Using AI As a Turbo Boost

Hey, don’t look at the markets today. 🤪 Maybe I’ll distract you with some WordPress awesomeness instead? 🤣

In all seriousness, though, this market reaction is so over-hyped, IMO. This is a major buying opportunity, if that’s something you’re into. The crypto market especially… these prices are going to feel like gifts in the not-too-distant future.

But, hey, that’s just my opinion. 😇 Let’s move back into the real world here….

I’ve said many, many times how stupid it is to use AI to “write” content for you. But, using it as a turbo boost to help you do it faster makes a ton of sense. Below, I’m going to spell out some ways I do that myself.

Then, I wanted to address a comment I had received about how it could get to a point where it doesn’t make sense to use WordPress anymore if the costs get too high.

So, let’s do this…

Using AI To Turbo Your Content Creation

It has been said so often by people out there on the AI hype train that it has become almost trite, but…

If you’re not using AI, you’re falling behind.

I have been using it as a tool for awhile when it comes to WordPress coding. But, I have also been using it as a tool to speed up and assist with my blogging, too.

Now, don’t get me wrong…

I do NOT condone using AI tools to “write” content. Not only does it make you look generic as hell and easily dismissable, but the algorithms aren’t stupid and you’re sure to be downgraded with your SEO if you just sit there and churn out AI-generated articles. Don’t do that. But…

AI is useful as a tool.

The tools I currently use the most are ChatGPT and Grok. Right now, I am finding that ChatGPT is a better fit when it comes to being used as a blogging tool. But, all of these AI tools are evolving so quickly and getting more capable that any differences you spot one day might not be the case the next day.

Now, let me just give you a quick example here…

I just recently re-wrote and re-published my guide on re-engagement email campaigns. It was originally written in 2015, so it was old and outdated. I completely re-wrote it.

Now, I fully wrote this article. I did not use AI to write anything. But, I did use ChatGPT to assist on a few things…

• I had ChatGPT scan the article and asked it to help me generate a simple PDF lead magnet for a short email series people can use as a starting point for their own re-engagement campaign. It did a pretty decent job of it. It showed me the emails it came up with. I then asked it to generate a PDF version. It asked me for branding requirements (such as my logo) and it did it. I then realized I wanted to make a few quick edits, so I asked it to produce a Word Doc version. I then downloaded that, made my changes, and exported to PDF myself. Quick, simple lead magnet.
• I asked ChatGPT to help me produce a new blog post feature image for the post. I did this within the same chat, so ChatGPT knows the subject matter. It also had clearly spidered some of my own website, since it knew about much of my other content. So, I told it I wanted a new feature image with 1280×720 dimensions, with no text, and I wanted it to be conceptual. It produces 5 different concepts. I liked one… which was “Faded or unread emails being re-lit or brought back to life (symbolizing re-engagement).” I told it to use that one and it produced the feature image which is now on that post.
• I asked ChatGPT to scan the article and give me some SEO suggestions and it did exactly that. It made suggestions for the title, alt tags and some other things. And since it was all in the same chat, it knew I had created that PDF so it even suggested adding it as a content upgrade (which was, of course, the plan anyway).

For anybody who has been using AI for a little while, this is all basic stuff. But, AI is one of those things where it keeps getting better and it will produce results as good as what you ask it to do and how you train it.

One thing I like about ChatGPT is how it maintains an active memory on your profile. You can train it to suit your needs and it remembers things. Whether it be your style guide for your blog, how you like your feature images to look, or your own writing style… ChatGPT can be trained to do things your way.

And you can use it to become a more effective (and faster) content marketer for your business..

• Have it help generate content upgrades and lead magnets.
• Have it help generate feature images
• Have it brainstorm a topic you want to write about, outline it, or even give you a framework for you to then write out with your personal touch.

Don’t look at AI as a tool that will do it all for you. It won’t. But, what it is is like having a massive turbo on your engine. You’re the engine, but AI is your turbo boost. And there are a lot of best practices out there when it comes to making your content awesome that you’ve probably thought about or read about but didn’t do because you didn’t have the time for all of it. With AI, you might be able to actually do it all.

