Become a Content Marketing Machine using AI

And that’s on top of the 1000-1500 word newsletters that I’m writing daily.

This week I want to show you some of the systems and techniques I used to produce helpful content en-masse.

The basic shape of the week will be:

• mass content idea generation (today)

• creating blog posts

• breaking posts into social media

• video to go alongside

• imagery based on the post

It all ties together.

One idea will lead to a long blog, multiple social posts, a video and images. All tied together, all aligned.

The focus will be very much on authentic personal brand - based on you. Low production requirements. Value over style.

This is the way to win in the creator economy.

We’ll cover:

• Part 1: Never ending story

• Part 2: First go long

• Part 3: Break it down

• Part 4: Video overlay

• Part 5: Getting arty

Let’s get started:

Never-ending story

First up we need to eliminate writer’s block. Sitting down and thinking “what shall I create” is a thing of the past.

I’m going to give you a prompt that can generate obscene amounts of ideas.

Will they all be good? Nope! You’ll need to select the best and tweak from there. But you’ll have a lot to work from!

This prompt is based of Dickie Bush’s content matrix. I recommend you go and learn anything and everything you can from him by the way. He’s one of the good ones. His blog + newsletter are the place to start.

Here’s the prompt:

Act as an expert content strategist and writer. 

My audience is [audience details]
Their common problems are [list problems]
My business helps the audience to [how you solve problems]

Help me create a content matrix. 
X axis = content types: Actionable How-To, Inspirational Advice, Example Breakdown, Contrarian take, Unique Observation, Present vs. Past, Listicle, Social proof about myself, Lessons learned, Benefits, Reasons Why, Common Mistakes

All relate to the topics in the Y Axis.

The Y axis contains my topics:
Generate a list of topics based on my audience, audience problems and how my business helps.

Generate the full context matrix, giving headlines in each cell. Make sure the content types are on the X axis and my topics in the Y axis. 

Fill in the specifics of your business. I used the following for this example:

My audience is people starting their first business 
Their common problems are what niche, no money, no time, stuck in 9-5, not sure first steps.
My business helps the audience to start  a business by leveraging AI tools like chatgpt

First the prompt generates a list of Topics:

Then it takes the topics and the content types and creates a huge amount of potential content for us:

This is just a snippet of the whole because there are 10 topics and 12 content types for a total of 120 cells.

That’s 120 things you can talk about right there. No more “I don’t have any ideas”.

Copy/paste these ideas into Excel or Notion or your tool of choice.

We’ll be using them in the next Part to generate posts.

FYI if you use ChatGPT Plus ask it for a CSV file and it’ll give you a downloadable version. Cool huh?

Premium Prompt - Join the Discourse

Pulling it together

In this Part we’ve looked at how to how infinite content ideas.

Writer’s block is no more. So no more excuses!

In the next Part we’ll build the foundation - the long form post.

Here’s a reminder of the week:

• Part 1: Never ending story

• Part 2: First go long

• Part 3: Break it down

• Part 4: Video overlay

• Part 5: Getting arty

Keep prompting,

Kyle

Not a writer?

Don’t worry - I’m going to show you how to create non-crappy, non-generic writing using AI.

You know how it’s often easier to criticise than it is to create?

We’re going to harness that!

Using a technique called revision prompting.

Let’s get started:

First Go Long

First up we want to produce a long-form piece of content.

Long-form is basically a blog article, newsletter or short essay. Generally 750+ words.

The reason for this is that we can cascade from long-form to medium and short form easily. We cannot go the other way.

We start with lots of information and break it up into smaller pieces. Large to small. Entropy, baby.

AI is fantastic at the breakdown process of creating lots of smaller content pieces from a large content piece. It’s a powerful use of AI.

This is the linchpin on which this content system is built. And it is why AI is so powerful in content creation.

However, there’s a catch.

ChatGPT’s Limitations

ChatGPT is not good at generating content from scratch.

There, I said it. Sorry AI bros, shoot me.

The content it produces tends to be very generic, very uninspiring and honestly not very enjoyable to read.

Lots of other people will recommend using AI to create newsletters and blog articles.

I do not.

No matter how complex the prompt the results will be uninspiring and inauthentic.

