Nick Usborne's Blog, page 5

Forget everything you learned about writing at school.

Back as a child, you were probably an amazing writer.

All those wonderful stories swirling around in your head. Maybe you wrote some of them down.

All that imagination… the adventures… the excitement.

And who was the hero of these stories? You, of course!

Your energy, bravery and wisdom were at the center of everything you wrote. You were at the center of your universe!

And then you went to school…

Ouch.

At school they started to beat that spontaneity out of you.

They taught you how to write more objectively. Include only what you learned by reading the class materials, as directed by the curriculum. No more pirates, princesses, or monsters! No more imagination!

And for goodness sake, keep yourself out of everything you write. It’s not about you. Stick to the facts. Write within the same format as everyone else.

University? The writing gets even more formal and structured.

Business school? Even more.

Suddenly, you find you’re writing like a… hmm, this is weird… you’re writing like a computer, or an AI. Even before AIs were a thing.

It’s time to write like a human again.

Bring back the emotion and the energy!

I’m not suggesting you insert yourself into all your business writing. Unless you’re pitching your own business, your own identity remains in the shadows.

But you can bring other people, and some real passion into your work.

You can tell stories that include employees, customers, or both.

You can write case studies.

You can write with empathy.

Acknowledge the emotions of your audience. Recognize their pain points, and their desires.

This is how you connect with your readers. This is how you truly engage with them. You can’t do that with “just the facts”, or by being dry and objective in your writing.

Emotional writing builds deeper connections, and trust. And greater trust translates to increased sales.

Writing with emotion is essential in a world of AI writing tools.

Tools like ChatGPT have “been to school”. They have been trained with massive data sets.

But they never had a childhood filled with mystery, imagination… and dragons.

They don’t know what it’s like to feel happy, or scared, or sad. They can’t laugh or cry.

So… if you want your work to stand out from the writing generated by these tools, you need to do what AI can’t do… You have to lead with emotion.

Rediscover your inner child, and bring some of that passion and emotion back into your writing.

This is how you set yourself apart from AI writing.

And this is how you inspire and delight your clients and your readers.

I’m not suggesting you ignore AI. Tools like ChatGPT can help us in many ways. But you should be adding a layer of emotion to any output generated by AI.

How can you do that? How can you combine AI with true Emotional Intelligence?

This is what I teach in my latest course for copywriters… Futureproof Copywriting.

The post Forget everything you learned about writing at school. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

Use personal, emotional experiences to separate your writing from anything created by AI.

There are various ways to insert emotion and emotional intelligence into your work.

But perhaps the easiest way to communicate emotion is to write from a perspective of personal experience.

On other words, weave yourself or someone else into the narrative.

Put human experience into the frame.

From description to storytelling.

I can give you a detailed description of how to change an inner tube if you get a puncture while out cycling.

But so can GPT-4.

This is why, to differentiate our own copy, we want to insert a real person into the narrative.

We’re no longer simply going to explain a process, describing each step along the way. Now we’re going to talk about how it feels as well.

It’s a pain when you get a puncture far from home. You hope, hope, hope that you have everything you need in your bike bag. Then you have to find somewhere safe and comfortable to set the bike up, remove the wheel, pry off the tire, without pinching your fingers… and so on.

And you hope it isn’t too cold, or it isn’t too hot.  Or it doesn’t start raining.

In other words, the experience is emotional. Not for an AI describing the process. But it is for you, a human being.

What we have done here is tell a story… a human story filled with emotion.

This makes our content a great deal more interesting to read. And it separates us from anything written by AI.

How to formalize this process with Emotional Intelligence.

The domains of Emotional Intelligence give us a structure or template to work with.

First, we need to understand our own emotions… Close our eyes and remember how we felt the last time we had to deal with a puncture.

Next, we remember how we managed to control our emotions at times like these. Stepping away for a moment, taking a breath. Reminding ourselves it isn’t the end of the world.

But hang on…. What if you’re writing about this experience, but have never actually had to change a bicycle tire, far from home, on your own?