This Week In Concierge

The variety of different things I do for clients each week definitely keeps things interesting!

Wrapped up two client funnels this past week—both now ready to launch. One of them also got a full site performance audit, and we cleaned up a bunch of things under the hood to speed it up. Load time’s down, everything’s running smoother.

As usual, I spent some time squashing the random tech gremlins that pop up—things like audio not playing, permissions not behaving, weird menu stuff. These are the little things that can drive you nuts if you’re not technical… but I just handle it so my clients don’t have to.

I’ve also been helping two clients get their email systems in better shape. One of them had nearly 10GB of email sitting on an old web host that kept going down. We’re migrating everything over to FastMail to get them on something stable and reliable. Email is not something I host with Concierge, but many times I end up helping people migrate their email.

A couple updates rolled out to the Concierge Toolkit plugins this week:

• Conversion Bridge was updated to 1.7 and now supports more analytics tools as well as new ad platforms (like LinkedIn and X conversion tracking). See the update.
• CartFlows was updated with some bug fixes and a new style for “thank you” pages.

Also, a reminder to all my Concierge clients that the full PRO version of SEOPress is available in the toolkit. I have some clients still running free versions of Yoast SEO, All-In-One SEO and a few others. And I never go in and proactively replace an SEO plugin. But, if you’d like to replace a free version of your SEO

WordPress Quick Bits

AI Crawlers Are Draining Site Resources. If you’re noticing that your website analytics are way off or your site is experiencing massive bandwidth usage, it may be because of AI crawlers. Search Engine Journal has a story about this growing issue. And these AI bots can be way more resource intensive than a typical search engine spidering bot. Just this last week, I was noticing one of my Concierge client sites with massive bandwidth usage. Way out of proportion to the amount of traffic he gets. When I looked into it, I found the chief culprit was “AppleBot”. The AppleBot was crawling his site like crazy. And let’s be real, Apple doesn’t send you any referral traffic at all. They have no search engine. So, Apple was clearly scraping my client’s site in order to train their AI. I ended up blocking AppleBot.

GroundHogg 4.0 Released. GroundHogg is one of the major competitors to FluentCRM when it comes to WordPress-based CRMs. In fact, GroundHogg was first and FluentCRM was the newcomer. Well, GroundHogg has just come out with version 4.0, introducing a new flow editor for automation design, more options to branch logic, flow reports and more. GroundHogg is certainly a pretty advanced CRM now. I am planning to do a more in-depth review and comparison to FluentCRM in the not-too-distant future.

StellarSites To Launch. Looks like the guys behind Kadence Theme (StellarWP) are going to be launching a new SaaS called StellarSites. Basically, it looks like done-for-you Kadence site hosting, but I’m not entirely sure. I guess for some people, this may be useful.

The Slop Stopper Plugin. Robert DeVore strikes again, with a new plugin he’s calling “Slop Stopper”. It is designed to scan content for AI-generated buzz phrases and flags questionable posts. Basically, to help keep AI garbage out. The plugin is on GitHub.

Conversion Bridge 1.7. As I mentioned above for Concierge clients, Conversion Bridge 1.7 was released and now supports LinkedIn and X as ad platforms. It also has more granular user info support for tracking events across your site. Read more about it here.

Etch Live Event Preview. Kevin Geary did a full Youtube Live event previewing the upcoming Etch site builder for WordPress. This looks like a very interesting tool that could make a major dent in the market (in a good way). It does look a little bit more aimed at pros, but we’ll see. And REALLY smart about it is that it will seamlessly sync with WordPress Core. What this means is that if you stopped using Etch, your content remains intact. So many page builders store things in such a proprietary way that, the moment you disable the plugin, the site looks like hell and has to be re-built. They’re really thinking ahead with Etch.

Automattic Lays Off 16% Of Employees. Matt has laid off 16% of it’s global workforce – around 280 people. These cuts come amid the turmoil caused by his lawsuit with WP Engine, which no doubt is sucking up some of their resources. Get more details over on The Repository.

