Many of our AI writing articles and reviews highlight the importance of using AI tools sparingly and effectively — not as a replacement for high-quality written content.
But what does that actually mean?
Find out how to effectively and productively incorporate AI as an assistant in the content creation process by creating content briefs.
First, find out why ChatGPT is a great tool to include in your process for creating content briefs.
When fed the right prompts, ChatGPT can produce a high-quality content brief in a matter of minutes. Although it can generate a first draft in seconds, for a truly high-quality result, it may need a few iterations.
Rather than spending hours scraping the internet for important talking points on a subject, ChatGPT reduces the legwork, freeing up more time to write compelling marketing content for your audience.
Sometimes, writer's block can strike and no matter how many coffees you make or breaks you have, a quality brief just won’t appear.
That's where ChatGPT can be extremely effective. It’s an excellent tool for bouncing ideas off of, asking for suggestions, and getting explanations about why certain aspects should or shouldn't be included in the content brief.
Plus, you won't have so many sleepless nights after having five cups of coffee after 6 pm!
Even when you are confident that the brief you prepared is perfect, it’s nice to have a second pair of eyes to confirm your thoughts.
However, it’s not always easy to get an expert second opinion, especially in a small marketing team or when you’re working solo.
With a simple prompt such as "please read through this brief for an article on X for brand Y. After full analysis of this brief and the best articles on this subject, please identify whether or not there are other topics that should be covered. If so, please bullet list them and add why they should be included," you can double-check you haven’t missed anything and you’re ready to start working on the content to fill the brief.
Sometimes, thinking up a catchy title is extremely difficult.
This is one example of where ChatGPT can help. With the right prompt, you can generate a great title to inspire your audience to click through and read your content.
Let's say, for example, we run a flower shop and want to write an article on how to find the best bouquet for Mother's Day.
Here's our prompt:
"We run a florist in Alabama, and we want to write an article on how to find the best bouquet for your mother on Mother's Day. We are a strictly online business so that advice should cater to that. Please provide us with a catchy title that will entice people to click through and read our content"
Here's what ChatGPT created for us:
It's good, but what if we could make it even better with an improved prompt?
Here's our revised prompt:
"We run a florist in Alabama, and we want to write an article on how to find the best bouquet for your mother on Mother's Day. We are a strictly online business so that advice should cater to that. Please provide us with a catchy title that will entice people to click through and read our content.
It must be no more than 155 characters long, and our demographic is 16-25 year olds. Our brand is quite whimsical, and our tone of voice in marketing tends to reflect that. We want a smart, snappy title that really catches our target audience's eye.
Please create 10 completely different and unique examples."
Here are the revised answers from ChatGPT
Now we have several examples to pull our favorite bits from, and create a fitting title.
Example: Find Petal Perfection With Our Guide to Picking the Perfect Bouquet This Mother's Day.
ChatGPT is also an excellent way to create audience personas, which in turn will help you develop briefs that are tailored to your audience. The more bespoke the content, the more likely your target audience is to resonate with it.
Let's reuse the example from above. Perhaps we want to expand our audience past 16 to 25-year-olds but don't know where to start.
Here's our prompt:
"We want to expand our audience further than 16-25 year olds. Given our location and service, who should be targeted?"
Here's what ChatGPT provided us with:
Let's ask ChatGPT to dive deeper into the “Men (20-25 years old)” audience to create a detailed persona.
Here's our prompt: "Can you create an example audience member for that men's category? Please provide a detailed persona of our typical audience member, including work, hobbies, etc"
Here's what ChatGPT gave us in return:
Note: This is an example audience persona generated by ChatGPT and is not based on a real person.
ChatGPT can also be an excellent tool for turning ideas into detailed and concise briefs.
Perhaps you decide to write an article on the benefits of getting natural sunlight in the morning before work. You have a title in mind and a few headers, but you need additional sections to take your content to the next level.
ChatGPT can help you expand these and formulate them into an in-depth brief that you can then use to write a comprehensive, original article.
When writer's block strikes, your mind might go blank, and all good ideas seemingly desert you!
ChatGPT can be brilliant in this instance. Asking it to come up with different content ideas or elements to include in your article brief encourages creativity, so you stay productive.
ChatGPT and other AI writing tools can be incredibly useful for brief creation and idea validation. However, AI can produce AI hallucinations or factual errors, so it still isn't great as a sole source for research. Always make sure to confirm facts through research and fact-checking.
