Episode 485: How to Write Better AI Prompts to Speed Up Your Workflow with Hanelore Dumitrache

EBT485 – Hanelore Dumitrache

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers, hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you know that you are heard and supported. 

Megan Porta 00:41

Which camp are you in? Are you in the camp that is more afraid of AI or are you in the camp that is embracing AI and using it to its fullest? Hanelore Dumitrache joins me in this episode. She is the blogger over at Sugar Yums and she really got intrigued by AI early on and she’s just really dug into it and learned about it and has just an extensive knowledge about how to use it. Inside this interview, she talks about how to embrace AI as a food blogger. She discusses the art of prompt engineering and how we can prompt AI tools to avoid those generic responses. She also talks through a framework called the CD framework that also helps responses to be less generalized. There are so many nuggets in this episode that I am really excited to try myself and I hope you are inspired by it as well and that you aren’t afraid of AI, but instead are learning to embrace it and see what it has to offer and how it can make your business run more smoothly. This is episode number 485, Sponsored by RankIQ.

Sponsor 01:48

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Megan Porta 03:21

Hanelore is a London-based architect turned recipe developer and food blogger. In 2020 she won the international Netflix show, Crazy Delicious, which opened new doors into blogging as a career since 2022, you’ll find Han focusing entirely on growing her blog, sugaryums.com, where she shares delicious Asian desserts, drinks and street food, a tech geek at heart, she is fully immersed in all things AI and is constantly on the lookout for new tools that can streamline her work well. Hello Han. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. How are you today?

Hanelore Dumitrache 03:55

Hi Megan. Thank you so much for having me. I’m great, thank you. It’s very dark over here. I’m in London and it’s already nighttime. How are you?

Megan Porta 04:03

Oh gosh. Well I’m just starting my day, so we’re on. Yeah, different parts of our day, I guess , but I’m good too. Thank you. We’re gonna talk about AI and blogging today. I am super excited for this chat. It’s so relevant as you know, but before we get into it, do you have a fun fact to share with us, Han?

Hanelore Dumitrache 04:23

I do actually. It’s actually a bit more of a fun riddle. So if you love classic literature, I’m originally from the Land of Vampires, but if you’re a Harry Potter fan, I’m from the Land of Dragons. Do you have any guesses where that’s from?

Megan Porta 04:39

Oh gosh, I’ve never had a riddle presented to me here. It’s a little early.

Hanelore Dumitrache 04:46

Right. So I’m originally from Romania.

Megan Porta 04:50

Oh right, yes.

Hanelore Dumitrache 04:51

Which is, you know, the birthplace of Dracula. Yeah. And also it’s where dragons come from in the Harry Potter world. So yeah, Romanian born and bred and I’ve been in London for well over 12 years now.

Megan Porta 05:06

That’s so cool. I love that. I love the riddle. Thank you for doing that, getting my brain working today.

Hanelore Dumitrache 05:12

Thank you for playing along.

Megan Porta 05:14

So that kind of leads into like just your blog and kinda giving your history a little bit. Would you mind giving us a history of your blog? And I know that you have been in a Netflix show as well, so kind of tell us about all of that.

Hanelore Dumitrache 05:28

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m not the oldest person in the game when it comes to blogging. I sort of accidentally stumbled into it about three years ago I started an Instagram account just playing along with food, trying to make myself feel better about life. And then I got pitched by a Netflix producer to be on a cooking competition, which initially I thought it was spam because who does that to an account that’s been around for four months or so. But it turned out to be the real deal. So in, I think it was somewhere in 2019, we recorded the show and then it aired in 2020 across the world. And it’s been a crazy journey since that has prompted me to start my blog to get more serious about it, to actually transition from a full-time job in architecture into the blogging world. And here I am now a few years later.

Megan Porta 06:22

Okay, I have to ask about the Netflix experience. How was it ? How’d it go?

