Using ChatGPT to Start and Grow A Successful & Persuasive Online Blog

Content is key! Starting a blog is a rewarding task, but it takes a lot of work. We'll show you some unique ways of combining ChatGPT with personal expertise to start and grow a successful online blog.

Justin Gluska

Updated March 18, 2023

a robot typing on a computer in a dark, dim-lit room with blue colors

a robot typing on a computer in a dark, dim-lit room with blue colors

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Blogging online isn't easy... It took me months to start seeing any progress and nearly half a year to start ranking for a few of the things I really wanted to (and that was still pretty quickly). Good blogs take time, but is there a way to speed things up?

With the introduction of AI came insane tools like Jasper and more recently, ChatGPT. After playing with these tools for hours on end, I've realized you can't use them to completely automate your blogging (you'll never get anywhere), but you could totally use them to speed things up.

The first step in starting a blog is figuring out what you're good at, second is seeing how hard it would be to rank for those things, and lastly actually producing/posting content.

If either one of these three steps are not figured out, you won't really get anywhere. Over the next few minutes we'll go over how to start and growing an online blog using AI writing tools like ChatGPT

How To Start Blogging with ChatGPT

So as exciting you may be to think you can just ask ChatGPT to create all your posts for you, unfortunately it's not that easy. Although Google recently reversed its rules and guidelines on AI-generated content (it's allowed now), you still have to produce quality.

ChatGPT is nothing short of amazing, it can write what you want in pretty much whatever tone you want it in. But before you start asking it for content you have to brainstorm what you want your blog to be about.

Step 1) Finding a Blogging Niche

To find your niche the biggest factor is to consider what you're actually good at. What do you like to do? What are your best skills?

Remember, you're not going to enjoy writing about something boring forever. Your motivation will eventually fade, especially during the blogging sophomore slump. You'll have days that you can't stand writing, sometimes even a week.

And that's assuming you actually like what you're writing about! Motivation fades, discipline is what keeps you going. This is at least a 6 month progress before you'll see any considerable results. Why make it harder on yourself writing about something you don't even want to?

You might be asking – why write about something boring in the first place?

Well generally, more "boring" topics don't have as much competition, so early bloggers will say "hey, that's easy to rank for, let me write about that!" only to quit a month in after realizing they've made a mistake. Don't do it! You're better than this.

Ok so back to topic brainstorming. Create a list on pen and paper. The reason I say this over typing one is because writing will actually force you to consider what you're putting down on paper

In this list write down topics that

You enjoy as a hobby (no money involved). Examples include:

  • Extreme skiing
  • Micro wildlife photography
  • Intermediate Ballet Dancing Advice

You are good at professionally (job tasks). Examples include:

  • iOS Frontend Software Development
  • Fruit Farming in Florida
  • Travel Guidance in Amsterdam

Opinionated topics (controversial, things you can brand yourself on). Examples Include:

  • Video game reviews
  • Basketball Sports Analyst
  • Controversial topics*

*remember to brand yourself as something advertisers would want to place bids on

Once you've written your list (5 things would be more than enough) follow a checklist to make sure you can say yes to all three of these tips:

  • Can you write over 150+ articles in some variation around this topic?
  • Is the topic free from something drastic that could alter this topic in the next 3-5 years?
  • Are you interested or have real expertise on the topic?

If you've said yes to all three of these, you are a lot closer to picking your niche. Remember you can't write about everything – so you have to pick a general topic that you can create authority over.

Step 2) Identify Keyword Difficulty

Once you've picked a few topics you'll have to determine how difficult it will be to rank for these keywords. You'll always have to start with long-tailed keywords (less competition & smaller audience) but aim to expand larger in coming months. Examples:

  • How to ensure strawberries don't get eaten by animals in Florida

VS

  • Strawberry tips

One of these is a lot easier to rank than others. Of course it's a lot more detailed and won't capture a large audience, but you have to prove your authority and trustworthiness for a few months before you can expand into more difficult keywords.

To start looking up difficulty, search for a long-tailed keyword example in Google and analyze the first 5 organic links that result. If you see text ads (above organic results), you might be too specific. Again, aim. for lower competition words.

Once you've stumbled on a word that you can rank for (you can also run it through free keyword difficulty checkers) to ensure what you want to write about is rankable. If you Google the keyword and see a website that specifically talks about your topic, you probably won't rank for it immediately. Those sites will have way more domain authority than yours.

Blog long tail keyword on google results search

Step 3) Outline Your Blog Posts with ChatGPT

Once you've picked a topic, let's say we're going with "How to ensure strawberries don't get eaten by animals in Florida" it's finally time to open up ChatGPT and create a blog post outline. Open ChatGPT and type the following:

Create a blog post outline for an article on "How to ensure strawberries don't get eaten by animals in Florida." My website talks about how to grow plants and fruit in Florida. Please generate me 6 total sections and a give me a description of each of them

And boom. Now that's a prompt. Check out what it gave us below:

ChatGPT result to create a blog post outline about growing fruits in Florida

This is exactly what you need. Now you have to write about this. If you don't like any of this, ask ChatGPT to replace a section.

If you like what you see, have ChatGPT expand on a section in a specific tone of voice. Let's say you're trying to be extremely formal, you can ask for an introduction paragraph and also specify who will be reading these articles (a big SEO tip)

Here's what I decided to use:

Generate me an intro paragraph for an online blog that will go on my website based on this. Make it extremely formal. The audience is a bunch of farmers and gardeners of 20+ years.

Here's what I got:

ChatGPT blog introduction paragraph created based on content brief

Now if I were actually posting this blog, I would never include the first sentence. If you pretended that didn't exist (or just omitted it) it actually sounds like a pretty normal blog post, right?

You could totally use this brief to start your article. Where you actually come in is in the details in the content. You got the hook, you got the brief, but now you have to be creative & engaging.

Who are you writing to? What is the vibe you want to give off? What's your goal from someone reading your post (to gain credibility with you, to buy something, to go viral, etc)

Step 3) Create, Refine, and Post Content

Remember, ChatGPT is an assistant – not a replacement. Once you have your content briefs keep expanding the content into the tone you want to portray your blog as.

Repeat the keyword research steps and brief outlines over and over until you have a ton of blogs that you're ready to expand upon and write about.

You need to create value.

ChatGPT is great at lifting you up for the first step but you have to take the jump.

Just keep adding your expertise, format posts properly, and repeat. If you get stuck, put a paragraph into ChatGPT and ask it to fix it (or whatever else you want it to do with it). Here's an example:

ChatGPT-generated conclusion paragraph about growing fruits with specific CTA

And now you have a conclusion that makes sense for what your end goal is. In this case you'd be helping others grow plants. Provide knowledge, inform users, and have them call you if they want additional support! There are tons of ways to monetize blogs, but don't hyper focus on that yet. It took us about 6 months before we made our first penny.

Humans are reading what you're posting, right? I'd hope so.

All jokes aside, there is a legitimate person sitting on the other end of the screen. Google won't show your site to them unless they believe that person will walk away having learned something from your post. No value, no views.

Final Thoughts

This is a long-term game! If you don't have the patience, don't do it! I don't mean that in a rude way, I mean it in an honest one. Just keep writing consistent & quality content and writers and money will come. You'll learn along the way!

ChatGPT is such a powerful tool and I'm almost sure that the best bloggers are already using it. Just keep in mind that ChatGPT doesn't have the expertise in your niche, only you do. Combine its organizational and creative skills with your knowledge to create powerful content pieces & grow your blog into the best site on the planet!

Have any questions about combing ChatGPT and blogging techniques to grow a successful blog? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Want to Learn Even More?

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our free newsletter where we share tips & tricks on how to use tech & AI to grow and optimize your business, career, and life.


Written by Justin Gluska

Justin is the founder of Gold Penguin, a business technology blog that helps people start, grow, and scale their business using AI. The world is changing and he believes it's best to make use of the new technology that is starting to change the world. If it can help you make more money or save you time, he'll write about it!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

2 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments