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Episode 180 - Will this tool change SEO + marketing forever?
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You've probably seen it in the news...
You've probably seen the ads for related products...
Who knows—you may already use tools that utilize artificial intelligency (AI) technology...
... but ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools have been making headlines.
Today we’re explaining what these tools are—specifically providing a brief overview of ChatGPT—why they matter, how businesses should respond, and what we think this means going forward.
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As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check ‘em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/ And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
Have questions about AI? Send us a DM. We're planning on recording another episode shortly on how these tools can be used to help you in your marketing efforts.
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Transcript
AI's Impact on Information Search
00:00:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think AI is going to have a significant impact on how we search for information and we really need to pay attention to that. But I think that there's a specifically human element that these sorts of things are missing, right? So for instance, if I'm looking for a backpack and I'm searching reviews on backpacks, I want reviews from real people with real experiences using those bags. I can't see how AI can ever provide what I'm looking for in that respect.
Building Creative Brands
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:40
Speaker
You've probably heard about it recently in the news, but chat GPT and other artificial intelligence tools have been making headlines.
AI in the Creator Economy
00:00:48
Speaker
This has led many to wonder what these sorts of tools are going to do to the creator economy and how they're going to impact creative fields like copywriting and design. Today, we're explaining what these tools are, why they matter, how businesses should respond, and what we think this means going forward.
00:01:04
Speaker
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out over at DavianCrista.com. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
Episode Sponsor: Basecamp
00:01:15
Speaker
Alright, a big thanks to Basecamp, the project management platform for sponsoring this episode. Imagine working with your team on a project and you're trying to do everything over email. Things seem to work well enough at the beginning, but once you start adding more than a couple people or sharing more than a couple files, the entire project becomes disorganized.
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:02:17
Speaker
Go to basecamp.com forward slash Davie and Krista and try Basecamp for free. No credit card required and cancel anytime. Now, onto the episode.
Chat GPT's Role for Knowledge Workers
00:02:30
Speaker
All right, last episode of the year. We're sneaking this one in just because this topic has been top of mind for a lot of people because a tool called chat GPT has made the news. And if you don't know what chat GPT is, it's a artificial intelligence chat bot. And the reason that it's made the news is because it is scary yet.
00:02:48
Speaker
So one of the reasons that a lot of people in our industry have been talking about, a lot of people in the business world have been talking about it, is because of what this potentially means for knowledge workers, what it potentially means for people in creative fields, like copywriting. And we referenced this back in the episode that I recorded with Ashlyn Carter, talking about, are these AI tools going to replace copywriters?
00:03:13
Speaker
Spoiler, I don't think they are. But I think this is definitely a trend that we want to pay attention to for a lot of reasons. So in this episode today, it might be a little bit of a shorter episode. We're really just going to kind of cover the basics around chat GPT and some of these artificial intelligence tools and what it means for business. But basically what I want to talk about is what is chat GPT? What are some of these other AI tools out there? Why do these things matter?
00:03:37
Speaker
How should businesses respond? And then what do we think this means for businesses going
Adapting to AI Tools
00:03:43
Speaker
forward? So those are really the things that I want to talk about in today's episode. Let's start off by talking about what is chat GPT? And then are there other platforms besides chat GPT? Because I think you've showed me a few now.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so I'm going to name one other platform that I think maybe people might be familiar with. They do a lot of advertising. So if you're in business, you may have seen one of their ads, and that's Jasper. Basically, it's an AI writing tool. So it's going to help you create written content. And this is one of the tools that we've referenced in other episodes as well. Again, it came up in the conversation with Ashlyn.
00:04:15
Speaker
And I would say one of the contexts in which it has come up a lot recently is in the context of Google's recent updates to their search algorithm.
Google's Algorithm vs AI Content
00:04:26
Speaker
Basically, the impact that those updates have had on content that's completely generated by artificial intelligence. And we put out a podcast episode a couple months ago about this, so we can link to that in our show notes.
00:04:37
Speaker
And so basically the gist is you can put prompts into these tools and what it will do is spit out, you know, content for you. In the case of Jasper, you know, you can get full blog posts and, you know, sales copy and whatnot written by these tools. Does chat GPT do that as well?
