With recent advancements in AI-powered software, business professionals have flocked to AI tech such as ChatGPT for their digital marketing content needs. With its ability to generate large amounts of human-like text in a conversational manner, ChatGPT has become a popular choice for efficiently creating digital marketing assets such as website content, blogs, articles, and more.
For busy lawyers, it can be difficult to find the time to consistently research, produce, and publish blog content that works to attract more potential clients to their website. That’s why many solos and small law firms are turning to tech to achieve a greater volume of content in less time. However, in its current state, ChatGPT fails to be a plug-and-play solution for attorneys, and instead, it requires a degree of oversight in order to produce high-quality blog content.
Read on for the risks and limitations of using ChatGPT for your digital marketing, an overview of the various applications of ChatGPT, what to include in your ChatGPT prompt for optimal output, and a step-by-step example of how you can use ChatGPT to produce a high-quality legal blog.
4 Risks and Limitations to Consider When Using ChatGPT
While it may be tempting to use content that is generated by ChatGPT as-is, it’s important to be aware of the limitations that prevent such content from being website-ready right out of the box.
The following are four major risks and limitations to consider when using ChatGPT for your digital marketing content:
- The content may not be 100% accurate. Accuracy should be a top concern when using ChatGPT for your law firm website content. Reports show that ChatGPT has a tendency to “hallucinate,” or inaccurately inform an inquiry, when it doesn’t know the correct answer. This could mean that, while the content appears to be correct and is written confidently, it could contain significant errors.
- ChatGPT lacks legal standards. For most attorneys, your law firm website has to adhere to local board regulations. Because AI-generated content is not written by a legal expert, it could contain fallacies or put you in violation with your local board. You need to lend a second look to anything and everything you ask an AI tool to generate for you.
- The database is not up to date. If you’re looking for the most up-to-date information for a blog post or other written content, ChatGPT may not be the most reliable source. As of today, the ChatGPT database has not been updated since September 2021. As a result, it will not reflect the most up-to-date information that may be necessary for your blog post or article.
- Your content could be a duplicate. Depending on where or how an AI software is scraping its information, a similarly written prompt can yield similar or same content results for another user. This can lead to plagiarism or duplicate content if you’re relying solely on the AI-generation for a written piece.
The Various Ways Attorneys Can Use ChatGPT
If you haven’t yet explored using ChatGPT for your practice, it’s free to create an account and get started. Users interact with the software conversationally. It looks and feels similar to a chat interface. For example, you can ask ChatGPT a question or tell it to generate something for you, and it replies to you in a conversational tone.
Beyond blog writing, there are several useful applications of ChatGPT for your law firm website. Here are some popular ways that attorneys are using ChatGPT:
- SEO keywords
- FAQ pages
- Attorney profiles
- Mission statements
- Taglines
- Email campaigns and newsletters
- Social media posts
- Chat bots
What to Include in Your ChatGPT Prompt for Optimal Output
There is a certain degree of trial and error when using AI software such as ChatGPT for your website content. However, there are a handful of recommendations that can help you get a running start with your AI-generated content. As a general rule of thumb, it’s best to always be as specific as possible when asking ChatGPT to generate content. The more detail you provide on what you need, the closer you can get to a final product that is ready for your website.
In this section, we will review three key things to include in your ChatGPT prompt for optimal output.
#1 Demographics
The first element you need to include in your ChatGPT prompt is demographic information. First, you need to inform the AI who you are. This helps mainly with determining the tone of voice for the content and helps with writing for an audience that is relevant to your practice. Telling ChatGPT your role in the most descriptive way possible helps it understand how the tone of voice of the content should come across and who your intended audience is.
For example, include:
- Who you are
- Where you are
- Who and where your potential clients are
- Language demographics (Southern, Northern, Coastal, etc.)
#2 SEO Details
The next element to include in your ChatGPT prompt are your SEO details. To avoid more work for yourself later on, it’s helpful to provide ChatGPT with SEO information in your prompt that will aid in the search engine visibility of the piece. While ChatGPT generally follows proper formatting techniques for its generated content, you are likely to see better results from the software when providing more direction in your prompt.
For example, be explicit about how or if you want ChatGPT to include H1 headings and subheadings in your piece. In addition, it’s helpful to specify if you would like to include any sort of bulleted or numbered lists in your blog piece. Finally, prompt ChatGPT to optimize the content for meta descriptions using relevant keywords.
