Are you using artificial intelligence (AI) at work yet? If not, you probably will be soon — or risk being left behind, as your colleagues and the competition leverage this revolutionary technology to get ahead.
A May 2024 Microsoft and LinkedIn survey of 31,000 people across more than 30 countries found that 75% of knowledge workers now use AI in their jobs, and nearly half of those (46%) started this practice in the previous six months. The survey also reports that the vast majority of workers say that AI tools help them save time (90%), be more creative (84%) and enjoy their job more (83%).
If you’re a business or marketing professional, how can AI help you do your job a bit faster or better? Read on to find out about 10 everyday tasks made easier with AI, and learn about two new UW courses that’ll make you the resident AI pro in the office.
A cautionary note: As powerful as AI tools can be, they also can often produce false or biased information. Always vet any text or images created by AI for accuracy or bias and check for any copyright or trademark issues before publishing.
10 Tasks Made Easier With AI
1. Develop a New Product or Feature
AI tools are great for generating long lists of ideas for new products or features based on a simple text prompt. You can also ask your favorite AI tool to come up with creative product names, descriptions, taglines or slogans. Compile the output and iterate on the best ones to find something that resonates with you. For AI tools specialized in product or feature development, check out Stratup.ai or FounderPal.
2. Create a Company or Brand Logo
Need a logo for your new company, product or brand? There are AI tools (both free and paid) that specialize in this kind of task, such as Brandmark, LogoAI and Looka. You can input elements of your creative brief, such as details about brand values and target audience, and then sort through the different logo options that the tool generates.
3. Produce a Newsletter
Professional marketers must often create catchy, original newsletter content to engage customers and entice them to click on a link, known as conversion. Your chosen AI tool can generate copy for you about specific products or topics based on your detailed prompts. For better results, include instructions around tone and audience, such as “use humor that would appeal to a Gen Z audience.” Edit the results to your liking.
4. Write a Marketing Plan
You can use AI to draft a high-level marketing plan for your business or product. In your prompts, include a product description, target audience, estimated budget and the specific marketing strategies you’d like to pursue.
Example of a market research report produced by Claude, a generative AI tool 5. Create Social Media Posts
AI knows social media; after all, most large language models used publicly available internet content, including social posts, for their training data. So, why not ask your AI tool to produce social media posts about your latest product or initiative? Your prompt should include instructions regarding content, tone and length, tailored for the platforms you intend to publish on. Just remember to review and edit the results before posting and sharing them with the world.
6. Analyze Customer Feedback
It can be challenging to mine customer feedback from surveys, emails, social media and other channels and develop actionable insights. AI tools can make this task quicker and easier by analyzing the feedback for you and surfacing recurring themes or issues you need to address. (Be aware, however, that you should never put proprietary content or confidential customer info into an AI tool unless you have cleared it with your company’s legal and IT departments.)
7. Generate Graphics and Images
AI tools such as Midjourney and DALL-E can produce stunning graphics and images based on descriptive text prompts entered by the user. This makes it incredibly easy to produce unique visuals that you can use for advertising, websites, product packaging and more. Just make sure that you check the images closely for errors before publication.
8. Help With SEO
Maximizing the search engine optimization (SEO) of web content is essential for increasing web traffic and driving marketing results (we even offer a specialization on the subject). AI can analyze a specific piece of web copy or marketing content and suggest keywords, title tags and other strategies to boost that content’s SEO performance.
9. Craft Compelling Emails
Need help creating concise copy for marketing emails that strikes just the right tone? Your AI tool will happily spit out 10 (or 50, or 100) different blurbs on any theme or subject you provide. Simply select the best ones, edit them for accuracy and fit, and get ready to launch your email marketing campaign.
10. Compile Market Research
Need to analyze what the potential market is for your new product? Prompt your AI tool to generate a thorough market research report that considers target audiences, market demand, competitor analysis, marketing and pricing strategy, and more.
UW Courses to Get You Started With AI
Want to get started using AI tools in your everyday work? We’ve got you covered. UW Professional & Continuing Education (UWPCE) is offering two new online courses on the topic, both launching this autumn.
The Generative AI for Business course, taught by Paul Fabretti, meets on Tuesday evenings in online synchronous (real-time) sessions. This course will give you practical, hands-on experience using AI to execute on many of the tasks covered in the list above.
The Empowering Marketing & Communications With AI course, taught by instructors Lara Bradshaw and Sam Tang of the UW Communication Leadership master’s program, is delivered in an online asynchronous format. The course will teach you how to leverage AI to enhance your brand’s storytelling, analyze data, develop a marketing campaign strategy and more.
“Both courses help students learn to use AI effectively and responsibly, but they do so in different contexts,” says UWPCE’s Brian Gutierrez, who helped develop the Generative AI for Business course.
According to Fabretti, who also serves as a communications director in Microsoft’s Cloud Operations & Innovation group, with workplace adoption of AI rapidly increasing there’s no better time to add AI skills to your repertoire.
“There’s always an aspect of first-mover advantage — anyone who can find ways to introduce this technology into their everyday work will be at a major advantage in the workplace and job market,” he says. “At a basic level, you’re making yourself more valuable; at a higher level, you’re changing and improving how you accomplish your work.”