STOP Using ChatGPT Prompts! The "3-Pillar" AI Content System

[00:00:00] What if I told you that most entrepreneurs are using AI completely wrong for content creation? They're obsessing over the perfect prompt when they should be building systems and processes. I recently taught a workshop at Chapman University, which is local here in Orange County, California, where students went from blank pages to compelling targeted content in under 30 minutes. Not because they found magic prompts, but because they learned the three pillar framework that I recommend to my fractional CMO clients.

[00:00:30] Today I'm going to share the core of this system with you and why context beats prompts every single time. Stick around. This could transform how you think about AI content creation. So make sure you listen to the very end of this next episode of the Digital Marketing Coach Podcast. Social media, content influencer, marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, TikToking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing.

[00:01:03] There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your digital marketing coach.

[00:01:35] Hey everybody. This is your digital marketing coach, Neal Schaffer. And welcome to episode number 436 of my podcast and your home for anything and everything digital content, AI, social media marketing, all of the digital threads that you need to cover in order to be successful with your business leveraging AI and digital marketing. Today I want to share something really special with you.

[00:01:59] I recently had the opportunity to guest lecture at Chapman University for Dr. Cynthia West's entrepreneurship class. Currently in the United States, not every university has a major in entrepreneurship. Well, Chapman at least now has a minor in entrepreneurship and Dr. West is head of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. So it was quite an honor to be together with these students that are learning at a very young age how to become an entrepreneur.

[00:02:25] And I walked these future entrepreneurs through a complete AI content creation workshop. The first of its kind that I created, but there will be more iterations of this in the future. I'll talk a little bit more about that at the end. The response was incredible. And I realized this process could really transform how any startup or small business approaches content marketing in the age of generative AI. Before I dive in, I want to quickly share some industry news I've been following.

[00:02:52] We're seeing AI adoption continue to surge across businesses of all size. But here's what's interesting. While everyone's talking about the perfect prompts and copy paste solutions, most I believe are still guessing, especially at the smaller business level, at how to actually build sustainable, scalable content systems in-house. And that's exactly what we're going to address today. So, you know, when I started working with AI for content creation, like many of us about three years ago, it was even before ChatGPT.

[00:03:22] I was using a tool called Jasper, which I believe was the leader in generative AI until ChatGPT came out. There's still a force to be reckoned with. They built their own technology. But I think most of us have moved on to our own ChatGPT or leveraging the ChatGPT cloud Google Gemini APIs. But when I started over three years ago, I was just like everyone else, focused on finding that magic prompt that would solve everything.

[00:03:46] But what I discovered over the years through working with a lot of professionals, a lot of companies, is that it is not about the prompt. It is about the process. And more importantly, it's about the context you give AI to work with. Now, if you are a regular listener of this podcast, you probably heard me in episode number 428, not too long ago, talk about the Ask Neil framework, seven steps to make AI sound like you.

[00:04:13] I would say the Ask Neil framework I really created for LinkedIn content creation, whether it is status updates or your bio. But what I'm going to go into today is a little bit more of a foundational framework, even before we do that, to help define your brand, your target audience, and use that to create even better results using AI. So they go hand in hand.

[00:04:37] And if you are a relatively new listener, I highly recommend that perhaps you want to listen to episode 428, either before or after this episode. I'll let you decide. But anyway, the workshop at Chapman University really crystallized some things for me as I prepared, presented, and saw the feedback in front of my eyes. Now, these entrepreneurs in the classroom were building everything from safety translation software for construction sites to career guidance platforms for high school students.

[00:05:06] Each had completely different target audiences, different brand voices, different pain points to solve for their target audiences. Yet, they could all use the exact same systematic approach to create compelling, targeted content that actually drives results. So let me walk you through the foundational framework that I shared with these future entrepreneurs. Now, I'm not going to give you like all of the core concepts today.

[00:05:32] If you want the complete step-by-step implementation guide with all the specific prompts and templates that I gave these students to get them started, that's something I'm going to be developing into a comprehensive webinar that I do hope to host in the near future. So be on the lookout for that. But even without the webinar, I think by following the advice that I'm going to give you today, you will get a lot out of this episode and be able to begin implementing this on your own.

[00:05:57] So, first, let's talk about why most people get AI content creation wrong. They treat ChatGPT like a vending machine. You put in a coin, which is a prompt, and you get out generic content, which sounds like everybody else. But here's the thing. AI can be extremely creative, but it isn't creative until you teach it your context. Think about it this way.

[00:06:23] ChatGPT has access to an enormous amount of data, but without giving it specific context about your business, your audience, your goals, it's searching everywhere for information. It's doing its best. But when you provide clear context, you're telling the AI, I only want this subset of information for my question. It helps optimize and improve any response that you get. I'm hoping that makes it a little bit more crystal clear as to why we do this.

[00:06:51] So, the students at Chapman University experienced this firsthand. As I mentioned, one was building AI translation software for construction safety. The other, completely different. Another building a career guidance platform for teenagers. There were others that were building various food and drink or health sites for people with chronic illness. But the same AI tool, completely different contexts, completely different results.

