196. Are AI marketing tools worth the hype? (f. Kate Scott)
Overwhelmed by new AI tools and not sure where to start? 🤖 This episode of Brand Therapy is the perfect place to begin. Our expert guest cohost Kate Scott is filling in for Lauren—she's a Squarespace template designer and online educator who will share her research and findings on the best AI tools (as well as the flops). Both Kate and Phil will discuss how AI is impacting small businesses (the good and the bad) and how we can all implement AI to help with our day-to-day tasks to save time. You’ll surely enjoy this broader discussion about AI, as well as the many examples that might inspire you like brainstorming, research, writing, and so much more.
Episode transcription
Phil
Hey listener, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to Brand Therapy podcast, where we help you position build and promote your brand. Guess what's new here? Lots. We're talking about a topic that's near and dear to my heart right now, controversial even. And I thought we would do something different. We are very busy on the client side of things. So Lauren gets a bit of a vacation today. But oh boy, are you in for a treat. My new friend but someone I've been following my ad on the internet for a very long time, she's a genius.
Her name is Kate Scott. She is a Squarespace template designer, and an online educator Kate, I am so excited to hash out this topic with you, but also just like meet you in real life, or almost real life. So welcome to Brand Therapy.
Kate
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. It's great to finally connect in person.
phil
Yeah, isn't it funny. I mean, we, you know, you think the internet's a big place, but then you start to drill down on topics like Squarespace and you're one of those names that pops up for me all the time videos, tutorials. I know, You've helped me in all kinds of situations when I'm trying to crack the code on a Squarespace website and customize it. And I've noticed more recently, that you've been paying very close attention to AI, specifically for small businesses, for creators for website designers. And that has, I should say, I've taken note of that, and I'm really interested to dive into this topic with you, because I think you like me have mixed feelings about AI. Right?
kate
Yeah. And you know, when I first started paying attention to it, it was because people kept asking me about it, I didn't really want to have anything to do with it, in part because I had originally tried to sign up for chat GPT and had been very put off by the fact that it demanded that you provide them with your real phone number, you couldn't use Google Voice or anything like that. And it's someone who cares a lot about online privacy that bothered me a little bit. But people kept asking me about it. I mean, my acupuncturist asked him about it at one point, it was everywhere. And so that's when I really started to pay attention to how is this impacting small business owners? What is the response to this, because I think that what I've seen is two different responses to this from small business owners.
There are people who are reacting to this out of fear, they're afraid of being left behind if they don't use it if they don't figure out a way to incorporate this into every part of their business.
And there are people who are just jumping on the bandwagon because they love it and it's very exciting. But in both of those cases, what I'm seeing is a lack of pausing, and really stopping to think about how is this going to impact us in the small business community? How is this going to impact jobs? What is the broader impact? It may be great for us right now, but we do need to stop and think about the ethics of what we're doing of how we're using it and how we're applying it in our everyday lives.
phil
That's a really good point. Okay, maybe let's start with the positives. And then we're going to get into the negatives. What are things are examples of it in use that you are excited by right now?
Kate
I love it. When I see people using it as a brainstorming tool, brainstorming content ideas, brainstorming business ideas. It's almost like having a friend that you can bounce ideas off of it's like having a second brain without actually having that other person there with you. So I think it's a great brainstorming tool. I've seen certain AI tools that I think are really helpful in making work better. There are tools that help you to rewrite a sentence when you've kind of hashed out a rough draft, but it could be improved. And you're not really sure how to do that.
phil
We love tools here by the way. So if you want to name it, name it tell us what it is.
kate
I think that one is called Word Tune. And you can also do the same thing with Chat GPT there's a bunch of different copywriting type AI tools. I don't necessarily recommend using them to just write your copy for you but they can really help to generate ideas and to refine something that you've already created. So I think they can be incredibly useful for that. And of course you know what I'm seeing with Adobe Firefly that's very exciting for me. I mean, as a web designer, how many times have we had to expand a photos background for a banner image and it's just so frustrating to do this is going to make tasks like that so much easier. So I'm very excited to see some of those new tools and creative uses for them.
phil
Amen singing the praises of Adobe, we love Adobe around here we love we love it and actually more recently integrated in the latest version of Adobe Express. Now some of those Firefly features that we're really excited about. The one you're describing is generative fill that's in Photoshop. But if you want to check out essentially that feature outside of Photoshop, you can go to Adobe Firefly. It's still beta, but it's open. So that means you can go and check it out and experiment with it. You cannot at this time, use those images for commercial use, but you can hop in there and experiment and create a way. The two that are in Adobe express more recently are text to image, which is really fun. And then text effects. So definitely check that out.
