Writing blog posts with Jasper

Transcript of this lesson

Austin Distel:

Let's roll in here into the next lesson, which is how to write content leveraging Jasper. And of course it's a great tool, but the tool is only as good as knowing how to use it and direct Jasper. So that's why we call it boss mode. So basically, think you're the boss and Jasper is your assistant. So if you are a freelance writer or a copywriter, content marketer, give yourself a promotion and become the boss, become the editor in chief here where you're thinking strategically with this keyword research, then going into Jasper with a plan and having your assistant write this content and now you become the editor.

Austin Distel:

And so I would love, Osama, for you to kind of break down, how do you use Jasper? And then how do you also train your team of writers to use Jasper, one, to produce really high quality content and two, to make sure that content aligns with the keyword strategy to make that blog post actually rank on the first page of Google?

Osama Zahid:

Yeah, so honestly, I would say that there is no one right way to produce content on Jasper. I mean, it's so diverse. It has so many features, so many recipes and even your community, they've come up with, if you view the community page, there are so many recipes that applies to different websites, different niches. So I wouldn't really claim that our way is the correct way or the ones that your viewers are using there, that's the incorrect way. But the one that we're using, it has just suited us more. It's worked well for us, and hopefully it would work well for you as well. Or if you're using your own way, that would work well too. Because again, there are so many different features that you can choose to produce content from.

Osama Zahid:

So yeah, the method we use is simply we hire freelance writers. They can either be experienced Jasper users or completely new, that really doesn't matter. We put them in the training testing phase either way. What I test them for is not just to use Jasper, but to make the quality better. I also evaluate them based on how well they're able to distribute that content in terms of the grammar, the formatting, the structure. You could produce 5,000 words with Jasper, but if the content or the quality of the content is subpar, then there's no point, right? You can produce 10K words, but if it's full of grammatical errors or there's no sentence structure or it's just random words or random sentences that are being produced, then there's no point to it. You can produce as much words as you want, but you'd still be on step one.

Austin Distel:

Awesome. Yeah. So of course the training of Jasper comes in, how do you do the commands? And in fact, actually we did an exercise with our team this past week on what are all the ways that you could command? And I'm really excited to share that here in the next two weeks or so, of a whole list of new commands that Jasper follows super well. And a command is basically literally telling Jasper, write a sentence, write a paragraph, compile your thoughts, make a summary, whatever that command is. And so would love to see what you've created here, because as a community, this is basically a mastermind. How do we come together and think what are the best ways to train this artificial intelligence to write better copy? So let me know, how have you been using it? And do you use any recipes or kind of a standard operating procedure?

Osama Zahid:

Yeah, we do have a standard operating procedure. We're still looking into the recipe features because our set of clients is so diverse because we have different websites that have different requirements, different niches. So we can't really just rely on a single recipe. So we're trying to work out our way as to what kind of recipes would suit us best in terms of the types of content we'll be producing. So that's still a work in progress but we do have a standard operating procedure and we do make use of the templates that Jasper has to offer. Let me just share my screen with you quickly. So here is the Jasper's main interface, once you log in, you go to the documents simply, you see these are all of the articles that our writers have been producing, it's an ongoing process.

Osama Zahid:

So, yeah, you create a new document, you start from scratch. What I typically like to do. So what we do is, typically since we work with new websites, we want to see... Let's just assume that we've come up with the keywords, we've submitted the content plan and we received the approval from the client. So what we'll be doing is we'll be searching for those keywords online and we'll be looking at the top four or five websites that are ranking for the same keywords. And sort of it'll give us an idea that, okay, it's a low ranking keyword, but there are still four or five websites that are ranking. What are the secondary keywords they're using? How might they be distributing their content? And that's what we sort of need to emulate to ensure that our content ranks as well.

Osama Zahid:

So for that, I would say... Okay, let's just open up, are grilled vegetables healthy, the keyword that we figured out earlier. Yeah, so it gives us an ultimate guide for the best grilled vegetables, are grilled vegetables healthy, okay so this one suits us a little more because the title is based on the keyword and that's what we want. So, yeah, this is a pretty good content, pretty good, well written article that we can use and it's ranking as well, so naturally. What we can do, is we simply just copy the content verbatim and we... Let's just copy it by paragraph by paragraph instead of the whole thing together.

Osama Zahid:

So yeah, we paste it on over here. This can be our subheading, but we don't want to copy it as it is because that's obviously illegal, we cannot. We use Jasper to get an idea from our competitor sites and then we use it, use its features to come up with its own original content.

