Hi! I’m DJ. I’ve been a professional writer for a decade now. Half of my career was spent staring at walls. The other half was spent in a complex, mostly one-sided relationship with a blank page. I bled on it. I cried on it. Sometimes it lets me write on it.
Then I met ChatGPT 3.5 (the OG).
Here was a machine that could take my raw thoughts and translate them into a fairly decent first draft in seconds. For the first time, I felt what I think my father would have felt when he met the computer the first time – terrified and fascinated.
Terrified because, quite honestly, my first thoughts were, “There goes my job”. Fascinated by the possibilities if one could learn to harness this power.
This was three years ago. Since then, AI has seeped into every part of my life. Right from the Gemini voice assistant in my car to Claude and Perplexity in my work life. It has doubled up as my research assistant, trusted advisor, a loyal wingman and occasional critic. My initial scepticism and fear have mostly been replaced by fascination.
Over the last year, I’ve created workflows to automate a significant amount of what I do with tangible results. A couple of examples.
I’ve created a Claude skill that has not only automated the process of creating a newsletter but also helped increase the open rates and CTR figures significantly. Another Claude skill helps me turn raw research into a 2000-word thought leadership blog post in my voice.
The biggest win so far was the creation of a social media asset that garnered 200k impressions and drove 600+ sign-ups. Most importantly, AI has enabled me to realize my long-stuck dream of starting my own website. Yes, this entire blog was created with the help of AI.
Yet I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Here’s the truth. Content creation is not what AI excels at. Its forte is creating systems to facilitate content creation at scale. And that’s the next frontier I’ve decided to explore. I’ve decided to document it on my own blog because I learn better when I have to articulate my findings.
That’s what ContentLabHQ is about.
This blog is a collection of experiments, observations, successes, failures, and lessons learned while working with AI. Most of those experiments will focus on writing, content marketing, SEO, and content operations because that’s the world I know best. I’m still learning. The technology is still evolving. This site is simply my attempt to document the journey.
Once again, welcome to ContentLabHQ.