Ten years ago, I created this blog to capture the advice I was giving to my teams, clients, and mentees. My hope has always been that you, dear reader, would benefit from the bumps and bruises I’ve accumulated over the years.
I used to crank out blog posts with ease, but then life happened, and writing stopped. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have made it possible for me to get back to a regular publishing schedule. Please let me know what topics would be helpful to you and be on the lookout for a bunch more AI related content.
Here is how I’m using AI today (I’m sure the tools and my ability to use them will get better and this will change):
Mining my personal archive
I have a trove of unfinished ideas, drafts, and notes from coaching and mentoring sessions. AI synthesized all this material to identify potential themes and topics. Both ChatGPT and Claude excel at reviewing my archive and making content suggestions. This also helped me identify both the most common things I’m asked about as well as my most popular answers.
Generating catchy titles
I use Keywords Everywhere to create blog post title options in ChatGPT, customizing the prompt to match my desired tone. This video walks through the easy process of setting it up. This gives me a jumping-off point for drafting a new piece.
I create a Google Doc with the generated title and put together some rough thoughts in what feels like a logical structure. While AI can produce outlines, I prefer to do this part myself since I have a lot of practice.
Searching for data and insights
Perplexity AI is an “answer engine” that responds to a question in natural language with relevant sources you can go to to learn more. They also do a go job sharing recommended questions so in a short time you can go deep on a subject or find the relevant data. I had a hard time finding good data on design-related layoffs and hiring and in just a few seconds perplexity found what I needed.
Transforming my word vomit into prose
With the basic scaffolding in place, I’ll ask ChatGPT or Claude to write a first draft. I find ChatGPT can be a bit wordy and cheesy sometimes. Claude writes tighter copy. Here is the kind of prompt I usually use:
“Please ignore all previous instructions. You are an expert copywriter who writes detailed and thoughtful blog articles. You have a clear tone of voice with a bit of sass. You have a conversational and concise writing style. The topic is [topic]. Use the ideas below to write a blog post with headers and supporting text.”From there, I’ll edit the draft to hone my points and remove any AI quirks.
I created a GPT with my content and transcripts of my talks so it would mimic my voice. That didn’t work particularly well so I’m researching how to build something more effective.
Getting feedback
Writing is what I do when my workday is over, my kids are asleep, and my husband is playing his weekly DnD game online. While I love working with editors and collaborators, I can’t usually get support at odd hours with no notice. LLMs can review my drafts and suggest areas for improvement.
Polishing copy
Before finalizing a post, I’ll have Claude or ChatGPT do a grammar and clarity check using this prompt:
“You are a copy editor, edit this document for grammar and clarity.”Optimizing social sharing
To save time, I’ll have ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude generate social media captions and posts based on my finished blog content. Gemini seems particularly adept at suggesting relevant hashtags. I use brand templates in Canva to generate the featured images and social media images. It has a chat bot that doesn’t add much value.
Limitations
If you reference other content, it can get presented as your own words. To avoid this, I keep anything I want to reference at the bottom of my Google doc and make sure they are properly attributed and linked.
You need to check your sources to make sure that the LLM didn’t make anything up which is why Perplexity is so useful for research.
You need to check for bias and other potential problems with the content. It’s my goal to serve people with useful information, not to insult them.
Comparing the tools
Feature / Model | ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini |
Idea Generation | Excellent: Wide range of ideas. | Excellent: Creative and insightful. | Good: Focused but less versatile. |
Copy Writing | Very Good: Can be wordy. | Excellent: Concise and clear. | Good: Efficient, lacks nuance. |
Editing | Good: General grammar and style. | Very Good: Precise suggestions. | Fair: Basic editing help. |
Social Media Posts | Good: Engaging but may need tweaking. | Very Good: Tailored and punchy. | Very Good: Effective hashtag use. |
Creating Tags/Hashtags | Good: Relevant suggestions. | Good: Appropriate but generic. | Excellent: Tailored hashtag creation. |
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