AI workflow and marketing tools

- In the early days of social media some marketers dove in headfirst. Others took a more cautious approach and still others buried their heads in the sand. Meanwhile, brands weren't sure what to do. I think we're in a similar place with generative AI. Which is why now's a good time to figure out how AI fits into your marketing workflow. You can start by mapping out the use cases, determine who's going to manage the output and how the AI might improve productivity. Are you going to use it as an idea generator, first draft writer, headline, or keyword specialist? Maybe you're going to use it for rewriting or editing suggestions, research reports, meeting summaries, or to take a visual concept and bring it to life. Your needs depend on your team sites and the type of content you produce and you'll want to take all of that into account. Next, get a handle on how AI might alter people's roles. Will you have fewer junior writers, but more fact checkers? What skills would a fact checker need and is someone from your team up to the task? What about prompt engineering? Again, is that a new hire or a job for an existing member of your staff? And most important, who will be responsible for the AI content that's released if anything goes wrong? Then, once you have an outline of your process brief your team and try it out for a couple of weeks to gather internal feedback. What's working? Where do you need to go back to the drawing board? Were there any uses that you never even thought of? The point is you want to be flexible and optimize your team's creative output and when you do implement the new workflow there's bound to be a learning curve. So build in time to let people adjust. And don't forget to consider how AI systems could affect your company culture and current team. You'll also want to establish a protocol to identify and evaluate the AI tools you may want to use. Start by defining the criteria you're looking for so you can assess features and price. Do you want an enterprise version anyone can use or one or two subscriptions? Does the AI tool fit into your existing tech stack? And how will a vendor safeguard your data? Put all of that into a spreadsheet so you can compare one vendor with another and be sure to prioritize what's most important. And always ask to test drive the app so your team can let you know if it's right for their needs. When it comes to generative AI workflow and tools there's no one size fits all so be open and listen to your team. There are so many new products being launched, that the choices you make today will likely change in the future, and you may need to go back to the drawing board and adapt.