Scott Elliott

I need A.I.!

Posted on December 29, 2023December 29, 2023 by scotte

There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence these days. Especially surrounding ChatGPT. If you think you need to A.I. for your business, I have a few opinions about this I want to share.

Don’t confuse ChatGPT and A.I.

ChatGPT is a specific type of software that uses A.I. Which is why when discussing A.I. I don’t call it ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a form a text (chat) input to harness the power of A.I. for lots of applications and purposes. You can use to it learn about a subject, you can use to help you write a blog post (no A.I. was used in this post), and many more possibilities. There are also several competitor chat tools in various stages of development from Google, Microsoft and more. At this point, other than experimenting with it, I am not using these types of tools in my professional work. Why? The quality is just not there. I could use it to write this blog post, but I would have to go through the whole thing, check it for accuracy, and rewrite various parts of it. Heaven forbid I miss something and I post something with inaccurate information. I’m not prepared to risk my companies reputation or risk legal issues to save some time. Sometimes, there are no short cuts. Maybe in the future it will be good enough, but not yet.
You are probably already using A.I.

A.I is not one tool, like ChatGPT. It’s quickly being utilized in almost everything that has a digital connection. Your Amazon Alexa, that’s A.I. Siri on your phone, that is A.I. I have been experimenting with A.I. in Adobe Photoshop and I used it to help me fix some photos of my partner and I and it worked pretty well. I am also experimenting with some Facebook Ads that have A.I. generated images I made in Adobe Firefly. A.I. is being integrated it almost everything it seems, so you don’t have to look to hard to find it, it’s coming to you.
Be wary of shiny new things.

As I mentioned in the first point, most if not all of these tools are in various stages of development still. There are huge issues with some of them, including ChatGPT, called “hallucinations” which outputs completely fake information. With Adobe Photoshop, the A.I. often produces completely unusable images, and it takes a few tries to get anything usable sometimes. A.I. is not a solution, yet, but its adding new and exiting tools and opportunities for us. It’s going to be fun watching it develop into possible a new era of digital transformation.

The future has no code

Posted on November 18, 2023November 18, 2023 by scotte

An interesting space in digital marketing that I have enjoyed learning about and developing with has been “no code” tools and services. The most famous no-code tool, in my opinion, is WordPress, which I use on most of my web sites. It allows me to quickly and easily setup and launch a web site with little-to-no coding required. My team can also update pages on our web site without any coding knowledge, which allows my team members with less coding experience to contribute to our digital efforts.

Next up is no-code app builders. App builders have also been improving significantly over the last few years. I have an app in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store that I built from scratch, by myself, with no coding using a no-code app builder. Several of these builders are out there, the one I am using is called Good Barber. With monthly or annual subscriptions, it includes a support team who have been very helpful in fixing issues I have run into and explaining the more complicated parts of running apps like staying compliant with App Store requirements.

Finally we have no code automation. I use a tool called Zapier to automate many processes and integrations in my marketing. I use it to integrate between my Facebook Ads and my CRM. I use it to send forms from a web site to an Office 365 excel sheet. All with very little coding required.

Lots of exiting advancements continue to develop in the no code space. It’s quickly become a game changer for small and medium sized businesses who don’t have the money or capabilities for heavy coding!

The Beginning of the End of Tracking-Based Advertising

Posted on March 29, 2018 by scotte

As Doc Searls so expertly explained in his article “Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing“, we are at a probable beginning of the end of tracking-based advertising as we know it.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is also a proverbial “canary in a coal mine” for advertisers as well. Has your organization considered the ramifications of using the data taken from users without their understanding or control? As the issues surrounding tracking-based advertising expand in the media, it will inevitably expand to not only include the publishers profiting from the technology, but also the companies spending money to use the technology to their own benefit and profit.

As @JohnnyRyan‘s Twitter thread from Doc Searls article said:

And advertisers, who pay for all of this, must start to demand that safe, non-personal data take over in online RTB targeting. RTB works without personal data. Brands need to demand this to protect themselves – and all Internet users too.

It’s time to ask important questions inside your organization such as: how does the adtech we are using for our marketing collect its user data? Are we comfortable with the data they have collected and how they are using it?

Just as you should know what data is being taken from you and your Internet activities, we should also understand what data we are using to send our ads out into cyberspace.