Growing a service-based business online can be hard. There are so many other people out there doing what you do, but you want your ideal customer to end up on your website, book a call with you, and become a client with you. How in the world do other service providers keep doing that and make it look so easy?
The real secret to marketing online isn’t really a secret at all. In fact, it’s what we all know is a best practice but is hard to do so we look for other shortcuts.
But nothing can beat creating regular content that provides free and useful information to your audience. It not only helps to attract new clients, but it can also keep your current clients around for longer.
When I tell a client that they need to blog on their shiny new website, however, they often blanch. Who has time to create something new and fresh every week? Where even do you get your ideas for that content?
Well, thanks to AI tools like Chat GPT, you can break out of your content creation rut and create 90 days of weekly content topics and even outlines in a matter of minutes.
Ready to save some time? Grab your notebook or even better, download the cheat sheet that goes along with this episode.
The Key Benefits of Consistent Content Creation
Before we break down the how, let’s talk about why you need to do this at all.
Look, I get you’ve probably heard and read from plenty of other experts out there that you need to create consistent content.
What that means is that you should release content on a regular basis so that your audience knows when to expect something new from you.
For instance, with my podcast, I release a new episode every Tuesday morning. Have I taken a break here and there? Sure, but I try to keep those breaks minimal because I know that consistency will help grow my podcast and my audience.
When you’re creating and releasing content on a regular schedule, you’re not only helping your audience find you but you’re also making it easier for that content to help you rank better in Google, showcase your business as an authority in the industry, and building trust because you’re continuously showing up when you say you’re going to.
It’s crazy how those three simple things can lead to more traffic, more leads, and of course – more conversions.
Creating a Content Calendar
Let’s be honest – have you ever really sat down to map out when you were going to release a new podcast episode, blog, or video? Or have you been winging it for years?
If the answer is the latter, well, that’s probably why you’ve seen very little benefit from the content you have created in the past.
The first step to getting consistent is to create a content calendar.
This sounds overwhelming but really it can be as simple as a spreadsheet where you track what the topic you’re going to cover is in that week’s blog or long-form content piece. You quite literally just need somewhere to write your topics down with the date you plan to publish them.
Choose a date you’ll release new content – like every Wednesday – and then start mapping out the topics from there.
Generating Content Topic Ideas with ChatGPT
Have you been hearing a lot about ChatGPT lately and how much time it might save you? Getting started with AI can feel a bit overwhelming simply because it’s so new. The key to AI and to ChatGPT as a whole is to use it to help you brainstorm ideas and to give it more specific directions.
For instance, you don’t want to just ask it for 12 blog topic ideas. That will get you something super generic and not really fit for your customers.
Instead, you need to train it a bit to give you responses that you might need for your own customers.
Before you start inputting anything into ChatGPT, you’ll want to make sure you’re clear on what your customers want out of your content.
Creating Content for Your Customer
If you’re going to put in the effort to create weekly content, you want to create content that your customers actually want to read or consume.
Novel concept, right? But we as business owners and experts in what we do often forget that our knowledge base for what we do is so different from the customers we serve.
In order to get the best answers and topics out of ChatGPT, I want you to ask yourself a few questions about your customers:
- What are their goals?
- What are they struggling with?
- What problem are they trying to solve?
- What’s a place they typically get stuck?
When you know what your customers are struggling with, it’s far easier to go and create content that will actually answer their questions and provide them with a simple transformation.
Helping your readers get a transformation from your free content will make them more intrigued to buy and see how much you can help them when they’re paying for your services.
Get Initial Topic Ideas
You know who you’re talking to and what they’re struggling with, so now it’s time to open up a new chat in ChatGPT and generate some topics!
The first thing you want to do is tell ChatGPT who your audience is and what they’re struggling with. Then explain your own services and how you help your customer. Then you’ll want to ask for some blog topic ideas.
Example: My audience is a service-based business owner who is constantly overwhelmed with running their business. I help them by building websites that convert and creating digital marketing plans. What are some blog topics that I can write about?
What I get returned are 10 blog topics including elements of a high-converting website and email marketing best practices.
