The Impact of AI on Marketing, Writing, and Leadership

Council Post: How Agencies Can Leverage Artificial Intelligence

Melanie Borden is the CEO & Founder of The Borden Group. She works with executives to align their brand with their LinkedIn strategy. Like many professionals, I was actually apprehensive when artificial intelligence first started sweeping the industry. What was it all about? How could I use it to leverage my business and systems? At my marketing agency, my team and I place heavy emphasis on the human touch element for our client base of executive teams and personal brands. So how could synthetic content play a part in effectively executing our goals? To put it simply, integrating AI felt like the antithesis of our mission. Well, I'm happy to report that embracing the AI revolution was one of the best moves I've made for my business. As I watched my colleagues, clients and community alike start accruing major success, I became more and more curious. By staying open and closely following those who were finding success with AI, I too found my flow. Now I can hardly envision our business model without it. According to a HubSpot survey, AI and automation tools are saving sales teams more than two hours a day. Imagine how your agency could better spend these precious hours. We've now integrated AI into our processes for content creation, standard operating procedures and client projects. Overall, it has enhanced efficiency, reduced business expenses and kept our content relevant with thought-provoking topics. If you're in a similar place as I was, wondering how to effectively weave AI into your agency, this article is for you. I'm going to share my top takeaways so you can begin using AI to your advantage too. I'm sure as an agency owner you spend the majority of your time on calls with clients and colleagues or even as a guest on podcasts. So why not make the most of these discussions? I started using AI transcription software to actively transcribe my conversations. It then populates transcripts into my account so I can easily access them. What I love most about the software is that it highlights the top themes from each call. I extract these themes and use them as content pillars for my own content calendar, e-books for my clients and guides to share with my community. Being able to reference all conversations in a succinct way makes it easy to distill unique thoughts and turn each call into a gold mine of relevant content that I can repurpose. My colleague once said, "I treat AI like an intern or an assistant," and I love this analogy. The truth is that AI can never replace human tone and creativity. You can tell when content has been directly copied and pasted from ChatGPT. It lacks depth and personality, which can actually harm your brand's reputation and credibility. Learning how to effectively prompt and train AI immensely aids in reducing this disconnect; however, to avoid incongruence, I always have someone on my team edit AI-generated content to maintain brand integrity. On that note, an excellent way to leverage AI for content creation is to ask for suggested improvements to your writing or request further ideas that will add value to your piece. This will position AI as a complementary resource rather than the only source. I'm a believer in immersing myself in rooms with those who are more well-versed than me, especially in areas I'm unfamiliar with. In this case, learning from AI experts on LinkedIn was paramount in moving the needle forward. By assessing the market and gaining insight into what is working and what isn't, I was able to imagine what using AI would look like in my own business. Once I gathered this information, I met with my team to train them on my discoveries. Scheduling this time to get everyone on the same page was vital. We then structured an AI SOP for each department to reference and then used this format to create further SOPs. This ensures all team members are aware of best practices, know where to find the proper resources and understand how to use necessary tools. By removing the guesswork, each member of our agency feels creatively empowered in their position while largely benefiting from AI output. I highly encourage you to search out top voices on LinkedIn, attend live audio events on the subject or find relevant podcasts so you can educate yourself and begin setting up your own aligned systems. While the world of AI can feel overwhelming, here are small action steps you can take today that will guide you in the right direction: * First, make a list of where you're currently struggling in your agency. What's consuming the most time? This is the area you want to target first. Let AI assist in this department. * Next, set up your systems and train your team to begin successfully implementing AI as a resource. * Lastly, stay organized and monitor progress. By keeping track of results and ROIs, you can avoid unnecessary expenses and make thoughtful decisions as to where AI is best suited in your business. I'm excited for you to begin your AI journey and find the inevitable success that comes with it. I assure you that once you find your groove, it will be a game changer. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