Hanelore Dumitrache 06:28

Picture everything in between crazy and insane and it’s somewhere in the middle. It was pretty much like being tossed into a bunker for three days and filming nonstop and trying to cook and not trip or break anything and try to be charming for the camera. But it was still super fun. So it was stressful but really, really fun. And if anyone’s on the fence between about doing a show or anything, I strongly recommend you go and do it because it can change your life.

Megan Porta 06:57

Okay. What was the show called? Did you mention that? I don’t think you did.

Hanelore Dumitrache 07:01

It’s called Crazy Delicious and it can be found in most countries on Netflix.

Megan Porta 07:06

I am so watching that. That’s so cool. Oh my gosh. We know a star. I imagine that after you got done with it, having gone through all the craziness, you probably just felt more equipped to handle blogging and everything else. Am I right?

Hanelore Dumitrache 07:21

Yes, definitely. So before this I never even knew blogging can be a full-time career. I was one of those people that didn’t know anything about this world. So my website was just a portfolio of stuff I’ve cooked. And on the show I was lucky enough to meet some full-time bloggers that sort of gave me an induction into the pros and cons of blogging. And then I started researching, listening to podcasts, to your podcast, of course, joining Facebook groups and all the works and yeah, sort of baptism by fire. And then I started my website pretty much a few months after the show aired.

Megan Porta 07:59

So you met other bloggers on the show? There were other bloggers there too?

Hanelore Dumitrache 08:03

Absolutely. So the show, the format of it was to almost like have food bloggers and Instagram content creators making food. So it was about the glamor, the glitzy side of food. So that’s where I had the chance to meet a lot of amazing people within the industry.

Megan Porta 08:21

Oh my gosh, I’ve not heard of this. I can’t believe I haven’t heard of this yet. That’s so cool. I’m gonna watch this tonight. Is it like seasons or is it just kind of one?

Hanelore Dumitrache 08:30

It was just one season, just six episodes I think on Netflix. I’m the last episode and the judges were pretty famous. So you had Hessan Blumenthal, the lovely Carla Hall. Oh, and the Swedish chef Nicholas Ekstedt, if I pronounce his name right. But yeah, it was pretty, pretty amazing.

Megan Porta 08:48

Okay, super excited about that and congratulations. That’s so cool. And oh, thank you. The thing you replied to the email that you thought was spam, right?

Hanelore Dumitrache 08:57

Absolutely.

Megan Porta 08:57

Yeah. Okay, that’s super cool way to frame the conversation. We’re gonna talk about AI today though, kind of a far cry from being crazy delicious.

Hanelore Dumitrache 09:08

Absolutely.

Megan Porta 09:08

Yes. Okay. So why don’t we start by, well, first of all, I’m just curious, how did you get into AI?

Hanelore Dumitrache 09:15

So I think it all comes from my background. I studied architecture for about 10 years and there was a lot of software involved in there. I also studied programming in my past when I was younger. So I’ve always been very techie and I’ve always been very interested in technology. And then about a year ago when ChatGPT started gaining traction, I became full on obsessed and I wanted to learn everything about it. And I pretty much submerged myself in everything AI.

Megan Porta 09:45

Awesome. And I think that sets you apart because a lot of us ran the other way, we’re like, oh, this is, I’ve heard so many people just be so afraid of it. And I love that you ran right into it and just decided that you were gonna figure it out. So do you wanna just describe if anyone is not aware what AI is, can you just define it?

Hanelore Dumitrache 10:08

Yeah, of course. So AI stands for artificial intelligence and it’s basically a machine that performs tasks similar to humans. And although AI has been around for a while, it’s become highly popular after the launch of ChatGPT, which was in the last I believe, year and a half. And if we’re talking about ChatGPT in particular, it’s what is called in the industry a large language model. That means that it’s an ai, so artificial intelligence algorithm whose primary function is language generation. So it’s designed to generate language or speech in whatever form that is. The key here is language generation, and that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. They think that it has real understanding, but ChatGPT and AI in general don’t have a real understanding in the human sense. They’re only machines that can predict patterns in speech and they can generate language. So they’re pretty much writing machines, if you will.