00:04:56
Speaker
Well, chat GPT is a little bit different, and we'll get to that in just a second here. So basically, some businesses have been taking the content that's produced by these AI tools, and they've just been publishing to their website. No editing, nothing, right? And the idea is you can create a lot of content fast targeting a lot of different searches. So, you know, the idea is you're trying to rank for as many searches as possible, get as much search visibility as possible.
00:05:20
Speaker
And some of Google's recent updates have targeted that kind of content, right? They really want, especially if you're reviewing products and things like that, people who have had real experience with these products, and they're trying to fight back a little against people who are just kind of, for lack of a better way to put it, just creating a ton of content at scale just to kind of game the search results.
00:05:47
Speaker
like maybe to sell a certain product or to rank for a certain topic, right? Yeah. Like, you know, you're creating a content site and you want to, you have a lot of different topics you want to write about. Well, now you can do that in, you know, a blink of an eye with some of these tools.
Chat GPT's Human-like Conversations
00:06:01
Speaker
So chat GPT has made the news recently because it is a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence that you can have human-like conversations with people, right? And so you can, you know, ask this chatbot a question and it's going to respond like, like human would.
00:06:16
Speaker
And it's really good. You know, did you ever do that on a whole instant messenger in like 20 years ago? However long ago it was definitely dating ourselves. You know, I don't remember the chat bot. I mean, I used AIM, but I don't remember the chat bots. It reminds me a bit of that, but I'm guessing that chat GBT is probably more advanced and more accurate than these like AIM bots.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, I don't even remember what they were. So I don't have any personal experience with that. But I would say they are probably a thousand times better, you know, a million times better. I mean, and that's why it's in the news because I think for the first time, we're hitting this place in artificial intelligence development, where people are like, Oh, wow, that is that's kind of scary. Good in your testing. Do you feel like it's accurate with the questions you've answered it?
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. So, you know, just an example here, you know, I went into chat GPT here, and we'll link to where you can access chat GPT, and so you can go play around with it yourself. But, you know, I just asked, you know, who was Augustine? And it spat out a response. Augustine Hippo, also known as St. Augustine, was a Christian theologian, and yada, yada, yada, yada. And during that response, it mentions one of his writings, which is City of God.
00:07:22
Speaker
And so I said, oh, tell me more about the City of God. And it goes on. The City of God is a philosophical and theological treatise written by Augustine Hippo in yada, yada, yada, yada. As a follow-up to that question, I said, was that his most popular work? And it went on and said, the City of God is one of Augustine's most famous and influential works, but it's not necessarily his most popular. And it continues with the answer. But what's interesting about this conversation is it does sound very human-like. It's not like a Google search where I might type in,
00:07:51
Speaker
St. Augustine and then get a bunch of results. And then in those results, learn that he wrote City of God and then have to go back to the search results and then type in, you know, City of God summary or something like that. Like I'm having a conversation, I can say, oh, was that his most popular work? And so this AI chat bot knows that I'm referring, you know, his refers to Augustine and, you know, most popular work. Like what I'm referring to is the City of God. So do you feel like it's a good research tool? Like, is that what you think the primary purpose of it is?
00:08:20
Speaker
I guess we'll get there in our discussion of how it can be used for business. But I would say that in my experience so far, and it's been pretty limited.
AI's Impact on Small Businesses
00:08:29
Speaker
I've only been playing around with chat GPT in particular for I guess maybe the last couple of weeks. I can't remember when I first saw it in the news and started fooling around with it.
00:08:38
Speaker
But in my experience, most of the answers it gives you when it has to deal with factual stuff, dates, things like that, are factually correct. They're at least accurate. So I could definitely see it being an easy way to get answers to questions maybe even faster than something like Google.
00:08:56
Speaker
So what kind of an impact do you think it's going to have on small business owners? You know, it at least raises questions about the impact that AI is going to have on knowledge workers and creative fields.
