The Future of Content Writing in the AI Era with Beth Hayden

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like No Straight Path. Today, we'll be breaking down the future of content writing in the AI era. To drop these value bombs, I brought Beth Hayden into EO Fire Studios. Beth is a professional marketing writer who embraces AI tools to boost productivity while preserving the human touch that's needed for compelling content. Today, we will talk about chat GPT and the change in content writing. We'll talk about prompt engineering, what that means, the future role of writers and content creators in general, and so much more.

0:43And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Beth and our sponsors. Success Story, hosted by my friend, Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversation on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. In a recent episode Scott brings Kate Bradley on the show founder and CEO of lately.ai to discuss the best ways to use AI to create content listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts ever thought about giving a TEDx talk it's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.

1:35Beth, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I don't believe any entrepreneurs to be successful need to fit into a certain box. It is totally okay to be able to think your own way and do your own thing. So that's for me, I have bipolar disorder. I have ADHD. And I spent a long time trying to shove myself into particular ways of thinking. And now I know it doesn't have to be that way. You can be successful, go on a different route. I love that message. And believe me, you're speaking to the right people, Beth. Fire Nation are entrepreneurs.

2:15They are fire brands. They are adventurers. They are making things happen. And they're tuning in today to learn about the future of content writing in the AI era. That's artificial intelligence. And we simply have to face facts, Fire Nation. Artificial intelligence will change content writing. But Beth, you believe it won't replace human writers, and you are not scared that ChatGPT will take your job. So tell us more. Yeah. So I am a content writer. So what I write is blog posts, white papers, emails, case studies, that kind of stuff. Lots and lots of content for mostly technology companies. and I'm not scared that chat GPT is going to take my job, but I do embrace it.

2:59And I want to talk to you about some of the ways that I use it and give people some tips. But I think, you know, generative AI and these tools, they can help you come up with ideas and sort of starting point drafts, but the output really still needs a human touch. We need to refine it for stuff like nuance, style, grammar, for sure, and absolutely fact-checking. So as an entrepreneur, you really want to avoid sounding like a robot and putting out generic content. And that kind of editing requires a human being, at least so far. These tools are fantastic. I think they're great, but they're not humans yet.

3:37They don't quite have that human touch, but they might get there eventually. But right now, not so much. Well, the thing is, is that we can utilize artificial intelligence because you have found them to be very helpful in starting points and generating different ideas. But the output, it still needs human refinement for the nuance, the style, the grammar, the fact checking. So break down your thoughts specifically here. The way that I use it, people ask me a lot of questions about this. And I use it for stuff other than text generation a lot. And I use it for things like brainstorming topic ideas, coming up with questions for interviews, creating outlines.

4:20I use transcripts a lot, interview transcripts, and I will pull themes out of transcripts and say, hey, can you give me the gist of this? And AI is fantastic for that. And then explaining super complicated subjects. I can't tell you the amount of times that I've said to ChatGPT or Claude, which is another one of my favorite tools. I've said, explain this to me like I'm five. Because a lot of the work I do is super, super technical. And these concepts will come across my desk. And I'll just say, I have no idea what that is. So can you explain it to me in super, super simple terms, in layman's terms, instead of engineer or software developer terms?

5:00And then I find it helps to rein me in. Sometimes if I get a little hypomanic, I get super hyper-focused on something. I have trouble sometimes reining it in and making sure that I stay focused. Believe it or not, ChatGPT can help with that, too. And then it can expand my thinking, too. If I kind of get in a rut, then it can expand what I'm thinking about and just help me brainstorm ideas. It's terrific for that. And then I do use it for drafting. I'll be honest about that. I use it to come up with what I call kind of crappy first drafts for content. And then I just edit the heck out of it, to be honest.

5:39because I, just like everybody else, I face sort of the blank page blues. It's hard to just draft from scratch. It's really tough. But I find if I get something down on the page, even if it's really, really rough and I need to clean it up a lot, it's helpful just to have a starting point, just something. And then sometimes, again, if I'm working from a transcript, I'll feed it like sections of dialogue and ask it to pull out ideas for certain sections. It's good at that. And then I fact check absolutely religiously because AI is often wrong and it can hallucinate. It can just make stuff up. So you definitely have to just watch your P's and Q's with AI output for sure.

