Generative AI Has Come Quick: What’s Out, What’s Coming, and What to Consider.

June 1, 2023June 2, 2023 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ Leave a comment

ChatGPT was released to the public six months ago and quickly became the fastest application to reach 100 million users. OpenAI reached this milestone in just two months compared to TikTok’s 9 months and Instagram’s 2 ½ years.

The result of this enormous attention is that the world has quickly become aware of the advanced capabilities of generative AI. As of March 2023, 87% of consumers had heard of AI and 61% somewhat understood what generative AI is and how it works.

ChatGPT generates text from text prompts through a chatbot, but that’s not all generative AI can do. The popularity of ChatGPT also brought attention to OpenAI’s image generation tool. DALL-E 2 generates images from text prompts through a chatbot.

Despite the mass attention, AI tools have been around for years.

I first wrote about AI in a 2019 post “Artificial Intelligence And Social Media. How AI Can Improve Your Job Not Steal It.” In it, I talked about how AI was being used in algorithms, automation, machine learning, natural language processing, and image recognition.

That post also talked about how AI was used in chatbots to simulate human conversion, in predictive and prescriptive analytics, and in content generation. Examples included Patern89 which has been using AI to analyze content combinations and placement for optimization since 2016. Another example was Clinch which has used AI for content automation and personalized dynamic ad content across channels for years.

Since ChatGPTs release, there’s been a race to integrate generative AI.

The race began with ChatGPT being added to Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Then Google announced plans to integrate its generative AI Bard into Google search. Other platforms quickly announced integrations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard such as Salesforce, Hootsuite, HubSpot, and Adobe. Microsoft and Google are even integrating ChaptGPT and Bard into Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace office software for writing, spreadsheets, and slides.

Yet they’re not the only options. Other generative AI tools include Jasper.ai and Copy.ai, for writing, and Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for image generation. Tools like Synthsia generates videos with human avatars and professional voiceovers from text prompts. Other examples of generative AI are summarized below.

AI content generation tool uses:

Content research/Data collection
Brainstorming/Idea generation
Copywriting/Copyediting
Summarizing/Note taking
Image (photo/illustration) generation
Video clip/Podcast clip generation
Transcript generation/Automated post prep
Ad/Post variation generation
Video generation
Podcast/Voice over generation
Presentation generation

Generative AI tools come with new skills and considerations.

A new skill with these next gen tools is prompt writing. Prompts are the natural language used to ask a generative AI tool to produce something. More descriptive specific prompts produce better results like prompts that describe the tone of writing or style of an image. Yet be mindful potential of copyright issues with prompts to create text or an image in the style of a famous person without their permission.

A new consideration is the data set from which you train AI. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are trained on data from the open internet. This is what makes it so powerful, but this is also what can lead to copyright issues and sometimes create bias or incorrect results.

Other AI tools like Jasper.ai allow you to train on a specific dataset. For example, a brand could upload all its previous materials to establish a brand voice to write new copy. Adobe’s Firefly draws from Adobe’s stock library and tracks creator images used to ensure copyright compliance.

With the explosion of AI comes limitations and cautions.

Despite the mass adoption, this technology is in its early stages. There hasn’t been a lot of testing. Regulations, laws, and professional standards have yet to be developed. HubSpot suggests the following limitations, cautions, and warnings in using generative AI tools.

Cautions when using generative AI:

AI can’t conduct original research or analysis.
AI can get things wrong so you must fact check.
AI doesn’t have lived experience and human insight.
AI doesn’t ensure quality, strategy, and nuance.
AI can contain biases that are not caught by filters.
AI can have plagiarism and copyright issues.

Despite these cautions, alarm over societal harm, and escalating calls for regulation, the AI race is on. Even while companies, government, and scientists raise concerns, companies continue to integrate AI into mainstream products and services. Below is a sample of what’s been released or announced thus far.

Examples of Early AI Content Generation and Automation Tools in Major Platforms.

Platform	Tool	Function
Hootsuite	OwlyWriter AI	Generate social media captions from URLs in different tones or voice, content ideas from prompts, auto recreation of top posts, and calendar events copy.
HubSpot	Content Assistant	Generate copy for blog posts, landing pages, email, and other content from idea, outline, and copy generation.
	ChatSpot	A conversational bot automates CRM tasks including status updates, managing leads, finding prospects, generating reports, forecasts, and follow-up drafts.
Salesforce	Einstein GPT	Auto-generate sales, service, and marketing tasks, content, targeting, messaging, reporting, and personalization across channels.
Adobe	Firefly	Generate images, fill, text effects, and recolor from text prompts inside plus create content, and templates, and edit videos with simple text prompts – some inside Creative Suite.
Adobe	Sensei GenAI	Automate tasks, optimize and generate content and content variations across channels in Adobe’s Experience Cloud marketing platform.
Canva	Magic Write	Generate copy, outlines, lists, captions, ideas, and drafts from text prompts.
Canva	AI Image generator	Generate images from text prompts and various styles and aspect ratios.
Meta	AI Sandbox	Generate multiple versions of text and backgrounds, plus autocropping creative assets for various ad formats on Facebook and Instagram.
Microsoft	Microsoft 365 Copilot	Generate tasks, content, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, emails, reports, summaries, and updates across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams via text prompts and Business Chat.
Google	Google Workspace Bard	Generate drafts, replies, and summaries in Gmail, drafts, summaries, and proofs in Docs, images, audio, and video in Slides, auto analysis in Sheets, and notes in Meet.