AI in Graphic Design
00:09:05
Speaker
One of the big conversations has been around image generation. I showed you another AI tool called Stable Diffusion. So this is another one that you can go and play around with for free. But basically you can give it a prompt. So for instance, like let's say I'm writing an article on Google and I need a quick image created for that article. I could say,
00:09:25
Speaker
you know, design me an image about Google in the style of Van Gogh, or something like that, right? And in seconds, it's gonna come up with an image in that style. Like, what does this mean for, you know, the demand for graphic designers? Well, we did test some other things and they weren't as strong of images. Yeah, yeah, they weren't as strong as images for sure. But it does, I mean, you have to remember too that these things are only gonna get better.
00:09:52
Speaker
So I think the question naturally goes to, okay, well, if I was a small business and I maybe had a graphic designer on retainer because I needed certain images each month for blog posts or whatever, you know, does this replace the need for that, right? I think ultimately the answer is probably no. I think it's definitely gonna have an impact. And it is kind of nice, you know, like the other day, you know, I wanted an icon for something or other, right? And so I went stable diffusion just for fun. And I was like, create an icon that represents, I forget what I said,
00:10:22
Speaker
email marketing or something like that, right? And all of a sudden I had four different icons that represented email marketing. They weren't on brand. No, and so I didn't use any of them. And that's the hard part, right? It's like, you know, you're not going to get maybe exactly what you want, you know, you're not going to get something that's necessarily on brand. But what's interesting about it is it gives you ideas for what you could create, right?
00:10:44
Speaker
And so, you know, I've done the same thing for headlines recently as well. Like you can go to chat GPT and you can type in something along the lines of, you know, write 10 funny headlines about email marketing. And you're gonna get 10 headlines about email marketing. Whether they're funny or not, I'll leave that up to you, but it does try, right? And so some of them might be funny. And I really haven't found that I use a lot of the stuff that these tools create.
00:11:10
Speaker
but it definitely has helped in narrowing down on or zeroing in rather on ideas. Okay, so you feel like that's going to be its biggest benefit at least right now for business owners, like maybe helping unstuck an idea. Yeah, for sure. I think it definitely helps in the idea generation process. I mean, especially, you know, helping run an ad agency, like, you know, to be able to go in this tool and generate 50 headline ideas in a matter of seconds,
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, so they might not be as good as the ones you ultimately think of on your own, but they definitely help you maybe get to a place faster in the brainstorming process than you would have otherwise. I think the danger here too is that it can lead to a kind of laziness, right? But point being is I still think it does help in kind of the brainstorming process.
Experimenting with AI Tools
00:11:57
Speaker
Do you feel like there is more benefit for people if they're going to experiment with this using chat GPT over Jasper? Would you say like they could test both? One of the primary differences between chat GPT and Jasper is that chat GPT is just like kind of this open AI
00:12:14
Speaker
You know, basically anybody right now can go to chat GPT or openai.com. I think is where it is. Yeah, openai.com. Create an account and start playing around with this tool for free, right? Its purpose is not to be monetized for any particular use right now, or like business use right now. It might be monetized at some point.
00:12:32
Speaker
you know, be a paywall. It might be behind a paywall at some point. At this point, it's not. Whereas Jasper is a tool that's specifically created for businesses that utilizes AI technology to help businesses generate content quickly.
00:12:47
Speaker
And is that still free? No, no, no, no. Jasper AI, last time I checked, I mean, it's not, you know, I'll include a link to it and people can check it out on its own, but I don't remember it being cheap. I guess I'll say that much. But that tool was specifically created as a business tool. You know, it has all sorts of use cases, whether you want to get to write blog posts more quickly, write, you know, sales copy, write ad copy, you know, I think you could use Jasper for all those different things. As like an idea starting point, again,
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, in my experience, I follow, uh, copywriters who have posted about, you know, some of the AI tools that they've used. Not one of them is like, Oh yeah, I just let this do the work and I don't touch it. You know, you're going to have to go back and refine it. You know, you might use it as a starting point. You might use it as to generate ideas or to get you going. Whatever is produced is going to be edited.
00:13:39
Speaker
Are there things that people need to be wary of when using it? Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, maybe if we back up a little bit and just talk about how businesses should respond for a minute. One, I would encourage people to go and experiment with chat GPT or at least or similar technology. I think what's clear is that this technology isn't going anywhere. We're going to see an explosion of AI tools for businesses.
