Your 4 tips to use AI for content, based on my 1.5 yrs of ChatGPT experience

How not to make a generic mediocre sh*tshow of your AI-generated content

By now, we know AI and ChatGPT are nothing short of amazing and have revolutionized content creation. Yet, professionally, it’s still underused for high-end, top-notch quality marketing and content creation. We all are familiar with the ugly, mediocre, obviously AI-generated marketing content.

→ You can create authentic, standout content with AI while maintaining your unique voice and style.

Based on my 1.5 years of active experience playing and fooling around with ChatGPT and other AI tools, these are my two cents on using it to create authentic content in your brand's voice.

Resulting in a +10% traffic boost, heading to 30k+ unique visitors a year, gaining 1.200+ subscribers, and a big bump in engagement. All this while I speed up my production processes and free up headspace for creative and strategic thinking to share my insights and research with you.

And, not the least important, I know that reading my content is like hearing my voice.?My authenticity, personality, and point of view echo through every word.?Despite vastly using AI.

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First,

• Top causes of sh*tty AI output
• AI-powered versus AI-generated

Followed by 4 tips

1. Let AI define your brand voice
2. Use Custom Instructions
3. Don’t make a sh*tshow of your prompts
4. Create GPTs for proofreading

And the question you always ask

• Does Google rank AI content well??

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The final tip is not to take yourself or AI too seriously; just have fun and fall in love with the process, not the result. And please realize that you can’t break AI, so you can push it around and play with it to discover how ChatGPT works and can help you.

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The top causes of sh*tty AI output

You don't get the WOW output from AI because you skipped the strategic part, didn’t configure it right, and didn’t master prompting. These could be some reasons for not getting what you want.?

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Over-relying on ChatGPT for the thinking

ChatGPT is your wingman. It helps you write your content; it’s a tool, not a replacement.

You do the strategic and creative thinking. You are the one who provides the insights, asks the right questions, and pushes ChatGPT to help you.?

I always write the structure of my content by hand. Old school, pen and paper. I use 6 handwritten elements to shape my content: ?problem—solution—benefit structure, combined with ‘what to know,’ ‘why it matters,’ and ‘to do.’?

And because AI does so much hands-on work for you, it frees up your time to be truly strategic and creative.

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Not paying for ChatGPT

There is a huge difference between the free and paid versions of ChatGPT. I assume CoPilot is comparable to paid ChatGPT; however, I don’t have firsthand experience. So, for the sake of clarity, I’ll stick to ChatGPT here.

Why pay? Two reasons.

1. It’s faster, more accurate, and just, well, better
2. You can use Custom Instructions to personalize your output; this makes a world of difference

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When I first got the paid ChatGPT in October ’23, I wasn’t really convinced. Until I started using it for Custom Instructions, creating my own GPTs, and using and abusing ChatGPT for proofreading my content.?

Paying for ChatGPT is worth the €25 a month. Try it, and if you don't see the added value, you can cancel it monthly.?

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AI-powered versus AI-generated

Before we start, please check out all my content. It’s no secret I’m quite outspoken and use clear, bold, strong language. You can notice I’m not native English. And, I write for mobile screens with very short paragraphs, bullet lists, and many sub-headers.

And still, all of my copy is AI-powered. I purposefully say ‘powered’ and not ‘generated’, as that’s exactly what it is. I use AI to make my content better, not to make the content for me.

The difference between ‘powered’ and ‘generated’ is that I’m still in control in the first, and I drive the content. In the second, I’m lazy and let AI do all the work for me.

• AI-powered enables me to do strategic thinking based on research and insights. I don’t rely on AI for how my content adds value for my reader. Next to my hand-written structure, it’s me who adds some complementary visuals and does the copy design to enhance skimmability and readability on mobile. AI speeds up the process, helps me along the way, and checks the quality of my output. ?
• The AI-generated content is me prompting my way into a piece of content fully written by AI. All I do is prompt, at best, a final sanity check, and that’s it. That often results in mediocre recognizable AI-generated copy. It's long, difficult to read, full of expensive words, and a bit middle of the road without a personality and point of view.

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Now, let's dive into my tips to improve your AI content. This is based on my 1.5 years of hands-on experience, pitfalls, mistakes, cutting corners, and failing spectacularly.?

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Tip 1. Let AI define your brand voice

In short, collect examples of your writing, apply the ‘tone of voice’ prompt, add more examples to fine-tune, and make it even more authentically you.?

Lastly, you create a prompt that you can use by copy-pasting it as an add-on to every prompt you write.?

For example, this is my brand voice? 'The tone of voice in this copy is direct, authoritative, and slightly informal. It uses strong language and metaphors. The author is not afraid to be blunt and even a bit confrontational in their language to make their point clear. However, they balance this with a friendly and approachable tone, offering practical advice based on their own experiences. Overall, the tone is confident, knowledgeable, and passionate, with a sense of urgency to get the message across.’

The extended step-by-step guide →?How to use ChatGPT to create content: defining your brand voice

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Tip 2. Use Custom Instructions

This is the game changer I mentioned above. Custom Instructions equal baking in your brand voice and add another characteristic to personalize ChatGPT.

The 2 elements of Custom Instructions

• Enter ‘What would you like ChatGPT to know about you to provide better responses?’
• Tell ‘‘How would you like ChatGPT to respond?’

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I strongly recommend using this feature. It will 10x your output, add personality, and decrease the time you need to review and rewrite AI's output.?

