Many will disagree, but I say yes: it’s entirely possible to create high-quality, engaging blog posts using Large Language Models (LLMs) without sacrificing your voice or compromising quality. But there are rules to follow.

The method I describe below is just to get you fast-tracked to creating your own content quickly. This way isn’t perfect, nor is it comprehensive, but it gets you up and running quickly.

1. First, some ground rules

In the spirit of responsible use of AI, you do need to follow some basic rules of AI-powered blogging:

• Write for humans. This is the original, golden rule for good reason: you are crafting content in exchange for some kind of meaningful transaction or connection with real people.
• Automate no more than 80%. Spend the extra 20% adding your own touches during the prompting and editing phases. I promise these minor efforts will increase your content’s value and originality.
• Don’t get lazy. When you’re prompting and editing and reviewing output, be as specific and detailed and possible as to what you want for your audience. You can even create style guides and other frameworks to make your content on-brand.

2. Draft your post in Perplexity

Now for the fun part. Perplexity.ai is a super powerful magic wand-like tool that searches like Google in real time and writes like ChatGPT — plus it’s blazing fast.

Type your blog post prompt into Perplexity. Following the 80/20 rule (focus 20% on being original). Be specific and detailed, and include things like context, style, word count, points to cover, and target audience.

Example prompt:
“Please draft me a 600-700 word blog post in clear, natural language about Hawaiian poke. Include the following: origins, modernization, global popularity, top 3 poke spots in Maui, and different varieties of poke in Hawaii. This post will be featured on a vacation rental agency blog for people who want to visit Hawaii.”

Notice the “please”? I add it for good karma.

3. Rewrite your draft in ChatGPT

Once you have a solid draft from Perplexity.ai (every draft I’ve gotten so far from Perplexity is very good), it’s time to fire up ChatGPT and ask it to “write in the style of x”.

Paste your draft in to ChatGPT with another prompt asking to edit the draft to match your personal or brand style. Be sure to add instructions or examples of your desired tone, voice, syntax, and any particular phrases or structures you typically use or avoid.

Tip: You can repurpose this prompt to create your own custom GPT that’s trained on your writing style, and reuse it any time you need to write content.

Example Prompt:
“Rewrite this blog post draft in my personal style, which uses clear, direct, natural language in a friendly but professional conversational tone. I often use analogies and personal anecdotes. Please maintain the structure but feel free to add some personality.”

4. Refine with Claude (optional)

Want something extra? Run your ChatGPT output through Claude.ai, Anthropic’s AI assistant.

Claude can offer a different perspective and might catch nuances that ChatGPT missed. It’s also known for strength in analytical thinking, so you could ask it to evaluate the logical structure of your arguments or the effectiveness of your examples.

If you’re fairly happy with your draft from ChatGPT, you can simply ask Claude to rewrite the draft “with minimal edits” focusing on focusing on flow, clarity, and engagement. The key here is get some variation and fine-tuning before your final edit.

Otherwise, reverse steps 2 and 3 and repaste your (first) Perplexity draft into Claude with the same prompt, then run that draft through ChatGPT. Or just ask Claude for a more serious rewrite.

Example prompt:
“Please review this blog post draft. Focus on improving the flow between paragraphs, enhancing clarity where needed, and suggesting ways to make the content more engaging. Maintain the overall structure and style. Cut length by around 20%, remove all exclamation points, and put headers in sentence case.”

5. Add your personal touch

The final and most crucial step is to spend at least 5-10 minutes carefully reading over your AI-generated post and adding your personal touch. This is how you transform a good post into a great one:

• Insert your personal anecdotes or perspectives
• Adjust the language to perfectly match your voice
• Add or modify examples to make them more relevant to your audience
• Ensure transitions between sections are smooth and natural
• Double-check facts and add your own insights where appropriate

If you don’t have time for this step, you either need to make time or stop blogging. After all, AI is here to make our jobs easier, faster, and more productive — not take our jobs!

Image credits: Jigar Panchal, BoliviaInteligente, sakana, Thought Catalog, Angelina Litvin

It was addressed to the unfortunate lot of us losing our privileged tech jobs. He said this: “AI is coming and I strongly recommend you learn as much as you can right now to stay ahead of the game.”

At least the guy was honest. But for a content person, hearing these words could easily translate to, “Here, drink the contents of this mysterious vial and, well, best of luck to you.”

I mean, it seems like the first and hardest group to be hurt by the AI craze are the writers and content folks. Why pay a decent writer $50/hour when you can pay ChatGPT $20/month?

