Say Goodbye to Tedious Freelance Tasks with ChatGPT and AI

With the news that Zapier integrates with AI tools like ChatGPT, you can now integrate more of your software apps and online tools to get even more use out of them.

Some people responses and AI as a virtual assistant tool by having it handle many administrative tasks like creating their schedules, writing draft email responses, and summarizing research material.

Here’s how to use ChatGPT as your virtual assistant for your writing business, to get rid of those tedious freelance tasks.

Before You Start

To use ChatGPT and Zapier, you’ll need four things:

1. A ChatGPT account
2. A ChatGPT API key
3. A Zapier account
4. A Zapier action (or zap)

While you can integrate Zapier and ChatGPT with a free ChatGPT account, you’ll quickly run out of free credits. You should sign up for a ChatGPT Plus subscription if you think you’ll use the integration a lot. Use the free one to start and then upgrade if you need to.

As for the zap, you can use one of Zapier’s ChatGPT templates or create a new one from scratch.

From here, it’s up to your needs, your business, and your imagination.

Note: Not all of these tips require both ChatGPT and Zapier. Sometimes, a good question or prompt in ChatGPT alone is enough to get the job done for you.

Six Ways to Use ChatGPT and Zapier as a Virtual Assistant

1. Automate prospect email responses

Use this zap to automatically create a response when you receive prospect emails.

• The Gmail version is here.
• The Microsoft Outlook version is here.

It’ll save them as drafts in Gmail so you can review them before sending them.

2. Create blog post outlines from form responses

With these two zaps, you can use form entries to create a blog post outline automatically. Use this one if you’re using Google Forms or this one if you’re using an Airtables form. Save a step if you know you will create posts from the submissions. 

3. Schedule your day

Combine your to-do list, your calendar, and ChatGPT to come up with a schedule for your day. You can connect productivity apps like Todoist or Google Tasks through ChatGPT with Zapier to create that schedule for you. Or combine ChatGPT with Google Calendar and Notion through Zapier to create your list.

Or, you can use this prompt to get ChatGPT to create a priority list for you:

I have X hours to work today. My tasks are:

[LIST YOUR TASKS, DURATION, URGENCY]

Create a schedule that incorporates my tasks and put it into my Google Calendar using Zapier on DATE.

4. Create summaries of research material

Much like an episode recap of your favorite TV show, AI tools can summarize long research material. Perfect for those projects where you have to read four white papers and a bunch of blog posts.

You can copy and paste the content into an empty ChatGPT conversation and ask it to summarize the previous article. If you’re a Plus subscriber, you can even just paste the URL to the article or information, and it’ll get the content for you. 

Use Zapier and PDF.co to create summaries of PDF files with this zap. It’ll even send the summary to you via a Slack message if you wish (just delete this step from the zap if you don’t want it).

5. Add to your social media message queue

There are many ways to connect your social media platforms and Zapier to ChatGPT and save time. You could:

• Use ChatGPT to create new messages based on a topic or event, then have them added to your platform queue via Buffer or Hootsuite.
• Promote older content by asking ChatGPT to summarize old blog posts and pull out messages to use as social media messages. Increase the views on that older content quickly.
• Use ChatGPT to publish links to new WordPress posts or Substack newsletters on your social media platforms via Zapier and Buffer or Hootsuite.

6. Draft a week of social media messages

Do a brain dump on a topic you want to post about, paste it into ChatGPT with this awesome system prompt, and choose your favorite ones for posting. This example uses Otter.ai to transcribe voice memos, but however you want to get the ideas written down is fine. The key is to use the system prompt to get it to create the messages for you from your ideas.

Use these tips to automate some of the boring admin tasks you do in your business. Save time so you can spend it on the stuff that really matters and excites you. Let the robots handle the rest.

Have you been using Zapier and ChatGPT in your writing business? Let us know in the comments, as we’re curious to hear from you.