Osama Zahid:

So let's see. We can type up the heading as, are grilled vegetables healthy? The first thing that I typically like to use is to go to the power mode. In the power mode, see, these are all of the templates, there's just an endless list so yeah, that's what I said, that no matter what template you use, no matter what strategy you use, it's never really incorrect. It just depends on how you use it. So the first thing we will go to a blog post intro paragraph. This is something that I like to use quite often as Jasper produces an intro which is really smooth. And it really helps set the tone for the rest of the article. Yeah, so this is the tab that opens up, we're going to be... [crosstalk 00:07:51]

Austin Distel:

Looks like you're in the AIDA framework right now.

Osama Zahid:

Yeah. Yeah. Let me just read for a second. Okay. Yeah. So we're going to add in the blog post title, are grilled vegetables healthy? Audience. The audience can typically vary depending on the content, so we're going to be, in this case, the audience that we can use are to marketers, moms... to health conscious people. Health conscious, okay, let's do that. So yeah, the tone of voice can be informative in this case, because this is after all an informational article. And we're going to be using the... Let me see. Yeah, we're going to limit our output to two because two is pretty good as well. We're going to see what kind of statement or paragraph that it outputs. So we have these two outputs just now, are grilled vegetables healthy?

Osama Zahid:

This is a common question that many people have. The answer to this question is... Yeah, I think I would like to choose this one because it's a little more engaging. It sort of gives the audience an idea, in this blog post, we'll be taking a closer look at the pros and pros of grilling veggies and help you decide if it's the right cooking method for you. Yeah. This is sort of out of context, it's the right cooking because we're not looking for a cooking method, we're searching for... Let's try it again. The best feature about Jasper is that it just produces different content every time. So you have lots of options to choose from. And when you look into it, it's why I've kept the output to two because if I were to kept the output to five or six, I would just go through each one individually and just get confused as to which one's better so... yeah.

Osama Zahid:

Okay. Yeah. So this one seems a little more relevant. We can copy this and we can paste it over here. Grilled vegetables are popular summer dish, but are they really healthy? The answer depends on... yeah. The important part while you produce content on Jasper is that you need to ensure that you edit them as you proceed. Because I have Grammarly installed with me, so there's a small grammar issue over here plus I feel that this sort of paragraph might be a little too long, so we can generally distribute it or divide it into two different paragraphs. The answer depends on how you prepare them. So this is sort of the opening statement that I'd like to go with, sort of give everyone an engaging idea as to what's to come. And then this is the general paragraph or the intro paragraph. So moving on, this is the intro paragraph that we've come up with using the blog post intro paragraph template. For the next step, what we can do is we can use our competitor's content to feed it to Jasper and then produce content that is based on it, but it's completely new.

Osama Zahid:

So let's see, let's just copy this down... And for this, I'm going to be changing the template into the tech summarizer. This strategy was actually told to me by Megan, from Customer Success. She's the one and who made the video for me and wrote down the article. She was really helpful with it. And ever since then, I've instructed my writers to use this as well, because it has cut down on our publishing time. And in our field maintaining our publishing time is really important because we're working on a budget as well. And we've hired writers on an hourly basis. So ultimately we want them to cut down on publishing time. We were initially on maybe one hour 20 minutes per article, but with this strategy, we've managed to cut it down to 40, 45 minutes. So it's been really helpful for us. It's been really efficient. So, yeah...

Austin Distel:

That's awesome. So you're able to start from scratch with keywords in mind, of course-

Osama Zahid:

Yeah.

Austin Distel:

To publish a blog or have a blog post ready, first draft done in 45 minutes?

Osama Zahid:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't use this too often now because I have writers to do this. So I might be a little slow, but the writers who do this on a regular basis, they're able to just quickly go through, scroll through the tabs and paste the article and then come out. It doesn't take them more than 45 minutes, maximum 50 minutes, not more than that. So yeah.

Austin Distel:

And so with that, is it a first draft or a final draft? Has it already been edited and images included and [crosstalk 00:13:14]?

Osama Zahid:

Yeah. From start till the end, it takes about 15 minutes, which includes producing content through Jasper, adding images, making the [SEO 00:13:28] adjustments through the WordPress plugins, adding in internal external links, back linking everything, it takes up to 45, 50 minutes.

Austin Distel:

Awesome. And what's the average length of a blog post that you deliver?

