AI Copywriting

On this episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business, Samantha Scott, APR, is joined by Paige Johnson, Digital Operations Coordinator, and Tricia Mullis, Engagement Strategist, both at Pushing the Envelope.

They dive into the world of AI and copywriting, discussing misconceptions about AI, its limitations, and how it can be leveraged for business. Learn about the importance of educating AI tools like ChatGPT to ensure high-quality and authentic content. Explore best practices for using AI in social media captions, ad copy, and email subject lines, and when to avoid using AI for emotionally driven or high-stakes content. Tune in for valuable insights and tips to optimize your marketing strategy with AI.

Have a question or feedback to share? Visit www.getpushing.com or one of our many social media channels. We look forward to hearing from you.

#marketing #business #communication #strategy

Transcript

Samantha: 0:05

Hi, welcome to another episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business, a podcast brought to you by Pushing the Envelope. I am Samantha Scott, and today I am delighted to be joined by two of my awesome colleagues, Tricia and Paige. And we're gonna talk about AI and copywriting, dos, don'ts, tips, tricks, all the things. So ladies, introduce yourselves.

Paige: 0:24

My name is Paige. I am PTE's Digital Operations Coordinator. And within my role I do a lot of AI research, making sure that I can fill the gaps for any pain points that our team has that AI could replace or streamline. I stay up to date on the ever evolving landscape of forums and new platforms and softwares, and just inform our team so that we can use it to streamline and make our lives easier.

Tricia: 0:50

And I'm Tricia. I'm our Engagement Strategist, so I handle a lot of community relations and then a lot of organic social. So I use AI for brainstorming and copywriting when it comes to content for our clients or trying to figure out events and how to tie them in with our clients for different goals. So me and Paige collaborate a lot between the data and the AI, to kind of use it to benefit ourselves and our clients.

Samantha: 1:13

So let's dive in. This is a juicy, really deep topic. I think we could go on for days about it, but let's start by discussing what's the biggest misconception as it relates to AI and using it for business. I would say, things I've heard quite often, is it's coming for our jobs, or it doesn't actually produce good content, which I think has to do with how you're prompting it. But those are just some of the things off the top of my head that I've heard. I'd love to hear from your perspective, you know, Paige, you live and breathe AI and optimization and how to use it, but Tricia, you're actually using it for content creation specifically. So tell me your thoughts. What's the biggest misconception?

Paige: 1:52

So I think first and foremost, I do agree people feel threatened that AI's gonna take over their job. But that being said, one of those biggest misconceptions is that AI can completely replace the human touch and replace certain processes within marketing or business function. It's a great tool, but behind it, and to your point about how you're using AI, it needs strategy, it needs to know what's working and using data to inform it. In a lot of ways it can help with speed and efficiency and improving processes, but it's never going to fully take a good majority of positions because it's just gonna make those positions do better at their job.

Samantha: 2:29

In fact, it's even created a position. A lot of companies now are finally catching up to us and having an AI ambassador like we have Paige. That's her job and a large function of it is to actually analyze it and optimize the use and support the team. I think it's a really important component because yes, humans are still involved and necessary, but also because we have to make sure that we're using it the right way and that it's being used consistently across a team. If you don't have someone spearheading that, you've got people just going rogue, using it different ways and not efficiently. And that's when you get into the situation of poor output because it's poor input. But Tricia, I'd love to get your point too.

Tricia: 3:03

Yeah, and kinda like Paige said, it's a lot of, you gotta have that human touch and I think that's where it kind of plays a role in my job. If I were to only use ChatGPT to create captions or social media content, you're gonna look at it and say, oh, ChatGPT wrote that. And we do a lot of tweaking for brand voice and things like that, but there's still just some element that you have to revise based on your client's needs and their goals way better than Chat does, no matter how much you inform it. We've even ran into instances where it will make up promos. If we would just put that out there, we would have clients knocking on our door for that matter, saying, why are we offering this? You know? So even just in the sense of fact checking and looking for that in content. But it definitely helps kind of speed that process along. It makes the process so much more efficient when you're kind of writing a month of content at a time, that can take a lot of time when you just use your own brain power versus using Chat to kind of help brainstorm and get those ideas really flowing. It really helps speed that along.