Do Consumers (Your Customers/Target Audience) Want AI?

Another consideration with artificial intelligence is the value consumers may put on human generated content and transparency in the use of AI. I began this article by saying that 87% of consumers are now aware of AI. In fact, 4 in 5 of them are convinced that it is the future.

Yet knowing something is the future and wanting that future are different things. The same consumer survey reveals that 3 in 5 (60%) are concerned or undecided about that future. What people are most concerned about is that AI will change what it means to be human.

As marketing communications professionals we need to stay up to date with all these technology advancements. We should use the latest tools to improve our profession and results for our business or clients. But we should also ensure that new technology is used responsibly and transparently.

Over 77% of consumers say brands should ensure biases and systems of inequality are not propagated by AI-based applications. Over 70% believe brands should disclose when they use AI to develop products, services, experiences, and content.

You Decide How To Best Use AI.

At its best, AI can help with the mundane, repetitive tasks of social media and digital marketing management. At its best, AI will enable you to focus on higher level strategic thinking. At its best, AI will not replace humans, but enable us to be more human.

It’s been 6 months since generative AI was brought to mainstream awareness. Companies are rushing to integrate this technology in everything they do. While we wait for regulations, laws, and professional standards to catch up, let’s use our own judgment in deciding when, where, and how best to use it.

This blog post was 100% human generated.

Does The Shoe Fit? How To Make Your Social Media Marketing More Strategic in 2023.

May 4, 2023May 7, 2023 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ Leave a comment

In the 2023 CMO survey, 17% of marketing budgets are spent on social media and this is expected to increase to 20% this year. With increased spending, it is more important than ever to ensure you are spending that money effectively and efficiently. Placing the wrong content on the wrong platforms can be like showing up to a track meet with dress shoes or a wedding in track spikes.

What does the wrong content look like?

Let’s say you’re an apparel company and your audience believes your brand is out of style. You won’t convince them with Tweets about quality materials. High quality images of your new styles on Instagram and collabs with fashion influencers on TikTok would be a better fit. Yet a Twitter post sharing stats and facts about climate change could be good for a nonprofit cause that supports the environment.

When considering social media platforms, think about the kinds of content that will work best and the platforms ideal for that type of content. A good way to think this through is to first answer these three key questions about your target audience:

What does the target audience currently think?
What would we like the target audience to think?
What visual/verbal message will move them from one to the other?

Why is the right place, for the right people important?

Getting the right content in front of the right audience at the right place is key. People go to different platforms for different reasons and may be in different stages of the buyer’s journey. You don’t want to squeeze a longer how-to video for current customers into a short Facebook video trying to attract new ones. Current customers would be searching for tutorials on YouTube.

Also, consider that different target audiences spend more and less time on different platforms and different products and services require different content. A gum brand like Orbit doesn’t need a tutorial or testimony, but for a business software service company like IBM tutorials and testimonials work. Each requires specific types of content to shift thinking.

How do I plan out the right content for the right platform?

The social media content planning template below considers different types of businesses or industries such as finance or fashion that tend to require different types of content.

First, decide your industry sector or category. Research and list the types of content customers in that industry market tend to seek. You can do this with consumer reports from market research firms like Mintel, conduct your own surveys, or simply talk to current customers and/or your front end employees and salespeople. They are the closest to your customer’s questions and needs.

Next, consider that your target audience may also need to see different types of content based on the stage in the buyer’s journey. Take your long list of content ideas and categorize by buyer’s journey stage:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Conversion
Use
Opinion
Sharing

Finally, consider the type of content appropriate for your industry, ideal customer, and stage. Keep in mind the following categories of types of social media content:

Educational
Interactive
Inspirational
Authentic
Entertaining
Promotional

This social media content planning template presents what we just discussed with example types of content under each category to help jump start your thinking.

Don’t let another day go by this year before considering if you’re sharing the right content in the right places to improve your social media marketing.

A social media content planning template can help you brainstorm content for your client, company, or organization based on the industry and content needed in the buyer journey stages.

