Episode 023
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[00:00:00] Welcome to SEO Day Studio with your hosts, the Findability Queen Denise Millet, and the entrepreneur Whisperer, Kim White. This is a space to hear the questions that fellow entrepreneurs have about SEO and get them answered. So many discussions involving techy topics like SEO are loaded with jargon and unnecessary complexity.
So much so that anyone outside the tech industry has difficulty getting to the real meeting inside the information. Denise believes that every entrepreneur can benefit from search engines. Once they hear how they work in a clear and straightforward way. She's on a mission to help entrepreneurs get the content They spend hours creating included in search engines, so when their customers search online, they're findable because she believes if they can't find you, they can't do business with you.
So stay tuned. The fun starts now. Well, [00:01:00] welcome to the SEO Day podcast. The fun is starting and I am the official mailbag keeper, Kim White, and I am joined by the beautiful, brilliant findability queen herself here in the studio, Denise Millet. Denise, thank you for giving business owners a place to get their questions answered about findability and SEO.
Thank you, Kim. Thank you for being here with me and doing season one of SEO Day. Yay. Well, I have to kind of preface this, these questions with a little bit of a different spin because we definitely have had these questions asked in various ways, but we actually pulled these questions. Not directly from the mailbag, but from our, I guess from us, Denise, that that's the way I'm gonna put it.
These are the questions we're asked so often these days that we want to [00:02:00] address them to hopefully calm some fears, help people be cautious, do things the right way, and I am grateful that you are willing to. Really talk about these things because they do come up when you're talking. SEO especially. Yes, they do.
And, we have a lot of people that are, trying to stay on top of things and they don't necessarily have all the background and so. These things are new and, and I, I'm happy to try to break 'em down so people feel more comfortable trying them out and using them to the, their advantage, but use them in the right way.
Well, our first question, and this whole episode will be spicy, but the first question is, what is AI? Okay. AI stands for artificial intelligence. Now let's [00:03:00] make sure we understand artificial not real. Not natural, not human intelligence. So yeah, it's a program, it's a programming. Style theory. All right, so because our computers are faster, smaller, we can do a lot more.
We have a lot more processing power. We have a lot more speed. We can have. Collections of pieces of information connected in more than just one or two ways, like a, a tree or an umbrella would be, you'd have, in these networks of, you know, like, here's this connected to this and this and this and this and this, and this and this, and backwards, you know, and across each other and.
Those connections are the like networky kind of thing. So if someone asks a question of artificial intelligence programs, they have the ability to take one idea and access all these other things about [00:04:00] it so quick, so fast that they could put it all together and then. Try to put the ideas together around it through a program, and it's incredibly powerful and very helpful at times when used in the right way.
I think if AI is not your friend and not your enemy, AI is, you know, how you use it. it comes in to play in being handy for some things. If you understand how to use it the right way, and I think this is a lovely conversation. Denise, question number two is what is an AI assistant? This is a good one. So, there's so many programs that we have and platforms that now want to use AI to help us.
What I like about assistance is they're often, for example, if I were to take the video from this podcast episode and an AI assistant [00:05:00] somewhere, might take it. And from that, create a summary for me. Give me a transcript, give me five bullet points of important things we talked about so it's able to understand what you give it.
Give you shortened versions or collections, organized or highlights or summaries. You know, it assists you in processing something, but you're telling it's your information that it's working on. So it's your ideas that it's assisting you in creating something different. That's what I think of as an assistant.
Did you have a, another way to think of it? So I just really think of they AI assistant as someone who takes your things, not other people's things. Right. And does, like you said, like some summaries or some bullet points or some things that help you as long as they stay in your voice [00:06:00] that, that's one of my things.
I don't want someone to say something against what I have built in my business. By taking something out, you know, from, from the what big, big, wide world, and bringing it in as if that's my message, right? So I like that we can use this as a tool, but check it. Yes, always check it. and here's the thing about an assistant or AI, the sources of information for AI can be anything.
So you don't always know if they're authoritative or they're, real, or, you know, other than the dictionary and maybe Wikipedia, like you're not always sure where the information's come from unless you ask it, and it won't always tell you, you know? So you don't really know. You do have to verify things.
If you're gonna rely on hard facts or hard data or anything. You need to find the [00:07:00] source. before you lean on that as something you would footnote in a research paper, you know, so there you go. And an assistant might have access to Wikipedia or the dictionary or the thesaurus to give you all the different words and things like that, but they're not going to go out to the wild in the internet and pull in all sorts of information to create something for you as an assistant.
