Many entrepreneurs hit limits not as a result of they lack concepts, however as a result of they will’t execute or scale them.
Not everybody has the posh of builders, designers, or analysts who will help flip massive concepts into actuality. Even in the event you do, you continue to must compete for time and assist with the remainder of your organisation.
However occasions have modified. AI instruments like ChatGPT make technical studying radically extra accessible. It’s now attainable to develop into “technical” even in the event you’re a humble author, social media marketer, or model strategist—as a result of all of us have entry to a affected person, succesful technical tutor within the kind of a giant language mannequin.
I’m a lifelong marketer and non-technical individual. I all the time wished to discover ways to code, however by no means knew the place to start out. I bounced off half a dozen coding programs, till I realised that ChatGPT is the right instructor and troubleshooter. Now I can name APIs, write easy scripts, and automate components of my workflow:
If I can do it, you possibly can too.
Ever wished you might pull stay information from instruments like Ahrefs, social platforms, or inside product analytics—with out ready on engineers?
The reply: APIs (Software Programming Interfaces) are instruments that permit totally different software program speak to one another. They unlock entry to information that may velocity up aggressive analysis, automation, and even constructing customized dashboards.
I used ChatGPT to discover ways to use the Ahrefs API to fetch my top-performing content material, observe SERP volatility, and monitor backlinks routinely. We break down the way it works in our Ahrefs API guide.
Use the API button in Ahrefs to get a sense for how API requests are structured. If you have access to the Ahrefs API, you can read our documentation and even make free practice requests.
How to get started:
- Learn the basics of HTTP requests, authentication (like API keys), and response parsing (usually JSON). Try Mozilla’s API guide, Postman Learning Center, or RapidAPI’s beginner tutorials.
- Strive your first stay request utilizing Postman to hit a easy endpoint, like fetching climate or headlines. For additional follow, strive calling a public endpoint just like the News API to fetch the newest articles on any key phrase—helpful for content material ideation or monitoring business tendencies.
- Use ChatGPT to write down a Python script utilizing requests, clarify every line, and deal with API authentication. Paste in API docs—it could actually assist translate them into working code.
What in the event you didn’t have to attend for an analyst to drag your numbers? That’s the facility of SQL—a common language for asking questions on information.
I exploit ChatGPT to assist write SQL queries that pulled weblog publish impressions, clicks, and common place from Google Search Console—damaged down by URL and date. Then I used these insights to prioritize which articles to replace and re-promote.
(This works nice alongside a full content audit process.)
One of many SQL queries I use as part of my blog reporting process. This example selects URLs from our international blogs (/es/ is Spain, and so on).
How to get started:
- Focus on learning SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, JOIN, and CASE statements. For an excellent beginner-friendly walkthrough, try Mode’s SQL tutorials or LearnSQL.com’s SQL Basics Track.
- Use free instruments like Mode, DB Fiddle, or BigQuery sandbox to write down and take a look at your queries.
- Paste your desk schema (column names and kinds out of your spreadsheet) into ChatGPT and describe what you need to measure—it’ll write and clarify the total question.
Sick of repetitive duties clogging up your day? Discover ways to automate your most mundane, repetitive duties, and you may unencumber your time for extra thrilling issues.
Automation platforms like Zapier and Make allow you to construct “if-this-then-that” logic throughout all of your advertising instruments—with out touching code. It’s technically “no-code,” however don’t be fooled—it nonetheless teaches you methods to suppose like a programmer: setting situations, chaining steps, dealing with exceptions, and reasoning by logic flows.
Right here’s an excellent easy Zap that syncs modifications in our grasp content material spreadsheet with spreadsheets for every of our worldwide blogs—on this case, notifying the Japanese advertising crew that new articles are prepared for localization:
I’ve used Zapier for 100 various things: managing contact kind submissions, triaging leads, triggering editorial workflows for content material, syncing information between totally different spreadsheets, creating notifications in Slack, you identify it.
The way to get began:
- Begin with Zapier’s template library or Make’s visual scenario builder.
- Construct a easy multi-step automation that makes use of filters, situations, and formatting. Zapier’s getting started guide is useful in the event you’re new.
- Ask ChatGPT to map out logic flows or generate JSON webhook payloads for extra superior steps. You can even paste in current Zap or Make configuration particulars and ask it to optimize or troubleshoot them.
Apps Script (a type of JavaScript) enables you to create automations and integrations inside Google Sheets.
You need to use Apps Script to ship automated e mail summaries, archive kind responses, merge information from a number of Sheets, or set off Slack alerts when new information seems. I exploit a script that routinely fetches creator information from newly printed weblog posts in our CMS and logs it to a shared Google Sheet—so I might observe who was publishing what, with out chasing down teammates or manually copying information.
