THE AI BANDWAGON:
Be skeptical? YES.
Is it useful? YES.

Keeping up with the demands of creating content regularly takes time, dedication, and a splash of passion and investment. It’s doubly hard for small businesses and teams without dedicated resources.

Fortunately, really smart people have created tools to make delivering thinking, content, code, and images easier. Conceptually, the AI tools everyone is hot about right now are not new. But the jump in quality forces us to consider how tools can be used to keep up, level up, or inspire ideas during Happy Hours. 

But they’re still not perfect, and maybe evil. But we won’t get into that argument right now. Rather, we’ll focus on real ways small teams can take advantage of these tools.

The hype surrounding ChatGPT and other platforms like MidJourney, and DALL-E, create opportunities to expand how people can plan and create content that seemed perpetually 2 to 3 years away from useful. We may have crossed that threshold.  And jumping ahead, we don’t see AI replacing (good) marketers or copywriters or designers anytime soon. But we do see people using these various AI tools to be more effective and efficient to be more competitive.

Let’s look at a few practical ways AI can be used in the day and life of a marketer, content creator, designer or software developer:

🧠 Rapid Brainstorming

Developing an effective marketing strategy is crucial for any business, but it can be time-consuming and challenging to navigate. Small marketing teams can leverage AI to gain valuable insights into their audience, competitors, and industry trends—many of the levers needed to create holistic plans.

🤖 Automate Content Creation and Optimization

Creating high-quality content that resonates with target audiences is essential, but it can be tedious and time-consuming when starting from scratch. AI can help automate content creation by acting as a content ideator or editor. AI, using prompts, keywords, and writing samples, can quickly knock out draft content in moments. It won’t win a Pulitzer out of the blocks, but it can be a great starting point to build momentum.

ChatGPT can also analyze existing content and provide recommendations for optimizing it to improve search engine optimization (SEO), change voice-and-tone, write summaries and improve accessibility.

Whether it’s being used to start writing, improve or augment content, there’s probably a place to plug in an AI tool 

🌅 Text to Image

AI can do more than write like Shakespeare.  Anyone can use AI to create text-based graphics for marketing, websites, emails, sales presentations, etc. by utilizing various online tools and platforms. These tools, such as MidJourney, Canva, Adobe Spark, and Piktochart, use AI to automatically suggest templates, layouts, and design elements based on the user's input. 

These platforms also offer features like custom color palettes and font recommendations to ensure the final design looks professional and consistent with the brand's overall aesthetic.

🖥 Text to Code

ChatGPT can write functional code in a variety of languages, and it’s pretty darn good. Software developers can use ChatGPT to author new code, provide code recommendations, and automate debugging. Ask it to generate code snippets using specific programming languages or frameworks or write a custom WordPress plugin.

Developers can input their code into ChatGPT, and it’ll provide recommendations on improving the code's performance, syntax, or structure. Additionally, ChatGPT can provide insights into common coding practices and programming best practices.

You can even tell it when it’s wrong, and it (will attempt) to fix the error.

💨 Make Your Social Media Management a Breeze with AI Automation

Social media is an essential component of any successful marketing strategy, but managing multiple social media accounts can be a daunting task for small teams. Social media management tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social use AI to automate social media posts, allowing small teams to post content across multiple platforms with ease. With AI-powered social media tools, small teams can create targeted ads that reach their desired audience without spending a fortune on advertising.

In summary, while there are concerns about the potential risks of using AI tools, their benefits cannot be ignored. Small teams can leverage these tools to be more efficient and effective in creating content, developing marketing strategies, designing graphics, and writing code. While AI may not replace human creativity and expertise anytime soon, it can complement them and help teams stay competitive.