Using AI to Repurpose Content with Lorraine Ball

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: to Marketing AI Radio, your shortcut to building smarter, AI driven organizations. I'm Melissa Reeve, founder of MarketingFrontier. ai, and your host for today's episode. Today, we have the thrill of talking with Lorraine Ball, expert in small business marketing, Host of more than a few words podcast, entrepreneur, author and professional speaker.

Lorraine, so much going on today. We'll be focusing in on exploring how to repurpose content using AI. Welcome to the show, Lorraine. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Thank you so much for having me.

I am so excited to be here. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: We're excited to have you. I'd love to know a little bit about your background and what inspired you to start the more than a few words podcast. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: So I am a marketer by training.

I was in corporate and then I started my own business. And back in 2009, I had an intern who wandered into my office. And he says, Lorraine, you know, you, you like to talk. Yeah, I do.

And he said, you should start a podcast. And I thought to myself, and I probably said it out loud. What the Bleep? Is a podcast and he explained it.

And I was like, you know what, let's give it a shot. If nobody listens, it's not going to be an issue. And we played around with it a little bit. We experimented with some different formats and kind of landed on something that worked for us.

January 3rd, 2010, we launched. More than a few words and the show has been going strong ever since. I have about 1100 episodes. It has changed a lot, but podcasting has changed a lot in 15 years, but it's, it's still about marketing conversations for business owners.

Originally it was designed to promote my digital agency, which I sold. Today I do just consulting work. So it's a chance to showcase a little bit about what I know. meet some wonderful people and learn so much about what's going on in marketing along the way.

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: absolutely. Well, we cannot talk about marketing without talking about AI. So I'd love to hear about how you're using AI and if it is part of your content strategy, uh, how are you using it? lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: I cannot even believe I'm saying this because even as recently as a year ago, I was like, well, yeah, you know, a little AI, whatever, whatever, you know, human beings, https: otter.

ai single day. Um, as a podcaster, I use a product called Opus Pro. I upload my videos and you're nodding. I'm just seeing sure you're familiar with it and I let it recommend short clips, create captions, create those wonderful video shorts that I used to do manually.

But what used to take me an hour and a half takes me about 15 minutes now. So I love, I love AI for that. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah, well, that's a great use case. And I know that our audience is always looking for use cases, always looking for tools.

So you mentioned Opus Clips, uh, Descript is another one. That is doing that. In fact, most of the podcasting platforms, it seems like are doing some version of that. Yeah.

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: I think as you're exploring different tools, figure out what you want from the tool. One of the things that I like, that I find very helpful is not only do I get the clips, but their AI is giving me feedback on, is this clip on trend? Is this a good opening? And I appreciate that insight as well.

The other thing that I am doing is to support a podcast. You need a lot of written content. You need a summary of the episode. You need social media shares.

And I used to spend a lot of time. re listening to the episode, reading through the transcript and pulling out the highlights. Now what I do is I upload my transcript into chat GPT. I have a standard set of instructions.

The instructions for me read something like this is a podcast interview with Lorraine Ball. Use her voice and then I have two paragraphs talking about my style. Use her opening sentence. And then write a summary with a strong introductory paragraph, three to five bullet points, and two to three action items or takeaways.

I paste that, I paste the transcript, and I don't even have time to leave the page, and up comes a fairly usable, in its raw form, right from ChatGPT, Summary that I can use on my website, on YouTube, on my podcast episode, I pull, I pull clips from it. I can ask it to suggest titles, to suggest social media updates, and it will even give me updates for different platforms. If you're sharing this on LinkedIn, if you're sharing this somewhere else, and again, That took what used to be an hour, hour and a half project a five minute exercise.

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: So I've had that, that same experience. And I, I want to ask this question because I feel like given all of these productivity games, games, we should all just be sitting on the beach, drinking margaritas and having a good time. But I sense that's not the case. It's not the case with me.

And I sense that's not the case with you. So what does that mean to get all of this time back? What are you doing with all that extra time? lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Well, two things.