Sure, ChatGPT is a terrible writer, but any business operator with decent writing skills can go in and polish things up…right? ?

The aha moment I had while sitting alone in a cafe in Paris

Being a digital nomad comes with notable perks.

One of these perks was me in Paris this past June, journaling one afternoon at a small table at Les Deux Magots. Just because.

Les Deux Magots is the very same charming Parisian cafe where many great artists and writers gathered, celebrated, and launched some of the most influential movements of modern art and literature.

One of these characters was Ernest Hemingway, literary hero to many. Drunk as he was, Hemingway could write in a way that cut through all our cluttered thinking and get right to our hearts.

The aha moment is this: let AI have it. Let it eat cake. Let AI write those 500-word blog posts in 5 seconds, those dense case studies and white papers, those 1,000 “personalized” emails to prospects.

Why do I say this? Because let’s be real: business and commerce content is not the same as art and literature and it does not produce the same effect on our souls.

Business is about efficiency, and AI is incredibly efficient, so why not let the robots loose to do the jobs we created them for?

What AI can’t do

AI cannot and will likely never be able to write stories that speak to people’s hearts and souls (if ever does, consider all of us doomed!).

AI could never sit down on a warm cloudy Tuesday with a cup of espresso at Les Deux Magots and feel the spirit of the place and the stories and people who have passed through over the past 140 years.

AI can’t write these magnificent stories, and if it tried we’d know it’s trying to fool us.

What AI can do

Anyone who thinks that AI is putting an end to writing jobs is correct.

But in exchange for lost jobs, AI is making life at least 10x easier for business owners and marketers who can rely on automated frameworks to run their content.

For a laid-off content strategist like me, this is a beautiful pivot and brilliant opportunity.

Instead of fighting or fearing AI, let’s rejoice and respect that it’s helping people at scale but it’s also making great writing even more scarce and valuable.

Any true writer mindful enough to know this will pick up their notebook and proceed to scribble precious strings of words from their soul.

Image credits: me, BoliviaInteligente, Marek Pavlík, Buddha Elemental 3D

First, let me clarify: “content strategy” per se is a wide, wide field filled with a lot of disciplines, sub-disciplines, job functions and titles, terms, labels, etc.

For the purposes of this post I’m going to refer to content strategy as the content needed to get a startup or early stage company off the ground. And the term “startup” itself comes with some assumptions:

• founder-led
• constrained by team and budget
• pre-PMF (product market fit)

Frameworks are friends

I love frameworks because: (1) they give you a structure to operate from, and (2) you’ll need that structure to take creative liberties later on.

The best framework I can think of for an impactful content strategy is in 3 parts: Strategy, Execution, and Measurement. Let’s have a look:

Step 1: Strategy

The strategy of content strategy is everything that’s behind the scenes that’s powering your content campaigns. Think of it like all the backstage crew, props, script, lighting, and orchestra of a Broadway production.

As you can imagine, it’s a lot to do but it’s vital to the success of the show…right?

A startup’s content strategy would, at minimum, look something like this:

• business goals
• marketing funnels
• style, branding, and messaging guides
• customer personas and target audience
• competitor audits
• content types
• distribution channels
• SEO

Spend some time creating these strategy documents and you’ll put yourself ahead of the curve before you unleash your content team.

Step 2: Execution

You could call execution the hotter sibling of strategy. Why? Because execution is the front stage where your content is seen, read, consumed, enjoyed, and talked about for days if you happen to go viral.

Of course, executing content is complicated. And time consuming. And hard to do right. But let’s have look at what content looks like:

• website and landing pages
• blog posts
• social media posts
• email newsletters
• transactional emails
• ad copy
• sales decks
• UI copy

With solid strategy in place, all of these content types theoretically should have no problem coming to life and executing their purpose: to capture your market and grow your startup exponentially faster.

Step 3: Measurement

The ROI you seek is seeking you — but ONLY if you measure it. After all, how will you know if anything is performing as planned if you’re not watching it…like ever?

Measuring and analyzing content empowers you to make data-driven decisions (vs. intuitive decisions) so you can tweak what’s working and what’s not. And optimized content translates to more sales, deeper loyalty, and stronger growth.

The elements of measurement look like this:

• content effectiveness
• user engagement
• distribution metrics
• conversion metrics

I have a dirty little secret: measurement has been the weakest and the least enjoyable part of content strategy for me. This is because I started out as a “just a writer” like most content people, which is great until you want to move up in the world. Content needs handlers!

