“AI won't take your job – it's someone using AI who will take your job."
This quote from Economics Professor Richard Baldwin might sound intimidating, but in the ever-changing world of communications and marketing, it's a call to action.
AI is evolving rapidly, and it's easy to feel apprehensive about its impact on our careers. However, instead of viewing AI as a threat, we should recognize it as a powerful tool at our disposal.
As communications professionals, we are uniquely positioned to harness AI's potential. Embracing this technology isn't just about staying relevant; it's about unlocking new levels of creativity, efficiency, and impact.
AI-Fueled Creativity: My Toolkit for Success
As Content Director at Just Drive Media, I have the privilege of leading a team of talented content creators and strategists. At Just Drive Media, we empower brands to drive results-driven marketing campaigns through innovative storytelling and captivating content. My role involves overseeing the development and execution of content strategies, ensuring that every piece of content created tells a meaningful story and resonates with our target audiences.
Commitment to our core values—mastery, integrity, curiosity, courage, and partnership—drives everything we do at Just Drive Media. These values not only guide our interactions and decisions but also fuel our constant exploration and experimentation with AI tools. To further encourage innovation, we recently launched our fifth round of the company-wide “Just Drive Media AI Challenge.” This initiative motivates our team to experiment with AI, submit innovative ideas, and implement the best ones to improve our processes and make our work more efficient. The alignment of our values with the capabilities of AI has empowered our team to continuously discover and experiment with various AI technologies, enhancing our content output and workflows.
Maximizing Impact: Combining AI Tools with the Content Matrix
Although similar in nature, each AI model brings something unique to the table. I often use these AI models together, leveraging their strengths and mitigating their weaknesses.
Here’s a brief overview of my main AI toolkit:
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ChatGPT: Excellent for generating initial content drafts and brainstorming ideas. It’s versatile and remembers user preferences, making it highly adaptable to different tasks. ChatGPT allows you to create custom versions of the model, called GPTs, that combine detailed instructions and extra knowledge tailored for a specific purpose. For example, I’ve created my own GPTs for tasks like optimizing hooks and CTAs, proofing social copy, and ensuring content accuracy. Creating GPTs is easier than it sounds, and I’ve put together a guide and template to help you get started. If you're not ready to create your own or need inspiration, check out the GPT store! You can find and use GPTs created by others that are available to use. One GPT I frequently use is the “You Are…” Prompt Snippet Generator by Nicole Leffer. It helps set the AI’s persona for specific tasks, making the prompts more effective.
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Perplexity: Perplexity excels at research and generating well-informed content by aggregating information from multiple sources, ensuring accuracy and depth. I primarily use it as a search engine and to source material for specific topics. By inputting my content objectives, Perplexity not only pulls up website landing pages but also provides relevant resources and various formats such as LinkedIn posts, blogs, and podcasts. It can also generate text that combines these findings into a cohesive draft, making it invaluable for both content sourcing and initial drafting.
I highly recommend downloading the mobile app and checking out the Discover tab. It offers daily short articles created from combined sources on topics that align with your interests. I usually start my morning readings here.
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Gemini: Integrates real-time results from Google’s search engine and is great at generating more natural-sounding outputs than ChatGPT. However, it may present information from unreliable sources like Reddit and offer inaccurate answers. It's important to verify its results for accuracy. For this reason, I consider Perplexity to be more dependable at content sourcing, while Gemini is preferable for content rephrasing.
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Claude: Designed to be socially conscious and inoffensive, making it ideal for sensitive content. It’s great for maintaining high ethical standards in writing and uploading resources such as PDFs and spreadsheets for analysis.
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Llama 3: Known for its speed and power, I have found Llama 3 to be exceptionally fast and efficient. Like Gemini, Llama 3 is excellent at producing natural-sounding output and is typically my favorite tool for rewriting AI-generated text.
Llama 3 is the best for crawling websites, as it has fewer limitations in the sites it can access compared to other models. For example, I can quickly enter a URL for an article into Llama 3 to draft content without encountering any accessibility issues. This enables me to produce content, like social media posts, based on specific articles, ensuring accuracy.
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ChatHub: This is where I compare rewrites and outputs from models like Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Llama 3. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses, and ChatHub lets me leverage the best of each one.
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DALL-E: DALL-E is an AI model by OpenAI designed for generating images from textual descriptions. It’s incredibly useful for creating visual content, brainstorming design ideas, and enhancing presentations with unique, AI-generated artwork.
The Content Matrix and Multi-Model Approach
A prime example of leveraging these models together is the Justin Welch content matrix, a popular method that generates a table of content ideas using a ChatGPT prompt. The output provides a month's worth of hooks and topics based on detailed objectives and content pillars. This matrix is used to draft content with Perplexity, ensuring comprehensiveness and credibility. The draft is then refined using multiple AI models in ChatHub, combining the best outputs for a polished final version.
Here’s how I do it (guide also linked below):
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Define Niche and Content Pillars: I begin by defining my niche and identifying four key content pillars.
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Create Content Matrix: Using ChatGPT, I create a table with eight content types on one axis and my four pillars on the other. This generates numerous potential ideas.
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Refine Ideas: I then refine and select the most promising hooks from the generated ideas.
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Draft Content: These top hooks are fed into Perplexity, which drafts comprehensive content using multiple credible sources.
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Compare and Polish: Finally, I utilize ChatHub to compare rewrites from various AI models, such as Claude, Gemini, and Llama 3, combining the best elements to create a polished final version.
For a detailed step-by-step walkthrough of this content matrix and multi-model approach, click here. This process streamlines my workflow and ensures that the content I deliver is engaging, accurate, and impactful.
Conclusion
By utilizing the unique strengths of various AI models, I have amplified my creativity, increased my efficiency, and refined my ability to generate compelling content that resonates with our audiences.
I encourage you to dive into the world of AI. Experiment, learn, and discover how these powerful tools can elevate your work and keep you at the forefront of our ever-evolving industry. The future of content creation is here. AI might not take your job, but someone using it might.
-Lina Perez, Content Director at Just Drive Media, 2024 MSU StratCom Grad
STRATCOM M.A. PROGRAM OVERVIEW