Ashley Gross, Founder of AI Workforce Alliance, had no technical knowledge prior to 2020. That year, she committed to condensing her workweek from 40 hours to 10, and she tinkered around with generative AI tools to make it happen — and it worked!

Not only was Ashley able to reduce her working hours, but she tested her strategy at a marketing org and saw revenue soar there, too.

"Okay," you may be thinking. "That's awesome for Ashley, but I've been trying to use gen AI and it just sounds so boring and generic!"

For the final session of our Content Resurrection series, Lindsay McGuire, Associate Director of Content and Campaigns at Goldcast, invited Ashley to the stage, along with Scott Tousley, Head of Content at Clay, to talk about how to infuse your brand into AI-generated content.

The panel discussed:

• 8 AI tool recommendations
• What to look for in an AI tool when you want authentic content
• What to do before you get started with a tool
• How to ensure that AI-generated content sounds like you
• Build your brand voice with AI
• On-brand AI content frequently asked questions (FAQs)

You can view the entire Content Resurrection series on demand below!

WATCH ON DEMAND

Here are the tools Ashley and Scott use regularly to brainstorm and repurpose content:

• GPT and Anthropic: Most of us are already using ChatGPT or Claude (or another similar tool) for research, drafting and other content tasks
• Visual Electric: AI image generator built specifically for designers
• Runway: Advanced tools that allow you to create sophisticated videos
• 11ElevenLabs: Speech generator that can produce output in 32 languages
• RB2B: Identify anonymous website visitors so you can segment and market to them
• Clay: Scale your outreach efforts with data enrichment
• Intercom: An AI customer service agent that sends info back to your CRM

Reminder: AI is not a good option for creating net-new content and it always needs a human mentor, but it can certainly help you along the content creation pathway!

How many tools on the list above have you tried? Most of us are familiar with GPT and Anthropic, but not many marketers have gotten into using AI for visuals, so why not try something new and poke around the other recs? (PS: If you do, tag us in your creations so we can see!)

If you're tired of seeing rocket ship emojis and unnecessarily wordy sentences on LinkedIn, you aren't alone. It's so obvious when people use AI and don't even try to touch it up!

However, Ashley and Scott both chose the tools that they use because they make their content more authentic and on brand.

Here's what to look for as you hunt for an AI tool to complement your voice!

• Adaptability and contextual knowledge: For example, our Brand Voice tool within Content Lab offers the ability to create multiple brand voices. That way, when you're creating a social post or another asset, you can add in the context of who's writing the post, and the output can adjust accordingly.
• The ability to evaluate historical data and analyze its performance so you can continue iterating and improving over time.
• Customizability: Being able to set up a style prompt and fine-tune it until it reflects your brand will help content feel more aligned with your unique voice

The beauty of AI tools is that you can use them to scale your creative efforts. You can input examples of creative assets that you like and then play around with the outputs to make them yours. For people who don't necessarily live in that creative space all day, it gives you the ability to move faster and unlock new capabilities.

Remember too that AI isn't competing or replacing with your team — it's highlighting your team's existing skills and creativity and pulling out even more of those abilities!

If your data isn't accurate and clean, nothing you do on top of that foundation is going to work. Even the shiniest, best AI tool can't fix bad data!

You will build all of your personas, mapping, segmentation, and automations on data, so take the time to clean it up before you launch an AI tool across your company. Go into your CRM and review the lead data there to be sure it's accurate and appropriately enriched.

The other thing you'll need to get started is an idea of your POV. AI can't create a just-for-you worldview; you'll have to get a grasp on that before you start using AI tools. LLMs are built to predict and guess the next word in a sequence and, while they continue to get better, they can't create a personality or opinion for you!

Now let's talk about how to work with the AI tools you select so they become your voice twin.

Before we start, we must reiterate: Never expect AI to create new content for you. Use it to enhance your thoughts, reformat content, create templates, organize your notes, or any other number of things — but don't think it's going to ever replace you as a creative or as a marketer.

Now let's get into some tangible ways to train your AI models!

The most important thing is to feed your AI as many good examples as you can. If you're using a tool to improve your educational documentation, for instance, you need to give it the questions your support team are being asked, the current educational documentation you have, and the use case of the product. Then, the tool can analyze and tell you about existing coverage gaps or offer suggestions about what to create next.

