When they said AI would be coming for my job, I will admit I was preparing to change careers entirely. But the more I looked into AI, the less threatening it appeared. After all, we’ve always had AI technology. It’s only now become a little more advanced. AI is not ever going away, period. So I asked myself how it could help me improve my writing. For me, the best way to use AI is to ask it to take care of the non-fun stuff, treating it like my assistant—because that’s all AI really is.
How AI can be helpful while writing copy
1. Using AI for SEO
I’ve been writing for over 15 years and, to be honest, SEO has always been that additional skill that takes a back seat while I’m trying to be creative. Now I can use AI to deliver keywords, both single words and keyword phrases, for my work. All I ask in my prompt is for ChatGPT to pretend it is an SEO expert, tell it the article I’m writing (or even paste my article into the prompt), provide the website where it will be published, and ask for dedicated long and short form keywords that I should incorporate into this article. By being highly tailored in my prompt, I’m more likely to get customized results for my client.
2. Using AI for Hashtags
Perhaps you’re seeing a pattern here: AI is great for providing trending information on the internet. Use AI software to pull the most prominent hashtags and also provide ideas for new ones. I always research and add my own, but it’s so nice to have a list to examine, pull from, and expand upon as I see fit. I still haven’t found a way for AI to create original, punny hashtags. But at least I no longer have the anxiety around starting from scratch to see what’s already working out there.
3. Using AI for Consumer Insights
If you’re looking for general information on what is getting people excited in your industry, AI can help. Of course, you should still lean more on what your company’s analysts or client research tells you. But you can ask AI about the ways to deliver information or preferred interactions through copy, aspects of consumer behavior that apply to a current, broader market.
4. Using AI for Content Ideation
Similarly to using AI ideation for design, you can absolutely use AI to help you define or find new angles for content. You can ask AI for examples of topics that need further exploration or to provide new ideas for takes on old topics. AI can also create a content calendar outline for you, allowing you to customize its output to better suit the brand. When it comes to ideation, AI can really help you kickstart your own brainstorming.
Ways that copywriters are still better than AI
1. Writing Campaigns
Writing great copy takes emotional intelligence. When you ask AI to write for you, you’ll notice it’s missing this crucial backbone of its output. For campaigns, you can use AI only so far before you’ll need to break out and come up with original ideas. Writers know their audience and clients better than an LLM, so they know what angles of marketing will and won’t work. At best, AI can show you established concepts that were already successful. At worst, AI can trip you up and make you overthink in different directions. Trust your gut and write your campaigns yourself.
2. Writing Taglines
Similarly to writing campaigns, the taglines you write have to come out of your campaign ideation naturally. The greatest taglines come from knowing exactly what the brand and consumer need to read and hear. Robots just get in the way here (they frankly haven’t established that important relationship between writer and audience). Any agency that has tried to cut corners using AI to craft taglines and website copy in a pinch will know what I’m talking about—those AI-written taglines never sound authentic or original, do they?
3. Naming
AI may be used in the early stages for naming, but great names need to come from an original thinker. If you’ve been in the copy game long enough to remember the heyday of Essie nail polish naming conventions, it’s a reminder that creatives have always been better at naming than today’s AI tech. Copywriters and marketers just know what resonates with their target demographic more than a robot ever will. Namers can quickly think outside the box and land on something truly unique. Try using AI for naming and you’ll receive mediocre drivel.
4. Writing emotionally-driven content (like this blog you’re reading)
This blog was not written while using AI and I’m sure you can tell. My voice is here, my style is here, and I’m having a natural conversation with you. If it were written by AI, it would likely be shorter, basic, and without an emotional approach. The bottom line is: if you want to keep appealing on an emotional level to your consumers, you need human copywriters to write all your content.
TLDR; Like so many others, I have reservations about relying too much on AI. For one, it’s terrible for the environment. Another is that it plagiarizes and hallucinates way too often to be reliable when it comes to facts. AI is designed to give you an answer to your question; it doesn’t care how off or terrible the answer is. But if you’re a copywriter looking for shortcuts when it comes to SEO, hashtags, and certain consumer trends, AI can be a quick tool to help strengthen your work. The bottom line is: don’t lose sight of the real strength that comes through in your copy—you.
Final note: if you are a copywriter or any other type of creative looking for work, Artisan is the boutique creative staffing agency for you. They help place top-tier talent with amazing clients nationwide. Whether you’re a successful AI prompter or creative strategist, Artisan can help you find the full-time or freelance gig for you.
Editor's note: this blog was written by our freelance copywriter since 2021, Alicia Berbenick. Unfortunately, this is Alicia's last blog with us - but how poetic and beautiful for it to be in her voice. We will miss her dearly and recommend her to ANY company that needs a copywriter. Therefore, we think it's important to acknowledge that the only use of AI was Grammarly editing.
