My AI Marketing Journey: How I Got Started (and How You Can Too!)

The questions I aim to answer in this blog - post by post:

• How is AI revolutionizing marketing?

• How does AI impact my work?

• What should I learn and do to leverage opportunities AI offers?

This blog isn’t about me telling you everything I know—it’s more of a personal journey and journal, as I try to figure out how AI is transforming my work as marketing professional, entrepreneur and content creatior. And you’re very welcome to join me on this learning path!

How did AI sneak into our lives - what has happened?

When scrolling through social media, it's no wonder we might feel both excited and overwhelmed by the constant stream of AI-related posts and ads. AI apps and integrations are emerging at an exceptional speed, and in order to make sense of it all and understand how to react to it, we should step back and see the bigger picture.

It wasn’t that long ago, when high-performing, easily accessible AI became part of our everyday lives. The launch of ChatGPT-4 in March 2023 was a huge leap forward from ChatGPT-3. It made AI even smarter and brought powerful tools directly to consumers and businesses, simplifying tasks like writing, coding, and brainstorming.

While Artificial Intelligence was first named and conceptualized during the Dartmouth Conference back in 1956, the real development started to pick up in the late 90s. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, showcasing supercomputer's ability to handle complex games.

In 2010s the speed accelerated and Apple’s Siri was one of the first widely used AI-powered virtual assistants followed by Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant. Around the same time, streaming services like Netflix and YouTube began using AI (in this case machine learning) to personalize recommendations based on what we watched.

So we can state, AI has been around for a while now, but we’ve only recently reached a point where AI systems and integrations are widely available for larger crowds and creating real, tangible value for our businesses and lives.

How I began learning?

When I first started learning about AI, the first platform I tried was ChatGPT. I quickly realized that learning how to ask the right questions and create prompts (instructions for AI) might actually be one of the most valuable skills of the 2020s. It began to feel like the most limiting feature, was my own ability to communicate clearly enough for what I want and my capability to remember that things which are impossible for a human to internalize & produce in seconds, are piece of cake for AI.

I give you an example. When I first started using Chat GPT, I naturally began asking questions I used to ask from Google. It’s just how we’re wired - we are naturally in the old box asking similar questions we have always asked. When you asked google-like questions and got well-organized, detailed answers from AI in seconds, I quickly realized that this was a completely different game.

I quickly found myself using ChatGPT every day. I didn’t need to go to Google, try different search terms, and click through pages to find my answers. AI delivered exactly what I needed in seconds, faster than I ever imagined. BUT. What AI won't give you (at least not yet) the same way Google does, is the understanding of the context - where is the information from, which page, who wrote it and when. You will get the information from Chat GPT as well, but only if you understand to ask for it. Also, you might miss out those happy accidents that happen with Google, where you’re searching for one thing and stumble upon something even more interesting. Chat GPT just won't give you random things, you are not asking for. (And by the way - AI is still not always right, but neither are Google results.)

So I would say, that the first thing to do when learning to use AI systems and intergrations, is to start using them in your everyday life. Practice asking questions, make a habit to double-check facts, and look for ways to boost your productivity. But don't fall into the trap (when you will get excited) of letting AI to completely write your emails or presentations - AI language is quite well noticeable and it's important to personalize the texts even though you'd use them. And many times it's wise to use them! By using Chat GPT one also easily learns to cherish spelling mistakes on other people's presentations & texts - that means they actually might have written the text by themselves :D

When you understand the possibilities AI offers as your personal 24/7 brainstorming assistant, you’ve unlocked a whole new world. Yes - it can read your presentations and summarize them in seconds, scan your social media sites or websites and suggest new creative ideas relevant for your audiences. And don't stop there - ask for different kind of tone of voices, ask for more clickable headlines, ask it to analyze your website and give you advices how to improve them. Ask it to summarize your thoughts in two sentences. Ask it to use more simple, human like language. And see how mastering the art of asking becomes one of your new superpowers.