How Ev Chapman Unlocks New Ideas From Old Content With A Simple GPT Prompt
Turn 1 piece of content into 10
Hey there!
Last week, I discovered a fascinating method for repurposing content with AI.
It was too good not to share with you.
The technique comes from Ev Chapman. Ev is a long time friend from the early days of Ship 30 for 30. She helps creative solopreneurs build note-taking systems so they can think & create at their best.
She’s a sought after knowledge management expert and founded the Spark Note-Taking Method that helps creators turn their random knowledge into powerful (& profitable) ideas.
You can find her hanging out on X/Twitter or more recently threads and making videos on Youtube.
Here’s Ev:
“We know we should remix our content.”
“Say 1x thing 100x ways” is the catch cry of any good creator.
And while we probably all agree in theory, the reality can be much harder:
Sometimes we're just out of creative ideas
We feel like we're just repeating ourselves
We’re too close to the idea that we can’t see it in different ways
And of course sometimes we’re just bored with the content & want to move on to something new (c’mon admit it we all like shiny new ideas).
So you can try sitting in a dark room for hours staring at your content and willing yourself to come up with yet another way to communicate this damn idea.
Or we could make this whole process much easier.
Spark Fresh Ideas From Old Content
I was recently invited to be interviewed on a podcast and the interviewer asked me a question about something I had recently posted on X. I had no problem talking about the idea. In fact it prompted me to see the idea from a different perspective.
When I got off the call I had several new post ideas that I added to my ideas library.
It felt so easy to find fresh perspectives when someone else asked me the questions.
And that got me thinking.
What if I could replicate that same conversation for each of my long form posts? Of course I don’t have a podcast host at hand every week to help me.
But what if I could get ChatGPT to act as a podcast host?
And that’s exactly how I came up with “Pretend Podcast GPT.”
Here is how it works:
The “Pretend Podcast” Prompt
This works best with a longer form piece of content. So grab a newsletter, thread or long form social media post that you’ve recently published.
The prompt itself is relatively simple, but has worked beautifully for me:
You are a world class podcast host. You are intensely curious and skilled at pulling out fresh perspectives from your guests
Your job will be to interview me on a specific topic and content that I provide.
You will ask me a set of questions related to the topic & content. These questions can be explicitly related to the topic, or you might ask me questions where I can expand on something related to the topic & content.
Prepare at least 10 questions for me & present them as a list.
Do not attempt to answer them for me - that is my job.
Get curious about me & let’s go!
Here is the topic & content
Topic: {Insert Your topic}
Content: {Paste your content below}
Run the prompt and you’ll end up with a list of questions just like you were being interviewed on a podcast.
Honestly the first time I ran this prompt I was surprised at how good these questions were.
Below is the list of 10 questions ChatGPT generated for my article, 3 Weird Things I Do To Stay Inspired Every Day.
Now you can go through each question and let it be a jumping off point for new ideas. This is where you can get creative again by exploring different perspectives. I find the questions jump start my brain again & it’s not a struggle to fill my idea bank with a lot of fresh ideas about the content.
Turn Questions Into Short-Form, Long-Form, Or Even Videos
A single session with Pretend Podcast GPT can generate so many new ideas. Depending on how you like to create you can use these for long form content, short form posts, or even videos.
As well as banking ideas to work on later. I like to answer each question in a short-form video just like if I was on a podcast.
Just by using the Pretend Podcast prompts I batch filmed 20 reels in 3 hours using this process. That is enough for a full month of content.
Whether you film them as shorts or use the ideas for more long form content. It should be easy to see how using the questions as prompts can help you batch create enough content to keep filling your content calendar.
Here's Why I Love This Process:
➤ It's not hard for me to talk about the topic because I've already written significantly about it.
➤ The questions help me to dive into my experiences & stories which is something that I often find difficult when writing (I usually skip to the ‘how to’ content). This has helped my content be more relatable.
➤ Because I also film my answers, now I have a completely different medium of content that I can share that is not writing.
➤ Because they relate to an idea I have written about I can link each of these short videos (or written content I produce) back to the pillar article because they are all interconnected. This creates a tight web with all of my content.
➤ And finally, AI isn't doing the thinking or writing for me - It is prompting me to think better & more deeply about my own content.
What are you waiting for?
Give you old content new life!
- Ev
That’s it. We hope you enjoyed this guest post from Ev.
Chat soon,
Co-Creators of Ship 30 for 30.
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Awesome thinking prompt... just what I need!
Cole, this is ridiculously useful. Thanks so much.