WP Engine Beefing Up For A Fight. WP Engine expanded it’s legal team and is clearly digging in for a fight with Automattic. The case is going slowly, with fact discovery scheduled to end November of this year. But, this slow burn and the expenses is probably also why Matt is having to trim the fat.

Rocket Is Growing Fast. My favorite web host, Rocket, was named #9 on the INC list of fastest-growing private companies in the SouthEast.

Sucuri Firewall And Duplicate WooCommerce Orders. An issue has arisen where stores using Sucuri could be seeing duplicate orders on their WooCommerce stores. You can read about it here. A fix is in progress.

High-Risk Vulnerability In Uncanny Automator. WordFence is reporting about 50,000 sites running Uncanny Automator were subject to a high-risk vulnerability. If you’re using this plugin, ensure you’re upgraded to 6.4.0 or higher to avoid any issues.

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Not Worth It To Stick With WordPress?

In last week’s issue, I talked about the hoopla with the increasing price of WP Rocket. And some people were upset about it. And I made the point that I thought their price increase made perfect sense and people needed to stop being drama queens about it. 😇

Erik (one of the subscribers to this newsletter) replied back and said if these WordPress developers make their prices too high, they may find themselves without customers. He went on to say:

“Worse, there WILL come a point where it’s really not worthwhile to stick with WordPress and plugins from a financial standpoint, rather than going to Go High Level or ClickFunnels. where you’re not also tech support. We’re not there yet, but we may be eventually. I tried ClickFunnels for 6 months and went back to WordPress. But, if the cost of hosting plus plugins ends up equaling or surpassing the cost of either of the above options I’ll have to look again.”

Erik makes a good point, of course.

Truth is, while the core WordPress platform is free, using WordPress is NOT free. You pay for hosting, you pay for themes and plugins. You may even pay for security tools, support, backups, etc. Depending on how much you are doing with WordPress, the costs can indeed add up.

And in some cases, it might make sense to look at these other third-party proprietary platforms and think it makes more sense from a cost perspective.

But, I will always use WordPress instead. And I will always condone using WordPress as the preferred option. And here’s why…

• With WordPress, you OWN the platform. You can host it anywhere you want. You’re not tied to any company. And even with paid plugins, as long as they are GPL open source (and most are), you can continue to use them even if you stop paying for the support license. In other words, you have complete sovereignty to do whatever you want.
• WordPress is insanely flexible because it is such an open platform. It is impossible to find any third-party proprietary platform that can stack up to the degree of flexibility you have with WordPress. With those platforms, if they don’t have a feature you want, you have to ask for it and then cross your fingers and hope they produce it. With WordPress, you can usually find a plugin that does things the way you want. And, worse case, you can always modify the code to do it EXACTLY the way you want.

Even when it comes to cost, WordPress is usually cheaper. ClickFunnels runs $147/month and goes up from there. GoHighLevel runs $97/month and goes up from there. Both are often seen as “all in one” services, so the cost isn’t bad. But, they aren’t exactly cheap either. Both are also proprietary. And both have things you’re going to wish they did that they don’t do.

Plus, does it make much sense to put your entire business into the hands of one, single company? Personally, I don’t like that idea much at all. Seems risky.

And, yes, there’s also the matter of support.

WordPress is pretty much a “do it yourself” platform. And it can be pretty confusing for people who aren’t very technical. For those people, these other platforms can seem attractive because you feel like you’ve got people there to hold your hand. Plus, sometimes the platforms feel easier to begin with.

But there again, the keyword here is flexibility. With WordPress, you can take responsibility yourself and do it yourself if you would like. Or, you can sign up for services like Concierge where you’ll have somebody there to make it all simpler and help you out when needed.

And get this…

Even if you’re on Concierge and I’m handling it all for you, you can STILL move away if you wanted. At any time, you could cancel Concierge and move your site elsewhere and take over. I’d even help you do it. So, once again….

Flexibility. And Sovereignty.

That’s why WordPress wins. And why it is worth sticking with. Even if it sometimes feels messier. 🤪