It's going to look at your input, your data in your account. Basically love it. So question number three. This is a little, we just want to make sure everybody's understanding the differences between these things. What is a prompt? Isn't this interesting? People probably never heard this word before in the wild like we do now.
A prompt is basically what you ask an AI platform. It can be what you ask an assistant to do, [00:08:00] but you may not be able to ask it more than give me. Give me three bullet points, give me a summary. Give me, they give you options in assistance of what they can do for you. But a true AI platform like the big one everybody talks about, you have to give it some serious direction.
It's a direction about what you want it to produce for you. And that could be very detailed. I mean, it doesn't have to be, it could be two words. What you'll get will be very general. If you want to really get something helpful and specific, you have to tell it. So what's a good example? you're trying to find different words to describe something.
So you might say, a red apple. Give me five different ways to describe a red apple. It'll come back with five different ways to describe a red apple, exactly like that. And then from there you can say, well, is there something else you want to know or say? Well, describe [00:09:00] green apples and red apples and the difference between the two and what it means, and then it'll tell you more about that.
So you can add onto it and the prompt is what you are asking it so that it'll give you something back. I make very long prompts. It probably says, please stop talking to me. But when I use it, I have long prompts because I want to be very clear with what I'm asking. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you want to, you want to find what you're looking for and.
Anybody can look up in Wikipedia. Anybody can do a, a search on the basics. If you're really looking for help and different ideas, you want to hear different ideas. So you're gonna give it what you already know and see what it gives you back. I love it. Well, let's head over to a word from our sponsor today.
This episode is brought to you by the findability Queen Denise Millet. Visit her YouTube channel [00:10:00] youtube.com/@findabilityqueen for her collection of short videos, answering questions about findability and SEO for entrepreneurs every day. Welcome back to the SEO Day Podcast studio. I am here with Denise Millet, the findability queen, and we are having a spicy conversation about AI.
I think everyone should go ahead and buckle up for this next half, Denise, because it's going to get even more spicy. I think so too, Kim. So, so you just were talking about prompts as asking questions and directions of, you know, something that is not alive. I want to make that very clear. Again, is something that's not a human, it is a tool.
But Denise, what does someone put in a prompt to get the answers that they're looking for?
Okay. the way I want to [00:11:00] describe this, and I want you to add onto it, is I want people to think about what your outcome is that you want, what it is that you're really looking for, and if, if you are just looking for words to help you describe something differently, that's what you put in. Ask for words.
Ask for things to describe it differently if you're trying to put together bullet points or a short summary, or ask it for specifically what you're looking for, and then give it the background about what you already know about it, so it doesn't give you what you already know. Because if you already know something, that's not what you want it to tell you, but it's not smart enough to know that you already know that.
So if you don't give it the ground, the basis of what, where you're starting from, it's gonna regurgitate all the things that you already know. [00:12:00] So that's the thing about AI is it can only draw on based on what you ask it for. It doesn't know what you know. And so you can ask it for what you want, but it's gonna draw on everything.
So you have to kind of narrow it down while asking for what you want. Broad and narrow. Denise. Broad and narrow. There you go. There you go. So question number five, and then I think we're gonna have a little bit of discussion about like making sure everybody stays on the right path with AI is how do I use AI for my business safely?
And I'm gonna like, you know, I'm gonna really push on the safely part. Okay.
It is funny. We've had this conversation a million times. I have a million things racing through [00:13:00] my head right now. So I guess what I want to say is, number one, when you put something into AI you don't know what it's going to do with it after you put it in there. So whatever question you put in, whatever you tell it that you already know, you have to be careful that it's not personally identifying information.
Or anything about your business that's proprietary or trademarked or copyrighted or anything like that, because we don't know. It's kind of a little bit of a big box that we're not unsure. We have ideas about what's going on in the background, but we don't really know. So you have to be careful to protect yourself.
Your business and your reputation by what you put in. Then the other side is what do you do with what comes out? Now you and I know that it's recognizable already and it's only been [00:14:00] however long it's been, that AI's been the thing. I can tell if I open an email and a article I wrote it. You could tell. You can tell if you know there's a blog post that came from AI, the language is already recognizable.
So you've got to protect your business and your reputation by making sure you use it as a research tool, as something to help you to outline, to do whatever, to make your job faster or easier or whatever. But it's not a substitute. Mm-hmm. And so for me, safety for your business is protecting your. Proprietary information yourself, your family, your, you know, business, but it's also protecting your reputation and the quality of what you do.
