#194: AI Is Your Course Best Friend

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you going and get you excited to help you build momentum and get your course done and build up the online based business of your dreams. And it’s on the minds of every marketer right now, and it’s air which is completely disrupted the industry.

And I’ve been meaning to talk about air for a long, long time on this podcast. And I just didn’t feel right about it until I had enough Interactions with it, enough experience with it to really report back. And I remember when I used to help Amy Porterfield with her podcast back in the day, and I really had to respect Ames because if we wanted her to speak on a certain topic, if she didn’t have the experience behind it and really have it in her body, she didn’t want to speak to it, or she’d say, Let’s bring on a guest who’s an expert in that topic.

And I feel the same way. I don’t want to just do a little bit of research. Come on here and talk about a topic I really want to own it and be an expert in something before I present a certain topic or information or details to you. So I wanted to get that experience first and I’ve been using Chat GB t with a ton of copy and a lot of different projects and courses and I finally feel ready to really share that knowledge with you.

And by the way, I consult for an agency and the owner has just been absolutely brilliant about pushing us to innovate and challenging us to use AI in different ways. So because of that I’ve been able to use it more than ever. So in this episode, I want to break down three ways to use AI effectively based on my experience as a writer and a course consultant and a project manager.

I wear many hats. I’m known as a course consultant and a digital strategist, but I got my start as a writer a long, long time ago, and I still consider myself a copywriter. And so we’re going to do three ways to use AI effectively. And then the second part of this episode, we’ll talk about three areas where I think you shouldn’t rely exclusively on AI because a personal touch still matters.

Now, first and foremost, let’s get this out of the way. I think AI is a tremendous tool in terms of what we can do as creators, as course creators, as program creators. It can make us that much more efficient and leave us time and leverage us for the areas that really matter so we can live in our zones of genius.

And that’s why I’ve chosen to embrace AI and really fall in love with it. And I hope you can fall in love with it too, because I think sometimes with technology, is this going to hurt or help us? And I think A.I. being done the right way is awesome for us as creators. As always, this episode is brought to you by my done for you process.

We use a little bit of AI with our done for you. However, it is completely custom. There’s no templates. There’s nothing that we swipe from. We completely start from scratch and personalize your course and you’re marketing in a really high touch way. So if you’re interested in doing Done for you and working with us in this next quarter, go to a course creation bootcamp slash course, check it out and you can set up a call to learn more.

All right, let’s dig in. Three ways to use A.I. effectively. And number one is thought starters. Now, one of the biggest hurdles in content creation is sometimes just getting started. And A.I. is an incredible tool for brainstorming. For example, I recently used Chat Liberty to just brainstorm a puppy course How to get your puppy to Walk Better on a Leash.

I was using this as an example when I was teaching a class because churro are one year old. Puppy is an absolute frickin nightmare walking right now. And the amount of content that came out of Djibouti was incredible. All these different ways to tire them out, to use less energy before the walk, or how to improve our walking.

All the detail was amazing. I couldn’t even believe it. Now, if my expertise was a dog walker and I had our dog trainer here, she could have probably spouted that out in a minute. But for me, I don’t really know a lot about dogs and I sure as heck don’t know a lot about walking dogs. I thought it was awesome to get all that knowledge literally in just a few seconds.

So if I’m thinking of a podcast and maybe I’m doing a podcast about email marketing and I want some statistics to have a hook or to just bring home why email marketing so important or some trends that I’m seeing. I could just ask AI to give me some recent trends, give me some statistics

So I love it for thought starters to get me going, or if I’m thinking about a certain topic and I’m not sure where to start. I’ll just put in like, where do I get started with X topic and it gives me thought starters, right? To get me going and get me thinking about something I might not think about.

And I sometimes can be short sighted. Sometimes I’m on a path and I don’t see the entire picture. Gives me those details that I wouldn’t normally see. So that’s number one. I’ll use it for thought starters. So I also love to use it for thought starters for campaigns. I mentioned email marketing podcast, so that’s me doing a script, but I also love thought starters for writing emails.

Give me some ideas around hooks. Like again, with the statistics or questions I can ask, or maybe a historic detail that I can then use to engage my audience from the get go. So the second way that I love using AI is to expand on my writing. So some of you are great writers and you just let it flow.

Maybe you need an editor to cut what you have to say while I’m the exact opposite. I write short, maybe too short. I like to keep it tight and I get right to the point like I do on this podcast. This podcast usually is no more than 15 minutes when I’m talking because there’s no fluff. I get right to the point and then I’m out.

Now, good or bad, I was reading on threads that some people were saying I never listened to 50 minute podcast because then they can’t get a good ride home on it or a good walk. But that’s who I am. I get to the point. I keep it short. That’s how I live life. So that’s how I write to the point where it’s too short and I’m not explaining.

I’m not giving it life in shape. You should see these podcast scripts before Robin, my project manager, get to them. They’re pretty brief and then she’ll challenge me. Hey, what do you mean by that? Can you give me an example? I can give some richness to this, can give it some shape, which is really helpful. Sometimes it’s a little fluffy, but sometimes it’s what people need and I struggle with that.

So now I use Charity Beauty to help me with scripts. So let me give you an idea. This is a script for a sizzle reel I did for a client. Could have been a script for a course very easily. And I plugged in the main eight points that I wanted to cover as part of this sizzle. Hey, I want to create a video around these eight benefits, and I really worked on these benefits.

I had several people check in on them, wordsmith them. Did they come alive? Like I really spent time with them. So I had eight awesome prompts and I set it into I and I said, Now give me a script. That’s this many words, because those eight prompts were pretty short and turned out to be a pretty darn good script.