Instead we need to put in human work here at the top of the funnel.

We add our human touch here in the long-form content piece and then allow AI to help with breaking it up into shorter form content (in the rest of this Playbook).

We still save a lot of time and energy. But we will need to put some work in here at the beginning of the process.

Still valuable

Am I going to ask you to write from scratch? If you can - do so.

The higher the quality of the input the higher the quality of the various outputs further down the chain.

But here’s a technique you can embed in your workflow whether you are going to be writing or not.

It’s called revision prompting.

Here’s a prompt to get started:

Topic = []
Content type = []
Title = []
My audience is [audience details]

Prepare a 1000 word blog article. 
Do not be generic, include non-obvious and controversial takes
Include a strong hook first sentence

Input the topic, content type and title from the context matrix in the previous Part.

In this example I use:

This creates a solid blog article. Here’s the beginning:

This blog article is perfectly serviceable but not particularly interesting.

What I recommend doing is using this as a jumping off point.

Have you ever noticed how criticising and editing other people’s work is a lot easier than doing so with your own work?

We can use this fact to our benefit.

Go through the output that ChatGPT has given you and criticise it!

Feed the criticism into ChatGPT.

An example - the generated article above is saying that AI is useful for identifying market trends. The point is fine but not very specific.

So I can feed in a criticism like:

Give specific examples and tools. Do not make general sweeping statements.

That forces specificity:

Much better. I’d then tell ChatGPT to add these into the main article. You can do this conversationally with a prompt like “these look good. Add them naturally into the 1000 word blog article”

Revision Prompting

Continue to do this as many times as required.

Read the article, provide a criticism or suggestion, review the revision and ask ChatGPT to combine the revision with the article. Repeat.

Why don’t we build all of these revisions into the original prompt? Why are you being lazy Kyle?

Some people will teach you to add ALL of these specifications into the original prompt. You end up with a 2000 word mega prompt.

Sometimes this works. But in my experience it’ll still produce something generic. It’s genericness built into the mega prompt!

The only way to truly get the output that you as a content creator need is for you to provide revisions. You know what you want and can tell ChatGPT.

Remember that once you have this one high quality long form content piece we’re going to be able to covert it into many many more using AI. It remains a low time commitment considering the value we’ll get.

So use this method of generating a first draft and then providing corrections to get the article to a place where you are happy with it.

Premium Prompt - Top Revision Suggestions

Pulling it together

Now that we have a high quality long form piece we’re going to start to break it down into other content pieces over the remaining Parts.

Here’s a reminder of the week:

• Part 1: Never ending story

• Part 2: First go long

• Part 3: Break it down

• Part 4: Video overlay

• Part 5: Getting arty

Keep prompting,

Kyle

In this Part we get to the meat. Nom.

We’re going to take our long-form and slice and dice it into short social posts.

One piece of content to 15 in one fell swoop. Ready?

Let’s get started:

Break it Down

As discussed in the last Part AI is not great at creating content from scratch.

It is however fantastic at breaking content up.

This is called repurposing.

Taking one piece of content and converting it for use in multiple ways.

Specifically we’re going to take our blog article and carve it into lots of short social media posts for X/Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or whatever your platform of choice is.

Crap in crap out

Important: each time we repurpose using AI the quality will decrease.

If we put crap into then we’ll get crap out.

Therefore we need to start with as high quality content as possible.

This is the reason why in the last Part I suggested you using your brilliant human brain to tweak and finalise the long-form content.

We need that first input content to be as good as possible. Otherwise the AI prompt below will turn bad content into eve worse content!

Before we jump in, I’ve covered repurposing in a lot more detail in its own Playbook. You can get access here or via the Vault.

Right, here’s the prompt we’ll use:

Act as a social media content re-purposer

Break the article below this prompt into the specified social media assets 

Posts to create:

1. One post announcing new article on blog. Tease the lede to get the click. 

2. 3x soundbite posts. Find the most intriguing and/or controversial sentences from the article and extract them as soundbites. The soundbites should trigger discussion. Do not reference the article - the post should be self-contained.

3. 3 x Question posts. Analyse the article for intriguing, controversial or fact-collecting questions to ask on social media. The questions should ellicit debate and allow people to express opinions/. Do not reference the article - the post should be self-contained.