This is where the third domain of Emotional Intelligence comes in… empathy.

This is the toughest part, but it also offers the greatest rewards.

As copywriters we’ll often be tasked with writing for products or services that we’re not familiar with.

Whenever possible, for myself, I’ll see if I CAN get first-hand experience.

If not, I need to research my audience, read their stories and reviews, and then see if I can put myself in their shoes.

This is the true test of your emotional intelligence.

Personal experience breathes life into your copy and content.

When you talk about first-hand experiences of a product or service, your writing instantly becomes more relatable.

If you have had those experiences yourself, so much the better. You’ll remember how it felt.

If not, you need to have sufficient empathy to be able to walk in the shoes of your audience. You need to imagine the experience to a depth that allows you to write truly engaging and relatable copy.

If you want to learn how to do this, check out my course on Futureproof Copywriting.

The post Use personal, emotional experiences to separate your writing from anything created by AI. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

Improve the authenticity of your writing by leaning into both AI and Emotional Intelligence.

Authenticity is about being genuine, real, and true to one’s character or brand.

At its heart, it’s about radical honesty and transparency.

When a person or a company manages to share their true selves, that authenticity goes a long way to connecting with their audience in a way that builds trust and a deep sense of rapport.

Authenticity is a profoundly human and emotional quality.

It’s hard to achieve at the best of times.

It’s impossible to achieve if you rely too much on AI for your marketing communications.

Think about it… authenticity relies on a deep self-knowledge. To be transparent and to reveal yourself, you have to know yourself at a level way beyond what ChatGPT can achieve.

Step one to achieving authenticity is through self knowledge.

This is where we encounter the core domains of Emotional Intelligence.

The first domain is Self Awareness. If you want to be authentic, you need to know yourself. And that includes being aware of the emotions you are feeling.

The second domain is Self Management. To be your authentic self, you’ll want to be able to manage and control your emotions when communicating with colleagues, prospects, and customers.

The third domain is Social Awareness. This is about being mindful of the emotions of the people around you, and showing empathy. To be authentic in your communications, you need understand the feelings of the people you are trying to connect with. You need to empathize with your audience.

The fourth and final domain is Relationship Management. This is where everything comes together, enabling a state of high Emotional Intelligence.

The point here is that if you want to communicate effectively as your authentic self, you need to start from a place of self-knowledge, and connect with your audience with empathy.

So where does AI come into our journey to authentic communication?

Empathy is core to any truly authentic communication. But you can’t feel empathy for people without knowing them… and understanding their fears and desires.

And you can’t know your audience intimately unless you first LISTEN to them.

This is where AI can help, simply because it is so good at crunching, analyzing and summarizing huge piles of data.

Here’s something that I now do on a regular basis…

When researching an audience, I will find a place where those people have been expressing their feelings about a particular product or service.

I might gather this data from product reviews on Amazon, or from customer service logs, or chat logs.

I then copy the text, paste it into GPT-4, and write this prompt:

“Conduct a sentiment analysis on this information.”

30 seconds later, I have a clear summary of the feels people have about that product or service. I have found this to be a wonderful way to “listen’ to my audience, before I start writing.

With the analysis in place, I’m now able to empathize with my audience, which allows me to write in a more open and authentic way.

There’s no need to choose either AI or Emotional Intelligence. Use both.

Many writers see a huge divide between AI and EI.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Identify their respective strengths, and combine them.

In this case, working with both AI and EI allows us to communicate in a more authentic way, addressing the emotions of our readers with empathy and understanding.

If you want more instruction on how to combine AI with EI, take my Futureproof Copywriting course. Details here…

The post Improve the authenticity of your writing by leaning into both AI and Emotional Intelligence. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

Add emotional intelligence to your writing by using sensory language.

As humans, we experience the world through our senses.

We see the sun rise, listen to music, taste chocolate cake, smell the spring air, and feel the comfort of a loved one’s touch.

AI tools can’t do that. They can sift through data and find examples of humans describing these senses, but they have no first-hand sensory experience.

