Creating a first draft

You've been assigned a brief or topic, now comes the hard part: getting started. Luckily, Letterdrop makes it easy for you to generate a first draft in several ways:

Generate a first draft from a target keyword, or pair it with a brief.

Generate a structured research dump from a target keyword.

Generate a first draft using existing content such as videos and podcasts.

Let's explore how to do each of these, but first, open Letterdrop, navigate to "Website" in the menu, then select "Posts." Start a new post and click on the “SEO Optimization” button on the right. Enter your keyword in the top-right and click “Generate first draft.”

First Draft from a Keyword + Brief

To begin drafting from a keyword, open the blog editor and select SEO Optimization. Enter your keyword and click "Generate first draft." Choose "Generate a first draft following SEO best practices" and optionally enter a brief. If you already have a content brief (from your team or an agency), take note that briefs for AI generation are different from briefs for a real writer. You should extract the relevant headers + sub-headers, then summarize them in bullet points in a way similar to the format below.

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Pro Tip: You can list section headers you wish to include in the Content Brief section, as well as refine the pages Letterdrop analyzes for your article by selecting "Select source pages." This can help exclude less relevant or less credible sources. Here’s an example of a brief you could use: The following topics must be covered:

Topic 1

Topic 2

Topic 3

Note: if you generated the draft using a brief, the AI will assume that the provided prompt is informationally accurate.

This process will take several minutes to complete. You'll be notified by email and in-app when it's done. While you wait, here's what we do to help you create a fast-ranking article:

Research: Analyze top 10 pages for your keyword, saving you time from manually researching them.

Content Creation: Generate title, headers, and content based on top pages.

Content Brief Integration: Customize title and sections if you provided a brief.

CTA Integration (if integrated with your CMS + Google Search Console): Include a product-focused call-to-action.

Featured Snippets and People Also Ask: Address these to help you rank.

Technical SEO: Follow best practices.

If you've set a Company Style Guide in your AI Settings, we’ll also factor it into your draft. However, this mainly impacts style rather than traffic generation. Your draft article will automatically populate in the blog editor once it’s ready:

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Pro Tip: Remember, this is a draft. AI-published content will not help you rank in the long-term. Make sure you edit it, add unique insights (use the Subject Matter Quote tool to request a video), and optimize further before publishing.

Research Dump from a Keyword

Researching top-ranking articles can be time-consuming. Instead of sifting through them manually, let Letterdrop save you time with a research dump. Just click on SEO Optimizer, enter your keyword, click "Generate first draft," and choose the Research Dump option. This option typically works best for experienced writers who simply want help with conducting SEO research much faster.

After a few minutes, you’ll receive an email letting you know your outline is ready. Letterdrop will analyze information from the top 10 ranking articles, offering a bullet-point summary of key themes along with their sources. You can use this summary to begin writing your article while saving you hours of research.

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Pro Tip: You can go to the "What should you cover?" section of the SEO Optimizer and click on the 3 dots to quickly see the top 10 pages that were referenced.

Repurpose Existing Audio and Videos

To repurpose an existing video, select the + button next to the blog editor, then choose "Video/Audio to Text." Upload a video/audio file or paste a link to a YouTube or Loom video. Select a template, make necessary edits, and click "Run" to proceed. You can edit and save new templates that work well for future use.

The transcription time varies based on the video length. For shorter videos, expect a quick turnaround, while longer ones may take more time. If it's a lengthy webinar, take a break and return later. Once transcribed, you'll receive a first draft ready for you to edit.

You can click on the highlighted text and click “Accept” to populate it into your blog editor and edit further.

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Pro Tip: When editing templates, you can use ##markdown headers to structure your piece, and offer guidance to affect the tone of voice (e.g., "This is a blog post written by software company XYZ"). Additionally, you can suggest section lengths ("ensure each section consists of at least 3 paragraphs").