Using AI Tools to Automate Blog Idea Generation
How the Automation Tool Cassidy Helps Me Run My Blog Business
Introduction
Let’s face it: repetitive tasks are the worst. They are pirates stealing your valuable time and draining the finances of small businesses and start-ups! Automating these tasks isn’t just a luxury anymore — it’s a necessity. And with the treasure trove of robust automation tools on the market today, it’s easier and more affordable than ever.
But repetitive tasks aren’t the only enemies of time. Content creation and marketing are crucial for any company and require significant time and resources. The question is no longer whether you enjoy what you do, but rather — do you have the time to do all that needs to be done?
Marketing and content are a fast-paced unforgiving game that is inadvisable to fall behind in. I’m sure you can think of a company whose product is not particularly inspired, but they scaled enormously because of marketing.
Let me help you. Liquid Death is a company that started selling solely water in a can, then branched out to Ice-T. That’s all.
That company is valued at 1.4 billion dollars.
All because of good — nay, great marketing!
From Instagram ideas to Twitter one-liners, from articles to blogs, continuous content generation is essential for scaling businesses, but it takes time to come up with these ideas.
But what if all of that could be handled by one person — or even better, one AI?
I write everything from technical articles to how-to blogs while also being in a full-time AI Engineering graduate program.
When you’re pushing out 2–3 articles a week, it can be difficult to keep the idea factory running!
So I decided to try an A.I tool I've been seeing around the neighborhood in hopes of being able to automate the generation of new blog ideas on a consistent schedule.
Doing so would allow me to manage my time at school while also staying consistent in my writing.
Welcome to Cassidy!
Who’s the New Guy?
Cassidy is a workspace that claims to make your life easier by automating repetitive tasks and managing workflows.
Sound familiar? Because it is. Zapier gave us a similar promise. If you haven’t read my Zapier article I suggest you do, it is a good starting place for understanding automation tools!
What Do They Claim?
Cassidy claims on their platform you can build custom AI tools to automate tasks and workflows for your business. They boast integration with various tools and platforms, enabling you to connect your data and automate tasks across multiple applications.
Notable features include:
- A visual workflow builder for creating and managing complex workflows.
- A knowledge base for storing and sharing information with your team.
- A security and compliance suite to ensure your data is safe.
- A team of experts ready to assist.
So, let’s see if they can deliver!
The Strategy
Much like sieging Troy, it is foolish to go onto Cassidy’s platform without a plan, a use-case, a battle strategy if you will.
There is too much to do and way too many possible automations, integrations, and creations.
Go in there less weapons, you may never come out.
I decided to test Cassidy using this very publication, N23 Studio, as the use-case.
In this article, we will discuss Cassidy’s Knowledge Base and Assistants.
Look for the next Cassidy Article where we will get in the trenches with two use cases (content generation and inbound writer’s submissions management) and incorporate them into the Workflows section.
The Brain
The Knowledge Base is a highly honed and specialized brain for Cassidy’s environment. It is made up of whatever you decide is pertinent information for your company or workflow. Maybe it's your specific company handbook, or clinical trial notes. This can be in the form of documents and URLs.
You will want to label them by their source category as I did below.
‘My Article Examples’ folder is exactly as it sounds, it’s the articles that I’ve written and uploaded to Medium (the platform that hosts N23 Publication). I want the chatbot I end up building, to pull from this folder.
Stay with me, I will explain what all of this means!
I connected the article data to the Knowledge Base by inputting the website URL where the articles were all stored.
The second category you can see under ‘My Article Examples’ is ‘Submission Guidelines’, where I uploaded pdfs of N23’s submission guidelines for writers querying with us.
The Knowledge Base essentially serves as the brain from which Cassidy’s AI will draw information. By uploading your website or content library, this Knowledge Base, along with the Assistants and Workflows connected to it, becomes highly specialized and deeply knowledgeable in your company/field.
The Oracles
Let’s move on to Assistants. To put it simply this is a no-code chatbot creator and it is just brilliant. These chatbots are like Oracles that you ask questions to, although unlike their Ancient Greek counterparts they give detailed answers, instead of weird cryptic responses. (No, I won’t be sacrificing any goats, thank you).
The first thing Cassidy will ask is, “What is the goal of this assistant?” I created an assistant focused on the guidelines for submitting an article to the N23 Studio publication. There’s an additional box where you can provide more context — use it! The more information the Assistant has, the better it can assist you.
Next, you’ll be prompted to select the model for the assistant to run on. If you’re unsure about the differences, just go with ChatGPT-4.
For the ‘brand voice’ section, I uploaded one of my articles. Cassidy analyzed it and summarized our brand voice as follows:
“Analytical, insightful, conversational, and slightly witty. At N23 Publication, our voice melds deep analytics with approachable dialogue, crafting content that not only informs but engages. When constructing copy, embody a tone akin to that of a well-versed sector analyst sharing insights over coffee — knowledgeable yet accessible…”
This perfectly captures what we’re aiming for at N23 Studio.
The summary does keep going for a bit, there was a point where I laughed to myself reading it — it was as if the AI was trying to show off its ability to use big words correctly.
It's kind of like learning a new word as a child and then using it in any sentence you could.
For me, it was Bioluminescence. I will never forget the moment I learned how to pronounce that word. Well, tried to pronounce it; I always ended up saying Biolum-in-sence, completely omitting the e. And I would go off spouting utter nonsense about the word, simply incorrect definitions, all so that I could mispronounce Bioluminescence over and over! Horribly annoying for those misfortunates enough to get caught in a conversation with me in 2007.
The AI, at least to a far greater degree, understands the words it is using!
Put It All Together
Finally, you will connect your Knowledge Base to your Assistant.
This step fine-tunes the model with your data. Now, a writer can ask, “What are N23’s submission guidelines?” and the assistant will generate a natural-sounding, and specialized answer (thanks to models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude).
Imagine the possibilities: an HR assistant who answers questions about vacation policies based on company guidelines or specific employee contracts. The potential for these Assistants is endless.
Continuing. . .
But here’s the kicker — the Assistants and the Knowledge Base, as impressive as they are, aren’t even the main event. We haven’t even delved into workflow automation with Cassidy and how it stacks up against the current heavy-weight champ, Zapier.
Stay tuned for my next article, where I compare these two titans to see who comes out on top!
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance
- Confucius
