Everyone is talking about AI and how it can revolutionize your business. Every high-tech company is trying to leverage it, from Microsoft to Google, from Apple to Facebook. Although it certainly is something that we, as lawyers, should be using, it is not nearly the magic purple pill it is made out to be.

The question becomes, how should we be using it? When is it a good idea, and when is it a bad idea?

AI Writing for Your Web Site

Although it has many applications in your practice, the allure of AI I want to talk about here is its attractiveness for producing marketing content for your web site at a level demanded by Google and the Internet, without taking up the valuable time of you or your marketing manager. Here I will discuss what AI can do, how its content differs from human content, and most importantly, how Google can tell the difference (because it can).

There’s no question that AI content generators to create content much faster than human writers. But that definitely does not mean that you should have it do all the work. You shouldn’t just cut and paste its response into your web site and move on.

I have found from my own use that it can be a great way to get past writer’s block and the strategic process of structuring the content itself into a logical and easy to read format. I see the text generated by applications like ChatGPT as as the starting point; there is definitely work to be done beyond that.

It Starts with the Prompt

Before you type anything into ChatGPT, you need to do some strategic thinking first in order to get back the best result. Remember, you are writing content for your avatar client. You want to attract the attention and curiosity of your ideal client, so your content should be written in such a way as to do so.

You do this by crafting a well worded prompt for the AI. For example, let’s say you do estate planning for wealthy clients. You you have found from experience that you can generate the most fee by representing families over 50 with grown children, a net worth of over $5 million, and a concern about protecting the inheritance for future generations.

With this in mind, you would write a prompt something like this:

“Speaking to a reader over 50 years old with a net worth over $5 million and children over the age of 25, especially those who are concerned about protecting the inheritance for their errors, write an article explaining the benefits of an asset protection trust as an overall part of an estate plan.”

You may have to tweak this prompt a bit before you get acceptable output. But as you can see, AI can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to SEO and writing content for your ideal client.

Adding Your Own Voice

But this is just the start of the process. For this content to be really effective, it needs to sound like you. It needs to be written in your voice. Overall, it needs to be written in your words, not that of an AI chat bot.

At this point, you should cut and paste ChatGPT’s response into your text editor and revise it to read as if you yourself was speaking to the potential client. This results in better quality copy written by human being, because believe it or not, Google can tell the difference.

Don’t Let Google Ding You!

Those folks are pretty clever, and you can bet they know more about AI than we do, and the kind of copy being put out there on websites to attract attention. Google isn’t sharing the specific parameters it’s using for AI detection, but it certainly can identify content that was generated or written by a human.

Of concerned here is that Google is now seeming to penalize websites that rely too heavily on AI-written content. If they show that your site’s content is automatically generated, your traffic can suffer significantly. In addition, research indicates that human-generated content performs better than AI.

The potential for AI to revolutionize content creation cannot be understated. It offers unprecedented efficiency and scale that saves law firms like yours time and money. However, a balanced approach is necessary.

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Do you want to start leveraging AI in content creation for your web site, but don’t know where to start or exactly how to approach it? Would you like someone to train you in how to craft effective prompts that get the best responses? I can help! Just click on this link to schedule an initial, no obligation call with me to discuss your situation and what value I can bring to the table.

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