EP 27: Fueling Your Content Creation with AI

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So how will search engines even work if we're all using AI? That's one of the things that we're going to talk about on today's edition of AI Everyday AI. This is your daily podcast, live stream and daily newsletter where we talk about all things AI, not just what's happening, but how you can actually learn and leverage what's going on. And someone helping us do that today is our guest. Super excited to talk to Tom Winter. Tom is the Chief Growth Officer and co founder of SEO Win. Tom, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for invite. I'm like pumped.

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it.

All right, as a reminder, this is a live show, so if you are tuning in, please drop Tom a comment or myself, and we'll do our best to talk. So we're going to talk some things, content creation and SEO. But before we do, let's just go over the news real quick. Professor Mohamed, good to see you too. All right, so let's talk about this. So Bing Chat is improving. Yay. So Microsoft just announced that Bing Chat is being added to more browsers. They're going to be expanding the context window and it's really just being kind of redesigned. So if you aren't familiar, Bing Chat is kind of a ChatGPT competitor, or at least it used to be, but now it's actually integrated into the platform. But to really use it by itself, you had to download Microsoft Edge browser. So this is an update. Tom, are you going to be jumping on this anytime soon?

Definitely. Like everything that is AI, I love to test it out just to see how it works and if it can help me out, like Bing, go for it.

Yeah, that's what I said. It's like I'm trying everything, you know, Microsoft, Bing, you know, cloud. Like, yeah, if it's out there, I'm trying it at least. Kind of a piece of news today. It's more of a milestone. But speaking of Chat GPT turning six, six months old today. So, you know, we'll, we'll six birthday candles for Chat GPT. But wow, Tom, talk about a wild ride. Over a hundred million users almost in, in a couple of months, which doesn't happen for any new platform. And ChatGPT has really changed, you know, since it first debuted six months ago. So, you know, now there's plugins and you can Access the web. So you aren't just limited to data. You know, from September 2021, you know, the new version, going from GPT 3 to G to 3.5 to 4, having a pro plan, all of those things, but also tons of ethics, privacy, copyright concerns now as well. Tom, what's, what do you make of the first six months of chat GPT?

I wouldn't even talk about, like, chatGPT change. Like the world basically changed. Like, if you asked me, like, like what my children should learn, like in the next, like 10 years, I would say, like, go be a programmer. It, like makes a lot of sense. And right now, like, you know what, actually a programmer maybe think of something different.

And I'm sure that's painful to say given your background too. Right? It's like this programming and SEO thing. Let's look at it from a different lens.

Exactly. So the world has changed and we will see a lot more changes.

Yeah, that's a great point. Speaking of changes, kind of a recent report, and we'll kind of use this to transition into a little bit of your background. Tom, but a Hacker Noon article, you know, kind of contemplating what does SEO mean now that we're all using AI, right? So many people are using AI now, not to just research and read the web, but also using it to help create, you know, content on the web. And you know, AI chatbots are becoming increasingly popular. So, you know, Tom, what, you know, your, your take on this Hacker Noon article, You know, real quick, like, what does SEO mean now? If we're all using AI, does it still mean the same thing as it used to 10 years ago?

It does, but at scale. Like, I think like the velocity of the content in the last 10 years, like got a lot higher, but at the moment it actually sped up like really badly. So, like, there's like a lot more content going out. But I would go with the definition of Google. Like, content has to be helpful. And this is basically the SEO. So if you can design the content that is helpful, if it's based on research and it gives the answers to the people, like, that's basically an SEO for me. Even though that, as I, as I mentioned to you before, the meaning, like, I'm a programmer, I can go really in depth into technical issues of SEO. In my opinion, if the content is not helpful, if you're not nailing the search intent, sorry, it can do magic, but it will not work.

Yeah, so just describe real quick about SEO Wind. What is the platform for? And I guess, why did you and Your team kind of decide to build this.

