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19th March, 2025 - Webinar replay

10 practical ways AI can improve your marketing

Phil Bray 

Welcome, everybody to a sunny Nottingham. Today: 10 practical ways AI can improve your marketing. I really enjoyed writing this presentation, and I hope you get as much value from the next hour as I did enjoyment from writing this. What are we going to talk about today? We’re going to start talking about what AI actually is because I’m very aware that we have very different levels of knowledge around AI within the group and the community that’s online today. So, we’re going to start by talking about what AI actually is. Then we’re going to dive into how to think about AI, some of the dos and don’ts for how you think about AI. Then, we’ll get into 10 practical ways you can use AI, granular, tactical, practical things that you can take away and do today. We’ll share six mistakes to avoid, and then we’ll talk about some experts to follow in the AI community and put them in the follow-up. We’ve got two great events next month, a workshop for LinkedIn that Abi and Katie are running, and another webinar with a fantastic guest next month, all about community building. So, Dan, do you want to do your normal housekeeping slot explaining how we do things around here?

Dan Campbell 

Yes, absolutely. Welcome to today’s session. What do we need to know? Well, firstly, despite the subject of today’s webinar, I am not an AI-generated video. I’m a real boy, as Pinocchio would say, but then an AI video might say that, so who do we believe? Anyway, if this is your first Yardstick webinar, welcome to our famous safe space. We like to hold a very open forum in these sessions. So, make sure you get involved. Your microphones and cameras aren’t on, but you can still talk to us. Send us a comment via the chat or use the Q&A box and have your say. Ask questions, tell us you agree, or maybe share experiences of what has worked better for you. Of course, people who are regulars to Yardstick webinars know that this is the part where I really encourage people to challenge us. I really ramp people up and say, “Tell us we’re wrong. Tell us what you think works better.” and the same applies today, with the very small caveat that the landscape of AI is constantly and consistently evolving, so you might know of tools that we don’t, and vice versa. The key theme of today is let’s all share what works and what doesn’t. Let’s all learn. Let me answer a question now that we often get. We absolutely are recording today’s session. A video will be sent out along with a summary of any links or resources mentioned, we have our very own Abi Robinson to thank for that. So, a huge thank you to her, as ever, for working diligently behind the scenes. Now, enough of me and over to Phil, how can AI improve our marketing?

Phil Bray 

Thank you very much for that. So, we’re going to start with a poll. I hope this works; I’m a bit nervous to press any buttons on Zoom today after what happened. We’re going to start with a poll, and it should have just launched. So, can everyone go and vote in that poll, please? Because I really want to understand how the audience online right now feels about AI. It’s a very simple question: “How do you feel about using AI in your marketing?” Very comfortable, comfortable, worried or anxious, or very worried or anxious. So, what have we got here? The votes are ever changing, but starting it’s starting to balance out. 50% of people feel comfortable. Only 14% feel very comfortable, and 37% feel worried or anxious. So, it’ll be interesting to see how that changes over the course of this webinar. That means we’ve got just over one-third of people who are worried or anxious, but it’s good to see that two-thirds feel pretty comfortable with AI in marketing. I really do emphasise what Dan said about sharing with us today, because we’re all in this journey together, learning how to use AI. We’re really open to public challenges or public disagreement and a debate on this sort of stuff, because by doing that, we’ll get better results for everybody. So I thought we’d start with a definition about what AI actually is. I asked AI, what AI is. It’s a bit like the pot will eat itself, really, isn’t it? But so what do we have? AI in marketing refers to the use of machine learning, automation and data-driven algorithms to create optimised and personalised content campaigns and client interactions more efficiently. So, it doesn’t actually mean a lot. If that’s the theory, in practice, what are we talking about? We’re talking about applications like Otter, Claude, ChatGPT, those two things are similar – Claude and ChatGPT, Grammarly, Adobe, Firefly, Notebook LM. Those sorts of applications are AI, but as Abi pointed out to me when I was writing this presentation, there are other systems like SmarterQueue and Hootsuite, that while you wouldn’t think of as AI, they do have AI functionality. AI is everywhere we have applications that we use, and then there is AI functionality in other types of software and applications. That’s what I’m talking about today, those sorts of things. When thinking about AI, the first thing I would say is, don’t overthink it. I know people who are worried about going into ChatGPT because they don’t know how to write a prompt. They overthink how to use it and just get scared and kind of run away. So, don’t overthink it. Don’t be scared, don’t be anxious, don’t be worried about using AI in your marketing, but don’t ever use the outputs unless you have checked and refined them. Don’t take what AI gives you and use it blindly, because it will bite you on the bum. Do embrace it. Do use AI in your marketing and your wider business, but fact check everything. One of the things that I always do when I’m using ChatGPT is check everything. I tend to use ChatGPT rather than Claude, but it’d be interesting to hear from anybody who uses both as to the different experiences. One of the prompts I give is “List 10 things and give me the sources”, because then I can go and check the sources out in the wider world. It’s so important to do that. It’s incredibly important to learn how to prompt effectively. I was listening to a webinar at the weekend. It was Joe Glover from the Marketing Meetup Podcast, and he had Ross Simmons on there. Abi, perhaps we can look this up and put it in the follow-up, you’re probably already doing it. He had Ross Simmons on there, both are former guests on Yardstick webinars. Ross was talking a lot about how to prompt AI effectively. It’s really important that we learn how to do that. In an ideal world, you would prompt AI in the same way you would delegate and explain things to a human being. So, learn how to prompt effectively. There are lots of different cheat sheets around on the internet to help you learn how to prompt properly. Do dive in, experiment, and have fun. Give it a go and see what it can do because there are huge numbers of things that AI can do that you wouldn’t necessarily think it can. So, dive in, have fun, and have a go. Then, make it part of your everyday life. One of the things that I’ve done, I found I was forgetting when I could use certain AI, especially ChatGPT, so, one of the things that I’ve done is – I use Chrome as a as a browser – I’ve set Chrome up so that as soon as I open it, one of the URLs that opens automatically is ChatGPT. I’ve got a bunch of other stuff as well, LinkedIn is on there, as you’d expect. So, when I open Chrome, certain websites come up automatically and that reduces the friction. It reminds me to use ChatGPT on a regular basis. Do make it part of your everyday working life and use it as your partner, your assistant, your researcher. Adam Kay, who is our one of our digital copywriters, gave a presentation about a year ago to the Yardstick team about AI, and he talked about how AI is your partner, assistant, and your researcher. It’s having someone there you can bounce ideas off. If I’m writing a blog at the weekend, and I’m playing around with a headline, we’ll talk about some of that more in a bit, I will bounce ideas off ChatGPT. Sometimes I like the ideas it comes up with, sometimes I dislike the ideas it comes up with. So it’s very much like using a human to bounce ideas off. Use AI as your partner, assistant, and your researcher. I think you’ve got to think of AI like a sandwich, which is a bit of a strange analogy but bear with me. It’s you, then AI, then you again. You’re the two slices of bread, and AI is the filling in the middle. What I mean by that is to begin with, you are prompting AI, then you are getting AI to do whatever you have asked it to do, then you check it and make sure you’re happy with it and it’s up to you, whether you decide to use it, and whether you use the output it gave or refine it. Dan, I can see a few people putting their hands up, I’m not sure if we’ve got anything we need to be aware of?

