← Small Business Quick WINS w/ Jay Schwedelson l Presented By Thryv
Small Business Quick WINS w/ Jay Schwedelson l Presented By Thryv
Using AI Tools Effectively for Small Business Content Creation with Amanda Zantal-Wiener
00:13:21
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- [00:00]
Jay Schwedelson
Foreign.
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Welcome to Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. This podcast is exclusively designed for small business leaders like you. Prepare to get invaluable insights from every episode, equipped with actionable tips made for immediate implementation in your business. Tune in as we teach our firsthand lessons from fellow small business owners and thought leaders. I'm your host, Jay Schwedelson. Over the last 25 years, I've grown multiple small businesses that have generated over $300 million in revenue. Along the way, I've learned pitfalls to avoid and quick wins that can transform your business immediately. I'm excited to share it all. So if you're ready to win on Main street, let's dig into this episode.
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Jay Schwedelson
We are back for Small Business Quick Wins. And you know what? Today I was like, we need to have somebody back. Somebody that was on the. That crushed it, that shared so much cool information. So we've asked Amanda Zental Weiner to come back now. If you remember, she is the head of content at Thrive. Thrive is one of the leading platforms for small businesses in this country, for communications, for billing, for marketing, for everything. And she pumps out so much great content. And today we're going to talk about how to use ChatGPT and not use ChatGPT for your content is going to be great. Amanda, welcome back.
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Hi, Jay. Good to see you again.
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Jay Schwedelson
Are you AI or are you a real human? Because we're talking AI today.
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Amanda Zental Weiner
I, you know, sometimes I wonder, some days I wonder, am I real? Is this a simulation? Am I just on the Truman show or the Weiner show in this case? But yeah, no, today I am a real. I'm a real person. How about you?
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Jay Schwedelson
Well, my kids sometimes call me a bot, so I feel like. I know, I know. Trust me. But it's okay, right? Today I'm not a bot right now because I'm with you and you are so cool. So for those of you who don't remember, Amanda has a crazy cool background when it comes to content. She ran content at the Search Engine Journal. She was one of the lead content people at HubSpot, and of course, she's now running content at Thrive, and she's pumping out stuff all day long. And her and her team use AI, but they use it the right way. And for all the small business owners out there, what we're going to dig in today is how can you leverage ChatGPT and some of the pitfalls to avoid. So Amanda hit us up. I'm a small business owner. I don't have time to do all this content creation, I want to use ChatGPT. What should I do and what should I not do?
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Yeah, no, it's a, it's a great question. And you should see some of the arguments that I have with my colleagues, my friends, my family all the time about this. And the first comment that I would make in response to that question is just to remember how new a lot of these generative AI tools are. And that's. Generative AI is basically the fancy word for tools like ChatGPT that generate some sort of content, whether it's written words or imagery, sometimes sound in a way that very closely resembles the way a human would do it. So that is the first thing I like to recognize. It's just how new it is that tools like that are publicly available. I think it. We're coming up on maybe just two years that ChatGPT has been available as a. As a consumer product. And so, you know, that is the one thing that I would say about when you're thinking about the right way to use it is how with something that's new, there's still so much gray area in terms of what is right, in terms of how I use that, especially a tool that's kind of unprecedented in many ways. So that would be, you know, just the first acknowledgement that I would say. Did you want to follow up?
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Jay Schwedelson
No, I say, so now you're on ChatGPT. Yeah. What is the first thing you're doing? You're a small business or what are you doing to get started?
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Mm. Mm. So the first thing that I would do is figure out, well, it depends. You're probably, let's say you're trying to create content for social media. You know, the first thing that a lot of people would naturally or instinctively want to ask something like ChatGPT to do is to ask it to just create a post for them. And I have a little bit of a controversial point of view on that, and maybe it's because I have a background as a writer, but I don't love asking AI or ChatGPT to do the writing for me. There are good, you know, if that's your thing, you're short on time. You know, I'm not going to fight you on it, but that's. Personally, I don't like using it as a replacement for human writing. However. However, it can be your sidekick, it can be your deputy editor, it can be your content strategist to help you get the juices flowing and think about ideas that make the process of writing content so much quicker. And getting the content right, getting it honed and getting the right tone of voice using the right words. That's where I feel like something like ChatGPT is going to be your best friend if you're a small business owner who's short on time and is maybe new to marketing.
- [05:12]
Jay Schwedelson
Well, I, first of all, I totally agree with you. I mean, ChatGPT should be more of an editor for you. It should not be a content starter because that you're going to go down the wrong path. And also from a performance standpoint, let's say you do have use as a content starter, okay. And you take that content written for you, put it on your website, you put on your social media posts. What happens is the, the social media networks and Google, the search tool, they can tell what is AI created and what is not, and they depress the performance, the circulation of social media posts or search engine organic rankings when they see that something is, is AI created as opposed to AI edited. So that can really hurt your actual performance, let alone your creative juices flowing. So what is another thing for a small business owner? What's, what's a good way to use it? Like, what are some wins?