And there you have it: a quick start guide to your startup’s content strategy.

You see, I am that guy: I love writing and I think it’s art, too. I wrote in little stories in grade school, have an English degree and admire Hemingway.

But alas, a novelist or poet I am not. I am a blogger and a content marketer.

If you too are a content marketer, let me tell you: you won’t get far in content marketing if you put writing on an aesthetic pedestal.

Just break down the term “content marketing” and you’ll see that content equals media and marketing equals persuasion. Content marketing is a business discipline which uses text, images and videos to persuade people to take an intended action.

Art is not content and it’s not persuasion. Art is art.

Can we agree on that? Good, now keep reading, because there is redemption.

How to keep writing and do content marketing and feel good about all of it

If you love to write and you think writing is art, but you’re also a content marketer, then what you first need to do is separate the two like you would a cat and a dog.

Then, just start writing. Lead with it. Write like the writer you are. Follow your heart and express your hopes and fears and bare your soul through your craft. Illuminate your world with words. Let it flow and be wonderful.

Then, when you switch over to content marketer, put aside the sensitive writer — let it go back to its dreaming and scheming. You’ve just honored your inner artist and now it’s time to get down to business.

For me, the way to keep yourself honest as a content marketer is to use data analysis to measure the effectiveness of your content. Data is numbers-based, and numbers don’t lie or judge or discriminate.

With data, you’re not just throwing beautiful words out there for people to enjoy but you’re throwing beautiful words out there for people to enjoy and meet business goals.

That’s not to say you can’t let your writing shine through when you’re “creating content.” In fact, all the better if you can. Just keep in mind there are goals that need to be met, and data helps you stay sober.

Your writing as a product

If you’re an entrepreneur, you might consider making your writing into a product — perhaps a book or blog or an email newsletter.

As a writer, you get the privilege of keeping your work real and genuine and true to yourself. Then you can draw attention to your product with content marketing. This way, you get to be both writer and content marketer without bruising your inner artist or shaming your inner marketer.

You might even be able to influence lots of people and make a fortune, too.

Photo credits: photochild, Aaron Burden, retrobob15, beinecke_library

Pay attention, because there might be some stuff in here you won’t find anywhere else when it comes to starting a podcast.

Start listening to other podcasts

Yes, this is obvious advice, but really make sure you do this if you’re not. Immerse yourself in the podcast universe of a few people you find interesting.

All you need to do is open the Apple iTunes podcast app (or this Android podcast app alternative) and browse for something you like. I recommend you pick at least one from the “Popular” or “New and Noteworthy” categories. This way you can observe who’s doing it right.

Don’t just indulge in the subject matter — pay attention to the delivery, tone, style and cadence.

Do episodes follow a narrative, or are they more structured like an Q&A interview?

Which do you prefer? Which style gets you excited for more?

Learn the craft and tools of the trade (but don’t overdo it)

Here are several excellent resources on the mechanics of podcasting:

• Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income Podcasting Tutorial – covers all technical aspects of starting a podcast. Pat Flynn’s a nice guy with great polish.
• The Ultimate Postcast Guide from John Lee Dumas – text and video tutorials on creating an avatar, equipment and publishing. Can’t beat JLD’s passion.
• How to Podcast Tutorial – really good info on the podcast production process (planning, audience, scripting). Don’t let those crappy adsense ads fool you.
• The ultimate beginner’s guide to podcasting from WP Curve – top notch resource with tons of links to even more resources. Awesome…borderline overwhelming.
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Audio Content from tropicalmba.com – develop a voice, have something to say, make a great performance. “TropicalMBA” is a catchy name.
• How to Start a Podcast – Ultimate Guide for Beginners from websitesetup.org – clear and basic step-by-step instructions on starting a podcast, from naming to artwork to pitching guests t0 audio editing to promotion, and more.

Tip: Give these a good read, learn what you need to learn, then take action (next section). Don’t get sucked into just learning about podcasting!

Take action

Tools are tools, and they’re standard for every podcaster. Tutorials help, but not in a direct or personal way. What really matters is what you’re all about and how you plan to connect with your listeners.

It’s time to take action:

1. Write down your ideas

• What’s your podcast all about? —and what makes it interesting?
• Why are you doing this? —are you truly excited or just doing it “because”?
• Who can you reach out to? —can anyone help, support or be featured?