[00:07:18] And everyone agreed that the end results sounded like them and would be engaging and relevant for their audience. So, the system I taught them has three core pillars, which mirrors what I see working with my clients, just scaled for entrepreneurs in small businesses. So, let's go through these one by one. And, color one is your ideal customer profile. We're sort of beginning with marketing 101 here, right? And as I would always say, social media replaces nothing.

[00:07:48] It complements everything. AI is the exact same thing, right? So, you still need to create a product. You still need to sell a product. Therefore, you should, in your mind, have an ideal customer profile. You cannot create effective content for everyone because then you serve nobody. I think you know that famous quote. So, I had these students get laser focused on one specific type of customer.

[00:08:13] Not everyone, but that one person that you think is going to become your first advocate. We went deep. Demographics, role, as in, are we targeting CTOs, CEOs, small business owners, entrepreneurs? Goals. What are the goals that our ideal customer profile has and how can we help them reach them? But more importantly, what was their number one problem? How and where do they look for solutions?

[00:08:40] So, as I mentioned, to give some brief examples, one student was targeting construction company CEOs with 100 plus employees who struggle with safety communication for non-English speaking workers. Another was focused on 35 to 39 year old women with chronic health conditions seeking holistic treatment options. That's how detailed we should be in creating our ideal customer profile. We can go even deeper in more detail than that,

[00:09:09] but I think those are two really great starts to developing this. The specificity is what makes AI come alive. When you tell AI exactly who you're talking to, it can craft content that speaks directly to that person's world. But that content has to be in your voice, which is why the second pillar after developing your target customer profile is brand voice development.

[00:09:35] Your brand voice is how you, the startup of you, or your startup, or your small business, or your company, or your brand sounds across every single piece of content. It is your personality showing up consistently. What most people don't realize is that this becomes your secret weapon for getting AI to create content that sounds uniquely like you. I had the students choose two to three personality traits from a list.

[00:10:03] Things like professional and authoritative, yet approachable, or friendly and inspiring. Then we fed this to AI along with their ideal customer profile. The results were remarkable. One student got your business dream, our mission. Let's build it together for their student entrepreneurship platform. Another got when safety speaks, everyone must understand for their translation software.

[00:10:29] Same AI, completely different voices because of the context we provided. Pillar three, and this is where it gets really powerful. Instead of guessing what they're right about, we systematically identified the three biggest pain points their ideal customers face, then used AI to generate content topics that directly address those problems. But here's the key. We didn't just ask for blog post ideas. We didn't ask for SEO keyword research.

[00:10:57] We asked AI to recommend topics that, if published and found by their ideal customer, would solve their problem and make them want to engage further with the company. So once you have these three pillars locked in, you can then move into the implementation of actual content creation. The content creation process now becomes incredibly streamlined because you have more context to give AI. We moved from topic ideas to full outlines to complete first drafts,

[00:11:26] all while maintaining that consistent brand voice and laser focus on the ideal customer. I watched these students go from blank page syndrome to having structured, compelling content in under 30 minutes. But more importantly, each piece felt authentic to their brand and spoke directly to the target audience's needs. So here's something that might surprise you though. I mentioned that we weren't doing keyword research or asking for SEO optimized titles. We were looking at pain points and solutions.

[00:11:53] But all of this ties directly into search engine optimization, but not in the way most people think about it. You see, I talk about this a lot in personal branding and this is where it comes together with corporate branding is that search engines and AI models like ChatGPT need to recognize you as an authority in your space. If someone asks AI for fintech startups in Orange County and you have no content establishing your expertise in fintech, you won't be found, period.

[00:12:21] But if you consistently publish content using the system, right? This is my library of content concept for those of you that read digital threads. And if you haven't read digital threads, that's your companion to digital marketing in the age of generative AI. But if you consistently publish blog posts that demonstrate your understanding of your market's pain points written in your authentic brand voice, this is how you begin building that authority in both the search engine's eyes

[00:12:47] and in large language models' bots' eyes, if they have them. Search engines start recognizing you as someone with expertise and AI models might begin including you in their responses. If you don't have content, they're not going to include you, right? So as you know, I call this the library of content concept. Publish once a week, using this system for 52 weeks and you will have built a comprehensive library that establishes your expertise in your field. Now, there's another secret I want to talk about here that we don't think about as well.

