The Savvy Seller with Kristen Doyle

166. The Smart Way to Use AI for Content Creation Without Losing Your Voice

• Kristen Doyle, TPT seller, SEO coach, and web designer

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AI for content creation can be a total game-changer, but only if you’re using it the right way. In this episode, I’m sharing my exact process for using AI to save time without losing your unique voice or expertise. You’ll learn how to choose the right AI tools, set up “project-based AI” to streamline your workflow, and create a brand voice guide that keeps your content sounding authentically you. Plus, I’m revealing my favorite trick for getting more natural results from AI.

Want to create your own AI brand voice guide? Grab my AI Brand Voice Fix to make sure your AI-generated content sounds EXACTLY like you!

00:25 – Why most people end up with generic, AI-generated content

02:00 - Choosing the right AI tool for brainstorming, writing, and research

04:15 - Feeding AI the right project knowledge for better results

07:11 - How to train AI to capture your true voice and expertise

11:25 - Action steps to take today to use AI for content creation (and get great results!)

Links & Resources:

Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode166

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Check out my Everything Page at https://kristendoyle.co/everything

Kristen:

If you have ever used AI to help create content, and then you cringed at the output you got because it sounded nothing like you, you know what I'm talking about, all those transforms and unlocks and up levels that you would never actually say, those long, complex sentences, this episode is for you. Now, I absolutely love AI tools. I use them all the time, but most people are using them wrong, and then you end up with generic content that sounds like everyone else's. Now you probably either are doing this and don't notice, or you have figured out that your content sounds like everyone else's, so you feel like you can't use AI. Well, today I am going to share with you my exact process for how I use AI, because it can dramatically reduce the amount of time we spend on content creation. But I'm going to show you today how I use it without losing my unique voice and my expertise, so that what I am creating with AI is still truly me, and it sounds like me. By the way, I used AI to plan this episode, and I'm going to tell you exactly how. And yes, I will give you some specific prompts and strategies that you can use right away after this episode. Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I'm Kristin Doyle, and I'm here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process—things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let's get started, y'all. So it all starts with choosing the right tool and feeding it the right information. Now, every AI tool out there has its own specific strengths, those things that it's really good at, and maybe things it's not so great at. For me, I like to use chat GPT for brainstorming, coming up with ideas, making plans, but I like to use Claude if I'm actually writing content. And if I want to do research with the help of an AI tool, I always go to Perplexity. Once you pick the right tool, then you need to make sure you're giving it the right information to start its job. Even if the AI tool you're using, you've been using it for a long time, and you think it knows all about you and your business from previous conversations, the quality of your output depends on the quality of your input, and it is always going to be better if you give it context for each specific task you're asking it to do. So from a very practical standpoint, choose the right tool for the right job. So if you're brainstorming, chat GPT, if you're writing content, Claude tends to do better, if you are researching, I like perplexity. Never start with just a blank prompt in a random chat if you're looking for really good, high quality content to come out of that prompt. And always give it context. When it comes to that context that you're going to provide, it depends on what the outcome is, and we'll talk about those details in just a minute. But what I recommend doing is creating a project for each specific outcome. That way you can feed it different context depending on that project. So one project, one outcome, not a generic project that knows all about my business, that can create anything and everything for me. Now, to be fair, I do have one like that, that I use for super general brainstorming and things like that. But if I am using an AI tool to outline podcast episodes or draft blog posts or write emails, each of those gets its own separate project. So one project, one task. And then when it comes to getting that project started, feed that project some information in the form of project knowledge documents. I usually do this in Claude, and so I attach Google Docs. That's how I do it. You can do it lots of different ways. You can copy paste content right into the project knowledge, lots of options. I personally like to link to Google Docs, because that way I can change what's in the document if I need to. Depending on the project, you might need to give it different types of information. So I would always start with just a basic summary of your business. Who are you? Who do you serve? What problems do you solve for those people? And then, depending on the project, you might need to share an overview of all your offers or services. Or maybe you need to go deep into the details of one specific offer if you're creating content for that offer. And then I absolutely always include detailed information about who my target audience is, really digging into their pain points, their struggles, those things that I can help with, as well as a brand voice guide. And I used to give my AI projects some sample content I had already written instead of a brand voice guide. But what I learned was, if I give it sample content, it starts to generate more content exactly like the sample. And that maybe sounds good, because it did make it sound like me, but it also made it sound super repetitive. It would use the same phrase at the beginning every single time, the same phrases at the end every time, and it just wasn't feeling natural, because I wouldn't naturally repeat such a formula. So I took a bunch of my content and did a bunch of brainstorming, and I created a brand voice guide. Good news for you, I will share at the end of this episode how you can get your own brand voice guide without having to do all the work that I did. The reason it's so important to create