A Guide for Improving your AI Workflows

Struggling to get results from GenAI? Follow my process for improving your productivity and your outputs

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When you started using AI like ChatGPT, did you assume you’d ask it to complete a task and have it spit out that stellar social media or blog post or write your TPS reports with stunning accuracy?

Did you quickly realize you didn’t get good results from a simple prompt?

Imagine if your team could focus solely on creative and strategic tasks, leaving the repetitive work to a reliable, efficient system.

The challenge, however, lies in striking the right balance between automation and human expertise. Over-reliance on automation can lead to a lack of personalized touch, while underutilization can result in inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Let me share my AI workflows designed for human-in-the-loop integration. My approach blends AI automation with human expertise, ensuring that mundane tasks are handled efficiently while maintaining the quality and creativity that only human insight can provide.

This fusion of AI and human oversight elevates productivity and enhances the quality of your output.

Example AI Workflows

Here are a couple of workflows I use to maximize my results and give you an idea of what I am talking about.

My Content Creation Workflow

When I write a piece of content like this newsletter, I use a combination of ChatGPT, Perplexity , Anthropic Claude, and Grammarly to get the desired result. While that sounds like a lot, you can move quickly once you have the process and the product is much better.

First, I start with Perplexity.AI, especially if I tackle a topic requiring more research. I ask for an outline of a newsletter on a given topic. I use Perplexity because it’s a great search engine. I think it's better than Google because it does some inference and searches. In addition, it doesn’t make money from the ads to affect rankings; I believe the search results are better.

Then, I take that outline into ChatGPT; I usually go back and forth with chain-of-thought prompting to get the outline worked out and all the inputs I want in the newsletter.

Then, after the outline is good, I use this prompt:

Develop this outline into a newsletter in the voice of https://theaienterprise.io. Write for a business audience who is adopting AI in their enterprise. Don't use hyperbole or jargon. Make the writing approachable and instructive.         

The results vary, so I do one of the following steps after tweaking. If the output isn’t excellent, and the writing is sloppy, I will cut and paste the output into Claude, which is a better copyeditor than ChatGPT, IMHO.

Then, I paste the content into my newsletter editor to do final edits with Grammarly as a plugin for my Chrome browser. If the output from ChatGPT was good enough, I skipped Claude, went straight to my editor, and started the final edits with Grammarly.

Finally, I spent some time reading and tweaking the copy the old-fashioned way to generate the newsletter.

Most of the time, this whole process takes less than 20 minutes; on a bad day, it takes 30 minutes.

Tweaking Images from DALL-E with Adobe Photoshop

Did you look closely at the image at the top of this newsletter? There’s no text in the picture. However, that’s not how it came to me from DALL-E. I asked DALL-E to create the image with this prompt:

Create a wide image of an AI workflow where you show human in the loop automation make it conceptual for businesses to understand        

It created the image below even after I revised the prompt to ask it to remove the text.

Notice the misspellings and odd labeling?

I could keep going down the path of tweaking prompts, but that’s not an efficient workflow. DALL-E has difficulty identifying text, and it’s not always easy to guide it.

So, I have a workflow.

Once the aesthetics of the DALL-E image are good enough, I open the image in Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop’s GenAI Firefly models are very good at removing text. So I use the selection box and the generative fill dialogue to remove the text, and in a few seconds, I have the image that meets my needs.

Ideally, we’ll have a better one-shot solution someday, but this workflow adds about 1 minute to the image's production, giving me the exact result I want.

Implementing AI Workflows

Here’s an overview of how to generically think about implementing AI workflows in any business, not just mine.

• Identify Automation Opportunities: Assess your business processes to pinpoint areas where repetitive tasks dominate. This could range from data entry to scheduling, allowing AI to take over these functions.
• Implement Human-in-the-Loop AI: Integrate AI tools that offer the option for human intervention. This ensures that while AI handles the bulk of the work, your team can step in for tasks requiring human judgment and creativity.
• Customize AI Tools to Your Needs: No one-size-fits-all in AI implementation. Customize AI solutions to meet your business requirements, ensuring maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
• Regular Monitoring and Feedback: Continuously monitor the performance of AI systems and seek feedback from your team. This ensures the system evolves and adapts to your changing business needs.
• Ongoing Training and Support: Educate your team about the new AI tools. Provide training and support to help them understand how to best interact with and complement these systems.

In conclusion, integrating AI workflows in your business can significantly improve productivity and quality of output. Automating tedious and repetitive tasks can free up your team's time to focus on creative and strategic work.

However, it's crucial to strike the right balance between automation and human expertise to ensure personalized touch and maintain the quality of work. AI can be a valuable asset to your business with the right approach and tools. So, take the first step in identifying automation opportunities, integrating human-in-the-loop AI, and customizing AI tools to your needs.

Then, keep iterating until you consistently get the results you want.

Prompt of the Week: A Prompt and a Workflow for Faster, Better Content

I adopted this combination of workflow and prompts from Luke Matthews (subscribe to his newsletter for many great tips ), who I think is an excellent copywriter.

I use this when I want to start with a previous blog post and repurpose it; however, if there’s a trend you want to comment it works by finding a news article or blog post and then using that with your input.

I often use this when writing for a client and my content. I usually mention myself as the [writer] in the prompt below.

For example, you might want to comment with your perspective if you are a security company with a new bug or vulnerability. The bug and vulnerability aren’t the differentiators; it’s your insight. That’s why I advocate this method to get down to the points you want to make and offload the who, what, where, and when. You can tackle the why.

Start the workflow:

• Go to ChatGPT
• Open a Second Tab.
• Find an article on your site or whatever is your inspiration (or competitors)
• Use the following the following prompt (Note: Luke uses Sahil Bloom for inspiration, but you could use anyone whose style you admire):

You are an expert ghostwriter who specializes in LinkedIn and Twitter marketing, and you have years and years of experience on those platforms. 

Please analyze the following article from: [???????????? ?????????????????????? ??????? ?????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????????? ?????? ????????????????] I want you to give me a new post based on the article I share with you. Please make the new post with the thought leadership of Sahil Bloom and the formatting and copywriting skills of a LinkedIn ghostwriter [???????????? ???????????? ???????] with a slight influence from [???????????? ???????????? ???????].

I want you to make the sentences short and concise and also switch up the formatting so it's enjoyable to read. Please take your time and think about what you write carefully. 

Be sure to use no hashtags, and make sure the posts follow this opening format: 

A bold statement that is no more than 8 words in sentence one.

A sentence that starts with the word "but" and then a counterpoint to sentence one.

A short statement beginning with "How to" and then a number included in sentence 3. 

Here is the article to analyze: [???????????? ?????????????? ???????]        

Continue the process below:

• Copy the post from ChatGPT
• Paste the post into an editing tool
• Fact-check the post using Perplexity
• Edit the post for visually pleasing formatting
• Focus on editing the hook and the call to action
• Then, run your Grammarly or other spell and grammar check to nail the final draft.