55. What School Marketers Need to Know About AI and ChatGPT with Pam Aungst Cronin

Aubrey: Welcome to Mindful School Marketing, your go-to podcast for personal and professional growth.  Tara: We’re school marketers, business owners, and moms passionate about connecting other school professionals with tools and strategies for success.  Aubrey: We love solving problems, exploring new ideas, and thinking outside the box. Let’s transform your school and life starting right now.  Tara: This episode is brought to you by inquiry. Easily manage all your inquiries, tours, open houses, and applications with a system designed by K through 12, education, marketing, and admissions professionals.  Aubrey: Welcome to Mindful School Marketing.  Tara: I’m Aubrey Burch. And I’m Tara Clays. Today we’re joined by Pam Angst Cronan. Pam is a widely recognized s e and P P C and web analyst analytics expert. She’s the president of Pam Am Marketing, l l c, and founder of Stealth Search and a. Pam describes herself as a major nerd who’s been playing with computer codes since she was six years old, and tinkering with websites since the Dialup Internet era, referred by to by Sprout Social as. Twitter success story. She harnessed the power of social media to launch her own agency in 2011. Since then, Pam has won several awards, including being one of named of one of ERP stat’s, top 10 women in seo o, and has been featured in three books, numerous podcasts and webinars, and all the major search engine publications, as well as national media outlets. And we are so excited and honored to have you on the show to share all this great information with us. Pam, welcome.  Pam: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to nerd out with you guys about ai.  Aubrey: I can’t wait to dive into this conversation personally and professionally. Before we get started though, Pam, can you tell us a little bit, I mean, that was quite a resume right there of things going on there, but can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and maybe your journey, uh, to where  Pam: you’re at right now? Sure. Yeah. So, um, that as stated, I am a major nerd. I’ve just kind of tinkered with anything and everything techy, uh, my whole life. And that’s kind of how I got to where I am. Um, I was working in, uh, in the early two thousands in job. Where I was just an administrative assistant, technically by, by title. And, um, but the company was trying to modernize, you know, a bunch of the competitors who were starting to have websites and they were like, we gotta have a website too. And I was like, I can figure that out. And just, you know, started, kind of just slipped right into, because I could figure it out, it became my job. So that took me all the way from admin assistant up to e-commerce director for an online store that where I managed like everything, not just the website, the whole operations of it and everything. So, yeah, and my propensity to tinker with techy things, uh, really brought me to where I am, uh, professionally today. And then I still, as a hobby, I just tinker with things too. Like, um, you know, when, when Ethereum mining was really hot, I built a, a crypto mining rig. You know, printed some money for myself and, uh, some digital currency. And I’m always tinkering with like smart home stuff in my house, you know, like I can tell Ms A L e x A to open my garage door and stuff. I can’t say her name or she’ll start talking. But yeah, so that’s just me and that’s how I got to where I am. And when I continued to. Tinker with technology, it’s, I  Aubrey: need you to, I need you in my house. That’s what I need. Forget that other person who we won’t speak of that. You have to spell the name out. I need someone like you tinkering with all the things in my house. Tara: Yes, I like setting those things up, but my problem is that I forget that I set them up, so I have to like print out a list of all the things to say to that, that letter, a tool, because I forget that I, I was like, oh, I set that up. I could be making my life a lot easier, but I forget that.  Pam: I made it, my husband always forgets exactly how to say things and like yelling random commands at her. He’s like, I can’t legit mad at her.  Tara: Yeah. Well, I’m, so, I, I printed out a list and have a magnet on the  Pam: refrigerator post by each thing to turn on this leg. The front,  Tara: yeah. Yeah. The technology part’s easy. It’s remembering to use it that it’s  Pam: there for, for an ai. She’s actually not all that I, because you have to be, That’s right. That’s  Tara: right, that’s right. Well, we’re excited. We’re so excited to talk to you about AI and chat G P T. And I know I’m gonna mention this as an aside and we didn’t prepare you for this and I don’t need you to like talk a lot about it, but I know a lot of our listeners also are, are scared about GA four. So I know you’re also really an expert on that, and so I wanted to reference it cuz I’ve shared some of your TikTok videos with, um, some clients of mind because you make it look so easy. So I just wanted