How to set up your first AI Content Generator campaign (complete beginner guide)

In lettura: How to set up your first AI Content Generator campaign (complete beginner guide)

A campaign is the unit of editorial automation in AI Content Generator. One campaign = one topical cluster, one AI provider, one tone, one publishing rhythm, one set of categories. Getting your first campaign right is the single highest-leverage 30 minutes you’ll spend with the plugin — from then on, every article the campaign produces inherits the choices you made once.

This tutorial is the complete beginner walk-through: open the campaign editor, fill each postbox in the right order, understand what each field controls, launch a small test batch, review the output, iterate. By the end you’ll have a working campaign publishing 1–5 drafts per day into WordPress with the tone, structure and category you configured.

The assumption is that the plugin is installed, licensed and at least one AI provider is configured in Settings. If you haven’t done that yet, read the install tutorial first — it takes ten minutes and unlocks the rest of this guide.

The mental model

Think of a campaign as a template that produces articles. The template has three moving parts. What to write about (main keywords, title instructions, output language) — configured in SEO brief (titles). How to write it (length, tone, structure, extra instructions) — configured in SEO brief (content) and Extra AI instructions. When and where to publish (schedule, categories, author, output status) — configured in Base data.

You set each part once, save the campaign, and every generation from then on follows the template. Change any part later and the change applies to all future generations, not to already-published ones.

Step 1 — Create the campaign

In the WordPress admin sidebar, click AI Content Generator → Campaigns → Add New. The campaign editor opens — it looks like a familiar WordPress post editor with a title field at the top and metaboxes stacked below and in the right sidebar. The metaboxes are your workspace for the rest of this tutorial.

Type a campaign name at the top: something descriptive like “Blog tutorials — Claude Sonnet — 2026”. The name is internal only; readers never see it. But you will, every time you open the campaign to inspect or edit it, so pick a name that tells your future self what this campaign does at a glance.

Step 2 — Pick the AI provider

In the right sidebar, the first metabox is AI Provider. It has a dropdown showing the current global default (OpenAI / Claude / Gemini) and a status row indicating which providers are configured. If you want this campaign to use a specific provider (overriding the global default), pick it from the dropdown. Otherwise leave it on “Global default”.

AI Content Generator AI Provider metabox in the campaign editor with dropdown and status indicators for OpenAI Claude Gemini — The AI Provider metabox. The current selection determines which vendor’s model writes every article this campaign produces.

For a first campaign, pick the provider that best matches your editorial intent. Claude for long-form tutorials, OpenAI for balanced blog content, Gemini for high-volume short-form. Any choice works; you can change it later without side effects.

Step 3 — Fill the Base data metabox

Scroll to the main column. The first metabox is Base data. It controls the publishing side of every article. Fill it in this order.

AI Content Generator Base data campaign metabox showing all fields — The Base data metabox. Content type, output status, scheduling stack, categories and author rotation — every publishing decision lives here.

Content type: Post (right answer 95% of the time).
Output status: Draft (for the first two weeks — audit each generation before publishing). Switch to Published or Scheduled once you trust the output.
Articles per day: 1 for a daily column, 3 for a steady blog.
Time window: 09:00–17:00 for a working-hours schedule, 06:00–22:00 for wider coverage.
Active days: tick Mon–Fri unless you want weekend publishing.
Categories: tick one category that matches this campaign’s cluster.
Author: pick a real WordPress user; SEO rewards named authors.

Step 4 — Fill SEO brief (titles)

Scroll to the SEO brief (titles) metabox. This is where you tell the AI what to write about.

Main keywords: 3–5 keywords, one per line, describing the campaign’s topical cluster. Example: “WordPress AI plugin setup”, “AI Content Generator configuration”, “WordPress automation tutorial”.
Title tone preset: pick the tone that fits your voice — Neutral professional is the safe default.
Additional tone notes: 1–2 short lines like “Never start with ‘Discover'”.
Output language: your blog’s primary language.
Anti-duplicates: ON (Fast) — recommended.
How many titles to generate: 10 as a first batch.

Step 5 — Fill SEO brief (content)

Below SEO brief (titles), the SEO brief (content) metabox controls how the AI writes the body. Configure length and preset.

AI Content Generator SEO brief content metabox with article length min max words, content preset dropdown and tone preset section — The SEO brief (content) metabox. Min/Max words define the length band; Content preset picks the structural template (Standard / Guide / E-commerce); Tone preset drives the writing voice.

Min words / Max words: 1500 / 2000 for long-form tutorials; 700 / 1200 for medium blog content; 300 / 600 for short news.
Content preset: Standard (balanced), Guide (practical how-to), or E-commerce (conversion). Pick what matches your campaign.
Content tone: Neutral professional or Authoritative / Expert depending on your audience.

Step 6 — Write Extra AI instructions

Scroll to the Extra AI instructions (campaign) metabox. This textarea is where you encode brand voice, linking rules, formatting conventions — anything that should apply to every article without you repeating it in every generation.

For a first campaign, three lines are enough: your brand voice (“write in second person, direct tone”), one linking rule (“when the article mentions ‘AI Content Generator’, link to /how-to/ the first time”), and one anti-hallucination guard (“never invent statistics or quotes not present in the source”). You’ll refine these over the first month based on the drafts you review.

Step 7 — Generate titles and pick the ones to publish

Save the campaign (top of the page, “Publish” or “Save Draft”). Scroll to the Titles (generation & selection) metabox. Click Generate titles. Within 5–10 seconds a list of 10 titles appears, based on your Main keywords and Title tone preset.

Review each title. Tick the ones you’ll publish; untick the off-tone ones. Typical hit rate is 60–80% on the first batch. If the hit rate is lower, refine the Main keywords or the Title instructions and click Generate titles again.

Step 8 — Launch the first generation

In the right sidebar, the Generation & controls metabox has the blue button Generate content for selected titles. Click it. The plugin processes each ticked title in sequence, sends it to the AI provider along with all the campaign settings, and saves the resulting article as a Draft in Posts → Drafts.

Each article takes 20–45 seconds depending on the provider and the length band. Watch the progress bar; when it reaches 100%, all articles are in your Drafts list ready to be reviewed.

Step 9 — Review the drafts and iterate

Open each draft and read it. Ask three questions. Does the tone match what you wanted? Is the length inside the band? Does the structure follow the preset (Standard / Guide / E-commerce)? If yes to all three, the campaign is well-configured. If any answer is no, tweak the matching setting and regenerate one article as a test.

Most campaigns need 2–3 iterations to land at the final configuration. From then on the settings are stable and the campaign runs on autopilot.

You’re done

That’s your first campaign: name, AI provider, Base data, SEO brief (titles), SEO brief (content), Extra AI instructions, generate titles, generate content, review, iterate. Total time for the first campaign: 30–45 minutes. Every subsequent campaign is faster because you know the workflow.

From here, add more campaigns for each topical cluster you want to cover, configure the Editorial Calendar to space them evenly through the week, and let the WP-Cron trigger the actual publishing on the schedule you defined. The plugin does the writing; you steer.