Stephanie Diamond

Video / Updated 11-13-2024

When you’re new to crafting AI prompts, you can easily make mistakes. Using AI tools the right way makes you more productive and efficient. But if you aren’t careful, you may develop bad habits when you’re still learning. We clue you in to 10 mistakes you should avoid from the start in this video and article. Not Spending Enough Time Crafting and Testing Prompts One common mistake when using AI tools is not putting in the effort to carefully craft your prompts. You may be tempted — very tempted — to quickly type out a prompt and get a response back from the AI, but hurried prompts usually produce mediocre results. Taking the time to compose your prompt using clear language will increase your chances of getting the response you want. A poor response spells the need for you to evaluate the prompt to see where you can clarify or improve it. It’s an iterative process, so don’t be surprised if you have to refine your prompt several times. Like any skill, learning to design effective prompts takes practice and patience. The key is to resist the urge to take shortcuts. Make sure to put in the work needed to guide the AI to a great response. Assuming the AI Understands Context or Subtext It’s easy to overestimate the capabilities of AI tools and assume they understand the meaning of language the way humans do. Current AI tools take things literally. They don’t actually understand the context of a conversation. An AI assistant may be trained to identify patterns and connections and is aware of these things as concepts (like norms, emotions, or sarcasm), all of which rely on context, but it struggles to identify them reliably. Humans can read between the lines and understand meaning beyond what’s actually written. An AI interprets instructions and prompts in a very literal sense — it doesn’t understand the meaning behind them. You can’t assume an AI understands concepts it hasn’t been trained for. Asking Overly Broad or Vague Questions When interacting with an AI, avoid overly broad or vague questions. The AI works best when you give it clear, specific prompts. Providing prompts like “Tell me about human history” or “Explain consciousness” is like asking the AI to search the entire internet. The response will probably be unfocused. The AI has no sense of what information is relevant or important so you need to refocus and try again. Good prompts are more direct. You can start with a prompt such as “Summarize this research paper in two paragraphs” or “Write a 500-word article on summer plants that require shade.” The prompt should give the AI boundaries and context to shape its response. Going from broad to increasingly narrow questions also helps. You can start generally asking about a topic and then follow up with focused requests on the specific details. Providing concrete examples guides the AI. The key is to give the AI precise prompts centered directly on the information you want instead of typing a request with a vague, borderless question. Sharp, specific questioning produces the best AI results. Not Checking Outputs for Errors and Biases A common mistake when using AI apps is taking the results at face value without double-checking them. AI systems may reflect bias, or generate text that seems right but has errors. Just because the content came from an AI doesn’t mean it’s necessarily accurate. Reviewing AI responses rather than blindly trusting the technology is critical. Look for instances of bias where specific demographics are negatively characterized or tropes (clichés) are reinforced. Always check facts and figures against other sources. Look for logic that indicates the AI was “confused.” Providing feedback when the AI makes a mistake can further enhance its training. The key is to approach responses skeptically instead of assuming that the AI always generates perfect results. As with any human team member, reviewing their work is essential before using it. Careful oversight of AI tools mitigates risks. Using Offensive, Unethical, or Dangerous Prompts A primary concern when working with AI is that the apps can inadvertently amplify harmful biases if users write offensive, unethical, or dangerous prompts. The AI will generate text for any input, but the response may be that you’re asking for a harmful response and it will not comply. Prompting an AI with inappropriate language or potential discrimination may reinforce biases from the data the model was trained on. If users are cautious when formulating prompts, that can help steer the technology toward more thoughtful responses. AI can be subject to the whims of bad actors. Expecting Too Much Originality or Creativity from the AI One common mistake when using AI apps is expecting too much original thought or creativity. AI tools can generate unique mixes of text, imagery, and other media, but there are limits. As of this writing, AI apps are only capable of remixing existing information and patterns into new combinations. They can’t really create responses that break new ground. An AI has no natural creative flair like human artists or thinkers. Its training data consists only of past and present works. So, although an AI can generate new work, expecting a “masterpiece” is unrealistic. Copying Generated Content Verbatim A big mistake users make when first using AI tools is to take the text and use it verbatim, without any edits or revisions. AI can often produce text that appears to be well written, but the output is more likely to be a bit rough and require a good edit. Mindlessly copying the unedited output can result in unclear and generic work. (Also, plagiarizing or passing the writing off as your own is unethical.) A best practice is to use the suggestions as a starting point that you build upon with your own words and edits to polish the final product. Keep the strong parts and make it into something original. The key is that the AI app should support your work, not replace it. With the right editing and polishing, you can produce something you’ll be proud of. Providing Too Few Examples and Use Cases When you’re training an AI app to handle a new task, a common mistake is to provide too few examples of inputs. Humans can usually extrapolate from a few samples, but AI apps can’t. An AI must be shown examples to grasp the full scope of the case. You need to feed the AI varied use cases to help it generalize effectively. Similarly, limiting prompts to just a couple of instances produces equally poor results because the AI has little indication of the boundaries of the task. Providing diverse examples helps the AI form an understanding about how to respond. Having patience and supplying many examples lets the AI respond appropriately. Not Customizing Prompts for Different Use Cases One common mistake when working with AI tools is attempting to use the same generic prompt to handle all your use cases. Creating a one-size-fits-all prompt is easier, but it will deliver disappointing results. Each use case and application has its own unique goals and information that need to be conveyed, as discussed throughout this book. For example, a prompt for a creative nonfiction story should be designed differently than a prompt for a medical article. An inventory of prompts designed for various use cases allows the AI to adapt quickly to different needs. The key is customization. Building a library of specialized prompts is an investment that pays dividends. Becoming Overly Reliant on AI Tasks Better Suited for Humans Almost everyone is excited about using AI tools to make their job easier. But it’s important to avoid becoming too dependent on them. AI is great for tasks like automation and personalization, but applying ethics and conveying empathy are still human strengths.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-30-2024

