In last month’s blog post, we focused on training your AI assistant. If you haven’t done that yet, make sure you go back, read the blog, and follow the steps. I know it’s a lot of “extra” work, but I promise it’ll be worth it. Training your AI assistant on your own business context makes sure that each subsequent response is guided by the parameters of your business – not some generic, unknown business.

Once you’ve got that done, you are ready to give your AI assistant some real work. Do you need a new email campaign for your prospects in the automotive industry? Do you want to write a social media post about a new product? Maybe you want to write a new project proposal template. Let’s get started…

There are 4 key elements you must define when asking your AI assistant to complete a task.

1. Role: What is it exactly that you want help with? Be as specific as you can. Examples:
   • Assist me in writing an email to distributors that convinces them that my product is better than my competitors and will make them look good to their customers.
   • I need help writing an article for my industry’s top trade magazine. Please start by creating an outline that structures all the documents I’ve uploaded as well as these three webpages…
   • Help me write a social media post for LinkedIn/Facebook/Instagram that will promote our new product.
2. Output: What do you want the output to look like? Include the format, word count or general length, tone, call-to-action, etc. Anything you can think of. Examples:
   • Please write a 300-word blog post on xyz subject using content from the technical document I’m uploading here. I want it to be understood by a non-technical audience, have short paragraphs and clear headings. Please write with an educational and authoritative tone.
   • I would like this marketing email to be no more than 150 words in short, easy to scan paragraphs. I would like it to sound urgent, but not demanding. Include a call to action to call us for a quote.
   • I would like the social media post to be 50 words, make it engaging and fun, but still professional.
3. Audience: To ensure that the writing is truly written for the correct intended audience, make sure your description includes exactly who you think will read it. Examples:
   • This article will be read by engineers and technicians who design and support products in the xyz They will need technical details, but it must still be readable by technical readers without an engineering degree.
   • The social media post should be geared toward entry-level employees.
   • The blog post should be written for executives looking to learn more about this topic.
4. Purpose: Why are you writing this content? Some of this may have been covered when you tell your assistant the role or output – but clarity is key. Examples:
   • The main goal is to educate our customers and prospects.
   • We want people to call us for a quote.
   • We want to explain this new feature that our customers have difficulty understanding.

This stuff isn’t rocket science – it’s just good writing. Any writer, even an AI writer, should know what they are writing, why they are writing it, and to whom they are writing it. If any of those are missing, the writing will be vague and without purpose. You may get all sorts of content you don’t want or need.

If you aren’t sure of the ‘what’ or ‘why’ behind your content – that’s when you should reach out to Web Savvy Marketers. We have decades of experience and understand the best practices to reach your customers/prospects.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of security when using AI (go back and read the last blog if you haven’t yet) …we can move onto the steps to take so you’re not creating AI slop.

First on the list is to fully define your business context. This is the basis of the instructions for your AI assistant – the training. Yes, you need to train your AI assistant, just like you would a new employee.

What is business context?

At the most basic level, this is the who, what, why, where, and how of your business. Once your AI assistant has a grasp on the full picture of your company, the content it provides will be much more targeted to your needs. It will take some time to build but is vital to your success with AI. (Remember…don’t include anything proprietary to your business.)

Who You Are

• Basic info – company name, website, location.
• Mission and core purpose – This is the ‘why’ behind your business. It helps shape the tone of any messaging and gives your AI assistant directions for strategic alignment.
• What you sell – The specific product(s) or service(s), in language a novice would understand. Details will come later in the process.
• Company stage and size – How you communicate is different if you’re a 3-person start-up or a 500-employee 5^th generation manufacturer. So, it’s important information for your AI assistant.
• Historical context – You don’t need incredible detail here, but the founding story or recent history of the organization may help provide additional context and drive a narrative.

Who You Serve

• Ideal customer profile – Industry, company size, role, and other demographics of the customers you want not just the ones you already have.
• Customer pain points – What keeps them up at night, what do they struggle with the most in your industry? It could be poor customer service, long lead times, high costs, etc.
• Their decision-making process – Do buyers find you and make quick decisions, does a CEO think through every possible outcome, do you often have multiple stakeholders that must come to a consensus? These all require different tactics.
• Common objections – What are the most frequent concerns that stop people from buying?

Competition

• Key competitors – at least the top 3.
• Key differentiators – Your actual differentiators, not aspirational ones.

Your Brand

• Brand voice and tone – Formal/professional/casual, technical/simple, trustworthy, confident, playful, fun, knowledgeable, clear, informative, serious – there are so many potential adjectives to describe how your organization wants to come across. In addition to a description, upload a sample document that highlights the voice and tone that you want your AI assistant to imitate.
• Words and phrases to use or avoid – This is so important to list so you’re not overusing stereotypical phrases like cutting-edge, best-in-class, etc. You can also mention jargon or legally sensitive words to avoid.

How to get the memory to stick

Now that you’ve written up your business context, you need to make sure your AI assistant learns it. Depending on your platform, there are a few ways to do this…I’ll just cover the basics here.

