Ep 33. How AI and automation can help you with productivity

Automation and artificial intelligence is becoming a big part of PR, Comms and marketing, often carrying out and replacing everyday tasks in the digital marketing space in particular, but it is much more far-reaching than scheduling a few social media posts.

As teams get back to work in earnest in 2021 and work generally ramps up for us all, automation tools can be really effective at helping us get set up super quick and automate some of those everyday tasks.

The AI market is projected to be worth $16 billion by 2022, so this is an especially exciting time to bring automation to your brand or business or both..

So today, I cover some of the key communication tools that I use and give you some tips on getting started.

 

Links in this episode;

Grammarly

Buffer

Mailchimp

Mailerlite

Answer the public

Pocket

Google trends

Full Transcript below (unedited)

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works, with me, Emma Drake. Hi everyone. How are we all doing? I hope everyone is doing okay today. I wanted to talk to you today about automation and artificial intelligence, and how it can be used to aid our productivity in communication and PR. Automation and artificial intelligence is becoming a huge part of Comms PR Marketing, often carrying out and replacing those everyday tasks in digital marketing, in particular, but it’s far more widespread than that, actually. And it’s much more than scheduling a few social media posts. And I think as teams get back to work in earnest in 2021, and work generally ramps up for all of us, and teams may even be depleted, or returning in a phased approach, automation tools can be really effective at helping us get set up super quick, and automate some of those everyday tasks, as some people run their entire businesses with less than three people, mostly via automation tools.

So this can be everything from scheduling calls to scheduling social media, to content checkers, insight and data gathering, financial planning, invoicing, relationship management, sales leads. I mean, the list goes on. And the AI market is projected to be worth around $16 billion by 2022. So this is a really exciting time to bring some automation to your brand, business, or both. Now this is a huge, huge area, okay. I’m not going to cover everything today, but I thought what I could do is cover some of the key communication tools that I use, and I think could help you. And also give you some tips on how to get started. So let’s dive in.

So to start with a bit of a personal example, some of you may already know if you listened to the podcast before, I volunteer as a trustee and director for a local community hub cafe, and we have room hire ,as well, and a library. And we’ve recently implemented a remote booking system, which I’ve helped with. Now, this has been an absolute game changer with regards to shifting our mindset, actually, in terms of what staff we need, who we need on board. And we’ve been closed for so long, getting back up and running it was a really good time to start to implement some new processes, and really assess what sort of paid staff we would need, and also what volunteer support we would also need.

Now, all the onus is on the customer to book a room, and the process is largely automated. All the emails are presets, and include all the information a customer would need, really. So at around about, I reckon about 20 to 30 tasks for each booking, we’ve got it down to about three for an actual person, to two. So it’s pretty cool huh? Now for a small business, this has meant we have saved time hiring someone to do this, and we’ve also saved money. It’s also meant that the tasks that need to be done by human can be done remotely, leaving a scope for what we can do with the desk area that we have there. And also, what else that person can do remotely to help aid the rest of the running of the cafe and the hub itself.

So let’s move on to those lists of tools, shall we. As I said, this is not a comprehensive list, by all accounts, but it will give you an overview of what I use, and why. So firstly, there’s tools to help you with the most obvious one, really, your social media. And now there are some great tools available that will save you time and make things easier, and you can schedule your posts in advance so it stops being a daily task for you. And it can become a weekly, fortnightly, or even monthly one. I use Buffer. I’ve used others, none I think are perfect, if I’m being completely honest with you, but there are lots of tools such as Sendible, Meet Edgar, SocialBee, Smarterkey, SEMrush, Content Cows, lots of them. And they’re all good ones with excellent scheduling features, and some have more functionality than others. So it’s worth having a look into what’s right for you.

Some of those I’ve mentioned offer free plans, but some don’t. But let’s be honest, for a few hundred dollars, or pounds, a year they’re going to save you literally hours of your life. So this you would be, you can spend doing other things you should be doing rather, than spending your time on social media. The next one is automated emails and writing. Now this is the bread and butter of automation, really, if you’re running a small business, or scaling up. And customer contact and there’s tension sending out useful information regularly, and also tracking who is opening what, so you can tailor your communication with your customers on an ongoing basis. And this makes for much more meaningful customer experiences with you. And in particular, if your business involves onboarding customers and automating some of that process is essential, really.

