Beyond Words
Top ChatGPT & AI Hacks for Comms & Publishing Teams
I promised in my last post to talk about how I’ve been using ChatGPT. And ack, I’ve been in the middle of a big data project and some workshops, so I’ve just not had time to go into it in detail. But I did promise, didn’t I? And THEN, just as I was all set, this happened.
So, generally speaking, I find ChatGPT helpful for brainstorming, idea generation and reframing the marketing copy I’m working on. But there are also a couple of other interesting, more developed use cases.
Read on if you want to understand both the basics and how it can support more complex consumer segmentation work (based on category needs) for commissioning or campaign work (excited face).
So, first of all, the obvious stuff.
Influencer / VIP Work
In non-fiction publishing, we are often at the deep end when it comes to a community. You can do a little dig if you’ve got a couple of basic social data tools. Perhaps you’re working with a gardening author, and you can see the top VIP gardeners that follow them using social data tools, maybe audience data for his following. Nice. But, sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Think of ChatGPT as the person sitting across from you in an office. Can I pick your brain, Becky? Who are the top female gardeners in the UK to send a book to? Can you think of anything I might be missing around keywords to track with my social conversation tool? ChatGPT is a Becky or a more intelligent (not hard) texty Alexa.
Typically I turn to Chat GPT at the moment to think about what I might not be thinking or know about—a shortcut.
Publicity / PR Copy
I’ve been working on a couple of projects outside of publishing where I’ve needed to write press releases, and honestly, it’s been really beneficial when I’m stuck.
ChatGPT and various AIs are most famous for writing copy, and there are a few great tools (like LEX) for writing copy from scratch. As ever, proceed with extreme caution. But honestly, is it much worse than google? Just check your facts. I’d certainly hope you’ve read the manuscript before this point, but be careful. I was mainly working on product press releases, perhaps a little less sophisticated than a book one. But I think it will start to have its place.
Marketing Copy
I’m never using it as a primary source for writing copy, but sometimes I am so deep in a project I don’t necessarily see the obvious or sometimes I realise my copy needs a bit of a refresh.
I can use ChatGPT to bring up a few new metaphors or learn about something relevant to the audience I hadn’t thought of. I had a play with a few Ottolenghi questions in this video to illustrate what I mean. TBH, a couple of things jumped out that I wouldn’t have looked for and didn’t know.
Click on the image for a video of it in action.
But this is when it gets a teeny bit more exciting…
Understanding Category-Related Needs
This is the biggy. Publishers often talk about needs publishing as though it were a separate thing. Usually, that’s been the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin style - how-to books. There’s no demographic or segment as such for these books. The onus of these is undoubtedly on that need. But TBH, all publishing meets a need somehow - because all products do, it’s why we buy them. A high-end dining cookbook meets a need, like a slow cooker or a health book does. Your high-end dining book may have signifiers in its marketing, presentation etc., that appeal to a specific audience, but it still has a need or needs of some sort at the heart of it. Once you understand your target audience's needs, you can use this information to create marketing campaigns and messaging that resonate with them. And ChatGPT can help with this.
A good prompt might be:
Prompt: “give me ten underlying category needs for air fryer cookbooks.”
It’s all about Context
One BIG tip here is context. ChatGPT can remember the context within a session. So, if you ask for the category needs for an audience, then name each need. You can then iterate from there to hone in on one element and see that specific audience’s unmet need. Sweet right?
Here’s a good example.
Prompt: “give me five underlying category needs for women experiencing the menopause”
Typically I would do this for ten needs, but to give you a rough idea, here are the top 5:
"Midlife Women" - women who are going through menopause or have already experienced it
"Hormone Balancers" - women who are looking for information and solutions to help manage menopause symptoms
"Health Conscious" - women who are interested in maintaining their health and wellbeing during menopause
"Symptom Sufferers" - women who are experiencing uncomfortable menopause symptoms
"Information Seekers" - women who want to learn more about menopause and its effects
From there, you then ask about unmet needs. Here’s your Prompt.
“For each category, please list the biggest unmet category-related needs. By "biggest unmet category-related needs" I mean a category-related need shared by many people and where it is hard for them to satisfy that need with the products and services on the market today. Please give reasons for your answers.”
And speaking of Prompt, that last example came from a brilliant book called… Prompt. It’s an ebook bundle with a free presentation.
What else do I need to know?
DON’T come to this without any knowledge of the topic.
Be as specific as you can be in your prompt writing (briefs).
Be prepared to double-check elsewhere, you need to build in some fail safes.
Iterate, iterate, iterate to get the really good stuff.
Workshop: Researching Audiences & Their Needs
I’m working on something for publishing teams that integrates some methods for researching audiences and needs for commissioning and campaign planning. ChatGPT is just one element of that. Contact me to learn more about this and my other areas of work.
Oh my god, is AI the coming apocalypse for publishing, though?
