Almost overnight it seems, AI tools exploded into the public consciousness and are is revolutionizing the way we work, the way we interact with the world around us, and in particular, the way we create.

While all this technology has some marketers fearing for their jobs, platforms such as Chat GPT can be a valuable addition to content creators’ toolkit, especially in the travel and tourism industry, where projects have such a fast turnaround time and it is essential to produce interesting, engaging content quicker than ever before.

Generative AI platforms are no different to any other software, in that you will get much more out of it if you learn how to use it, and you’ll improve with practice. Read on to discover how to use ChatGPT and similar tools to generate content to promote your destination and how to avoid some of the pitfalls. 

What kind of content can I use AI to create?  

More or less anything. AI is a great resource for creating promotional content, ad copy, blog articles, social media posts and more.

Generating original content - Whatever kind of content you are currently producing for your DMO, ChatGPT can help you with. And because it’s trained on large language models, it understands what kind of content people respond to, and what they expect.

As well as generating content, ChatGPT can be put to use in many different ways to make your life easier! Try some of these ideas:

Repurposing exisiting content - whether you authored a piece yourself, or used AI, your content is valuable and can (and should) be reused. It can be reformatted for social media, and you can request several different versions to keep those pesky algorithms happy. You can take an older piece, and ask ChatGPT to rewrite it to include updated material. You can take promotional content and restructure it for a press-release. You can change any part of the original prompt to repurpose the content for a different situation or audience. 

Slogans and headlines - Stuck for inspiration? ChatGPT is your friend! You can ask it to generate a slogan, and refine and reiterate as many times as you like, without anyone losing their temper! Similarly, you can generate catchy titles and headlines, and suit it to your own style, for example, ask for alliterative responses, or for rhyming couplets. You can focus on a specific theme or incorporate an exisiting association. 

Research- ChatGPT is a great resource for asking questions, especially for quick-reference, but bear in mind, it is not a search engine, so it doesn’t cite specific sources. However it can let you know how people are thinking and behaving and provide you with ideas for events or activities. 

Generating Questions - ChatGPT isn’t just about answers. It is also great for generating questions. So when you’re not sure what to ask, ask Chat GPT 

Writing accurate prompts

The first rule for using AI is to include as much information as possible in your prompt. A computer can only respond to the input it is given, so if you miss out some details, the output will reflect it accordingly.

Try to consider the following questions before typing your prompt:

1. How long do you want the response to be? Relative terms such as long and short can complicate things, so try to be specific. Use a word-count or number of paragraphs or pages.
2. What format do you need? You can specify if you want a bullet list or a step-by-step guide etc. 
3. Who is the intended audience? Again, be as specific as possible and include details such as age, location, level of education.
4. What tone do you want the response to have? Is it meant to be educational and serious, or fun and lighthearted? 
5. Is there a specific focus, angle or benefit you would like to portray?

Let’s say  I want to add a short text to a website promoting Kansas City Zoo. The prompt I type into Chat GPT is “Write a short blurb to promote Kansas City Zoo”. The response is over 300 words long and somewhat generic, not at all suitable for an engaging website. 

So my next step is to refine it to make it less generic and more engaging. I may choose to focus the prompt on specific attractions, or define the style and tone I want to capture. For example:

REFINED PROMPT #1: “write a short blurb to promote Kansas City Zoo to families using storytelling”. This generated an enchanting response, but at almost 400 words, it is far too long for most promotional material.

So for the next iteration I asked ChatGPT to reduce the response, first to 150 words, which would be fine for web copy, and then to 50 words, suitable for a social media post or for print copy.

REFINED PROMPT #2 and #3:

The final prompt includes all the relevant information (length, format, intended audience, tone and focus) in a concise form, so that the AI application can generate the response with content and format that is useful for my needs.

Now you have a great piece of content, a further prompt can help you repurpose it for a different audience or angle, for example: 

Iterate 

As you can see, the best way to get useful responses from AI engines is by trial and error. You may have included all the right information in your initial prompt, but the response may not be what you were hoping for. There are several ways to improve the quality of the response:

• Ensure that you have written your prompt clearly and concisely, using correct spelling and grammar. 
• Ask the engine to provide a different response, or even several different versions. One of these may be just right - problem solved!
• OR you can create a further prompt, telling the engine which versions you like best and asking it to regenerate the response using a combination of those versions.
• If the response is still not useful, try changing the original prompt, or try enhancing it with more information. You can add background information, or an example or explanation, which will aid the engine in understanding what it is you are looking for.

Dos and Don'ts

ChatGPT isn’t without its issues, and there are several things to bear in mind:

• DO fact-check - the login page itself includes the warning “May occasionally generate incorrect information”. Don’t make the same mistake as the lawyer who used ChatGPT to write his briefs. He was caught out when the engine invented cases that didn’t exist. ChatGPT is a generative AI engine, not a reference resource. Sometimes it will generate things right out of thin air. 
• DON’T post without reading through for accuracy and readability.
• DO be patient. Try different prompts and iterations to get the tone, content and length right. The more you do it the better you’ll get. 
• DON’T ask for content which depends on recent information. Because the model relies on large datasets it isn’t so reliable on current events and trends. Anything before 2021 was not necessarily part of the training data. 

The Final Iteration

For writers and other creatives, AI is a tool to improve our work. It can’t (yet) replace human creativity. You can take what chatGPT has crafted and edit, pick and choose, move sections around, and combine different versions until you have the content you need.

While AI wins when it comes to breadth of knowledge you are the expert at depth. Chances are you know the nuances of your own destination better than any large language model.

The final iteration should be you.