That’s a huge constraint. A critical part of what it means to be human is tied to our senses. Our senses trigger our emotions.

So… if you want to add value to your work as a writer – beyond what AI tools like ChatGPT can achieve – use more sensory language in your writing.

Use sensory language to describe product and service experiences.

If you’re selling hiking boots, talk less about the boots and more about the experience of being out in the wild… the smell of moss in the air, the cry of an owl, the view across the valley, the rough feel of a tree’s bark under your fingers.

If you’re selling a vacation package, talk less about the amenities of the resort, and more about the feel of sand between your toes, the smell of candles burning in the late evening, the taste of exotic drinks, the sight of the sun setting, the sound of waves breaking… and so on.

Even when selling something as ordinary as a laptop computer, you can talk about listening to your favorite music through its amazing speakers, viewing holiday videos on its incredible display, appreciating the feather-light touch of the keyboard… and so on.

When you tie things back to our senses, you evoke the memories and the emotions of the reader.

And… depending on which study you read… between 75% and 95% of people’s purchase decisions are based on unconscious emotional connections.

One more thing… AI can’t run, jump, cycle or surf.

Beyond our five senses, there is another human experience that is denied tools like GPT-4.

We can move.

We run, and we jump. We dance, and we swim. We surf, and we snowboard.  We hug, and we kiss.

Pity poor GPT-4… confined, unmoving, trapped in servers on the cloud.

Take advantage of this. Introduce movement into your copy when you can. And, of course, movement is often tied to our senses. The feel of the water when you’re swimming or surfing. The salty taste of the seawater on your skin.

Finally, add a layer of emotion to the experience… laughing out loud with a grin on your face as you finally capture that perfect wave.

As always, find the right balance between AI and Emotional Intelligence.

I’m not suggesting you don’t use tools like GPT-4. You absolutely should. AI will make you smarter, faster and more productive.

But using AI alone is not enough. Rely on it too much and your writing will sound the same as the work of tens of thousands of other writers using the same tools.

In other words, you’ll fall into the “sameness trap”.

Don’t do that.

First, use AI to brainstorm, research and outline your work… then use emotional intelligence to give it the human touch.

When you add that emotional layer, you’ll not only be writing better copy, but you’ll also be differentiating yourself from what AI alone can achieve.

This is how you futureproof your writing career, however good AI becomes.

If you want in-depth instruction on how to do this, step by step, find out more about my Futureproof Copywriting course.

The post Add emotional intelligence to your writing by using sensory language. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

If you’re worried AI might threaten your future as a copywriter, it’s time to get futureproofed.

Who’s opinion should you listen to?

Always a tough question. Right now there are plenty of conflicting views when it comes to the future impact of AI on the careers of writers and copywriters.

At one extreme, there are those who claim AI is just hype, a passing fad, and that it will never replace human writers.

At the other extreme, some copywriters are worried their jobs will be completely obliterated by AI within the next few years.

The truth, as it almost always the case, lies somewhere in between.

And it isn’t just writers who are feeling uncertain right now. Client companies are going through the same discussions and struggles internally. Should they welcome AI or fear it? Should they let some writers go, or not?

In my mind, there’s no question that AI will drive some huge changes for us all.

In the words of Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn:

“The future is stranger and sooner than you think.”

He said this during a Commencement Speech he gave at Bologna Business School. The topic of his talk? AI.

But he didn’t say it against a backdrop of doom and gloom. While aware of the harm that can come with AI, his focus was on how we can harness this technology for the betterment of us all.

What steps should you take to protect your own future?

Writers, copywriters, artists, and photographers find themselves at the forefront of this debate.

ChatGPT is all about writing, and tools like Midjourney are disrupting the lives of artists everywhere.

I can’t speak for artists, but for writers I can see a way forward.

AI tools are extraordinarily powerful. I use GPT-4 almost every day for brainstorming, research and project outlines. Even for first drafts, sometimes.

I don’t shy away from AI. I’m trying to embrace it, and use it to my advantage.

At the same time, I’m not blind to the fact that as the technology improves, it has the potential to mess with my own career and income.

