How to use ChatGPT to write blog posts: A practical guide

AI tools like ChatGPT have completely changed the game for content creation. If you're a blogger or marketer, you know it can be a huge help for brainstorming ideas, pushing past writer's block, and getting a first draft down way faster than before. It's a solid assistant for getting the ball rolling.

However, turning a raw AI draft into a polished, SEO-friendly article that people want to read requires extra work. The text from a general tool is often generic, may contain factual errors, and usually lacks the structure needed to rank well in search results. While general tools are a solid starting point, specialized platforms offer a more automated solution. For instance, the eesel AI blog writer is designed to produce a complete, optimized, and media-rich article in one step, bridging the gap between a first draft and a publish-ready post.

What is ChatGPT?

The technology behind it is complex, but you need to know its limits. The free version of ChatGPT has restricted access and might use older, less powerful models when a lot of people are using it.

The most important thing to remember is that its knowledge comes from the data it was trained on, which isn't always up-to-date. It can browse the web to find newer info, but it still has a habit of getting facts wrong or just making things up. That means you absolutely have to fact-check everything it produces before you hit publish.

A step-by-step guide for writing blog posts with ChatGPT

Using a general tool like ChatGPT to write blog posts isn't a single-click job. It's a hands-on workflow that involves several stages to get from a simple idea to a finished article.

Step 1: Brainstorming topics and outlines

First things first, use ChatGPT for what it’s great at: coming up with ideas. You can ask it to brainstorm topics, titles, and outlines. The trick to getting good results is to give it clear context and a specific role to play.

• Pro Tip

  Don't just ask, 'give me blog ideas.' Be specific. Try something like: 'Act as a blog post copywriter for a B2B SaaS company. Brainstorm 10 article ideas about project management software. For each idea, explain why it would appeal to marketing managers.'

This level of detail helps the AI give you more relevant and targeted suggestions, which is a much better starting point.

Step 2: Writing the article section by section

It’s tempting to ask ChatGPT to write a 2,000-word article in one shot, but the quality tends to drop off the longer the text gets. Many people find they get better results by prompting it to write snippets or one section at a time.

I do not use or recommend using Chat GPT to create articles and then using those blogs as is. I think using it as a framework to structure is fine but it simply isn't good at writing. It's redundant, sometimes inaccurate, and doesn't produce the highest quality content.

Reddit

This means you feed each heading from your outline back to the AI. For instance, ask it to write the introduction first, then the section for your first H2, and so on. This approach keeps the AI focused and produces more detailed and coherent content for each part of the article.

Step 3: Editing for clarity, tone, and SEO

The first draft you get from ChatGPT is never the final one. It needs a lot of manual editing to match your brand's voice, clean up repetitive language, and optimize for search engines.

You'll have to work on the tone to make it sound less like a robot and more like your company. This can involve a bit of back-and-forth with prompts. For example, you might ask: "Rewrite this paragraph to be more confident and direct, and include the keyword 'customer service automation'." You'll also need to go through the text yourself to make sure your target keywords are placed naturally for SEO.

Step 4: Finding sources and adding visuals

ChatGPT only gives you text. A good blog post needs more than that: it needs images, charts, videos, and other visuals to break up the content and explain key points.

This means you have to go out and find or create these visuals yourself. Once you have them, you need to upload and place them within your content management system (CMS). This part of the process is completely separate from writing the text and can add a lot of time to your workflow.

Limitations of using ChatGPT for blog posts

While ChatGPT is a useful assistant, certain challenges arise when using it as an all-in-one solution for professional blogging. These factors can present hurdles to reliably producing content that drives traffic and builds authority.

The risk of factual errors

One of the biggest problems with LLMs is their tendency for "AI hallucinations," where the model generates fabricated information and presents it as fact. This isn't just a rare bug; it's a known issue that even OpenAI is still working on. The platform itself includes a warning to "Check important info."

