In this episode, Sonja discusses some critical perspectives around the emerging use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in content marketing and social media. She shares tips on how marketers, teams, and brands should navigate through this game-changing era where AI is not just influencing search engine results but redefining how we create content.
Imagine a world where a tool like ChatGPT is your co-creator and content generation faster and smarter. It's time to embrace these innovations, but be mindful, as with everything else, they come with their own set of challenges.
Amidst all the AI-generated content, how do you ensure your content stands out? Throughout this episode of 10 Minute Marketing, host Sonja Crystal Williams, discusses the indispensable role of human interaction in AI-generated content. Whether you're an AI newcomer or a seasoned user, let's explore, learn, and transform our content creation strategy together.
Resource mentioned in this episode.
In this episode, Sonja discusses some critical perspectives around the emerging use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in content marketing and social media. She shares tips on how marketers, teams, and brands should navigate through this game-changing era where AI is not just influencing search engine results but redefining how we create content.
Imagine a world where a tool like ChatGPT is your co-creator and content generation faster and smarter. It's time to embrace these innovations, but be mindful, as with everything else, they come with their own set of challenges.
Amidst all the AI-generated content, how do you ensure your content stands out? Throughout this episode of 10 Minute Marketing, host Sonja Crystal Williams, discusses the indispensable role of human interaction in AI-generated content. Whether you're an AI newcomer or a seasoned user, let's explore, learn, and transform our content creation strategy together.
Resource mentioned in this episode.
Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of 10 Minute Marketing. I'm Sonja Crystal Williams, your host, so today I want to talk about a topic that everybody's been talking about, which is AI artificial intelligence. No interview today, although some of our upcoming and past interviews have included a little bit about AI thoughts that people have as it relates to marketing. When it comes to AI and that's really what I want to talk to you today and know this that whether you are a business owner, running a small business, a solopreneur, a freelancer, you're on a marketing team for a large corporation, a nonprofit, a government agency AI is impacting you in one way or another, and I really want to talk through today different ways that I'm seeing the impact as it relates to marketing, particularly marketing brands online in digital environments, and what you need to be thinking about as it relates to that, because whether you like it or not, it's here to stay. Whether you like it or not, people on your team will probably at some point use it. They might be exploring it. So I really just want to talk about it so that we are more prepared as marketers around how we use it and we use it in a way that's impactful and helps make our job and work more efficient. So let's dig into this topic. The first thing that I like to kind of say is look again. If you don't think that AI impacts you, then let me give you one simple example of how it's already impacting us, whether or not you even know it. Okay, so some of you might have heard about this back in May being made an announcement they made it really before may, I think it just started getting implement around May and that was that Bing and chat GPT would integrate.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Okay, so now if you are a Bing user which I'll admit I'm not I use Google Chrome. When I go to Googlecom and I do searches, right, the browser of choice that I pull up is Google Chrome. Some of y'all I know might pull up Safari if you're an Apple Mac user, but a lot of people use Google Chrome. Some people still use Bing for search. If they use, like Internet Edge or something like that, that's the default. Or they just go to Bing for searches, maybe as an alternative to Google, right?
Sonja Crystal Williams:So the biggest, biggest shift that a lot of people aren't realizing is the search engines are already experimenting or have already shifted to integrating the use of AI into our search results. Now this is huge for a lot of reasons. One, because it impacts just kind of like a day to day you know person who goes on and does search. But two, for your brand it's going to probably start to have an impact on ranking. So there's a huge impact again when we think about the content that we create and how it begins to rank and how we need to start even shifting our minds around our approach to creating that content. So again, big shift there in terms of things to think about.
Sonja Crystal Williams:So the way it works if you haven't been on Bing, you know Bing has done some integrations with its own chat tool. The way that it generates results when you type in search will be impacted by AI. Same thing with Google. So Google, google's answer to chat GPT is a tool called Bard B-A-R-D. If you haven't heard of Bard, take a moment to Google. That Okay. If you are a heavy Googlecom user or you're using a lot of Google products, you need to know what Bard is. In short, it's Generative AI and on Google you're probably not seeing it yet because it hasn't been rolled out to the masses, it's still kind of in a data testing mode.