Council Post: The Shifting Tides Of Marketing

Lisa leads marketing at Kaltura. She enjoys finding the right balance between the art and science of marketing. At a recent conference on digital engagement, I was struck by just how profoundly the world of marketing is changing. Like nearly every facet of business operations, marketing is becoming more automated and digitized. But for the last decade or so, advancements in digital marketing, while making huge strides in creating new opportunities, have led to some less desirable outcomes as well. Marketing has become more impersonal. Quality and the human connection, at times, are sacrificed for the sake of generating as many clicks, views and leads as possible. As a result, we're starting to see some of the "norms" in B2B marketing channels, and tactics are becoming less effective due to macroeconomic climates, content and data overload, and buyer fatigue. Now, the tide is shifting between the measurable and the unmeasurable -- or between the art and the science or marketing, if you will. The focus is no longer on digitalization for efficiency's sake but rather on using these very tools to forge authentic connections with customers by placing more emphasis on personalization and emotional sentiment than ever before. The cornerstone of this evolution? AI and its unprecedented ability to analyze customer behavior and personalize marketing content based on data collected. As marketers, we are now at the forefront of both exciting and scary times where we will redefine marketing and, together, find new norms. Popular marketing tactics, such as targeted e-book sharing, signal-based selling, and a focus on acquiring customers over retaining existing ones, have saturated the industry to the point that they are losing their luster and impact. Yet companies are still expecting marketers to increase their sales pipeline using the same budget or, in many instances, less. Rather than reinventing the wheel, AI is poised to breathe new life into existing marketing strategies, most notably through lead nurturing. This is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers until the point of purchase. For instance, AI can learn from lead data to draft campaigns and tailor newsletters, emails, webinars and product updates based on the interests or past purchasing habits of potential customers. Moreover, AI's ability to complete tasks and materials far more quickly than a human allows marketers to use their time more efficiently on other pressing or creatively demanding tasks. AI, however, is a double-edged sword, and when used incorrectly, it results in the same alienating marketing strategies that prioritize quantity over quality. Therefore, marketers must utilize it to generate real connections with their customers. With its singular ability to leverage vast swaths of customer data, AI can help make every individual feel like the marketing materials they receive were prepared especially for them. It can also help us in the shift from looking at the individual versus the account level and connecting the two. Relying too heavily on this data, however, can also be to a marketer's detriment. Herein lies one of the great consumer paradoxes: Consumers want to feel like brands and businesses are accounting for their unique preferences while not prying too deeply into their personal lives. Reveal too much of how the sausage gets made, and users will feel their privacy and trust have been violated. Fortunately, AI can be trained to find the sweet spot -- making customers feel that every email, newsletter and other marketing material has been personalized to their tastes, without implying a brand knows too much. By keenly assessing minute customer preferences, AI can repackage the same information in a myriad of ways, maximizing its potential impact on each recipient based on their tastes. This helps marketers in their content repurposing and scale efforts as well. A potential customer with a history of signing up for webinars but then watching the recordings may be more prone to short-to-medium snippets from relevant webinars pushed to them, while a prospect preferring to watch the webinar with no sound and just captions might be better reached by a simple text summary, e-book or infographic. This personalization can even take effect before marketers do their individualized outreach. For instance, data on customers' visits to a brand's website: which pages they visit, products they view, past purchase history and more can be leveraged to tailor the online experience for any subsequent visits. AI-driven personalization can then give two people two totally different experiences on the company website. AI's ability to repurpose and personalize content to resonate most effectively with customers, combined with human review, makes it the most promising tool for marketers at risk of getting caught in the rut of outdated methods. Modern marketers are increasingly understanding the shortcomings of yesterday's marketing tools. More and more of them are recognizing the path forward will be forged by the strategic use of AI. With its unique ability to help marketers improve efficiency throughout the lead and account buying journey and, more importantly, better personalize content for each consumer, and each account to create genuine connection, AI is quickly becoming more than just a nice-to-have -- it's a necessity for any marketer worth their weight in data. Now it's up to all of us to redefine marketing, explore the potential of building marketing momentum with AI and create the new B2B marketing norms. Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