to reference that and, and if you wanted to speak to that for a minute, I’ll let you talk about GA four and maybe anything that people should know or look out for before we talk about it. So I’m kind of going off track right at the  Pam: beginning. Sure, yeah. But no problem. I’ve been yammering on about that for quite several months now, uh, because the deadline is fast approaching. Uh, July 1st, the current version will stop working and you’ll be left with no data, no insights into your website’s activity. And that’s hugely detrimental, even if you’re not relying on it a lot Now, to have that. For when you do get time to dive into it and to use it to learn what you should and shouldn’t be doing with your marketing, it’s, it’s in that data is invaluable and it’s irreplaceable. So not, and not only do you have to set up GA four in time for July 1st, the number one most important setting that I see people miss is the data retention period. So by default, the current version of Google Analytics keeps your data for two years. By default, the GA four, the new version of Analytics keeps your data for two months. That’s kind of useless if you’re trying to do year over year comparisons or really learn anything about trends and patterns over time. So it’s really important to not only set up GA for in time for July 1st and get it working on your website, but go in first thing. If you configure nothing else, go in and go to the settings and set the data settings, data retention period. To the max, which is 14 months, is a little less than the two years that the current version gives us, but it’s a lot better than two months. So that’s,  Aubrey: yeah,  Tara: that’s a great tip. I definitely have shared that, um, with, with my clients. So what I’m gonna add you is we’ll put in the show notes, we’ll put in the link to any information that you give us about G4 and specifically the data retention information so that our listeners. Can hop on that right away. So thanks for  sharing  Pam: that and letting me, not on TikTok, but I also have a uh, GA four playlist on YouTube shorts, which is their version. Oh, awesome. Reels. But it’s cool cuz you can make playlists. So I’ll give you the link to the GA four oh perfect playlist on uh, YouTube shorts. Thank  Tara: you. Thank you so much. Thanks for letting to go on that tangent. I didn’t warn Aubrey about that, but I was excited to mention that because, um, I find GA four to be pretty frustrating, so thank you for mentioning that. Okay. Let’s talk about the topic that we’re here to talk about, which is chat, G B T and AI tools. Um, and we’re really excited to talk about that. I’ve been playing with it myself, and it’s, I know it’s all the rage right now. It’s something that a lot of marketers are exploring, a lot of anybody is exploring, right. And playing with. So let’s just start like scratch the surface. What are your general thoughts and overview of AI tools chat, G P T, and and the future of these for marketing specifically? Pam: It’s definitely huge. I, you know, some people are kind of chalking it up to a fad like that’s, you know, a bubble that might burst and kind of go away. But like, I feel like this is, um, this is kind of a second wave in my opinion, like, it’s kind of like virtual reality. Remember when virtual reality first came out and there was like those things in the mall that you could sit in and like, it, it, it was just kind of, Dumb and like didn’t really go anywhere, and it kind of faded from everyone’s, uh, you know, radar, um, for quite several years. And then all of a sudden it was back and like now it’s like really integrated into gaming specifically. And, but as some other things too. Um, so it’s kind of, I feel like this is that second wave for ai. There was, you know, several years ago it was like, oh my god, you know, AI’s gonna take over the world, blah, blah, blah. And then it kind of faded away a little bit. Um, but now it’s like the second coming and I feel. You know, now people are really integrating it like way in, in way bigger ways than virtual reality. You know, people thought that, uh, we were gonna be all sitting with headsets on, you know, doing virtual meetings over some virtual conference table with v with virtual. It’s just, we’re still here on Zoom. That didn’t happen. But big things are happening in AI and all the big players. Fully engaged in the AI wars. Um, you know, Google’s actually brought, uh, their original founders La Larry Page and Sergey Brent back in like, as like a, you know, I can’t say for sure, but a call for help it seems, you know, to get them like up to speed in this and to help them compete. In this, uh, cuz Microsoft latched onto chat g p t and that’s a huge benefit for them. But anyway, it’s, it’s huge. It’s here to stay, it’s gonna be part of our lives going forward. The same way that the, the internet and smartphones integrated into our lives like this is, this is happening as well. Wow.  