The Role of AI in Content Marketing

Speaker 0: speaking of that, what role does ai play in optimizing marketing strategies, and how can startups leverage ai tools? it sounds like, in general, ai content right now is not great, and people turn away from it pretty quick. but i sit back and say, it's all about the value. so if you have it depends what you're writing about, and it depends on the value. if you have listen. i'm i'm finishing up the startup ecosystem in toronto, series of pages that talk about venture capital, angel investment, all that stuff. so i'm gonna have one page with a list of angel investors. you know, some of that's gonna be generated by chatt gtp, and some of that's gonna be handwritten. but the key content there is the list of the angel investors, what they are, how to get to them, and whatnot. so that will be valuable to people, and it doesn't really matter if that individual list was edited by chatgtp or not because the list is there and it looks good. but the content around it, if you're drawing conclusions, if you're doing this, if you're actually creating creative things. so the question is where does ai fit in your strategy for marketing? does anyone wanna take that?

Speaker 1: sure. i'll do. so for me, it's really just about using it as a tool as opposed to the creator. so if you have an idea wanna, you know, you wanna try to flesh it out, make it actually better, then sure. throw yourself in the chat to ebt and see how that works out for you. but as to just go up and just type in and say here, write me a blog post about this or write me a linkedin post about this. and then just taking what it gives you and putting that up there, a lot of the times, people are gonna be able to sniff that stuff out. i mean, it's i can't explain how it happens. you just when you read it, you can tell that it's it's it's written by chad gpt. i i don't know the best way to describe it, but you can just tell. and so seeing stuff like that, all of a sudden, that person now thinks you are not genuine. and, you know, especially on linkedin, i see this a lot where, you know, people who are using ai to make comments, and people don't like actually having comments being made by bots. that's just not it. and any content in general made by bots does not work for a lot of people. so they wanna have authentic interactions and, and have authentic content made that speaks to them and how and resonates with them. and i just don't think you can get that directly from just poor just saying, here's a topic to chat gbt and say, write it write something about this.

Speaker 0: sorry, mark. you're muted.

Speaker 2: i was subscribed to a newsletter, and just on a related note, the top of the newsletter had a disclaimer that said, this content was not created by generative g i generative ai or chatgpt. and it got me thinking that i think that there's, a branding opportunity, a marketing opportunity for companies that will wave the flag for human powered content. and the idea that, you know, every company leans into chatgpt right now, and they're using it in one shape or the other. but if you can stand apart in saying, we have writers. we pay them well. they write great content. this is part of our ethos, then, you can leverage that as a way to stand out from the crowd just as hubspot stood out in the early days of, content marketing by simply writing a lot of content. so there's maybe a tip for some of those startups out there looking to get a competitive edge in some way.

Speaker 0: naima, anything on this?

Speaker 3: i have mixed feelings. so because, i think yeah. there's a lot of mixed feelings here. but if you're on a time crunch and you need to like, let's say, you just can't get an idea out, i think it's a great tool. i've seen somebody use it and get themselves out of, funk within like, because they had, like, they had something going right in that evening, and they wanted to kind of think. and then i was like, you know, i can see i can see that being great. but then on the flip side, whenever people use it for captions, you know what chat gpt always gives you? it always unlock your potential, empower your boat. those are the key word that they use. and every time i have you

Speaker 0: can spot them? yeah.

Speaker 3: yeah. you can just spot it. right now, obviously, it's gonna get better with time. so i just have mixed feelings towards it. however, i think is ai something that you can use for, obviously, it is in fact, people who don't have the resources, of course, it's a great cheat code, to kinda get the product. i don't know if it's gonna be the, you know, genuine of course, all the creative. it's you unique. you know, the birth from a muse, it's not that. but it's something, you know, for a company especially that don't have any especially if you don't speak english. like, for example, i was just talking to a founder from ukraine, and he didn't speak english. he didn't have anybody here. so he uses chat g p t to help him kind of with that portion, like writing emails. and, of course, it's gonna sound very, like, dry and not very, you know, personalized, but it's it's something that can be taken at face value as it is, you know, for what it is versus that, you know, adding the emotion and getting people to take an action and all that, of course. so i have a mixed feeling because i can see its use in its place, but at the same time, yeah, at the same time for creative work, for example, i feel like it's, i feel and i think that it's something that ethically shouldn't be used, if you're trying to put something out there as a creator.