Samantha: 4:00

Yeah. That brings us to the next point, which is idea generation. How do we best leverage this for this? Because if you just go to Chat and say, hey, write me a month's worth of Facebook content for a restaurant. That's so vague. I mean, think about asking a team member or an intern or an employee to do that. They may not come up with stuff and you have to know, well, okay, well is this a Mexican restaurant? Is it a fine dining restaurant? Is it takeout? Is it a food truck? I mean, there's so many variables, so making sure you're giving it really good data is so critically important. And one way that we are doing that is we educate Chat or any other tool we're using. We reference ChatGPT often, but there are many other tools we use as well, Perplexity for research, things like that. But we teach it, and that's the most important first step that I think so many people are missing when they're using AI to help with content generation or really for anything else, even idea creation. Because if it has no context about the company that you're trying to create ideas or content for, it's not gonna be able to do its best job. So the way we take it is we educate it about each individual client. So if you're in-house, tell it about your business. Explain, this is who we are. This is what we do. This is our target audience. This is our unique value proposition or our differentiator. This is our brand voice, how we wanna come across, this is our personality. Give it all the background information and then tell it what your strategy is. So what's your marketing strategy? Which you should have, annually, but then also if you have a campaign you're working on. Give it all of the resources and information so it can be successful. So you kind of have to help it, help you, and then see what it comes up with and then further refine it and say, yes, I like this, or don't like this, or change this wording. But then we take it a step further and use the data that Paige creates every month in her reports. And then we educate it and say, okay, Chat, we had these posts go up, these performed really well. These did not. Create more of these and less of those. So you have to continue to educate. I think that's another thing that people miss out, is if you educated it in the beginning, but then you just kind of set it and forget it, it's not gonna work as well. But if you continue to tell it, yes, this did well or this did not, it's gonna create better content over time and also better ideas because then it'll know, oh, okay, the audience really liked this, so I can create more of that.

Paige: 6:07

Yeah. And to your point with continuously educating it, I think it's also important, I kind of like to think of it as like talking to it like another team member as like a human and telling it exactly what you liked in its output, what you didn't like, how can it be improved and giving it clear direction. The vague like, give me a caption for this isn't gonna be successful and you're gonna continue to get bad outputs, that's gonna not save you time,'cause you're gonna have to make more edits. But continue to tell it what's working, what's not, be specific, and also pairing that with what's currently happening in those forums and stuff that I mentioned. How are people learning new ways to use their chat bots and like how are they speaking to them and what are some different, like even formulas for this is what I'm looking for and you can tell it like you are a digital marketing expert or you specialize in email marketing. And there's a lot of new research that emerges about how these formulas of how to speak to it and give it really good feedback for better outputs.

Samantha: 7:01

Yeah, absolutely. Engineering prompts, for those that are technically interested in this. Absolutely, and there's a ton of those available. I follow a number of people on LinkedIn that share tips, infographics, sheets like that, that help with prompts and customizing that. Make sure you're using the memory function as well and just storing anything that you can, educating it because, to your point, you have to tell it exactly what you want. Once you do that, then it can do the best work for you, but if you don't take that step, it's not gonna perform as well. And I think that's where people get tripped up or that's where they're getting that kind of to your point, Tricia, oh, that's clearly written by Chat. So I think it's really important to keep in mind, you have to educate it, but also really be strict about ensuring your brand and your strategy is clear, that you continue to remind it of that, and that you're checking it as the human against how you wanna position your company, your business, or your clients.