When you start creating great content briefs, it may be tempting to start pushing the boundaries a little further. Then, before you know it, you're rapidly publishing generated articles, waiting for the traffic to roll in.
However, AI as a content creation shortcut poses problems. It can impact a site’s search rankings. There are countless examples of Google search rankings dropping due to AI content. Read more about Google’s policies on AI content here.
Additionally, according to current US copyright laws, you can’t copyright AI-generated content.
With that in mind, it's important to remember the limitations of AI-generated content and always add your own value to anything you produce.
ChatGPT and AI generally, are questionable at best when it comes to producing facts. So, it’s still important to research and verify facts. Using a fact-checking tool is a great way to review the facts in an article.
ChatGPT simply isn't a good tool for aligning content with brand voice. Even when asking it to scrape web pages for tone or style, the results are bland and generic.
This acts as a further reminder of why it’s important to only use ChatGPT for briefing — not as a replacement for high-quality content writing.
Your brand’s tone of voice and opinion separates you from competitors; don't lose that by trying a shortcut.
When using tools like ChatGPT for content brief creation, it’s easy to add a little sentence here or there, and before you know it, full paragraphs of your content are AI-generated.
Instead, it’s crucial to focus on publishing original, unique, human-written content that engages your audience!
If you are working with published content, using a website scanner is a fantastic way to review copy for potential instances of AI use that require further review.
Similar to if you were working with a team member, the more information you provide ChatGPT, the better the results. AI writing tools work much better with clear prompts.
For example, if you need to create a brief for an article on picking the right vegetables for your garden, you cannot simply request, "Write me an article brief for an blog post on picking the right vegetables."
Instead, your prompt should read something like "Write me an article brief for an blog post on picking the right vegetables. The article is for a UK audience based in the north of the country, and the vegetables suggested should cater to the climate and soil conditions in that area. It should also be written in UK English. The article must be between 1000-1500 words, and the brief should cover everything that would be needed for the article to be deemed a complete guide on the subject. Create a detailed outline explaining why each section is included, what the benefit of including it is, and how common it is with other top search results."
The example prompt provides quite a bit more information and context for the article topic.
What really sets content apart in the eyes of your audience (and Google!) is human expertise. For this example, look at the brief Google Gemini suggests for this article.
While it provides interesting ideas for brainstorming, the outline and final article go beyond the prompted results and are based on human expertise in AI-generated content.
It is human expertise that takes content to the next level and shows Google that your content is truly helpful — not a basic replication of previously published content.
Here's a quick overview of some leading AI content creation tools and how they stack up compared to ChatGPT for brief creation.
Keep in mind that preferences can vary for user-friendliness, content quality/structure, and brainstorming details.
User-friendliness: 9/10
Quality of content: 9/10
Quality of structure: 8/10
Brainstorming capabilities: 8/10
When it comes to brief creation, Google Gemini is extremely easy to use, very responsive, and provides fantastic briefs for brainstorming. It’s reliable and consistent, ensuring briefs need minimal tweaks before writing!
User-friendliness: 7/10
Quality of content: 9/10
Quality of structure: 8/10
Brainstorming capabilities: 9/10
Another very popular AI tool is Claude, which provides high-quality content. That said, it isn't the most user-friendly, and there are limits on how many generations you can make each day.
User-friendliness: 7/10
Quality of content: 8/10
Quality of structure: 8/10
Brainstorming capabilities: 8/10
Finally, Mistral has been making headlines as one of the leading AI tools, and for good reason. The tool provides solid briefs and with the right prompts; it’s certainly worth testing.
AI writing software like ChatGPT can play an integral role in the writing process, whether for social media or blog posts. It’s helpful for creating briefs and brainstorming ideas that you can then use to draft an original and relevant article infused with your unique expertise and perspectives.
When used correctly and sparingly, ChatGPT can be an incredibly effective tool within the content creation process.
ChatGPT uses large language models (LLMs) to scrape through content that has already been posted online, providing users with a detailed summary of the best results written in a coherent and unique sentence structure.
To detect AI-generated content, try the Originality.ai AI Checker.
While ChatGPT can be beneficial within the content creation process, it isn't a replacement for content marketing experts and highly-skilled copywriters.