00:13:58
Speaker
There's a lot of tools that we use, whether we realize it or not, that utilize the AI technology. Google, for instance, I'm sure that they use machine learning and AI in how they generate search results. Whether people realize it or not, this technology is already in use. So becoming familiar with it will help you.
00:14:19
Speaker
I think at the very least, it just keeps you current on trends, but it also might help you refine your own workflow in certain areas. I certainly found that it helps us in our content creation workflow, but then it also might help you if you're trying to maybe figure out how you can tap into this industry, how you might be able to use it in the future.
00:14:39
Speaker
The second thing, I guess, you know, it ties into the first is just to use it. Use it to see if it can help you generate ideas. It can be especially useful, like I said, for things like headlines. One fun thing too, especially for complicated subjects, you can ask it to explain whatever it is as if you're explaining it to a five-year-old. That's really interesting. What terms have you tested it with?
00:15:01
Speaker
Oh, you know, even in just preparing for this podcast, you know, for instance, I asked chat GPT what chat GPT is, right? And it gave me a very technical response. Did you ask it to explain it like you're saying? Hey, how would you explain chat GPT to a five year old? And this is, this is legitimately what it says. Chat GPT is a computer program that you can have a conversation with. It can understand what you say and respond with appropriate answers. It uses artificial intelligence, which means it can learn and become smarter over time.
00:15:31
Speaker
ChatGPT can talk about a wide range of topics and can even make jokes and play games with you. It's like having a very smart friend who you can talk to anytime you want. I feel like a five-year-old because I understand that so much better.
00:15:43
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, what's interesting, just to compare it to its original response here, ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses a type of artificial intelligence called GPT, short for Generative Pre-Training Transformer. It is a program that can have conversations with humans by understanding the words and phrases we use and responding with appropriate answers. ChatGPT is trained on a large data set of texts and is able to generate human-like responses to a variety of input. It can answer questions, engage in discussions, and even make jokes and play games. ChatGPT is designed to have
00:16:12
Speaker
conversations about a wide range of topics, and it can learn and become more sophisticated over time as it is exposed to more data. So that's not super complicated. It didn't change all that much. Yeah, that's not a super complicated explanation itself. But anyways, it is interesting, you know, to be able to do that. Maybe you ask about a complex subject and then have it break it down for you.
00:16:31
Speaker
You know, this brings me to point number three though, being weary of relying on it too heavily, right? Like it is not an infallible source of knowledge. People have already posted plenty of examples where it's asked a question and chat GPT has got that question wrong. Have you stumbled across incorrect answers in your research yet?
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, in random stuff, just in typing in have found, oh, that's not quite right, you know? Is this more less on facts or more on like opinions or? I think by definition opinion can't necessarily be wrong, but some factual information has been incorrect. So that is something to be aware of. I haven't seen personally an example where it's been like way out there, you know? Like if you were a high school student and you were just trying to use this to get by, I'd be like, don't.
00:17:16
Speaker
Not only because it's not mortally right to do, but also because one, factually it has been off. And two, there are AI detectors out there now. So I was talking to one of my friends who is an English professor for a local college.
00:17:31
Speaker
And he said already there are AI detectors out there that he's tested them and apparently they're really accurate. And this is probably why Google, for instance, can guess whether something has been generated mostly by AI or not.
00:17:47
Speaker
So even for your content, I wouldn't recommend just slamming your blogs with a bunch of articles written by AI. I'd still make sure there's a human component to it, even if that's what gets you started or even if that's what you use to get your general structure.
Human Experience vs AI Insights
00:18:03
Speaker
So what do you think that this means for businesses going forward? Yeah, that's a good question. Who knows? I've watched a number of videos on this again, just because this is a subject that I...
00:18:13
Speaker
like to nerd out a bit on, you know? So I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos on it. I've tried to keep up with the news around it. And there's a lot of people, I think, especially in the SEO world, who have said, oh, this is going to, this is going to change SEO or this is what's going to end Google or, you know, whatever. I'm not quite as sure that's the case. So how would it change SEO? Because people use it to write their copy for them on their website.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, it just changes how maybe we search for things. Again, just going back to I think the example I used towards the beginning of the episode where comparing the conversation I had with chat GPT around a given topic, how I would search for that same information on Google. There's more steps involved with Google and I'm not getting as concise of an answer because I still have to then filter through all the results.
