One of the most important elements of making marketing content that people actually want to watch, listen to, or read is relatability, credibility, and humanity. These are all uniquely human, but that doesn’t mean that AI tools can’t help. Humanity and efficiency are not at odds. In my business, as head of a company who helps founders demonstrate thought leadership on video, I focus on bringing out the relatable and credible side of people by teaching clients how to make quality content but also how to do it efficiently.

I recommend leaning on Artificial Intelligence to speed up brainstorming, content creation, and for research with the caveat being, you must add your own angle and voice to it. AI is simply a starting point. A small sampling of the AI tools I use for production of both video and podcast are ChatGPT, Rev, Canva’s AI tools, and Castmagic. 

Create very specific AI prompts to sound like you

A variety of businesses and founders are turning to AI in unexpected ways and seeing huge benefits. Emily Friend, Founder of Florence Rose Group, consults startups, as well as Fortune 1000 and private companies, on growth strategy and operations and leverages AI for a variety of tasks in her business. Friend has worked with me and shared that in her business she configures bots to do legal, analytic, and social media work.

“AI is like Amelia Bedelia,” Friend says. Remember, that hilarious children’s book character who took everything way too literally? She recommends being very specific with who you want the bot to be: “The more details you feed it, the more specific and granular it gets.” As I started applying that advice to my own business, I had flashbacks of working with various vendors like video editors and videographers. Just like with AI, communication is key. Generally, I have been most satisfied with content from my vendors when I provided them clear creative briefs in simple language. The better your instructions are, the more likely you are to be wowed by the output—whether the output comes from humans or robots. But with AI, your prompts become more important.

Within the specific prompts, Friend says you can ask it to emulate a persona, ask it to cite valid sources, and tell it to keep evolving with the new inputs you enter. For her, leaning on AI frees up time for her to then commit to client work. The whole process “still requires my brain,” says Friend, as she still needs to work with the output and add her human touch, but it helps her run her business more efficiently.

Use AI to answer FAQs for you while you sleep

Tomer Pensenzon, the Head of Marketing at Unleash is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and says “AI will take my job—just when I’m trying to sleep!” For him, instead of trying to keep impossible hours across time zones, he has created and trained a Slack chatbot that answers questions solely based on his documents and company’s data named “Mini-Tomer.” Using the company’s software he says “it answers 80% of the questions in my ‘Ask-Tomer’ channel while I’m sleeping.” He says the main value would be “not in creating information, it will be making it accessible,” and it’s important that each company customize it. What does that look like for someone else? Tomer offered that this would apply to a marketer like me with my weekly podcast called The Exit Interview with Kim Rittberg. The podcast helps self-employed folks succeed in work and life, offering tips on business building, marketing, and work-life balance, and I have a blog post about the benefits of the show. Timer says if someone asked me a question about my podcast, I could configure the AI to answer that. Specifically, it could review blog posts and generate the answer based on my content.

AI to help you know what your customers want

Dave Anderson, Head of Product Marketing at Contentsquare, a digital experience analytics platform, uses AI to inform him “of market trends, and positioning” he should consider to market their analytical program. So basically he uses AI to understand what customers want out of AI. But under the “non-obvious” ways he uses AI, he says that during his keynote presentations, he often makes comical parody songs about the analytics industry. He uses ChatGPT to get ideas, recommending a song by someone like Taylor Swift or Sting. “It never gets the lyrics perfectly, but it provides inspiration.” 

Whether you’re looking to become the next Weird Al at your company, speed up your operations, or whether you’re ready to dip your toe in or jump off the high diving board, AI can certainly help us be more creative and more efficient. But be sure to remember that AI apocalypse has not quite descended fully, so your humanity is still the important finishing touch.