By Sara Mannix
I belong to a group of leaders who are utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) every day to make their work more effective and more efficient in an ethically responsible way. We have used AI to create flyers, design presentations, write software code, debug code, and even create movies. And at Mannix Marketing we have built CustomGPTs that perform functions based on our own knowledge bases and rules, and we have discussed and drawn up guidelines about the ethical use of AI.
We have reached the point where if you aren’t using AI in your work, then you are falling behind your competitors who have mastered using the latest breakthrough technology.
The good news is that it isn’t hard to get started and become familiar with some AI tools that can make your life easier. One of the simplest ways to get started with AI is to use ChatGPT.com, a tool that can provide detailed answers in a conversation-like format (its responses build upon the questions and answers that precede them, so no need to start from scratch as a conversation is in progress, or even if you need to come back to it). Here are a few simple ways I have used ChatGPT or other AI tools to help you think about how you can use them.
The first way most people use ChatGPT is to help them with their writing. We caution our clients not to use ChatGPT to write their website content as it is usually too generic to rank well in search engines. Instead, we recommend that you use ChatGPT to edit and refine content and brainstorm content ideas. I’ve used AI to refresh articles, inject new ideas, rewrite social media posts, and make content more concise, helping to ensure it’s engaging and up-to-date.
This past week, I had a list of client testimonials that I wanted to organize by industry. I created a list of top-level categories and asked ChatGPT to come up with subcategories for each based on my client list. Then, I asked ChatGPT to organize the client testimonials by category and subcategories. This took less than 10 minutes of back and forth with ChatGPT, and it had properly organized 200 testimonials. If done by hand, this would have taken at least three hours.
AI is great for helping you with your trip planning. Recently I took my daughters to Montreal to see Laufey in concert during the Jazz Fest. My youngest is a vegetarian who dislikes pasta and pizzas but loves Mediterranean and Asian cuisine. At the hotel, I logged into ChatGPT and asked it to recommend specific restaurants within a 10-minute walk that catered to my vegetarian daughter’s likes and dislikes. Like Google, AI has read everything on the web (this is why SEO is very important for the future). Since ChatGPT had already cataloged all the items on the menus, it was able to tell me what dishes various restaurants had that were noted as vegetarian. Granted, some restaurants were closed and it wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot easier than using a search engine. Usually, the search for restaurants on our trips takes an hour, and by the time we’ve found something, we are pretty hangry (hungry-angry)… This, however, this took about five minutes.
This week I had a 90-minute call with a client whose business was incredibly complex in an industry I was not familiar with. I did not take a single note. I listened intently and was able to be fully present. How? Before the meeting, I asked the client permission to use an AI note taker and ChatGPT to gain insights into our call. After the call, I removed all identifying information about the client from the AI-generated notes. Then I asked ChatGPT to find any opportunities the customer mentioned. I asked my AI assistant to find the competitors mentioned on the call and to give me links to their websites. I also requested an overview of the industry and the challenges for that industry. The AI note taker summarized essential discussion points the client cared about to help me tailor my approach for future interactions. This took a half hour but saved me two hours, and most importantly it was very thorough.
The more you use AI, the more it gets to know you and what you care about. I’ve used AI to find books for me and it suggested books like ‘Supercommunicators’ by Charles Duhigg – a great choice.
I was working with another new client in a new industry, and I was able to ask ChatGPT for industry-specific advice and insights. I was careful to ask where it found the data, but overall, the information was quite sound and saved me hours of research.
If you aren’t using AI, now is the time to give it a shot. Keep in mind that it does make mistakes (AI can only be as good as the data it is trained on), so it’s essential to verify and hand-check answers and results. Despite the occasional misinformation, AI will save you time, and that saves money!
AI is especially important to my business as we specialize in SEO – helping people get found in the search engines. AI results continue to be more prevalent on search engine result pages; SEO for AI is called Generative Engine Optimization, and when done with a clear understanding of how AI works can deliver tremendous results. No matter what your business is, not only do you need to use AI to be more efficient and effective, you need to understand how your customers will be using AI to find you.
Want to learn more about AI and the future of SEO? Contact Sara Mannix, the CEO of Mannix Marketing, a 32-person digital marketing agency headquartered in Glens Falls, at www.mannixmarketing.com/booksara. Mannix Marketing specializes in SEO and Generative Engine Optimization, which means it helps small businesses get recommended and found when people use AI.