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TS #113: Become a next-gen writer now

Take a stand on how you will – and won’t – use AI

“Why learn anything when you can get AI to do it for you?”

I saw that comment on a LinkedIn post by writer Yessica Klein on the back of the ChatGPT4 release this week. 

She said her heart skipped a beat as a lifelong learner and curious person. Her job as a writer is to make AI work in her favour and ALWAYS use critical thinking and fact-checking to ensure accurate information. “Yes, I’m a fan of OpenAI – but what will happen to critical thinking? Can we trust the feedback loop?”

I agree. It sets alarm bells ringing. Shallow thinking patterns? SEO-stuffing? Will we rely on AI too much for decision-making? I worry that short-sighted decisions are being made (letting writers/marketers go etc) based on new technology we don’t completely understand yet. 

The AI space is moving at a dizzying pace. We need to let the dust settle and see the bigger picture. Integrate AI into our workflow and, learn more, upskill teams – right now, it seems to be solo writers and marketers tinkering around with it.  

Had to chuckle at this piece by Digiday on the AI race – all the latest developments. Pretty soon, we’ll need our own AI to keep up with – and make sense of – the updates.  

Imagine when GPT5 rolls out… we’ll be queueing up for brain transplants.

Fascinating to see some of the use cases – personalised learning – Duolingo’s new AI-powered virtual tutor for £20 a month. The Icelandic government is using AI to preserve the country’s language – fantastic.

I’m experimenting with ChatGPT – as a digital assistant. I’m excited to see how it can help me to be more productive and creative, but I can’t see how it will save me time (too much fun). It reminds me of an ex who refuses to use Sat Nav because it sends you round the houses – the journey takes longer. He likes map-reading and using his brain. 

Very sensible 🙂 Good to set some boundaries around it.

There are also copyright issues to resolve re creators’ images and works, unintentional plagiarism etc. 

WIRED just published a piece on how they will and won’t use generative AI tools – aggressive against its use. Smart move. Good to see them taking a stand. 

Writers must do the same and say how they use AI in their content. I should add it to my Terms of Service and website. One for #CopywritersUnite.

Interesting perspective from Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute. He says as more shiny tools flood the market, real content, human-made, will become more valuable. People will crave content that comes from human hearts and minds. 

I find that reassuring. It also means we can potentially charge more for our work 😉 Can you afford real human content?

I like the idea of having a ‘Certified Human Content‘ badge or watermark for authenticity. I can’t do that on my Substack posts – be interesting if a tech platform like Substack, as WIRED has, took a stand on it.

He also said we’re having the wrong conversation. It’s not about AI taking our jobs (it will create more work). LLMs are getting all the media attention right now, but AI goes much deeper than ChatGPT. We’re talking about the personalisation of experience, content, and decision-making.

Autonomous human robots – one robot for every human on the planet – are the end goal.

Personalised newsletters – yes! I see the value in that. But what I really want to know is how AI will give us back time, extend our lives, and help our productivity and happiness?

I want to live to a ripe old age. A happy, healthy life frolicking in the Italian countryside. Reading books and writing with the sun on my back. Making olive oil, drinking local wine and eating tomatoes that taste like tomatoes… 

If AI can help me get there, I’m interested!! 

Companies need to make a shift in content strategy – a more human approach. 

And part of my strategy is saying no to things.

I’ve signed up for MAI’s AI for Writers Summit on March 30 to learn more about ChatGPT and other tools – you can sign up here for free (courtesy of Writer.com). 

Nika 🦾

🔥The Shift Hot 5

LinkedIn launches ‘Collaborative Articles’ – using AI to expand its content, beginning with a new initiative, which will use AI prompts to call on users for expertise and input. Smart move. It’s harder to start a conversation than join one. To incentivise, they’re also adding a Community Top Voice badge. Play the LinkedIn game! 

The Solo Author – Diego’s Pineda’s new book for solopreneurs. Enjoying this – actionable advice and exciting ideas on content marketing and thought leadership evolution. His niche is how to write a book and leverage it for your business. Check it out at soloauthor.com (free chapter). 

Newsletter Growth Tips from Josh Spector. 13 bite-sized videos on YouTube. Advice on finding your niche, free vs paid, building a content system, pricing ads, client acquisition and more. Super handy to have all this in one place – thanks, Josh. 

Building in Public Definitive Guide 2022 – a free guide to the ‘building in public’ movement from content creator Kevon Cheung. Benefits, channels, writing tips and his Public Lab. I’m enjoying Kevin’s column in Courier on audience-building and growing an online business. 

LinkedIn Podcast Academy: what does this mean for B2B creators? LinkedIn has launched an in-house podcast network featuring B2B-related news hosted by some of the platform’s biggest B2B creators. Going all in on empowering B2B creators in ’23 – great to see!

