ChatGPT is helping me write blog posts on Teach the 4 Ps
I’ve been experimenting with large language models like artificial intelligence to better understand how they might assist marketing managers and instructors. Specifically, I’ve been using ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 to help me write blog posts for Teach the 4 Ps and generate images for these posts. My goal is to learn more about the capabilities and limitations of these AI tools and how I can work with them to improve their effectiveness.
Early impressions from my experimentation on April 17, 2023, show that ChatGPT is quite impressive, while DALL-E 2 has been less satisfactory. My disappointment with DALL-E 2 may stem from my limited experience with the tool; I’ve spent dozens of hours with ChatGPT, but only about an hour with DALL-E 2.
My first attempt at using ChatGPT to write a blog post happened over a month ago, resulting in the post “ChatGPT Wrote this Blog Post.” The post was a response to the prompt: “Write a blog post explaining how ChatGPT can be used in marketing.”
Today, I provided ChatGPT with the following prompt:
I am the author of a blog. You can find my blog at https://teachthe4ps.com/. My blog posts typically provide a brief description of a recent article about marketing. I then describe how that article might be used in a marketing class and include a link to the original article. If I give you a link to an article, can you provide a recommended blog post that is in the style already used at https://teachthe4ps.com/.
After giving ChatGPT the link to each article, it generated excellent summaries and suggested ways to use the content in class discussions, even providing actual discussion questions. I iterated with ChatGPT a few times, asking it to revise paragraphs or provide specific feedback.
Through my experience and by learning from others, such as Wharton entrepreneurship professorEthan Mollick’s Substack, I’ve found that treating ChatGPT as a partner to develop useful content yields the best results. Detailed prompts give the AI context, leading to better blog posts, classroom examples, and teaching ideas. I’ll share more about ChatGPT’s shortcomings, like its tendency to lie or hallucinate, in a later post.
By providing ChatGPT with sufficient context and iterating with feedback, the tool can produce high-quality blog posts. However, you be the judge—read the posts yourself. In the interest of transparency, I’ll indicate which posts were primarily generated by ChatGPT (although some light editing is usually required).
I’ll continue to share my experiences with using ChatGPT to enhance my teaching, so look out for more posts throughout the summer.
One other use case for ChatGPT. After writing this post, I fed it into ChatGPT and asked it to edit the post for clarity. It offered a clearer more concise version, which you just read.