So…  I also focus on the one area where AI is weak… emotion.

Tools like ChatGPT can read about humans feeling emotions, but they can’t feel them first-hand.

This is a huge differentiating factor. It’s the one area where humans are super-strong, and AI is incredibly weak.

Futureproof your career as a writer by weaving Emotional Intelligence into your copy.

Step one is simply to infuse your writing with more emotion. Copywriters have been doing this for decades. We know that our prospects repond well to emotion.

Step two is to formalize that process by applying the principles of Emotional Intelligence to your copy.

When you take that second step, you are creating copy that is beyond what AI can achieve. You’re differentiating yourself. You’re separating yourself from the crowd. And you’re giving your clients and prospects a solid reason to choose you over AI.

This is the thrust and promise of my new course, Futureproof Copywriting.

It will give you the skills to protect and grow your income for years to come.

You can find out more about the Futureproof Copywriting course here…

The post If you’re worried AI might threaten your future as a copywriter, it’s time to get futureproofed. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

How stories add emotional appeal to your AI-assisted copy and content.

I use GPT-4 every day. I use it to brainstorm ideas, research topics, come up with content suggestions, and to outline longer-form content.

Once I’m done researching and outlining with GPT-4, I open up Nick-4 and look for ways to add Emotional Intelligence to whatever I’m writing. (Yup, Nick-4 is me.)

In other words, I’ll never just start writing based on the output of GPT-4 alone.

AI tools are great for improving our productivity, but they’re not good at genuine empathy, cultural sensitivity, or nuanced emotions.

They’re not human.

One of the best ways to add the human touch is to tell a story or two.

Here are just three of many types of story you can add to your copy and content.

Which ones you choose will depend on the business you’re writing for, and their audience.

Personal anecdotes

If you’re a freelancer or a small business founder, you can use your own stories to add authenticity to your messaging.

It could be an origin story, talking about how you came to launch the business, and the struggles you went through during the early years.

Or it could be about how you overcame difficulties and challenges as your business grew.

This is the Hero’s Journey story format. You have a goal, and struggle to achieve it. Then help arrives in an unexpected form. (Hello Yoda!) In your case that help may be one of the products or services you’re selling.

In the end, you prevail.

This kind of story is deeply personal, very engaging, and way beyond the capabilities of an AI to create.

User-generated stories

This is when you invite your audience to submit their own stories. You’ll want these stories to be about their experiences with your products or services.

A classic example of this is when a customer of Tilley wrote to the company and shared the story of how he was on safari when an elephant ate his Tilley Hat. Time passed, and the hat came out the other end of the elephant. After some serious washing, it turns out the hat was as good as new.

Wow! A powerful product story!

User-generated stories add tremendous credibility to a business. They prove that the company or publisher is actively listening and sharing. And active listening is a cornerstone of Emotional Intelligence.

Again, this is all beyond the capabilities of tools like ChatGPT.

Hypothetical scenarios

These are stories that evoke the imagination of your audience, in support of your products or services.

Let’s say – sticking with hats – I have a company selling hats with built-in mosquito nets. The net part can fold away when not needed, but drop down and tuck into your clothing when you encounter mosquitos.

As a writer I can now create a hypothetical scenario or story.

“Imagine you’re hiking through the woods, forgot to put on any mosquito repellent, when you suddenly encounter a huge swarm of mosquitos. Yikes!”

By evoking the reader’s imagination, I’m getting them to create their own stories, in their own minds.

The more realistic and credible the what-if scenarios you create, the more powerful they’ll be. And, once again, this is beyond what AI can reasonably achieve.

Wrapping up…

Stories are a great way to tap into people’s emotions. And by applying a high level of emotional intelligence, you’ll create stories that truly engage your readers and convert more of them into customers.

The future belongs to writers and copywriters who combine AI and Emotional Intelligence. And using stories is a powerful way to achieve this combination.

This is the topic and promise of my new course, Futureproof Copywriting. Check it out, and you’ll see what I mean.

