Getting better articles: how to brief the AI like a pro

The AI is only as good as what you give it. Hand it a vague topic and you’ll get a vague article. Hand it your prices, your service area, the brand you used, and one real customer anecdote — and you’ll get something that sounds like you wrote it.

This guide shows you exactly what to put into the article generator to get great results.

Why generic in = generic out

The AI has no idea what makes your business different unless you tell it.

“Roof repair” gives you a textbook article about roof repair.

“Emergency roof repair after Storm Ciarán — customer in Tooting, 4 missing tiles, used Redland 49 clay tiles to match existing, completed same day, total £850 inc VAT” gives you an article that sounds like you wrote it.

Same topic. Wildly different result.

Before and after — the same topic, two approaches

Without notes:

• Topic: “Boiler servicing”
• Result: A generic guide about why boiler servicing matters. Could be from any plumber’s website anywhere in the world.

With notes:

• Topic: “Boiler servicing”
• Notes: “We cover south Manchester, annual service costs £89 inc VAT, we use Baxi and Ideal parts, always check heat exchanger and flue, customers often book us after moving into older houses, free reminder texts before winter”
• Result: An article that sounds like it came from your business — with your prices, your service area, and your details.

The article still gets written for you. You just feed the AI enough real material to make it specific.

The four levers, ranked by impact

1. Notes (highest impact)

The single biggest quality lever. Paste actual job details, brand names, your service area, prices, things you always say to customers, one real anecdote. Don’t worry about structure or grammar. The AI reads it like a brief and extracts what’s useful.

What works well in Notes:

• Your service area — “we cover Hackney, Islington, and Stoke Newington”
• Words and phrases you actually use — “we call them call-outs, not visits”
• Specific details — the brand, the problem, the fix, the cost, the time it took
• One real customer anecdote — “elderly customer in a flat, hadn’t had hot water for three days, we got there within 2 hours”
• What makes you different — “only plumber in the area with a CCTV drain survey van”

2. Source links

Drop in a manufacturer page, a trade body guide, a regulation document, or a news article. The AI reads those pages and can reference or cite them in your article. Good for credibility and for articles that benefit from technical grounding.

If your section’s writing style has “Include citations & links” turned on (it’s on by default), citations appear at the bottom of the published article in a Sources list.

3. Photos

Even one photo from a job gives the AI something real to write about. When photos are included, Mixo uses a more powerful AI model that can actually see the images — it can describe what’s in them, reference specific work shown, and anchor the article in a real place rather than a hypothetical scenario.

Particularly valuable for Past Projects and Portfolio content where the visual is half the story.

4. Topic phrasing

The more specific your topic, the more specific the article.

• “Plumbing” → generic
• “Common causes of low water pressure in Victorian terraced houses in north London” → targeted, useful, and ranks for something specific people actually search for

Use your writing style settings to set the baseline

The AI doesn’t just rely on what you type per article — it also reads your section’s overall writing style settings. These apply to every article you generate in that section.

• Tone:
  • Friendly — warm and approachable. Best for trades and local services.
  • Professional — clear and business-like. Best for most consultants and small businesses.
  • Expert — authoritative and detailed. Best for medical, legal, technical, or academic content.
• Language — if your customers speak a language other than English, you can generate articles natively in any of 12 languages. The AI writes natively in each — it isn’t translating from English.
• End with a CTA — when on, every article ends with a call-to-action block encouraging visitors to get in touch. Great for lead generation. Turn off when you want purely informational content (e.g. a long technical guide where a sales-y ending would feel out of place).
• Include citations & links — when on, the AI adds a “Sources” section at the bottom if you’ve provided source links. Turn off if you want clean articles with no external references.

You can change these settings any time via the section’s Settings button. Changes apply to all future articles, not ones you’ve already generated.

Length and quality trade-off

Longer articles need more real content to fill well. If you want a long article, make sure your Notes section has enough material to justify the length — otherwise the AI will pad with generalities to hit the word count.

Short articles on specific topics often outperform long, vague ones. When in doubt, go specific over long.

The role of editing

Even a well-briefed AI gets some things slightly wrong. The AI gets you 90% there; spending 5–10 minutes reading through the result and tweaking it is what takes it from “good” to “genuinely yours”. See How to edit your draft before publishing for what’s editable and how.

A practical workflow

1. Pick a real topic — a job you finished recently, a question a customer asked you this week, or a misconception you keep correcting.
2. Open the new article form and type the topic in plain words.
3. Spend 2 minutes pasting rough Notes — what happened, what you used, where, how much, who.
4. Add 1–2 photos if you have them.
5. Click Generate. Review the draft. Edit anything that doesn’t sound right. Publish.

Total time: under 15 minutes from idea to live article.

What’s next

When your article is generated, see How to edit your draft before publishing to learn what to tweak before going live.