There are plenty of writing tasks where ChatGPT can save you precious time. But there are also plenty of writing tasks where it can cost you time. It’ll take longer to rewrite and edit ChatGPT’s outputs than just writing the piece yourself.

What are the writing tasks that ChatGPT excels at? What are the tasks it’s weak at? And how much can you use it for each?

The Three Tiers of Writing

What is your writing task? Place that task in one of these three tiers: low-level, mid-level, and high-level. I’ll explain each.

LOW-LEVEL 

This is writing that just needs to do its job. It doesn’t need to withstand much scrutiny from the reader because it will get skimmed. Whether it’s “good” or “bad” is determined by whether or not it did its job. You’re not composing beautiful prose here. Some examples: most social media posts, FAQs, terms of service for your site, or summaries of existing text.

MID-LEVEL

This is quality content that should engage your audience more, but it’s not the best you can do. This is valuable content, but it’s not headline material. It’s your content for this week, and you’ll need more next week. You’re probably not going to promote this content for months. Some examples: an article or blog post, a social media thread, or a landing page.

HIGH-LEVEL

This is the best writing you can do. These are big ideas and big swings. This content requires excellent writing and storytelling. It might demand research, analysis, or creativity. You’ll continue to promote or sell this content for months or years. This is your prestige stuff, the centerpiece of your written work. Some examples: a book, video, presentation, product copy, or important articles.

Get the idea? Choose the tier for your task. Is it low-level, mid-level, or high-level?

How much can you use ChatGPT? 

The tier you just chose is ChatGPT’s grade for that level of writing. In other words, ChatGPT is excellent at A Tier, good at B Tier, and decent at C Tier. You’ll use ChatGPT less the lower the tier you place it in.

With A Tier, you can use plenty of what ChatGPT gives you verbatim. (But as always, be sure to proof those outputs and edit them.)

With B Tier, ChatGPT will primarily give you raw material that you’ll rewrite. It’ll also give you some usable text.

With C Tier, ChatGPT becomes a support player, a bit like a combination of Google and a human copy editor. ChatGPT can give you information and edit your writing, but most of the work gets done by you. This is ChatGPT at its least revolutionary.

Beware of C Tier

C Tier is where ChatGPT can waste your time. You can end up typing endless prompts as you search for decent outputs or entirely rewriting and rethinking what ChatGPT gives you.  

To determine if your task belongs in C Tier, ask yourself the following three questions. If the answer is “yes” to any of them, it is.

• Is this a long piece of writing? (Even over a few hundred words is long.)

• Is this a complex piece of writing? (Does it have a narrative? Does it have a personal perspective? Is it intended to evoke emotion?)

• Is this a very important piece of writing? (Is it very important to you, your audience, or your business?)

Again, ask yourself: is this long, complex or very important?

An important note: ChatGPT is still very useful for supporting C Tier writing.

You need lots of low- and mid-level writing to market and publicize your premiere content. It’ll need social media posts, articles, product pages, summaries, etc. ChatGPT can help you do a lot of that work quickly.

Some of you might be wondering why you should use ChatGPT less and less as the writing task becomes more and more important. It’s simple: ChatGPT writes mediocre text that tends to be bland. In small doses, this works just fine. The text will be repetitive, rambling, and dull in larger doses. If you use ChatGPT where it’s not suited, you’ll just post text nobody will read.

The quality of ChatGPT’s writing might change, but that’s where we are now.

The Take-Away

ChatGPT can do most of the work for low-level writing, a good amount for mid-level, and valuable support work for high-level. You’ll use ChatGPT less frequently the higher you rank your project in these tiers. But for most of you, C Tier writing is a minority of your day, so there are a lot of tasks where ChatGPT can save you some time and spare you some tedium.

As always, be sure to verify any fact ChatGPT gives you. You’re responsible for what you publish, not ChatGPT.

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