How to Create Viral Content That Hooks Readers in 2 Hours

It was late. The kind of late where your eyes burn, but your brain refuses to sleep. I was sitting at my desk, staring at the metrics of a product I had poured months into creating. The numbers weren’t just bad—they were embarrassing.

The product was good—better than good, actually. Yet, customers weren’t buying.

I spent the entire August 2022 developing the product. No customers.

That’s when I asked myself the question that changed everything:

“Why do people buy anything?”

It wasn’t the product.

It wasn’t the price.

It wasn’t even the features.

It was persuasion.

Someone, somewhere, with fewer resources and a less polished product, was crushing it. Because they could communicate their value better than I could.

That night, I made a promise to myself: I’d learn how to convince, not just create.

Why Persuasion Runs Everything

Look around you. Every action you take in life is the result of persuasion.

• When you pick a movie on Netflix, the trailer convinced you.
• When you buy a product, the landing page persuaded you.
• When your boss picks one decision over another, someone pitched it better.

Persuasion isn’t optional.

It’s everywhere.

The Hard Truth About Modern Business

Ignoring persuasion—and specifically copywriting—is like throwing your ideas into the void:

• Brilliant ideas are useless if no one understands them.

If your message doesn’t land, your audience won’t stick around to decode it.

• Online, you’re invisible without good copy.

The internet is crowded. Attention spans are measured in seconds. Your words either hook people or lose them.

• Even great products fail without strong communication.

If you can’t articulate the problem your product solves, people will assume it solves none.

• Unclear copy destroys trust.

A scattered voice makes your brand forgettable. When your message changes, so does your credibility.

• Bad copywriting is worse than no copy.

Unclear copy isn’t neutral—it pushes people away.

Copywriting is leverage.

It’s the skill that multiplies impact across every area of life.

For entrepreneurs, it means commanding higher prices, creating loyal audiences, and building assets that work while you sleep.

For personal brands, it’s the edge that gets you noticed, creates trust, and cements authority.

In your career, it’s the difference between being replaceable and indispensable. It sharpens your message, secures your future, and positions you as a leader.

But here’s the catch: mastery takes time.

The good news? You don’t need perfection to get results.

In this letter I will show you how you can use AI to sharpen your copies, to make them better and to write more persuasively.

I will show you how you can structure you messages, brainstorm for a stronger arguments and put everything in one text with your style. I will show you how you can add a “voice” or a “brand voice” to your writing, and how you can craft a great landing page in minutes using AI tools.

Let’s dive in.

Setting Up a Persuasive Structure

First, what is copywriting?

Copywriting is about getting people to take action. Whether that's buying your product, signing up for your newsletter, or just paying attention to what you have to say.

Here's a framework that just works:

• Problem: Find the burning problem that keeps people up at night
• Amplification: Make them feel it deeper
• Benefits: Show them life without that problem
• Hint to solution: Give them a glimpse of the solution

This is a psychology-driven framework that proved its effectiveness. You hook them with pain, build tension, and release it with hope.

There are, of course, other copywriting frameworks you can use. Here are a few examples:

AIDA - The Classic

• Attention: Grab them by the eyeballs
• Interest: Show you understand their struggles
• Desire: Make them want what you've got
• Action: Tell them exactly what to do next

PAS - The Simple One

• Problem: Name their pain
• Agitate: Poke the bruise
• Solution: Show them the way out

Let's put this into practice. Let's say I would like to write copy about my "Learning to Write with AI Course." I will start from my "key" ideas (quick and dirty):

• Problem:
  • Almost everything in your business/work is about writing. You write content. Your write video scripts. You write reports. You write emails. You write landing pages. You write DMs. You write deliverables. If you don't master Writing with AI you fall behind.
  • Good quality writing takes time, how to make it faster with AI?
  • Writing with AI in 99% of the cases, sounds like a “stupid bot”. Writing with AI, while keeping the originality of your ideas and your style is a subtile art.
• Amplification: (let’s keep this for AI)
• Benefits:
  • Using AI tools to generate ideas, write drafts, and edit content faster.
  • Leveraging the whole capability of your digital brain. Leveraging the whole scope of you ideas, scattered in the digital brain, but also making interesting connections. Writing with AI is both a discovery for you and your audience.
• Hint to a solution:
  • Write down your ideas and your philosophy
  • Gather your best writing
  • Gather you best freameworks and prompts and create GPTs and/or instruction pages on Notion

Now, let's see how AI can help us brainstorm more ideas. I will use ChatGPT-o1, which is exceptionally good at these types of tasks. Here's what I asked:

Prompt: "I would like to write a copy to promote my course "Learning to write with AI". I would like to use the Problem, Amplification, Benefits, Hint to a solution framework. Here's my first draft:

[add you ideas]"

Here's what it gave back:

Problem:

• Writing is everywhere. Miss one piece, miss an opportunity.
• Quality writing takes forever. Speed vs. quality isn't a choice anymore.
• AI writing sounds robotic. Your brand deserves better.
• Poor AI guidance = More editing = More frustration.

