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How to write better with ChatGPT – and retain your job

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How to write better with ChatGPT – and retain your job
By Stephanie Oley

Worried that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools are here to take your job? Don’t be. Chances are you’re using quite a few already, whether to speed up the creative process, improve your grammar or cut down on research time.

If you’ve ever used tools such as Grammarly or Word’s Editor function, you’ll know what we’re talking about. The bots of today might not have the charm of R2D2 from Star Wars, but they sure have become indispensable to our jobs.

Several courses at CCE are helping professionals make the most of AI. One is the ChatGPT Course for Beginners: Using AI for Business and Marketing Communications, which provides a foundation in using this and other AI writing tools for business and marketing. So if writing takes up a large part of your working day, read on.

Where the bots do best

As many will attest, there are two particularly time-consuming tasks in writing. One is research and the other is writer’s block. ChatGPT is a game-changer on both fronts.

Let’s say you’re a property developer, writing a white paper with a section on market trends. As part of the research, you’d normally visit five or 10 reputable industry publications. You’d browse the latest insights, trying to find information that matches your theories. This might take an hour – or several – before you’d be ready to write.

Hand the task to ChatGPT, and it’s a different story. You start with a well-crafted prompt. For example: ‘Aiming at sophisticated commercial investors, write a one-page report that shows the key risks and opportunities in the 20 Australian suburbs with the greatest potential for capital growth.’ In an instant, word-perfect sentences and logical arguments unfurl before you, and your paper is ready 60 seconds later.

From here, you might ask the bot to elaborate on some points, verify others, or show its sources. But your piece has taken minutes to write, not hours or days.

Other uses for ChatGPT

You don’t need to entrust every task to ChatGPT. As a marketer, you could ask it to plan the concept for a series of persuasive emails. A business manager could use ChatGPT to draft a compelling business proposal, or write an empathetic letter to a grumpy customer. A restaurant owner could use ChatGPT to turn its menu descriptions into social media soundbites. The scope is endless.

Not keen on the bot’s style? You can increase the ‘temperature’ to sound warmer, or dial it down to sound more serious. You can even ask it to rewrite pieces in a style that mimics your own tone.

As an example, ChatGPT course facilitator Simon Hillier asked the bot to edit some guidance from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The goal was to make it sound like popular author and finance coach Scott Pape, of The Barefoot Investor fame.

Here’s the original ATO excerpt:

Small businesses are eligible for a range of tax concessions on capital gains that arise on the disposal of business assets. The concessions, which may be relevant to you, include the following [continues].

Here’s how that same paragraph reads when edited in Pape’s signature chatty style:

Mate, running a small business isn’t easy, and navigating through the financial labyrinth can be a real hassle. But did you know that you, as a small business owner, could be eligible for some pretty sweet tax breaks on capital gains? That’s right.

Where the humans win

Of course, ChatGPT can’t do everything – and neither can similar tools, such as Jasper, QuillBot, Google Bard or CopyAI. So your job is still safe.

For example, you are still the person best placed to adjust the writing to your audience’s needs. And you will always make the best decisions on structure, tone and referencing, provided you know a little about these things.

For example, let’s say you wanted to edit the ‘About’ section on your ecommerce website to exude a more Australian personality. What if the bot generates a piece full of ocker terms, like Paul Hogan from his ‘Shrimp on the barbie’ tourism commercial? Suddenly you’re scrambling to rewrite the piece yourself, or come up with a better prompt.

Humans are also savvier when it comes to questioning sources. AI has a tendency to make up facts, as a New York lawyer discovered earlier in 2023. After using several ChatGPT citations for a legal case, all were found to be fake and the lawyer was fined for his oversight in due diligence.

Mastering the bots to beat the bots

AI writing tools can save hours of work, along with blank-screen paralysis and the guesswork of wondering if you’ve covered all the angles. Once the basics are in place, all you have to do is edit to suit your audience or style.

Where AI will eventually lead us, no one really knows. However, most will agree that it has enormous potential. The more you understand AI, the more you will benefit from this game-changing tool.

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