The post How stories add emotional appeal to your AI-assisted copy and content. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

3 Ways empathy will help futureproof your copywriting career.

The third domain of Emotional Intelligence is Social Awareness.

And a big part of Social Awareness is feeling empathy for others.

We feel empathy when we open our ears and our hearts, and walk in the shoes of other people. We feel what they feel.

This is easier said than done.

When it comes to truly understanding the feelings of someone close to us, or just like us, we can score reasonably well. On a good day!

But when faced with feeling empathy for the feelings or beliefs of people who are not like us, or maybe even disagree with us, it’s a whole lot harder.

But it’s worth the effort.

However hard it might be, working on your ability to feel empathy for others will reward you big time in your career as a writer.

Here are three ways empathy will help you…

Use empathy to differentiate your writing from AI-generated outputs.

There are many things that ChatGPT and other AI writing tools can do really well.

But empathy isn’t one of them.

An AI can’t experience emotion first-hand. It just learns about it from data. It reads love poems and tags them as being an expression of love. But it can’t feel love, or be in love.

Empathy is a human attribute.

As a result, when we infuse our copy and content with empathy, we immediately separate our writing from anything that can be done by AI.

This is allows us, as human writers, to differentiate ourselves, and our work.

In the future, both near and far, this unique difference will set us apart from the machines, and enable us to present ourselves as being a lot more valuable.

Use empathy to improve your copy by almost every metric.

Writing with empathy isn’t just about being warm and cuddly.

It’s about dramatically improving the performance of your copy and content.

Ask any experienced copywriter and she’ll tell you that emotion is the principal driver of sales copy.  The facts are fine, but its emotion that makes people reach for their credit cards.

And writing with a high level of emotional intelligence achieves more than just closing more sales in the short term. It also connects more deeply with readers, builds trust, and secures long-term relationships with customers who become fans and advocates.

Put simply, being an emotional intelligent writer makes you a much better writer. And your clients will notice.

More specifically, your clients will notice that your work outperforms the output from tools like ChatGPT.

Use empathy to deepen relationships with your clients and network.

A valuable side-benefit of increasing your emotional intelligence is that it helps you build much deeper and long-lasting relationships with your clients.

When you empathize with your clients, and see things through their eyes, you’ll become a favored supplier.

When you feel no empathy, miss the signals, and think a client is just being a pain when they ask for some revisions, maybe you should pause.

If you listen and watch for the right clues, you might realize that your contact person is being given a hard time by her own boss. She’s not being a pain, she’s simply feeling frustrated by her own situation.

Show here a little empathy and you’ll make a friend for life. When other writers are let go, passed over, or replaced by AI, she’ll always come back to you… because you showed empathy at a time that really mattered.

It’s the same when building your professional network through platforms like LinkedIn. Listen carefully, show empathy and be there for people. The result will be a much larger and more robust network.

Summing up…

The secret here isn’t to ignore tools like ChatGPT. In fact, you ignore them at your peril.

What you want to do is integrate the productivity advantages of using AI with the deep engagement advantages of being more empathetic.

Increased empathy will help you in how you write, and in how you interact with your clients, prospects, and other people in your network.

The future belongs to writer and copywriters who combine AI and Emotional Intelligence.

This is the topic and promise of my new course, Futureproof Copywriting.

The post 3 Ways empathy will help futureproof your copywriting career. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

Writers fall into the Sameness Trap when they rely too much on AI and lists of “Killer Prompts”.

Client companies are already seeing it… and they don’t like it.

Freelance and in-house writers are relying too heavily on AI tools like ChatGPT to write their sales copy, content, and social media updates.

The result? When you use the same tool as every other writer, you begin to churn out writing that feels generic, flat… and the same as everything else out there.

And that’s the part companies don’t like.

AI combined with “prompt engineering” drags you even deeper into the sameness trap.

It’s not just about everyone using ChatGPT or GPT-4. And by the way… if you’re using some other brand name AI writing tool or service, chances are they’re using ChatGPT as their backend AI.

It’s also about how writers are seeking to optimize their use of these tools.