Megan Porta 11:15

Yeah, just a side note, because my 13-year-old son is obsessed with chess, he’s been using ChatGPT to play chess with. And it is very funny because as you say, it’s like a, A language like writing, right? So they don’t really understand concepts like, you know, the bishop needs to move this way and this is part of whatever. So he’s like, what is wrong? I’m like, well this is how it works, right? It’s just, it’s artificial intelligence, it’s just writing you back. It’s not like it has these elaborate concepts down or anything like that.

Hanelore Dumitrache 11:50

Absolutely. And especially when it comes to chess, like chess is highly predictable in terms of pattern, right? So I guess the way it works is it tries to predict patterns based on moves you’ve already made, but obviously most of the time it gets it wrong because humans are unpredictable.

Megan Porta 12:05

Yeah, right. It’s very funny. He’s like, can you believe it moved this piece over there, I don’t know, whatever. So how do you think food bloggers can use AI to just improve their businesses and maybe their workflows?

Hanelore Dumitrache 12:19

So I think it boils down to the problems that food bloggers face. And this is something I’ve learned over the last two years. You need to do a lot of things and pretty much be a one person band and everything is time-consuming. You need to do recipe development, photography, editing, writing posts, formatting, social media, and that’s just the beginning. And I think if used correctly and ethically, AI can take some of that pressure off when it comes to the most time-consuming tasks. And in the case of food blogging, a lot of my peers have been complaining about how long it takes to write posts to edit even proofreading or optimizing old posts. And as an example, ever since I’ve, I’ve devised a formula for using ChatGPT correctly, I’ve gone from spending four to five hours on an article to about 30 to 45 minutes, which is pretty good.

Megan Porta 13:13

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a huge time savings right there, which we all want, right?

Hanelore Dumitrache 13:17

Absolutely.

Megan Porta 13:18

Yeah. So it really can cut things down. Now are you super careful about using the writing that you generate from AI in your post? Like how much do you tweak it?

Hanelore Dumitrache 13:28

This is the thing. So this is where to me, prompt engineering comes into place and prompt engineering is basically the instructions that you give AI. And what I always do is I customize those instructions to such a degree that all the AI is doing is mirroring my own writing style. So I always give examples of my own write pieces of writing and basically all it does is it follows on from that. Of course there is some degree of tweaking, but ultimately if you use this type of method, I feel like it’s still in my own voice, in my own writing style and it’s consistent with my brand.

Megan Porta 14:09

Okay. Let’s back up just a second. So which tools specifically do you recommend bloggers using?

Hanelore Dumitrache 14:15

So I would say the most powerful as of yet, and the easiest to use is chatGPT. And they’ve had a lot of recent updates at the moment. So it’s only getting more and more powerful and more capable of writing in a very natural way. But obviously there are also some other free alternatives like Claude, which uses very natural language, but it’s not as advanced as ChatGPT. A lot of people also use Koala, Odin AI. And in terms of other tools, it depends what sort of content you’re interested in generating. The ones I’ve mentioned so far are the ones that are the best at writing, but you can also have a lot of tools that are great for social media like Jasper for example, that comes with prebuilt templates and it can just generate Instagram or TikTok captions for you. Or if you’re interested in image generation, whether it’s hero shots or ingredient shots or process shots, mid-journey and Open AI’s new Dolly three are pretty much the best on the market at the moment.

Megan Porta 15:17

Okay. So mainly we’re talking ChatGPT probably because I think most people listening are familiar with that. And like you said, it’s the easiest to use. It can really generate anything you want it to generate. But I love all the other examples you provided too. I have a question about your writing examples that you provide. So you kind of give it examples so that it can take on your voice, right? So what kind of examples do you provide it?

