1. Know What You Actually Want

Why This Matters:

Let’s get one thing straight: ChatGPT is smart—but not psychic. If you’re vague, it’s vague. If you’re all over the place, it’ll give you a confused soup of content that sounds like it was cobbled together from a forgotten marketing textbook.

Before you even open ChatGPT, you need to have a grip on what you’re asking for—and why. This is the step where most people mess up because they skip the thinking part and go straight to the typing part.

Here’s what this step really involves:

✅ 1. Be Clear on Your Goal
Are you looking to generate awareness, drive traffic, educate your audience, or convert leads? Knowing the end goal will shape the type of content ChatGPT gives you. A social post meant to entertain will look very different from a blog post meant to build authority.

Example: “I want to create a blog post that positions my agency as an expert in AI-powered marketing tools.”

✅ 2. Define Your Audience
Is your content for tech-savvy start-up founders? Corporate CMOs? Small business owners? ChatGPT can tailor the tone, examples, and depth of content to suit the audience—but only if you tell it who they are.

Tip: Try describing your audience like a persona:

“My audience is female founders aged 30–45, running service-based businesses in the UK. They’re busy, switched-on, and want results-driven marketing advice without fluff.”

✅ 3. Decide on your tone of voice
Brand voice matters. Are you friendly and funny? Professional and punchy? Slightly cheeky but still credible (hello, Flourish PR 👋)? Tell ChatGPT the tone you’re after—and better yet, show it an example.

Example prompt addition: “Use a confident, casual tone—like a conversation with a clever friend over coffee.”

✅ 4. Add relevant background
Have you launched similar campaigns before? What worked? What didn’t? Give ChatGPT a bit of context so it doesn’t spit out generic advice.

Example: “In our last campaign, we saw great engagement with video content but low click-throughs on static images. We’re now planning a product launch with an interactive angle—what would you suggest for a PR strategy?”

✅ What Happens If You Skip This Step?
You get generic, lifeless content. The kind that sounds like it came straight from a marketing-for-dummies template. It won’t resonate with your audience, and worse, it wastes your time.

✅ What Happens If You Get It Right?
You get content that sounds like you, connects with the people you want to reach, and saves you hours of rewriting, rewording, and wondering why it sounds so… meh.

3. Break Big Tasks into Smaller Tasks

Why This Matters:

Imagine walking into a coffee shop and saying:

“Hi! I’ll have a latte, an oat flat white, a vegan breakfast wrap, three almond croissants, and also tell me how to start a business.”

…You’d get a look. Then maybe a burnt croissant and some side-eye.

That’s exactly what you’re doing when you drop a massive, vague, multi-part request into ChatGPT and expect it to come back with something useful. When you ask for too much at once, it gives you something generic, rushed, and often not very usable.

Instead, think of ChatGPT as a really fast-thinking assistant—brilliant, but better when briefed in steps. If you give it one focused task at a time, the quality of the output skyrockets. You’ll also have more control over tone, structure, and content direction.

✅ How to Actually Do It:

Let’s say you want to build a PR and content strategy for a brand-new product launch. Instead of saying: “Write a full 3-month PR and social media plan for a new skincare brand including emails, blog posts, social captions, media outreach, and strategy…” You’d do this instead:

Step 1: Start with Trends & Strategy

“What are the biggest PR and digital marketing trends for skincare brands in the UK in 2025?” Why? This gives you current context, helps ensure your campaign ideas aren’t stale, and often sparks angles you hadn’t considered.

Step 2: Ask for Themes or Monthly Focuses

“Based on those trends, give me a monthly campaign theme for the next 3 months.” Why? Themes help guide content creation and PR angles. They tie everything together and make campaigns feel cohesive.

Step 3: Break Down Campaign Content

“For Month 1’s theme, suggest 5 social media post ideas and 3 blog topics that align with the messaging.” Why? This focuses ChatGPT on building around one idea at a time, rather than creating bland filler for three months.

Step 4: Get Media-Ready

“Write a short PR pitch (under 200 words) to send to lifestyle journalists, using the Month 1 theme.” Why? Now that you’ve got the theme and content in place, you can layer in comms tailored to journalists or specific channels.

Step 5: Repurpose with Intent

“Turn that PR pitch into a short email campaign for subscribers, using a friendly, engaging tone.”

🎯 The Result?
Instead of one overwhelming, mediocre deliverable, you get targeted, clear, bite-sized pieces you can actually use. And if you’re working with clients, this method gives you structured material you can refine, rework, or plug straight into your strategy docs.

🔍 If You Do It Right:

✅ You get focused content, with better tone, relevance, and specificity
✅ You can build a campaign like Lego bricks, making adjustments as needed
✅ You save massive amounts of time, with output that’s actually useful

❌ If You Do It Wrong:

🚫 You get a beige blob of generic content that sounds like a chatbot
🚫 You waste time editing and rewriting something
🚫 You lose the opportunity to build a strong, structured campaign that flows