Tricia: 7:50

And I would add onto that, that I talk to Paige all the time about this'cause she kind of spearheads our AI, trying to find ways to be nice to Chat. I've changed my mindset of kind of treating it like a colleague and giving it that feedback because it's a lot of trial and error with what are the right prompts that are getting the content that really resonates that I really like with minimal tweaking versus, sometimes I prompt it when I'm in a rush or something and it's like, wow, that totally missed the mark. When some people I think get in their heads that, well, if I have to spend the time to give it so much background I can just do it myself and save that time. When really what you get in the long run after just kind of front loading it with that information helps so much. And then just tweaking those prompts. Like Paige said, you're a digital marketing expert, or you're working in community relations, public relations, or whatever, just to kind of help Chat get into that mindset. But I've noticed too, the more you give it feedback on that was good. And for me it was kind of hard to say thank you or please, or great job to a computer. It really does make a difference because it's telling Chat that, oh hey, they really like this content and it knows to do more of that.

Samantha: 8:54

Give Chat a pat on the back every once in a while, you know?

Paige: 8:58

Yeah.

Tricia: 8:59

It sounds silly, but you have to do it.

Paige: 9:01

It can be frustrating when you're getting outputs that aren't what you're looking for, and that's when you wanna respond and be like, no, try again. But if you're cleaning up those memories and you're using those formulas for how you speak to'em, giving content feedback and specific feedback about what's working, what's not, giving the data upfront, of course, adhering to the AI policies that you should have in place. You don't want to put everything. Some information is sensitive and it should be only information that is available to the public. You can look on an Instagram how many likes something has or see some insights. But overall, if you combine all those things, it will be less frustrating to be nice to Chat because it'll have all the tools it needs to give you higher quality outputs.

Samantha: 9:43

Yeah, I like to think of it as, you guys have both mentioned this, it's a colleague. It's a partner in this. You wouldn't hire somebody new on your team and have them sit down, give them no background, and then say, go do this. Right. We wouldn't do that. There's an onboarding process, so it's the same thing with Chat, and to your point, Tricia, invest the time once and it will pay dividends in the long run and then continue to be a partner with it and give it the information and resources it needs. Now, we've talked a lot about educating it, how to go about doing that and working with it. But I also wanna touch on kind of the big elephant in the room, which are risks and limitations, right? So you mentioned the AI policy, Paige. I think that's super, super important. We have one on our website. There's a lot of things happening with the government and whether they're going to require this or not. I'm not legal counsel. You can look into that on your own. But I would say definitely educate yourself on that, one. But then also, two, be very aware of the limitations. AI is not perfect. Fact check. So make sure that if you're asking it for information, tell me about this or what about X that you're double checking that, that it's accurate. Perplexity is a fantastic resource for research. I love it. And it's also awesome because it will cite where it's getting the information, but then it also gives you secondary prompts so you can dig deeper and really get more information. Make sure you're doing your homework with that and you're aware of it. And then also make sure, to your point, Tricia, that if you're asking it to help with ideation, that it doesn't just come up with willy-nilly campaigns and you just run with it. You really have to be diligent to make sure this applies to the brand, that it makes sense, that it aligns with the strategy. Are there any other AI limitations, risks, or things that I missed that we should talk about, Paige?

Paige: 11:14

I think overall because this landscape is evolving and there's new platforms popping up all the time, you wanna be transparent with your clients and it's a really good idea to just have a policy in place. This can change over time, of course, once you make one, you can make adjustments to it. The platforms that you're using, keep a list of them, make sure you know if there's any updates to that platform specifically. Keep it as a toolbox, but it's not something that's stagnant. It continuously changes. Remaining transparent and having that in place, keeping that list, updating it frequently, would be best practice so you don't get caught in a situation where you're using misinformation or you're using content that people can tell isn't authentic and it's written by a bot. Your engagement's gonna drop off in the long run.

