Hi

(Listen to this newsletter - AI Generated)

All content begins with a blank page.

Its usually a staring contest. You stare at the blank page, and it stares back. That is until you get the brilliant idea. Then its all about curbing your enthusiasm and writing that content.

Staring contest is great if you are a well known author. You can afford to spend months or years doing nothing.

You are part of a business and content creation is one of the roles you play. There are targets to meet, algorithms to please everyday.

AI can play a great role in making you more productive, by saving you from the staring contest.

Get to the first draft quickly

Open ChatGPT and create a prompt to generate that first draft. Your prompt should have the following parts:

1. Role or Context
2. Task
3. Instructions
4. Example or Data

And that is it. You will get a first draft to beat that blank page.

Prompt for creating drafts for Newsletters

Newsletters are personal. Its a direct communication between your subscribers and you. Thus, your draft should also reflect your tone of voice, ideas, thoughts, and opinions.

AI cannot replicate your personality. It can give you some ideas. But the AI generated drafts for a newsletter requires a lot of rewrites.

Here are the prompts I use.

(Save the link of this Google Doc)

The prompts given in the link will help you create a draft. Provided your notes are well written and have a good logical flow.

Ah! but creating notes takes us back to the problem of a blank page. That brings us to...

Content creation workflow

Content writing involves several steps.

1. Research: The first step is to gather information about the topic you want to write about.
2. Idea generation: Once you have gathered enough information, the next step is to generate ideas for your content.
3. Outline: After generating ideas, the next step is to create an outline for your content. An outline helps you organise your thoughts and ideas in a logical manner.
4. Drafting: Once you have created an outline, the next step is to start drafting your content. You can use your outline as a guide to help you write your content.
5. Editing: After drafting your content, the next step is to edit it.
6. Proofreading: The final step in content writing is proofreading. Proofreading involves checking your content style, tone, flow, and consistency.

As you can see, creating a draft is the 4th step in content writing. This is true for all types of content, from newsletters to essays, from Linkedin Posts to Tweets.

If you don't know your topic then you cannot generate a draft.

Research: Information gathering and analysis

Content creation in a business is different from academia and fiction writing. Things change, topics evolve, there is competition, and everything is fast paced. The only way out is having the latest information and insights from it.

How can AI help in research?

Before we go to AI, lets start by collecting information. There is no dearth of information on the internet. In fact, there is too much information, and new information is rushing at us all the time.

The challenge is to capture the slice of this flow that is relevant to us, our business, and our audience.

Here are two ways you can achieve that.

1. Google Alerts : Setup one or more Google Alerts for topics that interest you.
2. Newsletter Subscriptions : Subscribe to newsletters that are relevant.

Tomorrow I will reveal a couple of ways to use AI on the information we gather.

Best

Anoop Kurup

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