Law 4: Write for robots, not just people

We all have an intuitive sense of how to write for people. Whether it’s a scientific seminar, a business presentation or a news article, there needs to be a hook to draw you in. Then a beginning, a middle and end.

You should still and must write that way for people.

But per law four, machines don’t read the way we do.

So should you write for these machines the way you write for humans?

The answer seems pretty clear—hell no!

When you write for the bots, you aren’t trying to launch substack and build a subscriber base.

Your goal should be a lot simpler.

Modify existing new content or create more to:

–Directly answer questions.

–Demonstrate expertise through meaningful details and well thought out perspectives.

–Provide deep content to answer likely follow up queries.

–Separate positive and negative ideas to avoid confusing LLMs, e.g., on the one hand and on the other comparisons.

–Publish regularly, demonstrating relevance and engagement

If you take these steps, your content will be bot-friendly and vastly increase the chances you end up in generative engines’ answers.

There is, of course, a catch.

You need to know which questions to answer. Unfortunately, unlike google search data, the chatbots are black boxes…they don’t offer any data on which questions are asked most frequently…

In our next law, we explain how to get around the lack of data and determine the right questions to ask and answer.