Council Post: How Writers Are (And Are Not) Incorporating AI Into Their Process

Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Justin Belmont is Founder & CEO of Prose, a leading content marketing agency that has powered 1,000+ brands for over a decade. Ask any writer and they'll tell you: Writing is frustrating. From coming up with ideas to getting the words down, the whole process can turn you into a wreck. So when generative AI burst onto the scene with the release of ChatGPT, some writers and content creators in our network were intrigued by the possibility of speeding up their workflows. Almost a year and a half since its release, ChatGPT isn't quite capable of writing an engaging, unique piece of work from beginning to end just yet. (Ask any teacher who's had to slog through rote, AI-generated student essays.) But more and more writers are dabbling in some AI-assisted writing. Let's walk through the writing process from start to finish and identify the parts where AI could come in handy, and where writers should still rely on good old-fashioned human intelligence. Generating Ideas "There is no such thing as a new idea," Mark Twain once said. "It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations." Though he never lived to give ChatGPT a spin, Twain might as well have been talking about AI when he said "mental kaleidoscope." (In fact, Mental Kaleidoscope could be a fun name for a writer-friendly AI model!) Generative AI models are great at spitting out lots of ideas in a matter of seconds. Are they all good ideas? Of course not. But it's like having a little writing partner on your shoulder, giving you some stuff to chew on during those moments of writer's block. No, AI isn't a cure-all for writer's block -- many of the ideas aren't completely original. But for now, generative AI is helping writers and content creators get past those dreaded moments when it's just them and the blank page. Occasionally, our writers will enter prompts in the brainstorming stage to identify key points and relevant links to sources. This helps to ensure we're addressing all the main elements in some way (even if it means consciously leaving out certain aspects) and taking recent literature on the topic into consideration. Research From tracking down stats to double-checking facts, plenty of people (including some writers in our network) use AI in the research process. Tools like ChatGPT are skilled at boiling down complex ideas into simple prose, especially if you use some creative prompting to limit the amount of jargon in the answer. So naturally, technical writers can use AI to fill in some blanks when they can't track down necessary subject matter experts for a piece. But AI isn't perfect for research. For instance, if you ask ChatGPT to track down more specific stats around AI in the research process, it reminds you that its last update was in January 2022, before the release of ChatGPT itself. So if you're looking for specific information from the last few years, the current version of ChatGPT may come up short. Generative AI tools are also prone to hallucination. While this could improve, we're still at a point where AI's output must be fact-checked against other sources -- because you never know when it'll decide to be confidently incorrect. Outlining While it might take some creative prompting, AI thrives when it comes to organizing information and giving it a logical flow. Is it remarkably creative? Not really, but it gets the job done. After all, outlines are for structure -- you aren't yet unpacking the meat of your argument. Structuring a book calls for more complex outlines that AI can't quite generate with logical consistency or creativity. But when it comes to outlining a short piece of writing, like a blog post, AI can be a valuable asset. Tip: Don't give up after a single prompt. Sometimes, you'll need to prod AI a few times to deliver what you're looking for (e.g., "more thorough!" "more interesting!" "more humor!"). Drafting AI may be helpful for drafting little snippets of text -- a subhead or maybe some alternative options for the title. But it's hard to imagine many serious writers generating full text from ChatGPT anytime soon. Anyone who has spotted an AI-generated email or LinkedIn message can understand why: AI-generated text is boring. It gets a bit more fun when you tell ChatGPT to "write like Shakespeare," but that's just a playful exercise -- no one is actually going to put out marketing copy that evokes Hamlet. Editing To paraphrase Hemingway, "Writing is rewriting." Editing might be the most important part of the writing process, so is it worth handing the editing reins over to AI? In some cases, maybe. You can send a written piece to ChatGPT in chunks and ask it to copyedit -- though most word processors do that anyway. For shorter pieces, you can feed the entire thing to ChatGPT and have it observe the piece for logical inconsistencies. Or if you're not happy with some phrasing, you can ask ChatGPT to offer alternatives while you edit. But no one knows a piece better than the writer who wrote it originally. Much of the editing process is about "killing your darlings" and condensing. For now, generative AI isn't great at spotting those moments where a piece might drag. Humans, with their lizard-brain need for novelty and entertainment, are still best for that. Writing, like any craft, is a practice. While it might be tempting to outsource much of the process to AI, coming up with ideas, structuring and editing are valuable skills for any writer to learn. You'll only learn by doing it, so maybe give it a try yourself first before letting ChatGPT take a crack. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

Council Post: Healing Leadership: Can AI Pave The Way For More Emotionally Intelligent Managers?

