Keith Quesenberry Archives - Post Control Marketing

In December 2022, my first experience with AI was using ChatGPT to write a blog article about social media marketing. I’d been practicing and teaching social media for over a decade, yet ChatGPT wrote a good article with good writing in less than a minute – something that may have taken me hours. I was both impressed and scared!

Do you remember when you first used ChatGPT? Since then I’ve had ups and downs with Generative AI. From full embrace and cautious integration to dystopian fear and simple avoidance. It’s been a long journey, but I’ve learned much along the way.

The end of the year is a time for reflection.

What I find I need at the end of a long hard year is pep talk. Anyone else? December alone gifted us “12 days of OpenAI” and major updates from most AI companies like Google, Anthropic, Perplexity, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and xAI. I’m still trying to process what just happened in my Fall classes and I only have two weeks to prepare for Spring.

I can relate to what AI expert Ethan Molick says in his latest Substack,

“This isn’t steady progress – we’re watching AI take uneven leaps past our ability to easily gauge its implications. And this suggests that the opportunity to shape how these technologies transform your field exists now when the situation is fluid, and not after the transformation is complete.”

University faculty are woefully behind.

I’ve accomplished much since Fall 2022: Two books, four research articles, three conference presentations, a top teaching paper award, and multiple presentations on AI to professionals and faculty. Yet, recent negatives have me losing sight of the positives.

This fall my LinkedIn feed felt full of posts and comments about how far behind university professors are in AI. I know many of the critiques are true. Years ago in my first adjunct appointment, a media professor didn’t teach the Internet because “it was a fad.” For every head-in-the-sand professor, there are plenty trying to keep their heads above water.

Dinosaurs do exist – like in any profession. Profs I interact with are working hard to learn and keep up. It’s hard to read comments that generalize us all as behind and advocate for replacing them with AI teaching agents. The many profs I follow, like Ethan Molick, aren’t just teaching but innovating the use of AI in education and their professional disciplines.

Professors are old and boring.

Despite many more positive comments and evidence of very grads excelling, human tendency is to focus on the negative. Years ago, I got a student comment,

“I can’t believe someone old enough to be my dad is teaching me about social media.”

That one hurt. So did the student who told me I needed to update my headshot. Apparently, I don’t look the same in class as I do on the website. Does age equate to being behind? Two weeks ago I received this comment from a student,

“My academic background in marketing, particularly courses in social media marketing and digital, laid a solid foundation for this internship. Concepts learned in these courses proved instrumental in creating effective social media posts. Without these courses, my social content would have not been as effective or efficient.”

Great right? Yes, but I still struggle to get the negative out of my head. Years ago a student once said my voice is monotone and boring. I know I’m not auditioning for America’s Got Talent, so why can’t I let it go? Human brains have a negative bias. We all tend to do this. It is something social algorithms take advantage of to keep us scrolling.

So thanks to the grad from two years ago who gave me a LinkedIn shout-out for my project management software and HubSpot certificate integrations. And to the student graduating this spring who has already been hired into her dream sports marketing job, who thanked me for what she learned in my digital marketing class to get her there.

We need grace, humility, and confidence.

Constructive criticism is key to learning and advancement, but you also can’t take it too much to heart. You’ll either be so discouraged you give up or you’ll become too timid to experiment for fear of the negative. I am in that in that moment right now.

I apologize to students and professionals in my field for the ways I was behind in AI advancement or days I wasn’t always engaging. Hopefully, there is room for grace. I’m also humble enough to take the things I can improve upon and implement them in this short window before next semester. To do this I need a boost of confidence.

So this is a pep talk to out there who don’t have their head in the sand. You’re trying to keep your head above the water. Academia is often a lonely field. I’m striving for humility to learn from critiques, grace for my failings, and confidence to head into the Spring semester – with the audacity to teach digital social media marketing in my early 50s.

AI image showing a university professor burning AI inspired by the book Fahrenheit 451. — AI image generated using Google ImageFX from a prompt to show a university professor burning AI inspired by the book Fahrenheit 451. https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx

We need to be more human, more bold.