So like, I'm a serial founder. I also co founded a tool called Deskler and we are in over 100 countries, we have customers and we used several techniques of SEOs, techniques to build content and drive organic traffic. And we thought like, okay, I'm a passive founder right now there, so let's build a tool that will help me out and automate all the things that I did. So we started with a simple tool that creates briefs for humans. So we help with the whole SEO research for the briefs for humans. And at some point, like about three, four months ago, we've encountered like, we realized that briefing a human is no different than prompting AI. And actually if you do the whole research and you have the whole knowledge about the search intent and everything inside, you can write articles that make sense. Most of the articles that I can see on the Internet, like done with, with AI, they are spam. Like, basically they, they, everybody says, like, oh, they're empty, they're shallow and they agree with you. But I can do a lot more. I've heard like a couple of times in your podcast that somebody said garbage in, garbage out. Like, and this is exactly it. Like if you put knowledge in, this is a language model, it analyzes the knowledge that you put in. And I don't care that it's cut off like in 2021, because I'm giving it the knowledge that I need it to know for writing the things that I want. So having all the knowledge about briefing the human, I'm able to brief also AI and I'm able to write articles using AI that makes sense, that are really good in my opinion. Go on.

Yeah, so real quick here, Tom. I actually have, if you're tuning in live, have the SEO Wind website here on the screen. But just explain that because you did say garbage in, garbage out, and I think shout out. MLO said that earlier this week. I've said it a couple times too. But it seems like your platform, which we have up on the screen here, AI article writing that drives traffic. It seems like it's not fully AI, right? It's just giving an AI outline to a human. Is that the main kind of use case for your tool or is there also kind of a feature that just lets AI take the entire thing from top to bottom?

We are able to go into God mode. Like just say you enter one keyword and write an article of 5,000 words for you and it will actually rank. But as I mentioned in the beginning, like we started with creating Briefs for humans. And we are strong believers in something that I call cyborg method. So, like, humans and AI working together, not separately, not against each other. Like, they're both in the process and they're able to help each other. So first you start with building a brief based on data so you actually have access as a human to data part. And AI helps you to define the brief, and it can help actually write the whole one using all the SEO data. So, like, we are scraping a lot of content from Google, from other websites, just to know exactly what's the search intent. But at any point, you as a human can jump in and say, like, okay, I have a special matter expert at my company, so, like, I want to write something from my special matter expert, or I want to add these things to the brief. And then when you have the brief ready, you just send it to AI and like, create the whole thing. And on top of that, I would say have a human, an editor that will go over that and make it, like, perfect.

Yeah. And it's refreshing, Tom, to hear someone like yourself, so someone with a background in technical development, SEO, to say, like, hey, there's still room for humans. Because I think there's good examples, but also bad examples where people just let AI run the whole process and the whole content creation process. So outside of maybe, know, using your tool, but what other suggestions do you have for people on to still keep that kind of, that hybrid approach of, yes, tapping into and leveraging AI, but still working with a human just in the whole content creation process. How do you. How can we do that?

Yeah, I have a hypothesis that every copywriter has to become an editor that manages a team of AI writers. And like, if you don't jump on board, like, unfortunately, there will be, like, in the future problems. Because even if people say, like, AI can't write, like, because it's too shallow, like, it's all about the content that you can put in. Like, the knowledge that you can put in. It's much faster in analyzing things. And that's why, like, you have to become an architect, an architect of, like, SEO strategy, defining where AI should go and help on top of what AI does, like, give this additional value, this cherry on the top that you as a human can give. And I doesn't have the experience, so I would work on that.

How do you think, you know, and I've, I'm sure other people have seen this, but, you know, I've seen kind of memes on the Internet where it says, like, hey, content creation is just you know, AI telling us what to write and then also in the back end, people are using AI. Then to summarize, long articles, just, just in general, how do you see content, not just content creation, but even content consumption changing now that it's so easy, you know, you kind of mentioned, you know, the God mode of your platform that can spit out a, you know, high quality thousand plus word article. But how do you just see the content creation and consumption changing in the future with more and more AI?

It's hard to say. Like, I think the authority, like will be really important. So like as a person, that's why like this cyber method where you have control over it and you actually add value on the top, like it will be a huge ranking factor from the perspective of Google, but still like there will be like AI is a new pen is basically, if you don't want to say, like, oh, I like my square wheels, like I will not use the round ones. Like, unfortunately you have to jump on this board like, because like just saying like, we're better, humans are better, like it, unfortunately it will not work out. Like, sorry, like it's something that can help you, like amplify your skills, make you like give you superpowers. But yeah, use it.