As AI tools grow more complex, effectively communicating with them is becoming a necessary skill for most professions. Learning the art of crafting effective prompts unlocks creativity and enhances decision-making abilities. Whether you’re a developer building the latest AI application, a marketer leveraging chatbots, or a writer automating content creation, the skill of writing AI prompts is indispensable. Poorly worded prompts will never yield the results you’re looking for. The good news is, you can practice and improve your prompting skills and find opportunities to advance in your career.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-23-2024

Lots of moving parts make up a successful content marketing strategy. Make the effort to complete all the content worksheets, and you will be on your way. This cheat sheet provides some tips for making your content marketing efforts successful.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 05-05-2023

Creating and operating a nonprofit organization can be a gratifying and worthwhile endeavor. Success depends on developing a good idea that meets a real need, testing that idea, planning (and then planning some more), and inspiring others. Though the work is demanding, it’s also deeply rewarding. Here, we include helpful information to help you raise money when you’re just starting out and apply for e-grants.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 12-12-2022

Digital marketing is continually evolving. New technologies enhance your ability to collect information about your customers and how they view you. This cheat sheet provides you with advice you can immediately put into practice to engage your customers and track their opinions of you.

Article / Updated 07-18-2022

After you’ve established your content marketing mission statement, you can focus on your company goals. Here is a brief look at how to formulate goals. Uncovering your content marketing goals When looking at formulating your own goals, it can be useful to see what other marketers set as their top goals for B2B content marketing. According to the “2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends — North America” report by the Content Marketing Institute/Marketing Profs, (see the following figure), the top organizational goals for B2B content marketing are the following: Brand awareness: 84 percent Lead generation: 83 percent Engagement: 81 percent Sales: 75 percent Lead nurturing: 74 percent Customer Retention/Loyalty: 69 percent Customer Evangelism: 57 percent Upsell/Cross-sell: 52 percent 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America Survey. The report indicates that 2015 was the fifth year that brand awareness came in at the top spot and that customer evangelism shows up on the list. Picking KPIs After you establish your goals, you need to develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are the measures you choose to help you determine whether you’re reaching your business goals. You need them to keep your strategy on track. If you don’t measure yourself against your business goals, you won’t know whether your content marketing strategy is working and supporting your larger business goals. To help you think about how to craft your KPIs in relation to your marketing goals, check out the table. You can apply the table to your marketing plan as well. List your goals and then choose some metrics. Then refer back to this list when you check your progress. Choosing KPIs CMI/Marketing Profs B2B Top Goals Suggested Metrics Increase brand awareness Social media shares, social media likes, email forwards, referral links Lead generation Lead nurturing Blog signups, blog comments, conversion rate, form completions Increase engagement Comments, page depth (how many pages consumed), downloads, page views, back links, time on site, click through rate Grow sales revenue by X percent Revenue influenced by content (which content was consumed before sale), offline sales Improve customer retention/loyalty Bounce rate, followers, retention rate Encourage customer evangelism Social media shares, comments, follower count, word of mouth Increase upsells/cross-sells Measure conversions in shopping cart and on landing pages, number of conversions

