I had the idea a few months ago to come up with 10 creative ways the ordinary higher education user could benefit from AI in advancing their work. Fast forward to today…. it’s four months later, and it’s time for the final part of this series.
Giving you all 40 creative ways to use AI has helped me better leverage the tools in my own work, but it’s also helped me create a campus culture that emphasizes smartly using AI in our work.
As always, a big thanks to Enrollify for sponsoring this content and giving me the space to create something special that helps advance our profession.
Finally, if you missed the other posts, be sure to check them out:
10 Ideas for MarComm Leaders
1. Write great emails – ChatGPT is a helpful tool when it comes to emails. Often, when something is personal there’s too much backstory, causing the communication to ramble. Using ChatGPT helps create succinct email drafts that flow, distill lots of information, and are easy to follow.
Personally, I’ve used it to craft email drafts when I need to push back or give feedback on something. It helps me strike a tone of kind and fair but still holding firm to the best practices and strategy that set MarComm leaders apart.
2. Review your emails – Speaking of emails, if you’re really looking to level up your email game, you need to check out the Custom EmailGPT written by Ashley Budd and Day Kibilds. This tool is based on the best practices in their book and can help you refine marketing emails or personal emails quickly and effectively.
We are reworking our email communications for prospective students and intend to use this tool, in collaboration with Prospective Patty, to make sure our emails are meeting student needs but also clear and easy to follow.
3. Put transcripts to good use – If your video team is capturing great content, chances are the editing process is challenging. It’s not easy to select the best soundbites and get the tone just right. ChatGPT is incredibly helpful to take transcripts from a video file and help you build a video that tells the right story. Using it in this way allows the team to focus on editing and removes the lift of having to manage the message.
While I don’t edit video personally, I find that I’m super involved in getting the tone and message right on videos. Having a tool like ChatGPT makes it easier for me to ensure the team isn’t spending hours creating great content that misses the mark because the core tone is off. I think this is a way to iterate in the process and ensure we are aligned on the direction before editing begins.
4. Transcript qualitative analysis – If you’re hosting focus groups or getting feedback from stakeholder interviews or surveys, ChatGPT can help with analysis. Much like an intern, I recommend reviewing it yourself and spend some time examining the raw data. However, I think this can help pull out key themes and nuance in those rich conversations (especially qualitative interviews) much more quickly.
I think this can also apply to my friends working on their doctorate. ChatGPT could take raw transcripts of interviews and help suss out key themes in a qualitative study, while minimizing the personal bias that we bring to the data analysis process.
5. Go from good to great – If you had a great event or a program that worked well, use AI to continue finding ways to make it even better. By giving it your plans and sharing some of the successes, it can help you find more ways to improve without sacrificing the vibe or spirit of the work.
After many key office projects, our team does a Stop/Start/Continue to informally assess projects and look for ways to continually improve them. I have started using ChatGPT to help with identifying additional options to improve great successes and make them better. Using it in this way helps me to more systematically apply what worked well in one situation to other contexts.
6. Standard operating procedures – Transition in our work happens more often than we would like to admit. Using ChatGPT to help make standard operating procedures (SOPs) is a great way to ensure that key processes and practices don’t get lost as there is transition.
Our team is starting to work this year on writing these things down to help future employees. We have used ChatGPT to get some SOPs for logging into the system for the first time, paying bills, planning events, and sending emergency notifications. We’ve used ChatGPT to help us with formatting but also help us to assess that the written process is easy to follow.
7. Creating graphics – Several tools, including ChatGPT and Midjourney, can create graphics to go with a post. The image and graphic tools are the least-developed, but they are getting better. By giving the AI some key characteristics and desired tone, it can create graphics to go with a variety of content.
To test this one, I’ve used Midjourney to create the graphic or image for each of the posts in this series. Each time, I’ve given it a similar prompt and asked it to create something that aligns with the content, while still featuring a woman doing the work.
8. Aligning personal and brand social media posts – If you’re looking to grow your thought leadership or share about wins at your institution, ChatGPT is a great tool to help align your personal and institutional brand together in one post.
As someone with a strong LinkedIn presence, I use my personal GPT to help me with social posts and when I’m talking about the university, I want those posts to amplify both our objectives. Often, I provide context about the tone and the event I’m posting about. However, trying to come up with fresh post text each day is too much. I have to revise the copy a bit, but it does a great job at getting me started.
9. Dad Jokes – Sometimes we need a laugh, and ChatGPT has jokes for that. Our work is hard, and sometimes we need a way to relax for a moment and not take ourselves too seriously. ChatGPT is on the ready with a variety of jokes to add some laughter into the day.
I have used this several times when the day was stressful, and I needed to take a break. It’s a free, fun way to use the tool to help lighten the mood on days that may be tough.
10. Media Impression Estimates – One of the more recent use cases for me is generating media impression estimates. A simple prompt into ChatGPT, and I can understand ballpark costs for media spends and the amount of impressions I might see for those media spends.
Since I work with a variety of campus partners on building media plans, I like knowing costs and estimated impressions very early in the process. However, when I reach out to our great media partners, I often feel like I’m wasting their time, as I’m very much still in fact-finding mode. ChatGPT has helped me to get close, and then when I’m ready to explore more seriously, I’m able to have a better informed conversation with my media partners.
What Else?
Are there great strategies you’re exploring? If so, be sure to comment on the post.
This is the last post in this series, but I’m still regularly posting, so be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss something.
Until next time,
Carry On!
And Carrie On 