Ep 26: The Future of AI in Digital Marketing: A Beginners Guide to AI

We are gonna be talking about how you can utilize AI tools for your business. This episode is titled A Beginner’s Guide using AI Tools, I know as much as you do that AI can be a daunting prospect to those just beginning but with the right resources and understanding, mastering it can be straightforward.

 

Here we’ll look at an introduction to AI and how to get started. So AI, which stands for Artificial Intelligence just in case you didn’t know, is the process of creating computer systems that can think and act like a human. These systems are used to carry out tasks such as data analysis, natural language processing and more. It is used in so many industries, whether it be healthcare to retail, and is a highly valued skill in the modern world, from healthcare retail to design, which will be what we’re talking about today. Let me not get ahead of myself here, it’s a highly valued skill in the modern world, and as we progress through time from now on.

 

So using AI does require some knowledge of programming and data science, but this is only if you want to get into the nitty gritty of AI, of how to create AI and things like that. There are plenty of resources available to help you on your journey, so if you are interested in that, this episode is more of a beginner’s guide we’ll go over how to use AI in marketing, so not programming and data science exactly. I’d recommend maybe doing your research and figuring out how to do that for yourself. Becoming familiar with popular AI tools and frameworks such as Notion AI, which is something that I have recently adopted, and have been loving ChatGPT, which is another resource similar to Notion AI, but a little bit different and it’s been taking our society by storm. Everyone is now using ChatGPT, and you can definitely do it as well, and Midjourney is also one that has been quite popular recently and I suggest we check that one out as well. It’s in beta mode right now, definitely caught me a little off guard how to exactly create these graphics or these images, but overall, Mid Journey was great.

 

It is important to understand how these tools and frameworks work, especially if you’re going to be utilizing them in your workflow, and also it’s important to know how they can be used to create solutions for everyday problems. Research existing AI projects will give you an idea of what is currently possible and what others have achieved, you should use resources such as blogs, research papers, and industry journals, this will provide you with an understanding of the current state of the art and AI, and we’ll help you build the foundations of your own AI projects. 

 

Generally for us all, I think it is very important to understand how exactly these tools and frameworks work and how they can be used to create solutions for everyday problems. I think this is important just so that you know what the limitations are, just so you have a better idea, you don’t have to go too much into depth about how these things work because it is a lot of information, but if you are interested in creating your artificial intelligence, I encourage you to do a deep dive into this, understand how AI works and in tools can solve the problem.

 

Right now let’s get started with writing. I think we all, to an extent have to write in our day-to-day work, we write text messages, we write emails often, and we even write social media captions. Writing is something not everybody is good at, personally it’s not my favorite thing to do I wouldn’t say I’m terrible at it, but I definitely would enjoy the help and appreciate the help when it is offered, so AI-powered language models such as ChatGPT or Notion AI, have been making a difference in my workflow. Let’s backtrack a little bit, let’s figure out exactly how these AI tools can do this. 

 

AI-powered language models can generate text for a variety of cases such as social media captions, blog articles, and email responses. AI-powered language models are pretty much computer programs that are trained on large data sets of text to generate text that is similar to what is found in the data sets. The AI algorithms learn patterns and relationships between words, phrases, and sentences in the data sets and help generate new texts that are similar to what has been seen before. This technology is used in various applications, such as natural language processing, machine translation, tech summarization, and content generation. 

 

One of the most popular language models is GPT-3 and this has been trained to own a vast amount of text data and can generate human-like text with impressive accuracy. Other tools such as Open AI’s GPT-2, which is highly widely used for generating texts in various domains. For example, GPT-3 can write creative fiction, produce professional template-looking emails, or even complete and also generates engaging headlines. We actually utilize this in our current workflow, and we’re able to generate articles, captions, titles for podcasts, titles for articles, and even write up emails. It’s very helpful and lessens the time that I spent trying to dig deep within myself and pull out that inner writer that I know is not the best, so this has been extremely helpful in my day-to-day. 

 

With the right inputs, the output of these AI writing tools can help jumpstart content ideas from marketers and writers, which is exactly what we do here at Citrus. However, it is important to note that AI-generated text is not always perfect, and it’s not always accurate either. AI-generated text can have some issues with grammar structure and tone, which can make it sound robotic or unnatural, I have witnessed and found that ChatGPT or even Notion AI will repeat words very often, and create sentences that don’t exactly make sense that’s why we recommended using AI-generated text as a starting point and then editing to fit your brand’s voice and style. That’s exactly what I do, I have it create the article first then I go in and edit everything to make sure it sounds correct just to make sure that the information is correct and there isn’t so much duplicate text.

