What is AI Content Operations?

Lesson 1: An introduction to understanding AI writing systems

This is a free sample lesson for a course on understanding AI writing systems called PromptOps. If you would like to exclude this from your Cyborg’s Writing subscription, you can turn it off in your subscription settings.

---

How do you keep up with AI developments?

I get asked this a lot. My answer?

I don’t.

Why? It's not about “keeping up with AI.”

It's about strategically organizing your AI workflow, understanding key principles for framing your tasks, and focusing on relevant innovations.

Keeping track of every AI update will lead to information overload and inaction.

Let’s talk grocery shopping. I hate super-big grocery stores. Sure, I can find just about anything, but I am so overwhelmed by the choices. There are so many that I just want to get out fast. I give up and don’t make any choices.

Or let’s think about Netflix. Have you ever logged into Netflix to watch a movie, only to scroll mindlessly for an hour trying to make a choice?

How do you solve these problems? You need a plan before going to the grocery store or logging into Netflix.

It's the same in the world of generative AI.

You need an AI content operations plan.

What is an AI Content Operations Plan?

Let’s not make it complicated. The word operations is about understanding your workflow as a set of networked relationships between people, processes, and technologies. It's sometimes called a writing ecology.

Just as an ecological system is a network of interactions among organisms and their environment, a writing ecology is a complex system of interactions among ideas, prompts, and the content they generate.

Quite simply, thinking about the environments around our writing helps us shape our content in more detailed and intentional ways. We can let our yard grow willy-nilly … that is an ecology. But if we have an idea of what we want our yard to do, we can shape it to a specific purpose.

This is all people mean by operations...shaping the people, processes, and technologies around our content.

Think about grocery shopping in terms of operations. To start, you need to have a clear purpose. What do you want to accomplish? Save money? Prep for the Super Bowl? Cook a fancy dinner for your partner? Prep easy meals for a busy work week?

Then you need something in writing, like a list of what you need, acting as your plan of action or roadmap.

With this list, the number of items becomes manageable. You have a way to measure your trip's success by how much you spend or how prepared you are for your cooking goals.

If your goal is to save money, you focus on the price and ignore more expensive choices. If you're prepping for the Super Bowl, you might focus on the snack aisle or specialized displays.

You don’t have to know about everything in the grocery store.

In AI, a clear purpose and plan help declutter your workflow and intensify focus.

It doesn't matter how many innovations and advancements appear daily. With your roadmap at hand, you can focus on just the pertinent developments. This is the crux of an AI content operations plan.

Whether it's grocery shopping or incorporating AI into your workflow, you need to understand how those choices fit into the relational contexts of your life … or your specific ecology.

AI content operations involves understanding the relationships and dynamics among elements and leveraging them to create effective content.

An AI content operations plan is a structured approach to managing your AI writing workflow and environments. It's your grocery list. Your store map. The sales flier you picked up or coupon page you perused. The items you repeatedly buy every week.

It's about knowing the best way to shop for you.

Whether you're a blogger, content marketer, or technical writer, an AI content operations plan is crucial for understanding how AI does (or does not) fit into your workflow and using that knowledge to more strategically manage your work with AI.

Examples from Everyday Life

The phrase AI content operations might have conjured images of large tech companies with dedicated content creation teams. But the truth is, AI content operations plans are becoming valuable for anyone who regularly creates content, regardless of background or budget.

Here are some examples to give you a clearer idea:

• History Teacher: Mr. Lee wants to create engaging presentations for his middle school class. He uses an AI tool or prompt to find compelling historical images and videos, then another AI tool to generate a basic presentation script based on those visuals. He adds his own insights and humor to make it engaging for his students.

• Technical Writer: Sarah needs to write clear and comprehensive user guides for a new software program. She uses an AI tool or prompt to analyze existing user guides for similar software, identifying structures and best practices. She then uses another AI tool to generate draft content for specific sections. Sarah reviews and refines the AI-generated drafts to ensure accuracy and align them with the company's style guide.

• Social Media Influencer: Emily wants to grow her audience and engagement on Instagram. She uses an AI tool to track her past posts' performance, identifying the most popular content themes and hashtags. Emily then uses another AI prompt to brainstorm new post ideas based on those insights, tailoring the ideas to fit her unique brand and voice.

• Freelance Content Writer: David aims to increase his writing speed and content variety. He uses an AI tool to research keywords and generate outlines for his freelance writing projects. He then uses another AI tool or prompt to suggest different writing styles or tones based on the target audience, refining and expanding the AI-generated content to meet client needs.

• Corporate Blogger: Maria needs to produce high-quality blog content consistently. She uses an AI tool to stay updated on industry trends and competitor content and drafts blog post outlines based on current events or trending topics. Maria fills out the outlines with her own insights and expertise, ensuring the content aligns with her unique voice.

As we've seen with these examples, having a clear purpose is the cornerstone of any effective AI content operations plan. It allows writers to not only generate more useful AI-generated content, but also incorporate their own unique expertise and human voice at strategic points in the workflow.

If you want control over how technology shapes your content or the way you write, then you need a clear purpose and plan.

Remember the grocery store analogy? Don’t let the store designer or display manager dictate how you buy groceries. Go in with a plan.

This will also help with the overwhelm we all feel when trying to keep up AI tools (or brands of yogurt).

Just like having a shopping list keeps you focused on your goals, a clear content creation purpose keeps you from getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of AI tools and features available.

You don't need to become an AI expert to benefit from AI.

By understanding your goals and implementing manageable AI steps within your workflow, you can unlock significant efficiencies and improvements in your content creation process.

But you have to know what you want to achieve.

Teams Need to Play Together

Consider this from a team perspective too.

If each member of your content team or school is doing their own thing, without a clear collective roadmap, the result would likely be inconsistent content, duplicated work, and lots of missed opportunities.

That’s why an AI content operations plan is particularly crucial for teams and organizations: it ensures everybody moves toward the same goal, maximizing efficiency while also driving consistency throughout your AI-aided content

It also will save you money. Instead of buying unnecessary tools, or not buying any at all, you’ll be able to create the system that matches your specific plan.

That’s what this course is going to be about. PromptOps isn’t just about writing prompts … it’s about managing your AI content operations plan.

Right now, managing your prompts … or prompt operations plan … is the easiest and most accessible way to shape GenAI technologies.

In fact, many “AI tools” out there are just prompts in disguise. So understanding how to manage your prompting workflow saves you from even considering a whole host of AI tools flooding the market.

Why buy an AI tool if you can build it yourself?

So in the next lesson, we are going to dig into what I mean by a prompt operations plan and how you can develop a guiding purpose for how you manage your prompts … and your AI overwhelm.