Tips Tuesday – AI and the Future of Your Blog

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Holiday Deals with $100 off BlogAid courses are happening
• The GA4 master custom Engagement report tutorials are now live
• A deep discussion on how AI will impact your blogging success

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BlogAid Happenings

ChatGPT, Lensa, Magic Write, and all things AI are the viral buzz right now.

And AI will impact your blogging success. 

So, we’re going to devote this week’s Tips Tuesday to that topic.

But first, let’s get a little other news and business taken care of.

Holiday Deals on all BlogAid Courses

All BlogAid courses are on sale right now.

Get up to $100 off on:

• Ultimate Google Analytics 4 Course for Bloggers
• DIY SEO
• Webmaster Training

These sales run through the first week in January.

But, you’re in a hurry to get your GA4 connected now so you can grab data on all this year-end traffic that you’re getting to your site.

Plus, we start the DIY SEO live sessions in mid January and there will be a big shake up in the course this year due to all the AI stuff we’ll be covering today.

GA4 Course Update

Woot! All of the tutorials are complete for creating your master Acquistion custom report.

And all of the core tutorials for creating your master Engagement custom report are complete too.

That includes the UA-like reports so you can see in GA4 what you’re used to seeing in Universal Analytics now.

This week I’ll be starting on the master Click custom report, followed by the Google Tag Manager section where you’ll set up specific clicks to follow, like whether a visitor saw your optin and if they clicked on its submit button. 

Plus, you’ll be able to track your affiliate link clicks too.

Folks who got into the course early have been able to take it like a drip course and they’re already enjoying these new custom reports and getting actionable data from GA4.

Site Services Update

Are you serious about getting the most eyeballs and making the most money you can from your site? I’m truly stunned at how many site owners radically overpay for hosting due to all their resources being chewed up by bad bots, or how they throw the kitchen sink of trickery at their site to make it faster instead of actually fixing the problems.

My clients see near-instant results after their site audit in the form of a noticeably faster site, more sign ups, and more repeat visitors.

If you’re ready to get your site spiffied up for the new year, or, it’s time for your annual site checkup, now is the time to get your site audit request in.

The waitlist for all site services is running into mid January already, and it will pick up through the winter.

So get your request in now.

State of the Word Address is Dec 15

Quick reminder that Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word Address happens this Thur, Dec 15 and you can watch via YouTube.

I’ll be watching the replay, and I’m super curious to see if the focus of development will become more balanced in 2023 instead of being so heavily tilted toward Full Site Editing, which is something I have yet to see be widely adopted.

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s dive into this week’s big news.

AI is THE Most Disruptive Technology of this Decade

Okay, let’s jump into this week’s main topic.

Functional Generative and Conversational AI has been available to us for the last couple of years.

But, major releases this year have upped the game so much that it is now being called THE most disruptive technology of this decade.

The biggest AI releases include:

• ChatGPT
• DALL-E
• LensaAI
• Magic Write

How ChatGPT AI Will Disrupt Everything

Last week, you may have seen my post on How ChatGPT AI Will Disrupt Everything.

It gives you an overview of what ChatGPT is.

ChatGPT

Here’s the deeper story on how it is being used, with examples.

In fact, let’s start with those examples. Here are a few I saw for ChatGPT on TikTok:

• Write copy 
• Write code 
• Create web app to calculate calorie intake and burn

Why Would Anyone Need a Recipe Site?

Here’s an example that shook up my foodie blogger clients:

• Meal planner and ingredients shopping list

That’s the exact question one of my foodie bloggers asked after seeing how quickly and easily ChatGPT spit out an entire weekly meal planner in table form, and then provided the entire ingredients shopping list for it.

But here’s why folks still need recipe sites.

People will still need to know how to prepare those recipes.

ChatGPT can’t do that.

Video Will Be Bigger Than Ever

In fact, ChatGPT can’t show anybody how to do anything. It’s purely text based.

So yes, you can get the written info.

But show and tell with video is FAR more powerful and effective for teaching folks how to do things.

So let’s say you want to make biscuits from scratch. And the recipe directions say to knead the dough.

Well, what if you’ve never done that before?

You’re going to want to see a demonstration of how it’s done.

Nothing but video can do that.

Screenshot Tutorials Will Still Be Big

Think about any tutorial you have seen from BlogAid.

I usually include a video and then a transcript with screenshots.

Which one do you prefer? Actually, folks are about 50/50 on that preference.

Some like to watch, some like to read.

But the fact is, that transcript wouldn’t make much sense without the images.

I do the same kind of posts on Heartwood Art where I teach woodworkers how to build things.

Change How You Blog

Folks, listen, this is serious.

If your site could be full of show and tell posts that go beyond mere text, you need to dedicate yourself to making it so.

That’s especially true of foodie sites, as it has become an internet standing joke that to find how to make a dish you have to see 15 images of the finished dish while scrolling as fast as you can through fluff text of how much their family enjoys this meal, and trying to get past a gazillion ads, some which follow you as you scroll.

Everything about that is a horrible user experience – EVERYTHING.

Leaving Old Search Engines in the Dust

No wonder folks are turning to multiple other sources for information and away from Googling everything.

All they see on Google are ads.

And if they do get to a blog post, it’s a horrible experience.

Searchers want answers – and they want direct answers too, not a bunch of junk they have to sort through to get that answer.

No wonder ChatGPT had 1 million users in the first 5 days of its launch.

People can just type in a query and get a direct answer that is good.