[00:13:16] We talked about the SEO secret. I want to talk about the scaling secret now. Because once you've created your first piece of content using the system, scaling becomes incredibly efficient. You can repurpose a single blog post into multiple social media posts, into email newsletter content, FAQ sections, even video scripts. I show the students how that same content can become 10 different social posts, each focusing on one key point from the original article, or how it can be reformatted for different platforms,

[00:13:46] a 15-second Instagram reel highlighting the main takeaway, a LinkedIn post or a newsletter diving deeper into one specific point. Now, a lot of people go wrong along the way, and I want to share some common mistakes I see because understanding these will save you months of frustration. First of all, content that sounds too generic or fluffy. If someone reads your content and immediately thinks this was written by AI, you have lost them. When done right,

[00:14:14] the brand voice and ideal customer profile prevent this. The more detailed those two sections are that you feed back in the AI, the higher the mitigation of that risk. Second, missing or weak calls to action. You need to be clear about what you want people to do after reading your content. In all honesty, this is a weakness that I have. I'll be completely transparent with you. It's something I'm trying to add more on my blog as I build out more products and services. If you're building that translation software, for instance, as I told this one student,

[00:14:45] end with something like, if you're struggling with safety communication on your construction sites, click here to see how our AI solution can help. And it can bring them to a product page. It can bring them to a free consultation, a webinar that you're doing, whatever that is, right? Bring them one step closer to your brand. Or in traditional marketing terms, one step down the funnel. Now, third, and this is the big one, not injecting your own experience and expertise into the content.

[00:15:13] AI cannot create authentic stories for you. Your personal experience, your unique insights, your specific expertise, that is what differentiates your content from everyone else using AI. I am really, really passionate about this. Even before really the mainstream emergence of ChatGPT when I was writing digital threads and in every other book, I need to make sure that every chapter has a story coming from a client, a case study,

[00:15:41] or from my own personal brand. Those are the things that people remember when reading business books. And those stories are what people remember when they read your content as well. And trust me, I read a lot of books. I have a lot of friends who are authors and I love reading their books. I'm a lifelong learner. I love reading nonfiction books because I'm a nonfiction author as well. And it's really clear when books are AI written because there's no story coming from the author. Like anybody can write a book,

[00:16:09] but not everybody has your stories. And what some authors try to do is they try to have the AI create stories. It sounds like case studies, but they don't say there's no last names, there's no company names, there's no sources as to where the story came from. They're not saying that they were their customer. So I believe there's a lot of hallucinated case studies out there in the world of AI. And in fact, if you sometimes ask AI, it will create these stories for you, but they are not your stories. They are not your customers. They're not your experience. They're not your expertise.

[00:16:39] That is the big differentiator. That is why this partnership with AI, right? Of doubling down of AI being a co-pilot, of the human AI collaboration. Those are the people who achieve the efficiency of AI, but amplify their humanness. And that's where I want you to get to. So looking ahead, I see this becoming even more critical. As younger generations increasingly use platforms like TikTok as search engines,

[00:17:09] and as AI becomes more integrated in how we find information, having a systematic approach to content creation, I believe is going to be essential, especially for the small business and entrepreneurs out there for your business survival. The entrepreneurs who master this now, while it's still relatively new, are going to have a massive advantage over those who wait or who keep treating AI like a magic prompt generator. So as I said, I'm actually developing this workshop content into,

[00:17:38] I'm going to first have it as a webinar, like workshop, online workshop, because I am seeing demand for this. And if this is something you're interested into, feel free to hit me up on social or send me an email to neil at neilschafer.com. I am the real Neil, N-E-A-L-S-C-H-A-F-F-E-R. And I can tell you when this drops or make sure you sign up to my newsletter at newsletter.neilschafer.com. So the complete implementation guide, when finished, will include all the specific prompts, templates for creating your ideal customer profiles,

[00:18:08] brand voice development worksheets, and a content calendar system for scaling your efforts. Plus advanced strategies for things like, how do we integrate that keyword research and competitive analysis into all of this work? So man, if you don't hear from me in a few weeks, that's what I'll be working on. But I think that it is something that the market needs. So if you're an entrepreneur or small business owner struggling with content creation, or if you're in marketing and want to help your clients build more effective content systems, I believe this three pillar framework

[00:18:37] that I taught you today changes everything. It takes AI from being a random content generator to being a strategic partner that understands your business and creates content that will, over time, actually drive results. So if you've listened this far, just like I gave my students homework, I'm going to give you homework. Start with this. Define one specific ideal customer profile for your business. Get as detailed as possible. Not just demographics, but the role, their pain points,

[00:19:06] what keeps them up at night, where do they go looking for solutions, what solutions they find when they go looking. Then choose two to three brand voice traits that would resonate with that person. Feed this context to AI and ask for five content topic ideas that would solve their biggest pain points. And I believe if you do this exercise, you will immediately see the difference that context makes in the quality of AI output. As always, if you have questions about anything I shared today, feel free to reach out. And if you want to be notified,

[00:19:35] obviously, when this course or webinar, haven't decided on the exact form, it becomes available. Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at newsletter.neilshafer.com. Hey, I have some incredible interviews as well as other solo episodes like this one coming up in the next few weeks. I'll be talking with experts about human-first marketing, AI, lots of different topics, storytelling. We always cover a wide variety of topics. I always try to find those experts

[00:20:04] that can really provide insight to help you maximize your ROI no matter what tactic or strategy we talk about with every single episode. So make sure you hit that subscribe button if you haven't so you don't miss any of these conversations and episodes. Well, all right, everybody. That's all for today's episode. Class is dismissed. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schafer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments,

[00:20:34] requests, links, go to podcast.neilshafer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilshafer.com to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First Group Coaching Membership Community. If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.