Samantha: 11:55

Do the right thing, always, is our motto. Do the right thing whether somebody's looking or not. And I think that's really, really important is just kind of self-police yourself in this matter and take the safety road I would suggest. There are ways to do that where you can turn off the kind of way that Chat can send information out into the... what is it? The LLM. Making sure that if you have work that you're doing and you wanna keep it private, that you have that turned off. So it's not putting that out there for the world to see. But first and foremost, you should just never put anything into these programs that would be proprietary or private in any way. I know a lot of people will even make up fictitious names for the businesses or organizations that they're working with to make sure that there's nothing that could possibly get out there that ties back to it. And just make sure that you're always keeping it nice and neat and that you're doing the right thing, the right way as it relates to that. Tricia, any thoughts from your perspective about things to avoid or risks or just stuff to keep in mind as it relates to using AI for content?

Tricia: 12:52

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, we talk a lot in content about authenticity. That's a big shift right now in content. Everyone wants to see an authentic brand. They don't necessarily wanna see the picture perfect, the kind of front your business wants to put on, they wanna see the day to day. They wanna see the real you in a sense. And a lot of businesses can do that in a variety of ways, but I think that's kind of one of the things some brands kind of teeter on the idea of AI of if I use it I'm not being authentic because I'm not the one creating that or whatever it might be. But I think that's where that human touch comes in of using AI to kind of streamline these processes, kind of speed things along and give you that good base. But it can't replicate that human emotion. So there's always tweaks to be made that refine that brand voice to really tie into the emotion that your audience wants. Or it may pull data that, if you didn't give it enough information, it may be from the wrong industry. So to your point of fact checking. There's just a lot of refinement that can be done with the human touch, that it doesn't necessarily mean that you're lacking authenticity. You're really creating it and making sure that it's there for your business, but kind of speeding things along using it as a tool. It’s not going to replace anything, it cannot replace things, and if so, every business that puts content out there in the restaurant industry, it's all gonna sound the same. So no one's gonna stand out. But when you use it for the ideas or just to kind of give you that base of content, then you add in those emotions, you add in those touches that really make your brand what it is. And I think that's where that authenticity comes in, in a little bit faster way, you know?

Samantha: 14:21

Yeah, same with if you're using Gemini, or Grammarly, or any of those tools, educate it and help it understand the brand voice, so it just gets you one step closer to that authentic voice. And Paige, you mentioned if you're doing work for clients, but I would say even if you're an in-house team, this applies. If you've got a small marketing department in-house, make sure that you're all using a team Chat so it's gaining the information from every person that's involved and that you're all working toward the same voice, the same outcome. Yeah, make sure you're doing all those things so that you can get the very best output possible.

Tricia: 14:51

Yeah, and I would say that's one thing that we're even working on refining kind of in our processes. It seems like it takes that extra time to give it more information as you go along. But if I'm already reviewing content and I know it's been approved by a client, we want more of those captions and that verbiage. If I'm already looking at it, it takes a couple more minutes to throw it in Chat and say, hey, this is approved. We really like this length or this tone, or whatever it might be. And Paige kind of does the same thing when she pulls data. We're already evaluating this data, what's performing, what's not, so taking those couple extra minutes to just put it in Chat and kind of inform it just as we're getting these things in real time. That really helps refine the content that you're getting. Taking that time to do the little bit of input really refines the output. And the more you do that, the closer you get to where you wanna be to just add in those quick human touches.

Samantha: 15:38

So let's talk about when to use AI and when to avoid it, because we talked about a lot of ways that we can use it in terms of idea creation or content generation, that kind of stuff. But I think there's some ways as it relates to that, that we should avoid it and probably some best practices or things that we see where it's really, really helpful. So, Tricia, where should we absolutely use it? And then Paige, I'd love to hear from you where we should not use it.

Tricia: 16:05

Absolutely. I think some great places to start with using AI for copywriting, kinda like we've been talking a lot, is social media captions or ad copy. That really helps keep things fresh. If you're writing a month of content, that can be a lot. And AI, the more you train it and the more details you give it, it can even really help kind of space out your content to where you’re not talking about the same thing three posts in a row and then you forget about it the rest of the month. So even small tweaks like that, it really helps kind of refine that and kind of get those ideas and kind of the flow of content a really good baseline for that.

