Wide-Eyed at 3 AM: How Deepshikha Dhankhar Went From Googling JSON to Building GEO Audits

Q: Introduce yourself! What do you do for work?

I'm a product content strategy and AI search consultant, working at the intersection of SEO, AI search, and product storytelling for fintech B2B SaaS. Some of my best work has been with Expensify, Stripe, and London Stock Exchange as a content strategy lead and PMM. And now, I've also recently started offering AirOps consulting as a Content Engineer.

Q: What led you to Content Engineering?

My path into Content Engineering probably makes more sense when you realize I originally started as a model, scriptwriter, and journalist, which, oddly enough, all trained the same instinct: understanding attention, storytelling, and human behavior. It feels very accidental but at the same time inevitable.

I trained as a journalist under the very best, did anchoring for TV, and was the youngest editor-in-chief for a national magazine. Writing for the web got me into marketing a decade ago and I've never looked back. Being a Content Engineer has been one of the biggest growth spurts of my career because it brings everything I experienced firsthand, just not in code.

Q: When did you first learn about Content Engineering?

It was back in 2024. I came across Gumloop and found myself wide-eyed at 3 AM trying to build a workflow. I almost gave up, but researching "what is JSON?" led me straight to AirOps. I was instantly intrigued and built my first workflow that cut down hours of manual work to 45 minutes. I couldn't believe my eyes.

I was instantly hooked. I used to look forward to wrapping up dinner so I could build another workflow. From there, I fell in love with the platform and the new confidence it gave me as a creator.

Q: How do you define Content Engineering?

Part editorial, part product thinking, part operational design, and part madness. You need enough controlled mess to build something that changes how you work. If something is too perfect, it's missing a crucial component.

Content Engineering reflects that controlled mess. It gathers isolated tasks and deliverables toward one simple goal: reduce friction without losing context, craft, and curiosity. That's how it compounds, instead of restarting from zero.

Q: Tell us about your biggest win with Content Engineering so far.

Seeing the systems I build influence real business outcomes. Increased citation rates, better SEO, a unified AEO scoreboard, a single SEO/GEO/AEO brief that's product and content agnostic, a closed-ended user interaction to conversion loop, an incredibly simple mental model of a product roadmap, and a promotion.

Q: How did AirOps University change how you approach your work?

For starters, I built the first-ever GEO audit. Nobody was creating one at the time. What would take me hours to manually audit, with workflows I reduced to 45 minutes. I realized the future advantage won't come from who prompts the fastest, but from those who can combine strategy, structured thinking, editorial judgment, and orchestration.

Q: What are you most excited about in the future of marketing?

We're moving into a world where depth, clarity, original experience, storytelling, and strong points of view matter again, because AI will always struggle to generate lived insights and taste.

Q: What advice would you give someone just getting started with Content Engineering?

Don't start with "How do I automate content?" Start with "Where does our thinking break down repeatedly?" Content Engineering is not a race to fastest content output. It's a race to reduce friction, preserve and even improve quality, and make smart people more effective instead of more exhausted.