Flocking to New Search Engines

This year, reports have been flying as to just how many people are now using TikTok as a search engine and news source.

And that number is growing.

In fact, it’s growing so fast that TikTok jumped to capitalize on it and radically increased the text description length so it could have more keywords instead of just hashtags. And they even started hyperlinking some of those keywords.

Pinterest was the front-runner of this type of anti-Google searching.

Even though folks couldn’t get the answer on Pinterest, they could see where to find it.

But, that lead them to these heavily ad-laden sites with fluff info too.

With TikTok, they get a direct answer in the first few seconds.

If they want a longer answer, many TikTokers have YouTube channels with longer-form content too.

Is it Google or the Internet That’s Getting Worse?

Here’s a fact for you to consider.

A lot of bloggers blame Google for a reduction in traffic because the search results on Google are so terrible. And that’s another reason why more folks are flocking to other places to get answers.

But here’s the truth. It’s not only that Google is getting worse. The web as a whole is getting worse – as reported in this recent Search Engine Journal interview with an ex-Google employee.

Why AI Will Not Replace Google Search

Okay, are you woke and scared?

Take a breath.

The pendulum is going to swing super hard over to AI answers for a while, likely for all of 2023.

But, here’s the main reasons why it won’t replace Google searches or traditional content.

Folks Adopt Slowly

Yes, ChatGPT had 1 million users in 5 days.

But, there are 7.8 billion people on the planet and the majority of them are still going to Google answers. Adoption from here will continue on a straight up trajectory, but it will still take a long time for ChatGPT and other AI generators to be the norm.

Remember when cell phones first came out? It took a while for them to catch on to the point that everybody had one. But that tech was so disruptive that it’s really weird for someone not to have a cell phone now.

Bad Answers, More Choices

Here’s another reason why folks will still Google things.

When you search something on Google, you may be given what it thinks is the best answer at the top of the page. 

But you’re also given choices with the rest of the links on the page.

It’s up to you to sort through them and decide what best answers your query.

With ChatGPT, you get one answer. Yes, you can refine it. But you still get one answer.

Here’s are some TikToks explaining why you should not rely on ChatGPT, especially if you aren’t expert enough on that topic to vet the response:

• Wrong answers from ChatGPT
• Why it won’t kill Google

Create Better User Experiences

Even though ChatGPT won’t kill Google, it will most definitely impact the traffic you get from that source.

Your best bet is to create a high quality user experience for readers so that you capture them.

That way they just come to your site first instead of Googling or doing any AI search at all.

Create Your Own Products

I’ve been telling my clients for 2 years that they need to get on the ball with creating their own products and to stop relying on ads for their main income.

When the traffic to your site drops, so does your revenue.

Get Going with Video

You need to stop relying so hard on SEO and social media and start going where the eyeballs are going, which is to video.

Remember when Pinterest started tanking? More bloggers started to get serious about SEO.

Now that traditional search engines are going to be impacted by AI, it’s time for you to get super serious about video.

Evolve or Die

The internet is an evolving thing.

You need to evolve with it.

Here’s your early warning.

Make it happen.

More AI Options

ChatGPT may have gotten all the viral buzz last week, but it certainly wasn’t the only AI generator to make noise.

LensaAI

Have you seen the LensaAI image generator?

You upload a bunch of images of yourself and it makes way cool cartoon-ish graphics of you.

MagicWrite

Canva just launched an AI content generator called MagicWrite.

It helps you generate blog post ideas and get started with writing them.

Google and Facebook AI in the Works

ChatGPT is not the only big AI. Both Google and Facebook have had their own in the works for years. And I bet fires have been lit under those devs now that ChatGPT seems to be winning the race.

Don’t Use AI to Write Posts

I’ve been saying all year that I think AI content generators are a great way to spin blog post titles or even help you spin some content as a way to get new ideas or freshen up stale writing habits.

And that really is helpful after you’ve already written to exhaustion on a topic.

But, you most certainly don’t want to copy/paste AI generated content straight to your blog.

Google Will Catch You

For the whole last half of 2022 Google has been rolling out an algorithm update called Helpful Content.

It specifically looks for AI spun content to de-rank it.

Unfortunately, a LOT of AI generated content is better written than most of the human generated content on the web. And human written sites got caught and de-ranked in the first algorithm update.

But, more of them are rolling out as Google refines the algorithm and sites that got popped may return to higher ranking.

AI is Free for Now, But There’s a Catch

Here’s another thing I want you to consider about all this AI coming out on the market.

It is a market.

ChatGPT came out as a research beta. What do you think their researching?

Right, us!!

They want to see how we are using it.

At some point they will monetize those uses and sell us that service.

Some folks are asking what LensaAI is doing with all the images we upload of ourselves. They say nothing. But they are likely gathering other data on us.

Just keep in mind that if the service is for free, you’re the product.

The other thing to keep in mind is the enormous computing power required to feed, sort, and deliver AI generated content.

OpenAI, the folks who run ChatGPT, are going to have to pay for all of that with more than investor money to make it sustainable.

Do What ChatGPT Can’t Do

Here’s a final thought I want to leave you with today.

Consider this Tips Tuesday post.

There is no AI generator that can sort through all of the hype and noise to bring you the info that is important to you and your site success.

Find a way to be that invaluable resource to your followers.

Do what AI can’t do, like product reviews and finding helpful resources and tools for your peeps.

Ask your followers what they need and create that.

Yes, AI will continue to be disruptive.

But there is no substitute for human generated content in some areas.

Adapt and grow and be the human source folks seek for answers.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.