6:24I think the tools are super fun. I don't know if you use them or not, but I think they're great. I use them every day. I use them for that exact same reason. I think it's such a good way to think about a Fire Nation, so many people look at a blank page and they're like, I just don't know where to start. It's so daunting. You can use tools like artificial intelligence to just like say, hey, get me going on this topic or write a really rough draft on this or write it like a fifth grader would and then boom, you have something down on the paper and then now you go in with your nuance, with your style, with your grammar and of course like Beth, you just shared, with your fact checking and you make it a great piece.

7:00You're able to kind of come in and say, okay, hey, I've got this really lumpy piece of clay. Now I'm going to make it into a beautiful pot because I'm using artificial intelligence just to get the engine going, just to get it sparting a little bit, then I'll take it from here. And so there's a lot of great ways to do it. And Fire Nation, have some fun. Like ask us some questions, see what it's capable of doing. Like you'll never know what will come next. And I want to talk next about prompt engineering because this is kind of some of the things we're talking about right now, like just kind of getting things going.

7:31So first off, a lot of people haven't even heard that phrase. So tell us what prompt engineering is and some tips for prompt engineering to get better content from artificial intelligence. Yeah. So prompt engineering, these are the questions that you're asking or the requests that you're making of these chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude and other tools like that. You're kind of having a back and forth conversation. So you need to be able to engineer those prompts so that they're really high quality and you get the best possible output that you can. And there's a trick to it. You're going to need to practice.

8:06You're going to need to get good at it. And it just requires sort of getting into the process. And again, having some fun with it. You can kind of gamify your content creation if you're willing to just sort of let go and be able to have some fun with it and say, okay, well, what's going to happen? Let's see what it comes up with. But what I tell people is be super specific as much as you can. Give it details. Tell it exactly what you want to write and what you're trying to communicate. I think that's super, super important. And then you give it a style, give it directions for the tone. Do you want it to be formal?

8:39Do you want it to be more conversational, lighthearted? Do you want to crack a joke every now and then? It's okay to say that too. And then give it context, tell it the background, tell it what your goals are, explain who your audience is. They really need to know that as much as you can. Tell them what the problems are, what they're thinking about, that kind of stuff. And then iterate. As you get output back from these chatbots, you can ask it, hey, refine it for this or try it again, but do this. I do that a lot. So it's a lot of iteration and asking it to regenerate based on whatever your newest requests are.

9:16And then you got to check for bias. And that's in your output. But you can also say in your prompts, watch out for this, don't do this. And there's guides online to sort of problematic language that you need to watch out for and things like that. But you can tell it that in the prompt, and that helps too. And then for your neurodivergent readers, or really practically anybody, you can instruct the AI, explain these concepts clearly. Break it down, use layman's terms, explain it to them like they're five. And they can absolutely do that too. Fire Nation, have fun with this. I mean, this is a tool that you should look at and say, hey, how could I use this in my day-to-day life to just make it more fun, make it more enjoyable?

10:01I mean, there's something that we just did the other day, Beth, that was pretty interesting. We had like a bunch of ingredients, you know, a couple of things of alcohol, a couple of other things that were just like in the fridge. And we just like listed them out. And we said, you know, ChatGPT, what's the best drink that we can make with these ingredients? And guess what? It gave us this great drink. It was funny. And we followed the step-by-step process. And it was like this random drink we never would have had. and it was like this fun little kind of cocktail hour experiment. So you can utilize it for fun stuff, for enjoyable stuff, and just play with it.

10:29And we have a lot more to talk about, specifically around the future role of writers when we get back from thinking our sponsors. You know your customers want fast, personalized support, but how do you find a customer service solution that actually delivers? Most solutions leave reps struggling to stay productive and customers frustrated by the lack of support. But with the new AI-powered Service Hub from HubSpot, you've now got a better way to do service and success. Service Hub helps you fly through the service queues and lighten the load on your reps with AI-powered self-service chat and knowledge-based articles.

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12:08Taylor has put together a free training that's going to teach you how to land a TEDx Talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. Beth, we're back. And before the break, you know, obviously I gave people away to use chat GPT during cocktail hours. But I also teased the fact that we're gonna talk about the future role of writers.

12:49So in your opinion, what is the future role of writers in the AI world? Yeah, I think writers need to embrace these AI tools because I think more and more companies and clients are gonna be asking you to use them in whatever way that might look like for them. So get smart about them. Don't be afraid of them. Embrace them, use them. But I think overall, writers will need to be more creative strategists rather than being in the nitty gritty of content creation every single day. They're going to need to kind of focus on the high level vision because that's not something the AI can do. They can't look at your content strategy or map out your editorial calendar or what your latest campaign looks like.