Hanelore Dumitrache 15:45

Exactly. So I feel like the key here is to personalize the writing style. A lot of people have told me, and I’ve found it the same in the beginning, if you just go into ChatGPT and you tell it, write a 800 word post about carrot cake, it’s going to give you the most generic post ever invented with not much structure. The recipe is all wrong, nothing really makes sense, but if you train it first on your own writing style, then that’s very different. So for example, what I would do before writing any article, I copy in one of my pieces of writing. So any blog post that I like as a template, and then what I do is I ask it to analyze the writing style, the voice content length and format of the example text I’ve given it. And then I use it to use, I ask it to use it as a reference text or as a template for a new blog post that’s going to write for me. And this way, because you’re given it an actual example, it can learn from your own speech and own writing style to generate a new piece of writing in a similar style. So most of the time it’s fairly accurate. Of course there is some degree of tweaking in there, but you have way more control over the output this way.

Megan Porta 17:07

So you paste in an entire blog post. And then can you say again, so you ask it to analyze voice style, what else did you say?

Hanelore Dumitrache 17:15

Yeah, so I ask it to analyze the writing style, the voice, the content, the length and the format.

Megan Porta 17:23

And it does a pretty good job of that. Do you feel like, do you have to reiterate like, oh you know, do this again or does it do it pretty good job one time?

Hanelore Dumitrache 17:31

It does a good job at analyzing how it’s written. So most of the time it would tell you the writing style is enthusiastic and friendly, but still informative and yada yada yada. But if you want even more control over the output, then that’s where you start doing things section by section. So for example, you would do, you would give an example for your introduction, then you give another example for why you love this recipe. Then third example for ingredients and so on. And this way, if you’re doing it chunk by chunk, you have way more control over what it writes. And the editing is way more minimal. There’s not as much editing involved.

Megan Porta 18:16

Is Google penalizing bloggers for doing this strategy? Do you know?

Hanelore Dumitrache 18:22

So in the beginning Google were a bit on the fence and they weren’t very vocal about AI generated content. But I think it was a few months ago, around July when they said that they are not penalizing AI generated content as long as it’s useful and it’s helpful content. So this is where it’s important to acknowledge that AI is only here to assist with your writing, not your thinking. So the information and the factual things that go into your post should come exclusively from you as the human and the recipe developer and AI, all it does is it connects the dots with words.

Megan Porta 19:03

Okay. I like that explanation. And that aligns with the chess thing, right? It’s writing, not thinking. So that makes sense why it’s not a good chess player.

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Megan Porta 20:43

Okay. Do you have any other strategies to make things less generic when you’re writing?

Hanelore Dumitrache 20:48

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s, now we’re getting into more advanced concepts here. There’s something called the CD framework, which is an acronym that stands for context instruction details and input. So every time you give ChatGPT, any kind of instruction or what is called a prompt in the AI world, you need to follow these four context instruction details and input if you want to get a very accurate response from it.

Megan Porta 21:20

Can you talk through those? We’d love to hear about a little bit more about each.

Hanelore Dumitrache 21:24

Yeah, absolutely. So when we’re talking about the first thing you should give it is the context, which is where you’re talking about the theme style or background information of your desired content. So as an example, you could say something like you are a food blogger specializing in easy family meals. Your main audience is based in the USA, mainly families looking for quick and easy dinners. So you’ve set the tone, you’ve set the background and it understands this is who I’m writing for, this is my audience and this is the type of blog I’m writing for. Then the next one would be the instruction. And this is a clear and direct command about what you want the AI to do. An example of this would be, this is where you tell it what you want from it. So for example, write an 800-word SEO-optimized blog post about carrot cake with a maximum keyword density of 2% using my recipe provided below. So here you’ve told it clearly this is what I want from you. Then the next step would be the details, which are specific elements or aspects that you want to include in your post. An example of this would be your writing style should be friendly or enthusiastic or whatever. Or alternatively, this is where you can paste in an example of your own writing and you can say mirror the writing style below when you generate the new section or the new blog post. And the last one is the input. And this is very important and this is the step that a lot of people skip over and that’s where they get really generic posts. So the input is your personal input as the recipe developer, your opinion and unique information that is needed for that recipe. So an example of this would be you would say below is the full recipe used to create a carrot cake. You’ll use it in the blog post without changing or adding anything. And then you can put in any secondary keywords you wanted to use. For example, if you pull them from RankIQ or any other tools you’re using. And you can also give it the post structure, use the following headings as a guide for the post structure. And after you give it all these instructions, you’ve pretty much covered all ground. So the output you’re going to get from it will not be generic, it will be based on the information, the ingredients, the headings, the structure you’ve given it, and the writing style if especially if you’ve given an example of your own writing, would be very specific to how you usually write it. And for me, this is the method that hasn’t really failed so far and it works and it works really well to the point where when I go over a post I’m like, this is pretty close to how I would actually write it.

