During a workout last week I refined my entire sales page using just my voice - no keyboard required.

By the time I finished my cardio session (a bit breathlessly, I might add..it’s been a couple years since my last marathon), I'd completely overhauled the value prop, added new sections addressing objections, and refined the call to action.

This is the beauty of the hands-free content approach: it transforms "dead time" into productive time and removes the friction that keeps us from creating high-quality content.

In Parts 1 and 2, we covered the basics of hands-free content creation and the co-working relationship with AI. Today, we'll start to refine your rough draft into a polished piece.

Let's get started:

The Human Pass: Staying in the Loop

Before we let AI evaluate our content, there's an essential step: the human review.

This "human-in-the-loop" approach remains a crucial part of the AI skill set - it’s amateur to skip this and rely too much on the AI! Don’t do it.

In the case of our sales page, you remain the expert who knows your product, service, and audience better than any AI ever could. Without your guidance, you'll end up with generic ChatGPT slop.

The simplest and most “natural” way to do this is to read through your draft and give feedback on the fly:

"This introduction paragraph feels a bit wordy. Let's tighten it up by removing..."

"I like the point about X, but we need to expand on it with..."

"This section doesn't flow well from the previous one. Let's add a transition that connects..."

This works fine but tends to focus in on the small issues rather than larger (more important!) requirements.

Let’s look at how we can systematise this a bit better.

The Critical Appraisal: Finding Weak Spots

First up we can have AI do a critical pass of the work. Duh!

You can either use the same AI or port your content to a second AI for a fresh perspective - experiment with both approaches.

The challenge here is that AI tends to be agreeable and may simply praise your work rather than finding flaws. We need to specifically prompt it to be critical:

Please critically evaluate this draft WITHOUT PRAISE OR POLITENESS. I need you to be honest. Identify weak arguments, missing information, logical inconsistencies, sections that need strengthening, and objections someone might have after reading this. Don't hold back - finding flaws now will help me improve the final version.

Equally do not point out flaws for the sake of it.

Ideally use a Reasoning or more advanced model for this.

For my sales page, this analysis revealed three critical issues:

1. The story wasn't adequately tied to the offer - they felt disconnected

2. I hadn't established my credibility for teaching the subject

3. The pricing section was completely missing (as I was initially building it for a waitlist so this was very true!)

The beauty of this approach is that once these issues are identified, you can immediately address them—again, hands-free. Simply speak your thoughts on how to resolve each issue, and the AI will implement the changes.

The Iterative Refinement Process

Once we have the most glaring problems resolved we can get stuck in ourselves. We’re going to start to provide specific feedback of increasing granularity.

The key is to work from large-scale issues down to the details - don't get lost in sentence-level edits when the entire structure needs reworking. Here's the hierarchy I follow:

1. Structural Improvements (Start Here)

Begin with the big picture. Is the information in the right order? Are there logical gaps in the flow?

No? Then ask for large structural refinements. For example:

I think the overall structure needs adjustment. Let's move the section about [topic] before the section on [other topic], and then add a new section about [missing element].

Generally to make sure the AI knows what section I’m talking about I’ll read the header or the first sentence.

2. Section-Level Refinements (Next Level)

Once the overall structure is solid, focus on improving specific sections. Ie:

The section on [topic] needs improvement. Here are my thoughts on how to make it stronger...

Then speak freely about what you want to change in that section, often thinking through options aloud. You can even talk around the subject until you’ve found the answer yourself! The AI cuts through your verbal exploration bit and implements the essence of what you're trying to communicate. Super useful if you are verbose like me!

3. Sentence-Level Polishing (Final Detail Work)

Only after the structure and sections are solid should you focus on fine-tuning individual sentences and word choices:

In the third paragraph, the sentence starting with 'Furthermore' is too wordy. Let's make it more direct and impactful.

or 🤣 ":

Goodness me don't use the word "delve" - everyone will know you are ChatGPT!

Don't miss the forest for the trees - handle the big issues first, then work your way down to the details. If you start changing individual word choices right off the bat it’s going to take a while to get through the edit!

Importantly, you can repeat this entire process multiple times. With each cycle, you'll notice the issues becoming fewer and less significant. When you find yourself making only minor tweaks at the sentence level, that's your signal that the content is ready for the next phase of enhancement. This is the iterative process: until it’s no longer required.

Best Practices and Useful Techniques

Beyond the basic refinement process, here are some powerful techniques to enhance your collaboration with AI. These are a bit more grab-bag but hopefully helpful.

Tone and Voice Adjustments

Getting the tone right is crucial for connecting with your audience:

The tone of this draft is too [formal/casual/technical]. Please revise it to be more [conversational/authoritative/accessible] while maintaining the key messages.

Pro tip: AI can actually analyse your speaking patterns from your voice inputs and emulate your natural tone in the written content. Extremely cool. For a sales page, this conversational authenticity can be incredibly valuable. For other content types like case studies or white papers, you might want a more formal tone.

You can also upload writing samples you'd like to emulate, whether they're your own previous work or examples from others in your industry.

The "Explain It Like I'm Five" Technique

If a section is too complex or jargon-ey:

This explanation of [concept] is too complicated. Please rewrite it as if explaining to a smart 12-year-old while preserving the key information.

The "Cutting Room Floor" Technique

For trimming bloated content:

This draft is too lengthy. Please condense it while preserving all key points and maintaining the flow. Cut unnecessary examples, redundant phrases, and overly wordy explanations.

This approach helps you trim excess verbiage without losing valuable content. You can direct the AI to focus on specific sections that feel particularly bloated or ask for an overall tightening of the entire piece.

FYI: most AIs are rubbish at word counts so don’t both with instructions like “cut it to 200 words”. It won’t work and you’ll get annoyed. It’s a common error early users of AI make and then complain AI is rubbish. 🤣

Preparing for Final Enhancements

At this stage, you've refined your core content through human review, critical appraisal, and iterative improvement. Your draft should now have:

• Clear, logical structure

• Consistent tone and voice

• Compelling arguments and explanations

• Natural flow between sections

• No obvious gaps or weaknesses

But we're not quite finished. In Part 4, we'll explore how to add credibility to your content through data, research, and supporting elements. We'll leverage AI Deep Research to find the perfect statistics, case studies, and expert quotes to strengthen your arguments.

And yes, all hands free.