When I encourage authors to blog, the most common responses I hear are:
- "What do I write about?"
- "Who even cares about my blog?"
- "It’s so much work!"
I get it. Even for those of us who love to write, the thought of blogging can feel overwhelming. But what if I told you blogging could be fun, fast, and incredibly rewarding?
I recently experimented with using ChatGPT to plan, outline, and even draft blog posts—and the results blew me away. Let me share my experience to inspire you to dive into blogging for your book.
Blogging Doesn’t Have to Be Hard or Boring
Discovering Custom GPTs
ChatGPT offers a feature that lets you explore or create tailored GPTs to help with... well, just about anything.
Here’s how I found my blog writer custom GPT:
- Logged into ChatGPT.com
- Clicked “Explore GPTs”
- Searched for “Blogging Coach”
The search turned up many results and I chose a GPT called “Blog Writer,” which was a great fit.
Transforming My Book Research into Blog Posts
My goal is to blog about topics that didn’t fit into my upcoming memoir about traveling solo on a cranky Chinese motorcycle through rural China in 1998. There are a lot of fascinating details about China’s industrialization, rural life, and cultural changes—perfect for blog posts to support my book.
Here’s the query I started with:
"Write a blog post on the difference between today and 1998 in rural China, when the landscape was mostly farmland, with few paved roads and no private cars."
To my surprise, ChatGPT acted as a coach:
"Sure! Let’s begin with the Content Compass to align on approach and audience..."
It then guided me through a step-by-step process:
- Who: People curious about rural China’s transformation.
- Why: To engage them with vivid contrasts and historical insights.
- What: An engaging, clear picture of how rural life changed over time.
Working with ChatGPT: A Coach and Teacher in One
I uploaded my book outline (and later, the full manuscript) to ChatGPT. It digested my writing style and helped me create posts that reflected my voice while adding depth through research.
With the upload, I explained, in response to its prompt asking about my audience, that:
My audience is curious about the facts because they have read my stories about my solo motorcycle travels in China in 1998. While my stories are travel-based, and have some grounding in the history of the development of the country, they are mostly narrative and not academic or scholarly. I want my blog posts to support the stories and books I'm writing about the journey, and to help market my books and stories. I'm attaching my book outline. I'd like to create many short blog posts - 800-1000 words each - that address the facts of the various areas I traveled through and the industrialization of the country, including factories, population movement to the east coast, a movement toward capitalism, facts about numbers of private vehicles, the makes and models of those vehicles, how much they cost, the rising middle class, what they do and how much they make, and other relevant and wide-ranging topics.
Here are some of the blog topics it generated for me:
- From Dirt Tracks to Highways – How Rural China Has Changed Since 1998
- The Mighty Blue Trucks of Rural China – Workhorses of the 1990s
- Rural Markets in 1998: The Heartbeat of Village Life
- Trains Then and Now – The Backbone of China’s Transportation System
- Farming Life in Rural China – A Day in the Fields
- The Village Bicycle – China’s Most Reliable Companion in 1998
And that’s just the beginning—ChatGPT helped me map out 28 weeks of blog posts!
Now It’s Your Turn
Are you ready to let ChatGPT help you brainstorm, plan, and draft blog posts to market your book? Here’s how to get started:
- Follow my process to outline and plan your posts.
- Open a new chat for each blog post topic.
- Let ChatGPT guide you step by step to a finished draft.
Here's the actual conversation
Here's a link to my conversation on ChatGPT. It's not available to the public (because I turned off sharing) but you can see it using this link.
How have you used ChatGPT?
How have you used ChatGPT for your writing and publishing tasks? I'd love to hear and be inspired by your ideas!
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Hey Carla, I use Chat GPT often, and recently taught my trades instructors how to use CHatGPT to create branching stories for assessments and learning. For example, “A cautionary tale: How thorough checks save time and money”
They are not writers (most of them) but have a lot of experience, so I have them input a story in their own language, and ChatGPT turns it into a lesson. 🙂 Story-telling for mechanics!