4. 3 x expert authority posts. Analyse the article for strong opinions and convert them into expert statements. These should be authoritative and demonstrate thought leadership. Use strong language to make a statement. Do not reference the article - the post should be self-contained.

5. 3 x  inspirational posts. Focus on how the contents of the article could change the readers life. Focus on the fact that they already have what they need in them, they just need to act.  Do not reference the article - the post should be self-contained.

6. 1 x actionable steps post. Analyse the article and extract a set of steps for people to follow. Do not reference the article - the post should be self-contained.

Do not use emojis, do not use hashtags
Dot use overly elevated, salesy language
Each post should be no more than 280 characters
Return results in a tabular format

Article begins:
[copy/paste long form article]

For this example I’ve plugged in Part 1 of this guide. This led to this output:

Some of these I’d be happy to post immediately - for example the question posts are good to go.

For others I’d rewrite and work in context. It’s still a lot faster than working from scratch!

As always if there is something about the output that doesn’t work for you then i) tell ChatGPT and ii) adapt the prompt.

Once you’ve done this you’ll be able to easy chunk up any article (created using the method in the last Part) into multiple posts.

Your content production just went up. Waaaay up.

Premium Prompt - Thread Maker

Pulling it together

We’ve now used AI to go from 1 content piece to 15.

You can actually get a lot more by:

• running the prompt multiple times - each time it’ll give you more posts.

• or adjusting the number of posts generated by changing the numbers in the prompt

One method here to test is generating a tonne of posts and then hand picking out the best ones. It takes more human time but should lead to higher quality.

In the next Part we’re going to add in another layer - short video!

Here’s a reminder of the week:

• Part 1: Never ending story

• Part 2: First go long

• Part 3: Break it down

• Part 4: Video overlay

• Part 5: Getting arty

Keep prompting,

Kyle

I’ve been doing short video for a while on Tiktok, Youtube and just started Instagram.

Here is how Instagram is going:

Notice only 385 followers - very small!

But in the last month 205,000+ accounts have watched my videos, 7500+ engaged.

That’s nearly a quarter of a million people. It’s still rising and I expect that quarter mil today or tomorrow.

I have similar examples from early on Tiktok and Youtube too - video, unlike other formats, lets you get in front of lots of people even when your account is small.

I like to call it “popping off” as in “oh, another video has popped off” and is going to the moooooon.

I’ve been (gently!) bullying my partner to get into short video for her coachng company + podcast and she finally did yesterday. Immediately had a video that rocketed to 2000+ views with huge engagement.

She admitted that maybe I was right.

I’m hoping that you’ll also try out short video after this and come to a similar realisation!

Let’s look at how to add short form video into our content mix.

Let’s get started:

Video Overlay

First up I’ve written Playbooks on short video before. Both are in the Vault:

These are more in-depth guides about setting up for video production and the specific “newsjacking” strategy I recommend to get started.

In this Part though I want to build on our content repurposing.

We’re going to convert our short posts from the last Part into video scripts.

Head back to the short post ideas we generated in the last Part.

Below these in ChatGPT use this prompt:

Act as a social media script writer

For each of the short posts create a short video script

Each video should be 30 -60 seconds

Start with a strong, engaging, curiosity driving hook

Give me the main talk points, not in full sentences

Do not include stage directions or images 

This will generate short video script ideas for each of the posts. Here for example are the talking points for the Expert Authority posts:

Notice that these give the main talking points. Not a full line by line script.

If you are creating a 30-60 second video (a short) you have very little time to talk. It’ll be over before you know it.

If you have 3 bullet points as above you can talk on each quickly and fill the minute very quickly.

I recommend this approach as it leads to more natural, less stilted delivery.

Full scripting

If you do prefer a full script though review the script ideas and then use this prompt to expand one of the ideas:

For script [number]
Provide a full 60 second script
Give suggestions for supporting 1-2 images

This leads to fuller script:

The problem with this sort of script is that it won’t “sound like” you. Not without edits and rewrites. Hence me recommending you starting with a couple of main points and speaking off the dome.

Get shooting

Initially it’s hard. Really hard. But like anything if you practice you’ll develop the skill. The other Playbooks talk about this in more detail than I can here.

For now I recommend you start filming on Tiktok.

Primarily because it has the best recording interface. It allows you to hold the record button, capture a sentence of two, then release record to stop.

If you flubbed the take no problem - hit the x to delete that last clip. If it was a good take move to the next. It’s that simple. The interface makes it super easy to cut out bad takes on the fly.

The name of the game now is to generate short videos alongside your posts.

You don’t need to video all of the posts. Instead read through the posts and think about which ones would be interesting to talk about. Then shoot those ones as videos and drop the rest. Keep it simple. Keep producing.

Premium Prompt - Teleprompter

Pulling it together

I’ve kept this Part light.

You’ve got enough to shoot your first video:

• script generator via the prompt

• recommendation to use TikTok to record

That is ALL you need. Anything else is procrastination.

Shoot your first few videos using this method and then check out my other Playbooks for more details. Don’t refine your method before starting!

If you want to a few practice runs whilst still being on the hook - drop your video or link to it in the AI Community (comment in today’s post).

Here’s a reminder of the week:

• Part 1: Never ending story

• Part 2: First go long

• Part 3: Break it down

• Part 4: Video overlay

• Part 5: Getting arty

Keep prompting,

Kyle

The first is relatively straightforward - your images become the post on Instagram. Add the post text we created previously as the caption et voila you have hit another channel. More exposure, more audience, more revenue.

The second is a little more complex but equally powerful. You can get more creative here.

For instance, you’ll notice that my newsletters include a hand drawn image. It’s another layer of content to reinforce the written long form content.

We also drop the images into social posts like this LinkedIn carousel:

This makes it multimedia in the truest sense - there’s a text post, a carousel with text and a graphic.

I also use the images as backgrounds in video posts.

How to produce graphics

Here’s my biggest tip - do your graphics by hand.

I can’t claim any credit for this. I straight ripped it from Greg Isenberg.

Here is one of his :

Notice the 155k views? Powerful stuff.

Is it highly produced? Nope!

In fact it looking so basic is why it works.

It “stops the scroll”. People stop to see what it is.

That doesn’t happen if your graphics are highly polished. No-one cares about corporate looking imagery. We see so much of it on the daily that our eyes glide right over it.

So put down Photoshop/Canva and get your pens.

Hand drawn feels like we’re physically sitting with a mentor who is sketching out her ideas for you on a napkin.

I “stole” the idea from Greg and started doing similar graphics for the newsletter. Further proof this method gains attention? A few days later Greg actually featured one of our graphics in his post:

The graphic on the right? That’s one of ours. That post is sitting at a cool 100k views.

Would he have featured it if it had been a written post? Nope.

How to design your graphics

I wish I could tell you there’s an AI tool that’ll do this graphic for you.

There ain’t.

But we’ll use AI to give us ideas for the design.

Here’s a prompt:

Act as a graphic designer

I need a simple line drawing graphic that represents the concepts in the following post 

Describe the graphical elements. Do not generate it

Use the graphics of Dan Koe as inspiration

The graphic should be possible to draw by hand - focus on simple geometric shapes, lines and text

[copy/paste post]

I plugged in this post from the last Part ""Your voice, your brand, your impact. Start expressing, the world is ready to listen."

This super simple post led to this graphic suggestion:

and some style guidelines:

That’s sufficient for you to hand draw the graphic.

I can’t emphasise this enough - keep it simple! Your artistic ability isn’t important here, just use simple lines and shapes.

If you have trouble visualising the instructions you can ask ChatGPT to produce a version:

I wouldn’t personally use this graphic straight from ChatGPT but it’s a good way to give you a reference image to then create an image.

This can inspire you to draw your own diagrams:

Premium Prompt - Coloured Pencils

Pulling it together

Over this week we’ve cascaded content from one format to the next.

Following this framework will let you produce huge amounts of content from a single idea.

You no longer have an excuse to not be creating. One idea leads to 20+ content pieces now.

Here’s a reminder of what we covered this week:

• Part 1: Never ending story

• Part 2: First go long

• Part 3: Break it down

• Part 4: Video overlay

• Part 5: Getting arty

Keep prompting,

Kyle