 

Now we’re gonna move on to creating images. Did you know that you can create images with AI? I recently found this out and I think we all did when the new boom in AI, when everyone was buying AI-generated art apps and creating art that look like them, but there are other ways to use this instead of just creating an AI version of yourself. For example, DALL·E is a powerful and innovative neural network-based tool that can generate high-quality images from text descriptions and it is based on a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT)  model developed by OpenAI, which is a type of artificial intelligence that can generate text from a given prompt. The DALL·E model is trained on millions of images and text descriptions and uses this data to generate images that match the text description. For instance, if the text description is a small red car with a yellow roof driving on a mountain road, the AI model will generate an image that matches that description.

 

I’ve used this within some of our newsletters and AI-based newsletters or where the subject was AI and created a main header image using DALL·E, which turn out cool. You’re able to create variations if you’d like one image but wanna see what else you can create or if you can make variations, overall it’s a great tool. This tool has great potential for use in a variety of contexts and applications, from product design to social media graphics by simply putting a text description DALL·E will generate an image.

 

Other tools that are kind of like this are Midjourney, which also offers AI-based image manipulation and generation capabilities. AI tools can also be used to enhance existing images, for instance Adobe Sensei is an example of a tool that can automatically adjust the lighting, color, and composition of an image to make it look better. This kind of technology can be used to make images sharper, more vibrant, and more aesthetically pleasing, and is invaluable for creating high-quality digital images for various use cases. Additionally, AI-based image enhancement tools can be used to save time and money by automating certain aspects of the image creation process, which ultimately can save you a lot of time. 

 

Now we’ll move on to graphics. AI is an incredibly useful tool when it comes to creating custom visuals for presentations, tools like Tableau and Google Data Studio make it easy to generate charts and graphs that can be tailored to the brand-specific style and colors and Google’s Data Studio makes it easy to generate charts. AI is an incredibly useful tool when it comes to creating custom visuals for presentations, social media, and just graphics in general. Tools like Tableau and Google Data Studio make it easy to generate charts and graphs that can be tailored to the brand-specific style and colors. For instance, Tableau can quickly and accurately generate visualizations for almost any type of data, including sales data, web traffic data, and customer survey data, these visuals can then be adjusted to reflect the desired theme and color palette of the brand. This makes creating eye-catching and professional-looking visuals a breeze, allowing marketers and data analysts to focus on the tasks at hand. 

 

I can see this being beneficial to someone who’s maybe making a deck that needs to put graphs and charts of different information, instead of taking the tedious time to create those graphs and pie charts and all of these things, they can just input it into these platforms and they can create it. Additionally, AI-generated visuals can be used to highlight key points and data sets that may otherwise be overlooked, allowing for greater insights.

 

In addition to Tableau and Google Data Studio, other AI-based resources can be used for creating custom visuals for presentations. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop offer advanced features for creating stunning visuals from scratch, while Canva and Visme allow users to quickly generate visuals from templates. Some AI-based tools such as Deepart and Photofeeler can be used to create unique and eye-catching visuals from existing images. This provides marketers and data analysts with more options for creating visuals that accurately reflect their brand style and color palette. 

 

Now we’ll move on to videos. Lumen5 is a powerful video creation platform that uses AI to produce videos based on written materials such as blog posts, articles, and other text content. With Lumen5 users can input text content and the platform will automatically generate a video based on the text, it can also help you create high-quality professional-looking videos for social media. For example, a user can input a blog post about the advantages of a new product, and Lumen5 will generate a video that emphasizes those advantages along with relevant images and graphics that provide visual support to the text. The videos generated by Lumen5 provide viewers with an engaging visual experience that further reinforces the message of the content. Furthermore, Lumen5 offers a wide range of customization options to ensure that the video is tailored to the user’s exact requirements and specifications. With Lumen5 you get the perfect combination of AI-powered automation and human-driven customization to create videos that are truly unique and engaging.

 

In addition to Lumen5, other AI resources can be used for video creation. Adobe Sensei AI platform can be used to create videos with an automated object and scene recognition. AI-driven video editing tools such as Adobe Premier Pro can also be used to enhance existing videos with automatic color correction, object tracking, and other features. Additionally, AI-powered speech recognition tools such as Google Cloud Speech to Texts can be used to create captions and subtitles for videos.