Sonja Crystal Williams:But if I go on Google. Let's say I do a search, for you know, I want to know an answer to something what are the best ways to grow my brand on TikTok? Let's just say I do research on that because I'm creating a new TikTok account and I want to start researching ways to grow my account. Well, in this kind of beta version that Google is testing, if you type that in Before, it gives you a list of websites to go to. It's gonna actually generate an answer for you. Kind of the way, if you've ever been on chat GBT, you ask it a question, it generates answers for you. Well, google's doing that type of integration. So it's really important to start thinking about how things are shifting in terms of the landscape. And that's just one example.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Now I'll tell you my own personal, in my own personal experience, I would say I started hearing more about, like AI. I don't know, it's been probably a couple of years, but I started to really take it seriously around the fall when I started hearing more about how Microsoft was investing in chat GBT, and then I was really nervous about setting up a chat GBT account, and so if you're in that boat, you haven't done it yet and you keep hearing about it and you're wondering what exactly is it? Is it safe to use? All right, I can tell you from my experience so far, I do feel safe, at least in registering for an account, right? I was sitting with one of my hairstylists, shout out to Steven, and he was actually the person that really, really encouraged me to take the leap, because we're sitting in his chair and we start talking about it and he's asking me if I'm using it and he starts telling me how he's been using it as a hairstylist to generate contracts and use it all different types of ways for the business side of being a hairstylist and so I started asking it questions. He lets me kind of play around with it on his phone. That night I got home and I was like I gotta know how to use this thing even more. So, number one you set up an account with OpenAI. It's free.
Sonja Crystal Williams:There are paid versions of chat GBT. I would encourage you there's no other way to learn how to use chat GBT as an intro to using AI and using something that can answer questions for you or sometimes generate content for you. We're gonna get to that, though I wanna talk about that. There's some things to think about related to generating content, but there's no better way to do it than to just get in, create the account and start doing it. So that was my experience, personally and for you again, you might be scratching your head wondering should I do it, shouldn't I? Or if you started to use it, you've started to dabble and you're trying to figure out. I've had a few clients come to me and say, well, I don't really need a rider anymore. I can now use my free chat GBT account and it's gonna generate lots of blog posts for me. Okay.
Sonja Crystal Williams:But listen y'all, there's some caveats to that. Okay, if everybody's generating content using AI, right, that's just gonna crowd the marketplace with a lot of the same or similar type of AI generated information. And if you're kind of in the midst of doing that, you gotta be careful because your content isn't gonna stand out. So AI and things that you might generate for social media or content with AI I think still very much so require human interactions, all right. So keep that in mind, all right, I'm a huge believer in that. So let's talk about like other things, okay.
Sonja Crystal Williams:When it comes to this, I think about AI in categories and how people and brands are using them. Okay. So there's one bucket of people who just don't even really know what it is. Like a great example, I'm having a conversation with my sister, who's a nurse you know about a few months ago, and she's not thinking about how to use AI for business. Again, she's probably using it in some way, maybe, but she didn't really know what Jack Chat GPT was, so I described it to her, and so there's people that fit into that bucket. They're not thinking about it, they don't really know what it is, they don't really have a direct reason to use it, they're not in business for themselves, they're not thinking about generating content and they're not thinking about using it as a search engine. Okay, so that's one bucket, okay. Then there's the bucket again of people who have heard of it but haven't tried it and are a little bit nervous or concerned about trying it. Okay. Then we move into the bucket of people who probably are trying it and you're hearing about use Chat GPT for this and that.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Use AI to generate your own headshot. You can use it to create an image of yourself and put a headshot up on LinkedIn, and you see people on these social networks posting these AI generated images of themselves, right. So there's some people that are kind of dabbling and getting themselves familiar with it, right. So there's the people that fall into that bucket. Or people who go on tools like Jasper and Chat GPT and they're trying to use prompts to start maybe figuring out content. Or there are tools that kind of are done for you Like. A really cool tool a couple of my clients introduced me to was a tool called Cast Magic, kind of a done for you tool. If you podcast, you upload your podcast and Cast Magic does all the work in generating the title, the description of your episode and much, much more, does social media posts and lots of other things. So there's that category of like hey, I'm using it and I like what it's doing and I'm copying and pasting what it produces for me and putting it on my website or dropping it on social media and seeing how it does.
