subject matter experts, I’ll let them do the talking as you will. But and we mentioned Kathy and you mentioned Robert and both of them were part of that and they both gave more. In depth answers, but I remember looking at that article. And I think I. Told you this, like when I when. I did research, cursory research. Because I was getting information from, I submitted a a questionnaire to these folks and several there. About five of them. And I got, you know, detailed information from them based on experience, real world experience, not what they read, you know? And but I did a search and. I I looked at some of his articles and I told you I said that sounds like about half the articles I read. When I was doing research on WordPress security.

You, you, you did.

But I got much. More. Yeah, I got more detail whenever I had Robert Riley and Kathy Benezette and Edward Arora’s name and some others there’s. Five of them. They gave me and it was. And it was based on real world experience. I mean, we’re talking about guys and gals who are a part of maintaining and secure. Probably the total of them thousands and thousands. Of websites you know.

And and like you get more even talking to me because I’ve got over 300 in My Portfolio, so.

Yeah, you never submitted any answers to that, but that’s OK. I’m just gonna ride you on that. But yeah, I wanted.

Throw out.

I had a couple people from the main W community. Main WP community who did submit, so I was pleased with that, that I was that was important to me, that we had a couple of people from the. Main WP community and then we. Had some outside experts like Kathy and Robert who submitted as well. So yeah, they they went beyond those basic high points that you’re that your AI. Vertical, you know, rolled up.

So I I’d like to go one more step talking about AI are good friends Bridget Willier and Warren Lanita just put out a book which I had the honor of writing the introduction for and one of the things I highlighted in the introduction. And I’ve said this to you over the years and on this podcast. One of the things business owners need to do, especially small businesses, is make their business different and stand out from their competitors. And I think I know you know where I’m going with this. So for all using the same AI bot, how do we make ourselves stand out at the content? It’s it’s putting out is the same.

Are you asking me that question?

I am.

I’m glad you asked. I’m going to answer that with two content frameworks and there are others out there on the Internet, but these two I’m much more familiar with. One is from my friend Lily, who I had on the messaging matters show. Last year and she’s got when she calls the the Lima framework, Le MA and #1 is logic #2 is explicit. So basically explicit as being specific and not using general phrases in general concept and the last two I want you to pay attention to because I think these two are the lot. Harder for something like AI to actually implement. #3 is memorable, M is memorable, so you want to write your content and it’s memorable. And then last one is actionable. What kind of action can you take? So I like the idea. You don’t have to use her framework, but I. But I I use them. I consider them like a checklist. Am I hitting these points? And then I guess Google has. The eat framework I don’t want to go into that just now, but that’s important as well. They Google does take a big apparently a big emphasis on subject matter experts, so authority is one of the deals right in the IEEE AT the other content framework, I want to mention is my own. It’s called. Then REO framework and has nothing to do with the press real estate property. It stands for relevant R it stands for relevant and then E stands for engaging. So you’re right, the kind of content is engaging that people want to read. And then the last one is, oh, is original something also I think robots will have a hard time doing. But the idea is what I think AI is going to produce is basic informational content. There is a place for that, so don’t. I’m not saying don’t throw AI out. I’m not saying actually have a a AI. Software that I use, but I think for longer form content and copy for your pages that you know you have 1000 words on or whatever. You need to be able to do those things. It needs to be engaging, which good copywriting will do because you learn how to do those things. Good need to have a good style guide for your long form content. Which I recommend getting Maddie Osmond’s book for that.

No, no question on that. On Maddie’s book is the best book out there and one you and I have kind of recommended all over the place and people want to learn more about Maddie’s go look up the archives of this podcast she’s been on so.

Yeah. So little you know, but the bottom line is I think AI is going to regurgitate information, and so some of those things that’s in Lilly’s framework and in my frame. Are are going to be. Missed and not and I think also there’s going to be an issue with siding sources and because it’s not going to have an original thought and it may have an original thought one day. If it does, we’re, you know, I’m, I’m going to be a little worried about humankind. But because, you know my thoughts, I I keep revisiting. The movie I robot in my head. And how much Will Smith detested those robots? And it started when he felt like they were thinking for themselves. Now we as humans. Want to think for ourselves, but. And they had some issues with the Sydney, I think was her name. The ChatGPT from from Microsoft apparently had some really interesting conversations with people. And Microsoft decided that maybe we ought to discontinue this so and some of the a lot of people in the SEO field play around with this stuff because they’re all about content, right, you. Gotta have the content for. Were and so I follow a lot of people. That’s much more in SEO than I am. And one of them is Lily Ray on the Twitter and she’s she’s she fits the engaging in the original and all that kind of stuff. Just as a person because she is a kind of a different person for a professional SEO. Wedding and she’s a DJ by night and she’s a lot of fun to follow, but. She posted some stuff I know was what she. Had or somebody else had with Sydney. And I was like, boy, that’s that’s kind of interesting. She, she actually hurt Sydney’s feelings. And Sidney shut her down. So I was like, I don’t know what to think. About this. So I think we have to tread lightly with the automation stuff. I think Chad, GP, I think ChatGPT will be great for speeding up and maybe making automation more efficient.

