And Carrie On

Earlier this summer I attended Hashtag HigherEd (It was a great day of high-level conversations!). During the event Bart Caylor, presented on some ways he’s using ChatGPT and AI. He challenged the audience to spend some time playing around with AI.

I accepted that challenge and have spent the past month spending intentional time with ChatGPT. For me, it’s been the best place to start.

In playing around, I realized the tool had many use cases beyond what I initially expected. When the American Marketing Association offered a panel on AI and ways it could impact the marketing profession, I signed up and listened in to learn from marketing experts about how they’re using the tool.

As part of the presentation, the panelists provided their definition of AI. Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, shared one that resonated with me.

AI – is making software smart.

Paul Roetzer

How AI Saves Me Time

Brainstorming – This is the part of the tool I’ve used most recently. As our team is continually trying to come up with creative approaches, part of my new process is asking ChatGPT what we should do. While the ideas aren’t perfect or fully fleshed out, I do think they have helped me get the creativity lowing.

Editing – This is probably where I’ve used the tool the most. I have had several print pieces that were too long and filled with too much jargon. Using ChatGPT, I’ve been able to drop the original copy into the tool, tell the tool what to emphasize and how much to trim. In multiple instances, it’s achieved this task with little to no edits needed.

I also needed to make copy more readable, so I asked ChatGPT to convert about two paragraphs of copy into bullet points. I had to make some light edits, but again — significant time savings.

Writing Emails & Invites – In our world, we get lots of requests to help with invitations, save the dates, and email messages. ChatGPT really excels in this space. I’ve used it to write three different emails about events and used it to help in formatting copy for several events. This is a task that isn’t hard, but using ChatGPT definitely gives me more bandwidth to focus on more important work. Time savings, for sure.

Marketing Copy and Messaging – This is where ChatGPT is the least successful on its own. Because I know our marketing message so well, ChatGPT messages feel a bit generic. This area, really does still need a human eye to get it right. The way I’ve had the most success in this space is asking to help with the messaging a few different ways. Then, I can take its best efforts and my insights and craft something that is usually pretty strong.

Other Uses from Colleagues

Writing Quotes – Often times writers are told to just “make me sound smart” or “just build a quote for me to review”. Trying to come up with quotes for others that don’t sound identical or say the same thing can be difficult. Several writers I know have used ChatGPT for helping craft draft quotes for articles.

Crafting Job Descriptions – Another colleague had a job description that needed some work. This was a great tool to help come up with additional bullet points of the responsibilities and ensure that industry appropriate terminology was used in the description.

Some Advice to Playing With AI

1. Brainstorm how it can help — One of the AMA panelists suggested making a list of all your tasks and seeing which ones AI might be able to help with. He said most marketers could probably use AI for about 35% of their tasks.
2. Ask multiple times — Sometimes you have to ask the question a couple of times to get where you’re wanting to go. This is especially true if you’re needing help with marketing copy or messaging.
3. The better your prompt; the better your results — Tell it the tone, what to emphasize, the desired length, etc.
4. Provide feedback in the same thread — If it didn’t get what you wanted, it’s okay to say “focus more on this piece”, or “make sure this phrase is used”.
5. Start a new thread for each request — Threads are active for a month in the free model, so it lets you see your history and can reuse a thread for similar needs.
6. The tool is learning — I try to say thanks and provide the final version of what I use. This (I think) will help the tool get better at matching my tone and style for future requests.

Wrapping it Up

Others have said it before, so this is not original. I firmly believe this is a viable tool that can help us all work smarter not harder. I don’t believe that it will replace our work, because so much of the human element matters. However, I do believe that we will quickly be left behind if we’re not practicing, playing, and using it to better our craft.

Happy testing!