This guide takes you from a fresh install to your first automated campaign. If you haven’t installed the plugin yet, start with the Installation page.
Step 1: Connect an AI provider
Go to AI Content Writer → Settings → API Settings:
- Paste your Gemini API key (free tier at Google AI Studio) or your ChatGPT (OpenAI) API key — or both.
- Click Save Changes. The plugin validates the key and loads the available models automatically.
- Pick a model from the dropdown and click Test Connection to confirm everything works.
Then, under Settings → General, choose which provider the instant-generation tools should use by default. With Pro, Claude, DeepSeek, and OpenRouter appear here too. Details for every provider are on API Keys & AI Providers.
Tip: Your keys are stored on your own site and shown masked (
••••••••1234) after saving. You pay your AI provider directly — the plugin adds no markup.
Step 2: Set up featured images (optional but recommended)
Still on the API Settings tab, pick an Image Source — Pexels, Unsplash, or Pixabay (all free) — and paste that service’s API key. Every generated post will get a matching featured image with alt text and photographer attribution. Pro users can select DALL·E instead for unique AI-generated images. See Featured Images.
Step 3: Check your SEO integration
Go to Settings → General and look at the SEO Integration panel. If you run Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, or SEOPress, you’ll see it detected with a green check — every generated article’s SEO title, meta description, and focus keyword will be written directly into it. No SEO plugin? The built-in meta description fallback is on by default. More on the SEO Integration page.
Step 4: Try instant generation
Before automating, generate one article by hand to see the quality:
- Go to AI Content Writer → Generate Content.
- Enter a topic (“Write an article on the best hiking trails in Norway”), pick a language and tone, and click Generate.
- Choose a featured image, and you’ll land on the finished post in the editor — complete with headings, excerpt, tags, and SEO data.
Step 5: Create your first campaign
- Go to AI Content Writer → Campaigns → Add New.
- Type: pick Gemini or ChatGPT for keyword campaigns (the AI invents topics from your keywords), Articles for trending Bing/Bing News topics, RSS Feed to rewrite a feed, or Autopilot — Analyze My Site to let the AI study your existing posts and choose topics for you.
- Keywords: enter your niche keywords, comma-separated. Pick the content language and writing tone. (Autopilot skips keywords entirely — just choose the AI provider that should write the articles.)
- Sidebar: set the campaign target (how many posts in total), the frequency (how often it runs), the post type and status — choose Draft at first so you can review — plus the author, categories, and tags for published posts.
- Click Add Campaign, then hit Run Campaign to start immediately instead of waiting for the schedule.
Step 6: Review and go live
Watch the campaign page: temp posts appear with progress bars as titles, content, and images complete. Use Approve to publish a finished post immediately, Regenerate to rewrite one, or Delete to discard it. Once you trust the output, switch the campaign’s completed-post status from Draft to Publish — from then on it’s fully hands-free. See Campaigns for every option.
Already have a blog with content on it? Try an Autopilot campaign instead of picking keywords: it reads your published posts, works out your niche, and proposes new on-theme topics by itself. It needs at least 5 published posts — see Autopilot campaigns.
Where to go next
- Campaigns — Autopilot, targets, schedules, bulk title import, and the review queue in depth.
- SEO Integration — what SEO data is generated and where it goes.
- Pro Features — drip scheduling, FAQ schema, Claude, DALL·E images, and more.