Back in 1995 I published my first website. Those were the early days of the web as a place for business.
That year there were just 16 million people online.
It wasn’t until 1998 that the number of people using the web hit 100 million.
From zero to 100 million in a little over 3 years.
That rapid rate of change was deeply disruptive to traditional, bricks-and-mortar businesses. Companies were struggling to keep up and adapt.
Now let’s fast-forward to November 2022, and the launch of ChatGPT.
Who’s opinion should you listen to?
Always a tough question. Right now there are plenty of conflicting views when it comes to the future impact of AI on the careers of writers and copywriters.
At one extreme, there are those who claim AI is just hype, a passing fad, and that it will never replace human writers.
At the other extreme, some copywriters are worried their jobs will be completely obliterated by AI within the next few years.
The truth, as it almost always the case, lies somewhere in between.
As you can imagine, I’ve been playing with ChatGPT and GPT-4 for a while now.
I’ve been using GPT as a brainstorming buddy, a research assistant, a first draft copy and content writer, a social media writer… and more.
Honestly, it’s incredibly good. Mind-blowing really, when you consider where this technology was just a few months ago.
This time I asked GPT-4 to write me a 40-page Kindle book I could publish on Amazon.
The title of the book is… Brain Sharpeners: 48 Natural Foods That Support Brain Health
My father was a farmer and a natural-born entrepreneur. I grew up watching him try various ways to expand his farm business.
For example, in the photo above you can see him standing by his milk carton delivery van in the early 1960s. As far as I can tell, he was the first farmer in the UK to carton the milk from his farm, and sell the cartons from refrigerated vending machines in local towns.
By the age of about 8 or 9, I was out there on the farm with my brothers, earning my pocket money… bringing in the cows for milking twice a day, baling the hay in spring, harvesting wheat and barley in the summer… and helping to fill those vending machines each day.
You’re driving downtown, in three lanes of traffic, during rush hour on a Friday afternoon.
Your foot is jumping between the accelerator and the brake. Your eyes are looking out front, but also frequently checking the rear-view mirror.
And you’re in the middle lane, so you’re watching your wing mirrors and turning your head to check the blind spots.
In short, you’re moving forward, but constantly aware of everything that is happening around you, and adjusting how you drive accordingly.
And then…every now and again you’ll end up behind one of those annoying drivers who does none of these things, other than staring straight ahead. These bad drivers act as if they are completely alone on the road, without any regard to anything that is happening around them, with the exception of what’s right in front of their noses.
If you want to engage your readers, earn their trust and turn them into customers, the worst thing you can do is write content and sales copy that is “on-message”.
Online content and copy that is on-message has about as much power as a politician who has been overly trained by his or her media trainers and speech writers.
The outcome lacks all authenticity. It’s BS, and we know it.
I recently returned from a trip to the UK where the country had just voted to choose their representatives for the European parliament.
What usually happens is a win by the Conservatives or the Labour Party, with the Lib Dems taking third place.
This time, the winner was a new, upstart party called Ukip.