one project for each type of content that you're trying to get out of your AI tool is because when you create those separate projects, this keeps your AI tool from mixing up context, maybe confusing different types of content. I know if you have ever dropped a prompt into chat GPT and asked it to write you an Instagram post, it might have given you something super long and wordy, and when you come back and say, This really sounds like a blog post, not an Instagram post, it says, Oh yeah, sorry, my bad. And then you have to prompt it and get something else out. So you'll cut out a lot of that back and forth by keeping things in a specific project per output type. That way, what you're getting is more focused, more relevant to the type of content, to the offer that you're talking about, and it saves you a ton of time by not having to re-explain everything and re prompt over and over. Now let's talk about how to get those AI tools to use your actual voice. So part of it starts with the brand voice guide that you're going to load in to the project knowledge. But even when we use a brand voice guide, AI doesn't always know all the nuances of your opinions, your expertise on your topic, how you would actually talk about this particular thing, not just your business as a whole. And so when I am creating new content in any AI tool, typically, like I said, if it's for writing, I'm working with Claude, when I create that new content, I always start by talking my ideas out loud. Talking out your ideas instead of typing them, will really do so much better in terms of nailing down your actual thoughts on the topic and your voice in the way you speak about this specific thing. See, the problem with us typing is that when we type, we naturally edit as we go, so those thoughts in our head that we might say out loud, don't ever make it through our fingertips onto the keyboard, because we've been writing long enough that we edit mentally as we go, and we're revising and tweaking and making it sound more perfect. And when we do that, we're stripping away a lot of ourselves from that content. So what I recommend you do, and what I always do is I use the microphone button on my Claude app, or I will use the voice dictation shortcuts on my computer, and I will just share my own unfiltered, raw, messy thoughts about this content. When I'm prompting, I usually will say something like write a blog post for my target audience about this topic. And here are my personal thoughts, and then I'll just start this voice recording of whatever my thoughts are. It doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to be organized, just that flow of content that comes to your brain as you are talking. And then what you do from there is you let that AI tool create this content based on what you really believe, not what it thinks you should believe or what most people typically believe. It will create that content based on exactly what you believe, and it will take those messy thoughts and organize them into a structure that makes sense. I know a lot of times when I'm doing this, I will get halfway through a five minute voice message about whatever my topic is, and I'll remember something I really should have said at the very beginning. Just say it, because the AI will figure it out, and they'll restructure it and put it in an order that makes sense. In fact, this is exactly how I create the outlines for my podcast episodes. I decide on a topic, and then I just voice record unfiltered thoughts, just everything I think about this topic. Sometimes those voice memos are as long as the episode ends up being. They are messy, they are raw, they are not polished and put together. They probably wouldn't make sense to anyone but me, because I ramble, but I feed that into my AI tool, and it takes those thoughts and it puts out an outline that helps me figure out, Okay, start with this concept first. Here's the bullet points that you said about those, and I have it even give me quotes, remind me of exactly my words. And then move to this next topic, and here's some bullet points and the next topic, and here's some points to make. And that way, when I sit down to record, I have my thoughts right in front of me, so that I can refer to those. I can remember what I was saying. I don't hop around all over the place. And the episode is that much easier for me to record because I already did all the brainstorming, and I let AI put it into an orderly, organized fashion, so that you guys don't have to listen to me ramble and brainstorm. You get the polished version after the AI has helped me organize it. Alright, so here is what I want you to do today. I want you to think about one content type that you have. Maybe it's something you've tried using AI for before, or maybe it's something you're already consistently using AI for. It could be podcast episodes, videos you create, blog posts or emails, whatever it is, pick one type of content and set up a dedicated project in your favorite AI tool with all your business information, your brand voice guide, details about your audience, all of those things. In fact, in my podcast outline project, I tell it how I like my podcast to flow. I want an intro, I want to have about this many points, I want an action step at the end every time. And I also tell it how long I want my episodes to be, so it doesn't write me a 45 minute episode outline when I'm not going to record that long. So set up your project. Give it all of the background information that it needs, and then try it to create your next piece of content and see if it doesn't sound so much more like you and really get across your unique point of view, your expertise, that thing that makes you different, that makes your followers turn to you for whatever advice you're giving them. At the end of the day, AI can absolutely save you hours and hours of content planning and creation time, but it really only works well if you use it strategically. So start by feeding it the right information about your business and your voice, work in those dedicated projects for each type of content that you're creating, and use your actual voice to share your real thoughts, your expertise with your AI tool. This is how you get content out of AI that amplifies your voice instead of replacing it. Now, if you found this helpful and you want to create your own AI brand voice guide, make sure you grab my AI brand voice fix. I'll link it in the show notes, or you can grab it at kristendoyle.co/fix. It'll walk you right through creating a brand voice guide that makes sure that your AI generated content sounds exactly like you. I'll talk to you soon.