I just had another powerful discussion with Joel about AI and what’s coming for us as creators and Substackers.
Here’s a brief summary of our discussion points:
First impressions of GPT-5 vs GPT-4 about speed, reasoning, and accuracy
Why AI “confirmation bias” can hurt your creative process and how to avoid it
Introduction to AEO (AI Engine Optimization or Answer Engine Optimization) - how to structure your posts so they get cited by AI search engines:
Using “Answer Cards” with a main question answered in your post, and a concise answer,
Bullet-point steps,
FAQs,
Sources, and
Problem-solving titles
How AI search differs from Google SEO and why free content matters for visibility and conversions
Practical AI agent use cases:
Weekly competitor analysis and industry trend reports
Automating LinkedIn posts from Substack content
Multi-platform posting via Make.com agents
Tools we covered: ChatGPT Agents, Claude MCP, Perplexity, NotebookLM, Make.com
Best practices for prompts — treating AI like a new team member, giving examples, and using detailed context
Building a custom “AI team” for writing, marketing, and automation. I call my custom GPTs “My Minions” ;)
Insights on AI’s future, platform differences, and staying adaptable in a fast-moving ecosystem
And as I promised, here are the elements I use in training my custom GPT for long form writing: voice, tone, role, style, vocabulary, audience, formatting, structure, writing approach, signature elements.
I always learn something new from Joel. Make sure you subscribe to his amazing publication, there’s so much to learn and we’re just starting with AI: https://substack.com/@leadershipinchange10/
Stay Unplugged!
Yana
P.S. If Substack still feels overwhelming, check out this link.
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