Aubrey: I, I love that because I think it, it. It brings home that really we need to pay attention to this now. Right? This is not the time to ignore things like, you know, the flying cars of Back to the Future. Maybe we can put that off for a couple years. But AI is kind of, um, the thing we need to focus on now and especially, When I’m thinking of schools, um, there is an awareness in schools that this exists, but I don’t think they’re as comfortable using it or know how to use it or know all those, you know, ups and downs and challenges. But I’m curious, just to kick off kind of the conversation, what are the best uses, do you think, for AI  Pam: content? Well, speaking of schools and awareness of ai, um, I can tell you one of the worst uses that is obviously super popular already is students using it to cheat on homework and write essays. And it’s just, that’s not a marketing thing specifically. And you know, most of what I focus on is marketing, but just, I can’t believe like how many people are just like, oh yeah, I just wrote that essay with Achey, bt, and I’m done. And. Okay. So as fast as AI is developing the, like the, just as fast the, there’s, okay, we’re gonna edit that one. As fast as AI is developing to cheat things, um, Other ai, other applications of AI are being used to catch the cheating. So there are tons of AI detector programs out there already and it’s just too easy. There’s a lot of ’em are free. It’s just too easy for for teachers to run it through. I mean, teachers have, I think, become accustomed with the internet choosing plagiarism detectors. This is different. A plagiarism detector is not necessarily gonna flag AI cuz it doesn’t copy word for word, but an AI detector. Will detect ai. I mean, AI is what generates the tech. So it’s actually really easy for AI to detect AI generated content. Um, so I, I really hope that a lot of schools start to tune into this more, and maybe it could even turn into a marketing angle for them, uh, especially private schools. You know, who. Parents are seeking a, a really, you know, unique set of things they have in mind from that school. And if they are worried about their child kind of AIing their way through school, then they’re gonna look for schools that have this, you know, a procedure and a process in place for combating this. So a lot of times we talk about using it and taking advantage of it, which we’ll talk about that too, but I think it’s an equally important to have on your radar how to combat it. Yeah, that’s really a good point. I absolutely  Aubrey: do. Do you know offhand any of the tools that people are using to combat or is there a way for schools to find that information? I’m just thinking if I’m the school out there, am I googling ai? Get Your  Pam: Psych? I, I created a whole list, but it’s really just from Googling free AI detector. And obviously for using it at scale, you know, a school will have to invest in something that’s beyond free, but just for testing them out. And even just for a teacher’s kind of personal use, let’s say the school doesn’t have a process yet, but a certain teacher wants to use it, the free ones, they’re, you know, and I think actually there’s a benefit at this point to using different ones and playing with different ones because some of them work better than others. And it can be based on what type of content, you know, technical writing versus student writing. That’s two kind of different realms. And one AI detection tool might be better at the student side and a different one would be better at the technology side, and so on and so forth. Um, and that’s gonna have to evolve too, because a lot of people are like, they’ll, they’ll. Something with ai and then they’ll tell a different AI to rewrite the AI generated content to avoid the AI detector. The AI detectors are just gonna keep evolving along with that. I mean, if the AI can do it for you in the first place, if it can write the content and rewrite the content, then uh, AI detectors can detect that the content was written and rewritten. So, Wow. Very Anyway. Yeah. Tinker with a lot of them to see which one works True. Cause they all work slightly differently. Yeah.  Tara: So let’s talk about how, um, from a marketing perspective, what the use is for ai. Ai. What are the best uses for ai? I know I was using it for social media posts, but talk, let’s talk about for, you know, Other things that it can be used  Pam: for. Sure. So, um, so most of what we do focuses on seo. So in that world, I think it’s wonderful for coming up with ideas for what to write content about and even, you know, maybe like a content brief, an outline of what that content, you know, should include and you. Uh, headlines, subheads, uh, image, alt text, and the, the, uh, meta descriptions. There’s, there’s, all those little pieces are wonderful. To use it for but to write kind of similar to what we were just talking before to like full blown cheat on your s e o by having it write full articles and page copy for you. No, don’t do that. Just like I was just saying, the AI detector technology is evolving just as fast as the AI itself and Google’s got its own AI models and they don’t want, they’ve been very clear. They don’t want people. Using AI to generate content strictly for the purposes of seo. So they, they’re walking a fine line because they want to make money on ai and they’re coming out with their own AI tools, including some, like for Google Docs that will like write stuff for you right? In Google Docs. So they, they wanna play in the game, but they really don’t like it from an SEO perspective. So, Saying like, yeah, you can use it if you, if what you generate with it has like true value to actual humans and you’re not just saying like, you know, spit me out an article that contains, you know, 500 keywords in my niche. Um, so, but that’s such a fine line too, because, so, How can, how are they going to determine what is, uh, AI generated content that has value to humans and AI generated content that doesn’t have value to humans? Maybe you generated something you really feel strongly about that has. Value to humans, but it hits some kind of red flag check some kind of box in Google’s algorithm and they’re like, Nope, that was AI content generated purely for the purposes of seo. And we’re gonna ignore it, demote it, or penalize it or whatever. Um, I, I say just keep it safe and. Write your content manually. Use the AI to get ideas and even write you an outline and write your headings and subheads or whatever, but then just go full human, uh, with the rest of it. It’s the safest thing to do. And also this pa past year, Google added another E to its e a t recommendation. If you’re not familiar, the e a t recommendation from Google is to write content that demonstrates your expertise authoritative. And trustworthiness. They added another E this year, I believe, because of ai, uh, which is experience. They want you to talk about your personal firsthand experience in your world, whatever it is you’re talking about. So in addition to the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, they’re gonna be looking for clues that you are talking about your own unique. Individual experience, and when I say your, that can be as a person, like a personal thought leader or that can be as a brand, a company. So either you or your company’s unique, like never seen before by AI use case or situation that you helped solve for a client or whatever it may be. Um, so that’s gonna be, you know, something AI can’t do for you anyway, so just go full human with, with your content writing, but utilize all the tools for all, you know, just kind of the more production operations side of things, getting things posted with the right tags and so on. Yeah, I  Tara: wanna ask a little bit more about that in a little bit more detail. I know when, when we work with schools on their websites, we give them some keyword suggestions, um, but we don’t actually write their meta descriptions usually for them, and we create a spreadsheet so they can put their meta descriptions in there and we can upload them and make it super easy, but it’s still, it’s not super easy, right? People struggle with writing those meta descriptions and maybe including keywords in the meta descriptions. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, um, I wanted to ask, how do you do that? Like how, how do you, how would you generate meta descriptions or, um, and maybe we can talk about alt text also, but I’m getting super technical cuz I’m also a nerd. But how do you, um, how do you generate those meta descriptions? Can you be, can you tell me the process that, is there a process that makes it really easy to like drop it into a spreadsheet? How does that.  Pam: Yeah, so, um, ironically that’s one thing that we’re kind of reversing position on. We’ve always told our clients and that they need to write those meta descriptions like purely manually so that it gets like their brand tone and voice and their expertise into it and everything. But, uh, the summarization capabilities of AI are so good. That I feel like meta descriptions are one of the areas in addition to adult text, which we’ll talk about too, but I feel like, uh, meta descriptions are something that is safe to let AI write for you. You can train an AI model like. Chat, G p t to know your brand tone and to speak in the, in the ways that you would speak, whether it be formal or informal, technical or not. Um, you, you know, I’ve, I’ve already tinkered with that a bit and I’ve gotten, you know, our brand tone down pretty good and. Important thing to note about meta descriptions specifically is that they don’t actually affect your ranking position. They convince people to click on your result instead of someone else’s result. And it’s important to include keywords so that the keywords get bolded and draw their eyes. To your result instead of someone else’s result. But it’s not actually a ranking factor that’s being evaluated when Google’s deciding how high to rank content a piece of content. So I feel like a meta description is a safe place to utilize ai. So take your human generated content for the page. Put it into AI and tell it to summarize it into a meta description using the guidance that you’ve written for your brand tone and style and all of that. Okay. It in a spreadsheet is obviously ideal. Um, for this kind of thing, uh, you know, as more WordPress plugins and stuff come out, you know, maybe someday we’ll be able to do it in there. I haven’t. Seen any yet that do it really great yet, especially with the, the needing to put the brand tone and voice and everything in there. Um, but I have been able to integrate with chat gb t’s a p i in Google Sheets and give it input through that. So we always do our keyword mapping on a page by page basis for the clients picking keywords, primary secondary keywords for each page. And you know, we can link to the page copy and then pull it in and have chat two b t write the meta description with that. Brand tone and everything. Um, I did that kind of manually, but I saw that there is now a Google Sheets add-on that you can add. I believe it’s free, um, to more easily integrate chat G B T into your Google sheets. So Wow.  Tara: So you actually give it the content. You can’t just say, go to my about page and write a meta description and it won’t, like go to the page and read it. So as of  Pam: right now, chatty PT doesn’t actually have access to the internet. So it, it was, it was trained on information from the internet up to a date that I think is sometime in 2020. Um, just for like general knowledge, but you actually can’t, like, you know, give it a u r URL and tell it to analyze something unless you use another, like a, there’s an add-on that can like connect chat. Okay. Chat to the internet. Um, not a Google sheet sat on. I forget what it is, but, so it’s possible, but not by default. Uh, so right now you have to feed. Uh, the content, um, that I’m not sure if that’s gonna change with G B T four, which just got released yesterday. A couple things, and this will segue into the image alt, uh, dis uh, discussion. Uh, couple things that did change is it can accept a lot bigger input. So you can put about like 20, 25,000 words into it now. Um, it can handle a lot bigger input and it, uh, can handle image input. So up until now you couldn’t give chat g b t an image, but now you’ll be able to and ask it to write a summary of that image and what’s in it and, and even optimize it for s e o, uh, for your image, all text purposes, which is really cool. Um, GBT four is not available to everyone yet. They’re only giving it to their paid subscribers at the moment. Um, but you can join the a p I wait list or just, it’s only $20 a month. So to tinker with it. I mean, if you, you really gotta remember like how much, what time would I pay a person to do this for me versus how fast can AI do it? Um, for all of these, these use cases we’re talking. Now I know we have,  Aubrey: this is fascinating by the way. I know we have a lot of educators who listen. Um, and I, I’m guessing this is on their mind. Um, do people who use AI generated content need to cite that content as coming from ai? Like, this is a whole new ballgame. Remember, like, I’m remembering thinking back to like when I was writing my thesis papers and stuff and how you had to cite where things came from. So, um, if you could speak on this, I know this would be interest interesting to our.  Tara: Yeah. And I know also, yeah, attributing content when you, you know, if you copy content from another website or something like that, right? You always have to attribute it. Same with images, or you can get, you know, really in big, really big trouble for stealing that content or using it without acknowledging where it came from. So yes, this is an awesome question.  Pam: Yeah, so it’s a very, very good question. Um, I’m not entirely sure where that’s gonna go. And, and like I said before, I do focus mostly on seo. From an s e o perspective, I would say don’t cite it. Well, first of all, I say don’t do it. So you don’t have anything to cite if you don’t write your content with ai. You don’t have to cite ai, but let’s say you, you did. Um, I wouldn’t put that for SEO purposes because I don’t. Uh, tip Google off that this is AI content because the AI detectors are still evolving. So if they’re not, if they’re potentially not gonna catch it, why am I gonna point it out to them? But that’s strictly from an SEO perspective. There are so many other perspectives to look at with these things. I mean, from an educator perspective, obviously I think citing, you know, requiring citation. Is gonna be absolutely necessary. Um, you know, you may even allow it to a certain degree with citations, just like you are allowed to quote someone else’s writing if you cite it properly. Um, you know, so that can actually teach students how to use AI responsibly and ethically. Um, but yeah, I don’t know. There’s another angle too that I think about. If I, so AI is supposed to replace, you know, a person and their eye, their own inte, human intelligence, their brain, right? It’s like, so if you think of it like that, now I hire compare it to, I hire an employee to write an article for me to go stripe for me. And I give that employee input on what I want them to write about how, you know, the points I want them to make and so on and so forth. Um, how is that any different to me telling an AI. What I wanna write about the points I wanted to make, so on and so forth. You know, um, I, I, ghost writing is a thing in the marketing world that doesn’t have to be cited. Uh, so I don’t know. There’s a lot of different angles and, and morals and ethics and, you know, that all comes into play too. Um, and I’m starting to hear a lot more people talk about using AI responsibly. So, Citations are definitely gonna be, it’ll look different in like, let’s say marketing versus, you know, student, uh, homework and whatnot. But, uh, yeah, it’s definitely gonna be a big part of the discussion and methods that are to be determined for how to use AI responsibly. Aubrey: This is fascinating. I feel like this happened so fast, but really it probably didn’t. It’s been building for so long,  Pam: right? Yes. It’s like those businesses, people say are an overnight success, but they’ve really been around for like 10 years and they just finally got all that pr. Yeah, that’s kind of what it is. But now it’s really rolling. Now it’s really snowballing.  Aubrey: Exactly. So I think actually this year, the next couple years are gonna be fascinating to just watch and, and participate in how, how this all rolls out. Um, I’m curious. A lot of schools are, you know, haven’t even touched, you know, any ai right? Or to their knowledge, I’m sure they have like, right, but where if, if they’re like, yes, this is something like, we should be trying, or at least trying to understand, um, where do they get started? Like what is the basics for, like, I know nothing. How do I get started? Or I know I need to educate myself more. How do I get.  Pam: Yeah, so playing with it firsthand, uh, obviously can’t be replaced. So, you know, go tinker with it. Go to chat.openai.com and play with their free version. You don’t need to sign up for the paid version to get G P T four if you haven’t even played with G P T three or 3.5 yet. So, um, you know, just go there and, and play with what’s there available to you now for free. Um, also I think that there’s a lot of great. Thought leaders emerging in this space already. I follow a bunch of people on TikTok that post videos about, you know, tips and tricks and learning cuz AI is like a, a tool, kind of like, kind of like Google, if you put in, if you search something and you’re not clear enough. You don’t get the, the response that you’re looking for, you don’t get the results you’re looking for. And it’s the same thing with ai. You have to ask for things in a very specific way. Um, I actually saw a term yesterday, uh, where they refer to it as prompt engineering. So, Like, just like software engineering, like, like designing the prompts to be worded in such a way to produce the output that you’re looking for is something people are already starting to specialize in. So you can definitely struggle with it if you just start, you know, asking it a few questions and it will sometimes tell you like, I don’t know that cuz like, it’s not connected to the internet. So it might say, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. You’ll be like, what the, what good is this? So it’s all about, The way you write your prompts, you know, just the, what you tell it to do, but how you tell it to do it. Um, so definitely, you know, start to just look up a little bit about like how to write AI prompts for your specific use case. That  Tara: is a great idea. That’s so interesting. You know, you think, I think about, um, Google, like knowing how to use the right ask Google the right questions. Mm-hmm. So it’s kind of mm-hmm. It’s similar to that, but, but broader too.  Pam: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Like people got better over time where like people type full questions into Google all the time now. They didn’t used to do that. Google didn’t used to be so good at it, but, you know, people kind of did get conditioned over time though. Oh wait, I can just put my full question. And get my answer. I don’t need to worry about how I word it. Yeah, we’re kind of still on the worry about how you word it phase with AI though, you know, I’m sure it’ll get much more natural at some point, but now you do have to be pretty specific with what you ask it to do and how you ask it to do it. Yeah, and  Tara: following up too, right? I mean, when I was playing with it, you can ask it to write something and you can say, no, write it a little bit more formally, or you know, talk a little bit less about me and more about this, or something like that. And it, I mean, it. Super  Pam: cool. So fun. Part of what I myself doing. Refine, refine, refine, ask it. Oh no. Be more like this. No, dude. No, I meant that. Right,  Tara: right. I can’t wait to try it for bettered descriptions. I love that idea. This has been so interesting, but we’ve got one more question before we go on to our rapid fire questions, and that’s because we are a mindful, uh, we talk about mindfulness on our podcast as well and how it applies to the small school leaders that listen to this. So we always like to ask our guests, and you’re included in this, how do you define mindfulness, Pam, and and how would you advise school leaders to apply mindfulness to the process of using AI for their school marketing?  Pam: That was an excellent question. So my knee jerk reaction to the word mindfulness is just thinking about staying in the moment. Um, you know, I love meditation. I don’t do as much of it as I nearly should, but I, I need to get back to it cuz it’s so wonderful. Um, and I think of it as like being really present in the present moment, but. It. Mindfulness, I think can also go a lot further than that. This is actually what I’ve been trying to do lately, especially when it comes to U use cases for ai, is not just staying in the present moment and being aware of what you’re doing, but questioning your own motives. Why am I doing this? Why do I wanna do this? Am I. And as a part it could be anything. Um, you know, am I doing this to be a good human or am I doing this to create a shortcut? If it’s shortcut is an ethical shortcut, is it for efficiencies that will benefit my clients? Or am I really doing them a disservice? Am I kind of cheating? So it’s like the, you know, I think of it as like the be a good human barometer, like checking in, in the present moment, you know, what am I trying to accomplish here? Why am I trying to accomplish it? And, and how, and is that? Am I being a good human? Is this, is the output of this a, a good, ethical, moral thing to help other humans? So I don’t, ironically with ai, you know, it’s like we’ve gotta remind ourselves we are humans, we are dealing with other humans. Am I serving this human? Am I being a good human or am I just kind of. Looking for ways to cheat the system. And, you know, people who, who wanna use AI responsibly, I think all of us do here, um, are gonna, gonna, you know, do that by default. But it is good to check in and like to, you know, should I shouldn’t, I like with the meta descriptions, I had to kind of go through that process. Like, wait, should I, I tell everybody, did not write your full content. Uh, with ai. So is it okay to try to, I had to like really like check in with myself, like, why, what, why do I wanna say this? Is it really like, good advice? And, um, so anyway, the, I’d say, you know, questioning your own motives in every moment, and from a teacher perspective, Teaching students how to use AI responsibly with that kind of a barometer, like, what am I doing right now? Why am I doing it? Am I cheating or am I being efficient and is it moral? And so on and so forth.  Tara: I love that line that that’s great and, and being a good human, I think. Sometimes we get so caught up in our end goals, you know, enrollment numbers, inquiry numbers, all the things that we’re driven to do in our jobs that we kind of, we have to keep in mind. And especially, you know, schools that, that we work with are, you know, they’re amazing and they’re out. There to help make the world a better place by enriching children’s lives and families’ lives. And that’s ultimately why they’re there. Right? So keeping that in mind is, um, is important to, to all of us. And so I appreciate your sharing that so much. What a great point. Love it. All right. Aubrey, take us into  Aubrey: the rapid fire. Yes, it’s time for rapid fire. Um, alright, I’ll kick you off with that first one. What is a book that you, that had like an impact on your life and that you would include in the high  Pam: school curriculum? So I’d in general love to see more about business in all curriculums. Uh, I, I barely remember being taught anything about business in high school. So, um, and so my mind goes to two of my top favorite business books. It’s hard to choose one cuz in my brain they’re equally tied For number one, it, they are built to sell and the EMyth. And I don’t remember the author’s names, but they’re two very famous books if you look up Built To Sell. And the EMyth just invaluable for anyone who’s even remotely interested in starting a business. And ironically, with the name Built to Sell, um, you would think it’s for people who are building businesses to sell them. It actually cont contains excellent advice for, even if you’re not looking to. Because designing your business in a way where it’s valuable to sell is just as profitable for you if you don’t intend to sell it. So those would be my top two picks. I love  Aubrey: those by the way. They’re both on my shelf and I would agree with Bill to sell. Uh, absolutely. Like it’s like one of those things you’re like, oh yeah, good advice all around. Um, and I also agree that there, I wish there had been more business like. In my education. So that’s what I would hope for my children as well. So yes, thank you for those book recommendations. Okay. Yes.  Tara: I’m gonna ask you about apps now. What is one app that you could not live without?  