When to use AI, and when to steer well clear…
…let’s work smarter, not harder to get to your marketing goals
I’ve already written about AI on my substack, and in some ways I was coming into this week’s post thinking - have I said everything that needs to be said?
This topic was the short session that I delivered as part of my live session this week. Twice a month I do an online session, you can join me as a one-off for the price of a coffee (£5), and I dive into a topic for around 20-30 mins, after which the floor is open to you to ask any marketing questions you have for your small business.
Here’s the secret - I don’t want to do workshops or one-off live sessions. I want you to come along, try out working with me, and think, OMG she really ** is ** the Marketing Director I need and can afford for my small business! And then you can sign up to join The Content Club where you get regular sessions with me and access to all the info that you need to get smart about marketing your small business and have me give you the support you need to keep getting it right time and time again.
And the other secret is that right now I’m getting together my first 50 Founder members. So that means two things - 1. you’re getting almost a 121 from me for the price of your coffee because my live sessions and membership is so small and 2. the first 50 people to join The Content Club will have their membership kept at the current price (£20 a month) for the whole time they are with me.
What I’m trying to do is get all this marketing knowledge and ideas and general chatter out of my head and pour it into something that amazing business owners like you can use to really change the way you think about your marketing, and get it moving forward, consistently, over time. And that’s also what really lights me up, so it’s basically win-win all round.
So, with that all out of the way - AI, what the hell are we all doing??
If you didn’t read my last post on this, here’s the TLDR version:
There are some ways you can use AI that are smart
None of them involve creating content using AI - writing, images, video - and posting it
This is because AI images are obviously AI and because they are just the sum total / average of everyone else’s creativity, so they look a bit weird and bland
Your small business is amazing, and your content should reflect that, not the sum total of the internet spat back out of you in the interests of ‘saving time’
I hate to be the party pooper on this one, but let’s quickly take apart the recent phenomenon that was making yourself into an action figure in a box with AI.
Firstly, AI, like search before it, is terrible for the environment. If you’re trying to reduce your plastic, or recycle more, asking AI to do joke stuff is going to set your carbon footprint right back!
Secondly, what does posting something that everyone else is posting achieve? Again, I don’t want to be negative about this, I completely get that it’s fun. And the fun of it is fostering connection. But your content can totally be fun AND move you towards your marketing goals. Because I’m going to bet that none of you had someone enquire about work off the back of seeing you as an action figure.
Of course, you’re going to counter with, but the engagement on that post was great! I’m sure it was. Who was engaging in it? From what I saw, as it was mainly business owners doing this trend, it would have been other business owners. I don’t think it will have been your target audience.
But what this trend has given me, is a perfect example of what I call Content Flow, and I’m going to use that to show you how you could use AI in your marketing but not end up as an action figure.
In order to create your action figure you would have done three things:
Had the idea - hey, look, I can be an action figure
Created the content - you went to an AI agent and gave it the prompt to create your AI image
Posted the content - you went onto socials and shared it
I call this your Content Flow. It’s something that I’ve come up with to help you get and stay consistent with your marketing. It’s the idea that having ‘marketing’ or ‘post to LinkedIn’ constantly on your to-do list isn’t working because you think you can just show up on socials, create and post something all at once, and then tick it off the list.
But getting to the point of posting is actually 3 things that all need to work together and spending time on each of them separately will help you get consistent on your end goal - actually sharing content online for your business - which will help you reach your marketing goals for your business.
So let’s look at each of these and see where AI can actually help out.
Content Ideas
I think this is the place where AI can be most useful. It can often feel like you're stuck for ideas as to what content to create in the first place, and AI can help you get started with that list.
And over time, you are probably going to find that you don’t need it as much at all. I have certainly got to a stage where I have ideas for content all the time and am constantly adding them to my list, or noting them down on my phone if I’m out and about. As with anything, the more you practice it, the better you’re going to get with it, and having ideas is exactly the same.
This one also seems pretty obvious when it comes to how you might use AI to help you. You can simply type into any AI agent things like:
What FAQs do people ask about [your industry]?