00:19:02
Speaker
So anyways, I think in general, I am not as skeptical that this is going to be like, oh, you know, this is going to like tomorrow, copywriters are not going to have jobs and you know whatnot. Like, I don't think that's necessarily going to be the case. I'll talk more about that in a second here. I wouldn't consider myself like a doomsayer either. I can definitely see sort of the dystopian impact that AI could have on the world. Like I'm not particularly excited.
00:19:28
Speaker
about artificial intelligence on that level. But in general, I don't think people should be feeling a lot of anxiety about this right now. I think that there is right now and always will be a specifically human element that are missing from these sorts of things. For instance, going back to that question about content websites and whether content websites will just even exist in the future. Well, like if I'm looking for backpack reviews,
00:19:56
Speaker
I want reviews from a real person with real experience wearing that bag. I'm not going to get that information from some AI chatbot, which can never wear that bag. I can't see how AI in that instance could ever provide what I'm looking for in that respect.
00:20:17
Speaker
And just, I don't know about others, but I would assume that this is gonna be true of others too. I'm going to trust a person, any person's experience, over what an AI tool is going to tell me. And that's true of so many different things, not just backpacks.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, you think of courses and education and all of the information there is out there. It's hard to believe that AI could ever replace what you teach about SEO or what Caitlin James teaches about photography and all of those things. Yeah, for sure. I think beyond that, AI is going to change things.
00:20:53
Speaker
Like it's going to be useful, maybe so going back to the backpack example. So I'm researching backpacks, I'm watching my favorite YouTube channel that reviews bags, all right. And it narrows down maybe two or three that I wanna purchase. Well, AI could be really helpful in finding the best deal on that bag. So maybe there's an AI tool out there that helps aggregate a list of places where I can purchase this bag and also can filter through a number of different, I don't know,
00:21:21
Speaker
like coupons or offers, like honey, kind of. Yeah, like honey, kind of. But point being is like it can aggregate a list of stores, which I can buy from, or it can help filter through large amounts of information quickly so that I can find the exact bags that I'm looking for that have certain various features. But at the end of the day, I'm going to go back to a person to tell me how that bag actually feels and their experience with it on a day-to-day basis.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, I think at this point, if people are having like serious anxiety about it, I don't think they should. I think that the people who make best use of these tools are already the people that are most talented in those fields, you know? So like continue getting better at your craft and doing what you do, you know? And this is just a tool to help you maybe get results a little bit faster, you know? Or maybe get your project done a little bit quicker, right? You know, or it's not gonna be able to replace your experience, I think.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, and then I think it's just good to pay attention to, you know, make sure that your website is using technical best practices. I mean, we see this in search engine optimization, right? Like with schema markup on websites, and we talked about this in our SEO course, and I won't get into schema markup here, but like schema markup makes it easy for search engines to understand different elements and information on your website, you know, so it's why like for certain search results,
00:22:39
Speaker
a list of products is going to appear at the top and you can use, you know, Google Shopping, right? It's why if you are like, you know, type in the name of a movie theater into Google, right? It's going to automatically show you like show times and titles that are playing, right? Schema Markup makes that stuff easily understood by search engines. And so it can show it in the search results. You know, as technology develops, especially around AI, see how you can incorporate stuff that plays well with your site, you know, pay attention to those things.
00:23:09
Speaker
And just be flexible. I don't think there's anything for people to certainly have anxiety about right now, but I think it's wise to kind of understand how these things work.
00:23:17
Speaker
And definitely go test it for yourself. Ask some questions. Yeah, for sure. Any other questions before we get? I don't think so. Shut it down here. Yeah. Well, we hope you found this helpful. Again, if you have questions about this episode, feel free to ask them because this is a topic that's very interesting to me. Like I said, I already use some tools that incorporate some sort of AI that help with our content workflow. You probably do too. You know, for instance, RankMath has different AI features in it. I use another tool called Surfer SEO that I like that has AI features in it.
00:23:47
Speaker
So you'd be surprised probably at the amount of tools that you currently use that already have some sort of AI features in them. But if you have questions, send them in, send us a DM on Instagram, comment on the show notes. We will hopefully record more episodes about this in the future.
00:24:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.