How to Make ChatGPT Work for Your Business (and Three Prompts to Get You Started)

Let’s be honest, it’s the holidays and you do not have the time to stress about what to post on Instagram this week. When used correctly, ChatGPT can be an incredible tool in your business, but instead of allowing ChatGPT to write boring, generic content for you, use it for inspiration and add your own unique twist. It isn’t always easy to know exactly what to ask ChatGPT, that’s why I’m sharing three prompts to help you get started. We’ll discuss how to ethically use ChatGPT in your content, with real life applications to spark your creativity, so you can start creating content right now. 

In this episode we’ll be covering:

• Why it’s risky to use ChatGPT to create content for you and how to use it responsibly.
• The different ways to use the content prompts and hooks I share with you..
• Three ways to use ChatGPT responsibly in your content: Inspiration and Ideas, Content Repurposing, Tweaks and Editing
• Quick tips for using ChatGPT to help with market research and understanding your audience better (PS: You still need to do your own market research!)
• How to use ChatGPT for inspiration and ideas while adding your own unique spin. 
• Spice up your content, take your existing content and use ChatGPT to make tweaks and edits.

Reels in this episode:

• Hawaii Reel ​​

Other episodes you might have missed:

• Episode 014: Why Creating Specific Content Leads to Higher Engagement
• Episode 035: Turning Inspiration into Unique and Original Content
• Episode 036: Maintaining Your Brand Identity When Everything is Trendy
• Episode 037: Personalization is the Key to Your 2025 Content Strategy

