AI: Friend or foe?
The answer is…both.
When it comes to marketing your organization, effective, differentiated, and thoughtful marketing cannot be overstated. There are constant demands to create meaningful impact, engage the unengaged, raise more money, build more awareness, and on and on. Marketing departments at many nonprofits, schools, and small businesses are perpetually understaffed.
Embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in marketing can be a game changer. That is, if it’s used correctly and, when drafting content, NOT USED VERBATIM.
For example, a prompt was entered in ChatGPT. “Write a social media caption promoting my private school open house.”
The response: "📚✨ Explore excellence in education at our Private School Open House! Join us for a sneak peek into our enriching programs, dedicated faculty, and vibrant community. 🏫 Save the date and discover the difference! #OpenHouse #EducationExcellence #FutureLeaders"
While it gives a solid foundation (enriching programs, dedicated faculty, vibrant community), AI doesn’t know the school’s value proposition, key messages, or intended audiences.
A better post: "Each grade at ABC Academy is a community within a greater community. Our students work together, encourage each other, and exude so much joy in learning. When Anna started Kindergarten, she went from an observer to an active and engaged participant under the guidance of her incredible teachers." - Anna’s Mom
Attend our Open House on Sunday, November 10, and get a taste of the wonder, exploration, friendship, and learning that takes place at ABC Academy every day.
See the difference?
Here’s how can you leverage AI to your benefit, while adding your own spin:
Providing baseline content ideas: Have writer’s block? Need to make sure your promotional campaign has all-encompassing elements? AI can help.
Making data-driven decisions: Don’t want to spend hours upon days analyzing fundraising, enrollment, event, email, and other data? Let AI help you forecast, draw trends, and make informed decisions.
Elevating donor engagement: Use the aforementioned data to tailor donor communication. Who doesn’t want to build stronger relationships?
Prompting automation: There are ways to streamline recurring tasks, including email and social media scheduling. Once those genuine posts and engaging emails are written, let AI help get them out the door.
AI can help generate content ideas (emphasis on the word ‘ideas’) and assist with other processes so you can maximize the bandwidth that you have. Humans still have a significant amount of work to do in determining and refining mission and values, key differentiators, resonate messages, and more. 2024 will be a year of increased AI usage and experimentation, and it will be very clear in the coming months which humans are doing their part, and which are copying and pasting.
