Ask the experts: favorite hacks for using AI

Shannon Hinderberger

Artificial intelligence is taking every business by storm right now. We asked our marketing experts for their favorite AI tips that their using in their business and with their clients. 

I like to use AI as a calculator after it was suggested by Mark Schaefer on a call we had last winter https://businessesgrow.com/) When I’m stuck on something, I head over and ask a question regarding my current writers block. For example, I had a coaching client who was stumped on how to make one of her frequently asked questions into a blog post outline. We put in the prompt “Make this audience question [insert the question] into a blog outline geared towards [insert audience]. The result was six bullet points with sub-bullets to guide the writing. It was a great start for my coaching client to get the creative juices flowing!

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Katie Casillas, Casillas Media & Consulting

You may have seen this Canva + AI hack floating around Instagram, and I recently tried it for myself and was blown away. The hack is to use AI (either ChatGPT or Canva’s built-in AI tool to create a list of quotes, affirmations, or sayings relevant to your industry and audience (for example: “give me 50 inspirational quotes for women entrepreneurs”). Then, you add the best ones to a spreadsheet and save as a csv. What you do with it next is magic – create a file in Canva that will act as your template. This can be a reel video file with a tweet over top, or a simple text-based quote image, but it must have text. You then highlight the text area that you want swapped out on each new graphic and select “bulk create” from the left side menu. Then you upload your .csv file, right click on the text area and select “connect data” and continue. This should generate new pages with all the different quotes. Then, you just swap out the background image/video or some other element and you have 50 pieces of content ready to go.

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@heykatiecasillas

Victoria Chiampas, Champ Social 

If you are struggling to stay consistent with posting, schedule your content ahead of time! Apps like Planoly, Meta Business Suite and Later are all great resources. If you are not able to find the time every day to post, set aside a couple of hours to plan and schedule your feed posts for that month. Use story posts organically to update your followers in real time.

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@champsocialmediamgmt

Shelley Webb

Of course, I always use Grammar.ly but that’s almost OLD A.I. For the new, I have an SEO A.I. software that I use for blog articles. It helps with keyword research, headings, titles, topics etc. all right within the software. It was an App Sumo lifetime deal. And of course, I use ChatGPT for a lot of different things.

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Darlene Veenhuizen

I like to use AI to give me inspiration for a design or blog topic when I’m feeling stuck. I usually can’t use everything it gives me exactly as it’s written, but I often come up with a spin-off idea that would have escaped me otherwise! I recently tested out Midjourney to create a landing page mock up for a new client. While it didn’t give me what my client was looking for, it was interesting to piggyback off of and create something they loved. Another fun thing I have been loving is in Canva (they just released a ton of AI tools) is to use their new Brand Hub feature. With a design project open, I click on Brand Hub, then hover over the Colors section and hit Shuffle. It gives me a new design with colors applied in a different way – and it comes out pretty great! You can watch the release video of all the new Canva tools here. 

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@picklejarstudios

Jordin Jewell, West Loop Soul

There are so many great tips here to implement! Another way I like to use AI is by finding objections my ideal customers (or my clients’ ideal customers) might have to purchasing a product or services. For example, a jeweler might ask an AI tool “what are 5 common reasons not to buy an expensive necklace?” Once the AI tool gives you those reasons, use them at a thought starter for your next piece of content. If one is that the quality of the necklace, you might use that as inspiration to make a post about the quality of your necklace.

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@westloopsoul

Need help navigating AI to market your business and gain traction? DASH can help!