Samantha: 16:35

Yeah, you can even direct it and say, for example, if you are a business that has a marketing strategy and a specific campaign, you can say, I want X posts about the primary strategy. I want X about this campaign. I want this many that are just general value added, et cetera. So you can really guide it to your point of varying that content, making sure it's good quality content, not just volume.

Tricia: 16:55

Yeah, absolutely. And especially because there are times that, again, if I'm in a rush, or I kind of just, I don't really pause and take a moment to see what all I need to put in it. I give it a prompt, I kind of tell it a couple things, and then I realize, oh, I didn't mention this campaign. It's very easy to say, hey, I forgot, can you add in three of these posts or two of these posts? It'll shuffle everything around to really make it flow. All you have to do is give it that information and it's a really good starting place for social media content and ad copy. And another way that I really like to use it or we as PTE is for subject lines for emails. You want those to be really engaging, and you can even tell it give me three options to focus more on this, or lead with this. Trying to give it those key words. That's kind of that brainstorming part of AI. A lot of times it'll give me five or six subject line options, and I see two that I kind of like, but I don't love them by themselves. It gives me that kind of idea of, okay, can I mash'em up this way? Or, ooh, I really like that they used that word. Even if you're not necessarily copying and pasting straight from a subject line, it can really give you a lot of great options that can even then lead to good performance with open rates and things like that. Especially with email subject lines you want them to be super engaging, super enticing, because that's the first thing users are gonna see, so you want them to be able to click it and then open that email. And then another thing that I really like to use AI for is to repurpose content. So like I said, we kind of tell AI what's really working for our clients and what's not. And if we have a post or a video that worked really well, you can then tell it to take that and kind of make social media captions from it. If we have a blog, for example, that is performing really well or it's a really hot topic that has a lot of really good verbiage or maybe even data points in it, you can give it that information and say, hey, can you give me an email campaign for this, or ad copy, or whatever. You've already done the bulk of the work to find that data and get that information, that it can streamline that process super quickly to kind of break out points for social media captions, et cetera, et cetera, versus you having to go through your blog and ok well I really like that point, and I really like that point. It can just really like analyze that really well and kind of streamline repurposing content.

Samantha: 19:03

That's a great point and it reminded me of something else you can do is not just telling it I am a digital marketing expert, or I am a marketing person, but actually tell it who you're trying to write for. So I'll do that sometimes when I'm trying to write a LinkedIn post, I'll say, here's the video, or here's the particular topic, and I want this to appeal to X, Y, Z. It could be a business owner or a marketing department leader, or fill in the blank and I want it to be engaging or I want it to be informative. So working both sides of that, how you want it to be written in your voice, but also who you're trying to attract and engage. Great points, Tricia. All right, so tell us what not to do, Paige. Give us the rules, the guidelines.

Paige: 19:38

I would say the first and foremost thing, we've kind of touched on emotional connection, the emotional connection that AI lacks. So anything that requires a strong emotion behind it. You can use it for like ideation, or as like a template, but I think overall I would keep things that are very emotional, such as brand storytelling and like the narrative and the identity of your brand. When you're making that baseline, that should be something that comes from when you're creating your overall marketing strategy and your branding from the start. If you start at the baseline with AI, everything that you make from your brand story and from your brand voice and from your marketing strategy is going to be an extension of automation. So you want it to be authentic and genuine from the start. And then the other thing I would say is just any high stakes content like PR statements or thought leadership content. I would steer clear from AI in those scenarios.

Samantha: 20:30

Yeah, absolutely. Good points. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation about one teeny tiny way that we can use AI, specifically as it relates to content creation. So we talked a lot about authenticity, the human element, how to educate it at the beginning, how to continue to educate it so it can create the best content, different ways you can use AI in your content writing. I hope this has been helpful for those of you who have listened in. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tricia, thank you, Paige, for sharing your expertise. We appreciate it and I hope you all tune in for another episode of 1000 Ways to Market Your Business.