Writing Assistant
Note that this feature is currently part of a beta program. If you are interested in participating and you don't already have access, contact your Conductor Customer Success Manager or Account Manager.
Optimize your content before you publish it—or pull in the content of a live page to learn how best to approach optimization. Conductor's Writing Assistant provides real-time insights from Content Guidance for a piece of content that you can write and edit directly in Conductor.
Where to find it
Click here ↗️ or:
- follow the path Discover > Writing Assistant in Conductor.
- Go to Content Guidance (Discover > Content Guidance) in Conductor, and click Start Writing.
Overview
Your Drafts
When you open Writing Assistant, you'll see a table with all your existing drafts, which includes information about each draft, including:
- The draft's title.
- The Target Keyword.
- Assignee.
- Status.
- Who created it.
- Who last updated it.
- When it was last updated.
You'll also be able to edit the draft by clicking Open or delete the draft by clicking the Delete icon (the trash can).
Create a Draft
To start a new draft, click Start a New Draft. You'll enter up to five keywords that represent a topic you've researched and want to see recommendations for. Then click Evaluate. If you have a page you are optimizing for, you can also enter a URL for the page you already have for the topic.
Note: The ability to enter more than one keyword in Writing Assistant is in a limited alpha program.
In the Topic & Pages tab, review the monthly search volume and—using data derived from Conductor's modeled traffic metric—potential engagement a top-ranking page might drive. See if there are stronger primary keywords you might want to target. If they don't look encouraging, you can go to Content Guidance to do more research on the topic.
Click the Competitors tab to review the top-ranking competitors from which Conductor should derive insights for your content.
Editing Your Draft
Topic, URL, and Competitors
At the top of Writing Assistant, you'll find the settings that determine:
- The topic for which you want to generate assistance.
- The URL, if entered, for the page you want to optimize. Writing Assistant will pull the content from this page into the text editor automatically.
- The competitors you have configured to gather insights from.
You can click any of the options to revise the settings for your draft.
Page Title and Meta Description
You can enter a Title tag and Meta description for the page to get assistance for those elements as well. The Target topic and Tag length indicators on the right show when your entries meet best practices for these elements.
You can also use AI-suggestions for each. Just click the AI menu icon (the green lightbulb to generate suggestions. A list of up to 5 options appears.
Text Editor
The text editor in Writing Assistant is a standard WYSIWYG editor that lets you craft content the way you would in your CMS of choice. You can also pre-fill the editor by entering the URL for an already-published page in the optional URL field at the top.
Outlines
Starting from a blank slate and not sure where to start? Use the AI menu icon (the green lightbulb) to generate a content outline. You can enter an Objective and Audience for the outline to give more context to Conductor's AI engine.
After you confirm your input, Conductor generates a content outline based on these inputs and a selection of isights including body copy suggestions, People Also Ask questions, and h2 tags from top-ranking content for the entered topic.
Once the outline generation is complete, you can:
- Accept the outline (keeps the generated text)
- Reject the outline (discards the generated text)
- Retry generating the outline (sends a new request with the same inputs).
Content Expansion
Want a co-pilot to help you build out your content? When you highlight any text in a draft you're working on, the AI menu (the green lightbulb icon) appears next to the text selection. When you select this the Expand selection option, Writing Assistant expands the highlighted text based on the context of your full draft and all your insights.
After the expanded content is created, you can:
- Accept it (keeps the generated text)
- Retry generating it (creates new text)
- Cancel (discards the generated text)
Insight Results
To the left of the text editor, you can review the insights Conductor generates based on the entered topic and content in the editor, including:
- Guidance for:
- Primary keyword (your target topic)
- Titles
- Meta descriptions
- Headings (h1–h3)
- Readability
- Body copy
- Content length
- AI-enhanced People Also Ask questions that provides:
- Feedback on how well your content answers those questions.
- Suggestions for how you could improve your content to better answer the questions.
