You know you need content on your website — service descriptions, blog posts, FAQs. You also know you don't have time to write it, and hiring a copywriter is expensive. AI writing tools can genuinely help here, but only if you use them correctly. Here's how to do it without ending up with content that sounds like it was written by a corporate robot.
Why AI-Written Content Works for Professional Services
AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and others are trained on enormous amounts of text. They're remarkably good at producing clear, grammatically correct prose. For professional services websites, this is useful because:
- You know your subject inside out — you just need help translating your expertise into plain language your clients can understand.
- The structure is formulaic — service pages, FAQs, and about pages follow predictable patterns that AI handles well.
- Volume is manageable — you might need 10-20 pages of content for a complete site, which AI can help draft in an afternoon.
The key insight: AI is a first-draft machine. It gets you 80% of the way there in 10% of the time. Your job is to review, correct, and add the specific details only you know.
How to Describe What You Do So AI Gets It Right
The quality of what AI produces is almost entirely determined by the quality of what you tell it. Garbage in, garbage out. Here's what to include when you give AI a writing task:
Tell it who you are
"I'm a family law attorney in Denver, Colorado. I've been practicing for 12 years. I focus on divorce, custody, and property division. My clients are mostly professionals and business owners going through divorce."
Tell it who your clients are
"My clients are smart, stressed, and not lawyers. They're worried about protecting their assets and staying close to their kids. They don't want legal jargon — they want to understand what's happening and what their options are."
Tell it what you want
"Write a service page for my divorce representation service. It should be about 300 words. Use plain English. Don't use legal terms without explaining them. End with a call to action to schedule a consultation."
The more specific you are, the better the output. If you just say "write a page about my law practice," you'll get generic fluff that could describe any firm in the country.
The Review-and-Edit Workflow
Here's the process that actually works in practice:
- Generate the draft: Give AI your instructions and let it write a complete first draft. Don't stop it halfway through to correct things — get the whole draft first.
- Read it aloud: This is the fastest way to catch anything that sounds wrong. If you'd never say it out loud to a client, rewrite it.
- Check for accuracy: AI doesn't know the specific laws in your state, your fee structure, your actual process. Add your specific details and correct anything that's wrong or misleading.
- Add your voice: Swap out corporate-sounding phrases for how you actually talk. If you always tell clients "let's figure out your options together," put that in.
- Cut what doesn't add value: AI tends to over-explain and use filler sentences. Cut anything that doesn't help a potential client decide to contact you.
Common Mistakes That Make AI Content Sound Terrible
Letting AI use jargon
AI will use professional jargon if you don't explicitly tell it not to. "Leverage our comprehensive suite of financial solutions" sounds like no real person, ever. Tell it to write in plain English and review specifically for jargon.
Not checking for accuracy
AI will confidently write things that are wrong. It might mention a process that works differently in your state, or describe a service you don't actually offer. Read every word with your professional knowledge — you catch these errors, AI doesn't.
Using the output verbatim
If you publish exactly what AI wrote without editing, it sounds like exactly what AI wrote. Your clients can tell. Add at least one specific example, one detail only you would know, and one sentence that sounds like your voice.
Making every page sound the same
If you generate all your pages in one session with similar prompts, they'll all sound identical. Vary your instructions, and edit each page to give it a slightly different angle.
How SmashWebs Handles This Automatically
SmashWebs uses AI to generate your website content as part of setup. Instead of you writing prompts and editing drafts, you answer plain English questions about your practice — what you do, who you help, what makes you different — and the AI uses those answers to write content that sounds like you.
The content goes through the same review process described above, but the heavy lifting of the initial draft happens automatically. You review, suggest changes in plain English, and the site updates. You never have to think about prompts or editing raw AI output.
Quick Tips
- Always tell AI your specific location — it makes content much more relevant locally.
- Ask AI to "avoid corporate buzzwords and write as if explaining to a smart friend."
- If the first draft is off, don't start over — ask AI to revise specifically: "Make this less formal" or "Add a sentence about the consultation process."
- Use AI for the boring pages (privacy policy, terms of service) and save your energy for the pages that convert clients (homepage, services, about).
- Read competitor websites before generating content — you want to sound better than them, not similar to them.
AI writing tools aren't going to replace your expertise or judgment. But they can do the tedious work of turning your expertise into polished copy — if you give them good instructions and take the time to review the result.