8 Ways ChatGPT Can Simplify Your Writing

Creating effective promptsChatGPT, a practice known as “prompt engineering,” requires a different set of skills compared to actual writing. The technology ofartificial intelligence is still limited and constantly evolving, and the early adopters such asEduard Fastovski are just beginning to consistently provide high-performing suggestions. “I don’t think anyone has truly mastered ChatGPT yet, and it’s constantly being updated,” he said. “A month from now it could be completely different.”

Below are some ChatGPT tips that writers can experiment with.

1. “Don’t start writing yet” and “Do you understand?”

It helps to discuss with theartificial intelligence before starting to write. According to Fastovski, bloggers can “prepare”ChatGPT by having a conversation about their project. For example: “I am a fashion blogger and I need your help writing a blog post. The topic is New York Fashion Week. This post should be useful for people interested in Christian Dior’s spring line. Don’t start writing yet. Do you understand?”

Armed with this information and these simple instructions, the tool will learn before creating any output. Theartificial intelligence will also remember this information for future questions.

2. “Write an introduction based on the following bullet points.”

If you tell ChatGPT to write an entire blog post about Christian Dior’s spring line at fashion week, the result probably won’t be great. Without the right input, ChatGPT is not an expert on niche or current topics.

“You need to bring subject matter expertise into every ChatGPT session,” saidShelly Palmer, who uses the AI writing tools ChatGPT,Notion andBing Chat in her communications and writing every day. “The program makes things up and you need to know when it does.”

Fastovski suggested writing a list of bullet points you want the blog to cover, then typing the prompt: “Write an introduction based on the following bullet points.”

The bullet point tactic can be used for each subsequent section of the blog or article.

3. “Please ask me any questions you need to help me write this article.”

ChatGPT is not just there to take orders. It can also ask questions.

Palmer suggested the prompt: “Please ask me any questions you need to help me write this blog post.” The “blog post” could also be more specific, such as “introduction” or “conclusion.”

To test it, I typed into ChatGPT: “I’m a journalist writing a piece on the best ChatGPT tips for blog writers. Please ask me any questions you need to help me write this post.

ChatGPT isn’t just there to take orders. It can also ask questions.

Theartificial intelligence responded with eight questions, including: “What kind of suggestions are you looking for? For example, suggestions to help generate ideas for blog topics or suggestions to help with the writing process,” as well as “Is there a specific audience you’re targeting with your blog post? (e.g., beginner bloggers, experienced bloggers, etc.).”

These are pretty solid questions I should be asking myself!

4. “Write 10 alternative headlines for [your draft headline]”

Coming up with an alternative headline for an article can be tough enough, let alone 10, 20, or 100! This is where ChatGPT can really shine since the task simply involves rearranging words and extracting keywords. The same prompt can be used for text adjacent to headlines, such as subheadings or section headers.

5. “Reduce the length of this article by 30%.”

One of ChatGPT’s biggest strengths is summarization. If you tend to be a bit wordy, ChatGPT can help trim your writing to meet a specified word count.

For example, if you have an article that was assigned 1,000 words, but your first draft is closer to 1,200, you can ask ChatGPT to help eliminate any unnecessary information.

You might say: “Please reduce the length of this article to 1,000 words without omitting any substantial information” or “Please cut any redundancies or unnecessary sentences to trim 200 words from this article.” Play around with the instructions and the AI should be able to meet your request.

6. “What keywords should I use in this content?”

ChatGPT might not know everything, but it knows SEO. “ChatGPT is helpful for extracting keywords and key phrases, assisting with sentence structure, and generally shaping SEO-based writing,” Palmer said.

Therefore, writers can input an entire post into ChatGPT and ask the AI to generate potential keywords. Follow up by requesting: “What can I do to improve SEO in [article, blog, etc.]?” to make the post even stronger.

7. “Rephrase it to make it [more casual/first person/funnier, etc.]”

ChatGPT can rephrase or edit any copy into a completely different tone, Fastovski said, changing the perspective of a post, the grammatical tense, and more. The results may not be perfect, but they could save you a lot of time editing lines if an article needs a major rewrite.

8. “Turn it into a caption/meta description for Tweet/Instagram.”

After writing a brilliant, informative article or blog post, the last thing a writer wants to do is write more copy for social media and search. ChatGPT can help turn a blog post into Tweets, Instagram captions, meta descriptions, and more, Fastovski said. In fact, these small tasks can be a great way to start using ChatGPT in general.

“The best way to practice is to use it as much as possible for every little thing you write,” said Fastovski. “Even if it’s quick and you don’t mind doing it yourself, ask ChatGPT to write a meta description or a Tweet or reply to an email. Even if it slows you down at first, you’ll learn something new and maybe write something better than you would have otherwise.”

Source: Contently