Dan Campbell 

It looks as though, when we reset, we lost the ability for everyone to chat with hosts and panellists. So, just reset the chat function, if you will?

Phil Bray 

Yes, of course I will. We are still recording aren’t we Dan?

Dan Campbell 

We are, yes.

Phil Bray 

There we go, everyone can chat with everybody. Dive in everybody, go and have a chat with everybody. So, I think of AI as a sandwich. You to begin with, then AI is the filling, then you again, and you decide whether you want to use the output that AI gives you, or you want to refine it further. Thanks GP, for letting us know that you can put stuff in the chat now, that’s fabulous. I see Abi has just put the link into the Marketing Meetup podcast, so I’ll keep going. How do we think about AI? From a marketing perspective, it means that the world is about to get even noisier than it is right now, because AI can mean unlimited content, or will mean almost unlimited, infinite content. It doesn’t mean the content is any good, but it means that we have the potential for unlimited content. Unlimited content means we’re going to have a noisier world, and a noisier world means it’s going to be even harder to be heard. That means that if it’s not already there, it soon will be that content promotion becomes more important than content production. I’ve said for a long while, people like Ross Simmons have said equally long, if not longer, that the balance is wrong between content production and content promotion, and we need to reset. We need to reset that balance, focusing on content promotion once it’s been produced. I think even Ross talked about a rule of thumb, if I remember from the webinar, which was if it takes an hour to produce a piece of content, you should spend five times as long promoting it. AI means the world is going to get noisier, and it’s those people who know how to promote content who are the ones that are going to cut through. Search is going to be disrupted massively. I was sat a couple of weeks ago watching an ice hockey game with my daughter, which is something I tend to do on a Sunday evening, and I asked her something. I looked at her phone, and she was on ChatGPT. I said, “What are you doing there?” She said, “I’m looking it up” I said, “Why don’t you Google it?” and she said, “Because ChatGPT gives me the answer and I don’t have to click links.” That is how search is going to be disrupted. People are going to be moving and gravitating towards search on AI, ChatGPT and Claude, etc., and away from Google. That’s why Google has changed the dynamics and the anatomy of a search results page recently, and put AI results at the top. AI from a marketing perspective, and just running a business perspective, it’s going to be huge potential for time saving, but equally, there’s going to be huge potential for making mistakes. So we’ve got to balance this, be aware of the threats, and be able to take advantage of the opportunities. From a marketing perspective, for me, AI is a massive benefit providing that we understand the issues and address the issues that it’s going to bring. Right, poll time number two, before we start getting into the practical ways you can use AI in your marketing. I want to understand how often you use AI in your marketing. We’ve already established what AI is, so let’s see if we can sort this next poll out by me clicking that and that. Look at that. Launch. So, how often do you use AI in your marketing? Daily, weekly, monthly, almost never, or never. Wow, this is interesting. I’ll just give it a minute or two. Dan, have we got any questions or comments to deal with while this is being voted on?