Yeah, you know, probably something. And you know, we talked about this before the show. Tom. I'm, I'm an SEO geek, right? So I understand the importance of it. But you know, maybe for someone not as familiar with, hey, why do I need to be creating new content? Why do I really need to care about SEO? So let's just say, you know, it's a small business owner, an entrepreneur. Why is content creation so important? Maybe now even more than ever.

Basically it can give you organic traffic and organic traffic is basically leads. If you want to combine like paid ads, inorganic, like organic is the same kind of traffic. But like you don't pay for that. So like I would go with both of them and you can just reduce the costs of having new leads, like, and getting new leads and this is like what I would do like, and yeah, that's basically it.

Yeah, probably something other people are thinking, you know, they, if they're looking at SEO wind and they're like, wait, isn't this kind of what ChatGPT does? You know, kind of what's, what's the difference? Or maybe the benefit of using a platform like yours versus just when people say, you know, hey, hey, chatgpt, write me a thousand word article about this. What's, what's the difference? And you know, will Will not just content creators know the difference, but will the people consuming the content know as well?

So actually, you know what? I've created a PDF how you can actually write the whole articles that make sense using ChatGPT without using our tools. Like I'm happy to share it like for free without like any. It's not gated. So like, yeah, grab it and like see how you can do it. But if you will, see like how much research you have to do inside. So how much scraping of data we're doing. Like this is actually the piece that helps you out because we're like when we're writing prompts, to give you an example when to write a 3,000 word article, we're using 7,000 words in the prompt. Like if you would make me write a 7,000 word prompt or a new article that's 3k words, I would choose writing the article. To be honest, I'm not doing that. So if you can automate it and make it simpler just to get spit out as fast as possible, the article that your editor can work on and make it perfect, that makes sense. I've tested out many ways of writing articles with AI and we're currently having challenge. 100 posts in 30 days. Challenge where we are actually putting the money where our mouth is putting it on our website. Like 100 posts within 30 days and watching like how it grows. So go on LinkedIn, check it out. I'm sharing the data like pens down, like all the questions possible. You can ask them and I will show it to you.

I love that. I love that. So yeah, we'll make sure to throw that in the comments kind of this discussion after the show. Thank you for all these great comments so far. So Hunter just said that is a long prop. Wow. 7, 7000 word prompt for a 3000 word article.

3K. But like we're writing articles that are like 8K 10K. Like these prompts grow like so.

Yeah. Wow, that's. That's amazing. So if you are still tuning in to Tom's kind of Tom and I's conversation, feel free to drop a question. So I actually have one here from Sayetta who brings. Sayeda brings the heat every morning. She's always asking great questions. So she's asking. And I'm going to let you take this one, Tom, because this is a tough one. But she's wondering, are there any ethical concerns surrounding the use of AI in content creation, such as potential biases or plagiarism issues? Great question.

It's a tough one. Like thank you for that that you're letting me answer this one to be honest, like when you're a content writer, like let's go like, because for me AI and content writers are the same. Like it doesn't matter if you use AI or a content writer. If you're writing about the topic, what are you doing? You're researching it. You're not writing from top of your head. If you write from top of your head, you will never ever rank in Google because it will not nail the search intent. And especially if you're writing about financial it something else, you have to do the research. AI does it at scale. So is this actually a plagiarism issue if you're doing the same thing as a content writer, if you did it manually, I can't answer that. But basically this is exactly the same thing that we did for last 10 years at scale right now.

Yeah, that's a good point. Handled that one well better than I would have. So Hunter, kind of Hunter with a comment here. So let's talk about this because I think this is important as well. So Hunter saying, I like the idea of writing articles with AI assistance. Use it to help create documents for work, some side job things, but fact checking, double checking all the. Right. So Tom, talk a little bit about that. Kind of finding that balance between using AI in your content creation process, but also not just taking everything as written in stone right.