Andre Shojaie is CEO at HumanLearn and a successful entrepreneur & coach helping individuals and organizations perform in a changing world. As business leaders, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in your leadership opens new opportunities for transformative growth and effectiveness. My exploration into artificial empathy and its impact on organizational dynamics brings us to a compelling concept: "healing leadership." Leveraging AI, this approach not only drives innovation and resilience but also fosters an environment that prioritizes mental health, empathy and personal growth -- key elements of a "healing leader." AI's capability to facilitate deep introspection and foster inner agility allows you to promote a profound sense of purpose. In doing so, AI revolutionizes traditional leadership paradigms to include emotional wellness as a cornerstone of success. The role of AI has evolved beyond mere data analysis to shape a deeper understanding of human emotions, which is crucial for you as a healer leader. Tools like Arista EOS not only provide real-time telemetry data but also enhance decision-making by improving human interactions within professional settings. This shift toward emotional AI allows you as a leader to better understand and respond to your team's emotional needs, reinforcing your role as a healer leader who nurtures the psychological well-being of your teams, creating a more supportive and empathetic workplace -- essential for effective healing leadership. Cogito, developed from MIT's innovation, exemplifies how AI can enhance emotional intelligence in teams. This technology utilizes advanced voice analytics to scrutinize voice tones and speech patterns, not just during customer interactions but also within internal team communications. By providing real-time feedback to representatives, Cogito helps them adjust their emotional tone and empathy levels accordingly. This application significantly reduces stress and cultivates a supportive work environment by enhancing interpersonal interactions among team members. This feedback mechanism is particularly effective in enhancing leaders' abilities to discern and respond to emotional cues within their teams. Looking ahead, similar AI technologies could extend to other high-stress environments, amplifying the impact of healing leadership across industries. AI can significantly improve team collaboration by automating repetitive tasks such as data entry, scheduling and email filtering. This automation frees your team members to focus on more strategic and creative efforts, enhancing job satisfaction and reducing burnout. For instance, AI-driven project management tools like Asana and Monday.com can automatically update task statuses and deadlines, allowing team members to concentrate on creative problem-solving and innovation. Business leaders should prioritize AI for handling administrative and routine tasks to maximize these benefits for their employees, promoting mental health by reducing task saturation. Furthermore, AI plays a pivotal role in managing and resolving conflicts within teams by providing unbiased insights that can facilitate objective conflict resolution. Tools that analyze communication patterns can identify misunderstandings or tensions early, enabling timely interventions before conflicts escalate. AI coaching can transform your leadership and team development by providing tailored guidance that leverages detailed data analysis. This innovative approach utilizes data from various sources, including performance metrics, employee feedback and digital communication patterns, to generate insights into behaviors and thought patterns. For example, AI can evaluate the sentiment and responsiveness in email exchanges to pinpoint areas where your communication could be more effective or more motivating. This analysis helps you understand not just what you're saying, but how it's perceived, allowing you to adjust your approach for clearer, more impactful interactions. This capability is crucial for you as a healer leader, allowing you to offer targeted support in areas such as goal setting, optimizing workflows, time management, prioritizing tasks and skill development to help you maximize team output and personal growth. However, the effectiveness of AI coaching involves critical considerations concerning data input, such as privacy, which poses a notable challenge. Moreover, incorporating feedback mechanisms where both you and your teams can validate and refine the AI's analysis is essential for ensuring the reliability of its guidance. Addressing these challenges is crucial for understanding both the transformative potential and the meticulous considerations required when implementing AI coaching effectively. The potential for AI to transform mental health support is vast. AI's integration into mental health care can enhance accessibility and personalizing support, with AI-based services like chatbots and virtual assistants providing around-the-clock assistance. These tools deliver immediate responses and personalized coping strategies, significantly boosting the ability of individuals to manage challenges, thereby supporting your goal of fostering a resilient and emotionally intelligent workforce. For you as a healer leader, managing AI's ethical implications is crucial. Ensuring data privacy and robust security is essential, as AI often handles sensitive information. You must establish and enforce clear guidelines on data usage and maintain transparency about data management. This ethical stewardship is key to fostering trust and aligning AI use with your organization's values on privacy and integrity. By prioritizing ethical practices, you not only utilize AI effectively but also reinforce your commitment to the well-being and respect of your teams. As demonstrated, AI's diverse applications go beyond operational efficiencies and are crucial in fostering the core tenets of healing leadership: empathy, resilience and personal growth. As you navigate this new era, it's important to actively incorporate AI into your strategic frameworks. This involves tackling ethical challenges and finding a balance between technological advancements and human values. The potential benefits, such as enhanced personal development, stronger team cohesion and improved organizational health, are significant. For leaders ready to champion a culture of healing and empowerment, AI tools are readily accessible. By collaborating with technology experts, engaging coaches and committing to continuous learning, you can shape the future of leadership to be not only innovative but also inclusive and humane. Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?