No. Absolutely not. Well, I mean, I can’t predict the future. But I don’t think so. I shared ChatGPT writing a recipe for me earlier this week, and it looks scary, but honestly… it’s a quicker google search, no? And when people start to license or get creative with the API, for example, an author sets this up to work with their cookery books within a monetised platform, it’s another revenue stream. We know that people don’t like to be online all the time, and we know that people like physical books. So I don’t think this will change anything there. Will someone write a romance novel using AI or similar? Probably. And it will be a massive news story, and then we won’t care. Hell for commissioning editors in the meantime, though with the volume of proposals landing on their desks, all probably written using this.
What about the books being plain wrong?
Well, yes. There is that. There’s currently a thin line between books that need fact-checking and books that don’t for some publishers of non-fiction. Counter-intuitively, those books that rely heavily on citations but perhaps don’t come from a rigorous academic background (although they won’t be exempt from this issue) could be the ones to keep an eye on. The temptation for those on a short deadline will be to use these tools *as though they are Wikipedia*, but they are not Wikipedia. How do you manage this? It’s probably not for me to say I’m already straying a little out of my lane here, but I can think of a few ways to add some protection with a little thought. In short, the genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in. Hopefully, some frank cross-departmental conversations are happening. They should involve comms teams as well as legal and editorial.
What about design teams?
I’m thinking mainly of Midjourney here or DALL-E. It won’t replace jacket design, but I genuinely think it could have a role in jacket briefing (gulp). In the same way, text AIs are great for brainstorming positioning; these can help brainstorm creatives and images. Give it a jacket brief, see what it does, and see what direction it interprets the brief. It might come up with something you haven’t thought of. It might highlight your brief needs finessing. Why not? It will do it in 3 mins flat. Great if you’re feeling stuck - it might just unstick you.
Is this the end of Creativity?
No, absolutely not! Quite the opposite. Ask anyone currently using this all the time and you will realise it speeds up creativity and gives more time for it.
What about the data cut-off in September 2021?
You may have heard that ChatGPT's access to a lot of data was cut off around then.
So, there are quite a few ways around this for social listening queries - where you can export and run through an AI to find themes etc. from CSVs of tweets, for example, if recency is really important to you. Or Bing’s AI trawls the web and so has some recent data in it.
However, for the main use case mentioned here - the audience needs - you want deep solid consumer needs. They shouldn’t have disappeared or changed since then. If they did then what does that say?
Summing Up
This post could go to thousands of use cases and words. I’m working on something for publishing teams that presents some solid methods for researching audiences and needs for commissioning and campaign planning. ChatGPT is just one AI mentioned and AI is just one element of that. Hopefully, this is a good little intro to the potential of various AI. Many of these will start to be built into a host of social listening, conversational, audience segmentation and predictive trend analytic tools but with a bit of logic (and a little caution) - you can get pretty far right now. Contact me to learn more about this and my other areas of work.
MY TOP AI TOOLS
Grammarly helps you write mistake-free in Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other app you use, even in text messages.
It’s not just grammar (although it does this). It uses AI to give suggestions based on tone, clarity, how positive the text sounds etc as well as the usual stuff. It’s a personalized, high-quality generative AI.
I use this day in and day out. Unfortunately, it was blocked at various publishing houses. God knows why. If you want to support neurodivergent staff, it should be standard. Let alone people who went to slightly crap comprehensive schools where grammar was not taught in any way (me). The best app I’ve ever paid for.
Not sure it qualifies as a large language model in the same way as ChatGPT but it learns which is where the personalised element comes in, It’s been around for a while and I think it’s a good example of an AI we feel pretty comfortable with.
I use Midjourney on Discord a lot. It is a lifesaver as a freelancer without a big budget for design work. Although Canva is great for resizing social assets and templates for the odd bit of work, it can’t design a concept from scratch. I love Midjourney. You write a brief in the prompt, it auto-generates four options of images based on that brief, you ask the community to upvote the two you like, or you click on the versions you are most interested in developing. It refreshes and creates four more versions based on that, and boom… you’ve got some fully realised designs/images or logos. It just takes the pain out of basic design work. I use it all the time in presentations. And I asked people to tell me at the end which of the images was an AI one. They’re often surprised at how good it is.
The most annoying thing about Midjourney? You can quickly lose your design thread in the middle of all the others pinging up on the timeline. So, top tip, the minute it accepts the job, grab and copy the Job ID so you can search for it once the timeline jumps around.
Obviously. Although, I’m still using these first two more at the moment as I’m knee-deep in presentations and workshops.
That’s it from me.
Head over to my website to learn more about what I do, and get in touch if you want me to come in and present, train or consult on the three core things I tend to focus on with my insight hat on - Talent, Trends and Audiences.
I'm also here if you want support or training on digital strategy or tools. Or if you’re looking for a safe and experienced pair of hands for some campaign work that utilises many of these techniques, then I’m your gal for that too.