2. Create the script for your first episode – Keep that first episode ultra simple, like an intro to you and your podcast. I’m currently working on this now, and I’ve broken it down like this:

• Welcome Intro, music (don’t have any yet but soon)
• Part 1 (2-3 minutes): what the Wordful podcast is all about, why I’m doing it
• Part 2 (2-3 minutes): who am I, what’s my background, how did I get here (how much do I want to share?)
• Part 3 (2-3 minutes): what to expect, what’s in it for you, my promise, what’s up and coming
• Outro, music

Yes that’s pretty simple, but it’s an outline to get the ball rolling. You can fill in more, and you can also break the recording down into these three small sections to make your first podcast experience bearable. Here are some podcasting script resources.

3. Perform a sound test – this basically means start talking into a microphone and record yourself. If you’re not used to it like me (terrified of hearing your own voice), it definitely feels a little strange at first.

UPDATE: Two hours of recording later and it’s still a little weird, but I’m already more comfortable. Try it yourself!

Be yourself

I can’t stress this enough — staying true to who you are is just as important as taking action, and here’s why:

• If you’re not yourself, then who are you? (hint: someone else who doesn’t really exist).
• It feels far better to be the person you want to be rather than the one you’re supposed to be.
• People like genuine people, even if you’re not an expert (yet).
• If you’re unsure of who you are, that’s okay. Taking action gifts you this knowledge.
• Remember, this is your journey and no one else’s. The fact that you’re even reading this means the Universe has conspired to teach you about podcasting, so embrace it as part of your journey

***
I’m just a few days ahead of absolute newbie and it’s fun. I’m still terrified of “being me” on an audio recording, and I’m still clueless about the how my script should look, and I have no idea what to expect, but I’m pushing through…and you should, too!

Photo credits: Josh Sheldon, Patrick Breitenbach, Paul Falardeau, Irish Typepad, Tess Watson, lee Scott

And what are the 7 reasons for that?

1. Wordful.com started over six years ago and I still believe in its potential
2. It’s got a cool, catchy domain name
3. There used to be a small but loyal audience here…
4. …and it even caught the attention of a few prominent bloggers back in the day
5. Very recent redesign and it’s the best one yet
6. It helped me land a job at a Silicon Valley startup
7. I love blogging

Here’s the problem

Don’t know what to write about anymore. I get a lot of ideas — like critiques of great content-rich sites, or why I love email marketing, or a chronicle of my marketing projects — but they never seem to stick or belong here. Feels off.

Don’t know who to write for. Maybe if I knew who to write for, I’d know what to write about. Content marketers? Meh — is there even such a thing? Other bloggers? Yes, but what kind of bloggers? Entrepreneurs? What do they need?

Unsure of the market. As an entrepreneur, I can’t just write a blog for the sake of enjoying it — there needs to be a viable market on the receiving end. The problem is I can’t think of monetizing Wordful because of the first two reasons.

For Wordful to succeed, all three of conditions must exist: subject, audience and market potential.

In essence, Wordful.com is diagnosed with an identity crisis. And I’m reaching out to whoever is reading this to help me out, please.

How can I help you?

In the past, this blog could be best summed up as a resource about becoming a better writer and editor and blogger. While I still believe in those things, I’m not quite sure it’s a complete picture of what Wordful is capable of.

So I ask you:

• What do you need in a blog about writing and editing and blogging that would really you in your life and your business?
• What’s missing from your entrepreneurial arsenal?
• Do you want to be educated or entertained?

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts, I’m TOTALLY LISTENING.

Unsplash photos from Jeff Sheldon and davide ragusa and Jasper van der Meij

Write short paragraphs with short sentences and simple words. Omit needless words.

Think casual, assertive efficiency for readers with infinite choices and shrinking attention spans.

Avoid huge, wordy paragraphs. They detract most readers because they remove the ease of skimming.

Go ahead and test the theory: go on Facebook and scroll around until you open a blog post. Don’t even read it. Just look at it. Your brain will send you an instant signal if it’s physically worth reading.

Writing for the web is a fun craft. You get to enjoy finding ways to stand out using fewer words. For example, the previous sentence said could have said “You get to spend more time finding ways to say a lot in as few words as possible” — but it didn’t.

Lastly — if you have a lot to say, go ahead and say it all. Take as much screen as you want.

And don’t forget style. And personality!

I don’t mean it was hijacked or taken down, but the posting slowed down to a point of near-death. Then it just flatlined. The last post was on May 2, 2012.

The good news is I’m back, and the first thing I want to do is share some of the lessons learned from ditching my blog like a dropped popsicle on a hot sidewalk :

Don’t be afraid of what you want

Fear is the biggest reason most people don’t believe in themselves, so they lose sight of what they want, or who they want to be.