I use MailChimp, and I’ve used it pretty much since it started. It’s one of the early and original email cloud-based systems, but it’s grown into a full marketing tool, really. And with a bit of input up front, it can make really light work of ongoing customer engagement. MailerLite is another option that is easy to use, gets lots of really great reviews, and has some good functionality on the free program. So the other thing worth mentioning, and you may already use this, I don’t realize you’re using AI, but that’s Grammarly. It’s an extension you can add to your browser that checks all of your writing for grammatical errors and punctuation. Now it’s a quick and easy tool if you work at speed, like me, or you’re doing lots of short pieces of writing that you just need to check on an ongoing basis. Or if you’ve written something at length and you just need to check the paragraphs to make sure that you’ve not missed anything. I mean, it’s not replacing a proofreader for client work, for example, but it is really good for just checking email marketing, social media posts, and things like that.

The other one is Otter AI or Rev.com and they are transcription services. So, and in the case of Rev, also automated video caption tool for audio and video. I use rev.com to transcribe this podcast every week. I find it really reliable, and almost word perfect. I’ve had mixed results with Otter, but I know people do rave about it. So, each to their own, really, on that. And I would give both a go and see what you get on with. Otter is free for so many minutes a month. But to be honest with you, Rev is really, really accessible. And it’s a few dollars, $10 to transcribe half an hour or something like that.

So the next area, really, I wanted to cover was automated data and insight gathering. And a large proportion of my client work is around this area, and gathering insights. So first of all, I use Pocket, it’s great for building profiles of insights and news that I’m interested in, and want to comment on. And there’s a curation tool, and you can use the app to download articles and mark them, and read them offline. It’s really useful. So, you won’t lose them. And you don’t have to keep screenshotting, as well, which is really great. It also integrates with some of the social media publishing tools like SocialBee. So you can save articles and share them, and schedule them at the same time while you’re on the fly, which is actually very useful.

Another one is Answer The Public. Now this is used for finding out what people have been searching the internet for, basically. So, hundreds of thousands of people search the internet every day. So, when you’re creating content, like I do for this podcast, for example, you can search terms to see what’s popular, and investigate lines of inquiry from there. So, I would go and give it a go rather than me trying to explain it all to you, but it’s also really handy because it has a download option. So, no more sitting on Google doing all that desk-based research, busily trying to find the right search terms, and then filling out a Google doc. It kind of does a lot of that for you. Another one similar to that is Google Trends, as well, so it’s worth having a look at.

To finally, tools to help you manage your time. I use Calendly for my appointments, and I integrate that with my website and my email, and this can save lots of time going backwards and forwards for a meeting date. You have to invest some time upfront to proportion your time out, and mark in to your online calendar when you want to have meetings, when you want to have calls, et cetera. But, you could allocate a certain time every day, or like I do, a couple of mornings a week to do calls.

So finally, my three tips for getting started, if you don’t really know how to start automating some of those tasks. So first of all, make a list of all your tasks, okay. How often do we do this, is write down all of the tasks associated with each thing that you do. And I’m sure you’d be surprised, actually, if you look at how much you do, and I did it for the podcast, and you write down actually all of the steps involved, and I was trying to assess what of that could be automated. Not a lot, I have to say. But there will be other tasks that you do, and if you start to break it down, once you’ve created a workflow of these tasks, it’s going to be much easier for you to move on to the next one.

Which is number two, which is deciding on the right tools for you. So for you to outsource, you want to make sure that you are choosing the right tasks. I got this wrong a couple of times, actually. I thought, “Oh yeah, I’ll use this tool, because it’s really fancy,” but actually it wasn’t really the thing that was taking me time. And I had to search for an automation tool that would help me more with some of those tasks that I felt were draining my time. So you want to know how long they take you, and where you gain the most traction. And then finally, test them out, and learn from it. Don’t just take automation on board because you think you have to. It’s really important that it’s right for you, and that you are making sure that you’re doing the right thing for your business.

So, hope you enjoy this episode. You’ve learned a bit around how I use automation and AI to run my business and carry out everyday tasks. And also some tips on getting started. So I’d be really interested to know what you’re going to try and automate. So you can contact me on social media, on my Facebook page, on Twitter or LinkedIn. And those links are in my show notes. So, I’ll just say bye for now, and see you next time. So finally, thank you for listening to this episode of Communication Strategy That Works. Don’t forget to check my show notes for those links that I mentioned, and I’d really love it if you would subscribe to my podcast, and leave me a review. And also if you think there’s someone that could benefit from listening to this podcast, please share this within your networks. So I’ll just say bye for now, and see you next time.