This isn't just a theoretical problem. In the legal case Mata v. Avianca, a lawyer used ChatGPT for a legal brief that ended up citing several court cases that didn't exist. If you don't rigorously fact-check its output, you risk damaging your credibility and misleading your readers.

Generic content and lack of a unique voice

AI-generated text can often sound bland and repetitive. It tends to lean on stock transitions like "In today's fast-paced world" or "In conclusion," and other clichés that make the content feel generic.

This kind of writing struggles to capture a unique brand voice, which is key to building a loyal audience. When your content sounds like everyone else's, it doesn't connect with readers or establish your brand as a credible source.

Lack of built-in SEO optimization

ChatGPT has no real understanding of search intent or competitive SERP analysis. You can tell it to include certain keywords, but it doesn't know how to structure the content for the best possible search performance.

It's also not built for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which is becoming essential for getting seen in AI-powered search results like Google's AI Overviews. Google has said that content is rewarded based on its E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Generic AI content has a hard time showing these qualities, which puts it at a disadvantage.

No automatic assets or media

A good blog post is more than a wall of text. It's filled with images, infographics, embedded videos, and real social proof that add depth and credibility.

You don't get any of that with ChatGPT. The time you spend searching for stock photos, creating charts, finding relevant YouTube videos, and digging through Reddit for real user quotes adds up. This manual hunt for assets is a huge bottleneck that stops content teams from scaling up their work.

The eesel AI blog writer: An automated approach to content

Instead of juggling different tools and manual steps, a purpose-built platform like the eesel AI blog writer automates the content creation workflow. It's designed to address common challenges in AI-powered writing and produce a publish-ready article from a single prompt.

We know it works because we use it ourselves. This is the exact tool that took our own blog from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months by letting us produce high-quality content at scale.

From a single topic to a complete, optimized post

The workflow differs significantly. With ChatGPT, you have a multi-step process of outlining, drafting, editing, and finding assets. With the eesel AI blog writer, you just enter a topic and your website URL, and the platform does the rest. It does the research, creates an outline, writes the full post, and generates all the assets in one automated step, giving you a nearly finished article.

Context-aware research for a human-like tone

One of the toughest parts of using AI for content is making it sound authentic. The eesel AI blog writer tackles this by analyzing your website to learn your brand's context, voice, and key messages. This lets it create content that fits with your existing material and includes natural product mentions, so you don't get the generic filler common in other AI tools.

Automatic assets, quotes, and video embeds included

The eesel AI blog writer directly solves one of the most time-consuming parts of creating content. Every article it produces comes with AI-created images, infographics, and relevant YouTube video embeds.

It also has a unique feature that finds and includes real quotes from Reddit threads related to your topic. This adds a layer of genuine social proof and human perspective that makes the content more trustworthy and interesting for readers.

Built-in SEO and AEO from the start

With the eesel AI blog writer, optimization isn't an afterthought: it's built into the process. The content is automatically structured with proper headings (H2, H3), optimized keyword placement, internal links to your other content, and external citations. This makes sure every post is set up not just to rank in traditional search engines but also to do well in new AI answer engines.

For those who prefer a visual guide, the video below offers a detailed walkthrough on how to use ChatGPT to write blog posts that are optimized to rank in search results and drive traffic.

A video guide explaining how to use ChatGPT to write blog posts that can rank on Google and generate organic traffic.

Streamlining your content workflow

ChatGPT is an impressive writing assistant. It can help you brainstorm and draft text faster than you could on your own. But turning its raw output into high-quality, scalable blog content is still a manual, multi-step process that takes a lot of time and effort.

For content teams, the decision comes down to workflow preference. A general tool like ChatGPT requires more hands-on management, while a specialized engine can produce complete, optimized content with less manual intervention. The eesel AI blog writer is built for this purpose, turning content strategy into a more streamlined, scalable operation.

Ready to stop drafting and start publishing? Try it for free with the eesel AI blog writer and see what a purpose-built platform can do.