Number one, the time that I used to spend in production, I am actually spending more in focused engagement on social media and it is working. My LinkedIn community, which I am on a mission to increase the size of my community, and I started using a lot of these tools really seriously, let's say in January. And my LinkedIn prior to that, you know, I'd pick a 500 here this year. I'd pick up 200.

I'm probably right around 2, 300 new members of my community in the last year. And it's because I have had the time not just to shoot invites, but really engage and interact. And so for me, that's been part of it. And the other thing is that, uh, I have the capacity to work ahead.

So I'm taking a lot more vacations. You know, there is that as well. So it's, um, uh, I've had more time to look to be on other people's podcasts like this and to seek and reach out to people for those opportunities. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Right.

You know, I've written a couple of articles that talk about, you know, the, the downfall of marketing jobs that we see from time to time. You know, all marketing is going to go away, but that that hasn't been my experience. From what you're describing, it hasn't been your experience. And I actually feel like the pie is going to get bigger.

So what does, what does AI enable? It enables it. More people to do more things that before, maybe they didn't have time to do like your, uh, you're reaching out to your social media contacts, but also it's, it's things like doing a better job. I've done better job pitching.

I've been able to create more complete proposals. Uh, you mentioned consulting. Have you been able to integrate that at all with your consulting, uh, organization? How has that looked?

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: So, several things. One, I, um, I've done a good job of using AI where I will give it an example of a website and I will ask it to read the content. I, you know, read content. So I have some better feedback for prospective clients.

Um, I, as I'm working with organizations, a lot of it is editing and, um, I'm not doing a lot of done for you marketing anymore. It's much more just, Hey, this is what I've seen. Here's some strategies. Being able to dictate my thoughts as I'm going through a conversation with them and then take AI and use that to put together a more organized report is, is fabulous.

And then both for myself as well as recognize, uh, recommending to my clients how they use AI specifically to improve their SEO. And I know that was one of the things before we got online that we really were going to talk about it. So I don't want to lose that because AI on the one hand, If you use AI generated content for your website by itself, you are going to lose. Okay, so squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: more.

Tell me more. I'm fascinated. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: here's the thing. What does AI do?

AI is not creating. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm-hmm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: what it finds. So, When you're like, Hey, I want to write a website copy and I want to write on this subject. What should I say?

It's going to go out and read tons of existing copy, and it's going to synthesize the key phrases and ideas and build a very coherent. page that sounds like and reads like everything else that's out there. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm .

Mm-hmm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: when you just take it as is, it's going to be adequate. It may be good for your prospects, but it's not going to drive Traffic. It's not going to help you in search. You squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: and I wanna, oh, keep going.

And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna add some, add to what you're saying. Mm-hmm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: So what you want to do is you want to start with your existing content and start with what you have and use a I to enhance it. Um, one of the things that I have been teaching for 15 years is this idea of content based SEO and answering the questions that your customers have. And part of that process is Is once you have a lot of information on your website, going back and updating it, adding new information and asking Google to re index it, say, Hey, this page that you used to like his new stuff on squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm-hmm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: when you have a blog post, an article that has done well, squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: to, um, an AI tool and say, What's missing?

What other information can we add to this? to enhance it. Don't change my original language, but give me suggestions for an additions. And in that instance, AI can be incredibly valuable.

Um, people often shy away from outbound links, but going to AI and saying, can you find two or three other pages on this topic? that are sharing related patient using that to take what you've got and make it bigger and better squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah, what I love about what you're saying is a couple of things. One is not just using AI as kind of this glorified search engine or just, you know, to write me, write me something quick, but actually help me improve on.

What I've already got going and so I really love that. I want to push back on the, the generic content, um, only because there's, there is this myth out there that, uh, I can't write to your tone of voice. And what I've found, and I can see you're nodding here too, is that that a lot of that is a matter of training. And, you know, I've, I have gotten AI to talk like John Wayne.