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Transcript

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:05]:
I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never ending content creation, guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked. Good Content. All right, let's talk ChatGPT. Because it is the holiday season, I know you do not have time to stress about what you're going to post, right? You know, on Instagram, I share a lot of prompts. Obviously in the Reels Lab, I do weekly industry specific prompts. But if you follow me on Instagram, I almost once a week share a bunch of prompts for you to take and run with. And just the other day I shared a whole 30 days of prompts, again, reels prompts meaning on screen text.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:47]:
These could also actually be used for the first slide of a carousel. They could also be used for the first line of your caption. They're a hook, essentially. Okay, so if you want to go to that post with the Chat GPT prompts I'm about to share, go for it. And I want to say I have very strong feelings on Chat GPT, especially because it can get you in a really tricky situation. You do not own anything. You cannot call anything your own. If it came from Chat GPT, you cannot claim a formula, a method, a tip, nothing.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:16]:
If it came from ChatGPT, you can't claim a tagline, you can't trademark any of it. So like, be careful. This is a place to go. This is how you use Chat GPT. Ready inspiration and ideas, repurposing content you already have. Or when you come up with a hook and you're like, man, maybe this isn't quite as it's not quite landing, say, hey, can you make this a little spicy or a little more feisty, a little more empathetic, whatever that is. Right? So just tweaks and editing. As my friend said on the Instagram Live, I know I talked about last week, Ryan, she said it is a soup starter.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:49]:
It is not the full recipe. So anyway, have strong feelings about it because a lot of people are getting their stuff copied and it's just be careful. On that note, with ChatGPT, it's an incredible tool. I don't play around with it a lot, but I have started because obviously in my profession I need to learn it, I need to be an expert on it because it's there. Will it replace social media managers? No, because I'm going to be for real right now. I test the prompts that I see floating around and I look at the content Chat GPT spits out. And it is so generic. It is generic AF.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:25]:
It is boring and robotic AF. Yes, you can train it to add some sass and stuff. Honestly, the reason I give you guys the prompts I do on this podcast and with the hooks on Instagram, and again, I share prompts on this podcast every single week. But the reason I do that is because that's what's working right now. ChatGPT cannot tell me what prompts on screen right now, what text on screen right now, on Reels and TikTok are trending, going crazy. What formulas it has no idea. So what I want you to do is take ChatGPT to learn buzzwords, phrases, pain points and desires of your target market, because I know a lot of you. I've talked about this on the podcast so much, you guys are probably so sick of me about market research.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:10]:
If you do not have time to sit down and do an interview with someone, and I know right now in December, that's not happening. So you're going to use ChatGPT to do what I would do for a client when it comes to market research. Okay, I still want you to do your market research, though. I still want you to interview past clients and things like that. And again, sorry for my voice. I've got a sinus thing going on. What else is new? All right, Here are the ChatGPT prompts. And again, I wrote these based on this is like, I just.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:36]:
I don't know. I came up with them because again, for me, when I look at the 4 H's I use, I was like, well, what questions would I ask chatgpt to spit out? Answers that would help my clients fill in the blanks of the prompts I give them for the 4 H's. Okay, so prompt one and I'll walk you guys through it to tell you, to tell you why this is my favorite one, because so many of you tell me you're not funny. Yes, you are, number one. Number two, like I say, the humor category, which obviously we are on Instagram to be entertained. We are picking up the phone because we're bored. Do not add to the boredom. Right? But, you know, humor is obviously going to keep us on the app and we're going to share it and love it.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:15]:
But a lot of you struggle with the humor categories. I would go to Chat GPT for a client and say, okay, let's figure out what these were relatable situations are. Normally my clients just spit them out at me. And we have so much fun creating their content. But this is what you're going to do in Chat GPT. You're going to type. Can you describe some relatable, funny or silly situations that blank have to deal with? I typed in moms, right? Because you don't even want to go as far as, like, someone trying to lose weight. Like, who are your people? You know your people, right? You want to go a little more broad with your humor.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:46]:
Obviously, you can get more niche if you want, but if you are, if your goal is like, no, I want reel to go viral, you got to go more broad, right? Period. Like, when I do the one about Chloe, I mean, the people go crazy. They love it. If I do something silly about a girl's night, people love it, right? It's not my niche. But guess what? People still follow me because they go to my account, see what I do. DM me go, oh, my gosh, I saw that reel. So funny. By the way, I'm trying to grow my business on Instagram.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:08]:
Cool. Let's go. All right, so my relatable situations are less about really niche specific and more about the people who follow me. So I know moms follow me. I know wives follow me. I know a lot of men follow me. A lot of my clients are dudes, by the way. I love it.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:24]:
Like, I work with a lot of construction guys. It's so fun. So what I did in the Chat GPT prompt is what I typed was. And these are going to be the three ChatGPT prompts I want you to take and run with today. Okay, Ready? Can you describe some relatable or funny or silly situations that moms have to deal with? It gave me 17 ideas, and one of one, of course, is, why are you so upset? Next text. Because I wanted the green cup. You gave me the blue one. And then number three, it says mom I'm bored.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:51]:
What you would do with that, you make a list of all these silly situations, and then from there, you come up with your content. Okay? So the next time there's a funny trend going around, you're like, oh, my gosh, I could do a perfect one about kids complaining they're bored. And you could poke fun at it by being like, mom, I'm bored. Meanwhile, we grew up having to sit in the back of a tight Honda Accord with a disc man that skipped every five seconds. Do you see what I mean? You start with the idea from Chat GPT and then you put your spin on it so that. So that no one can steal your copy and your shine and your content because we know it is going rampant, myself included. Okay. I just saw someone else who just did one that was, like, literally blatant.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:32]:
It's just. It's just crazy. So again, even if you see that, I mean, again, I'm a big proponent in calling it out, because every time you don't, it just keeps happening. But in the days of ChatGPT, people think they can just copy and paste something from the Internet and call it their own, and you can't. So this is a good way to really make sure that your content is. Is unique to you. That's a boring. mom, I'm bored.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:52]:
Okay? Get it. How do you take that and drive it home? You can even do a kids now I'm bored with, like, their tablet and whatever me in, whatever grade. Right. Just have fun with your content. Right? All right, next Chat GPT prompt. So again, you would say, moms, what do homebuyers deal with? And what I did for the realtors and the local people. I don't know. Realtors like having my brain right now because my husband's one and we've been thinking of some fun content ideas for him.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:17]:
I put, let's say you're a realtor in Washington, D.C. can you describe some relatable or funny situations that people who live in D.C. have to deal with? And it gave me a bunch of ideas. I love this one. I live in a studio. It's a glorified closet. So if you're a realtor in D.C. you'd be like, you can even take that and just use it as, like, hey, are you tired of renting a glorified closet and ready to da, da, da, like, use the words chat GPT does and put your spin on it? Do you see what I'm.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:39]:
Where I'm going with this? Because that'll help you get the funny, creative juices flowing. Second prompt. Can you give me some feisty pep talks for someone who is debating whether or not to splurge on blank? Because I know a lot of you sell something that isn't necessarily a necessity. So this is. This is where you can kind of have fun and, like, make it really cheeky. So if you sell jewelry or, you know, crazy expensive trips or just stuff that isn't really necessary, it's like an, you know, just a fun gift. I love this one. You're not.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:07]:
And I put for jewelry, I said, can you give me some feisty pep talks for someone who's debating whether or not to Splurge on jewelry because this is more the herd content, right? So this is like making them feel so feisty. Pep talks. Because pep talks. We've seen it all. We want feisty. We want your. So again, you take the generic stuff chat GBT gives you and put your spin on it. Your unique spin.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:25]:
I love this. This isn't a splurge, it's a victory lap. That's cute. You're not buying jewelry, you're buying a statement. So again, you would take. I don't know who needs to hear this lately, but right, you kind of make it more. You add it. You take that concept and then put it with one of the cool prompts I'm giving you guys here on the podcast or in my things whenever I give you guys those that are kind of more seen type of content.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:46]:
So that's the second prompt to get you guys some juices flowing with your ideas. The third one is my favorite. I came up with it the other day and just shared it on Instagram. People are loving it. You're going to say, please share with me why my people hire. You're going to insert your title for reason they hire you. So I can use this information for content. If you sell products, you're going to flip it a little differently.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:08]:
Yours will say please share with people who buy blank luxury cruises over the top bouquets. I don't know. So I can use this information for content and it will tell you why people buy. So there you've got something to help you come up with funny ideas. The humorous content. Someone help you come up with the herd content, which is that stuff that makes them feel seen. Heard permission slips. And especially right now with the holidays, we want to go buy stuff.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:31]:
Okay. And then lastly, why do people buy my stuff? Those three prompts are going to help you and again, it's going to make sure that your content resonates but isn't too chat GPT ish. Because originality is the name of the game in 2025. Speaking of which, there's one prompt I want to share with you today because I just gave you a bunch of homework. Okay, ready? It is From Travels by Nikki 76,000 likes 3 million views. Again, not everyone's reaches down, I hate to tell you. And then you look at what's doing well and tailor it to your niche. So she's a travel agent.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:09]:
A lot of people go to Hawaii but miss this place that's only four hours away from Florida. And then it's like a collection of clips now how do you make that tailor to your niche? Me, as a social media strategist, I would say a lot of people use blank chat GPT. Sorry, I'm annoying, but I know, I know I want to do this now, but miss my. My prompts that are actually timely. That's not that spicy. That wouldn't go viral. Because this is like, hello, look at this. Gorgeous.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:38]:
Everyone wants to go on a gorgeous trip, but do you see it? I mean, who knows? It might. And then in the caption, I'm like, steal my prompts below. They're better than anything chat GPT will give you. And it's true. Okay, if you're a local blogger, a lot of people go to blank. Maybe it's a. It's a. Okay, you know what? For me in North Carolina, a lot of people here in Raleigh go to Wilmington, but I grew up going to the Outer Banks, and hardly anyone here goes to Outer Banks.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:01]:
It's only one more hour away and it's. Sorry, I love it, but again, it's. For me, it's nostalgia. Wilmington's beautiful. I would say. I would have my husband say, because he's realtor and local. I would have him say a lot of Raleigh, add that keyword in. So the algorithm pushes it out to locals.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:15]:
A lot of people in Raleigh go to Wilmington, but miss this other beach that's only three hours hours away from downtown or something like that. And then it would be Outer Banks. All these pretty things. A lot of people use blank on their salad, on their. To add protein to. Do you see what I mean? A lot of people. Because what you're doing is saying, this is what most people do. You're not most people.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:35]:
Okay? So that's what I mean. Taking a viral reel, a viral prompt, and change it into your thing. Podcast managers, a lot of people use this mic, but miss this one. That's $20 on Amazon. I don't know. Do you see what I'm saying? You. You take what you know, your people know what they love because you've done the chat GPT exercise, you know the words that they're going to use, and you use a prompt like that to showcase a product, a service, a method, etc. Okay, I hope that helps.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:02]:
I'm sorry, my brain is a little off today. I hope I still brought some heat for you guys. I promise I'll be back better than ever on the next episode. But thank you for bearing with me in my voice, and I just love you guys, and I hope you have had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And I'll talk to you soon.