 

So now we’ll move on to slide decks. I know there are a lot of us that have to create slide decks for marketing meetings, client meetings, and various meetings like that, and they can be time-consuming. Canva and Prezi are presentation tools that use AI to help users create visually appealing professional-looking slide decks with minimal effort. These tools can automatically generate slide layouts and designs based on the user’s inputs, making it easier for those with less design experience to create attractive presentations. For instance, a user can input a sales pitch for a new product and Canva or Prezi will generate a slide deck with custom-made slides that showcase the most crucial points of the pitch, this can include everything from infographics to videos, as well as additional images and text, all designed to help the user get their message to be effectively and engagingly. 

 

This is made possible by the AI power design algorithms that are built into these tools, which are constantly being improved and refined to ensure that users get the most out of their present, which is amazing we see this firsthand. Canva started just as a graphic creation platform with not that many features, and now it has grown. This huge platform where you can create these slide decks, all you need to do is start a document on Canva and input the text that you would like to be featured and press continue, and it gives you different options of different designs that would fit the content. 

 

In addition to Canva and Prezi, there are other AI power tools for creating slide decks. SlidesAI is an online platform that uses AI to help users create beautiful and professional-looking slide decks quickly and easily, it has an intuitive interface that makes it easy to create presentations from scratch, as well as a library of templates that users can customize and tailor to their specific needs. SlidesAI also uses AI to optimize the design of each slide for maximum engagement, allowing users to create study presentations that make an impact. I suggest if you are someone who struggles with creating these slide decks, maybe you don’t have the time on your hands we are all very busy, so if you don’t have the time to create these beautiful slide decks, start using Canva, Prezi, or even SlidesAI and let us know what you think. 

 

We’ll move on to removing ads. I think this is something that we all struggle with, I know I get tons of emails, tons of calls even, and texts of just random ads, and random spam. Ad blocking tools such as AdBlock and Ghostery make use of Artificial Intelligence to identify and block ads on websites, allowing users to browse the web without interruptions and making for a more pleasant browsing experience. When I was researching for this podcast episode, I ran into a lot of different platforms that can do this, I have not incorporated these into my life yet, but I’m going to start because these ads are very annoying. AdBlock for instance utilizes machine learning algorithms to identify and block ads thus allowing users to focus solely on the content that interests them without being distracted by ads. This improved browsing experience can be of great benefit to users who are looking for a more streamlined and enjoyable internet experience. 

 

Additionally, this can also be advantageous for website owners as it can reduce the time spent by users on ads and increase the time spent on their content, this can lead to increased user engagement and satisfaction and ultimately lead to more conversions. I think we all know once we’re on a website and there are a ton of ads popping up with all these random ads, it’s annoying we don’t like it we want them to go away, and even the times when we accidentally click on an ad you’re taken to another really weird website, and it’s just, that’s not what we want.

 

In addition to Ad Block and Ghostery, there were other AI power tools for blocking ads. Robokiller is a spam call blocker that uses AI to detect and block robocalls and telemarketers, it is powered by an AI-based algorithm that can identify and block spam calls, allowing users to enjoy a much more pleasant calling experience. Robokiller also provides users with detailed reports of calls that have been blocked, allowing them to stay informed about the types of calls they are receiving. Additionally, Robokiller’s AI-based technology can also be used to block ads allowing users to browse the web without interruption. So with Robokiller, you do get the best of both worlds. Kalika actually mentioned this app to me and I definitely wanna start incorporating it because she says she doesn’t get any calls anymore, she doesn’t get any random texts, and I learned that you can also use it on the web, which is amazing. 

 

 The last point we’ll talk about today is Marketing and Design. To sum everything up, AI is an incredibly powerful tool for humans to utilize for a variety of tasks, from data analysis and natural language processing to creating mesmerizing visuals, videos, and slide decks. It can be used to automate several marketing tasks, allowing you to focus your time and energy on more important tasks, with the right resources and a comprehensive understanding of the various AI tools and frameworks available, mastering AI can be a breeze. AI can help you develop one-of-a-kind solutions to common problems, as well as provide you with the capabilities to create captivating content that will stand out from the competition. So by utilizing the power of AI, you can optimize your workflow, become more efficient, and produce high-quality results.