Regular chat session: You can use a regular chat session for your work, but it’s not ideal. The free version of pretty much every platform offers regular chat sessions BUT, your instructions won’t be retained from one chat session to the next. So, you will have to copy it into the chat every time you get started, saying something like…”For this session, I want you to use the following business context” and then copy-paste the information, or upload your business context as a document.

Projects: ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot all use “Projects” where you can save Context that stay in memory across every chat session in the project. All platforms allow several projects in their free version (usually 5) but they all work a little differently:

• Claude allows you to both upload documents or type in instructions for context.
• ChatGPT does not allow you to upload documents, so you must copy your business context into the instructions. If you want to upload context documents in ChatGPT (examples or anything else), you must use a CustomGPT (available in paid versions only).
• Copilot only allows you to upload documents, not give written instructions. If you want to include written instructions, you must use Copilot Studio (requires an additional license).

Need some help?

Web Savvy Marketers has decades of experience pulling together business context just like this to create the best marketing plans. We’d be happy to help you gather all the information you need to train your AI assistant – and we can also help you train your AI assistant as well. Contact us for more information.

Let’s clarify that AI can be a great thing for writing IF you use it well. However, if you are just opening your AI platform and asking it to write you a blog post/social media post/article on XYZ topic, you are definitely getting the worst version of AI content, aka AI slop. Stop it! No one wants that junk.

There are at least half a dozen steps you need to take to get the most out of your AI platform to help with your writing – whether you are writing marketing content, engineering content, sales reports, etc… You need to set up your AI process for success.

In the next few blog posts, we’ll walk you through the process of getting the most out of your AI platform. Since we’re a marketing firm, our focus will mostly be on marketing content (and all that entails), but the basics can apply to nearly any kind of writing/content.

Let’s start with the most important part…SECURITY.

AI is public

Let me say it again…AI is public. Anything you upload or write into an AI platform trains it and becomes part of its data. There are only a few exceptions to this – and unless you’ve specifically been told about it by your IT team, you’re not using one of them!

This means that before you put ANYTHING into any AI platform, make sure there is no confidential, proprietary, or regulated information (yours, your company’s, or anyone else’s). I cannot stress this enough. DO NOT put anything into an AI chat that cannot be posted on any other public platform.

Cleaning your data

Luckily, there are work-arounds so you can still safely use AI – but it requires work BEFORE you get started. Before putting anything into your AI platform, you must clean it. What does this mean? It means you remove any identifying information.

Here are some categories to consider and examples:

• Personally Identifiable Information – names, contact info, ID numbers, and any dates or specific events that might be used to identify someone
• Intellectual Property – business strategies, product designs, client lists, internal memos, and ANY other proprietary processes or data
• Financial information – Pricing lists, credit card or bank account details, Tax IDs, policy numbers
• Protected Health Information – medical records and numbers
• Technical data – passwords, network info

Some things must be removed entirely while others can be replaced with “code names” (Customer A) or anonymized in some other way.

Secure is the way

Everyone knows that the biggest threat in your email inbox is you. Clicking on the wrong link can lead to catastrophe for you and your company. AI usage is the same! The biggest immediate risk is you – uploading information that you shouldn’t.

It’s bound to happen but hopefully you’ll catch it before anything bad happens. If you lack expertise in this area, contact Web Savvy Marketers. We’ll ensure your content creation is secure.

Next blog will move onto setting up your AI for success – Defining your business context.

Earlier this year I wrote a post called Is Your Website Protected from Lawsuits? In that post I addressed the need to have an up-to-date Privacy Policy on your website. This issue has become more critical over the last few months.

Did you know there is a California law that allows you or your business to be sued if your website is in non-compliance – even if you are outside California?

The California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) law has been getting a lot of press recently, and not in a good way for small and medium-sized businesses. The law, which went into effect in 1994, was originally meant to protect residents from third party eaves dropping on private communications (at that time, phone conversations). But, over the years, it has been reinterpreted to cover all kinds of communication, including on a website.

The short story is that any website that uses third party tracking of any kind, without asking for and receiving consent from the visitor first, can be sued by a consumer for up to $5000. Third party tracking apps includes tools like Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, Chatbots, YouTube embedded videos and more. It’s safe to say that A LOT of small businesses are using these tools.

Litigious individuals are willfully using these laws to their advantage to demand companies pay up or risk an even more expensive lawsuit (remember that lawsuits cost money on top of the $5000 fine!). These aren’t empty threats; there are more and more law firms willing to take part in these lawsuits.

There are a few steps you can take to ensure you are in compliance with CIPA:

1. Look over any tools used on your website to identify what data is being collected and how.
2. Update your website privacy disclosure to match your tracking tools.
3. Use a consent banner that blocks tracking on your website until the visitor accepts your terms.

At Web Savvy, we use a third-party app to stay on top of the latest laws and interpretations of the law to ensure that your website complies with the current legal framework – without you having to stay on top of it! Our colleagues said they have recently gone from 10 calls a month, to 10 calls a day about the CIPA lawsuits. Don’t leave yourself at risk. Reach out to us today to find out how Web Savvy can help you stay protected.

It seems like whenever new technology becomes available, society embraces it before considering potential repercussions.