Megan Porta 24:18

So you have very minimal tweaking when you get to that point.

Hanelore Dumitrache 24:21

Exactly. But by that point I’ve also put in quite a lot of work. Sure. So I would say out of those 45 minutes, you know, when you think about it about all the recipe and the details you give it, you’re pretty much writing about half of the post and then what it’s doing, it’s filling in the gaps.

Megan Porta 24:41

Okay, that’s so interesting. And then do you use this for other writing that you need for your blog or do you just use this for recipe posts?

Hanelore Dumitrache 24:50

So I mainly post recipes on my blog. But now I’ve also started a secondary website which is more about using AI for food bloggers. So of course I’m using, I’m using it in a constructive way to you know, formulate whatever products I’m working on and whatever articles I’m also writing there.

Megan Porta 25:10

Do you use it for social media or newsletters or anything like that?

Hanelore Dumitrache 25:14

I have to admit I am one of those people that’s terribly bad at everything social media and newsletters. But otherwise, yes, I would definitely use it for that as well.

Megan Porta 25:24

Okay, awesome. And then do you use this every time? Like every single blog post that you write, you send it through the CD framework?

Hanelore Dumitrache 25:32

I think for me it depends. I tend to judge it on a case by case basis depending on how quickly I could write the recipe on my own. If it’s something that’s very simple or something that’s part of a cluster of recipes and I’ve written before, I know I could probably write it on my own very quickly without the need of AI. But if it’s a newer recipe that’s very comprehensive where I need to explain a lot of things, I tend to use it just to save time. So I think it’s up to every person how they want to use it and whatever works best for them.

Megan Porta 26:07

Are there additional ways to personalize AI and ChatGPT? In addition to like everything you’ve already said.

Hanelore Dumitrache 26:14

One thing I like to do is use templates. So how every single blogging coach says you should have a template for your blog post. So it’s almost like a framework that you start building on. I like to do the same thing with AI because if I have everything templated then I just need to copy and change some small keywords here and there, the information I’m inputting and then everything is much quicker you and you can streamline your workflow by quite a bit. And also because in that template you can add a lot of personalization that’s unique to you and your writing style.

Megan Porta 26:52

Okay. I have not used the templates feature, so I was just trying to peek at that.

Hanelore Dumitrache 26:58

Oh no, sorry. So it’s not a template you can upload in there. One thing you can do is if you go to settings and you go to customized instructions, you can preset how you want it to sound like. So that’s where you can put in an analysis of your personal writing voice. But when I said templates I meant I, I personally have a Word document when I have all my prompts written out with the instructions for each section and then I just copy and paste them into ChatGPT as I’m writing the article.

Megan Porta 27:32

Okay. I didn’t even know this was here. Custom instructions. So you can kind of type in what you want ChatGPT to know to provide better responses and how you would like ChatGPT to respond. But there is a templates option at the bottom too, but it looks like it’s linked to keywords everywhere. Do you know about that?

Hanelore Dumitrache 27:51

I don’t think I have that one, no. It might be a US feature, I’m not sure. We tend to get things a bit delayed in the UK.

Megan Porta 28:01

Okay. Yeah, it looks like if you click templates you can choose a category. So if you want copywriting, marketing, SEO and then subcategory and then you can select a template. I have not played with this yet, but.

Hanelore Dumitrache 28:14

Oh, interesting. Oh well that will make things even easier. You can just devise your own template and just upload it.