It knows my tone of voice. I think you're, you're nodding. It probably knows your tone of voice. And so, uh, just for our listeners out there, if you have that perception that AI cannot talk like you, keep listening to the show.

We are going to do one episode just for you. focused on tone of voice. Um, so I can see you're wanting to jump in here. So go ahead and say your piece.

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Yes, I actually what I did is I actually gave it three articles that I wrote and I said, if you are going to explain and define Lorraine's voice for another A. I tool. How would you do it? And so I have this really nice summary, but my concern is still that even if it's my voice, if the suggestions are still the same as everything everybody else is putting out there, if there's nothing original in your answers, you're just not going to get that real, um, point of difference.

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm. Mm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Something I suggested to someone today that I thought made a lot of sense in their business. Um, they were a consultant and I said, you know, what you want to do is go to some of your clients and let them, you know, see if they'll let you record them and ask them, why do you work with me? Now that we've been working together for a while, what's the one thing you've learned?

Um, What do you want to work on this year when you were looking for a code and just ask all these different questions about their experience or objectives. you've got all of this content that is in the language, not your voice, but in the voice of your customer using words and phrases that they would use. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm hmm. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: To describe the experience now, give that to an AI tool and ask it to synthesize it, organize it, you know, start building a case study from this information and now you've got something that is not pulled from the Internet, but pulled directly from your experience.

And that is a wonderful way to enhance your existing content, to create content that only you can write. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah. Mm hmm. Love it.

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: win search, but still take advantage of the tools. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah. So, um, so I want to circle back to that, that central thesis of repurposing your content using AI. So we kicked off the show, you did an amazing job sharing, uh, how you were using AI.

To generate your podcast content and repurpose it onto social media and with the transcripts and into a blog post, I want to back up even higher because, you know, I've, I've been in marketing leadership for a while and I always had this holy grail of, you have these content pillars. You might have really big pieces of content and a book or an ebook or, uh, you know, something really needy like that. And the idea here is that you're not just generating new content all the time, but you can break that content down and desegregate it.

And even though that's so neat and organized in my head, I have just really struggled to make that happen within marketing teams. And so I am curious about that approach when we're talking about these content pillars and big content, what your point of view is on repurposing that content and how we can all use AI. to help that disaggregation happen more, more easily. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: So, one of the easiest things, I did this with a book that I had written, and I gave the entire manuscript, or actually I didn't because I didn't want to overwhelm it, I gave it a chapter, and I said, read this chapter, pull out three to five key points, create social shares, create a script.

an interview. Um, and so it gave me tips on how to start breaking that down. The, the trick is, Individual people may have a longer attention span, but people in general have the attention span of a goldfish, you know? And so you've got to give it to them in little bites.

And I had these wonderful hour long seminars that I've broken up into self paced courses with a series of five minute videos. Well, the truth is that the slides are all the same slides I've always used. The script is essentially the same. Sometimes I reshoot and sometimes I just slice and dice.

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: and actually I will tell you people who are trying to create content in real time by creating a series of short videos and are going to burn themselves out. It is way easier to start with a. Big piece of content and break it up and create pieces and take a paragraph from a longer article and then get people's reactions to that paragraph.

And you have, you have a new piece of content. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: And so, yeah, I, I love the idea of the pillar. I love Again, go to chat GPT and say, here's this information.

What kind of questions will people have about this information? What's missing? squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Mm lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: And then you work on new pieces to go along with it. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah.

Well, I love what you're doing there, which is you're truly using, you know, we've heard AI as a sidekick, AI as co pilot, and you are, you're asking it the questions. You're, you're, you're saying you initiate the questions. And I think that that point of view is different Then a lot of marketers are how they're using it today. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Yeah.

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: So for those, uh, marketers are just getting started. Uh, what advice would you give to them where they might, you know, they might feel intimidated by the learning curve of AI. They might be listening to what we're saying and saying, okay, but how do I do this? And in reality, what advice would you give them?

