Everyone is excited by AI. No surprise there – it’s exciting tech. Who knows where it will lead us?
But there are a lot – a lot – of people who now use it to replace tasks completely that they shouldn’t be replacing.
Tasks like writing.
This isn’t an ‘anti-AI’ post. I do believe it has huge potential in many, many areas.
I also believe it can help with writing, but not in the way most people do.
Why Do We Write?
That’s the question we need to ask before creating a new piece of content. What’s the purpose of it?
If your purpose is to game the system to get your site ranking, you’re thinking about it all wrong.
You should be writing to connect with the reader in some way.
That could be showing them who you are through telling them about a personal experience or how you tackle a problem.
It might be sharing your expertise to help them improve their lives in some way.
But here’s the kicker:
The way you tell it, the way you write it, will be unique to you.
And that’s the way it should be.
The words you choose, the length of your sentences, the adjectives you select and, yes, even the mistakes you make – they’re all part of how you write.
Writing is communication. Your way of writing is how you communicate.
Use AI with Care
This is not a post to tell you not to use AI to create. But I would suggest using it in a different way.
Don’t just plug in a prompt and take what it spits out. It may read well to you, but there will be something off about it – that your readers will pick up on.
They might not even realise they’re picking up on it.
But if they think that this piece of content has been created with next to no human involvement, that’s going to have an impact in some way.
- Use it to come up with ideas to write on.
- Use it to suggest improvements.
- Don’t use it to do all the work for you.
Use AI to Improve, Not Create
We’ve always used writing tools to help us improve our writing. And that’s fine. But don’t assume that you can let a tool do all the work for you and still get great results.
The real win will come from making your content stand out from the rest. Making sure the people who read it – your customers – know it’s you who’s speaking to them rather than a machine.