Ask HN: How do you use AI for building in public?
Fellow founders, I know AI writing is strictly forbidden here. But I was wondering if yall hand write every single post on X or on Linkedin for ship updates or user engagement posts. For small team like mine, I'm in charge of my own account. Not gonna lie, content batching and writing everything from scratch are extra work for me. On the other side, when I outsource my content generation to AI, my personality gets washed away. I'm curious how other founders approach this. Do you use AI to some extent for content batching, drafting or editing? How do you draw the line?
Obviously, everyone uses AI for research purposes. Here's how I write content for B2B tech founders. Here's how I approach content...
First of all, I use AI to check competitors. Now, it seems easy, it feels, but it is not. AI gives you tons of competitors, and then I check the website. Summarize both websites and their founders' voices through AI. What's they are talking about, what's working, what's not, and all the stuff. Then I put all the important data in a sheet. Rough but enough to get me competitors' insights.
2. I do another research on ideas/topics. I try to find subtopics. For this, I check niche blogs and sometimes competitors' blogs as well. Summarize all the things again with AI. AI does 90% of the work for me here as well.
3. Again, I check objections customers come across. Again, that part is still managed by AI. I check the source as well, for that reviews and everything. Now, when I have all the data, here's my real work starts...
Then I pick some ideas which I thought would be better, prepare a questionnaire, ask clients, and when I get answers...
From here, I start my first draft on my own. Now I use AI to refine it. I don't refine it much, tbh. Just correct the grammar.
That's how I use AI, mostly for research purposes. But again, when it comes to voice, that's a tricky part, so in most cases, AI can't copy it, and not even a human writer. Humans still catch it to some extent, but even that works.
I have seen a lot of writers saying we can write your voice, but even they can do 80% of that. That is a win-win.
That's why I always tell founders to write your own content. 6/8 hours a week is more than enough.
Trust me, never use AI straight. You're gonna lose trust. Research is important, and positioning is even more important. Nail positioning, half the work is done.