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: I found most of the AI tools to be so intuitive. Once you get into them, I would take one piece of content that you've already created, a blog post, an article, the transcript of an interview and work, trot yourself over to chat GPT or PO and say, hey, suggest another article on this topic based on this. See what it says or go over. I love this one.

I did this for, she's a personal trainer and I was just, I was out of ideas. You know, I, I, I help her a lot and I just went over and I said, I'm a personal trainer. My clients are women business owners suggest 10 topics I should talk about in the next month and other topics I didn't have to look, I didn't, I didn't have to use any resources from chat GPT on those topics. But I took those topics back to Sarah and I said, okay, I want you to talk about these things.

I created her talking points and then she talked about, I said, how do you talk to your client about this? How do you talk to your client about that? And so the answers, so if you don't know where to start, ask CHAT GPT where you should start. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah, it really is.

It's called chat GPT for a reason. And it's a dialogue. It kind of reminds me of the early days of search engines when you just had to learn over time what type of words to put into the search to get the results you wanted. And that's what I'm hearing you say.

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Oh, absolutely. And, uh, I want to kind of present an idea to your listeners. We have talked about SEO as search engine optimization for a very long time. SEO is now really search everywhere optimization.

About 80 percent of your searches are still happening on Google or other search engines. About 15 or so percent is now happening in social media. People are searching on TikTok and LinkedIn and not even going back to the search engines. And about 5 percent of all searches are now happening inside the the LLMs, the large language models, ChatGPT, Poe, Perplexity, Claude, And on and on and on.

And so the world is changing. The places people are going for information is changing. And if you are thinking that you're going to be in marketing for the next few years or the next few decades, You absolutely have to learn how to use these tools. So get in there, kick the tires and practice.

squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah, well, I, I heard something just fascinating about SEO the other day. Um, it was the first time I'd heard it and it was this notion that top of funnel will be now handled primarily through AI. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow.

But when you ask a general question, Most likely your answers will come through AI. So to your point about the content, you know, is your content structured through snippets and answering questions in a way that's AI friendly and then part 2 of that, which I thought is interesting. And I'd be interested in your take on this, which is, you know, That puts people into middle of funnel. And so is your website optimized for that middle of funnel conversation?

lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Yeah, I, I'm seeing that play out more and more. If you're logged into Google and you do a search, you ask a question. You used to get a list of websites. You got some ads.

Now you get two paragraphs of AI generated information, which in many cases. Satisfies that top of funnel question. So yeah, I think people are gonna have to be Rethinking because when people come to your website, they are not coming with, hey, I don't know what you do or how it works. They're coming with, I know what you do.

I know how this generally works. Now tell me what you do differently. Now tell me why I should have a conversation with you. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Yeah.

Yeah. It's super fascinating, isn't it? lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Oh, you know, uh, if you're somebody that likes things the way they were, you do not want a career in marketing. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Amen.

Amen to that. It's been nothing but changed since I started way back when Lorraine, you have been a wealth of information. I just appreciate your time. I appreciate everything you've shared with our listeners.

Um, where can listeners go to learn more about you and your approach to repurpose, purposing content and, uh, your approach to consulting? lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: So more than a few words. com that's my website there. You will find.

More than a thousand conversations in the archives. You'll also find resources, links to webinars, workbooks, white papers on a variety of marketing topics. And when you're ready for a more detailed conversation, book an office hour. Let's, let's dive into it and see if I can help you.

And certainly if you're on LinkedIn, be sure to say hello. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: Love it. Lorraine, thanks so much for being on the show today. lorraine-_1_12-18-2024_150645: Thank you.

This was fun. squadcaster-a6h8_1_12-18-2024_130645: And for our listeners, thanks for listening to the show today. Be sure to subscribe. So you never miss an episode.

Check out marketing frontier. ai for more resources, tools, and expert advice, including our hands on marketing labs. Those are hands on AI. And until next time, keep pushing the boundaries of what AI can do for your marketing.