The One AI Prompt That Gave Me 50 Blog Topics
I've been in sales and marketing a long time, and I usually walk out of marketing workshops with theory and nothing to actually do. Carly Olson's workshop in September was different. I left knowing exactly what I was going to do, starting with one AI prompt.
Carly, founder of Divergent Marketing and Branding in The Woodlands, explained why on the podcast. People aren't typing "best plumber in The Woodlands" (or insert your city) into Google the way they used to. They describe their problem to ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude and ask who can fix it. In her words, SEO is a search and AIO is a conversation.
The prompt
First, ask Claude or ChatGPT to crawl your website to understand your brand voice, tone, value proposition and target audience. Once it shows you what it found, ask it to crawl Substack, Reddit and the internet in general to understand what your target audience is searching for this quarter.
I ran it for my business, then for my husband's business, and came away with 50 topics for this quarter. I'll run it again in January for his, because his business is seasonal and the questions change. Carly recommends batching every month or two instead of asking for a year of topics at once. She also says to niche down: ten posts on the pieces of a topic will help you more than one post on the whole thing.
Why blog if nobody reads it?
Carly's take is that people mostly aren't reading your blog, but robots are, and they're looking for proof that you're the best at what you do. It's the same reason recipe sites put a long story above the recipe. That story is how you found the page. Pair your blog with a complete, active Google Business Profile, with photos and regular posts, and you've given AI a lot more to work with. And every industry has questions customers are asking, no matter how boring you think yours is.
Carly's last word was about brand, and I'll leave you with her test: can you tell someone who you are, what you do, what problem you solve and for whom, in 30 seconds?
Listen to the full episode here
FAQs
What's the difference between SEO and AIO?
SEO is about showing up when someone searches. AIO is about showing up when someone has a conversation with an AI tool like ChatGPT and describes their problem.
What AI prompt can I use to come up with blog topics?
Ask the AI to crawl your website to learn your brand voice, value proposition and audience, then ask it to search Substack, Reddit and the web for what that audience is looking for this quarter.
Does a small business still need a blog?
Yes. Carly Olson says few people read blogs today, but AI tools do, and a blog that answers your customers' real questions helps AI recommend you.