Places to draw "food" for your AI from include:

• Website
• Newsletters
• Blogs
• LinkedIn profile and posts
• Visual assets
• Voice memos

The more good content you provide, the better. It gives AI a fuller, clearer picture of who you are and what your voice sounds like.

Ashley uses templates to train her AI tools. She has templates for each type of content: blogs, articles, PR pitches, etc. She feeds those, in addition to voice memos, transcripts, and a compilation of her own research, to the AI tool and then asks for help reformatting it all into the output she's looking for.

PSA: Voice memos, or just talking to your AI tool, can really help you sort through your thoughts and get to those golden nuggets we're mining for when creating content. It also helps AI learn the way you think, the way you speak, and your mannerisms.

It sounds a little creepy, but it works!

You might also open up your GPT, talk to it about a topic, and then ask it to summarize what you said. That can help you start to better articulate yourself around the topic or spark new ideas — and you're not asking another person to sit with you as you ramble on and try to figure out your clearest, crispest POV.

Ashley sets up automations that take in information from external sources like her LInkedIn DMs, her website chatbot, and elsewhere, and then the brand voice updates automatically to keep up with what it's taking in from elsewhere. By doing this, Ashley creates a uniform brand experience so that no matter where someone interacts with her, they get the same tone and messaging.

Ashley shared a brand voice document with the audience that provides a simple, step-by-step way to take all existing data on your brand and then evaluate it to determine what parts you actually want to retain when you're developing your voice with AI.

If you want to read over Ashley's brand voice document for yourself, click here!

You can also experiment with the Brand Voice feature in Content Lab, which allows you to drop links or excerpts of marketing assets that embody your brand. Then, Brand Voice builds out the characteristics of what makes you, you, and applies that to content going forward!

Check out how it works as Lindsay surprises Scott with his voice profile results:

As you can see, Content Lab picked up on Scott's use of short paragraphs, rhetorical questions, emojis, metaphors and analogies, and so on. It also noted that Scott's tone is enthusiastic, conversational, personal, and informal. Then, it applies all of those "rules" to the content we create for Scott!

(If you want to see Ashley's voice profile unveiling, you'll have to watch the replay. It's another good one!)

If this is your first time hearing about Content Lab, we'd love to tell you a bit more about our AI-powered video editing tool. It's totally free to use and includes both Brand Voice and our new AI Search functionality that allows you to search across your entire content library to find content. Sign up below and get started today!

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Q: How do I know AI isn't creating the same content for someone else?

A: This is a good one!

You can't ever guarantee that AI isn't giving you the same output as someone else. That's why it's key to put your personal spin on the content you get so that it showcases your thoughts and unique perspective. You can be proactive and infuse your voice into the prompt as well, so that the LLM gets a feel for you and sprinkles that throughout the outputs as well.

Q: What kind of training tools or courses do you recommend for marketers, agencies, and orgs who are just starting to use AI?

A: It depends what you're trying to accomplish. Start by thinking about the problems your business needs to solve, and get alignment from everyone at work. Form your use cases, and then vet the AI tools that were built to solve those issues.

From there, you can seek out training and build your knowledge. You just want to make sure you aren't rushing into trying the newest, coolest AI tool when in reality it might not make strategic sense for your business.

It's also worth noting that Nike has a good approach: Just do it. You learn best by using the tool and trying to figure it out. See what results you get, and keep experimenting. That might be more useful than watching training videos or reading a ton of documentation; jump in, and get your hands dirty!

Q: What are your best tips for building a good GPT?

A: The more info you feed your GPT, the better. Just be sure that the data you're inputting is accurate, timely, and up to date. (Once the GPT has it, it's got it — so don't just throw a bunch of info in there and expect it to know what you like and don't like.)

If you're building out a workflow, be sure that you know the current process in and out. The only way to mimic the human in the loop is to understand exactly what's happening. You may need to interview people involved in the process before you sit down to work on your GPT.

You should also consider ways that you can make the workflow as easy as possible for your end users; that way, no matter what someone's skill level is with AI, they can still get strong outputs. Build shortcut prompts if possible that save people time, and look for spots people might get tripped up so you can troubleshoot ways to address it.