Go to Google and search for “gpt prompt engineering”.  You’ll find over 12,000,000 results. That’s insane!

Every writer wants to get the most from GPT, so they look for the “top 20 prompts”, or “50 killer prompts” and so on.

The more people use these lists of prompts, the more they are adding another layer of “sameness” to their copy and content.

Same prompts for the same AI tools.

Neither companies nor freelancers can afford this sameness or lack of differentiation.

Nobody wants to sound the same as everyone else.

Companies have often invested many years and even millions of dollars in establishing a unique brand that differentiates them from their competitors.

They literally can’t afford to start publishing copy and content that sounds and feels “the same”.

Generic, robotic copy not only dilutes their brand, but also reduces customer engagement. When copy lacks a unique voice or appeal, it’s unlikely to be talked about and shared.

The same is true for freelancers. If your copy samples read like they were created by ChatGPT, why would anyone hire you?

This is why you should use Emotional Intelligence to add value to AI content.

The cure for the sameness trap is to add one more layer to the mix… Emotional Intelligence.

I’m all for using AI… I use it myself. But I always take one step further. I apply the principles of Emotional Intelligence.

Emotion increases engagement, and fosters a sense of trust.

Emotion improves recall, and helps build a sense of shared community.

And, as every experienced copywriter knows, appealing to a reader’s emotions is the most reliable way to close a sale.

Plus… when you add genuine emotion to any copy, you’re adding something unique… through voice, story or emotional touchpoints.

Your adding something different to that copy.

Bye bye sameness.

How does this work? How can you differentiate and empower your AI writing with Emotional Intelligence?

This is the topic and promise of my new course, Futureproof Copywriting.

It’s essential training for copywriters who want to use AI, but without falling into the sameness trap.

Find out more about the course here…

The post Writers fall into the Sameness Trap when they rely too much on AI and lists of “Killer Prompts”. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

5 Reasons why Emotionally Intelligent writing sells more.

AI is the big thing right now.

And while tools like ChatGPT are incredible in many ways, there’s one thing they’re really, really bad at.

Emotion.

Bots don’t do emotion.

They definitely don’t write with emotional intelligence.

For a start, they have no first-hand experience of emotions. Lines of code can’t fall in love, or laugh.

And they can’t feel empathy for others. Lines of code don’t care about people, and how they feel.

This is a problem for writers and marketers who rely too heavily on AI.

They end up with a ton of content which fails to connect with its readers at an emotional level.

Fortunately, we have a solution for that… Emotionally Intelligent writing.

Here are five ways in which emotionally intelligent writing raises the bar way above what AI alone can achieve.

#1 – Emotionally Intelligent writing makes people feel heard and understood.

This is the magic of empathy. When you recognize how other people feel, you’re able to write in a way that respects and mirrors those feelings. When the reader sees that… when she feels heard… that’s a powerful moment.

Her feelings are validated, and she’ll lean into whatever you’re going to say next.

In other words, writing with empathy wins you a much deeper level of engagement and attention.

#2 – Emotionally Intelligent writing fosters a sense of trust.

When people feel heard, and get the message that you really care about what they feel and what they want, their trust in you – and in what you say – deepens.

Building trust is essential to any marketing activity. You can have the most amazing promotion of all time… but if your reader doesn’t trust you, nothing happens. Those prospects don’t move on to become customers.

Once again… Emotional Intelligence comes to the rescue. Emotionally intelligent writing connects with readers at a deep level, and fosters and communicates a sense of authenticity and sincerity. It builds trust.

#3 – Emotionally Intelligent writing improves recall of your message.

Did you know that emotions play a large role in memory formation?

Promotions you just read and think about disappear from your memory within minutes, or seconds even.

But promotional messages that touch you emotionally are locked into memory for much, much longer. If you think about ads you remember from decades ago – maybe from childhood – they almost certainly delivered a powerful emotional punch.

Now think about the respective values of a promotion that is remembered for 10 seconds, compared with another that is remembered for 10 years.

EI writing delivers real value.

#4 – Emotionally Intelligent writing builds a sense of community.