I was going to add a tool for copywriting. I am not in love with chat GPT for copywriting. I feel like what it spits out, at least in my experience, and I've really tried to test it prompt and rewrite and rewrite and prompt. It just feels very average it feels it's missing the creative juices that we can't really expect AI to have anyways. But my favorite copywriting tool is Any Word full disclosure, I am a partner with them. I'm an affiliate, but I, I created content with them. But I love their platform because it actually scores your copy results that has a predictive performance score, and it will actually tell you what it's used. It'll score it out of 100 based on its chances of performing well, which is really kind of interesting and neat.
Can we talk about something that I took a screenshot of in your Instagram? I mean, I've been following you closely because I, I can tell that you're the kind of person that I would love to do a school project with. You're thorough. Okay, if you're going to go into something like you're going to do it properly. That's you I already know it. I love the little bit on your Instagram. By the way lListener this has saved on Kate's Instagram as a highlight the que you explored AI content and explored whether or not this is actually against Google searches guidelines. Can you just dive into your experience of that?
Kate
Yeah, it's it was interesting, because about I guess it was about a year ago now, Google Search advocate, John Mueller had stated that AI generated content was against Google's search guidelines, they view it as spam. And then chat, GPT came along, and suddenly the narrative shifted, they changed their minds there. So now, the official Google guidelines say that AI generated content is fine, as long as it's high quality, and it's designed to serve the end user. But they also say that it can't be used to manipulate search rankings, which I find very confusing, because that's what content that is written for the purposes of SEO is always designed to manipulate search rankings.
So I think what they're trying to say is that just make sure that you're AI generated content is high quality. But they could have been a little bit clearer. And I do I mean, my history with Google and SEO is that I've seen them do this before, where they kind of purposefully obfuscate the actual intent of their guidelines. So I do think that the gist of it is that they're not going to penalize you for using AI generated content, but they will penalize you for low quality spam-like content.
And unfortunately, right now, I think that most of what chat GPT and other tools that are like it come out with usually is kind of low quality, spam type content, unless you really get in there and guide it through the whole process, every paragraph, you know.
phil
Let's talk about that. That, for me is my biggest pain point, which almost sounds silly. But for me right now and in how I feel, as an entrepreneur with three businesses, how I feel, and my audience are also very busy working professionals, chat GPT can be great when you take the time to learn how to use it effectively. But don't think for a second that you're going to learn that overnight. But I mean, if you want to learn how to use it effectively get ready to basically be in pilot school, because you need to spend hours, learning how to write prompts, researching whether you're sure you can take courses and buy resources that will give you prompt ideas. This should take so much time. And that's my biggest reservation right now with going all in on this platform that can do so many things. Yeah, I can do a lot of things. But does it do any one thing really well, in my opinion? I'm not sure it does.
kate
And that's the thing is that I feel like if you're going to invest that much time into learning how to use chat GPT to specifically to write content, why don't you invest that time and learning how to write great content yourself?
phil
Right? Maybe use it as a research tool. But we know I think what what Google's alluding to, and I also like, we're going to call it the next iteration. I'm sure if it hasn't already gone live, but their next change in their algorithm is going to need some kind of quality filter for content that it can tell is written by AI. It's probably going to scan or scrub content and see how the likelihood maybe it'll give it a score of the likelihood that it was created by AI, and that would then maybe impact it negatively like that. So it has to be in the future, it has to be if everyone's doing this.