So to me, it's twofold. What would you add? So we are like, we are a lifestyle brand. That's one of the things that we know, and I think AI can [00:15:00] make it sound like we are artificial because it is artificial. By using all the buzz words. Mm-hmm. I think that's one of the things that I have recognized quickly is there are a lot of things you cannot use AI for.
If you want your clients and customers to remember that you are there serving them in a humanness. Like, we have machinery that does manufacturing things. We have, you know, we have, um, robots that can package and send things out into the world. But if at the end of the day your relationships with your clients and customers and even your team is important to you, don't mess that up.
By using something fake. I don't want a fake friend. I don't want a fake tool. I don't want a fake business. But I do use AI and I'll give you a great [00:16:00] example. If I'm doing some, what I'll call big thinking and I need some different thoughts that maybe I haven't thought of myself yet, I love that I can interact with.
AI and it will help me think, oh, well I didn't actually think about that, but I don't give it permission to speak for me. And I think maybe that's part of the reason that I like it, but I am not going to be replaced by it, and I think there's a big fear of that. Mm-hmm. I do think we're gonna do things a little different, having the ability to have, you know, answers so quickly.
And I mean, I remember the day that we didn't have GPS, you know, I remember the days when we didn't. I know. But if you think about it, GPS is a sort of an AI. Assistant to us because it tracks where we [00:17:00] need to go and helps us. We, we got a notification this weekend of there was heavy traffic in this area.
There was a wreck in this area and it was rerouting us. And I think that that is a form of AI. Absolutely. It's watching where we're at. It's following our location and moving us around. Objects or traffic jams. So we've been dealing with AI and not maybe recognize it because that term is so, I don't know, it's just a, it's a hot word right now, I think.
Yes. Yes. And. I agree with you, Kim. I think that it's never gonna be a substitute for original thinking and creativity, but it can be a very, you know, shortening time and how long it takes to do something. It can help you with the creative process because how many times have I stared at a blank screen or a blank page?
[00:18:00] I love to write, but there are times that my brain just doesn't turn on, and so it's great to have something help spark me, go, but you know, writers do that. They have prompts that they use all the time to get themselves going, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But I think when we cross over and say that we don't need people writing anymore because we have AI to do it, we get ourselves into trouble.
You know, 'cause it becomes a bland world and I don't see how that develops relationships online. Online is hard enough. Yeah. To convey yourself. If you take away a whole piece of your voice out of your content, I think it can be dangerous, but people are doing it and some people think it's great and so we, I don't judge what other people do, but I will say that for my business, I don't think it's the right approach if I want somebody to know who I am and what I believe in, you know, because AI doesn't know what I believe in.
Mine should [00:19:00] know. I tell it all the time, but you know, I think the best way to protect your business is to be you. Though I think whenever we use it as a tool, which it's an amazing tool, and we add to what we can do to serve better, I think that's amazing. But. You know, listeners, please don't lose your voice.
Don't lose your message. Don't lose your mission. Don't turn it over to something that's not even human. Have no emotion for whether it's, right or wrong for you. That's my cautionary tale, Denise. I think you're absolutely right, and I think we're not trying to be naysayers. I love technology.
It's my lifeblood. You know, I love analyzing, I love puzzles, I love all that stuff, but I think that there's a, an element of the wild, wild west that's going on right now. And because there's so much we don't know about behind the scenes, [00:20:00] there's an element of caution that I think everybody should have for any new tool, any new way of doing things.
Use it, figure it out. Try it out, see how it works, understand it. But just be careful. Just put a little bit of hesitation in there before you go all out. And don't put any personal information in there because you don't know what they'll do with it in the future. just protect yourself and your business a little bit and, and protect your reputation.
And we'll feel good. Great advice. Well, Denise, thank you so much for having this conversation because this is a, this is a spicy topic these days and we didn't even open the mailbag so we don't have to close it today. Just, just saying you did a great job of making it clearer. What AI is for and how to use it properly and how to keep us safe.
So thank you for all of that. Denise and Kim, thank you for season [00:21:00] one for all of your help and getting this off the ground with me and being here diligently every week and managing the mailbag helping make this a very useful place for people to get their questions answered.
So I so appreciate your time and your energy and yay. Thank you. Thank you and everybody head out to the show notes for some links about some things and we'll be back in season two. Thank you. Take care.
Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day studio for today's discussion. If you would like one of your SEO questions answered in the future episode, head on over to denise Millet.com/questions to let us know. The link is also in the show notes. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the SEO Day podcast.
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