Speaker 0: so i guess i'm probably the person here that uses it most for my marketing stuff since everyone else uses more, against it. but let me tell you some of the things i use for it so that, you know, people can use them in context. they can condemn me. i don't really care. but you can decide whether those are use cases for you. one, it really helps with trying to decide. if you're trying to figure out what to write, you can throw some stuff into chatgtp, and it can come up with a whole bunch of ideas on, you know, here are a bunch of articles that, you know, are in demand or based on high volume keywords or whatever, and that'll give you a starting point. i use it for creating a lot of my tweets because i run events. i put out eight podcasts a week, plus we have, you know, four of these and four, many live events. and so i got so much crap to promote. i use it saying, here are these events, create five once they have the full description, create five tweets to promote this event because i don't have the time. now if i have a bunch of guests coming together, and i usually try and create a different social media packages for each of them that is different from everyone else so they're not repeating it. i'll say, okay. go ahead and create me ten tweets. that'll be from daniel's point of view and ten tweets from mark's point of view because it'll do that for me, and i don't have the time. and people can curse me for that or not, but you know, it's a easy thing for me to do. i don't consider that, creative content where you're actually giving valuable thought. it's just, you know, here's the description. here's who's coming. here's this. you know, give me five things to promote this. so i do blank page. i like ai for if you're doing seo and content mapping, there are some great tools to map out, how that whole content pillar should appear on your page. at a high level, here's the name, and here's the url that should be so it all maps together, and then you can go create those. so there's some great tools to help you get started into, fix what i call blank page syndrome. like, oh, i don't know what to do. but at some point, you need to take it over. otherwise, it becomes that crap that everyone else sees that no one wants to see. so that's not gonna

Speaker 3: i wanna say one thing. i just remembered something. so if you wanna respond to a review, negative review, and if you have some words that you probably don't wanna use publicly, what you can do is you can write out of your heart and then put that in touch if you didn't be like, hey. write this in a professional manner. i think that

Speaker 2: that's

Speaker 3: another thing.

Speaker 2: that's funny to me. i mean, because i got this new technique called dog powered ai content. and, basically, what it involves is me walking my dog. and then i'll open up my voice memo on my iphone, and i'll just start talking about something that i'm interested in, you know, something some topic that i'm interested in. so i'll ramble for a couple minutes, then i'll upload the audio to chattbt and say, write me a blog post. don't change the content. just make it sound good. right? this kind of tone. it's it's quasi authentic content, but it's a way of taking your a video that you shoot or audio and leveraging chatgpt, but not having chatgpt actually write it for you, right, out of the blue. so lots of different ways to use it. yeah. yeah.

Speaker 3: i'm gonna steal that one, mark.

Speaker 2: yeah. it's perfect. so, you know, twenty minutes to walk your dog, you can come up with two or three, linkedin posts right then and there.

Speaker 1: but, see, that is using as a tool, as a way to, you know, help you do what it is you're trying to do, what you're trying to accomplish. but if you're setting it up in such a way that you would just want to write content and whatever it spits out, you're gonna claim as your own and say that these are my thoughts. i think that's that's a bridge too far for me.

Speaker 3: yeah. out oh, and outside of, text based content, i just gonna say the other day, so we we have our, team meetings, and then where we just kinda do, just look at different ais. and one of the ones that i was interested in kinda like exploring is, hey, jen, for, you know, where you can put an audio, you can put the transcript of, like, a testimonial, and then you would generate a video, and it would be like a person doing the testimonial. of course, it's not something that we're doing, but i just thought that was interesting because that means that if it can be done, there's gonna be testimonials out there that are gonna be, ai generated and video testimonials. you know? and i thought that was interesting.

Speaker 0: well, i don't know about that.

Speaker 3: i don't wanna debate. i know that we're not debating whether or not it's something that we should use ethically, but it's just something that i've seen, like like, right on

Speaker 0: the screen. i like the concept, but, you know, let's face it. as soon as we the you know, one's gonna trust an ai, generated, recommendation video.

Speaker 3: yeah. no. no. hundred percent. i just thought it was in i'm just throwing it out there.