It was probably 80% there because I had put in the work and had great prompts. It added words, it added volume that I wouldn’t have done otherwise because I’m limited that way. All right. The third way that I love to use AI is variation. So again, this idea that I’m starting with some great material, I’ll write ads, for example, I’ll write one great ad for Meta, so I’ll write an ad for Instagram or Facebook all perfected in my mind like, Dang, this is good.

I’ll get it to a place where I’m happy. Then I’ll ask it to write the version for LinkedIn or write a version for Google. If it’s a video, I could ask it to give me a description for YouTube. So it’s this quote resizing or reformatting aspect of making the copy work for different environments and I think it’s been amazing.

I haven’t either had to think about that. And if there’s one other area and I give total credit to my copywriter friend Megan O’Leary, all link to her episodes in the show notes and yes, we’re doing the sales copywriting class, I couldn’t be more excited. The waitlist is up If you want to be one of the first to know when it opens up.

I’ll link to that in the show notes. So Megan says that she uses I like a junior copywriter and actually I’m going to have Megan on in the next episode and she can talk more about this. She says it never gets exhausted. She’ll start with a headline and say, Hey, give me five variations. Okay, Now give me a couple that are only four words.

She’ll maybe put an article in there and say, give me a 100 word version of this. And it never gets tired. When you’re asking for these different variations, you’ll hear O’Leary talk about more about that next week. But I love this idea of just asking AI to come up with varieties for you, and you don’t have to do that heavy thinking.

All right. Here are three areas where I think I fall short and this is what I spit out for me because I asked it Where should I not be using air? And of course, the first one is sharing stories and personal examples and adding that richness. I’ve had this happen to me several times now with I mixing up details about my stories.

I was putting out a story. This was a podcast episode script I was working on, and I had details of a story and then they made up details that weren’t true.

They had filled in the gaps, but the gaps were wrong. The fill in were wrong. So sometimes if I try to fill in the gaps of a story and it comes out incorrect and I’ll jumble it up, it’s never going to expand a story in the way that you really want it or the way the story unraveled. Even if I put a prompt, it might jump to some conclusions.

It just didn’t happen. So you’re going to share your original stories. You’re going to use your examples that are beauty and richness to your content and to your courses. I won’t ever match that. Number two, and this goes hand in hand with stories, is delivering the emotion. I just worked on an email campaign for a client and what the writer did was stored up all this expert’s content.

They loaded up all the content into the air generator, gave it prompts to spit out an email campaign, and the emails were fine, but pretty much completely devoid of emotion. You could tell it was spitting out something that had already been done and just giving me kind of word for word. There was no laughter, tears or goose bumps.

None of that was part of it because it was just spinning back what I already had. And when you when you do that, when you give content back like that, but you don’t think about the flow, you don’t think about how you’re building up the emotion, it tends to fall flat. And that’s exactly what happened with this email campaign.

So we ask, as humans, how is this making me feel right now? Every time you read a piece of copy, every time you see a commercial, every time you look at any piece of art, you’re asking, How does this make me feel? Am I having a connection with this course? Am I having a connection with this video, with this expert?

So that’s because we bring humanity to it. So you could use AI for a lot of other things, including critiquing landing pages. And I love that part of AI as well. But you’ve got to add that emotion back in and by the way, I did mention critiquing landing pages and see you put a prompt into AI. They’ll tell you the photos are okay, but they’re not going to be able to tell me what’s really going to move me.

You have to do that for yourself. You have to know that for yourself. A I will flag. Hey, you can improve this image or you can improve this layout, but it will never let you know really what’s necessary to move the needle in terms of your students emotion. Because we’ve heard this before. Tony Robbins always used to talk about it.

We buy based on emotion, right? We don’t buy based on reason. When we buy because of the way that we think a product, a course is going to make me feel. I think this LinkedIn course is going to make me feel like I’m a true expert in this. I feel like this new born class is going to help me be a better mom.

And deep down inside, I want to there’s nothing more that I want than to be a better mom. So we buy an emotion. We need to drive all of our marketing with emotion. So the third area that I won’t compete with us is innovation and bringing that special spirit to our work. A I is not going to know a story about me running a5k and going up a slight incline and kind of thinking I’m not going to be able to make it, but then finding momentum going down the hill.

And then I see my 11 year old son who’s ready to high five me, and I think I could run another 3 to 5 miles. A He’s not going to come up with that story, right? They’re not going to come up with that richness. They’re not they’re just not. You’re experiencing new things all the time. And it’s the same with creativity, innovation, what you bring to the table.

They’re not going to be able to know what those new stories unfold or what the new innovation is. All right. And here’s one final bonus to building connections. Of course, one thing I will never master is human connection. I’ve been talking about it the entire time. We crave trust, vulnerability, authenticity. We share our highs and lows. So a high for me in that race was high fiving Tristan at the end, although I was trying to make it up that hill and feeling like I had to walk for a little bit.

It shows your audience the human side of your journey, and it goes back to the emotion that we’ve been talking about, digging in to make sure that you strike a chord with your people because it’s more important than ever. So put yourselves out there in a way that no machine can do right now. Don’t be afraid to do that.

Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and share your highs and your lows share that vulnerability. So an AI is a powerful tool for all of us as course creators and it’s a tool. Use it for brainstorming, expanding, adapting your content. But don’t forget the innovation that only you bring your stories, your creativity and your emotional connection. All right.

Hopefully this was helpful. Next week, special guest Meghan O’Leary on to talk about the big mistakes that we see with sales, copywriting. And you’re going to learn how to become a better copywriter if you’re interested in joining the waitlist for our sales copywriting course, please check out the show notes. We’ll have the link up there. Till next time, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.