Dan Campbell 

Yes, while people are filling this in, I’ll read out Paul’s comment from earlier. Paul says, “Perplexity is the best I’ve used so far.” this is when we were talking about ChatGPT and Claude “…it uses a combination of the others and always gives a list of links for you to check the sources. Not always great ones, so I totally support the check your facts suggestion.”

Phil Bray 

Cheers, Paul, cheers, Dan. Right. How often do you use AI in your marketing? We’ve got an almost equal split here. 21% of people: never, 21% of people: almost never. That’s 42% of people never or almost never, use AI in their marketing. Let’s see if we can change that a little bit. 18% use it monthly, 25% use it weekly and only 14% of people use AI daily in their marketing. That’s interesting, really interesting. I thought it might have been a bit higher, the frequency that AI is used. Let’s see if we can change that. Let me end that poll and move on. So, 10 practical ways that you can use AI in your marketing. Just remember, as we’re going through these, that these recommendations are based on our experience, and alternative platforms are available. So, if I mention a platform, there will be others that you can use. There are no affiliate deals in here, we don’t have deals with the services that we’re going to talk about in the presentation, it’s just based on our experience that we use at Yardstick, we use individually, and our clients have used as well. As we’re going through this, please do share your knowledge, as Paul has done, talking about Perplexity. So, number one, improve your writing. For me, there are five stages of writing: ideation, what are you writing about? Research, understanding the topic and looking for sources, the actual writing of the of the piece, whether it’s a guide, a white paper, a blog, or whatever it is, social posts, editing, polishing it and knocking off the rough edges, and then proofreading, making sure there’s no typos in there. That’s different to editing. So there are five stages to writing. ChatGPT can help with the ideation and the research. Remember to check sources and check what it gives you, and then things like Grammarly can help with the editing and the proofreading. Grammar is a great tool. Others are available, but it knocks the edges off your writing; it does tighten things up. I don’t always agree with everything it says, and if you try Grammarly and something else alongside it, they sometimes conflict and have different opinions. If you want to improve your writing, ChatGPT and Claude are great for ideation and research and Grammarly is great for editing and proofreading, but they don’t replace human input when it comes to ideas. I’ve not got a copy of Marcus Sheridan’s, They Ask You Answer, but it’s still really important that during your day-to-day interactions with clients, you are on the lookout for ideas for content. AI doesn’t replace a human writer effectively, you can currently spot content written by AI. We have had people apply for writing jobs at Yardstick and use AI to write their example pieces for us. I was having a conversation, and it was quite a heated conversation with somebody on LinkedIn, relatively recently. They were quite negative about advisers and planners, and I felt as though I needed to wade in on your behalf. So I did, and the comments coming back were clearly written by AI, so I just gave up and moved on. There’s no point trying to interact with somebody who’s writing comments through AI. For me, it doesn’t replace a human writer, and it doesn’t replace other little techniques. For example, if you want to tighten your writing up, probably the best way of doing it is using the read aloud function on Word, because it reads the article back to you, it does what it says on the tin. It reads the article back to you, and it allows you to hear it as other people do. It’s a fabulous tool. If you take nothing else away from today’s webinar, use the read aloud function and get your content read back to you, that should be it. Dan, I can see a couple of things coming in, is there anything we need to deal with?

Dan Campbell 

We have a question in from Sarah, who asks, “Do you use the paid versions of both ChatGPT and Grammarly, and what is the difference between free and paid?”

Phil Bray 

Yes, I use the paid-for versions of both of those. ChatGPT for the first level up after free, is $20 a month, and it’s the best $20 that I spend every month. The additional functionality it gives me, it’s always online and it means I can use other people’s GPTs that have been built, I’ll give you an example of one of those in a minute. It allows me to do a bunch of other stuff that I couldn’t do on the free version. So, for me, the free version of ChatGPT is good, but the paid-for version is absolutely worth the $20 a month. I also use a paid-for Grammarly subscription. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how much that is, but maybe Abi can just Google Grammarly pricing and stick it in the chat, but it’s so little that I’ve forgotten about it. Again, it’s all about the functionality that you get. Most of these platforms have a freemium model, and then after that, you can then pay and upgrade. So yeah, I’m rambling now, Sarah, but yes, I would pay for subscriptions. Dan, any other questions?

Dan Campbell 

For anybody who’s not monitoring the chat, Abi has put a great tip in there: if you’re using AI tools like ChatGPT to improve your writing, you can feed your own writing into it that you’re happy with, and then it can mirror your writing style. Of course, the finished version will still need touching up, but it does get you a little bit closer to that finish line.