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-08-2022

Dragon Professional Individual puts you in control of your computer with the sound of your voice. You can dictate messages, browse the Web, and control popular applications. Here's the straight scoop to take charge of your system with Dragon Professional Individual.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-15-2022

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, present unique marketing opportunities. To make the most of social media marketing, you should begin by exploring the online social media sites and see how things are done. Next, you need to zero in on your niche and target your market. After you've done that, you will be able to run a successful online campaign and measure the results.

Article / Updated 08-05-2020

You can use Facebook Messenger chatbots to help you stay in touch with your customers. You may have heard the term chatbot and wondered what it is. A chatbot is a piece of interactive software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to respond to chat in a conversational way. If you have created a chatbot for your Facebook Page, your customers will be able to type questions into a chat window and receive preprepared content that answers their questions. The content can include text, video, links, and images. One good example of a chatbot used to educate and entertain a company's users appears on the Food Network Facebook Page. If you click the Send Message button, you see preset text saying that a company representative will instantly respond. It asks you to click the Get Started button. When you click that button, you are asked whether you want fun food facts sent to you; you can also ask for a recipe. This entire exchange is done by the chatbot. Another great example is the chatbot used by 1-800 Flowers. Its chatbot lets customers order right from the Messenger app on their Facebook Page. You can see how this encourages people to make a simple order. Facebook has built-in settings that you can use to provide two-way customer service to your users. There are two Settings links that you need use to configure Messenger: Messenger Platform: Select this radio button to go to the page where you set up how your chatbot will look. Subscribed Apps: The Apps that are connected to your Page will be automatically displayed here. Link Your App to Your Page: You need to enter an Apple ID to connect native apps. Allowlisted Domains: These are third-party domains that you say can be used with Messenger. Discover Settings — Discover Visibility: This setting allows your bot to be searched along with other bots. The default is Show. Unless you have a reason to make your bot harder to find, leave the default setting. Consult your webmaster or developer to ensure that your Messenger app performs correctly. Messaging: This section lets you set up how people can message your business Page and what messages they will receive in return. To set up Messaging, go to Settings at the top of your Facebook Page and follow these steps: Click the Messaging link. Go to General Settings and click Yes or No to the following choices: Use the Return Key to Send Messages: The default is Yes. Leave the default choice if you're used to hitting the Return key after typing a line and want to do this when using the chatbot. Prompt Visitors to Send Messages: The default is No. If you click Yes, Page visitors will see indications that you are responsive to their messages. Go to Response Assistant and click Yes or No to the five choices you see. Send Instant Replies to Anyone Who Messages Your Page: The default is No. If you click Yes, you see a prewritten message that says, “Thanks for messaging us. We try to be as responsive as possible. We’ll get back to you soon.” You can choose to edit this message by clicking the Change button.When you click the Change button, a window pops open, showing you how your message will look on a mobile device. You can refine the message and click the Add Personalization link, which gives you the option to insert the person’s first name, last name, or full name, as well as your Facebook URL into your reply. When you're done editing, click the Save button. (Optional) Personalize the name for each of the following settings.The name is pulled from the person’s profile. Displaying people's real names may make them feel more welcome. Decide what you think your target audience would prefer: Stay Responsive When You Can’t Get to Your Computer or Phone: The default is No. If you click Yes, you see a message that says, “Hi [customer name], thanks for your message. We are not here right now, but we’ll get back to you soon!” You can choose to edit this message by clicking the Change button. If you do, a window pops open, showing you how your message will look on a mobile device. You also see a Schedule link that lets you set up the days and times on which the message will show when you are Away or Available. When you're done editing, click the Save button. Show a Messenger Greeting: The default is No. If you click Yes, you see a message that says, “Hi [customer name]! Thanks for getting in touch with us on Messenger. Please send us any questions you may have.” You can choose to edit this message by clicking the Change button. If you click Change, a window pops open, showing you how your message will look on a mobile device. The greeting message is displayed and then the visitor’s question appears. When you're done editing, click the Save button. Pre-Appointment Reminders: The default is No. If you click Yes, you will see a message that says, “We’re looking forward to your next appointment.” You can choose to edit this message by clicking the Change button. If you do, a window pops open, showing you how your message will look on a mobile device. When you're done editing, click the Save button. Send Follow Up to Anyone Who Books an Appointment: The default is No. If you click Yes, you see a message that says, “Hi [customer name]! It’s been a while since we last saw you. We’d love to have you back!” You can choose to edit this message by clicking the Change button. If you do, a window pops open, showing you how your message will look on a mobile device. If you click the Schedule link, you can choose the number of times and the hour, day, week, month, or year that the follow-up message is shown after the previous appointment is booked. For example, if you're a dentist, you may choose to have the message pop up 3–4 months after a person's last appointment. When you're done editing, click the Save button.

