How to Use ChatGPT/AI Writing Tools as a Photographer, Creative, OR ADHD Brains
How to Use ChatGPT/ AI Writing Tools as a Photographer, Creative, OR ADHD Brains
- Success Coach and Sales Expert for Photographers and Creatives.
What seems to have been all the rage this week is chatGPT, and/or AI writing tools.
I've literally seen and heard chatGPT brought up in basically every space where I’ve been online this entire week. Even my father-in-law here in Iceland showed it to me last week, as we played with it at their house.
I've been using AI writing tools for over a year now and it's funny because when I mentioned it previously in other forums, I got a fair bit of backlash from the photography community. Nothing major, but an overall consensus of it felt like maybe it was cheating or it wasn't authentic, or just general fears about AI robots taking over humanity.
I too feel like it could be a bit of a cheat but there is a way to use it where it's not, and it's so very helpful now that it seems to have caught up and is a little bit more accepting in these communities of AI writing tools, especially with the blowup of chatGPT in the past week.
From my experience with AI writing tools as a photographer and success coach, I’ve been impressed and find them great as assistance, but they’re not meant to be the bulk of what you’re putting out there.
Meaning you really do need to be editing what it's giving you. I use it mainly as an idea sparker or a sentence filler. I never use it as something that is just a hundred percent the output as I don't think that is how it's designed to be used.
At the moment, it seems to me like the majority of photographers and creatives in the spaces that I find myself in are really enjoying using chatGPT for a number of reasons, in particular for writing their blogs. besides the fact that it's free for now as it improves.
But when it comes to your photography or creative business blogs, you still need your foundations locked in solidly to know what specifics your clients want to see.
You really do need to have these down in order for these writing assistants to actually do more good than more damage to your brand and your SEO. Think about it! If everyone is writing the same generic ideas because the AI doesn't know enough about you or your brand or your clients etc, then that’s a ton of content on the same subject out there. Right? You've probably seen this a lot, especially in the photography space.
For example, you’ll see things like ‘the 10 best wedding venues in Tulsa’ and for this, all you had to do was insert the city. If you're not a photographer, simply insert another common phrase for your industry, for example, if you’re a website designer, you’d see more of ‘the 10 best website designers in Tulsa’.
Meaning even if you give the AI writing tools prompts and suggest tones or who to sound like, it still doesn't actually know your brand experience.
It doesn’t know the value and the effort that you're giving to your clients. It doesn't know what your clients actually feel when working with you or what your clients are wanting to see or consume from you. It doesn't know all of these teeny tiny details that you put into it, so you really still need to have a voice, and know your foundations in order to break through all of the noise. This is more important than ever now since there's going to be more content being published faster than ever before.
If you don't know what these foundations are for your photography or creative business and you don't understand how you and your thoughts are unique to the marketplace ie who your clients are and what they’re looking for from their experience, then all the AI writing tools are going to kick out at you is going to be very, very generic!
So it really is incredibly important that you understand these foundations otherwise you’ll just find yourself back in all the noise!
When I think of it in my head, I see that GIF of Homer Simpson, the one where he falls backward into the bushes!!
Imagine you're Homer Simpson putting out all these generic topics and/or paragraphs that the AI tool is spitting out at you, all of that content surrounding you. I recently read a study whereby 4.4 million new blog posts are being published every single day! That's so much new content and so much noise. And you’re Homer falling back into the bushes of noise and mass and just completely disappearing. There's a lot of noise out there for people to get through and we don't want that!
So with chatGPT and a number of AI writing tools out there, there's going to be even more creative content being published in 2023 than there was last year for sure.
This all simply means that in using AI for nonspecific post ideas or scripts, we'll just add to that noise already out there and it will not convert your content into clients, which is the point of creating content, right? It's never to just get content out there. It should always have a purpose and it should always have an intention, which is of course conversion! Helping your clients!
So, if you're using it for something like say ‘40 tiktok ideas’, then cool, you might get more followers, but followers aren't aligned avatars. They're not your aligned clients who will pay you for your high-end photography or creative service or whatever business it is that you’re in.
I actually know lots of people with over 20,000 followers and they're not converting these followers into leads or into clients. Why? Because the content that they're putting out there is not conversion content.
Once you have these ‘top 40 AI ideas’ that are not targeting your people, nor showcasing your superpowers, what is it actually adding to the conversation? And how is it helping your clients?
See, you must stand out as the unique person that you are, there to help them.
AI is also not meant to be relied on for facts. It's more of a tool to help you get over writer's block and offers you writing assistance. It isn't a research tool, in fact, it usually pulls up made-up facts just to fill in the story or fill the paragraph that it's giving you. It expects you to then fill in the correct facts. So if for example, you want to write about a subject that you actually don't know anything about or enough about, without the research required, you wouldn't actually be able to distinguish what are facts and what are not.
So you really still need to be writing from your own perspective and from your actual knowledge and personal experiences, otherwise, you won't be able to catch which facts and what things you need to edit out of the results that the AI writing tool is giving you.
In my experience, I have been using Jasper for over a year. When I first started using it, it was actually called conversion.ai. Then it moved to Jarvis and then it moved from Jarvis to Jasper.