Megan Porta 28:19

Yeah. Cool. All right, so consider doing something like that and then yeah, what if we’re creating a blog post for example, and we have specific keywords we want to incorporate into it, how do we kind of integrate that SEO into what ChatGPT comes up with?

Hanelore Dumitrache 28:37

Definitely this is something that you can add into your template or whatever method you choose to use. But for example, what I do, I use RankIQ a lot and Megan, I know you’re quite a big fan of RankIQ, too. So what I do, I pull all the secondary keywords from RankIQ and as I am asking the AI to write section by section, so let’s say in the introduction, I would give it an example of my own writing, then I would tell it based on the example, write a new introduction for the keyword carrot cake. And then I also say also add in the following secondary keywords and I paste in four or five keywords from RankIQ. And then you do this section after section until you exhaust all the secondary keywords. And the way it does that it, it simply sprinkles it where it sounds natural and I found that to be quite successful.

Megan Porta 29:33

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I love the strategy of using RankIQ for those secondary keywords and H2’s, but I’ve never used it in conjunction with ChatGPT, so I love that strategy. And then do you find that the posts that you write this way rank well?

Hanelore Dumitrache 29:50

Yes actually. So I’ve started using this strategy over the past, I would say five to six months. And most of my posts have been ranking well, obviously the ones that are also related to the rest of the content I have, cause I’ve been doing a lot of experiments on my website recently. But most of them rank on the first page without any issues and all of them show up in the first five to six results of the rich recipe results.

Megan Porta 30:16

That’s awesome. That’s very good. Okay, anything else about SEO or anything strategizing there?

Hanelore Dumitrache 30:24

I think one other thing I would like to add is when it comes to the ethical considerations of using AI for writing articles, I know a lot of bloggers and the audience are rightly a bit concerned about, you know, making everything too robotic and so on. But I think it’s a case of maintaining your own voice and staying true to your brand and ensuring you have continuity and content, which is what happens when you follow a very strict template and when you’re, the prompts you give the AI are very customized to you and your writing style and every single bit of factual information actually comes from you because the last thing you want is to give wrong information that chat g PT just pulled out of thin, thin air. And another thing I’d say is that I think a lot of bloggers should start becoming a bit more honest about AI use and that this is something that could potentially be disclosed in their disclosure policy. I think there is honestly no harm in saying that yes, this blog does sometimes utilize AI only for language generation, but every single factual information and the recipe itself is written by me or whoever’s writing it. And another thing that people are concerned about is that they’re worried that the information they’re giving ChatGPT will forever be stored by this AI and will be used and stolen for training purposes or whatnot. But there’s a very simple way of preventing that. Again, if you go into your settings for ChatGPT, all you need to do is turn off the option for storing your information above 30 days. And when you turn that off, all your chat history will disappear after 30 days. But also everything you tell it will not be used for training purposes so that information is not used by them.

Megan Porta 32:20

Oh, interesting. Okay. I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s really good to know. That’s there. And then do you have that in your privacy, in your disclosure policy?

Hanelore Dumitrache 32:28

Yes, I do have it. And it said something along the lines of what I, I said earlier that we use AI only where necessary and to only for language generation purposes.

Megan Porta 32:39

Yeah, I like the those words, language generation only. So you don’t write it individually in each post, you just have it in the policy and that’s it.

Hanelore Dumitrache 32:48

Yes, exactly. I would, for example, write if I’m using an AI generated image. So I would put under the image that this image is AI generated. But personally I haven’t used a lot of those yet.

Megan Porta 33:01

And then I know that you use AI for eBooks, right?

Hanelore Dumitrache 33:07

Yes, exactly. So I have an eBook that’s called AI for Food Bloggers from Kitchen to Clicks that’s launching on the 5th of December of this year where I’m basically, so all the concepts I’ve talked to you about today and more are very nicely packaged in an eBook where you can learn how to maximize and improve your workflow and maximize your efficiency and output as well. And how to use AI in the best way that’s suitable for you while still maintaining your own personal brand voice and identity.

Megan Porta 33:42

Did you use AI to generate the eBook?

