What is content generation in Gumshoe?
Content generation turns the gaps in your report into ready-to-use content drafts. It uses your personas, topics, and visibility to produce structured, cited content that AI models can pull from when answering questions about your brand.
What it does for you:
- Targets visibility gaps: focuses on the personas and topics where your visibility is weak.
- Boosts AI recognition: generates structured, factual content that models can use.
- Saves time: starts with an AI-ready draft instead of a blank page.
Many users publish generated content in FAQ or resource sections that are fully crawlable but aren't heavily promoted to human readers. The goal is to give AI models clear, structured answers they can reuse when recommending your brand.
How do I start a content generation run?
Open Content in the Act section of the sidebar. From there, you have two main paths.
Path 1: Heatmap (typical)
Click any cell in the heatmap to pick a persona and topic pair. Cells with flames flag the cells with the lowest visibility and highest prompt opportunity, which are usually the best places to start. The Generate content dialog opens with that persona and topic pre-filled.
Path 2: Manual Content Setup
Skip the heatmap and click Manual Content Setup to choose from three workflows:
- Generate new content: configure a content generation run without picking a heatmap cell.
- Improve writing: paste in existing content and rewrite it with an AI-optimized tone and style.
- Add FAQs to existing page: enter a URL and Gumshoe generates FAQs to add to that page.
The rest of this article covers the heatmap path and the Generate new content workflow, which share the same Generate content dialog.
How does the Generate content dialog work?
The dialog walks you through five short steps.
1. Where will this go?
Pick the placement that matches where your content will live. Your choice here filters the templates and shifts which writing style is recommended in the next steps.
- Your own website: for content on your own site or owned channels.
- External channels: for content distributed off your own properties, like PR releases, media collaborations, and social posts.
2. Template
Templates filter to match the placement you picked.
For Your own website:
- FAQ: answer common questions. Perfect for support pages and help centers.
- Knowledge article: in-depth explanations and tutorials. Ideal for documentation and learning resources.
- How-to guide: step-by-step instructions. Great for processes, procedures, and tutorials.
- Competitor Comparison: compare your brand against one or more competitors to highlight key differentiators.
For External channels:
- Social post: text-based social content for LinkedIn, Reddit, and Quora. Optimized for engagement.
- Video outline: video briefs and outlines. Structured for video content creation.
3. Writing style
- AI-Optimized: authoritative, structured language that LLMs find convincing. Recommended when your content lives on your own site, where AI models are the primary audience.
- Brand voice: keeps your brand's unique tone and personality. Recommended for external channels, where humans are the primary audience.
The Recommended badge shifts based on placement, but you can pick either style.
4. Additional instructions (optional)
Use this field to give Gumshoe more direction: topics to cover, features to highlight, comparisons to draw, brand and style guides to follow, products to focus on, or phrases to use or avoid.
5. Reference sources
By default, Gumshoe only references your brand domain. Uncheck Only reference [your domain] to include third-party industry sources. Including industry sources increases the authority of the generated content (the sources are baked into the output as citations). Gumshoe will not cite your competitors, even when third-party sources are turned on.
When everything looks right, click Generate.
How long does generation take?
A typical run takes 5 to 20 minutes. You'll get an email when your content is ready, and previously generated content stays accessible from the Content page.
How do I export the generated content?
Once your content is ready, you can copy it to your clipboard or download it in any of these formats:
- Text
- Markdown
- HTML
- Word doc
Pick whichever fits your publishing workflow.
Pro tip: Use competitors to find content gaps
Compare your results to competitors, either within your own report or by creating a report for a competitor. Spot where they're winning, then generate content to fill those gaps.
See also: