Cutting through the AI hype

how I can help you to cut through the AI hype blog image

I’ve been hesitating to write this blog post on AI because you can’t do anything online without being bombarded by opinions on AI now. At first I didn’t want to add to that, but I’ve got over it.

I’ve been helping people with tech for a long time now, and that’s always been about using the appropriate tech in the most effective way at the right time. That was true when I was training health and education staff on Word and Excel in the early naughties and is still true now I’m working with small businesses on email marketing. That won’t change now AI is with us. In fact it’s even more important now that the tech (AI) is generating huge amounts of content itself.

Last summer (2024) I saw that I had to start integrating AI tools into my email marketing work with small businesses because you can save huge amounts of time and effort by using it. One thing that small businesses are short of is time and it would be crazy not to pay attention to what AI could offer. Since then I’ve been learning how to use ChatGPT in particular and by January (2025) I included the use of ChatGPT into my course Launch Your Newsletter.

Using AI in an intelligent way

I was determined to use AI intelligently, to help my clients use it as a tool to enhance what they are already doing, not as a cheap content generator or as a way to trick clients into thinking they are talking to a human when it’s actually a robot. And I’m going to carry on with this. One huge advantage small businesses have is the close relationship they have with their audience and it would be crazy to risk spoiling that.

As I was getting to grips with Chat GPT and how to apply it to email marketing and the small business world in general, the online world was changing rapidly around me. Social media marketing has been challenging for small businesses for some time, with many having built audiences only to find their reach plummeting and the platform suddenly favouring a type of content that isn’t a natural fit for them – Instagram’s shift from a photo sharing platform to primarily a short-form video platform, for example. Plus, it’s hard to stand out when the social media content that gets attention now takes so long to create. You don’t need to be a professional video content creator but it sure helps if you can afford to pay for one.

Keeping up with social media changes

In the last few months, dramatic changes announced at Meta and X have meant many people aren’t willing to tolerate Facebook, Threads and X any longer. Then the explosion of AI content together with the platforms showing far less of the family and friend content we actually joined for means there seems less and less point to even looking at these apps. I’m seeing some people switch to BlueSky, others retreat into online communities and some of my friends saying they aren’t going to bother using social media at all.

Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic and social will bounce back, but the fact is that it’s getting harder to do social media marketing in the way we could in the 2010s.

So what’s the answer? I don’t know – does anyone? – but I suspect that in an online world where many accounts are AIs we’ll increasingly value human connection and originality. This was always the best way so it’s no bad thing we’re being pushed back in that direction. But the constant change is exhausting to keep up with when you’re also spinning all the plates in a small businesss.

I’m determined to cut through the AI cr*p so you don’t have to, so stay tuned!

Why email is part of the answer

If it helps at all, I genuinely believe that email is part of the answer. For one thing you aren’t at the mercy of the latest whim of the tech billionaire in charge as you are with social media platforms. Also, all the restrictions on email marketing that have felt a bit tedious (but important) for small businesses in the past e.g. having to authenticate your email marketing platform, having to do the right thing to keep your deliverability up, GDPR rules, the promotions tab in Gmail etc are now working in our favour.

Why? Because email subscribers are reasonably well protected from content they don’t like or didn’t ask for. It takes a second to hit the ‘report spam’ link, it’s not hard for them to spot an unsolicited email in their inboxes and hit delete, and it’s easy for them to scan-read their inboxes to spot that email they’ve been looking forward to.

Treat your email subscribers well and they’ll receive, open and respond to your emails.

Compare this to social media where they open the app and find mindless clickbait or a video they have zero interest in on a platform where the moderators have all been fired by the platform owner. I know what I’m more likely to pay attention to.

I’ve been really hard on social media here. I was a huge fan and from about 2008 to 2015 and loved the connection it gave me to family, friends and new people. I really do miss it. And in many ways the good people need to stay if it’s ever to improve. (See Lauren Hug’s Digital Hope if you want to know more).

So what’s next?

So, back to AI. I don’t know what the future holds for AI in the small business world but I promise to help you navigate the flood of AI info out there, dodge the BS and to only give you information and advice that improves your business – and makes life at least a little easier, too.

If you’d like to know more, you’re welcome to sign up for my newsletter here.

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