Speaking of audacious. That’s the motivation for the main image generated by Google’s ImageFX. My prompt? Show a university professor burning AI inspired by Fahrenheit 451. My human fireworks to not become replaced by AI teaching agents or young YouTubers selling top 10 strategies for social media success. Marketing thought leader Mark Schaefer inspired the image saying,

“AI has helped create a marketing pandemic of dull. It’s not your fault. Your company probably rewards you for being boring. You’re Google-sufficient and optimized. They’re trying to keep you in their box. But the AI bots are coming. You need to do something, and you need to do it now. It’s time to unleash the HUMAN fireworks in your content. There is no choice. You need to be audacious.”

Thanks for leading us to the future Mark (someone older than me). This is my audacious post that couldn’t be written by AI. AI can’t explain what it feels like to be a professor at this moment. AI can’t know what it is to fear its own adoption. AI can’t know what it is to have grace, humility, and confidence. Google’s AI Overview did give a definition though,

“A state of being confident in one’s abilities while also acknowledging limitations and approaching situations with kindness and respect.”

In bold confidence we also need caution.

While we may have no choice in adopting AI, we choose how. Human agency still exists. I don’t want to make the mistakes we made with social media. Have you read Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation? Between my period of AI avoidance (pushing off meetings with faculty development) to AI embrace (agreeing to a 5 part AI integration workshop), I had to come up with a framework and process to strategically apply AI.

“Move fast and break things” may have helped develop AI, but I’d rather not. A benefit of academia that I didn’t have in the fast-paced ad agency world was time for thoughtful reflection. Successful marketing is based on frameworks and processes. I needed that for AI integration. The result was my summer AI blog series:

How I integrated AI in Fall classes.

Coming out of the summer. I went through every class and every assignment to specifically look for places where I felt AI would be helpful for student learning and where it would not. I tried AI for tasks in my assignments and shared what I found with students.

Each assignment had an AI section giving students specific aspects of the assignment to use AI and how. There was no general ban, but also no all-out use. Using AI for everything shortchanges the learning process as the infographic below illustrates.

This graphic shows that in stages of learning you go through attention, encoding, storage, and retrieval. You need your brain to learn this process not just use AI for the process. — Click the image for a downloadable PDF of this graphic.

I also had a consistent general AI statement on my syllabi (see below). I directed students on when and how to cite AI, and what AI to use with links and directions to use it. I sent them to Copilot for convenience and financial considerations as all students had access to GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 free with their university Microsoft 365 account.

Beyond AI-specific uses in assignments, I had a general AI use policy.

I cautioned about AI copyright issues. I also didn’t want them using AI to complete an entire assignment – why I use Turnitin’s AI checker. I never used it solely, but a student citing 10 print-only marketing books not assigned in the class nor found online is a key second sign.

Academia isn’t the only one using AI detection. A digital marketing professional guest speaker last term told students they use AI in many ways but use AI detectors for their writers. If a client is paying for human-created content, they want to ensure that.

Student Uses of AI In Assignments.

AI helped students brainstorm and better express their ideas. Groups in my Integrated Marketing Communications class created campaigns for brands like Qdoba. In a class of little graphic design or art students, DALL-E through a Copilot account enabled them to create a fully customized storyboard of their 30-second TV ads and 6-second YouTube bumper ads.

This also allowed us to talk about how AI content is okay to sell ideas. However, there are potential copyright issues with publishing AI content. There is also a potential backlash from consumers as highlighted in recent Adage articles and Harris Polls.

An example AI prompt to create multiple versions of a social media post caption. — AI can be used to create the many versions of captions needed for social posts.

In social media marketing, students used AI to generate variations of social content captions. The social media simulation requires many organic posts that must vary (as in real social content). Students wrote the main message but let AI create versions to word counts for each social platform. For a brand’s social strategies, they used AI to research influencers, get hashtag ideas, and create images to mock up brand social media posts.

I taught them prompts to get better results. Using the prompt framework below got me and my students much better results. I heard from colleagues at other universities who are using this framework for their students and getting better results as well.

AI Framework Template for AI Use that includes 1. Task/Goal 2. AI Function 3. Level of Thinking 4. Legal/Ethical 5. Outsource to AI? — Click image to download a PDF template.

What’s to come for the new year?

In my next post, I’ll share what I am planning for the Spring. Recent AI developments have opened up possibilities. I plan on using NotebookLM as an AI tutor for one class. I’ll go beyond Copilot to leverage new AI capabilities in Adobe Express and Google’s ImageFX. I’ll get deeper into the new multimodal capabilities of AI with videos exploring live audio interactions with NotebookLM’s Audio Overview and a demonstration of live video and conversations with Gemini 2.0 as it “sees” what‘s on my screen.