However, I know that some of these might be a bit technical or not quite what my audience wants. They’re not going to want to go and optimize their own website for speed, for instance. That’s something they’re hiring Captain Coder to do for them.
Refine the Topic Ideas
If you get some topics that you think might not be the best fit, you’ll want to continue to refine and encourage ChatGPT to narrow down topic ideas.
A great way to do this is to tell it that your client might not understand the topics it returned and ask for them to be simplified.
But an even better way is to tell ChatGPT a question you get asked all of the time. Take a specific pain point your clients have and now ask for some additional blog topics.
Example: One thing my clients ask me all the time is how they can get more leads. What are some blog topics for them?
Now I’m getting blog topics about creating compelling lead magnets, lead generation strategies, webinars, and referral programs, etc. I know that these are a much better fit for my clients and how they run their businesses and now I have 10 topics and beginner ideas that I can go and put in a content calendar spreadsheet.
If you want more blog topics so you can mix up the goal for the blogs over the next 90 days, you simply tell ChatGPT another thing that your clients struggle with.
Example: My clients also want to save time. what are some blog topics I can write for them?
Now I have 10 more blog topics to choose from that align with another goal and/or pain point that my clients have.
Writing The Blog Posts
One thing I love about ChatGPT? They don’t just return a possible blog title for the topics and information. They also give you an idea of what you might focus that blog on. This helps to get those creative juices flowing and aids you in creating an outline for your actual blog articles or even podcast episodes.
If writing isn’t your forte and you want ChatGPT to help you actually create the content for your blogs, you can take it a step further by asking it to create an outline for you. I talked about this in-depth in episode 34 and walked you through how to get it to help you flesh these ideas out further.
Don’t Just Copy Chat GPT’s Output
One thing I want to make sure you’re aware of here – copyright law with AI-generated content is super murky right now.
You don’t want to just copy what ChatGPT gives you and throw it up on your website. Not only are we unable to copyright something that AI creates for us because it’s quite literally not human-made, but there might be others in your industry who got a very similar output.
Plus, full disclosure, I think ChatGPT’s writing style is pretty elementary and hokey.
Instead, use it to help you outline and get some pieces in place. You’ll still need to flesh out the blog posts and inject them with your own brand personality and experience. People aren’t going to connect with something AI wrote for you. They’re going to connect with something that feels like you.
Make Your Content Go Further
Within 10 minutes (or possibly less!), you’ve planned out 90 days’ worth of long-form content ideas! Doesn’t that feel pretty amazing?
You can make that go further by not only batching your content (writing multiple blog articles or recording a few podcast episodes at a time), but you can break up that long-form content into multiple pieces.
Think about it. One blog post can easily be turned into:
- A YouTube video
- Podcast episode
- Three to four social media posts
- Multiple social media stories
- Email blast
Once you’ve written or created that long-form piece of content, you can take pieces of it to use in smaller capacities. Cover just part of the overall topic or give away one of the quick wins. You can always direct them to go to the larger piece of content itself or give them enough in that one piece that they don’t need to find the larger article.
I, personally, also spread them out. If I have a blog post go out one week, I create a couple of social media posts around it, but I might also post something about it on social media a couple of weeks later. It doesn’t have to be done all at the same time.
Get that calendar back out and start planning out those broken-up pieces. Choose which channel you’ll post on and what day you’ll be sharing. This helps you to fill in the gaps, keep a theme consistent, and it helps extend your reach on a long-form piece of content since not everyone will see it the first time.
Create Content Easier with AI
If you’ve listened to any marketing podcasts over the years as you’ve grown your business, you’ve probably gotten overwhelmed by just the thought of all the content you have to create to stay ahead.
But it doesn’t have to be that way!
Thanks to some powerful new tools at your disposal, you can shortcut the hardest part (coming up with the “what to talk about”) and start creating valuable content for your audience.
Make sure that you grab my cheatsheet to reference for when you start planning out your content topics with ChatGPT.
90 Days of Content in Minutes with ChatGPT – Cheatsheet
You don’t want to miss this freebie! Make your content creation super easy with these ChatGPT prompts that will help you get the best answers for yourself and your audience.