Article / Updated 03-18-2020

Reddit is a community discussion and rating platform where participants vote content up and down. It was founded by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman in 2005. It calls itself the “front page of the internet” and lives up to that billing; Alexa ranks it as the sixth most visited site in the U.S. You can submit blog posts, images, audio, and original content. In fact, there is a separate link for original content on the front page. According to Statista in 2017, the Reddit audience skews male (sixty-nine percent), and the majority were in the 18–29 age range (fifty-eight percent). If this is your audience, you need to look into what’s being shared here. Marketing on Reddit Should your company consider joining Reddit to become one of its “Redditors”? That depends on how much you want to spend time digging deeper and connecting with your niche audience. It’s likely that there’s an audience online that is discussing your topic. According to Statista, Reddit has: Five hundred and forty-two million monthly visitors; two hundred thirty-four million unique users) as of March 2019 Over one hundred and thirty-eight thousand active communities Almost 1.6 billion visits to their online forum (from February 2018 to April 2019) Reddit has gotten the interest of brands because it has a mass audience and marketers are eager to grab their attention. But, not surprisingly, marketing behavior is virtually shunned on Reddit. Therefore, figuring out the best way to participate as a company takes time and effort. Determine whether you have the time to spend learning the rules and determine the best way to join the conversation. You don’t want to associate your company with inappropriate content and be banned. To avoid being banned from Reddit, think about the following: You first goal is to understand the lay of the land. You want to find subreddits (threads) hat have content related to your business topic and determine how you want to participate in discussions. Think about adding value by doing things like answering questions. If you act like a marketer who only talks about their products, you won’t be welcome. You want to develop a community and serve them well. See how content is presented. Make sure not to use cheesy headlines or clickbait. The administrators can ban you. Setting up on Reddit To join Reddit, you have to register and verify your account. Here are a few important things to note: Username: You can’t change your username after you pick one, so give careful thought to your choice ahead of time. Rules: After your account is verified, you receive a welcome letter from Reddit that outlines acceptable behavior (reddiquette). Subscriptions: Reddit automatically subscribes you to fifty of the most popular subreddits when you join. Communities on Reddit are called subreddits. You can keep or delete them as you choose. All subreddits names start this way: reddit.com/r/ name. Premium: You can subscribe to a premium version of Reddit for $5.99 a month. This gives you an ad-free version, access to the r/lounge community, and seven hundred coins to spend each month. Coins are virtual tokens that can be used to show the writer of the content that their contribution is exemplary. Account: To view your account as others see it, go to your account. Search: To search subreddits type a term related to your business. To keep up on the latest communities, you can find new subreddits as they are created. Knowing Reddit lingo When you join any community, it’s helpful to know the special terms used by its members. As a marketer, here are two you should know: Karma points: Karma points are earned by upvotes to your posts or comments. This is your currency. Other users can judge you by this, so pay attention to this metric. Shadow ban: If you violate the rules you may be shadow banned by the administrators. This means that no one else can see your account although you think your account looks fine. Analyzing Reddit content One of the reasons for participating on Reddit is to see the kinds of things others in your communities are writing about and how they’re using it. Here are two free/paid tools you can use to analyze subreddits users and determine how well your content is performing: Snoopsnoo is a free tool that lets you look at other member profiles to see how they’re using Reddit. You can see such things as how long they have been on the site, how long it’s been between postings, and their karma scores. TrackReddit is a tracking tool that lets you set up alerts for topics (two are free). For example, you can monitor what’s being said on Reddit about a brand name or person.