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What if a robot could write your copy?

Jarvis AI review

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Jarvis AI

That was written by AI – not bad, eh? 

I gave it a few words about my newsletter as a prompt – and it wrote that in seconds.

Jarvis is the latest AI writing assistant I’ve come across – thanks to Marianne Lehnis, who suggested it. These tools have been around for a while, but the new AI GPT-3 based writers go a step further and help you write long-form copy – ad copy, sales pitches, emails, product descriptions, social media and more. 

I’ve used it for client work and content pieces, and it’s a very cool tool. Fun to use: it’s made me laugh, surprised me, given me ideas, and saved me time. I’m trialling Boss Mode (the most advanced package💲) and have barely scratched the surface (53 templates, recipes, commands, long-form content), but it’s given me a sense of how powerful it is. 

I asked Jarvis to rewrite my bio:

I am a woman of many hats. I am the author of Remote: Office Not Required and Chief Tingler at Tingler Inc.

I’m Nicci. I write about remote work and building an online business. My favourite thing to do is go on adventures, make friends with animals, and take long walks in nature.

Spot on, Jarvis!! 

Open AI’s GPT-3 is described by Marketing Brew as ‘kind of a big deal’ – among the most advanced language models in existence.

Large language models are powerful machine learning algorithms with one key job description: identifying large-scale patterns in text. The models use those patterns to “parrot” human-like language. And they quietly underpin services like Google Search—used by billions of people worldwide—and predictive text software, such as Grammarly.

Emerging Tech Brew’s Hayden Field.

The goal is to humanise AI and help you write smarter, faster – and get over Blank Page Syndrome. The better you describe what you want to write, the higher quality content Jarvis will help produce.

Super useful for content marketers, digital agencies, and anyone who needs to generate a lot of content. The long-form option (Pro + Boss Mode) is a game-changer – interesting to see on Facebook that people are using it to write books.

It won’t steal your writing job. You get well written generic copy, the first draft as a base to tweak from. It’s not for complex articles, fact-checking or emotional aspects. This post by Danny Veiga, a digital marketer, was written by Jarvis – he told Marketing Brew Jarvis wrote about 80% of it, with 20% fact-checking. 

I see it as part of my writing toolkit. It’s helped me generate ideas, perspective, given me a creative boost and saved me time. Jarvis is a workhorse! 100% remote and 24/7 *shoulders drop*. Forget the threat – embrace the tech and use it to sell your services and promote yourself – 5 x your content in minutes! Read this now! 

Jarvis has over 30,000 users from companies including Shopify, Google, Canva, Zillow, Airbnb, Stripe, lots of positive reviews, and an active Facebook community. Learning in public – good to see them flagging issues and solutions, responsive to feedback and improving the product.

You can sign up for a free five-day trial here (Nicci on steroids – gives me a few more credits to play with) – I promise not to send you five newsletters next week 🤖

Have you tried Jarvis or any other AI writing tools? I use Grammarly Pro, but this is in a different league.

🔗🖐5 Things  

💸Twitter Tips – their latest experiment now lets you tip anyone with cash or crypto (via mobile). Twitter seems to have gone mad introducing new features to try and get up to speed with other networks – rolling stuff out to see what sticks – at least they’re experimenting in public. But if the content is freely available, where’s the incentive for users to pay? Good overview by TechCrunch.

🎙Burnout and exhaustion while working in content – you’re not alone (Content Rookie). I love this podcast. Interesting chat with Jane Ruffino and Candi Williams on setting boundaries at work and moving the conversation from productivity to burnout. How scale (scarcity mindset) shouldn’t drive a company over growth and community (abundance mindset). ‘We shouldn’t have to constantly perform ambition to do well.’ There’s a pressure to upskill – especially in an emerging field like UX.

👩‍💻Letting go of perfection – I wrote a piece for The Portfolio Collective on the rise of perfectionism as a cultural issue and how we can keep it in check – some strategies that have helped me. One of the members, Zarir ‘Zed’ Vakil said: “One tip I use for avoiding toxic perfectionism is being outcome-focused and always taking action. This avoids procrastination and rumination.”

🕵🏻‍♀️Reinvigorate your career by taking the right kind of risk – inspiring piece by Whitney Johnson on taking smart risks. Exploring underserved areas of your industry and crafting a new role for yourself, staying in your current job and inventing a new product or service or switching industries. Finding the gap – what no one else is doing – and creating opportunities – businesses don’t disrupt, people do.

📕Free book! Collaborate: Bring people together around digital projects by Ellen de Vries (Gather Content). Content is about people and collaboration – how to think about the work you do as a collaborator in your day-to-day life – and some practical activities to test out. How to work with others online efficiently – this will be helpful to anyone in digital, not just content people. Via the excellent & new Working in Content.

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