Sonja Crystal Williams:And then the last bucket I would say are the innovators. These are the people that are not just using the AI for the creation of their own content, but they are building apps and tools that allow them to actually give the use of AI to maybe their clients and other people. And there are business owners out there small, medium-sized, big corporate businesses that are integrating how AI can be used into their actual business ecosystem. Okay, so there's a learning curve associated and it's really up to you to kind of figure out which one of these categories do I fit in and will I kind of flow from one category to the next. What makes sense for me? And again, you wanna think about this from the mindset of marketing your brand or product or service, whatever that might be and the impact that it has.
Sonja Crystal Williams:So let me give y'all a list. These are some apps. I'm just gonna share some apps that I've been paying close attention to. I named a few just a minute ago that I think can make your life easier when it comes to using AI from a marketing, online marketing standpoint. What are some tools you can use? So, when I mentioned before Cast Magic really simple tool, great for podcasting, right. Then there's ChatGPT. But here's the thing, y'all, even with using ChatGPT, I would tell you there is a learning curve.
Sonja Crystal Williams:With using ChatGPT, I would encourage you to find and research case studies or get samples of prompts that can generate content for you. If I went into chat GPT today and simply gave the prompt, please write an article on the top five ways to grow a TikTok account and then, let's say, I'm gonna take that and put it on my blog. If I give it to you know kind of that prompt to chat GPT in really plain language like that, it will generate an article for me, but again, that article won't have much personality. The answer might be kind of broad or it might not give you exactly what you expected. Okay, so get some training on how to use prompts, and there are so many good trainings out there that I've been coming across. I would also encourage you to follow people on Instagram and TikTok who are talking about AI. Research those hashtags and start building yourself a list of prompts, store them in a file and start testing those prompts out when you go into a tool like chat GPT to generate content for your website, content for your social media post.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Another good tool you could test prompts with would be a tool like Jasper AI. This is becoming a really popular tool. That's kind of like a AI writer, it's a AI writing tool that you can use. So a lot of people will use this in addition to, or instead of, chat GPT when it comes to writing content. So these are a few examples.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Let me give you some more. Oh, here's a good one, all right. So when it comes to creating content, other types of content besides written or text content that people often create would be images or presentations. So one of my favorite tools that I already use is Canva, and so I like to use Canva to go in, and Canva rolled out a suite, I'd say maybe about a year ago, of tools that you could use that are essentially AI friendly, and you can kind of tell it this is what I need you to generate for me. So you can generate Canva presentations, which is kind of like the equivalent of having a PowerPoint.
Sonja Crystal Williams:You can ask Canva to generate graphics for you. You could describe it and say, hey, I want a picture of a red bird flying through the sky with very scenic mountains and canyons in the background. You could describe what you want it to create and it will literally attempt to create that for you. There's a lot of tools doing that. There's other tools, too, that you could get into using, like Descript. Descript is like an AI video editing tool. Not only will it edit your videos using AI and automatically draft transcripts from your video for you, but you could even go as far as to let it sample your voice and, instead of maybe you being the person talking on the video, it replaces your voice with AI and you can make edits to what you said using Descript's text feature and it using your voice. Well, mindblower y'all. So you know. I'm giving you a list. There's so much you can do and, I will be honest, it's a rabbit hole.
Sonja Crystal Williams:My encouragement to you would be, if tools that you're already using on a day-to-day basis to manage some of your social media or content marketing, if those tools are beginning to integrate AI, I would say start with those. So for me again, canva was my starting point into using AI more frequently because it's already a tool I use. So it wasn't too much of a leap for me to start using their tool to generate presentations. It hasn't been too far of a leap for me to use a tool like Grammarly, which is already an app that I use on a regular basis that helps me with editing content, and Grammarly has an AI feature embedded that will also give you suggestions on how to write better content or, in some instances, might rewrite a sentence here and there for you. I think that's a great way to begin using AI in a way that doesn't feel like you are. It's overwhelming. So start thinking about what do I use today that might have that feature already, and then are there new apps that I want to start jumping into that will also give me that ability and flexibility.