I’m old enough to remember the 90s, when companies installed new phone systems and laid off all their receptionists (hardly a huge savings since they weren’t very high paying jobs). After a couple of years of button-pushing frustration, companies that value customer service re-hired receptionists to answer phone calls and greet guests (and employees) at the door.

When the cell phone came along, it meant that your employees, your spouse, or your kids could be readily available every minute of the day. It also meant that school children could text each other, and later have the internet and social media, at their fingertips, every day, all day. Since then, research has repeatedly demonstrated how damaging phones are (particularly in school) for a child’s education and psychological well-being. Sadly, we are slow to solve this problem in the US. It isn’t complicated, we know the problem, cause, and solution…we just lack the will to make it happen. (Luckily, 58% of countries worldwide have made it happen – most within the last 3 years.)

The latest technology we can’t live without is AI. I’m not against AI, I just don’t think it’s the answer to everything…

From a marketing perspective, AI is great in many ways, but not when it’s used to write content. Don’t get me wrong, we love to use AI to help brainstorm ideas, flesh out an idea, or even to create an outline. The problem is that exclusively using AI can quickly degrade the quality of your content. There’s a great article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Don’t Let AI Slop Muck Up Your Company’s Processes”. I think the title says it all but take the time to read it. Very interesting!

The other issue with AI content is that it conflicts with both good SEO practices AND good GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), which defines what the latest AI models are finding and promoting. This is because much AI generated content lacks:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

These 4 are critical when it comes to SEO and GEO (or AIO, AI Optimization). Since AI generated content draws primarily from existing content, it lacks SEO rich information which is quality, relevance, and trustworthiness. There are also several logistical issues with AI content creation such as formatting and keyword placement that affect the way in which your site is found.

AI has come a long way, but it still has further to go. It may eventually get there – but until it does, be sure you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you would like to learn more about proper AI implementation for your marketing needs, contact us. We’d be happy to discuss it.

 

Data drives everything in our lives from the advertisements we watch to the music we listen to. It has become so intertwined in our daily life that we don’t think about it. However, January 28th marked International Data Privacy Day, and it might be worth investigating the last time you updated your website’s privacy and data collection policy.

There are currently twenty states with some form of data privacy law (Connecticut being one of them), and your website needs to comply with all rules and regulations. Violations can cost you not only in legal fees but also in potential fines that could set your business back and put your growth on hold.

Not sure if this applies to you? Well, if you’re using tools like Google Analytics or have a form on your contact page, your policy needs to be up to date. The challenge is how to do this. Large corporations like Disney and Pratt & Whitney have departments dedicated to compliance with state regulations and even they fail to do so at times.

Manually editing your policy on a regular basis is cumbersome. Even if you have the staff to make these updates, who is going to monitor the legal changes for each state? Fortunately, we’ve partnered with a company that can help. For an annual fee of less than $150 you can ensure your policy stays up-to-date regardless of legal changes in any state. They keep track of the law and simply send a code to add to the website when new laws take effect.

Not that your privacy policy is all set, what’s next?

If you’ve taken the time to ensure your privacy policy is up to date, be sure you go a step further and use the data you’re collecting.

• Use your analytics to help improve your website for better search engine optimization
• Make sure you monitor your contact forms and act on them. Respond to inquiries. Add them to your database. Sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how often this slips through the cracks

If you need to update the privacy policy on your website or want to better utilize the data you’re collecting don’t hesitate to contact us. We have a history of helping small to medium manufacturers in Connecticut and would welcome the opportunity to help you with any of your marketing or website-related needs.

 

At the beginning of the new year, people often set new year’s resolutions like going to the gym or eating better. But setting a goal is just the first step – you actually have to follow through with action. THAT’S where the rubber meets the road, because if you don’t want to do it, it’s probably not going to happen. I mean, we all know that running is a good way to lose weight, but if you hate running, it probably isn’t the right task for you. So, maybe you should try a team sport or swimming instead. You’re way more likely to complete a goal that you like!

Establishing goals in your business works the same way as personal goals. Your goal may be to excel across the board only to find that you’re great at some things but struggle with others. Sometimes the struggle comes, not from being bad at a task, but maybe you just don’t like it. For example, maybe you’ve got to do some cold calling to company targets, but if you don’t like doing it, you’re probably putting it off or rushing through it, even if you’re good once you’ve got someone on the phone. Instead of taking on that task, you should probably assign it to someone else who likes doing it and is good at it.

When setting business goals, it’s best to focus on the things that you enjoy doing and let others take the load off for those things you’ll spend your time avoiding. Whether it’s delegating to someone else in the company or outsourcing, having the right person for the job can save you time and money.

That’s where Web Savvy can help. We can take on lots of the things you may not like, like that cold-calling! From business development to marketing tasks to researching funding opportunities, Web Savvy can take things right off your plate.

If you are a small manufacturer in Connecticut with 50-200 employees, reach out to discover how we can help you. If you don’t meet these criteria but could use some help or guidance with your company’s goals, you can still reach out. We’re sure we know someone who can assist you!

For more information on goals and more specifically the importance of setting goals that work for you, check out I Stopped Setting Personal Goals by Ajay Prakash.