AI WILL TAKE YOUR JOB!...?

Hey everyone.

It’s been a slow week for me. Got some sort of cold that has knocked me out. Spent a lot of time in bed trying to recover. Hopefully, next week will be better.

Let’s crush our dreams together.

Craig

Tweet of the Week

Can you guess which one of these texts was written by AI?

One jumps out to me as having not been written by AI.

There is much fear-mongering about AI making ripples across many industries, but this tweet is a perfect example that we don’t need to worry about AI for a while.

If you DO have concerns about AI taking your job, here’s some advice.

• Become a hybrid writer: First, I saw AI as an insult to my writing abilities. And I was stubborn in the fact that I would never use it. But I saw many people using it (some of my freelancer friends), so I let my stubbornness dissolve a little and gave it a go. Using it to create articles is stupid. But why not use AI to help create an outline or make your writing more clear and concise? It’s also good for writing meta descriptions because, for real, who likes to write them?

• Upskill: I truly believe that learning doesn’t stop at school. You should always be learning something new. Not only to improve yourself but to offer your clients more help. It could be writing emails, copywriting, video scripts, or white papers. There are plenty of other writing jobs you can offer. The more you can aid a business, the more you become important for its success.

• Strategy: AI might be able to pump out an article within minutes, but does it know how to create a content strategy for a business? AI might be able to create an overview of a strategy, but can it do the research needed to write targeted articles? Can it do keyword research to write articles about? Does it know how the company can help its customers and how you can embed them into articles?

• Systems: So your concerned businesses are turning to AI to create content. How about learning things AI would have trouble doing? I’m talking about systems. Systems are things like paid media or email list management. You can say to Chat-GPT, create these ads on Facebook for me. Or can you create a segment of my high spenders in my email service provider so I can send them my latest offer? These systems skills can be great to have in your skills toolbox to protect yourself from AI, and it lets you offer more value to your existing clients.

Quick tip

Some clients hand you the brief, and you can get to writing. Others need extra help (one I hope you charge extra for). Coming up with content ideas can be like scratching your head sometimes, so here are some ways to help you.

• Customer: talking to your client's customers, conducting surveys, and reviewing support tickets. These provide ways to find customer pain to help create great articles that resonate with customers.

• Reviews: It could be looking at Amazon reviews, Trustpilot, or G2. Whatever industry you are in, look for review sites. It could be directly for the company you’re working in, your competitors, or related industries. Hearing what your customers say can inspire some content ideas.

• Communities: Communities allow you to get a pulse on what’s happening to customers. And hear exactly the questions customers are asking. Look for questions with high responses, which means there’s a lot of pain worth writing about. If you find a topic that is repeatedly asked, anytime it comes up, you can link to the article you wrote, creating an instant distribution.

• Social Media: Twitter and LinkedIn are great places to look for content ideas. It could be looking at big accounts that post a lot, questions people are asking, or searching keywords to see what people are talking about. You could also see what the company is tweeting about and what posts resonate the most and spin them into articles.

• Clients Employees: Talking to the people on the front line can be a good place for content. The sales team and support team interact with customers the most. Speaking to these and help you identify themes of things that customers ask and need help with, which then can be turned into articles. The side benefit of these is that these articles turn into sales and support enablement articles that can be used to help these teams in the future.

• Keyword Research: If you can access tools like SEM Rush, Ahrefs, or simply Google keyword planner, you can use these to find article ideas. Focusing on keywords that are likely to rank based on the client site means that you can aim to get some organic traffic for your customers.

If you made it this far, you are a legend. Feel free to reply to this email to say hello or tell me your biggest problem as a freelance writer so I can answer it in future newsletters. I read and personally answer all replies. So don’t be shy.

Have a brilliant week, and I hope you crush it.

Craig