Phil Bray 

Great point. Okay, next. Number two: improve your headlines and subject lines. We’ve all seen the David Ogilvy quote, and we all know how important your headlines for articles, webinar invites, and your hooks for social media posts are. We all know how important they are, and there are a few different ways of doing them. I will write 3, 4, 5, or 6 headlines and stack them on top of each other to the point where I’m happy with a couple of them, I will then feed those in to ChatGPT. My prompt is something along the lines of “You are _____” telling it who it is, talking about the audience, telling it what you want the subject line or headline to achieve, then I’ll say, “Review the two that I’ve done, tell me which is better, and crucially, why.” It’ll come back to me, I’ll iterate from there and probably try another couple of split tests to the point where I’m really happy with it. I’ll then head over to something called Headline Studio. For all of my headlines and subject lines, I use ChatGPT, myself, and Headline Studio. Headline Studio scores headlines and tells you where they can be improved. The score is out of 100, and it tells you how it can be improved. Neither of those two things replace your gut feel about headline, how you think it’s going to land with your audience, or your sector knowledge. So, it doesn’t replace any of those things, but the combination of ChatGPT, yourself, and Headline Studio can absolutely help improve your headline writing. Number three: replying to reviews. Almost everybody on here might have heard me talk once or twice about the importance of Google or VouchedFor reviews. I bang on about it all the time because it’s really important. When these reviews come in, it’s really important that you reply to your Google and VouchedFor reviews. I won’t go into why it’s important right now, but I’m happy to do so separately if anybody wants a reminder. So, it’s really important that you leave replies and it’s really important that those replies are more than just, “Thanks, Dan, for the review.” It’s a great opportunity to amplify some of the positive things that the client has said in their review. But it takes time to write good quality replies and time is a finite thing for most people. Once someone’s written one or two replies, they do sometimes get a little bit samey. So, the Yardstick Review Responder, which is a GPT that we have built, will write your replies for you. Abi is going to put a link to it in the chat for us, and it’s another good example for someone like Sarah of why the paid-for subscription with ChatGPT is useful because the Yardstick Review Responder is one of millions of custom GPTs that you can access for $20 a month. While it will write the replies for you, and in my experience, and talking to advisers we work with, the responses it writes can be used 80% of the time without editing and 20% needs a little bit of finessing, but it still doesn’t collect the reviews for you, and it doesn’t automatically do it for you. You have to feed it a bit of information, but it really does cut down the amount of time it takes to reply to your reviews. So, the third out of the 10 practical ways we can be using AI is to use the Yardstick Review Responder or writing replies to your Google and VouchedFor reviews. We’ll do four and five Dan, then we’ll do some more questions and comments. Number four: build GPTs to save time on repeatable tasks. For example, let’s say you’re a Yardstick client, we will tell you each month what the most popular articles that have been read in your newsletter. You could use ChatGPT to analyse those. In fact, we’re building a GPT that does that, where you’ll be able to feed in the spreadsheets of what different people have clicked. Let’s say you’ve got three different spreadsheets from three different months’ worth of newsletters, you can see what people have clicked, and that will give you bases for conversations with clients and prospects. If you’re writing SOPs (standard operating procedures) for how you do certain marketing tasks in your business, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc., will help you write those SOPs. Then, let’s say there is a report, a white paper, or a guide. If you are a Yardstick member, you get a deep dive guide every month, included in the cost of your membership. You could take that guide, upload it into ChatGPT and say, “Give me 10 ideas for social posts from this guide.” It saves you having to wade all the way through it. “Here’s the guide, Mr. or Mrs. ChatGPT, please give me 10 ideas for social posts from this.” You then write around those ideas, use Grammarly to edit, use ChatGPT and Headline Studio on your hook, and you’ve got 10 social posts much quicker than you could by reading the guide and taking things out. So, use ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity for repeatable tasks. AI doesn’t do everything, it doesn’t always work first time, you’re going to need to edit it, and the results aren’t 100% perfect, but it will save you time. Number five is a big deal. We’re seeing more advisers run webinars and they’re a great way of engaging with clients, prospects, and professional connections, but it’s really important, if you want to maximise the value of the hour that you’ve spent presenting and the hours that you’ve spent building the presentation, that you do more with it. So, what could you do? Use Otter.ai to produce a transcript from the webinar and then upload it to your website. Now, what you actually get is a massive page of text, a huge page of text, and it’s unlikely that somebody’s going to sit and read that rather than watching the webina, but what it does is generate unique content. It’s 5000 – 6000 words of unique content and Google will love that from an SEO perspective. So, the transcripts, as it says on the slide, aren’t perfect and they will need checking, but if you use Otter.ai to produce those transcripts, then get a human to check and upload them to the page on your website where you’ve put the webinar recording, Google will love the SEO. You could then take the finished transcript, feed it into ChatGPT and write a prompt asking it to turn the transcript into social post or blog ideas. Like I talked about a minute ago about uploading the guide into ChatGPT and asking it to give you social ideas, well, the same can be done with the transcript from the webinar. Upload it, say “Give me five ideas.” I’ve done this with the webinar from Sam Russell that we did last month, and other webinars that we’ve done. I’ve uploaded the transcript and said, “Give me some ideas.” or “Give me some quotes.”, and then I’ve written around those quotes. Also look at using tools such as Choppity to turn the footage into clips for socials. Tools like Choppity will find the best sections and turn it into social clips. It’s not perfect, the transcripts need editing, and you’ll still need to write the blog posts or the social posts, but there are three ideas there to turn the hour of the webinar and the time you spent preparing for it into something that has a much longer shelf life. Dan, how are we getting on with questions and comments?