Sonja Crystal Williams:I'll share one more with y'all. This one is totally kind of honestly moving away from content marketing and kind of moving more into the realm of just like things that are helpful to use from a business standpoint. So a friend introduced this one to me. It's called Fireflies and this is a tool that will record or transcribe and summarize conversations from your zoom meetings. I think it probably does some other integrations to. I use it specifically for zoom and it is just again such a game changer the idea behind AI and how you can start to use it. As a marketer or a marketing manager, director, cmo, business owner, whatever your role is, you have the ability to take these tools and maybe just start out with a handful that will work for you and really begin to make the most of them to work your job more efficiently. Okay.
Sonja Crystal Williams:Now, with these tools, I want to kind of issue a warning label, okay, which is be careful about over using AI. So I mentioned earlier kind of one of the biggest concerns that a lot of marketers have, as well as companies, lawmakers, everything is that people will become over dependent on the use of these AI tools to do their job, and then that removes the human component and then the content that you're creating Now it sounds kind of canned box, generic. It doesn't have the personality of prezazz that your brand should be bringing. I'm a big believer in humanizing your brand. So while I'm I'm currently in the process of kind of coaching my team little by little on how we choose to use AI as an agency, and part of that conversation is making sure I coach my team and understanding.
Sonja Crystal Williams:I'm okay with you using some of these tools to generate a new title or some ideas for titles on blog post or headers for videos we're going to publish or even blog content, but we don't use it word for word and I don't want everyone to get again are overly reliant on using these tools. The other reason with that warning label, that we wanna be careful not to use it word for word is because it really can if you're, let's say, for example, publishing a blog post or you're publishing social media content or you're using it to write email campaigns. It's quite possible your work on an email campaign could get stuck in a spam filter. If it sounds a little bit again to AI generated, it's possible that if you publish let's just say, for the next six months you publish 20 blog articles because you're like I, can generate these so fast using any of these writing tools and you publish them, copy and paste word for word and don't change anything, search engines will detect that there are AI detectors. They probably won't reward you for publishing content in that way, so you need to be really careful and smart about how you choose to use AI.
Sonja Crystal Williams:There's a really great article I'll drop a link to it in our notes by Neil Patel on the disadvantages of AI marketing, and some of the things shared in his article, based on some surveys done to tons of digital marketers across the US, were what were some of the big risks associated that they feel like are associated with AI and marketing. And again, some of those are like content not being optimized for getting yourself rewarded by getting a higher ranking on Google, yahoo, are being search results, ai not providing accurate information right, if we're relying on AI to generate a blog post for us and we don't fact check and do some of our own research. That's a concern. Content also, again, might sound too generic, robotic, and then if you got 10 companies publishing similar article topics that they generated from AI tools, it might sound too similar, not to mention some of the ethical dilemmas associated with just copying and pasting. So be careful about how you choose to use it, especially when it comes to using it for writing purposes.
Sonja Crystal Williams:And one final thought y'all, as a marketing manager, as a business owner, you also gotta think about how you're hiring, who you're hiring, and one of the questions that might have to start coming up in those conversations let's say, if you're hiring a copywriter or a freelancer or a designer in some way, shape or form to work with you video editor, you gotta start asking the question if they're writing any content for you, if they're creating anything for you, anything along the creative scale. You might start asking them if they're using AI and, if so, what are their practices? Okay, because we might not wanna bring someone on board that overly relies on it, even though they can produce more. I think of it as a supplement to what you're doing, and if you're doing this on your own, look at it as a supplement. It shouldn't replace the human interactions we have or the things that we're doing. All right, keep that in mind as you look forward. Your team also might wanna think about if you wanna invest in any kind of AI detection tools. That's important as well. So keep these things in mind when it comes to using AI and thinking about it from an online marketing standpoint.
Sonja Crystal Williams:All right, I'm gonna leave us right here for today. I think that's a lot of food for thought when it comes to AI, but I would love to hear your thoughts and your comments. How are you using AI within your team, within your company? What are the dos and don'ts? Does your company have any kind of guidelines that have been developed around what's permissible when it comes to the use of AI, and where are you having your big wins? I'd love to hear about it. Let's have a conversation. So thanks again for listening and I look forward to you all joining next time. Have a great day, ojv.