13:34They can help you execute it once you've got it planned out, but it can't plan it yet. And then writers are definitely going to be prompt engineers like we talked about. And they're absolutely going to be in charge of quality control. So making sure that content that's created using AI in any way, whether they use it a little or a lot, that whatever goes out the door, it's high quality, it's accurate, the tone is right, it's aligned with your overall goals as a company. and they're going to need to iterate, provide feedback to whoever is doing that. Or if they're doing it themselves, make sure they're giving that feedback to the AI to create better content.

14:12And then they're going to need to be thinking about ethics. And again, bias, putting guardrails up, making sure it's representative. You're avoiding bias. That's going to be super important. Big picture, 30 ,000 foot view kind of stuff. and then automating repetitive tasks, finding ways that you can gamify, make it a little bit more interesting, have some fun with it. If you're managing a team, help them figure out how to use these tools and be sort of in a management kind of role with that. So that's kind of how I'm picturing that the role will change. It's going to be less of us, you know, sitting down and writing every single blog post word for word.

14:52And, and, but it's going to be more like an overseeing kind of thing where you're using these tools and you're editing and also really looking out for those overall goals and the overall strategy of your content creation and what you're trying to do. So you have given us a lot of value bombs on the future of content writing in this AI era. I want to now go into your specific process that you use on collaborating with AI to create better content faster. Walk us through one of those processes, one of those days. Let's get real specific. I've got a client that I work with who often has me pull, again, from transcripts of interviews that she does with some founders.

15:39And so I'll use ChatGPT sometimes to help create an outline for the post, either based on just my reading of the transcript and me highlighting it, or from actually me feeding it the transcript and saying, hey, can you generate an outline? And I'm always quality checking on that to make sure that it didn't miss anything. If it does create the outline for me, there's always a backstop to it. And then I'll go section by section. I'll pull out the parts of the transcript that I think are an important thing to include in that. And you know how it is with a transcript. The way that we talk is not the way that we write.

16:15And so I'll feed it that and just say, this is what they said. Can you turn this into more readable language, make it a little easier to work with? And then it'll spit out a section. And then I will sometimes have it help me brainstorm headlines, which I will usually not use word for word, but often it sparks an idea of mine. And then I'll use my own headline in it. And again, it's just a great brainstorming tool. And then I'll just go section by section through the post. And then I will take the entire post once it's drafted, again, sort of crappy first draft, and I will just edit the heck out of it to make sure that it sounds like a human being wrote it, that it's totally accurate, that there aren't any funky grammar errors, because there usually are, and make sure it fits the tone of the company.

17:04So that's how I often work with it. That's one example of many. I love hearing these specific step-by-steps of how other people who understand this process and these tools are using it in their day-to-day lives. Beth, we've talked a lot about AI. What would you say the one thing you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? These tools are powerful. And if you're resisting using them because you're afraid of AI taking over the world, which I have heard, I get that. There's a lot of fear around them. And there are writers who say I refuse to use that because it's helping the, you know, it's sort of, it's undervaluing us as writers.

17:50And I just want to say embrace the tools because our jobs are changing as content creators. And if you don't get on board this train, it's going to pass you by. But you got to figure out a way to make them, you know, do it ethically, make sure that your content is original, that it's great and that it's super high quality. So I would say get on board with AI is my biggest lesson for the entrepreneurs in your audience. Beth, if Fire Nation wanted to connect with you to learn more, what is your call to action for our listeners today? So if you're an entrepreneur, which I know that's what your audience is, and you want more tips like this, especially if you're neurodivergent, you have a mental health condition that makes you just think a little bit differently, just think out of the box.

18:34You might want to check out my new Substack. It has lots of ideas on how to work in a way that supports your brain and your unique way of thinking. So you can check that out at bethhayden.substack.com. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with BH and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Beth in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Beth, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

19:12Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to Beth and our sponsors for sponsoring today's episode. And if you want to set and accomplish a goal, the Freedom Journal is for you. Thefreedomjournal.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Success Story, hosted by my friend Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversation on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. In a recent episode, Scott brings Kate Bradley on the show, founder and CEO of Lately.ai, to discuss the best ways to use AI to create content.

19:49Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training, where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.