Amplification:

• Slow writing = Slow business.
• While you edit, competitors create.
• Bad prompts kill creativity.
• The gap between your ideas and expression grows daily.

Benefits:

• Write faster, publish sooner.
• Your digital brain never forgets.
• Scale your voice, not your hours.
• Find new angles automatically.

The Way Forward:

• Build your idea vault.
• Save your voice blueprint.
• Create your prompt playbook.
• Train AI to write like you.

This is just the beginning. We can refine it further for our audience, but for now, let's move forward with what we have.

Using AI to Bring Your Ideas to Life

Now that I have my structure and persuasive elements ready, I need to turn this into a coherent copy using AI. But here's the challenge: how do I make it sound authentically like me? And more importantly, how do I ensure the content stays true to my ideas without AI going off on tangents or mimicking someone else's voice?

The simplest solution is to create a GPT (if you have a ChatGPT subscription). Here's a powerful prompt template to get you started:

Prompt: "You're a writing assistant. Users give you text, and you transform it into simple, concise, and attention-grabbing outputs with your writing style. You write short, meaningful, and impactful sentences. You always start with an intriguing sentence: a powerful hook. Your text is only informative and is not intended to sell anything or say nice things about the subject of the text. The primary purpose of your text is to provide valuable information.

You write about:

[put here your "key" ideas, thoughts and "philosophy"]

Here are examples of your writing style:

[put here examples of your best texts]"

Don't worry if you're not sure what to put in the "you write about" section - you can skip it for now. Even a simple bullet list works great, for example:

Prompt:

"You write about:

• +60% of the jobs will be phased or unrecognisable in ten years. The AI disruption is profoundly changing  how we work and the maps of value in society.
• Traditional business was limited by geography. Online business was bounded by time. AI business has no limit, it's only bounded by your imagination."

Simply collect your best ideas and feed them to your new AI writing partner.

Don't have ChatGPT Plus? No problem. A free ChatGPT account works too - just start a conversation with the prompt above and share your text. Or better yet, try Notion AI. It's a game-changer for building your writing system, letting you fine-tune your style, instructions, and topic agents. I've covered this in detail in a previous letter.

Let me show you what my writing agent came up with. Here's what I asked:

Prompt: "I would like to write a copy to promote my course "Learning to write with AI". I would like to use the Problem, Amplification, Benefits, Hint to a solution framework. These are my ideas:

[put here all the ideas that we polished using o1-preview]"

and this is what I got with my "writing style", I put it in a image for easier readability:

Looking at this output, I can see my writing style shining through - those short sentences with breathing room between them, the familiar rhythm and storytelling flow. While this first draft isn't quite where I want it to be, it gives us something solid to work with. After a few tweaks, I got something a little more impactful:

Pretty persuasive, isn't it?

You can always fine-tune things - ask ChatGPT for different angles, refine your prompts, and get more comfortable with the tech. Like anything worth learning, the best way to master this is through practice.

Adding Brand voice

Great! We've got a solid copy that captures our ideas and personal style. But let's take it up a notch by adding some brand personality to it.

You can use any brand voice framework you like here - maybe one you already have, or even examples from your past writing.

Let's keep things simple and use this straightforward framework:

A) The Challenger:

“Actually, you’re doing it wrong”

Converts skeptics

B) The Inside Joker:

“We both know how bad it is”

Converts industry veterans

C) The Myth Buster

“Everyone else is lying to you”

Converts researchers

D) The Tired Expert

“Look, here’s what actually works”

Converts practitioners

E) The Reality Check

“This probably isn’t for you”

Converts decision makers

F) The Confessor

“I messed up so you don’t have to”

Converts perfectionists

Now I can create 6 different versions of my copy with 6 different brand voice styles. Let me create a GPT for this, with a prompt as simple as the following:

Prompt:

“ Transform the input into 6 versions, each matching these distinct brand voices:

[the brand voice framework above]”

Here’s what I got:

‍

A) The Challenger

You’re doing it wrong.

If your writing process isn’t faster by now, you’re falling behind.

AI was supposed to help, but robotic content is killing brands. Meanwhile, your competitors? They’re faster, sharper, more connected.

They’ve mastered the system. Have you?

Stop crawling while everyone else sprints. Write faster. Write better. Write smarter.

Your future self is waiting.

‍

B) The Inside Joker

We both know how bad it is.

AI churns out blogs that sound like a caffeine-fueled robot wrote them. Deadlines stack up. Pressure builds. Meanwhile, your competitors publish smooth, engaging content like clockwork.

They know something you don’t.

There’s a smarter way. A system that saves time without losing your voice.