Osama Zahid:

Typically, we have set a range between 1000 to 1200 words, but it also depends on the clients. For example, we do have certain clients who told us that, okay, for the package they purchased, they told us to come up with less keywords, let's say 50 keywords, not hundred. And for each keyword, they wanted us to produce an article over 2000 words. So we sort of adjusted based on that.

Austin Distel:

Hmm. That makes sense.

Osama Zahid:

So, yeah, moving on, we simply copy paste this and we paste it over here. Let's just remove the paragraph. And then we generate the... let's generate two. So what this template does is it simply sort of summarizes the content into a short paragraph, but we're not going to be pasting that paragraph as it is. We're going to be using it to command Jasper to come up with a paragraph that's completely new. Yeah. This is just to get an idea of it. So, okay. We're going to add up the asterisks over here and we're going to command Jasper to write a paragraph, write paragraph.

Austin Distel:

And so just for the audience that might not know what three asterisks do, I want you to imagine that Jasper now is blindfolds on above so it's blocked by these three asterisks to not read the content above and be influenced by it. And so now Osama is writing a command, rather than trying to start the sentence and let Jasper finish it, you're actually instructing Jasper to run this command here.

Osama Zahid:

So this is the paragraph, it's a pretty... Some people think that grilled are not as healthy because they're cooked with heat. However, grilling vegetables actually helps preserve the nutritional value. So yeah, Jasper through the command I just gave, it output a paragraph which is of a pretty good size, based on the blog post. And it's based its information from the paragraph that we copied from our competitor website. So what we can do is we can simply remove them because we're not going to be copying them. And we simply keep this as it is. And just like that, we move on to the next paragraph by paragraph, we'll do the same process. We'll repeat the same process and we'll keep on giving commands to Jasper to come up with the paragraphs accordingly.

Osama Zahid:

It depends because sometimes you have to add the content accordingly. You might have to make a few manual adjustments as well just to seek out relevance. But other than that, if the topic is good, if the topic is popular and if you enter the right commands like this, then it should take you no longer than 45 minutes to... Actually it takes about 20 minutes to come up with the entire article. The remaining 20 minutes are spent on adding images, adding back links and making the SEO adjustments. So overall, it would take you about 45 minutes.

Austin Distel:

Cool. A couple notes here, just from our team's experience, Meg is really the queen on this, is you got the blog post intro paragraph is awesome and then if you do the on power mode, we also have the blog post outline. So all you would have to do is give it here on the left hand side, why don't you find that one, the outline-

Osama Zahid:

Blog post outline.

Austin Distel:

Yeah. So this is great. Once you have the title of your blog post and you're thinking, what are some good headings-

Osama Zahid:

Yeah.

Austin Distel:

To fill out, this does a great job at giving you a solid outline. And sometimes what I find is, writers will cherry pick, different headlines throughout these ideas, but this gets the ball rolling. And so, yeah, using each of these is a tool in the tool shed, right? And so here you have the blog post outline and good writers will go in and be like, okay, well, this makes sense for the context, this one too, this one too, especially if you have a keyword strategy for each of your [H2's 00:18:19], then this will really work well and you can compile really the whole outline.

Osama Zahid:

Exactly. But this is for sort of like, it gives us flexibility as to choosing from different headings that are available. But as a content writing service, we also have many, many clients who already have the headings defined, for the keywords that we provide them. So what they do is they simply ask us, they provide us with the headings and they ask us to generate content or paragraphs based on this specific heading. So for that method, what we typically do is we use the same method. We search the headings individually on Google, we go to our competitor sites and we use that information to generate just content through giving Jasper commands. But in terms of flexibility, this is also a great way. I've only added one output. If you add more outputs, it'll give you more options to choose from and you can sort of pick the ones that are suited to your niche or suited to your topic.

Austin Distel:

Cool. Now preparing for this training, I had asked a few of our other customers to request the pros to answer here. So one of the questions is, what tips or tricks do you and your writers have to ensure Jasper writes the highest quality? Is there something that you can... is there any pre-framing that you need to do before Jasper writes, to ensure that? Is there better commands or ways that you found to ask Jasper to do something so that it writes better?