Pam: Google Sheets. Yeah, I, my brain is a giant spreadsheet. I need to see everything in spreadsheet format. I have a spreadsheet for like everything. Me too. And just, it’s getting smarter and smarter with all these integrations like I was talking about with AI integrations and everything. So like I already for forever have relied upon, well prior to Google Sheets, Excel, but now Google Sheets cuz it’s so collaborative and everyone can edit them at the same time. And now, Sheets are getting smarter and smarter by the day, so I could not imagine trying to function in life without Google Sheets. Me  Tara: too. I love myself a good spreadsheet. One thing I’m proud I passed on to my children is that they both use spreadsheets. Awesome. Go on a vacation, make a spreadsheet. Everything is a spreadsheet. Good.  Pam: Oh my  Aubrey: gosh, I love it. I love spreadsheets and I love well-designed ones. So, um, I’m hanging out with the right people right now.  Pam: Oh, yeah. I’m constantly tinkering with mine, trying to make ’em better and better and better. Oh,  Aubrey: that’s awesome. And I love all the plugins, all the cool things you can do with, uh, Google Sheets. So yes, I am going to ask you the next question of what  Pam: are you reading right now? So I’m not reading any books at the moment. I’m just trying to keep up with all of this AI stuff. Uh, it’s so rapid fire, so many new articles every day, new releases of tools every day, the AI wars. Full blown. You know, it’s happening and so I’m really just like, when I have time to read, I’m just reading like what’s going on in that world and online articles. Yeah, they’re, by the time they  put  Aubrey: out an AI book, it would be  Pam: outdated. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Same with s e l, although. Majestic has kind of figured out how to do that now. Um, those are a couple of the books I’ve been, uh, a part of as they do a annual, um, you know, kind of roundup of advice for the upcoming year from all sorts of SEO experts. So, uh, that I guess, uh, I would recommend as well to anyone interested in seo.  Tara: Thank you so much. All right. Our last question is, uh, what is one great piece of advice you’d like to leave us with today,  Pam: Pam? I think. Again, back to the be a good human barometer, like just gotta double down on with all of this AI and technology and rapid advancement. Don’t lose sight of your humans. Um, especially, you know, if you own a business or you own a school, if you’re in any kind of position where you have clients, you know, the, my business coach always tells me the number one reason that people leave a business as a client that they cancel is perceived indifference. Even if you truly care about them, if they perceive that you don’t. Basically because they’re not getting enough communication from you, real human communication from you, then they will leave. So you could be like implementing all this new technology and AI and everything to bring your, your clients’ efficiencies or to, you know, bring your students amazing experiences they’ve never had before. Um, But if you’re not effectively communicating that human to human with your clients, they could perceive you as just like automating your job for them and like signing off and not caring. Um, so it’s, it’s a fine line to walk. So be a good human and remind your clients that you care about them as humans. Mm-hmm.  Tara: Thank you. Thank you so much, Pam. Thank you. We really. Yeah, this has been great. Uh, I could keep talking about this nerdy stuff forever, but, um, we’ll wrap up and ask where people can find you online.  Pam: Sure. So, I mean, anywhere that’s Payman Marketing, so payman marketing.com and facebook.com/payman marketing, payment marketing Twitter. But lately I’ve been doing a lot on TikTok. Um, because it’s just the short form video is just so easy to give these updates on these rapidly evolving situations. With GA four and G B T four, it’s the year of the f ironically, 2023 is the year of the fours, so tiktok.com/at symbol pan marketing is where I’ll be talking a lot more about all of this stuff. Thank you. Thank you again.  Aubrey: This has been an amazing conversation.  Pam: Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you so much.  Aubrey: Inquiry Tracker is the all-in-one CR R M solution used by over 250 schools. Easily manage all your inquiries, tours, and open houses. Key Instant Analytics help you manage and grow a robust pipeline. So end spreadsheets forever.  Tara: The Smart Online Application System with Powerful Document Upload is a game changer. No school is too small or too big, and their Fast Start program will get you up and running in no. Best  Aubrey: of all the system is designed by K12 education, marketing, and admissions professionals. Check out Inquiry tracker@inquirytracker.net. That’s inquiry with e tracker.net.  Tara: Thanks for joining us on the Mindful School Marketing Podcast.  Aubrey: We’d love it if you pop into iTunes and leave a review. Five Star Preferred. Let us know how you like the show. It helps us improve what we’re doing and helps others find us too.