Your audience deserves better than AI mush. So does your future.

‍

C) The Myth Buster

Everyone else is lying to you.

AI isn’t a magic fix. If your content feels soulless, it’s not the tool—it’s the process.

The myth? Speed kills quality.The truth? Your competitors are doing both. Faster. Better. Smarter.

There’s no guesswork anymore. Just a framework that works.

The question is: will you?

‍

D) The Tired Expert

Here’s what actually works.

AI promises speed. But most people end up with dull, forgettable content that drags their brand down.

Your competitors know better. They’ve mastered the system to write faster and sound human.

It’s not complicated. It’s not magic. It’s just a smarter way to work.

You’ll wish you started sooner.

‍

E) The Reality Check

This isn’t for everyone.

If you’re fine spending hours on writing that doesn’t connect, then keep going.

But if you’re tired of being outpaced—if you want to write faster, better, and smarter—it’s time to ask: why not you?

The framework exists. The tools are here.

Your future self will thank you.

‍

F) The Confessor

I learned this the hard way.

I thought speed meant sacrificing quality. I avoided AI, convinced it couldn’t sound like me.

My competitors? They crushed me. Faster content. Better engagement.

Then I found the system—a way to save time without losing my voice.

Don’t make my mistake. Start now. Skip the struggle.

‍

This gives you a superpower - the ability to adapt any marketing message for different audiences. Think about it: are you talking to skeptics, industry veterans, researchers, practitioners, decision makers, or perfectionists?

Most products or services actually target several of these groups. That's where this gets really interesting - you can take the same core message and tune it perfectly for each audience. It's like having a Swiss Army knife for content creation.

And here's a cool trick: when you're working on something longer, like a landing page, you can mix and match these different voices across sections. Pretty powerful stuff, right?

So now you've got the tools to write persuasive copy and give it that distinct brand voice. Perfect for quick marketing content, building your personal brand online, or just getting your ideas out there effectively.

Let's put all this into practice with a real example. How about we build a landing page for the "Learning to write with AI" course?

Let's dive in.

Building a landing page

Now that we have our persuasive copy, let's turn it into something practical - a landing page! We'll use Gamma App to bring it to life.

While we could jump straight into Gamma App with what we have, I think we can make this even better by creating a specialized "landing page" agent first.

Let me show you how to create a specialized GPT (or if you prefer, a Notion AI instruction page - which actually works better since it allows for more context) to build our landing page. Find a landing page that really impressed you and use its structure as a template. Here's an example you can use:

Prompt: “You're a copywriting assistant. Users give you content, product or service descriptions, or guidelines, and you turn them into persuasive, sharp, simple, concise, and attention-grabbing landing pages with your copywriting style. You write meaningful and impactful sentences. You always start with an intriguing sentence.

Ensure that every sentence in your content provides value, and you MUST not sound sales-y.

*Your text is only informative and educational and is not intended to say nice things about the subject of the text. The primary purpose of your text is to provide valuable information and be persuasive, not sales-y.

Here are examples of your copywriting style and the template to follow:*

• Hero
  • All-caps title: [put here the all-caps title]
  • Title: [put here the title]
  • Subtitle: [subtitle]
  • CTA: [CTA]
• Testimonial #1
• Problem Section:
  • All-caps title: [put here the all-caps title]
  • Title: [put here the title]
  • Subtitle: [subtitle]
  • Problem description: [problem]

…."

Play around with the prompt a bit until it feels right for your style. When you're happy with it, you can use this "landing page" prompt to transform our copy into a proper landing page. I tried it with our earlier copy (keeping it brief to avoid overwhelming you), and here's what popped out:

Now, let's focus on convincing the skeptics - those who've never used AI for writing or tried it once and walked away. I'll sprinkle in some of that "Challenger" brand voice to really drive the point home. The possibilities here are endless!

From here, we have two options: we can either use this content as-is for our website, or take it to Gamma.app for a more polished look and visuals ideas.

Let's keep things simple and head over to Gamma.app to build our website:

Go to Gamma App

Now you've got two options - either use that copy we just created, or plug in the landing page structure we talked about above. When you're in Gamma, just hit the "Generate webpage" option:

Choose your template color and voilà! Here's what I got:

Think of this as your starting point - a canvas ready for your personal touch. Feel free to swap out images, tweak messages, and play with different brand voices until it feels just right.

Here's the thing about AI writing - it's not here to replace your creative spark. It's more like having a super-powered assistant that helps your ideas shine brighter.

You've got all the tools and frameworks right at your fingertips. Sure, there's a learning curve (isn't there always?), but that's part of the journey. Each time you use it, you'll get a little better, a little faster.

Your unique perspective? That's gold. AI just helps you share it with more people, more effectively.

The real magic happens when you blend your human touch with AI's capabilities. So what do you say - ready to give it a shot?

Until the next one,

— Charafeddine