Work out what actually goes in a blog post before you write a word of it
A prompt that interviews you with five questions, then returns a contents sheet naming what belongs in each section and which parts only you can supply.
- Works in
- ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini
- You need
- A subject you have been told to write about · Twenty minutes to answer five questions honestly
- Written for
- what to write in a blog post
Scored by our own engine
This page, run through the audit we sell. Measured 4 August 2026.
The hardest part of a blog post is not the writing, it is knowing what belongs in it. The prompt below asks you five questions before it proposes anything, then returns a contents sheet that names what each section must contain and marks the parts no model can supply.
Structure is the easy half
Every model already knows the shape of a blog post. Ask for an outline and you get a competent one in seconds: an introduction, a definition, some benefits, some steps, a conclusion. That shape is not wrong. It is just the same shape returned to everyone who asked about the same subject, filled with the same general knowledge.
What decides whether a post is worth reading is substance, and substance is made of things the model has no access to. What happened when you tried this. What a customer said when it failed. Which of the usual recommendations you have stopped giving, and why. A contents sheet that names those slots and marks them as yours to fill is more useful than an outline that quietly fills them with plausible prose.
That is why the sheet separates who supplies what. The line marked “me” is the post. The rest is arrangement.
Five questions, then a shopping list
The interview phase exists to stop the model guessing. Left alone it will assume a reader, assume a level, assume the subject is exactly as broad as it sounds, and every one of those assumptions is baked into the outline before you notice.
Expect the sheet to be shorter than you hoped. A subject that supports four sections rather than nine is a normal outcome, and it is a better position than nine sections with five of them padded. The instruction forbidding padding is there because a model asked for a contents list will produce a complete looking one whether or not you have anything to put in it.
Two honest limits. The model cannot tell you whether anyone wants this post, and it will design a good one for a question nobody asks. It also cannot check your subject against what is already published, so nothing here proves the post is original.
When the sheet is filled and drafted, the next two moves are drafting from a brief and then confirming the published page still answers each section question, using the AI content readiness check.
I have to write a blog post and I do not yet know what should be in it. Do not
write the post. Do not give me an outline yet. Work in two phases.
PHASE ONE. Ask me exactly five questions and nothing else.
Choose the five questions whose answers you cannot guess and which most change
what belongs in this post. At least one must ask for something concrete that
only I could know: something that happened, something a reader said, a
decision that was made and what it cost. Number them. Add no preamble, no
explanation and no draft. Then stop and wait for my answers.
PHASE TWO. When I have answered, return a contents sheet in this shape.
THE ONE QUESTION THIS POST ANSWERS. One sentence, phrased the way a reader
would ask it out loud. If my answers do not support a single question, say so
and give me the two or three separate posts they actually describe.
THE SECTIONS. For each section, in reading order, give me four lines:
- The question this section answers.
- What must appear in it to be worth reading, named specifically. Not
"examples", but which example. Not "data", but which number and where it
would come from.
- Who supplies that: me, or you. Write "me" for anything you cannot know,
and do not soften it by offering to draft a placeholder.
- What makes this section thin, in one line.
WHAT ONLY I CAN SUPPLY. Everything marked "me", gathered into one list. This
is the shopping list I have to fill before writing starts.
WHAT TO LEAVE OUT. Three to five things a post on this subject usually
contains that this one should not, with one line each on why. Include anything
my reader already knows.
HOW IT ENDS. What the reader should be able to do at the end, and the one
action that follows from it.
Rules:
- Invent nothing. No statistics, no studies, no research findings, no named
sources, no customer quotes. Where a section needs a figure, describe the
figure and say where I would get it, and never supply one.
- Do not pad the section list. If my answers support four sections, give me
four and say the subject is narrower than it looked.
- If every answer I give is generic, say plainly that there is no post here
yet and name what I would have to find out first.
- British spelling.
The subject: [WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD TO WRITE ABOUT, IN ONE LINE]
Who reads it: [WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY HAVE ALREADY TRIED]
Why us: [WHAT YOUR COMPANY KNOWS ABOUT THIS THAT MOST PEOPLE DO NOT, OR WRITE "nothing obvious"]What to change
Everything in square brackets is yours to replace. Nothing else needs editing.
[WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD TO WRITE ABOUT, IN ONE LINE]- The subject as it was handed to you, including how vague it was. "Something about AI search" is a legitimate answer and produces a better phase one than a tidied version, because the questions then attack the vagueness instead of assuming it away.
[WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY HAVE ALREADY TRIED]- The second half is the load bearing part. "Ecommerce managers who have already added FAQ schema and saw nothing change" deletes a third of the sections a generic contents sheet would propose, and those deleted sections are the ones readers skim past.
[WHAT YOUR COMPANY KNOWS ABOUT THIS THAT MOST PEOPLE DO NOT, OR WRITE "nothing obvious"]- Access counts as knowledge: the support tickets you read, the audits you have run, the migrations you have watched fail. Write "nothing obvious" if that is true and the sheet will tell you honestly that the post has no advantage, which is worth knowing before you spend a day on it.
How to run it
- 01Give it the subject as vaguely as you received it
Resist the urge to sharpen the brief before you paste it. The five questions are the sharpening, and a subject you have already narrowed by guesswork sends them at the wrong thing.
- 02Answer the five questions in full sentences
One word answers produce a generic sheet. The question asking for something concrete is the one that decides whether this works, so spend most of the twenty minutes there: a specific thing that happened, with the details left in, is what every later section hangs off.
- 03Read the "what only I can supply" list first
That list is the real output. If it is empty, the sheet describes a post anyone could write and no reader has a reason to choose. If it is long, you have found the post, and the writing is now collection rather than invention.
- 04Cut two sections before you write anything
Take the sheet and delete the two sections you would skip as a reader. Nearly every contents sheet contains a definitions section and a benefits section that exist because posts usually have them, not because this reader needs them.
- 05Fill the shopping list, then write
Go and collect the items marked "me". Once they are in a document, the draft is mostly arranging them, and the sections that had nothing behind them will announce themselves as you write rather than after the post is published.
- 06Check that each section still answers its question
When it is live, run the URL through the AI content readiness check. Sections drift while being written, and a section whose opening sentence no longer answers the question the sheet gave it is the passage nothing will quote.
Questions people ask
What should I write in a blog post?
The one question your reader is actually asking, answered in the first sentence, then the specific things only you can contribute: what happened when you did this, what it cost, what a customer said back, what you got wrong. Everything else on the subject is already published and adds no reason for anyone to read yours.
How long should a blog post be?
As long as the material you actually have. Word counts get chosen first and then filled, which is how the padding sections appear: the definitions, the benefits list, the history nobody asked for. Decide the sections from what you can genuinely say, write them properly, and let the length be whatever that comes to.
What should the opening of a blog post do?
Answer the question in the title, immediately. The convention of setting the scene for two paragraphs was built for a reader who had already committed. Both a skimming reader and an assistant looking for a quotable passage take the first sentence as the answer, so make it one.
Why does the prompt ask me questions instead of giving me an outline?
Because an outline generated from a subject alone is the same outline everyone else received for that subject. The five answers are what make the sheet yours, and the question asking for something concrete is the one that turns a generic structure into a post with material behind it.
What if I have nothing specific to add to the subject?
Then the honest output is that the post is not ready, and the prompt is written to say so rather than to produce a sheet anyway. The fix is not better prompting. It is half an hour in your support inbox, your call notes or your own analytics, looking for one thing you have seen that other people writing on this subject have not.
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