Why article summaries matter
There’s a wide range of reasons we can outline here, but let’s focus on the core 3:
- Quick relevance check: Summaries allow your audience to quickly decide whether or not your content is relevant to their needs, saving them time and effort.
- Great for SEO: Whether your blog has a dedicated summary section, or you generate SEO-optimized meta descriptions at scale, a wide range of the types of content summaries can be great if you’re looking to rank on search engines!
- Social media marketing: Summaries can provide a great starting point for social media marketer looking to craft engaging and informative posts at scale. Think of it this way: If you’re publishing at a high frequency, it’s unrealistic to ask your social media manager to read every single post. Instead, provide them with a detailed summary of each post to help them scale with the path of least resistance.
A step-by-step process on how to summarize articles with AI
Step 1: Prompt the AI to summarize your article.
Use a clear and concise prompt like “Summarize the following article in 2-3 sentences” or “Provide a brief summary of this article.” Make sure to include the article’s text or a link to the article for the AI to analyze.
Step 2: Review the generated content
After you’ve submitted your prompt, it’s important that you read through the AI-generated summary to ensure that it accurately represents the main points of your article. It’s also important to check whether the content generated fits your brand voice, style guidelines, and so on. If necessary, make minor edits to the copy or modify your original prompt.
Remember, generative AI is meant to help you be more efficient. It’s not meant to do your job in its entirety.
Step 3: Publish!
Once you’re satisfied with the summary, add it to your CMS, send it to your social media manager, or set it live wherever you intended it to be! It’s as simple as that.
👉 Create a free Copy.ai account and start summarizing your articles in seconds!
AI Prompts for summarizing articles
Here’s what that looks like when using Copy.ai:
✍️ PROMPT: Summarize this article: https://www.copy.ai/blog/generative-ai-best-practices-for-seo
Now, let’s say we want something a little shorter than that. We can refine our prompt and add in some more parameters.
✍️ PROMPT: Summarize this article in one sentence: https://www.copy.ai/blog/generative-ai-best-practices-for-seo
Now, let’s say we want to have a little bit of fun with it. 😏
✍️ PROMPT: Summarize this article in the style of Ted Lasso: https://www.copy.ai/blog/generative-ai-best-practices-for-seo
… And one more for good measure (on the odd chance you’re the only non-Ted Lasso fan on the planet!)
✍️ PROMPT: Summarize this article in the style of a news anchor delivering breaking news: https://www.copy.ai/blog/generative-ai-best-practices-for-seo
When it comes to generative AI, there’s so much room to play around with to get the most succinct—or most engaging—summary.
Prompt writing best practices
Want even better output? Here’s some general advice to follow when writing prompts:
- Use positive language by avoiding negative commands. Instead of saying “Don’t speak in a formal tone”, you can say “Use a casual tone.”
- Be descriptive. Summaries can vary in length, depending on what you’re using them for. While the AI won’t be able to spit out the exact word count you’re looking for, it can get pretty darn close! If you want to stop at 100 words, try adding direction like “Up to 100 words.”
- Trial and error. When prompting generative AI tools, it’s important to understand that sometimes it’s all about trial and error. Changing up the language you use can go a long way!
Want to be a prompt-writing expert? Watch our prompt writing crash course for beginners! 👇