Apps Scripts additionally work in Google Docs. Right here’s a easy script that I run to routinely add WordPress shortcodes into my completed drafts. ChatGPT wrote the script in about ten seconds flat, and this protects me about ten minutes per article draft:
The way to get began:
- Study key strategies like SpreadsheetApp, getRange(), and triggers like onEdit(). You possibly can discover these within the Apps Script documentation or look by examples on GitHub to see how actual tasks are constructed.
- Construct a script that sends e mail alerts or fetches information from one other Sheet. In case you’re new to JavaScript, strive beginning with JavaScript.info, MDN’s JS tutorial, or W3Schools JavaScript basics. These will aid you perceive the core programming ideas that Apps Script depends on.
- Use ChatGPT to write down, clarify, and debug your Apps Script line-by-line.
In case you’ve ever imported e mail lists or GA4 exports, you realize: uncooked advertising information is chaos.
Python’s Pandas library is constructed to wash and remodel that chaos into clear, structured insights. It’s a Python library that makes it simple to filter, clear, and reshape spreadsheet-style information.
I’ve barely scraped the floor of the Pandas library, however I already use it deduplicate rows, normalize UTM parameters, and routinely reformat uncooked exports into the appropriate format for my month-to-month reporting.
Pandas’ information frames are essential for my weblog reporting automations.
The way to get began:
With the ability to construct dashboards or charts helps you get buy-in sooner and uncover patterns that uncooked spreadsheets miss.
Looker Studio is without doubt one of the best methods to construct customized dashboards out of your advertising information—with no need to code or use BI instruments.
Ahrefs now provides a direct integration with Looker Studio, so you possibly can pull in search engine marketing metrics like visitors, backlinks, key phrase rankings, and web site audit information to construct real-time dashboards with out exporting CSVs. Meaning much less handbook reporting and extra time spent analyzing tendencies throughout content material, campaigns, or competitor domains.
You possibly can discover ways to set it up in this guide.
How to get started:
- Connect Google Sheets, GA4, or Ahrefs directly to Looker Studio. Follow this guide to get started.
- Create visualizations like bar charts, pie charts, and time collection with calculated fields.
- Use ChatGPT to assist write Looker formulation, mix information sources, or troubleshoot damaged charts.
Want structured information from web sites that don’t supply APIs? Scraping public pages is one choice—whether or not you’re gathering occasion listings, job boards, or weblog metadata at scale.
(Simply take note: not each web site desires to be scraped. All the time test their robots.txt file and phrases of service earlier than you begin.)
If you would like a protected begin mission, strive utilizing BeautifulSoup and ChatGPT to scrape publicly out there product information from the Books to Scrape demo web site, which is designed particularly for practising internet scraping. Attempt to extract titles, costs, and star scores, then manage the information right into a spreadsheet for evaluation. As a result of the positioning is constructed for studying, it’s a protected and accountable place to sharpen your scraping abilities.
Books to Scrape is a web site that actively encourages scraping.
The way to get began:
- Study Python fundamentals and set up libraries like BeautifulSoup and Requests.
- Apply scraping your individual web site to keep away from breaking something. You can even take a look at your abilities on websites that explicitly enable scraping—like Books to Scrape, a demo e-commerce web site constructed for this goal.
- Ask ChatGPT to generate scraper scripts, clarify the logic, and deal with pagination or user-agent headers.
You’ve in all probability observed that I like Python. Python is the spine of tons of cool workflows—it’s the way you go from spreadsheets and handbook processes to actual automation.
Studying any coding language is clearly a giant ongoing dedication, however even a small quantity of fluency can allow you to construct very cool issues.
With assist from ChatGPT, I’ve automated duties like exporting weblog efficiency information from Google Search Console and visualizing it for my month-to-month content material report, downloading favicons for my “top companies” lists, and extracting possible keywords from podcast transcripts.
A handful of my amateur Python projects.
How to get started:
- Learn basic syntax (variables, functions, loops). One great place to start is Replit’s free 100 Days of Python, which mixes bite-sized classes with hands-on coding workout routines proper in your browser—no setup required.
- Use os, csv, and re libraries to automate duties like renaming, cleansing, and categorizing.
- Ask ChatGPT for Python scripts tailor-made to your workflow and have it clarify the code.
Whereas Airtable and Notion are no-code instruments (therefore “non-technical”), they assist clarify how relational databases work: how totally different tables join, how information varieties affect conduct, and methods to construction your info for straightforward querying and automation.
These are foundational ideas that not solely make you higher at utilizing Airtable, but additionally dramatically enhance your spreadsheet recreation and prep you for extra superior instruments down the line.
I’ve used Airtable particularly to construct light-weight CRMs, programmatic SEO strategies, and entire content management systems, capable of tracking briefs, drafts, publish status, and performance.