When we connect with others emotionally, we feel a sense of belonging. We feel empathy for one another… we care for others.

This is why emotionally intelligent writing is so powerful when you’re trying to build community… through your website, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Discord and beyond.

And when people feel they are part of a community, they feel tighter bonds. They are more open to buy products and services that other community members talk about, and recommend.

#5 – Emotionally Intelligent writing is more persuasive.

Ask any experienced copywriter, and she’ll tell you the way to make a sale is through your audience’s hearts. Almost every purchase we make is driven by emotion.

At its most basic level, we buy something because it makes us feel good.

For decades copywriters have been using emotions to increase sales. They know it works.

Writing with emotional intelligence adds power to that truth. It deepens the emotional impact of your writing, and increases conversion rates even more.

Remember, AI writing alone can achieve NONE of this.

Tools like ChatGPT are now a reality in the lives of copywriters and content writers.

And that’s fine… just so long as we understand that relying exclusively on AI isn’t the answer.

AI has zero emotional intelligence.

That’s why the future lies with writers who combine the efficiencies and other benefits of AI with the emotional power of Emotional Intelligence.

To master this winning combination, you need to learn how to fuse AI with EI.

And that is the focus of my new course, Futureproof Copywriting

It’s essential training for all copy and content writers who want to thrive and grow in this new world of AI.

Find out more about the course here…

The post 5 Reasons why Emotionally Intelligent writing sells more. appeared first on Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing..

Why my own writing process now includes both ChatGPT and Emotional Intelligence.

Emotion is at the core of great copy. This has always been the case… before AI, before the Web, before computers.

Great copy touches its readers at an emotional level.

Why? Because as consumers we buy based on our feelings. We buy the car that makes us feel good. We buy the pair of shoes that makes us smile. We buy the video game that gives us pleasure.

Every purchase is triggered by emotion. Once we have decided we want something, we will often turn to our more rational selves to justify the purchase.

“That video game has great reviews, and all my friends are playing it.”

We’ll always find ways to justify our purchases, but the first impulse to buy something is purely emotional. That has always been the case.

But AI tools like ChatGPT don’t lead with emotion.

ChatGPT is an AI. It’s just code on a computer.

It has zero feelings. It has read about emotions, but has never felt them.

Its database tells it that Oreo Cookies taste good, but it has never tasted one.

It has read the script of Love Story, but it has never felt love.

As a result, when it writes copy or content, ChatGPT does a great job in pretty much every respect, except for one… there’s barely any emotion there.

Part of the absence of emotion comes out as a lack of empathy. An AI doesn’t care about the feelings of its readers.

But human copywriters do care. At least, the good ones do.

This is why you should never depend on an AI to write the final drafts of your copy or content.

Some copywriters are already making this mistake. They love the productivity benefits of using ChatGPT, and are pumping out copy and content at a prodigious rate.

Some companies are making a related mistake… they’re firing their human copywriters and replacing them with AI.

Well… that’s a problem. Because on the day you decide to have AI write your copy – all the way to the final draft – that’s the day your marketing messages cease to engage your audience emotionally.

And when you fail to engage emotionally, your conversion rates will fall.

The answer is to infuse AI with EI… Emotional Intelligence.

The key here is not to avoid using AI as a tool in your writing toolkit. I use it every day.

I use ChatGPT and GPT-4 to help me with research and audience analysis. I use it to outline articles, presentations, and reports. I even use it – sometimes – to write and rewrite early drafts.

But I NEVER use ChatGPT to write a final draft.

My writing process now begins with using AI, and then moves on to infusing that draft with emotion by applying the principles of EI… Emotional Intelligence.

What is Emotional Intelligence, and how can you use it to dramatically improve any copy written by AI?

Those questions and more are answered in my latest course for copywriters and content writers… Futureproof Copywriting.

My course shows you how to futureproof your career as a writer.

It teaches you how to add massive value to your brand as a writer, and make sure you can never be replaced by an AI… today or in the future.

Get ahead of the rise of AI… find out more about my course here.

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