AI CAN WORK FOR YOU, IF YOU REMEMBER WHO’S IN CHARGE.
By Roy Harryman
No matter how large or small, businesses are always looking for the magic button that will solve all their marketing problems “with just one click!” Then along came AI …
Sorry, but the magic button is still AWOL along with the Fountain of Youth. AI is not a one-stop marketing shop for small (or large) businesses. Yet it can definitely provide a productive boost to their efforts.
Since I’m not a technologist, but a marketer who uses AI, I’ll take a principles-based approach to explore this topic.
What exactly is AI?
This is sort of like asking, “What is physics?” or “What is math?” It’s not an umbrella, it’s a big-top circus tent with numerous categories and subcategories. It can write your term paper or create a greeting card image. So, first off, it’s not just one thing.
This makes the landscape confusing from the start. But when you layer on the numerous sci-fi movies built around computers becoming sentient, it’s downright bewildering.
So, what is AI? IBM defines it this way: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy.”
That’s the macro view. However, it’s part of numerous applications. The name that broke into the consciousness of most non-techies is ChatGPT, developed by Open AI. Today it’s just one name in a competitive environment of AI companies.
So, what does this mean for the small business or nonprofit? The shiny AI ads featured during golf tournaments are targeted at Fortune 1000 executives. But what about North City Plumbing? This 8-person business is not going to drop six figures on AI marketing. And if it could, it wouldn’t know what to do with it.
AI at the grass roots
Certainly there are viable uses for AI in small-business marketing, including these:
A plumber asks AI to write an article about the three most common plumbing problems for homeowners and how to avoid them. This article is then posted to a website and social media.
The plumber could also ask AI to write a page on his website, using key words to promote his plumbing services in Lenexa, Kansas.
Small businesses and nonprofits of all types can use AI to write blog posts, articles for LinkedIn, e-books, social posts and many more content-related tasks.
There’s much to celebrate about the abilities of AI. This is particularly true for people who struggle with writing. The HVAC business owner who is a skilled engineer, but a shoddy copywriter, may jump for joy at the idea of delegating all her copywriting to a machine.
Certainly, many a college student has found AI to be remarkably helpful: They don’t have to write term papers anymore! Just enter a few bits of data and you have covered the life of Henry VIII. No reason to get bogged down with academic work at college when more important pursuits are at hand!
Marketing guru David Meerman Scott shares a more balanced approach:
“I use AI to brainstorm, to summarize, to transcribe, and to help with article titles. I use AI to turn my long-form blog posts into short-form social posts. AI helps me make sense of huge amounts of data. … However, I avoid using AI to create content that’s important to get right. … I am focused even more on being original.”
Where it falls short
Using AI for marketing falls short when its outputs are completely uninspected and unsupervised. The work of an AI tool must be managed in ways similar to that of a human employee.
Is it doing what you intended?
Did you communicate your instructions clearly?
Are there errors in the output that need to be addressed?
Let’s take the plumber using AI to write an article about the three most common household problems. AI can indeed spit out the article. But …
What is the source of the information? Is it authoritative? Or sketchy? The internet is full of wonderful nuggets of wisdom alongside tons of garbage, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience. AI often can’t separate one from the other.
The results of the search may yield information that’s incorrect. AI can and does get some things 100% wrong. When I queried an AI tool for data on a state’s workplace safety legislation, it gave me results for another topic and the wrong bill. If I didn’t have some existing knowledge of the law, I could have written a bogus article for my client.
AI often assumes an exaggerated tone of voice that’s cheesy, academic or over-the-top. In other words, you would never say or write some of the things AI creates on your behalf.
Be careful when asking AI to create articles from scratch. If you are an expert on the topic and can review the accuracy of the content, it may be a helpful tool. Yet even a fully factual AI social media post will need your human touch. Plan on doing at least a little editing to keep it human.
Some companies promote AI products that will write a complete website for your business with “the click of a button.” While this may (or may not) be a good place to start, you’ll need to make sure this writing (1) sounds human (2) sounds like you (3) actually describes your business. Just because you can create website with one click doesn’t mean you should.
Other ways AI can help
AI has other beneficial uses beyond creating articles and term papers from scratch. It can convert your business content (audio files, manuscripts, manuals, videos) into e-books, blog posts and social media posts. In other words, it can help you make renewed use of documents and presentations that have collected dust and are of no practical use in their current state.
This could mean:
Asking AI to summarize customer surveys about their experience at your business
Transcribing the audio of a presentation you gave and turning it into a written article, blog post or e-book
Taking an article you wrote and asking AI to improve it
Yet even these outputs must still be reviewed, edited and personalized.
A writer’s perspective
One option of the AI tool I use is called “writing enhancer.” As someone who has worked as a business writer for decades, AI does not “enhance” my writing. Instead, it comes out sounding:
Academic
Overly hyped and sales driven
Inaccurate
What AI actually does for my written copy is to make it different. This can actually be a valuable service. Why? Because duplicating the exact content in multiple web locations alerts Google that the content might not be trustworthy, original or authentic. For that reason, you should not copy and paste your original blog article and re-post it all over the internet. It dilutes your subject matter authority.
For example, I assist a client with webinars and write a text summary for its blog. But I also need a summary for YouTube, Vimeo, our podcasting service and Google Business Profile. Cutting and pasting could result in your overall Google ranking going down instead of up. If I need to write multiple posts using the same article, AI’s rewriting functions can be helpful. But even then, I still have to edit out cringeworthy phrases and inaccuracies.
Where from here?
Billions of words could be written here about AI (and by AI!), so understand this is only an introduction specifically directed toward small businesses and nonprofits. In addition, I fully recognize the ground is constantly shifting under our feet and some of these conclusions may have to be revised.
Explore AI. Use it. Check its work. But don’t expect it to replace your unique background, personality and approach to the work you’re passionate about.
It’s an executive assistant, not a supervisor.
Roy Harryman is the author of “Small Business, Big Impact: A No-Nonsense Marketing Strategy For Companies That Do More With Less.” This column is an excerpt from the book.