How will ChatGPT impact content marketing & SEO? (5 Takes)

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AI.

It’s going to change content production!

Our jobs are gone!

We will soon be illiterate!

By now you’ve heard about ChatGPT, one of the new features from OpenAI (maker of DALL-E, the AI image software).

If not, here’s what it looks like.

You type in a question and it gives you an answer.

ChatGPT remembers more of the context than GPT-3 currently does (I think?) but it seems like Jasper and other tools have some of that capability already.

So what do we make of this? 

Doesn’t this affect organic search and SEO and content marketing and all the things we care about?

Maybe, but thankfully there are some smart people on the case. I’m still processing it.

One thing I do know: things will change.

Below, I selected a few LinkedIn posts from smart people and draw out the key points.

Follow all of the people mentioned below; they’re great!

1. ChatGPT is a good place to start…but not a great place to finish

ChatGPT and GPT-3 provide a lot of potential in regards to outlines and starting points. Very rarely will the AI product be good enough to publish or share with clients. It lacks nuance, it lacks specificity, and it lacks expertise.

From Ross Hudgens, CEO of Siege Media

2. ChatGPT still feels like a content mill

ChatGPT provides an answer, but what does that really mean? Is that all that Google is good for? Sometimes. But other times you need more nuance, beyond the “fact” of a featured snippet. ChatGPT is great at giving you a featured snippet answer, but like Parthi mentioned — it feels like a dusty ol’ content mill with a lot of friction between those gears. Parthi sums it up well

From Parthi Loganathan, CEO at LetterDrop:

3. It’s good for facts…kinda

It’s good for facts on the surface, as long as you ask something up to the time it was last updated. It’s not real-time. (Who won the basketball game last night?) It can’t keep up with news, not yet.

Also, I disagree on this. I think it will help someone write an amazing book. Probably a novel.

From Eli Schwartz, SEO consultant

4. You need differentiators.

Think sources, expert quotes, new data and research. Your company’s point of view and what you’re discovering in the market will need to be shared quickly. Use that info to craft a point of view and make a real argument — just like for those college papers.

Tracey Wallace, content director at Klayvio

5. Do the real work

AI tools will replace you if you’re doing basic work and turning in basic posts. We’ve all had to do it at some point. It could bring down the scale of your content output (eek for me!), meaning that the Google game has just gotten harder, just like it did with many of the other algorithms. Real research, strategy, and idea generation are more important.

I love this chart from Blake Thorne, director of content at strategy at Launch Notes

Hope this helped you process some of the changes with GPT-3 and ChatGPT.

Go to OpenAI and sign up for your own account, play around with it, and make your own decisions.