Kate
It has to be because one of the things that I foresee being a really big problem is that if anyone can generate AI content, and it seems human, but it's not, you could generate an entire blog post or guide without even reading what you've just generated, then there is going to be a real problem with trust in our industry. People are not going to be able to trust the content that we put out there that there's quality control that we've really, you know, written it from a place of expertise, rather than relying on the expertise of AI. And so I think that making a statement about human generated content as a business owner is actually going to be helpful in establishing authority in your niche. Because if you rely on AI, you are outsourcing your expertise, you're outsourcing your authority, and you're diminishing your own authority. That's my feeling. And I think we're going to see that more and more in the future as people realize, oh, this thing that I thought was written by a person wasn't and they didn't disclose that.
phil
Isn't that interesting? I haven't actually thought of it that way. But you're so right. We're seeing AI integrations, what feels like almost everywhere. Grammarly has AI now, any of the tools that you use and to touch day to day that are big in technology have probably already integrated or there are about two, one of those being Squarespace a platform that you and I both use thoughts on Squarespace is integration of AI, which I know you've played around with.
kate
Yeah, it was interesting, because I looked at the terms of use for that contour see generation tool.
phil
This is why we love you.
kate
And one of the things that they say is that you can't use it to basically deceive people and trick them into thinking that the content was human generated. Which immediately raises some flags for me and questions like, Okay, do people need to disclose that they've used this? Do they need to put something in their footer that says, hey, this copy was aI generated? So I contacted Squarespace support and I asked them that question I thought, you know, surely they can clarify their own terms of use. And they responded to me with I'm sorry, we can't clarify.
So the only way we're going to know for sure is if someone doesn't disclose that they've used it, and their content gets taken down by Squarespace or something like that. So I think that's a real concern is just the fact that I think it goes along with a lot of things in AI right now, like the fact that the creators of open AI and all this other stuff, they don't even fully understand how their own technology works. Well, Squarespace doesn't understand their own terms, apparently, or they're not willing to explain it. Which, again, I think it's just one more reason to create content yourself.
phil
I agree. I was talking with an educator, and how hope and AI and how Chat GPT has disrupted that. I mean, stock prices are down for many, many education companies. And they blame the disruption of Chat GPT, primarily. But I said to this educator, actually, if we were to flip this around, as I often tried to do, maybe this is a good thing for the people that do take that extra effort to not be lazy and to actually put their own heart and soul into something. We're going to actually be able to discern, humans evolve, and we're going to evolve quickly, we're going to be able to tell if something's written by AI, maybe not in every instance, but a lot of instances, and we're going to be able to detect that. So maybe there's a positive in this, that the people who actually do put their own human touch on something are ultimately rewarded. At least that's my hope. I am in StrengthsFinder, by the way, my number one strength is positivity, which is sometimes a fault.
kate
No, I think that's a great thing. And I love the way that you're applying that strength here because I do think that some people just think that AI is great, and everyone's going to use it correctly. And that's obviously not how things usually go in the world. But what we can focus on is that if we stick to our guns, and if we really focus on how we choose to use it and be thoughtful about that, then we can come out ahead as individuals and collectively, hopefully as a society.
phil
So you as a small business owner, have you successfully integrated AI into what you're doing day to day. And let me give an example of my end. I'm certainly testing and trying a lot of AI tools. I always say my adult job as a brand strategist, my fun job is as a content creator on YouTube. So I partner with brands Adobe is my biggest partnership. So I love testing and trying tools. But when I actually saw them pause and go, what I'm actually using within my business, the first AI tool, if I'm not counting Any word, which I do use for copywriting, the second so let's count that.
But the next one would be extending images just as you described. Actually hopping into Photoshop and using some of those generative AI features to make an image larger, that was cropped horribly. And all of a sudden, generative AI can help finish that image. For me, that was one of the first moments when I felt true excitement, because I had actually integrated this thing that everyone's talking about. So I guess I'm curious to hear from you have you actually started to integrate this into your day to day life in a way that's useful?
kate
I've attempted to and I'll be honest, so far, it hasn't gone great. The biggest thing that I've continued to try to experiment with is using chat GPT as a brainstorming tool. But I've been a content creator for a long time and I think that my brainstorming, whatever part of my brain does that has has become very good at it over time and chat GPT hasn't caught up to that yet. One of the tools that I absolutely love using in my business is Headline Studio. And it's basically it's for scoring headlines for blog posts and other types of content. And it basically, lets you know, you know, how clickable is this? How much is is this going to get traffic and stuff like that? It's a very useful tool. I use it for every single blog post that I write, and they just released their AI tool to go along with that, which basically generates headlines for you based on a headline that you've already written.
