This is a transcript for episode 88 of the Let’s Get Data-Driven podcast.
I’m Lanie Lamarre and I like to bring up what the cool kids are talking about… and right now, OpenAI and ChatGPT are what ALL the cool kids are talking about.
But we’re cool kids, too, boss, and that’s why today, we’re talking about it.
OK, so ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer and it was launched in November 2022 to build an interactive model on OpenAI, an artificial intellgience research laboratory. Basically, you’re able to ask ChatGPT anything you want and it’ll answer and engage with you, based on what you’re looking for.
So how is this different from using a search engine like Google? Instead of showing you a bunch of options that may match what you’re looking for, ChatGPT will straight-up answer you in a conversational manner. This means that it will generate answers for you in the same way that you and I would speak to or write to each other, and the benefits of this extend far beyond simple search capacity.
Which brings us to what using ChatGPT means for you as an online business owner: it means your content creation process just became a whole lot easier.
ChatGPT can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to your content creation for everything from generating better headlines, writing copy to split-test your ads, inspiring new content ideas and it can even write your social media captions and image text for you. The more information you’re able to feed into the platform and the more specific your line of questioning is, the better ChatGPT is able to generate results that are of use to your and your audience.
And if you know how to provide ChatGPT with actual data, the platform is able to generate the type of results that will flat-out tell you how to make your next data-driven decision. You know I love use cases and examples so let’s roll one out:
Choose a platform where you have content that has a title. We’re talking about content like videos or blog posts or podcast episodes. Now, figure out what best reports on the performance for these. For instance, your YouTube analytics would report on your video views, your podcast hosting platform would report on your episode download numbers and you could use Google Search Console to see how your blog posts are being found.
You’re going to download your performance report from that platform into a .csv file and input those results into ChatGPT. If you need help with this, I walk you through the process of doing this as part of the current Featured Workshop in the Membership To Get Data-Driven and you’ll find a link in the shownotes to join now. What’s great about just feeding this information into ChatGPT is that it takes all the guesswork out of figuring out what’s working well for you and what could potential work even better than you may have thought to do on your own. Furthermore, if you probe and prod the platform with the “right” questions, it can actually produce most of your content strategy for you.
I love examples so let’s use one that I will also feature on my Instagram over @omgrowth, if you’re more of a visual person who wants to follow along.
Let’s say I download a YouTube performance report from my channel and I share that data with ChatGPT. It’ll comment on what it’s seeing in this report, and then it’s all about the questions I ask. I’d start with something like, “Based on this table, give me 10 new topics I can create videos for that would perform well for me.”
Suddenly, you have 10 new content ideas you don’t have to figure out. In fact, you can push it further and tell ChatGPT to “break point 4 down into 8 points that I can use in an Instagram carousel post”. You can also ask it to “elaborate on point 4 in the form of an Instagram reels script and at the end, include a call-to-action to use the link in the bio” or you can call on ChatGPT to “provide me with 3 Instagram captions for point 4.”
I’ve said this before and this is an opportunity to say it again but creative bosses are the best at getting data-driven because they ask the most interesting questions. When it comes to using ChatGPT to make data-driven decisions about content generation, the more creative you are with its uses and your line of questioning, the more work it can do for you to deliver and show up better for your audience.
Is this a perfect solution? Absolutely not. ChatGPT isn’t without its flaws, one of which is sourcing: you don’t get to know where its results are sourced from and it will be up to you to follow up on the accuracy and validity of what it’s telling you. For instance, I was playing with ChatGPT to see how it interpreted various privacy regulations and the results weren’t ideal. The platform is totally upfront about this, though, and it tells you as soon as you login that it may generate incorrect information, it may be biased and even harmful in its advice, and that it’s limited in its knowledge of anything occurring after 2021.
Furthermore, my experience has been that it’s an excellent starting point for generating content ideas but that’s how it should be treated at this point: as a starting point. It can do 80% of the work for you but you still have to fill in the extra 20% with your own thoughts, ideas, voice and input. You still have to do research, you still have to customize, and you’ll notice as you use it more, that it does have its limitations with what it can do with specific keywords and it can generate repetitive results; it’s up to your creative brain to shake up the results it provides for you to make it stand out and meet your audience where your experience tells you they are.
But the more you use ChatGPT, the more uses you find for it. We looked at using your video viewing results to generate social media content, but you can use ChatGPT to write your ad copy or your entire series of launch emails or help you generate better headlines… all you have to do is ask, and the better you are at asking, the better your results will be.
However – and this is the part where I buzzkill this entire conversation – you have a responsibility with your use of this and of any platform you use. Understand what you are agreeing to and you know what? I went straight to the horse’s mouth for this answer and asked ChatGPT “what are the privacy implications of using ChatGPT?”. It said:
“Using ChatGPT can have privacy implications, as the model is trained on a large amount of text data from the internet, which may contain personal information. When you use ChatGPT, you are sharing the inputs you provide with OpenAI, which could be stored and used for various purposes, including research and development.
It is important to be mindful of the information you share with ChatGPT, and to avoid providing sensitive or personal information that you would not want to be seen or used by others. Additionally, as with any technology, there is always a risk that information you share could be intercepted or misused by unauthorized third parties.
Overall, it’s advisable to be cautious and thoughtful when using ChatGPT, and to carefully review the privacy policy of OpenAI to understand their data collection and usage practices.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself… which is kind of ChatGPT’s jam anyway, right?
We talk about this over in the Membership To Get Data-Driven in the section dedicated to creating your own databases of information, but as a responsible marketer, you always want to take a privacy-first approach to how you’re handling data and what you decide to share with ChatGPT is no different. You never want to input data like names, emails addresses or IP addresses into ANY platform unless you have explicit consent from the person whose name, email or IP address to share their information with that specific platform. This means if you’re trying to hone in on trends among the inidividuals on your email list or who bought your offer, it’s a bad idea – and it’s potentially illegal, depending on that person’s location – for you use platforms like ChatGPT to help you see and determine those trends.
As always, pay attention and act responsibly with how you’re using the data you have access to. Rely more on the use of aggregated data sources – meaning, places where the information is gathered and summarized at a high-level where individuals aren’t identifiable – like Google Search Console or YouTube, which will focus more on trends and patterns related to topics rather than individual people.
I also encourage you to apply the Rule of 7 with your use of ChatGPT and flex your bossy mind muscles by challenging yourself to ask 7 questions of every sessions you run. For instance, let’s stick with the YouTube analytics we input. While it may be challenging to find 7 ways you can remix that data at first, remember that creativity begets creativity and the more questions you ask, the more questions you’ll find that you have. Set some time aside to figure out how your past performance can not only inform your content strategy, but can actually help you develop and improve how you’re showing up.
Again, if you’re looking for inspiration or want to see how you can input different data sets into ChatGPT, including working around some of the challenges with importing Instagram data, for example, we’re covering that in the Featured Workshop in the Membership To Get Data-Driven and I would be tickled pink to welcome you on board, and we will talk soon – baiiiieeee!