Ah, my early morning drafts.
The witching hour for the creative.
Those first elusive rays of daylight teasing their way through the shade.
Soft, but somewhat mocking this morning, to be honest.
I sit, coffee in hand - two refills deep, pondering its purpose: a conundrum of flavor versus function.
My desk chair? Suddenly turning into quicksand, threatening to swallow me whole.
And the cursor, that incessant, blinking thespian, is back on stage- its metronome-like rhythm now feeling rather accusatory.
Time to confront the taunting questions:
“Is this newsletter an exercise in logic or futility?”
“Is this content actually valuable to my subscribers?”
“Will the subject line encourage them to click in?”
“Is the content delivering on the subject-lines promise?”
“Is it hitting the mark?”
Each question nags, a relentless self-critic undermining my confidence.
And at the same time, I sense the rising pulse of the entrepreneurial world:
Creatives waking, caffeinating, and their projects miles in the works.
Their ideas: ripe peaches. Ready to be savored.
Mine? Feeling green, hard, unsweetened.
Their ideas are in full bloom while mine are potentially locked away, germinating in a shell of uncertainty.
The ongoing dilemma of creating content.
Tell me I’m not the only one…
It’s at this moment, when I teeter on the brink of writing despair, that clarity strikes.
[Enter] AI Content Coach - neither a mediation chant nor a boutique espresso, but a digital oracle clad in algorithms.
With AI, I’m not relinquishing my voice or creativity. I’m not delegating the writing to AI.
Instead, I’m leveraging the mountains of data it rests on, to hold a mirror up to my draft.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, assess my draft, and show its flaws.”
ChatGPT, trained on a dataset that’s practically an encyclopedia of human expression.
Think blogs, articles, academic papers, you name it.
It has a sense of syntax and structure that I envy, TBH.
So how does one court this data-backed content curator for a quick 1:1 content consult?
Or, let’s call it a second opinion, shall we?
Here’s how I’m testing it:
Prompt ChatGPT: “Please assess the quality of this piece I’ve written. Provide a ranking from 1 to 10 based on its content, structure, and relevance to [insert target audience.] Additionally, please identify any areas of improvement and offer suggestions for making it more compelling and effective.”
Copy + Paste the Draft into a ChatGPT Thread Just a simple Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V of your draft into your prompt thread. Note: Always adhere to the privacy policy. Personal or proprietary data should never find its way to ChatGPT, IMO.
Digest the Feedback The good. The bad. The ugly. It’s like having your work reviewed by a Harvard-educated librarian, your favorite college professor, and Google. And the response you’ll get is pretty consistent: → Helpful → Digestible → Actionable
Here are a few examples of the feedback I’ve gotten from ChatGPT:
“This line is a little vague, and [target market] prefers direct, clear messaging. Consider rephrasing it to something more straightforward.”
“Your call-to-action (CTA) is buried at the end. Make sure it stands out more and consider placing another one earlier in the text to guide your readers on what they should do next.”
“You start with a captivating anecdote, but it takes too long to get to the point. You might lose your audience’s interest. Try condensing the opening and getting to the value prop sooner.”
So there it is…
A personal content consult from ChatGPT.
At the crux of dawn, where caffeine meets the cursor and creativity teeters a high-wire act, we’ve all questioned the weight and worth of our work at one point or another.
You’re not alone.
And again, it’s not about surrendering your creative voice to AI.
It’s refining it, applying a data-driven polish that only AI language learning models (like ChatGPT) can provide in seconds.
Will all the suggestions be on point? No.
Take 'em or leave 'em.
But I've found more to be helpful than not.
It’s quite possibly your ticket out of the existential creative crisis we all face when writing content now and then.
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