But well.

I think for and I think there’s certain parts of content that AI is gonna be really helpful for descriptions of products. I think you could probably do a a general professional bio using AI.

How about how about podcast transcripts I? Mean we all use.

Yeah, podcast transcripts.

Things like Autor dot AI or even Office 365 now has built in transcription built into it. So and and the script.

And one thing I was. And one thing I was gonna bring up is we we’ve all been using either Grammarly or Pro riders aid or.

So true.

Hemingway out for years. It’s the same principle, right? It cleans up your writing. It makes it more. So what I have used them out for mostly thus far is to to make my writing smoother and better, because sometimes I write a little choppy because I’m writing like, what’s in my head to getting the facts out and and. It needs to be smooth, it needs to be. Download it. You put in oh. I want to speak casual and friendly. And it just. It smoothes out but. I wouldn’t want. You to I I I say that AI is great for what I call microcopy. Or micro content, so no more than a paragraph at a. Time I think you can use it to. Generate ideas for headlines. And thereby unique value propositions. If you’re working on that. But here’s the thing. When you do any of that, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to have your information, you got to know what, what your, what your input is, if you will. And so you know, you can’t just, it won’t magically. Pull that out of your head, you’ve got. To input that.

So no question. Now the other Rd. I wanted to go down with AI. Is if AI is kind of what ChatGPT does, and many other AI sources do is they scour the Internet for the information. That’s where they’re getting it from. So the two issues we have is 1 timeliness, but to me, the biggest issue we often have is copyright. So if ChatGPT. Scouring the Internet for information, how do we know the information that ChatGPT posing is not copyrighted or or not? Or Creative Commons? We don’t know that and. That’s an issue.

Yeah, that’s that’s thing I worry. About, you know they’re not. Citing their sources like a. A good college term paper writer would do you know? They always told me in a site your sources, you know, you put your little information on your on your index card and you put where it came from. You you got to cite your sources or you got to, you know, and of course on the Internet, basically citing your so you don’t have to do footnotes. Although I have seen people do that, I think a link usually you know is is suffice like this is where this comes from. You can go read more about it. Especially with data studies and that kind. Of stuff. So yeah, you run the risk. And what’s really ironic is you can use AI to find out if something is plagiarized, but apparently you can use AI to plagiarized. So it’s kind of a.

Well, they’ve already got. I was reading somewhere recently. They had one major US university. That had a hundred students expelled for using ChatGPT to write their term papers, so it’s already happening, folks.

Yeah. So the, the the thing about AI and ChatGPT and this is this is. Not really a good or bad thing, it’s just the nature of it. You’re you’re. You’re speeding up something, right? Speeding up process. Those who already have a propensity for trying to find shortcuts are. Going to use it.

We’ll we’ll try and use them to find.

Shortcuts, yeah, and use it for wrong. That’s why I said, well, you know, I think ChatGPT is gonna be great for making automation more efficient. When I talk about automation is like you think about zappy or or using automation for like I. I heard somebody say I was looking for. I don’t remember what it was they were looking for. Some kind of information they needed to to do some task and they said they had. They asked ChatGPT and they did it and it did it to write a script to go out on the Internet and find this information and delivered like that’s an efficient way to use of doing something that. You know, they’re trying to do a task. You know, there’s a there’s a word. There’s a there’s a people say. You know. How to know if you automate something? Well, if it’s repeatable and you know there are things that we have to automate to make life easier as a business owner and we do it all the time, why most people don’t use Excel to keep up with their client list, you know? And but there’s there are things I think. You know that chat GPD is gonna help with? Thinking right now. Let’s say I could ask ChatGPT, OK I need. To have a. List of journalists in the the security the tech security space to contact about my new. Business on my new plugin for WordPress security. Some people who write about WordPress security and if you could have chat, ChatGPT, go out and find that information for you, sometimes the information going to be correct but you just. Speed up so. Thing that would take you hours to do. You would probably hire somebody on fiber to do it. Well, now you just tell ChatGPT. So I heard somebody did something like that with chat. GPD I.