I really like it, it is a beef of a software. It has so many different use cases, which is really awesome. Unlike chatGPT which is really just more like a chat tool that kind of understands how humans talk to each other, jasper.ai. has a whole bunch of use cases.
I've been enjoying it as It's really helped me get over the whole, I don't know what to say phase of content creation.
What I’ve found in my own experience when using Jasper is that whenever I want to say something from the heart or from my lived experience or from my client's perspectives, or really anything that even borderlines as thought leadership, I absolutely cannot use AI writing tools. It just doesn't work for me because it of course is not in my head. So for those things, I actually do find it quite difficult to use it.
What I have used it for however is for potential blog topic ideas. I will see what it spits out with my specific command and then whatever it throws out at me gets my creative juices flowing, leaving me to edit as I choose. I'll change the topics as I see fit and then I just run with it. So for me, I like to use it as an idea sparker!
I'm like, Ooh. Yeah, I kind of like that idea and I will also use it to help me form better sentences because I just love, love, love to write. Writing is my absolute favorite way of expressing myself but sometimes I might write in a way that isn't really concise enough, so I will have the AI help me in the shaping up of it or I'll use it to expand what I want to say into improved sentences.
I've also used AI writing tools before to help me with emails when there's something I want to say nice and delicately that I just can't find the delicate words for. As someone with an ADHD brain, I'm very, very, very on the nose and I'm very, very, very to the point as a way of communicating.
That's just how I'm wired but I do know that for some people, that can be seen as potentially rude or could just come off as a little sharp. So, I’ll use Jasper to help me form better-sounding sentences to get my point across in a delicate manner by simply filling in the actual type of words that I would use in that sentence so it sounds like me and it basically is me, with a little bit of padding, like soft padding that I've gotten from AI to just help me express myself better.
So as a creative and as someone with ADHD, I find the AI writing tool really just helps me formulate and organize all of these crazy thoughts I have in my head.
I’ll also use it to revive my creative juices when I know that I need to get something out, but I'm just not feeling it.
Anybody who has ADHD knows what I'm talking about! Whenever our motivation and our drive and our executive functioning are just not having it that day, It's really, really, really hard to be creative. That part of our brain is really not operational in those moments and this is when AI writing tools are helpful.
Some other AI writing tools that can help creatives and photographers or people with ADHD are the photo cUlling AI softwares. I've been using aftershoot for a year and a few months now and overall I liked it.
I did find that it wasn't learning my artistic eye, if you will, fast enough though and I found myself taking way longer to actually fix what it was culling and getting rid of. It just made the process a lot longer and I didn't really want to be doing it that way anymore so I did stop using it. I just found that it wasn’t helping me in the way that I hoped it would.
But if you haven't used them yet and there’s something else that you’re looking for help with, you could look into AI as an assistant or to help you do your job to the best of your ability.
There’re also AI software tools for publishing and repurposing content, which could be super helpful to anyone who creates podcasts, including me.
I personally love the AI transcriptions of audio of conversations because for instance, as a creative with ADHD, I love to go back and read what happened during the conversation as I re-listen to what was said.
I love to listen again and read along because that's the best way for my brain to actually process the information. I don't process audio very well at all so the AI transcription has been a lifesaver for me.
I use it with my own clients. I use it with my own coach. I use it with all sorts of stuff, so I can actually process a lot better what just happened. I like to use otter.ai. and descript.
The point that I’m basically trying to make here is that AI is a great tool but it’s not a replacement for you to just copy and paste.
So how can you make AI helpful to you in your own photography or creative business moving forward?
It seems like everyone will be using these AI tools eventually, especially when they are free (like right now chatGPT is free until it goes behind a paywall) and whilst they are, there’s going to be a lot more content pumped out.
You will want to still cut through the noise and stand out from the masses just as you always have and so how do you do that? Well, first don't be lazy about it.
As a photographer or creative, know your foundations for having a strong, unique brand. Know your aligned clients on a deep level and understand what motivates them and makes them want your high-end service. What you are writing or posting into the universe as content, you really need to know those foundations in order for the content to actually convert into a client, which of course is the point of your posting content. Don't forget the purpose.
The purpose of this content should never be quantity over quality. It should always be about quality and really showing your value. It should always be about answering the questions your aligned clients want answered, whilst offering your unique perspective, insights, and value to their lives and to their experience with working with you.
Know your superpowers and how you are different in the market and in the world. Content is there to help your aligned clients get to know you. They need to know that you have the answers to their problems and are the unique solution for what they're looking for. Content is not about just ranking!
I've said it so many times in the workshops and masterclasses that I've hosted for creatives and photographers. SEO, ranking, and content quantity doesn't matter if it's not what your aligned clients are actually interested in looking at and consuming.
If it's not where your aligned clients are actually looking, then what's the point, right? You can ask chatGPT to give you ‘10 blogs for people eloping in your area,’ or whatever it is you’re wanting to target but if those topics are boring as fuck to your readers, and are super similar to everyone else’s, especially the more and more content that goes up and more importantly, they don't showcase who you are, they just won't convert to a client.
My hope is that you can use these awesome tools in a way that they work with you and not for you!