Here’s an example content management system we built for our marketing agency, way back in 2017.
How to get started:
- Create a base in Airtable or desk in Notion with fields like standing, proprietor, due date.
- Construct views to filter by content material sort, creator, or due date.
- Use ChatGPT to draft formulation, counsel schema enhancements, or automate with buttons.
Pivot tables are one of the vital highly effective methods to research giant units of spreadsheet information—with out writing a single method.
I used to make use of them a ton in my weblog reporting: to summarize content material efficiency by creator, spot tendencies throughout totally different content material varieties, and even discover correlations between publish cadence and visitors.
Right here’s an actual pivot desk from our latest AI in content material advertising survey. The pivot desk turns tons of unwieldy information into particular, helpful analyses.
The way to get began:
Regex (quick for Common Expressions) is a compact language for locating patterns in textual content. Whereas it appears to be like intimidating at first, it’s one of the vital helpful technical abilities you possibly can decide up—and it’s good for entrepreneurs drowning in messy information.
I’ve used regex to wash UTM parameters, extract domains from referral URLs, filter URL lists to search out simply worldwide subfolders, validate e mail codecs, and even pull key phrases from content material briefs. It’s particularly helpful for filtering in Ahrefs: Site Explorer and Site Audit both accept regex queries:
How to get started:
- Try free RegEx testing tools like Regex101 or RegExr, which spotlight matches and clarify the logic.
- Begin small: match e mail addresses, isolate URL slugs, or clear marketing campaign tags.
- Use ChatGPT to write down expressions for you—simply describe the sample you need, and it could actually generate and clarify it line-by-line.
- Study the place Ahrefs accepts regex.
- For hands-on guides, take a look at Regular Expressions for Beginners and JC Chouinard’s Regex for SEO.
Spreadsheets aren’t simply for easy sums—they’re one of the vital highly effective (and underutilized) platforms for logic-driven advertising automation.
If you mix formulation like ARRAYFORMULA, QUERY, REGEXMATCH, and IMPORTRANGE, you’re mainly writing light-weight code. It’s structured considering, modular logic, and information manipulation—all with out touching a programming language.
I’ve used superior formulation to automate month-to-month reporting dashboards, analyze search visibility trends, and even build keyword clustering workflows directly in Google Sheets. This weird nested formula is a crucial part of my blog team reporting dashboard:
This kind of fluency opens up huge leverage, especially when paired with data from tools like Ahrefs. In fact, we wrote a whole post about it: 29 Google Sheets formulas every SEO should know.
How to get started:
- Learn how ARRAYFORMULA, QUERY, and FILTER can replace manual copy-pasting with dynamic updates.
- Use IMPORTRANGE to combine data from different Sheets.
- Try REGEXMATCH or REGEXREPLACE to clean up messy UTM parameters or flag branded keywords.
- Ask ChatGPT to help explain formulas, debug errors, or optimize slow Sheets.
Let’s wrap-up with a meta talent: prompting.
There’s numerous pseudoscience round prompting giant language fashions (LLMs)—folks discuss it like magic spells. However the reality is, there’s a science to good prompting. It’s a technical talent that amplifies all of the others on this listing.
Whether or not you’re asking ChatGPT to write down Python scripts, clarify SQL joins, or debug a method, the way you ask determines the standard of the response. Beneath is an inventory of prompting methodologies gleaned from my expertise and the educational literature:
The way to get began:
- Present grounding context. In case you’re utilizing ChatGPT or Claude, think about importing paperwork (through Tasks) so the mannequin has entry to related examples, information, or fashion guides. That is primarily a light-weight model of RAG (retrieval augmented era).
- Use structured prompts. Body your request with sections like: overview, examples, what to keep away from, and desired output format. This helps the mannequin purpose extra clearly and ship constant outcomes.
- Use delimiters to separate content material. Enclose code, pattern information, or reference textual content in triple backticks (“ ‘) to keep away from confusion and enhance output formatting.
- Lean into emotional tone when acceptable. Language like “you’re a world-class Python tutor” or “I’m actually caught—please stroll me by this like I’m new” can have an effect on how the mannequin prioritizes readability and tone.
- Study from finest practices. OpenAI’s guide and Simon Willison’s article on prompting supply nice frameworks for enhancing reliability and output high quality.
Last ideas
One of the best entrepreneurs aren’t simply inventive thinkers—they’re technical sufficient to really execute, too. And now, with LLMs like ChatGPT, there’s no excuse. You might have a 24/7 tutor, debugger, and strategist in your pocket.
Don’t simply ask AI to do issues for you. Ask it to show you. That’s the way you construct actual, sturdy abilities. So decide considered one of these technical abilities, give your self a weekend mission, and use AI to degree up.