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I can use an example of, of how I use it. So we were actually, I'll use something we were doing this morning. We were coming up with promotional copy for an upcoming webinar. And, you know, I think that's something that a lot of business owners and just, just a lot of businesses in general struggle with when they're getting started is finding their right voice and what the right words are when, when you're navigating that voice and also remembering that, you know, something like a brand voice evolves over time. So we were coming up with this fabulous marketing copy for, or what we thought was this fabulous marketing copy for a fabul, and we realized, you know, this is not how human beings speak. Like the words we're using, you know, streamlined, packaged, you know, engagement better. Like people don't. If I sat down next to you at an airport bar, I'm not going to be like, tell me about how you streamline your engagement, you know, and then I would say, well, Jay, you are a bot. You know, so. But so that's where you can kind of maybe do a gut check and use something like ChatGPT as your, as your sidekick and your gut check to say, I don't feel like this is how people talk. You know, this is who I am. I own a small real estate firm in Ponte Verde Beach. And, you know, I'm having this great event and I, I want to say this, but I want to say it in a way that, that really, you know, sounds more conversational. And so that's the type of thing where I think that something like generative AI and these tools like ChatGPT can be really helpful. And, you know, they're there to go. They. It's getting smarter in terms of the conversational back and forth, which is a little scary. But also, as somebody who refines content for a living, I love it. And being able to have that back and forth where you realize, okay, all right, this is what it's changing, all right? This is why it's telling me to do this and not that I think that that's a really good example of how you can save a lot of time because now you're getting an idea of in the future. What you want, say your marketing words or your social media captions to sound.
- [08:08]
Jay Schwedelson
Like, you know, it's so important. What you just shared, which I don't think enough people do, is they treat ChatGPT like a search engine. They ask it do something, it does it. They take the output and they roll with it. But you have to, like, almost bully Chat GPT, right? It gives you, you know, you ask it to do something, gives you the output you want to say, you know what? That wasn't funny enough. That wasn't sarcastic enough. That's not good enough. I needed to be more concise. I needed to be better. You can be rude to Chat GPT and push it and then it will say, you know what? You're right, that wasn't funny enough. That wasn't good enough. Let me try again and it'll give you a better version. But you are failing, in my opinion. If you are just taking the first try that Chat GBT gives you back. Are you on board with that?
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Amanda Zental Weiner
I am totally on board with that. I personally, I, I try to be nice to Chat GPT because actually at an off site we had earlier this year, somebody was saying, I always say please and thank you because someday if, if Chachi BT takes over, you know, and becomes our, our AI overlord, you know, it's going to remember who said please and thank you. So that made me paranoid. But I do agree, you have to, because it just, it's still a robot at the end of the day and it's not always going to get it right the first time. And it misunderstands me all the time where I'm like, no, Wait, that's not, that's not what I meant. That's not what I meant. This. Can we try it again? But yeah, absolutely. And, and, but at the end of the day, you know, because somebody might hear us say that and might say, well, how am I saving time then if I have to have a full on conversation with this robot, you know, to just to get one sentence right. But I think that what you're going to find and what I have found is that as you're training, and we are kind of training them with these back and forths, but they're also kind of training us and figuring out like you're right, that does sound better. And I think that that's going to help me figure out maybe what I want to say in my blog posts, in my social media, you know, if I'm hosting an event or I want to put something clever on a business card. This is helping me figure out the right way to say it. And what I want that messaging to be what I want to sound like to my customers.
- [10:17]
Jay Schwedelson
You know, I'll tell you one new thing that we're using ChatGPT for that's been really cool with our clients is we've been taking all the reviews that a product or service has from one of our clients. Like could be like a thousand reviews. And we are uploading a chatgpt and we're saying give us the 10 most common things that people love the most in reviews and the 10 most common things that people are frustrated by. And it's actually driving the content creation of whatever it is that that company's doing because you're taking this, you know, at scale information from actual users. So it's a really cool way to kind of let it help you guide your content. So that's something cool we've been doing.
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean there are some platforms that have started building it, you know, e commerce platforms that have started building AI like that into, into its, its customer reviews, saying, you know, this is what customers like about it, this is what customers don't like so much. And so you can absolutely use that internally with things like customer feed. Even if it's emails that you've gotten from customers, it doesn't necessarily have to be the reviews that they've left, but it's a great way to synthesize a lot of information, like a lot of data. You know, if there's, there's, there, you know, I was out of the office earlier this week and you know, if there's, there was a 90 minute meeting that was recorded and I appreciate it being recorded, but I don't have 90 minutes to sit there and watch a meeting recording. But you know, some of these video streaming platforms, they have a way of summarizing what was said. Now that's just another example of synthesizing a lot of information that's ultimately going to help you do your job, whether it's someone like me who was absent for a meeting or whether, you know, you own a storefront and you want to know the best hours when you're, when you're going to get the most foot traffic. So being able to use that's another great way that it's going to make your life easier.
- [12:08]
Jay Schwedelson
Totally. I love all of that. All right, we've covered a lot of AI stuff and we are two real humans doing this. This is very exciting. So listen, everybody, you want to connect with Amanda on LinkedIn, we're going to put her information in the show notes. She shares so much great information. And you got to check out Thrive's free content for small business owners. They're not just out there putting out content about their business. They're sharing things that allow small business owners to be successful. So check them out@thryv.com that's T H R-Y-V.com Amanda, you are awesome. Can't wait to have you back on the show to talk about more stuff. Thanks for being here.
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Amanda Zental Weiner
Yes, thank you for having me, Jay. Hope you have a great day.
- [12:49]
Well, that was fun and great news. We got way more where that came from. Subscribe. Make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips from today's top small business leaders. And hook us up with a five star review if you've got at least one new idea you may consider using. Lastly, if you want to ensure you never miss a message from your customers Again, check out Thrive.comWin to get your free account with Command center today.