Dan Campbell 

We’ve got a few comments. Scott makes a really good point. Scott says “Empowered Mortgages have an AI-powered marketing generation tool for advisers that I have played with before, and it works really well. As it’s specific to financial services and will do things such as prompt when you may need to get something approved as a financial promotion, as well as being a lot less US-based in its output.” So, it’s UK-centric, which is quite interesting, and obviously a lot of AI tools are US-based as default and sometimes you have to specify that you’re in the UK, don’t you? Scott makes another mention bit further down where they say “In regards to the free versions of tools, our network has an issue regarding data ownership, so we have to be very careful with what we input into the free version.” So, that’s an important consideration. Emma mentions, in response to Scott’s comment, “We are the same, so use Copilot for our business.” That’s something we see quite a lot, it’s Microsoft’s AI service, isn’t it?

Phil Bray 

Yes, indeed, it’s not something I have much, if any experience with, to be honest.

Dan Campbell 

That’s perfect timing, because Peter asks, is Microsoft Copilot worth looking at? So, you’ve answered that with it, hearing the question.

Phil Bray 

It’s almost like I read the question beforehand. Yeah, I’ve got no experience of Microsoft Copilot. I’m afraid if anybody else on the webinar does, then please share your experiences with Peter.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Amelia is sharing some love for the LinkedIn guide that Abi recently wrote, where she mentions using ChatGPT to write headlines for your profile and giving it a detailed prompt. So, I’m sure other people that aren’t Amelia will be interested in that too. Abi will be able to leave a link to that in the follow-up too. Then, just going to one of our earlier questions from Julia that we can sweep up now, Julia says, “I’m thinking of using AI to write info articles in a local magazine. Is this a good idea?”

Phil Bray 

Thinking of using ChatGPT to write local articles, Is it a good idea? Yes and no. I think to write one from scratch, probably no, because I think that the content ChatGPT etc. produces right now is pretty dull, to be honest, bland, middle of the road, and is reasonably easy to spot. What you could do, though, is, Dan and I have had this before, you don’t actually get much space in local magazines to write the article. You might have a word count of 300 words, for example. So, what you could do here if you’re a Yardstick member, and you take articles from us each month, is you could look at the data that we give you, pick the most popular article – for example, we wrote a guide in February that talked about tax year end planning and tax allowances, you could take that – and ask ChatGPT to summarise it in 300 words for an article in a local magazine. For writing from scratch, probably not but taking a long article and turning it into a short article without losing the meaning or the value, yeah, I think that could work.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. And we’ve had a few opinions on Microsoft Copilot. So, anybody who is interested in that, just read the conversation there and if you have used it and have an opinion, obviously, add that in so that everyone can benefit from it too. It seems quite mixed at the moment. Some people don’t see the value in it, whereas others have had quite a bit of success with it, so I guess it’s how you use it, isn’t it? But that’s it for now, Phil, so if you want to move on to point number six, do.

