I recently had a chat with a young lady working in a startup. She wanted to know how she could use ChatGPT or other Gen AI apps to help her with marketing, among the many other startup stuff she is saddled with.
She asked, “How can I get ChatGPT to help with our social media posts and reach more customers? We’ve been creating posts but there seems to be no traction.”
I said, “Hmm, you’re doing what many other companies do. Put up posts on social media, spend money promoting the posts, and then wonder why people aren’t reading. Now, who taught you that this is the right way to do social media marketing?”
Her eyes widened, and she said, “I thought this is what everyone did.”
I said, “Precisely, but who did ‘everyone’ learn this from?”
I shared with her another approach: Get off your butt, go talk to the customers, get them to check out your social page, create relevant content that keeps them coming back, and encourage them to add their friends because you can provide real value to them.
One thing I forgot to tell her – She’s probably better off doing an email newsletter. These days, social media algorithms will bury your organic content unless they go viral or you pay big money to promote them. I’ve noticed that my regular LinkedIn posts often stop getting views after several hours.
Now, I did ask ChatGPT what to do in her situation, and it gave me a generic answer that every digital marketing agency repeats ad nauseam: “Determine your target market, write quality content, post frequently, and pay to promote your posts.”
The advice isn’t wrong, but it’s basic hygiene for digital marketing. The advice will not solve the frustrating problems that many startups, SMEs, or big companies face:
- How do you get people to notice you in the first place?
- What if you don’t have a big marketing budget?
- How do we deal with consumers who block digital ads, swipe past promoted posts and generally don’t give a damn about most things on social media?
But the biggest problem to deal with is ourselves. We need to ask:
- Why are we doing a particular action?
- Who taught us that this is the right way?
- Why do we keep doing the same thing when it doesn’t work?
The late Jim Rohn wrote in his book 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness (what a terrible title, but the book is gold):
When I met Mr. Shoaff I’d been working for six years.
Shortly after we met he asked me, “Jim, how long have you been working now?” I told him.
“How are you doing?” he inquired further.
Not very well,” I said, a bit annoyed at having to admit this.
“Then I suggest you not do that anymore,” he replied. “Six years is long enough to operate the wrong plan.”
Then he asked, “How much money have you saved in the past six years?”
“None,” I admitted sheepishly.
Raising his eyebrows, he said, “Who sold you on that plan?”
What a fantastic question. Where did I get this disastrous plan?
Hey, everyone has bought someone’s plan.
The question is, whose?
Selected Writings
So you’re not happy about Gen AI stealing artwork…
Live on air with Susan Ng: Excessive screen time for kids
My teaching philosophy on Gen AI
How I suddenly stopped eating ultra-processed food, thanks to Michael Pollan.
This is probably my last newsletter using the LinkedIn platform
I’m probably going to move this newsletter to Substack as the LinkedIn platform makes it so hard to format content and they’ve been truncating the newsletters when you open up your email. That’s why I haven’t written here for two months.
Stay tuned on how the move will happen!
(See, I’m practising what I preach. I am NOT buying LinkedIn’s story on how newsletters should work.)