What are the top things people ask before they buy XYZ?
What are the best tips for choosing [someone who does what you do]?
This list is pretty much endless!
Once you’ve got these answers, you can use these in a few different ways. But I would also add another step in here. There might be questions, prompts and ideas here that you can pick out and use straight away - that’s great.
You should definitely sense check all the ideas and suggestions. Just because these are ideas are being given to you, doesn’t mean you need to use them.
Because the real secret sauce here is to sprinkle your own special magic on these answers. It is just as valuable to find questions, or ideas, from the answers that you don’t want to use. Take out what is useful and leave the rest. Or you can also turn it around into something that reflects your business and why you do things differently.
It would be like the idea of taking all the awful questions and just putting them together in a video - ‘here are all the awful things that ChatGPT thinks about [your kind of business] and why they’re not relevant’ - now that video is going to be gold!
Or take an idea that you don’t really agree with, and write a blog about why.
This is the central idea with any kind of AI, you’re getting it to do the leg work, and then you’re making it into something that fully reflects you and your business.
Content Creation
When we think about AI in content creation, we’re going straight to the stuff that’s getting people who create content hot under the collar. It’s AI images and videos that are being made to look more and more realistic by the day.
But, if you’ve seen any of these, I would argue that they really do lack something. And in the same way that you don’t want AI to be writing your blog posts, I don’t think you want to be giving over the images and videos you create to it in full either.
There are however lots of ways in which AI can help out when it comes to content creation.
One of the big wins for AI in content creation is captions. AI has made sure that you can create accurate captions easily on pretty much every platform now. This is not only great for accessibility but stats tell us that around 75% (I’ve found figures from 50% up to 85% depending on the survey / platform) of people scroll on socials without the sound anyway, so captions are a must!
When you’re capturing your content, if you have a Google Pixel device you can use their AI tools like Audio Magic Eraser, Magic Eraser, and Best Take and Add Me to take out background noise, people and things in the background of photos, or make sure everyone is looking at the camera, and can get in the shot. These are all powered by AI, and most devices that you use to capture content will have features that help you take the best video and pictures using AI.
Most editing software now has some form of AI to help you out. Mine can give me show notes for a podcast episode, or even go through the episode and suggest the best clips that I can then repurpose for social media. Again, it can be a bit hit and miss, but it is very good at picking out some really good sections quickly, so I can spend my time taking the best bits out of that section to use for clips.
Content Posting
If there was going to be anything that I would tell you to completely take AI out of the mix for, I think it would be content posting.
If you are spending time each week collecting and creating content ideas so that when you come to the time you’ve set aside for content creation you’re ready to get started. You’ve set aside some time to create content - whether that’s writing a blog, newsletter, making long videos for YouTube or short ones for socials - and are working on that consistently too.
Content posting should then become the easy fun bit at the end. You’re not turning up to a blank post template thinking - what am I going to share? You’re taking ideas you’ve had, content you’ve created, with your business goals and audience in mind, and now you’re ready to share it - this is the exciting part!
So why would you turn this over to AI? I’ve seen more posts on LinkedIn about whether or not the use of an em dash means that someone has used AI to write their posts. It doesn’t help that LinkedIn are quite literally giving you an AI writer, it’s marked ‘rewrite with AI’ like it’s already judging you and you haven’t even written your own post yet!
This is the part where you can show up and be your very own business self. It’s your time to shine.
When I’m posting, I take a quick moment and think about what I’m posting. Who is this for? Why is it valuable? What do I want them to do next? Then I write a short caption and press publish. Now you’ve taken the sting out of this with your time spent on content ideas and creation, you don’t need to be making this bit hard!
I hope this post has been helpful, and given you some AI food for thought. I have been feeling like I’m the only person that doesn’t want to turn over everything I do to AI, but if you’ve also been wondering if it’s the best way forward, I hope this has helped you make some more decisions about how you want to tackle it.
As ever, if you’d like to chat about what you do, what I do and how I can help you out then just hit reply and we can set up a time to catch up.
Chat soon
Laura