Phil Bray

I shall indeed, right, what have we got? Number six: turning meeting transcripts into content ideas. So, more and more advisers are using tools to produce transcripts from their client meetings. You would have to remove the confidential information from the transcript just to be on the safe side. Remove the confidential information, upload it into ChatGPT and write yourself a prompt, or you could even create your own little GPT here, so you don’t have to rewrite the prompt every time. When you upload the meeting transcript in there, ask it to produce content ideas, blog ideas, guide ideas, and social media ideas from the transcript to use with a wider audience. Naturally, it’s not going to write the blogs and social posts for you in an engaging way as much as a human could do, but it might help you take a long transcript from an hour’s meeting and just pull out the nuggets that could make good guides, blogs, and social posts. Just be careful with confidential information and take that out before you ask it to analyse it. Number seven, I love this, I’m still playing around with this, and I’ve not launched it yet, turn your written content into audio. There are a couple of ways of doing this, one is via NotebookLM. If you give it some of your written content, it will turn it into a podcast-style piece of content for you. Go and play with it. It’s just mind-blowing. I took a blog that I wrote last week about QR codes on the underground. I couldn’t work out why QR codes weren’t used on the underground and that led me into thinking how QR codes can be used in your marketing. We’ve got a couple of examples later on when you want to sign up for the next webinar and the next workshop. I turned my blog into a PDF, uploaded it to NotebookLM, and it turned it into an eight-minute podcast of two people essentially debating my blog. I’ve tried it with my weeks’ worth of LinkedIn posts, I’ve tried it with a series of posts we did around adviser fees and how they charge, and it’s really good. It’s got American accents, which grates a little bit sometimes, but you could use something like ElevenLabs to turn the American accents into British accents. It turns out a really good quality podcast. Go and try it, it’s absolutely mind-blowing. I’ve not started playing with the paid for version of it, but I absolutely think NotebookLM is worth looking at if you want to turn your written content into podcast-style content. Jellypod does something similar, but with your own voice. I’ve not been overly keen on what I’ve heard from Jellypod, I prefer NotebookLM but go and play with them both. It doesn’t replace human podcasting, and it isn’t perfect but it’s bloody good. Go and have a try, give it a go. Number eight: analyse open ended client feedback questions. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? If you are on this call and Yardstick have run client surveys for you, you could use this. We will ask open questions in the client survey, for example, “What’s the best thing about working with firm?” “If you were in charge of the firm for a day, what would you change?” Analysing those open answers, those free-type answers, isn’t always the easiest thing in the world to do. So you could use ChatGPT, Claude, etc. to analyse those responses for you. You upload the information and ask it to show you trends, things that are coming out on a regular basis. And it’s really good. At Yardstick, we did a team survey at the end of last year. There are 48 of us and had lots of open-ended questions. We ran the analysis through ChatGPT, and it saved a lot of time. Clearly, it’s not going to run the surveys for you or collect the data, but it will help you analyse it. Then, turning guides and white papers into social ideas. I’ve already touched on this a bit, but if you buy a guide from somewhere or through the Yardstick membership, you could write a prompt asking it to turn the guide into 10 ideas for social media posts. It’s really easy to do, it’s not going to necessarily write the post for you, it’s certainly not going to format and schedule them for you, but it will give you the ideas. It can turn a piece of content into a series of social posts. So, you’re repurposing your content. We’ve talked about producing content, we’ve talked about promoting content, we need to talk about repurposing content as well, so you squeeze as much value as possible out of every piece of content that you pay for or produce yourself. As I said, it won’t write the posts for you, it won’t format and schedule them, but it will give you the ideas. Number 10, then we’ll do some more questions, then we’ll do some mistakes. Number 10: creating video content at scale. HeyGen is a game changer for this. I don’t if anybody’s used HeyGen, but it’s a fabulous way of creating video content at scale. Dan, you and I were having this conversation with our video team yesterday. We have a client who wants to deliver an update to all their clients about the business and things that are going on. The good stuff, like people joining and awards, that sort of thing. We want to try and personalise it. So this adviser has got about 100 clients. He could go and record 100 videos, personalising each one, but it’s not necessarily the best use of time and it probably would never get done, especially when 95% of the script is the same. So using something like HeyGen, we can do the 95%, and we can do the personalisation by taking snippets of him and using those snippets and AI to produce really high-quality videos. Then we can send them out. So, something like HeyGen for creating video content at scale is great for things like business updates, updates when markets are volatile, getting it out really quite quickly. So I’d encourage you to do that. It doesn’t write the scripts for you, ChatGPT will help there, and it doesn’t distribute the content. We talked earlier about content production and content promotion. It’s not going to promote or distribute the content for you, but it will help you produce video at scale. So, there are 10 ways that you can use AI, practically and tactically in your marketing. Hopefully, there were some nuggets there that you can take away and start using. We’ll do six mistakes to avoid when you start using them in a minute, but Dan, what are the questions and comments we’ve got?

Dan Campbell 

There’s been a bit of activity in the chat. A lot of it mirrors the idea of using AI as a tool rather than a replacement for a person writing. Jill mentions they use ChatGPT/Copilot to create the first draft of articles, she said, “It’s very good for info gathering, obviously, it’s all reviewed and personal advice is added, but it’s a great starting point.” and that’s the key, isn’t it? It’s a starting point. Then Anna asks an interesting question about whether the ChatGPT paid version is confidential, and Abi has mentioned that unfortunately, no, it’s not. So, the paid versions don’t guarantee any additional privacy compared to the free plans. Daniel asks, “If I use ChatGPT for content, are there any issues around ownership of the content created?” That one is aimed at Abi for a LinkedIn point of view, I believe.

Phil Bray 

Do you want to take that Abi, or do you want me to take that?

Abi Robinson 

I’ll defer to you, Phil, since I answered one thing.

Phil Bray 

So, I think copyright law and copyright and ownership is still something that’s playing out in the AI space. My view, personal view only, is if you use the writing that ChatGPT gives you, and then change it as you absolutely should, you’re going to change it into something that is unique to you, so, I don’t see any issues there. Dan, we’ve got one more from Jill.

Dan Campbell 

Yes, Jill mentions that her understanding is that Copilot can sit behind your company’s firewall, so the confidentiality is maintained there.