In sum, you want to specify to ChatGPT how you would like it to generate:
- Subheadings
- Bulleted lists
- Numbered lists
- Meta descriptions
#3 Strong Call-To-Action
The final key element to crafting better ChatGPT prompts is the call-to-action (CTA). A blog or other piece of written content on your law firm website cannot be complete without a strong CTA that prompts the potential client to connect with your firm. To help ChatGPT write a better CTA for your generated content, include information about your practice and your experience in your prompt such as years practiced, relevant credentials, awards, and any significant outcomes or accomplishments.
Crafting a Blog Using ChatGPT from Start to Finish
Step 1: Writing a strong prompt
The first and most important step to crafting a high-quality blog post using ChatGPT is writing a strong prompt. The image below shows an example of a blog prompt for a family law attorney in Tennessee regarding child custody over the holiday season.
Now, let’s run through our checklist to make sure that our prompt addresses all of the key elements we need to generate a high-quality blog:
✔ Demographic information: In our prompt, we see that the user has specified that they are a family law attorney in Tennessee. They also asked for ChatGPT to optimize the blog for Tennessee, alluding that the tone of voice should match a Tennessee audience, but also include relevant jurisdiction law for the state.
✔ SEO details: The prompt asks ChatGPT to use headers as well as examples and tips to aid in the search engine visibility of the piece.
✔ Strong call-to-action: Lastly, the user asks ChatGPT to provide a strong CTA that highlights ten years of experience in family law with an emphasis on their expertise in family law.
Once you have determined that your prompt covers the necessary elements, you are ready for Step 2.
Step 2: Check the formatting
The next step to creating a high-quality blog piece using ChatGPT is to perform an initial overview of the blog’s formatting. Review the content for H1 headings, subheadings, properly formatted bulleted or numbered lists, proper bolding, and that all paragraphs are the appropriate length. If there are multiple issues with the formatting, consider revisiting your prompt and being more descriptive with how you would like the content to appear.
Step 3: Craft your add-ons
Once you’re satisfied with the first draft of your blog in ChatGPT, it’s time to copy the content and paste it into your typical text editor for further changes.
Before your blog post is ready for your website, consider making the following additions:
- Add empathy, tone, and your unique personality. While ChatGPT is skilled at creating high-quality content for a general audience, it tends to fall short when it comes to replicating a real person’s tone of voice. Think about the brand identity of your law practice and how you would like your written words to come across. Fill in the gaps for where ChatGPT may be lacking, or where you can show how your firm is unique.
- Identify opportunities for internal linking. Internal linking is an important element of engaging web visitors and improving the search engine visibility of your web pages. Give your new blog piece a once-over for any internal linking opportunities.
- Add any relevant multimedia. Blog posts are best accompanied by a relevant visual. This can be a photo, infographic, graph, or video. For LawLytics users, this is easy to do with access to a library of stock images right from your text editor.
- For longer pieces, create anchor links. Anchor links help guide the reader to topics they are most interested in learning about without having to search through the entire written piece.
Step 4: Proof and optimize your CTA
Although you may have provided adequate guidance for ChatGPT to create a strong CTA, the software still has limitations on its ability to capture human tone. In addition, it may be lacking vital information such as how to get in touch with your firm.
Step 5: Publish and share to your website and social media
Once you’ve made additional edits to your AI-generated blog, you’re ready to publish it to your law firm website! To maximize the visibility of your hard work, consider sharing your new blog post to your social media audience. For LawLytics users, sharing new blog posts directly to social media is quick and easy with our social media integration.
Skip the Risk and Reap the Rewards with LawLytics
Whether you’re using ChatGPT or other AI-powered software for blog writing, emails, or chat bots, there’s a measurable amount of risk in trusting AI technology with your firm’s digital marketing. With LawLytics, we ensure you get all the reward without the risk using technology that is attorney-specific and tailored to the needs of your practice.
Launch your website faster, disrupt your local market, or add a new practice area all with the LawLytics built-in content creation tool. Unlike ChatGPT, our smart content generation tool features 250+ professionally-written practice area topics across 20 practice areas that are optimized for search engine performance. Not only is this content high-quality safe to use, but it comes equipped with everything your firm needs to increase your visibility on search.
If you’re not yet a LawLytics member and would like to see the technology in action, schedule a 20-minute interactive demo with us.