I just can't emphasize enough how much of a game-changer Custom Instructions are. It's best you try and experience it yourself. Worst case, it's € 25 for a one-month paid ChatGPT subscription down the drain.?

It’s a bit too long and much to give an example of my configuration on this page. Please check the link below for all the details and specs.

→?Improve your ChatGPT output: a 2 step guide for 'Custom Instructions

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Tip 3. Don’t make a sh*tshow your prompts; master the art of prompting

The main reason why you’re not seeing results is the ‘sh*t in, sh*t out’ rule. If you can’t properly prompt, you will not get what you’re looking for.

Prompting and prompt engineering sounds impressive and complicated. In reality it’s like chatting with well, ChatGPT. It’s already in the name.

Based on research, following 60+ online courses and some trial and error, here are a few tips for?better prompting

• Long, detailed prompts. Ask ChatGPT, AI, exactly what you’re looking for as if you are giving 5-year-old instructions. Be clear. Be precise. My prompts usually are 3 to 5 lines, if not more. ?
• Prompt chaining. Weave your prompts together; it’s a chat. There’s no such thing as a one-prompt answer; always use follow-up prompts to get a better answer. ?
• Give feedback. If the answer is not what you’re looking for, tell that to ChatGPT. You can do that with a new prompt in the same chat, or just hit the ‘regenerate’ button.

Add more prompts for specific needs

Imagine you’re writing something specifically for mobile. Then, add that to your prompt.

It can be as simple as ‘please optimize for mobile reading, use short paragraphs, use sub-headers, use many break lines to create hierarchy, and use white spaces. Write in B1 intermediate English without jargon.’

Or add that you want the output in a bullet list, a top 10, or a table. The options are endless. ?

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Say ‘hi, please, and thank you’ to ChatGPT

My personal tip is to say ‘hi, please, and thank you’ while chatting with ChatGPT. It’s not that ChatGPT will do a better job, ?your input will be better as you’ll communicate with ChatGPT on an equal level, and therefore, the output will be better.

→?2 tips to improve your prompts instantly

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Tip 4. Create GPTs for proofreading and more?

Once you have the paid version of ChatGPT, you can build your own GPTs. GPT stands for ‘Generative Pre-trained Transformer.’ These are much like pre-set prompts with their own bespoke Custom Instructions.?

Although GPTs look really complicated and impressive, I built them in not even 5 minutes.

My two most used GPTs

• Proofreading my content on clarity and structure. I specifically ask for suggestions and not to rewrite my content. So I can cherry-pick what to apply and what not. I apply around 75% of the suggestions; AI isn't always right and can make mistakes as well.? ?
• Writing LinkedIn statements: bold, clear, focus on the first 90 characters, and provoke engagement. Usually, I need to regenerate 3 times to get the right wordings, which I combine manually into 1 LinkedIn caption. Since I use this, my engagement has improved vastly, as it prevents me from writing lame captions that describe what I share.?

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You can also create a GPT for email marketing copywriting or SEO research (credits). The options for GPTs are limited to your imagination.

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My tip from the ChatGPT-4o release

Review your GPTs regularly. With the developments within ChatGPT, things change.?

What works today, can be different tomorrow.

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Last tip: Have fun; you can’t break AI

This is my very last and maybe even most important tip. ‘Have fun’. Play and fool around with ChatGPT. Push the limits, ask the weird things, challenge the status quo.

Whatever you do, you can’t break AI. If you get stuck or don’t like what you get, close the chat and open a new one.

The worst that can happen is that ChatGPT remembers your quirky prompts; at best, that results in a better output for the next session.

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Does Google rank AI content well?

The lame answer is ‘it depends’ if the content is AI-powered or ?AI-generated. Let me explain by example.?

My content ranks very well in Google; about 80% of my traffic is Google, driven by about 5 to 10 top-notch pages. ?And all of my content is AI-powered. Google can't really see that my content is AI-written because I make a real effort to be authentic and personal, and I have a huge consistency in my brand voice in all my content.?

• So yes, AI content ranks well if done correctly. I do the strategic thinking, find the insights that solve your problem, and I wrap it up in a clean and clear structure for easy and light reading. AI helps me to write and proofread to improve the quality.? ?
• And no, if you use AI to generate your content fully, you're cutting corners but just prompting your way into a piece of content, Google will notice. And Google will dodge your content.?

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Research shows that human-written content outranks AI-generated content 94% of the time. By month 5, an AI article generated 52 visitors a month, while a human-written article generated 283. Please keep in mind that they compare fully automated, AI-generated content against human-written and maybe AI-powered content (like mine).?

Wrapping it up

You can use AI while you keep your personality and authenticity. All you need to do is configure it, learn to prompt and dare to challenge the status quo.

This is what you need to know and do

• Top causes of sh*tty AI output
• AI-powered versus AI-generated

1. Let AI define your brand voice
2. Use Custom Instructions
3. Don’t make a sh*tshow of your prompts
4. Create GPTs for proofreading

• Does Google rank AI content well? (answer: it depends how you use AI)

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And lastly, have fun. Practice makes perfect, and you can’t break it.

Fall in love with the process, not the result. Enjoy the ride.

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Need help?

If you need any help with all of the above—and I’m not biased at all—I’m thoroughly experienced, have ruffled many feathers, and have learned from my mistakes,?drop me an email. If I’m not the right person to help you, maybe I can recommend someone or an agency from my network.

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