Osama Zahid:

In terms of the pre Jasper process, what we typically do, what I ask my writers is to ensure that they have Grammarly installed. It's to ensure that they have access to [Copyscape 00:20:19] and to ensure that they have access to sort of a dictionary as well, because these three tools are essential to come up with content. Grammarly, because you want to ensure that your content doesn't have any formatting errors. For example, there's a space between healthy and question mark. A lot of writers manually do this, but this grammatically is incorrect. So it's why Grammarly is so important because it's sort of very convenient to use and it just highlights all of the grammatical or the formatting errors that you're having. And it just gives you suggestions on how you can correct it. Not only that, but you can also sort of shape Grammarly based on your audience. For example, Grammarly has the option to set up its grammar based on the US audience or US English or UK English or whatever different variations of English that are available. There are different regions to choose from.

Osama Zahid:

So if you select that option to sort of focus on a specific geographical location and its English variation, then Grammarly adjusts exactly according to that and then highlights those words or the formatting errors accordingly. As for the in Jasper-

Austin Distel:

Quick tip on that. If you look at the top right, you can see the Grammarly button. So we've partnered with Grammarly to... Here within Jasper, we have a native integration, so you don't even need a Grammarly account separately. We have Grammarly basic right here built into Jasper if you activate it in the top right.

Osama Zahid:

I think over here, right?

Austin Distel:

Yeah.

Osama Zahid:

Enable Grammarly. So, yeah, as for using Jasper and its commands, this is the typical SOP that we use to come up with content. But our writers, since most of them have more experience than I do at this point, because they've been working for three, four months straight on a daily basis. And I often ask them to sort of experiment with the content or set up a sample article with a different strategy. So there are what I would say is that, try experimenting with different templates, use recipes because we're still working on a recipe, especially if you have a personal website or you are an individual or a team that has a website and has everything figured out in terms of the niche, in terms of the keywords and everything, then the best way to produce content quickly and effectively would be by using recipes.

Osama Zahid:

If you ever look at the Jasper community, you'll find that so many users, the community there is so helpful because they've posted their own secret ingredients, their recipes. And if you choose the one that fits you the most, then you can sort of rapidly produce content without having to edit much of it. That would exponentially increase your output as well as the quality of the content. But as for us, since we have a very diverse set of clients. Like I said, there are different templates, there are different features that we use. Sometimes if nothing comes up on Jasper, we simply use the rephrase tool to sort of mix it up with that specific paragraph. The one important thing about the rephrase feature is that it's not a content spinner. I think a lot of people are under the misconception that it's just a plain old content spinner, it's not.

Osama Zahid:

The best part about Jasper's rephrase feature is that it not only re rephrases or restructures the content, but it also additionally adds content to it. It adds additional information or it adds value to that statement or the paragraph that you're rephrasing. So this is also a very good tool to use. If you're unable to sort of use the tech summarizer feature or the blog intro paragraph, you can simply use the rephrase feature and Jasper will do such a great job at adding additional content and restructuring the entire paragraph.

Austin Distel:

Hmm. So cool. Yeah. And I think if you go to community.jasper.ai in your browser here, then you'll find recipes. And because we are already pretty far into this training, we're not going to go deep into recipes, but I wanted to explain some of these here and you can just go ahead and click on the very first one, as an example. But this is a series of commands, kind of a standard operating procedure where you have... And it compounds on itself and learns. So write a brief for, why vegetables are healthy and then write blog title ideas for the above and it reads that. And then once it comes up with those ideas, it'll write an introduction and then a blog outline and then, it'll write paragraphs for each one of these sections. So this makes it easy to literally save into your account, copy and paste.

Austin Distel:

And then now you can quickly ideate upon this. We found that our most efficient users have maybe started here, but then they've gone upon this and created their own framework, their own recipe sometimes just for internal work, they can also share that. And so that's where if you go back a page, the community has come up with their own. And so some of these recipes are for writing scripts for their YouTube channel or very specific types of blog post such as a product review blog post. The outline of that might be a different kind of blog post than if you were to do more of a [listical 00:26:26] or a think tank article. These are different types of articles and so more tools in your tool belt for you to save time. But this is what scaling content can really look like and getting down these efficient processes.

Osama Zahid:

Yeah, exactly. And one of the additional advantages that I'd just like to point out, is that a lot of these recipes, regardless of what you use, what type you use, they're going to be heavily optimized in terms of SEO, no matter what kind of recipe you use, you're going to be essentially commanding Jasper. And the type of content that Jasper would produce, would really, really help your website or your channel or whatever template you're using, it would help it to grow and attract traffic. This is something that I've sort of personally witnessed as well. We're not essentially using this as part of our service, but I have played around with Jasper for our personal site as well as some experimenting on a personal level. And it works really, really well in terms of SEO optimization.