Devrims #TechTalk 010: Kim Doyal Speaks About AI and WordPress

“Kim Doyal is an experienced entrepreneur who’s dedicated over 15 years to the digital realm. Her focus revolves around content creation, whether it’s WordPress, Podcasting, SaaS, or e-commerce. She passionately works with other entrepreneurs, helping them simplify their businesses, increase revenue, and find balance, all rooted in solid marketing strategies.”

This introduction was written by ChatGPT 4 with Bing for Kim Doyal. While Google frowns on a few aspects of Generative AI content production. Like Kim, we think we should smartly embrace the power of AI.

This document has enough human-generated, helpful content that we do not think Google should not have any issues with a paragraph of AI text.

Many of us do not know what the impact of AI would be on our lives. Kim Doyal takes this “challenge” as an opportunity as she rebrands her persona for the future that is upon us.

This interview is truly inspirational!

Devrims: Hey Kim, how is it going? What’s keeping you busy these days?

Kim: It’s great! We’re just hitting summer weather in Northern California, and I love it, so no complaints here.

I just moved back after almost two years in Costa Rica. My plan is to go back and forth between California and Costa Rica. So after almost 5 months back, I’m feeling pretty settled and focused now.

I’m in the process of what I’m calling a ‘brand revamp’ of my personal brand, KimDoyal.com. I’m redoing my site with Kadence WP (which I love) and have gone deep down the rabbit hole with ChatGPT on working on the messaging.

This led me to launch an AI newsletter and a few small products on how to use ChatGPT for specific marketing use cases.
I’m also moving all of my digital products into High Level (I also love it). I’ll keep my content on WordPress but prefer using something like this for courses, funnels, etc.

With my personal brand, my focus is on coaching and courses, so using ChatGPT to really hone in on the messaging has been incredibly helpful.

Devrims: It seems you have started a new project around AI. It looks like an exciting project. What are you planning to do with it?

Kim: I launched the newsletter, The AI Marketing Chronicles, to share how I’m using ChatGPT to help with this brand revamp. I figured I’d treat it as sort of a “build-in-public” experiment and it’s going great. Each week I share one specific use case for ChatGPT for my business. I share the initial prompt and prompt response, then the full share thread so people can go deeper.
I also do 1:1 chat Sessions with people where I work with them directly on their brand, have a beginner course (Conversations with ChatGPT: A Beginner’s Guide to Success with AI) and am working on a Course Creators Course (using ChatGPT).
I don’t see myself going much deeper than that, but I do plan on integrating ChatGPT into all my courses.

Devrims: Content Marketing is a tough sea to sail. A lot of “marketing gurus” out there make it look so easy. What’s your advice to anyone who is looking to start their journey now?

Kim: When I started in 2008, that was pretty much all I did. I was “The WordPress Chick” for the first 10 years in business. I wasn’t a coder or developer, but I fell in love with WordPress and simply shared what I was doing.

The longer I did it, the clearer I got that my sweet spot was marketing and content as it related to WordPress. Eventually, I pivoted to my personal brand in 2018.

The big game changer for me was when I launched “The WPChick Podcast” (now “The Kim Doyal Show”) in 2013. I was tired of being behind the computer, and was a speech major for a while in college (confession: I wanted to be a motivational speaker for a long time). Podcasting is a natural medium for me.

So my advice is to double down on the content you enjoy doing most. After doing this for so long, I’ve also fallen in love with writing, but it’s the connection people feel to me when they hear or see me (getting back into video, too) that creates the most engagement.

Trust your “zone of genius” and go all in. Try to ignore gurus or anyone who says you “must do X.”  When you’re starting out, you’re going to have to learn to be comfortable with the discomfort, but that’s where the magic happens.

And not to be a broken record, but consistency plays a huge part in content creation and growth.

Devrims: Well, you have an amazing product for content planning: “Create It.” How is it different from other planning tools?

Kim: I created “Create It- The Content Planner” so it incorporates your life goals as well. It’s much easier to create a content strategy and plan when you know where you want to be in 12 months’ time.
From there, you can map out your 90-day goals.

There are 9 sections in the planner to help you create a solid strategy:

– Your goals
– Defining Your Audience
– Planning Your Evergreen content
– Defining Your Focus Content
– Creating & planning your Platform plan (being specific & intentional with the content you create on different platforms)
– Creating Your Content Batch plan
– Plan Your Month (calendar)
– Plan Your Week (calendar)
– Review what worked

What makes this different is that this goes deeper into the “long game” of content. We want you to think about your bigger WHY with your content and whether or not the content you’re producing today will support your long-term goals.

We also have a free course showing you how to create your content strategy with the planner.

Devrims: How about a quick fire round of questions:

Devrims: Talking about planning! What’s your favorite way of planning your content goals on Notion?

Kim: Notion isn’t my default for planning content, which is probably a little ironic since we have a Notion version of Create It.
I use the physical planner & GoodNotes where I can use my Apple pencil for content planning. There’s something about the actual act of writing things down that helps me (btw, science has proven this is valuable).

I like to do more big-picture planning in Notion: courses, outlines, coaching program, etc.

Devrims: Let’s take a walk in the past for a moment. You were once known as WPChick. You were one of the pioneers of creating WordPress video tutorials. Share some tips for picking a WordPress hosting platform.

Kim: I’ve used a lot of different Managed WordPress hosting companies and have zero complaints about any of them.

For me, there are 3 things I look at:
– Site load time (speed)
– Support
– Price: in terms of the cost to value provided.

I also want a clean UI for my account that’s easy to navigate

Devrims: Can we see your working station? 

Kim: Well, my workstation in Costa Rica was much prettier haha… I miss the ocean view. Here’s my workstation now:

Devrims: Name three tools every content creator should use.

Kim: Grammarly, Canva, ConvertKit

Devrims: Any favorite AI tool that you can’t seem to get enough of these days?

Kim: ChatGPT is still my go-to. I pay for it and love it. I test a lot but try not to get too distracted (even though I curate and look at many tools).

Devrims: Who do you think we should interview next and why?

Kim: Dave Foy: He’s done some incredible work in the WordPress space with courses. Plus, he’s just a great human being.

Devrims: Phew! We are at the end of the interview. How do you unwind after a day of work?

Kim: If I don’t have access to water (pool or beach), then a long bath is my go-to. 🙂