Magically Turn Headlines Into Short-Form Content With ChatGPT

The best way to leverage short-form content is to test "outlines." Then, turn your highest-performing short-form into valuable long-form assets.

Hey there, Digital Writers!

Being a prolific writer really isn’t about being “brilliant” day after day after day.

It’s about testing ideas in small ways, and then doubling-down and expanding those ideas when you see an opportunity to do so. It’s about writing “WITH” your readers—not trying to be brilliant in a log cabin somewhere all by yourself.

We call this Lean Writing.

Lean Writing is all about validating ideas out in the market before doubling-down and investing time in creating longer-form versions.

You can easily do this by creating & publishing bulleted lists that “outline” each of your ideas—and you should publish these outlines to start gathering data.

We call this writing “Outlines As Content.”

Which is what we are diving into today!

Step 1: Start With A Clear Headline (Topic + FOR WHO + SO THAT)

Choose what you want to write about.

Just pick an idea. Then pick 1 problem inside that idea. And then do it again. Keep going down the problem list, getting more and more specific, until you reach a point where you literally can’t get any more specific.

The goal is to write a “long-form headline” that essentially summarizes exactly what you want to write about (Topic), FOR WHO (audience), SO THAT (they can achieve some sort of outcome).

For example…

• V1: “I want to write about real estate.”

• V2: “I want to write about buying your first rental property.”

• V3: “I want to write about what questions to ask current owners of rental properties to figure out whether it’s a good deal or not.”

• V4: “I want to write about what questions to ask current owners of rental properties to figure out whether it’s a good deal or not—specifically for properties in Miami, Florida.”

• V5: “I want to write about what finance-related questions to ask current owners of rental properties to figure out whether it’s a good deal or not—specifically for properties in Miami, Florida—so that you know you are buying a property you can rent profitably AND flip for sale in 2 years or less.”

Once you get to a point where you can no longer really clarify the Topic, the WHO, or the SO THAT any further, now you know you’ve gotten to the Subatomic Idea.

Which means you should now write a Tweet or short-form post that “outlines” that small idea BEFORE you over-invest in it (aka: write it into anything long-form).

Let’s keep going!

Step 2: Turn Your Headline Into An “Outline As Content”

Once you have an idea, the next step is to outline it.

Here’s the mental shift we want you to experience:

Every single piece of writing, in some way, is a list.

• A New Yorker article discussing the benefits of living in a certain city? It’s a descriptive “list” of benefits.

• A Buzzfeed article curating different kinds of socks to wear depending on the time of year? It’s “listing” socks, and “listing” the different times of year.

• A novel that spends 3 pages describing a vacant house? Those 3 pages are “listing” qualities of the vacant house.

• Listen closely: “The list goes on and on…”.

What is the above? It’s a LIST!!!

At the end of the day, all great “writing” is basically just a Jenga tower of ideas stacked on top of each other. And so what’s the easiest way to figure out what “ideas” need to go together? By listing them out!

Short-Form Content = An “Outline”

Short-form content doesn’t have to just be “short Tweets.” In fact, thinking about it that way is extremely inefficient—because it requires you to “think” about each idea individually. It also forces you to create 2x or 3x or 5x more content than you need to (you have to create short-form content and THEN different long-form content and THEN different even longer-form content, etc.).

So, we want you to think of all your Tweets as “Outlines As Content.”

What does that mean?

It means every time you write something “short,” what you should really be doing is testing to see whether or not this batch of ideas (this list) is compelling to readers. Because IF IT IS, then it becomes extremely clear which of those “outlines” is worth expanding into longer-form content.

Which compounds all of your efforts.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say your Headline is “Teach beginner writers the fundamentals of copywriting so they can sell their first digital product.”

What should you list out in order to “test” whether or not the reader finds those “tips” valuable?

TIPS!!

For example:

This is an “Outline As Content.”

And if this short-form post performs well, you now know: readers are interested in a) Tips, b) “To Learn,” c) Copywriting, and d) these “Tips” you listed, they found helpful.

That’s a bunch of variables you now have a reasonable amount of data telling you are worth experimenting with over and over again! This is what makes Digital Writing such a science experiment.

There are a million possible things related to your topic you could give them—you don’t have to just give the reader a list of tips.

• Give them the steps

• List all the questions

• Curate all the tools

• Name the mistakes

• Etc.

Then publish each piece as its own “Outline.”

The more you publish, the more you learn.

Step 3: Train ChatGPT To Turn Headlines Into “Outlines As Content” (Tweets)

Now let’s combine Steps 1 & 2, and train ChatGPT on how to turn headlines into short-form content (“Outlines As Content”) for you!

Here’s the prompt:

I am going to train you to write short-form content (280 characters or less).

Here are the rules:

1. It must open with an encouraging sentence
2. 3-5 succinct bullets organized in a list
3. Do not use hashtags and emojis. Ever.

I am going to give you the headline and you are going to write a short-form piece based on that headline.

Do you understand?

Boom!

You now have now trained your Digital Writing Assistant to turn a headline into a short-form piece of content (an “Outline”)—which you can expand more, later, if you’d like to!

With this approach, you’ll never have to wonder about what to test on Twitter again.

But… A Couple Things To Keep In Mind:

• Remember, ChatGPT is still buggy. It won’t give you perfect answers every time.

• ChatGPT-4 will probably give you better answers here than ChatGPT-3 or ChatGPT-3.5, but it’s worth playing around and seeing which ones gives you the output you’re looking for.

• ChatGPT is notoriously bad at remembering to NOT use hashtags or emojis. So, if it gives you an answer with hashtags or an emoji, just remove them and keep the rest.

• You can always respond to ChatGPT’s first output and ask it to rewrite or improve based on your feedback (the first “answer” doesn’t have to be perfect! Train your Digital Intern!).

• ChatGPT’s strength is in listing out tips, mistakes, even stats, etc. So, keep those, and just rewrite the first and last sentence… and voila!

Chat soon,

Nicolas Cole

Dickie Bush

Co-Creators of Ship 30 for 30.