- AI-generated guidance for:
- Objective
- Audience
- Journey Stage
- Content Type
Customize Your Insights
Based on the insights Conductor provides, you might want to:
- Add or remove keyword suggestions.
- Set different goals for length or readability.
- Add or remove questions for the content to answer.
To do so, you can use the links on each editable insight to customize the specific insights to make the experience as relevant to your content creation as possible.
Extending Your Insights
Need more time working on your draft in the text editor? You can save your progress. Conductor will also auto-save your content if your pause more than 5 seconds.
When you want to open a previously saved draft, just click the folder icon.
Want to pass what you learn on to your content team? Just click the button to download a brief. You'll see the draft from the text editor along with all the insights you see in the platform.
Manage Your Draft
To help you manage your writing efforts, you can set statuses for and assign users to your drafts:
- On the Writing Assistant landing page.
- In the draft itself.
Using Writing Assistant
FAQs
Do I need to worry about privacy based on what I enter in Writing Assistant?
Conductor currently uses OpenAI’s API to generate insights and recommendations about the content you enter into Writing Assistant. OpenAI does not use the information you enter to train their AI models, and Conductor does not share it outside of the Writing Assistant feature and its use of the OpenAI API.
You might have heard that OpenAI's ChatGPT product does use the content users enter in its interface to train its models. This is true! We want to clarify that while we use OpenAI to power Writing Assistant's AI features, it is not OpenAI's ChatGPT product, but their API. You can learn more about their privacy commitments in their API data usage policy.
Is there a character limit for in the text editor?
No. However, the AI-enhanced People Also Ask insight might not load results for long pieces of content. To avoid this issue, try to keep content in the editor around 3,000 words.
Why research more than one keyword in Writing Assistant?
Researching one keyword at a time can provide a limited view of the actual landscape—SERPs vary greatly according to keyword variants and closely related keywords. Even though you might care about ranking for one primary keyword for a page (maybe based on monthly search volume), the reality of search today is that topics are more meaningful than keywords for meeting customer intent. By querying multiple keywords at once, these topics can be researched in Writing Assistant more holistically.
Why doesn't the imported content from the URL I entered look right?
We do our best to mimic the content on your page and present it in a way that is useful. Because the way our customers structure their websites can vary so widely, this means there are times when what appears doesn’t always capture the experience on the page.
You can use the Main page content not appearing? link above the text editor to re-import the content in a way that might improve the way the content appears in the editor.
If this alternate method still does not import the content in a way that's useful for your needs, you can always copy and paste content from your page into the text editor.
What types of content does the Content Types insight include?
The Content Types insight suggests the type of content most likely to be ranking highly in search, based on its review of the currently top-ranking content. Here are the potential content types that it chooses from:
Product/Service Page
A detailed webpage that showcases the features, benefits, and specifications of a specific product or service.
Landing Page
A focused webpage designed to convert visitors into leads or customers by highlighting a particular offer or call-to-action.
Education/Information
Content that provides valuable insights, explanations, or background on a specific topic to inform and educate the audience.
How-to Guide
A step-by-step instructional piece that teaches readers how to accomplish a specific task or solve a problem.
Blog Post
A regularly updated article that shares thoughts, opinions, or information on a particular subject, often in a conversational tone.
List-based Article
A structured piece of content that presents information in an easily digestible numbered or bulleted format.
News
Timely content that reports on current events, recent developments, or breaking stories relevant to your industry or audience.
Event
A promotional piece that provides details about an upcoming occasion, including date, time, location, and other relevant information.
FAQ
A compilation of common questions and their corresponding answers, designed to address user queries efficiently.
Local Page
A webpage tailored to a specific geographic location, featuring information about local services, products, or business details to attract and engage customers in that area.
In the event there are many different types of content ranking well for a topic, the Content Types insight will still return the content type that is the closest fit based on the patterns it detects across the top-ranking content.