No question.

Can’t remember information was so I. They had ChatGPT to write a script to go out and.

To tell you. Find that information. I got to tell you. I was talking to one of these copywriting firms recently. The ones that write. Copy for websites and stuff just for comparison sake and one of the things they said is they vet their writers by having them do samples and would you believe some of these people writing for these firms are trying to write samples using ChatGPT to circumvent the system so they don’t have to do any work? Like it’s.

Yeah. So you don’t. Want to hire those people, do you?

So they said their increase. So they give you an example. In December they caught 24 instances. This month they cut over 1000. Believe it or not of people writing stuff with chat GP.

I would be curious to know if they pay to do that.

No, this was.

And how?

The this was the submissions to get on the.

I know, but the test the test from the company. A lot of times companies will have to do that test unpaid. And I don’t I. I’m not going to say they should. HI or ChatGPT to do that. But I can see why somebody would if they’re having. To do something, to take them a while and then I am paid.

For they’ll always be the people. To try and circumvent. Remember the days of plagiarism where we’d sit down and you wouldn’t do your homework questions? You’d look at your friend and say, can I borrow your homework so I can scroll the answers? Down quickly, so when the teacher does a homework check, I’ll pass.

And that’s why teachers always change up the test each each semester. For a little bit. So, because, you know, kids would.

That’s right.

You know, I know there’s. Always going to be people. Who do and and they’re and. And it’s a fine line, right? In one instance, it can be ingenious and ingenuity and and. But the other side. Is just, you know. So you. There’s a fine line, right? But you don’t want to cross that line and go to the unethical side, so you know. But you know, schools, they they expel people for plagiarism. That ought to tell you, you know, in the blogging business blogging world. And I think some of it has. Has settled down a little bit, you know, Wild West, probably a few years ago. You know, people doing all kinds of stuff and and copying and ripping off people’s ideas without attribution. Well known people doing that and it seems to have settled down a little bit people, but I I would like to see a little bit more standards for. You know, a lot of companies who are worth their salt and get people to write articles for them tend to go out and find people they try to anyway. It just depends on what the company is doing. I I’ve I’ve listened to a lot of companies and some are just looking for. Content for and it almost seems like for content sake well when you do that, you’re not going to care about standards you know, and I think Google’s beyond that so. Create a style guide which has standards in it and again go back and listen to the podcast with Maddy Osment. Get her book. She walks you through doing a style guide. I mean, I can’t say enough about what Maddie has done with that book. And I think it will affect the digital marketing industry is if people keep I I tell people like they come, people will come to me about doing content and like first of all go buy a copy of Macy’s book if you haven’t already and create a style guide if you plan on having people. But you know, I listen to other people like Joe. OK. The other day was talking to him. He had this LinkedIn, he had this. Voted list about how he, how they vet riders and Joel also from Canada runs case study buddy and it was pretty interesting to to hear that I’m like OK, this doesn’t really affect if it you know isn’t completely relevant to me right now, but it might be in five years and. I get students. To write for me, for Conway scene. I loosely vet them because I understand that they haven’t really done professional writing other than what. They’ve done in school. I vet them a little bit. I asked them to send me copies of of stuff they’ve written, and sometimes they’ll say, well, I’ve never written anything like that. I said I don’t care. Just send me a copy of what you’ve written. I’m looking to see that they can write. You know? And then the rest of it, we can we can work with them on so. But when you’re getting somebody, when you’re paying somebody to write content for you, you know, insist that they have some quality standards. If you have to, you know, hire Maddie’s team to build you a a A style guide, that that’s a great place to start.

I I think every business including a small business. Should have a style guide. I’ve even developed one for my own that’s goes everything from the fonts I use to the colors I use. To the tenses I use with certain words. So consistency is what the style guy gives. You and you know, give.

And that’s that’s what I’m working towards more now because obviously copy flat for the most part has been me right now. So you know, you know what you had like in your head. But for Conway scene and you know, you’re starting to see more people write like, OK, I need to have like instead of just editing their stuff, I need to have like, you know. Style guide that says these things I have to get them out of my head and for because we’re gonna have more riders going forward. But I’ve been fortunate to have some really good riders from the university local. So, and that’s a good place to start too. Some of these kids are looking for opportunity to write, to put on their portfolio. If you live like I live in. A town with three. And if you live in a town or near a town with colleges, I mean contact the. Writing department and. You know, and see if any of the kids would. Be willing to write.

