I’m fascinated by the way the world is approaching AI – and I think it’s a great example of how new paradigms in tech disrupt not only processes – but people.

Because of the tremendous response to my post about how I used AI to research and help write a blog post, I thought I’d share all the ways I used AI this month, in the course of doing marketing for myself and my clients. Hopefully this sparks some ideas for you.

First, please note that I understand (and agree) that turning to AI for everything can make you lazy and unprofessional. If you’re lazy and unprofessional in how you use it, that’s bound to happen. But people who are lazy and unprofessional have been skirting doing “real work” for years – and AI is just another tool they’re going to use to do that. I’m not that person, nor do I recommend you become that person.

Second, I choose to use AI to save time. That’s it. I don’t believe it will “think” any better than I do – though I’m sometimes pleasantly surprised at research and findings it shares that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own. Again, because it saves time – not thought.

Third, I understand there’s a lot of controversy around the amount of energy that AI uses and agree that, in many ways, it’s not good for the environment (using up water, heating up data centers, hogging electricity, etc.). But I’m trying to be realistic, assuming that these issues will be solved in the long run. No one stopped using car engines (over horse power) because “gas was expensive” or took a lot of resources. Tech marches on – whether we’re onboard as individuals or not.  

To use another horse analogy, the “horse is out of the barn,” with regard to LLMs, and we’re going to be using them in the future. So we should all be figuring out the best way to maximize them.

With that in mind, here are just some of the tasks I used AI to do for me this month.

• Create a marketing plan for my new book, which is coming out in September.

Book marketing is not something I do for a living, so I figured starting out with an outline based on what’s “out there” would give me a head start. Will I follow it religiously? No. I use it as a starting point for creating my own, customized approached to launching my book. But it did give me a couple of ideas that I hadn’t thought of before – and voila! It helped move the ball forward better than I could have without it.

• Write basic marketing emails for me – again, for my book

Writing marketing emails can be boring and repetitive. I still do them, of course, but what better use of AI is there than to take on the boring and repetitive tasks? I agree with Seth Godin on this one – let the bots do the dull stuff – so we get to do the fun, interesting, and creative stuff.

• Do research on my client’s ideal target market persona

I love letting the AI do research for me – finding sources, collating industry data, etc. It’s a much better use of the search engine’s power than me googling and going down rabbit holes. Again, I check all the sources and references – that’s important. There may be some that are more relevant than others, for example. But the “harvesting” of the data so that I can take a look at it is a great use of its power.

• Find podcasts that are popular among my target audience (for my own, new podcast)

Again, what better use of the engine than to do research on the competition? Or to find resources that I can use myself? Podcast guests on similar shows might be ideal guests for me!

Here are a few more ways I used AI this past month:

• Brainstormed panel topics for an industry conference
• Created a video strategy for a client – which I then rewrote (but at least had a foundation and some key points to add)
• Crafted an outline for a LinkedIn Training session

AI is great if you ask a very specific question, with detailed parameters. Then, as the savvy user, you get to parse the results, ask additional questions, and research the original resources that the LLM referenced. This involves time and analysis – but also saves you the time of amassing the research in the first place.

I don’t ever take what AI spits out for me word-for-word. I consider it, edit it, add to it, enhance it. Basically, I do the “human thinking” work necessary to finish up the project. That is our job, isn’t it?

I hope you’re getting the general gist of this. AI is there to make life easier – if you let it. If you’d like some help with this, or how to use AI in your own marketing, feel free to reach out.