I started Wordful because I wanted to build an awesome blog. I still do. But my fear of failing at it got the best of me, and I got too uptight about trying to be perfect, so I abandoned ship.

It’s also important to know that I also had a fear of succeeding.

Throw rules and systems out the window

There are tons of rules, systems and advice that offer the “right” way to do things. The truth is — there is no right way.

Sure, there’s general advice on what works for most people — and yes, this can help — but it’s best to stay away from gurus that promise to make you as successful as them. What works for one person may not apply to everyone.

Your craft will reflect your unique character the deeper you go. But you won’t know what works for you unless you do it first, fail a few times, then apply some mid-course corrections.

Rewards and recognition are not the goal

The “old me” banked on the success of this blog, and I think that’s a big reason it failed. I was too focused on the outcome of making money.

Lately I’ve discovered that it helps to let go of outcome (future) and instead focus on process (now). In my case, I want to write awesome blog posts and connect with people through my voice and content.

Don’t be what you think other people want you to be

This one is huge, and it relates to fear — and I struggled with it: stop creating stuff just to please people. Save the soul crushing work for that boring, 9-5 office job I hope you don’t have.

Instead, create stuff that:

• makes you happy
• is honest
• lets you express yourself

Marketing matters

Old me blogger: Three star all-you-can-eat buffet.

New me blogger: Charming oceanside cafe with great table service.

Where would you rather dine?

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. —David Ogilvy

Ogilvy wasn’t messing around when it came to headlines, and if he were alive today he’d definitely bump it up to ninety cents. Headlines do all the heavy lifting when it comes to attracting clicks and shares, which is why it’s more important than ever to invest in good copywriting.

But who actually gets it right? I don’t mean your average headline-writing-formula-right, but rather holy-cow-I-must-click-on-this-now-right.

There are three sites known to possess this kind of headline mastery. Strangely enough, two of them are on opposite political spectrums and the other one publishes nonsense—but in all fairness, none of that matters. What matters is they’re getting people’s attention, whether or not you think they deserve it.

Here they are:

The Huffington Post

Sure, HuffPo gets ragged on all the time for its sensational, flimsy content, but you gotta admit—their headlines are really catchy. I’ve even heard they split-test and crowdsource them. Just remember—it’s not every day an Internet-only news site sells for $315 million.

Note the difference in headlines versus the actual article titles (once you click on it):

“Obiwan Kenobi Turns To Dark Side, Charged With Hit And Run”
“‘Octomom’ Broke, Turns To Porn”
“LOOK: You’ve Never Seen Saturn Like This Before”

Drudge Report

Whether you agree with Drudge Report or not, their headline strategy is unconventional and brillant. The site is one big news aggregator, so the editors spend time crafting catchy headlines that do nothing more than link to outside articles.

What results on the one-page site are several boxes of persuasive political narrative which—if you’re of the right-wing persuasion—goes down like really good scotch. For example, here’s a sampling from today’s news (click for graphic), read from top to bottom in exact title case:

• OBAMA ADMITS FABRICATING GIRLFRIEND IN MEMOIR…
• ASKS: ‘Why black people so angry all the time’…
• OBAMA: ‘That was an example of compression’…

The Onion produces the very best headlines on the Internet thanks to the unlikely pairing of real events and absurd humor. I mean, how can you compete with “Black Guy Asks Nation for Change,” “‘Huffington Post’ Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine‘” and (my very favorite) “Owls are Assholes“?

From what I’ve learned and come to admire, The Onion writers take their headline writing very seriously. This makes a lot of sense considering how—if you really think about it—The Onion could probably survive if all they wrote were headlines.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore is one of those bloggers. He started the social media news site from his parents home in Scotland, then quickly expanded to New York and San Francisco (I actually used to work on the same floor at SOMACentral). Now it’s the #2 blog in the world behind the Huffington Post, with rumors of a massive buyout from CNN.

The videos below are from a 2010 Bloomberg Business Week interview, so they’re a tad old—but that doesn’t really matter. What matters are the vision, core values and execution behind the blog:

• Cashmore says he has trouble with authority and had no choice but to do his own thing
• Mashable is 100% bootstrapped
• 100% of Mashable’s content is created in-house, so nothing is aggregated
• Ad revenue and conferences are Mashable’s main source of revenue
• While scoop content offers massive short-term value, utility content offers better, long-term value (think news vs. how-to)