This could be especially useful after conducting a social media audit. To turn audit recommendations into a social media plan, use the content planning template above to brainstorm types of content for the most effective and efficient social media.

Does the shoe fit when it comes to your social media marketing content and platforms in 2023?

TikTok’s 1 Billion Users: What You Need To Know For Social Media Marketing.

December 13, 2019December 3, 2022 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ Leave a comment

Tiktok is a social media short-form video app for creating and sharing lip-sync, comedy and talent videos. TikTok first grew in popularity in Asia and then the app’s parent company bought Musical.ly and merged the two apps under the TikTok name. In two years, Tiktok has quickly grown to 1 billion global monthly users. Unlike previous social networks that relied on organic growth, TikTok has invested in a huge advertising campaign on competing social platforms. Globally, TikTok users are younger than most other social platforms with 41% aged 16-24 years-old and 60% under 30.

Find more statistics at Statista

In the U.S., TikTok is the second most popular mobile social network app.

Facebook users spend an average of 13 hours per month on the app, while TikTok users have risen to 6 hours per month over Snapchat’s 3 hours. Average session length is high with nearly 10 minutes per session compared to Pinterest’s and Facebook’s 5 minute average and Snapchat’s 2 minute average. This isn’t surprising when you learn TikTok is one of the first social platforms to use artificial intelligence to show users more of what they like with advanced interest behavioral targeting.

Despite the growth and active engagement, TikTok is a niche audience.

With just 2% reach among U.S. mobile users placing it 16^th behind Facebook with 91 percent reach and Snapchat’s 26 percent reach. Even among Gen Z, Instagram (65 percent), YouTube (63 percent) and Snapchat (51 percent) are still the most popular social networks based on daily use compared to TikTok (11 percent).

TikTok has unique and similar features to other social networks.

Like other social platforms TikTok users have a profile that includes a photo, username and bio. Users follow other accounts to see their videos. Popular videos are liked with a heart counter appearing over the video and organized by hashtags that appear as trending on a Discover Page. Examples of trending hashtags include #whywebrokeup, #rocktober, #facetrackingchallenge, and #MosaicZoom creatd by TikTok to promote use of a new creative effect.

The For You page is TikTok’s front page as it is the landing page when users first open the app. The For You page is based on an algorithm designed to show you more content similar to what you have liked in the past from people you do not follow. At the bottom of the page users can find content outside the For You algorithm through the Search and Explore page. This is the opposite of Instagram where when you open the app you first see content from users you follow, then you can switch over the Explore tab.

Getting on the For You page is important to going viral and is a goal of many users to grow their followers much like brand trying to get into the newsfeed of Facebook users. TikTok has not released information on what goes into a video making the For You pages, but many speculate it has to do with engagement such as likes and more people watching all the way through (retention rate). Hashtags related to what users have indicated they like also most likely matter, but many also include #foryou, #foryoupage, or #fyp trying to get on this page, gain more exposure and become TikTok famous.

TikTok enables users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. Videos can be sped up, slowed down and edited with filters and background music is selected from various music genres. Users can also create short lip-sync videos to popular songs. The react feature allows filming reactions in a small window over the main video. The duet feature you can film two videos beside each other. Unlike Facebook videos the default is to have the sound turned on. Therefore, subtitles are not has important.

Businesses can participate in the social platform.

Brands can create a brand channel and uploading and sharing relevant content. Brands can work with influencers to spread messages to a broader audience. TikTok offers social ads with some creative formats. TikTok ads include standard native in-feed video, brand takeovers that run full screen, and branded lenses that use AR face filters and 3D objects. Brands can also sponsor Hashtag Challenges that encourage user-generated content such as the #JumanjiChallenge.

TikTok offers social media advertising options.

TikTok ads can be targeted by age, gender, state-level geo-targeting and custom audiences from CRM lists. The platform also boasts advanced interest targeting based on their AI technology. Marketers set campaign periods and budgets paying on a cost per thousand (CPM), cost per click (CPC), or cost per view (CPV) basis. Advertisers besides Jumanji include Grubhub driving app downloads and the NFL courting younger viewers. TV stars such as Jimmy Fallon have embraced the new platform. His #TumbleweedChallenge created 8,000 videos with over 9 million views in just 7 days.

This fast growing social platform is not without controversy. The U.S. government opened up investigations into TikTok owner ByteBance alleging the Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content and questioning how it stores personal data. Users have also complained that their videos are being used in TikTok ads on other social platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram without being asked for paid. Yet, everyone who signs up for TikTok agrees to their terms of service (whether it is read or not):

“You or the owner of your User Content still own the copyright in User Content sent to us, but by submitting User Content via the Services, you hereby grant us an unconditional irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, perpetual worldwide licence to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, make derivative works of, publish and/or transmit, and/or distribute and to authorise others users of the Services and other third-parties to view, access, use, download, modify, adapt, reproduce, make derivative works of, publish and/or transmit your User Content in any format and on any platform, either now known or hereinafter invented.”