At the moment where you wouldn't have to fact check, double check, shorten the sentences or rewrite a couple of things you're not needed. Basically in my opinion it's worth to do it. For me, when I want to write a good article, it takes me about one and a half hour from starting point with AI writing it, about 20 minutes and then fact checking and doing all the stuff and also adding visuals and so on. I've tried midjourney, but it's not good with time. I would say just creating new images in midjourney just takes me too much time. But you do have to do it. It's getting better and better. The better quality of content that you put in. So like the knowledge that you'll put in, the better facts you will get out. This is how it works. So but still fact check it. Definitely go through the text, understand it, put it into Grammarly, add visuals. Like add a human touch. Like this is like you just saved four hours or five hours of your time. Like you have time to make it better.

Yeah, Tom, you actually just said the human touch. Right. So this is what actually Professor Muhammad just had a question or a statement. You know, if you know, having experience that chat, GPT is sometimes more innovative than a human. I, I have a quick take on this, but. But what do you think, Tom?

It is, but like not always like from SEO perspective. If we're focusing on SEO perspective, nailing search intent is the key issue. So being creative actually doesn't help with nailing the search intent because it increases the risk of Google saying like showing you something that you don't want. So they prefer to go after something that they know, 80% sure that it will be about this topic. So as an example, if you go with Independence Day, like and you type it into Google, what will you see? Like Will Smith will go over the whole place like there's no holiday, like there, like no fireworks, nothing like that. Like Will Smith and the movie. So this is exactly nailing the search intent. If you go and you don't name the search intent because you're creative. Sorry, like you will never appear on Google. Like your mom will read it, your dad will read it and that's like it.

Yeah, yeah. Without get, without going into it. So Professor Mohamed, we've talked before, but I will say this. Can ChatGPT or other platforms create content as innovative or as creative as a human out of the box? No. For 99% of users, absolutely not. But if you spend time giving it the right background, it can, it can be comparative to an average content writer. But kind of like what Tom said, you know, you have to spend almost as much time, you know, with the prompting, with the direction and making sure that whatever platform you're using has access to up to date and accurate information. And kind of like what Ryan said.

Here's.

He's, he's, you know, kind of going to my ppp which, which we can talk about another time. We'll make sure to link this in the newsletter. But yeah, making sure that you prom time prompt and polish correctly. So, so real quick as we're kind of winding down here, Tom, I want to give you the, the opportunity to maybe help some of our audience. So it could be about, you know, using your tool or might not be. But what is kind of through your experience of not just using AI, but obviously building a product around it as well. What is one takeaway that you have that can help the everyday person, you know, really just use all of this new technology? What's that one piece of advice that you would have for someone to actually use this?

Stop making excuses. I would say, like it's not about my product because like everybody that I meet have so many excuses. Like I can't do this because I don't have time. I have kids, I have something. I have two kids. Like I have two companies that I'm working in. Like you have to spend time and actually try it. Go to do things manually. I love to do things like AS has not SaaS but has Human as a service because it proves me that my idea works. Like do a POC that you spend one day on, try it out, verify if you can actually achieve. Like stop thinking about things. Try to achieve what you want. Like the end result using Human as a service and stop making excuses.

That's great because I do think you see all these new announcements and all these new products coming out and it can be overwhelming. So Tom, that's great advice. Just go do it. No more excuses. Just jump in. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Try it out.

Yes.

Just do it.

Just do it. We're gonna borrow from Nike. Just do it. So thank you Tom for coming on the show. We're gonna have more resources in the newsletter, some things that Tom referenced and hopefully you can share some of those resources with us in the comments too. So, Tom, thank you so much for, for, for coming on the show. It's, it's been amazing to get your input on AI and content creation.

Thanks a lot, Jordan. Thank you. Thank you all.

All right, so. So real quick as we wrap up, please remember, go to your everydayai.com Sign up for that newsletter. We're going to be sharing you know more about some of these things, SEO Win and some of the other things that Tom talked about. But also it is the last day of our Chat GPT giveaway, so we're giving away two year long subscriptions to ChatGPT, the premium service. So make sure that you sign up today and enter the contest. It takes 30 seconds. So hopefully we will see you back tomorrow on Everyday AI and every day after that. So thank you.

Awesome. Thank you all.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit youreverydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.