I am better at writing headlines that score well than that tool. It's not that great yet. So will it get to the point where it is better than me probably, I think that's the direction that things are going. But so far, the copywriting tools, I feel like they haven't gotten to the point where they are going to surpass people who have content creation expertise. I think we'll get there. But it's not there yet.
Phil
So I love that you're applying it to your world, which is web design, content creation. I recently I'm working on a video title at the time that we're recording this, which plans a trip for you. So I set it to be one day I give a budget. It's called tripplanner.ai. And I'm actually going to all of the places that it tells me to go. So I'm in Oslo at this particular moment, and I am going to see is this a great day trip. I'm going to do everything it tells me to do spoiler alert. I mean, she goes to watch the videos that will be published by the time that this episode goes live, go watch it. but spoiler alert, one of the things that tells me to go and do is go to the Viking museum. It's been closed for six months, and it's closed for another year and a half.
kate
Chat GPT it gives a lot of if you ask it for links to websites, a lot of those links are broken. And Google's new Google Search labs which just came out, it's providing outdated information by tested it with a couple of Squarespace related queries, and it's still out there recommending 7.0 templates, which are three years gone by now.
phil
Good old Brian. Good old Brian. Yeah, that's a Squarespace joke. If you get it, then you're a nerd like us. Oh, this great, though. I've loved this discussion. And maybe while we have you in 2023, I mean, I think a lot of our listeners are working on their own websites, maybe they've hired someone to help them make it but they're certainly in charge of maintaining it. Maybe there's a world where, updating your website intersects with AI, but while we have you any tips right now for a solopreneur, or a small business, any things that they could do to make their websites better?
kate
I think that in the age of AI, and people taking shortcuts to communicating their message, one of the most important things is going to be really nailing down on what your message is, and communicating that effectively. Who is your target audience? How do you serve them? What makes your business unique and special in this world where we're just cloning things, basically, you know. Focus on your messaging. I'm a big proponent of design, but your messaging is the most important thing. Well, you have to say, from a place of genuine authority, not something that you've, you know, just pulled out of a hat, the AI hat, you know, but focusing on that is really important. And I think that the people who can speak from a place of authority and real expertise are going to have an advantage in this market.
phil
That is such great advice. Where can we get more amazing, Kate Scottness?
kate
You can go to my website, which is katescott.co.
Phil
We love the .co
KATE
And you can follow me on Instagram at @katescottco and I just started to TikTok which I may invest more time and so there's going to be a lot of training and educational content on there as well. And that's also @katescottco.
phil
That's awesome. I am a fan of what you post and what you create. As I said, I have referred to many of your blog posts over the years that have provided code or tips on updating certain little features on Squarespace. You're one of those names that just pops up in this Squarespace world. And hopefully you receive that well, because that's, you know, it's the goal to be discovered online. So if someone finds me, I'm like, how did you find us? Very important question yet. Ask them. They saw us refer to this person. It's like, yeah, that's great. But so it says, I found you online. I found you on Google. I'm like, yes, yes, my favorite way to be found. I mean, something worked. But certainly you are very good at that. And I knew that you'd have some good opinions to share on AI and I've loved this conversation with us who thank you for hanging out some Brand Therapy.
kate
Thank you. It's a great conversation to have.
phil
Kate, thank you so much. That was awesome. I had been excited about this conversation and it finally happened. Listener I hope you enjoyed it as much as me if you enjoyed it, you know what to do. Leave us a review in Apple podcasts five star five star that helps other people discover this podcast and we work hard to create for you. And we'll be back this week with a brand new episode. Thank you so much for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy. We will see you next week. Bye bye.