What have been your struggles and successes with AI?

100% Human Created!

I began college in engineering, switched to another major, and then journalism before finding advertising in undergrad and marketing in grad school. Yet I don’t view those other classes as wasted. I firmly believe that diverse knowledge helped make me a better marketer. The same is true for social media strategy.

Marketing via social media is unique and requires different skills from marketing, advertising, public relations, personal sales, and customer service professionals that can be more relevant to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Customers’ needs and interests change when they’re in different stages of the buyer’s journey. Social media marketers should create unique content and engage in unique ways during these stages. Yet, the best person for the job isn’t always a marketer.

In your business or organization, you have different people or departments better suited for various content and response depending on buyer stage. Diverse employees and departments are best suited for communicating with and appealing to consumer interests and needs in these distinct stages.

Optimize your social media strategy with appropriate content and engagement from those employees, disciplines, and departments. Distributing social responsibilities to the most relevant people can be more effective and efficient. This often requires alignment of goals and objectives, software integration, and a system to identify, sort, and assign social media tasks across siloed departments.

A cross-discipline approach tailors content and engagement to consumer needs. It also can help scale one-on-one social media engagement spreading out time and costs across department responsibilities, budgets, and staff. To ensure the most appropriate people are creating the content and engagement follow these suggestions for each stage.

Pre-purchase Stage Content, Engagement, and Disciples.

During the pre-purchase stage, B2C or B2B consumers are not actively seeking to buy. They may have a general interest and are simply exploring and learning. Or they may have a problem but have not realized the solution yet. In the pre-purchase stage use social media listening to find people in the market who haven’t purchased. Listen for brand, product, category, competitor, or specific product and service mentions.

Marketing and advertising can contribute by creating relevant messages and content. This includes content from followers and reviews. Monitor conversations to engage with marketing-related questions.
Public relations can monitor for reputation issues and negative mentions must be managed. PR uses media and influencer outreach to generate earned media awareness.
Sales reps create and share valuable content and answer consumer questions to generate leads.
Customer service can create satisfied customers who share positive experience reviews and make more purchases turning customer service into marketing.

Purchase Stage Content, Engagement, and Disciples.

During the purchase stage, people are interested in buying and are seeking the best options. They’re looking for value, convenience, special offers, guarantees, and signals that your product or service is the best for their needs and budget. In the purchase stage use social media listening to find people seeking purchase information such as prices, offers, stock numbers, contact information, shipping options, or store hours.

Marketing and advertising can help answer questions, and provide additional information related to the product, service, and offers.
Public relations create content to educate via media and influencer outreach. PR looks for competitor comparisons and 3rd party endorsements for social sharing.
Sales reps in B2C directly interact with customers to facilitate sales. B2B sales reps engage identifying leads to set up appointments and sales presentations.
Customer service can respond to any technical and account issues or complications in the purchase process that may prevent a sale.

Post-purchase Stage Content, Engagement, and Disciples.

During the post-purchase stage, people have purchased your product or service but are looking for validation that they made the right decision. In most markets, there are many options and buyer’s remorse may creep in. There may be complications, issues, or hiccups that come with a new purchase. In the post-purchase stage use social media listening to look for current customers seeking help with product usage, problems, and account issues. Also, seek happy customers who share positive product and service experiences.

Marketing and advertising can create messages that reassure purchase decisions, share messages of happy customers, and build brand community through offers and loyalty programs.
Public relations creates relevant brand and earned media that engages current customers, other stakeholders, and influencers to maintain relationships.
Sales representatives can follow up with customers to ensure they are happy with regular interaction while encouraging referrals and additional sales.
Customer service can resolve any post-purchase issues to help with retention and loyalty, plus contribute to positive social media comments and reviews.

Social media marketing is more than marketing. Are you missing out by not working across disciplines and organizational department silos?

Customizing listening and response with cross-discipline teams in social media can help scale social media engagement. Meeting different needs of consumers through all stages of the buying cycle can help businesses achieve their overall goals more effectively and efficiently.

Another way to improve your social media content is to consider the right content in the right places. For help see my post “Does The Shoe Fit? How To Make Your Social Media Marketing More Strategic” including a Social Media Content Planning Template.

This Content Was Human Created!