Phil Bray 

ChatGPT talk about the fact that they won’t share data outside of open AI, but clearly it is using data, information, and what people are putting in there to train the AI. So we’ve covered 10 ways you can use it, here’s six mistakes to avoid, six things that I would avoid doing. Number one: using AI to write your content. You can spot it.  In his presentation, Adam gave a series of words that AI tends to use. You can spot AI written content right now, who knows what will happen in the future? There are also tools out there that you can cut and paste text into, and it will tell you the probability of it being written by AI. That’s quite amusing when you’re on LinkedIn and you’re wondering how somebody writes so many lengthy comments all the time, copy and paste it into one of these AI detectors and for some of them, your suspicions are not founded, other times they are. So for me, I wouldn’t be using AI to write content for blogs, social posts, and certainly not for comments on social media, they are just so bland. We’ve got to put some personality into this stuff and give a bit of our time. So for me, one of the mistakes to avoid is using AI to write content. I wouldn’t use AI for routinely producing images. I think most of the images that AI produces are really poor quality. We’ve all seen the images on LinkedIn of people with six fingers or misspellings on the images, and for me, it just reduces the credibility of both the post and the author. They are also all over the place, so they don’t stop the scroll. We talk a lot at Yardstick about using images and media on social media that stops the scroll. So, images and videos that stop somebody scrolling down and causes them to pause and read the post. AI images right now, most of them look the same, they’re derivatives of each other and that doesn’t stop the scroll. So, just be really careful with the imagery the AI gives you because it could damage brands, and the credibility of the author and the actual post itself. Dan, anything come in? I can see a couple of things. Is there anything that’s come in so far on that?

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, we’re always getting comments. Nas mentions, “There seems to be ways to detect that content is AI written, even if there is human interaction before posting. How does everyone feel about the impression it creates about you/your company in terms of not having created original human-written content, especially when it comes to opinion pieces or blogs? Is there some form of scepticism about the content almost being plagiarised?”

Phil Bray 

Yes, I can absolutely see how that would, especially the thought leadership piece where someone’s trying to give what they can. I would 100% agree with that.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Paul mentions, “Suspicions not founded here, Phil, but I know who does use it to write their long posts and comments.” So, I feel that most people have suspicions around certain accounts that they see. I think you mentioned a while back, Phil, somebody was responding to you quicker than they could physically type, which kind of gives it away, really, at least wait a couple of minutes.

Phil Bray 

Absolutely, it wasn’t you who I was suspicious about Paul, but yeah, we all know who they are, because we probably all check them out. There was one occasion when I was having this conversation defending the honour of advisers and planners and the person responding to me, it was just impossible to have written what they wrote, the word salad that came out, in the time that it took them to post it. Yeah, very interesting.

Dan Campbell 

Finally, Jill asks if we can suggest an AI detector, because it’d be useful for them as a quick check of written test submissions in their recruitment efforts.

Phil Bray 

There’s a few, I just tend to Google them. Grammarly has got a good one. I tend to Google them and see what comes up first. But I use more than one, Jill, I’ll probably put it through two or three, just to produce some consistent results.

Dan Campbell 

Onto the next three then.

Phil Bray 

Yes, number three: using AI for LinkedIn automation. LinkedIn seems to be cracking down on this quite significantly. I ticked the terms of service, and many people have had warnings. I woke up one Sunday morning a few weeks ago to it saying, “You’re using some AI, please turn it off if you want to come back onto the platform.” The AI I was using was WEConnect, for connecting. Some people have had warnings like I have, and I’ve seen quite a few others have, and I’ve seen some people who have been banned. I think you’ve just got to balance risk and reward, and for me, the risk is not worth it so, we’ve stopped using things like WEConnect at Yardstick. Number four: not fact-checking. We talked earlier about sources, and I think you should never trust what AI gives you, because if you do and you use it blindly, you might get bitten on the bum. So, for me, never trust what AI gives you, always double check the output, and ask Claude and ChatGPT and anything else you use to provide sources and then go and check those sources as rigorously as you usually would. Number five: writing poor quality prompts. Inputs and outputs, the better the quality of the input, the better the quality the output. That applies whether you are briefing a human in your life or you’re briefing AI so, write really detailed prompts. There are so many prompt cheat sheets around, and of varying quality, but if you go and look at some of Ross Simmons’ stuff, it’s really, really good. So, avoid poor quality briefs when you’re dealing with humans and when you’re dealing with AI. Finally, not using it. AI will save you time. It gives you time back, and time to do more stuff. AI will give you more time. It will help you get more value from your content. We will use AI on this webinar to do various different things, transcripts, social posts, blogs. We’ve done the same with Sam Russell’s webinar with us, we will do the same with Leah Turner’s, which we’ll talk about in a second. AI helps you repurpose your content. It’s also a great system and research partner. When I’m sitting in Nero on a Saturday morning and I’ve got no one to talk to about my headline, I talk to ChatGPT. Always say thank you, because it remembers. So, always say thank you and treat it politely. It’s a great assistant and research partner, and it’s a lot of fun as well. There are all sorts of things you can do that are really cool. It doesn’t replace human creativity, it doesn’t replace content writers, but it can save you time, help you squeeze more value from your content, and act as a great research partner. So, I hope that you’ve heard some nuggets that you can take away today, some things to use AI for, some things not to use AI for. I’m happy to hang around and answer some questions, but now, Abi has got a couple of things, one workshop and one webinar, to talk to you about.