These terms are similar to what other apps and social platforms have included in their small print, but perhaps they have been noticed more with the high profile of Tiktok’s ad campaign. California’s new data privacy law (CCPA) takes effect January 2020 with similar privacy protection and disclosure requirements to Europe’s GDPR. Many companies will be changing the way they disclose and what they do with people’s data to avoid fines.

Despite these concerns brands have moved forward on the platform to reach its young user base. How will your brand leverage TikTok? How will TikTok fit with your larger social media strategy? Ask These Questions To Ensure You Have The Right Strategy and consider Top Social Media Channels By Category.

Employer Branding in Social Media [Infographic]

Employer Branding and Employee Engagement in Social Media Strategy for Marketing

September 28, 2018December 4, 2022 ~ K. Quesenberry ~ 2 Comments

Why social media employer branding? Job seekers rank social and professional networks as the most useful job search resource compared to job boards, job ads, employee referrals, recruiting agencies, and recruiting events. Companies believe that social media marketing will be the most in demand human resource skill by 2020.

An employer brand is a brand’s reputation as a place to work and its employee value proposition. It is related to, but unique from the general brand reputation and customer value proposition. Think of the difference as “great place to work” versus “great place to buy.”

Employer branding is attracting, engaging and retaining talent. This is often done by human resource managers working with marketing and/or applying brand management concepts to recruitment and employee relations. Social media can be a powerful tool for employer branding with many benefits as evidenced in the statistics below.How do you use social media for employer branding? First, understand your employee value proposition (EVP), the set of offerings you provide an employee. EVP is an employee-centered view of the unique set of values that differentiate your company from competitors. A good EVP helps attract and retain talent that is the best fit. Kristina Martic from the recruitment marketing firm TalentLyft explains that EVP includes:

Compensation (salary, bonuses)
Benefits (healthcare, vacation)
Career (stability, development)
Work environment (positive atmosphere, work-life balance)
Company culture (team support, social responsibility)

By defining your EVP you should form an idea of who your ideal job candidate would be. This is more than a standard job description of required education, skills and years of experience. TalentLyft recommends creating a candidate persona combining demographic and psychographic segmentation the way you would in defining a target audience for marketing.

Next, discover where that ideal candidate is spending their time online, where they are looking for job information, and who they want to receive that information from. The average candidate uses 18 different resources to research a company before applying for a job and 79% are using social media in their job search. The top social networks for recruitment are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. These social channels are good places for more formal posts (organic and paid) about specific positions, benefits and corporate values, but other factors are important.

A LinkedIn survey found that the number one obstacle candidates experience is not knowing what it’s like to work at an organization. For more of the behind the scenes or in the trenches view other social channels like Instagram or Snapchat could be powerful. Show don’t tell with images and videos of what the company culture and work environment are like.

Another LinkedIn survey found that candidates trust employees three times more than employers. It is important to include your employees in your employer branding social media. Consider employee takeovers and Instagram and Snapchat stories from live events. Or have employees guest write about their accomplishments on the corporate blog. Pew Research indicates that 77% of workers use social media while on the job. Why not leverage that time for the good of the employer brand?

Be sure to also use social media to communicate to your employees. Remember that it isn’t just candidates that are viewing your social posts. Employees are as well, especially when you start engaging them to communicate company culture. Job Vibe reports that employee turnover can be reduced by 28% by investing in an employer brand.

Another social channel consideration for both employer branding and employee relations is employer review sites. Survey’s indicate that 50% of job seekers read employer reviews on sites like Glassdoor before applying. And 69% are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand by responding to reviews, updating their profile, and sharing updates on the culture and work environment.

With employees sharing updates on brand social channels, writing corporate blogs and leaving reviews on employer review sites employer branding and employee engagement are intricately linked. Employee engagement is actively appreciating employees and their work to motivate more productive and active employees. This is important considering 89% of employees say performance recognition impacts their drive and determination.

Driven and determined employees are excited to be recognized for their work in social media and happy to share their enthusiasm for their work and company in social. This enthusiasm is observed by job candidates who become new employees and continue the cycle. Thus, good employer branding becomes good employee engagement.

Who is doing this well? The international IT company CISCO has a great employer branding and employee engagement program based on #WeAreCisco. Explore their Life At Cisco Blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat for inspiration. They have even been enter into the Shorty awards for employee generated content for for employer branding.

If you haven’t thought about the importance of employer branding, employee engagement and social media, now may be a good time. It could be a nice edition to your overall social media strategy. If you are an employee looking for a job consider this Social Media Career Guide and developing A Social Media Plan For Your Personal Brand.