I don’t just write about generative AI in my Smart Content Report. I also use these tools myself. It’s a good way to find out what works and what doesn’t.
At the same time, this site would not be possible without the help of my AI assistants. After all, I don’t make any money from it. It’s actually a side project of another project of mine, namely UPLOAD Magazin (German only).
Having said that, I’m not an uncritical fan of the AI boom, just because these tools have proven to be useful. See the tag “criticism” on this page.
Ultimately, it is very important to me that I, as a human, keep my hands on the wheel at all times. I don’t automate. I utilize helpers.
Let me show you what that looks like.
Researching topics
The first thing I have to do is keep myself up to date. I use NetNewsWire as a feed reader. This allows me to keep track of new articles on relevant websites in one place.
Three sources are currently the most important for Smart Content Report:
- Hacker News. Run by VC investor YCombinator, it has developed an active community with a strong focus on technology, especially web technologies.
- Techmeme. This is a news aggregator specifically for technology topics.
- VentureBeat. There are many sites covering AI, but VentureBeat’s coverage is especially good and often in-depth.
Another important source is Reddit. I follow these subreddits, among others:
This list changes frequently. In these subreddits I find personal impressions, speculations, examples or even news.
Collect, sort, select
After the latest update to my “AI Content Assistant” plugin (see below) I use a shortcut on the Apple device of my choice to save interesting articles to the plugin’s “News Desk”. This way, I have all potential topics right there in the backend of this site.
This is a nice improvement over my prior workflow: I used to bookmark what I find. These bookmarks were synced across my devices (if iCloud Sync “just worked” which it didn’t always). It was a bit cumbersome to save, edit, and open these bookmarks. It’s much easier now: I just open the plugin’s publishing page and get started.
Two to three times a week I take time to go through the topics and articles I found. I decide which ones to use, which ones to combine, which ones to delete.
Publishing
I use tab groups in the Safari browser both for posting new content and for the bi-weekly newsletter. They open all pages and tools I need for each task in one go.
The publishing process has changed a lot over the last two years. I used to have several tools that I had to switch between. I used TypingMind, for example, for my AI assistants with ready-made prompts. For translations, I used DeepL Translator and DeepL Write. Plus the Smart Content Report backend.
There was a lot of copy and past going on.
I have simplified this considerably.
With the help of AI assistants like Claude and Gemini, I created and expanded a WordPress plugin. It currently looks like this:
I choose one of three AI model families (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) and one of the prompts I’ve set up on the settings page.
The text of the source article(s) is entered in the “Source Text” input field.
I click on “Generate Draft Post” and everything is sent to the AI. A few seconds later, a tab opens with the new draft post.
I have customized my prompts so that the AI immediately returns an English and a German version. Have a look at the prompts on this page.
Then it’s time to read, edit, improve, and correct the draft. There are a few things that need to be done before publication, such as the tags.
Every other Thursday I put together the newsletter from articles in the “Spotlight” category. This newsletter is published in German by UPLOAD Magazin and I publish it in English via LinkedIn. Ultimately, I would like to manage the newsletter directly on the website. But that’s not very urgent right now.
That’s my current process in a nutshell. If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with me: jan@smartcontentreport.com
This post from 19 September 2024 was last updated on 13 February 2026.