Or or the the other places conferences not not related to this, but I had somebody come up to me at Pod Camp and said are you willing to take somebody on to do something to learn to do editing and do editing with me.

Oh really?

And I might I might actually do that. So there’s always people trying to learn a little bit. So I give them credit. Like you got to start somewhere, but the key is like with writing is AI is a good base and I think that’s what it provides, but I wouldn’t be using AI as the end to all end person but.

No, not long form content, you know, like I said, Microcontent Microcopy. I I can see like, you know you have an e-commerce site. Somebody’s listening. Have an e-commerce site and you got. Maybe you’re starting with 50 products, you got to write a description for every one. Those might give them a try. They might. They might really speed up that process. A little bit. For you got to write a professional bio because you’re speaking somewhere. Pull up a AI, help you do that. Those are excellent places then. Then when you start to write stuff, drop. You know your paragraph and I think. This paragraph needs some. You know, smoothing over, drop the paragraph in there like the one I use. They I copy, it’s called copy Smith. Copy Smith dot AI I can drop the paragraph in there and click rewrite and it’ll rewrite it and you. You can look at several variations and it’s almost always better when I wrote so you know, it’s really helpful in that regard. So there’s there’s a lot of ways, but, and I think Ryan has used a phrase as A to help him come up with outlines for articles. So there’s another place, you know, that you can use.

I I have used.

They helped generate allies.

I have a used AI degenerate subject lines and that’s really handy to.

Yeah, absolutely. And you can use it and keep and you can, you can literally generate. Probably dozens of headline options in just a few seconds, and you know it’s it’s. It’s also a brainstorm tool. You know, there’s there’s so many things I’m not. I’m never gonna say. Don’t use a I use a I just use it. Just realize that writing a complete article or your entire home page is probably not going to work well. However, there are sections on those things. That you can use AI to make better. On the home page, you know I’m pretty big on the hero area being a headline based on your unique value properties, you may have to, you know, run that through a few times and you’ll get a better option and you can test those so you know sections like that can be, I think some of the AI’s have.

I agree.

The storytelling feature I haven’t yet to. Try that but. You know that that might be an option if you’re writing your own story. So you know, there’s there’s a lot of ways to use a the the temptation is to shortcut things, right. Ohh I’m gonna write this 1200 article. I need to write using AI and that’s probably not a good idea because it’s probably going to pull up information that needs to be cited. You know, unless you go back and. Thoroughly edit it and also I think you’re going to miss out on some of the things you need to have in an article like making it memorable and engaging, and original thoughts, those kinds of things are going to be hard to. To to replicate in an AI setting.

No, no, I I would agree with you 100%, Todd. Is there anything else you want to add into the discussion?

You don’t. Most of the AI places AI software online will have some kind of free. Well, you can always try. I probably tried three or four of them before I settled and it was based on a price point and what I got for the price, you know. So if you’re in a WordPress space, you know Bertha is an option as well. And but I can tell you if you use it very much, you’ll run out of that. Pretty pretty.

OK.

But, but I think it’s worth playing around with and like I said, you know, you’re really I think you’ll find a lot of like I think a lot of people don’t do a very good job with their headlines and with articles in the WordPress space. And I think the AI. Tools can help. Make and and I’m not. I’m against click Beatty here at the headlines. But you can still write a engaging headline without being. With beauty. But hey, I can help with some of that stuff, so I would just say try out several of them and you know they all have. I think I’ve you I have tried most of them at one point. Did the free trial. So anybody interested if you know if you want to talk, ask me questions about it. Feel free to ping me, I’ll. Tell you what I know.

Todd, thanks for joining me. Where is the best place to ping you either? On Twitter or by e-mail.

Twitter or Facebook. Or you can you can e-mail me, but I’m I’m following Twitter and Facebook pretty closely my Twitter. Is at Tod Jones. And Facebook? I’m Todd E Jones on that and. You can, I think Todd at copyfllight.comt.com, it would be my best e-mail.

Todd, thanks for joining me today and sharing your insights into the world of AI and cooperating much appreciated.

You bet, man. Thanks for having me on.

Always a pleasure. Thanks so much.

 

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