Hanelore Dumitrache 33:45

To some extent. But again, similarly to what I said, it’s only for language generation purposes. So all these concepts I’ve been talking about are things I’ve learned by taking extensive courses and taking Google’s machine learning course and then I try to gather all the factual information and then when I get stuck a bit, I ask it, can you please take these bullet pointed ideas and write them into a paragraph for me in this writing style?

Megan Porta 34:16

Yeah, that’s great.

Hanelore Dumitrache 34:18

Which again makes it much easier while still not compromising the message and the educational value.

Megan Porta 34:25

So your eBook launches in December?

Hanelore Dumitrache 34:29

Yes. Exactly. It launches in December 5th, but I will start running pre-orders. And I have a surprise for all your listeners, if they use a personalized code, they will get a 25% off and a bonus cheat sheet for advanced prompts.

Megan Porta 34:46

Where do they find that?

Hanelore Dumitrache 34:47

Can find this on my website hanelore.com. I will give all the information to you, Megan, so you can add them in there. And yeah, and I’m always happy to answer any questions if you reach out to me on [email protected]. Awesome.

Megan Porta 35:01

Is there anything else we need to know about AI do you feel like that we missed?

Hanelore Dumitrache 35:05

Not that I can think of off the top of my head. What I would say and what I would urge everyone is to try it out for themselves, even if it feels a bit intimidating, it can be quite fun to play around with it. And you can sometimes use it as a sparring partner when you’re trying to come up with ideas, with new recipes, use it to bounce off ideas off of it. So you can say something like, I’m thinking of making a new recipe with these ingredients. Can you give me some ideas? Or if you have some existing recipes, you could say, I have these three recipes, what else can I make that’s related to them? So there’s a lot of ways you can use it in a very playful and at the same time useful way. And the only way to properly learn that of course, is by researching and documenting yourself by, you know, courses or eBooks, but also by trying things out yourself. That’s the best way to learn.

Megan Porta 36:00

ChatGPT has become my brainstorming buddy. Anytime I am kind of stuck with anything, whether it’s like what H2 or what, what paragraphs do I write here or just maybe I need a list of ideas for toppings to put on pancakes or whatever. Like I just automatically go to ChatGPT and just, it’s almost like a friend now like, Hey, what’s up buddy, help me with some ideas here. And it’s so good because every time I’m like, oh yeah, I wouldn’t have thought of that.

Hanelore Dumitrache 36:27

Absolutely. It’s so useful and especially because blogging can be a very solitary industry, right? You’re at home by yourself writing stuff all the time. And sometimes it’s difficult when you’re stuck in your own bubble and it’s nice to bounce ideas off of something, even if that’s something it is just a machine.

Megan Porta 36:45

It’s true. It really does help. But maybe not play chess with it yet. Maybe it’ll get smarter. But this was so good Han.

Hanelore Dumitrache 36:54

It’s getting there.

Megan Porta 36:55

Yeah, it’s getting there. This was amazing. Thank you so much for giving us the ideas and the framework and just ways that we can use AI to make our writing more smooth and all of that. We really appreciate your time today.

Hanelore Dumitrache 37:09

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Megan Porta 37:11

Yeah, it was great. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today?

Hanelore Dumitrache 37:16

I do have a quote from a book I’ve been absolutely obsessed with called Atomic Habits by James Clear. And the quote is, goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.

Megan Porta 37:30

Yeah, I think I feel like that book has so much that you could pull out of it, but that is a really good one. Love that. And that kind of applies to what we’re talking about today, right?

Hanelore Dumitrache 37:39

Absolutely.

Megan Porta 37:39

We’ll put together a show notes page for you, Han. If you wanna go look at those and find Han’s offer that she talked about as well, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/sugaryums tell everyone where they can find you Han.

Hanelore Dumitrache 37:53

Absolutely. So you can find me either on my blog, which is sugaryums.com or on my AI website, which is hanelore.com.

Megan Porta 38:02

Awesome. Everyone go check her out. Thank you so much for listening at Food Bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro 38:11

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.