Abi Robinson 

Yes, thank you for your blog last week, Phil, because that gave us the inspiration to make life much easier for everybody here today in terms of signing up for our next event. Our free webinar next month, is very exciting. It’s a bit of a fan-girl moment for me, if you’ve been on LinkedIn for any time at all, particularly heavily in the last five to ten years, then Leah Turner’s name will be familiar to you. You can’t miss her or her tattoos and she’s a real expert on LinkedIn. She built up a huge community, and she’s now moved away from LinkedIn advice and more into community building. So, on the 23rd of April, which is next month, we’re going to be talking to Leah, who’s now founder of a community called The Holt, about the benefits of building a community, the platforms that you need to know about, how to do it, and the pitfalls and potholes to avoid as you build up that community. As Phil said, the noise around AI is going to make authenticity even more important, and building a thriving community is all about authenticity and relationship building. So, grab your phone, scan that code, and don’t worry if you miss it, because I will include a link in the follow-up this afternoon as well, but you can sign up for Leah’s webinar in a month’s time through that QR code.

Phil Bray 

Then next month’s Webinar. Oh, no, sorry, I mean your workshop.

Abi Robinson 

Yes, I should have done them in another order, really, shouldn’t I? This workshop is in two weeks’ time today, I believe, and we’ve run it for the last couple of years. There are a few people in the crowd who have attended before, Amelia, for sure, and Lucy attended before. Feel free to put your glowing reviews in the chat. It has been a fantastic event the last two times we’ve run it. It’s three hours, 10am to 1pm on Wednesday 2. April, and you can scan the QR code there, which takes you to a page on our website to give you more details. Myself and Katie, who’s our head of social media, will be covering the four key things you need to do to use LinkedIn effectively, from setting up an effective profile, to writing engaging posts using AI in the right way, sending connection requests and engaging with others in your wider network. It’s about how to really make sure that you’re using LinkedIn in an effective way to grow your business. £95 plus VAT, so that’s £114 per place. If you scan that code, you can go and have a look, and if you like the sound of it, you can sign up through our website and just drop me an email if you’ve got any questions about it. Thank you, because I believe Amelia has put a message in the chat, that’s very kind.

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Abi. Right, I’m happy to stick around and answer any questions anybody’s got. If anybody on this webinar is at the Professional Adviser Awards tonight, I’ll be there, come and say hello. We’ll be on a table at the back somewhere, I’m sure. Do come and say hello. Otherwise, Dan, what have we got to finish off?

Dan Campbell 

We’ve got a lot of love for Abi’s workshop. David put something through in the Q&A box, saying that they did it two years ago and learned loads. Lucy has just mentioned “It’s a great workshop. It’s good for the foundations on LinkedIn and smooths out any rough edges. So, it’s well worth the small investment of money and time for the benefit.” Thanks for that, Lucy. Then, we’ve got a few things in. Anna makes an interesting point, Anna says, “Is it only me thinking of AI always as female?” I suspect – well, I won’t say their names, but Amazon’s voice-activated assistant and Apple’s voice-activated assistant, their default voices are female, so maybe there’s something there. I don’t want to set 100 devices off, so I won’t say the words. Leanne mentions “You mentioned setting up prompts on ChatGPT, like the Yardstick Review Responder. Do you have any aid around how to do this, or is it quite simple?”

Phil Bray 

There are lots of prompt sheets out there, go and have a look at Ross Simmons’ stuff. The Yardstick Review Responder is a specific GPT that we have built. Think of it like an application. It probably took me five or six hours to build, by the time you tested it, tried to train it, etc. And you can only build GPTs When you’ve got the paid for version. But it is pretty simple to do once you’ve got the paid version, it’s really quite simple to do. I think this is one of the issues too, some people over-complicate using things like ChatGPT, you’ve just got to talk to it like a human.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant, thanks. Paul mentions to try Winston AI and Originality.AI. There are a lot of tools available, and those two are working for Paul. Michael will have left now but asked if the webinar can be emailed. If anyone does need to dash off, don’t worry, you will get a recording after this. I believe that is everything. We’ve got a lot of nice comments coming through of everyone getting a lot of value from this, so, thanks for those. Oh, we do have a question from Scott, “What are your thoughts on new disruptors, for example, DeepSeek. Do we stick and commit with a more established AI, or do we look at the new ones?”

Phil Bray 

You know what? I think you play around with things. If we stay in our lane and only use the things that we are comfortable with, we’ll only ever get the developments from those applications and from those AI platforms. So, I will be taking the blinkers off and looking as wide as I possibly can, because there will be cool stuff and there will be really useful stuff. So, I would just play with it, try it. Set maybe an hour aside every week to play with some AI, play with different applications and have a look and see if you can use them in your business. Will I stick with the tried and tested? No, I’ll be playing around with different things.

Dan Campbell 

And of course, innovation comes from competition, so the more players out there trying to come up with interesting AIs, we’re going to get a lot of interesting things. That seems to be everything for comments and questions. So, thank you for being such an engaged audience. Over to you, Phil, to wrap things up.

Phil Bray 

Thank you everybody. If you’re the Professional Adviser Awards tonight, we shall see you tonight. We’ll definitely see you, Sarah, you’ll be up on stage, I’m sure. Everybody else, have a good day, we will send out the recordings later on. Cheers guys, bye.

Dan Campbell 

Take care guys, bye.