Here at Beacon Digital, we’re always on the lookout for ways to optimize our workflow and create compelling and unique content for our clients. As content creation becomes increasingly reliant on technology and data, it’s more important than ever for us to stay on the cutting edge of marketing’s future — and that future is powered by AI.
Our team has been experimenting with a range of cutting edge AI tools such as ChatGPT, TikTok, and DALL-E to up the ante in content creation. These AI platforms may seem intimidating, but most of them are quite user-friendly and even fun to use!
We sat down with some of Beacon Digital’s team members to learn their favorite AI tools and how they’ve incorporated them into their daily workflows.
From streamlining tedious tasks to unlocking new pipelines of creative inspiration, read on to discover how our team is using AI to transform the way they work.
Meet Raylyn Robinson, our Content Specialist.
Raylyn writes content and manages the social media channels of a wide range of clients, from cybersecurity to B2B SaaS companies and everything in between.
“AI tools allow me to unlock new levels of creativity and ensure each client’s voice is heard loud and clear.”
Which AI tools are you using?
Raylyn: “Our team mainly uses ChatGPT and COPY AI. We are also building a strategy to incorporate TikTok, which we hope to roll out in the next few months.”
ChatGPT and COPY AI are similar in that they generate written responses to a variety of customized prompts that help guide tone, research, and style of writing. While these AI tools optimize processes and can improve written content, TikTok provides a direct pipeline for engagement through video content. TikTok is also a great platform for brand storytelling, testing video marketing trends, and capturing new audiences that written content can’t always reach.
How are you using them?
Raylyn: “I use these tools as a starting point for ideation when I’m writing organic social media content. I’ll sometimes turn to ChatGPT as a research tool to gain a better understanding around a topic or industry that I’m writing about. It’s amazing how much time it has saved me with research — but I always make sure to fact check!”
COPY AI is particularly helpful, because it allows Raylyn to customize her tone and style when she’s creating content, especially across all the social channels she manages.
Raylyn: “COPY AI gives me inspiration! There are times when I will be doing optimization and then I have to jump into writing social media copy. Some clients want more formal and informative posts, while others prefer having a funny or quirky voice on social media. The AI tools help me adjust my writing style quickly to ensure each client’s voice is unique.”
When it comes to TikTok, Raylyn says her team isn’t jumping in without a plan.
Raylyn: “We are building out a whole strategic approach to using TikTok and plan to execute it over the next few months. It will be an extremely valuable tool for enhancing recruitment and promoting Beacon’s thought leadership in the industry.”
*Be sure to keep an eye out for updates and improvements on our TikTok page!
Incorporating these AI tools allow her and the team to work more efficiently on customized content, while never sacrificing the quality of what they are creating.
Meet Jordan Roach, our Art Director
Jordan has a knack for brand development through design and digital illustration. His team churns out top-notch creative solutions for clients across our focused industries.
“It’s incredibly exciting to have AI tools at our fingertips. It has created a whole new pipeline of inspiration for our clients.”
Which AI tools are you using?
Jordan: “We’ve been using DALL-E, and I just started to explore a similar one called MidJourney.”
These two platforms are quite similar, both developing illustrations and digital graphic images from textual prompts and descriptions. DALL-E’s name is aptly derived from the famous artist Salvador Dali in combination with the robotic character in Pixar’s futuristic movie, WALL-E.
How are you using it?
Jordan: “I love using them for storyboards and mood boards for client presentations. The biggest benefit for me is being able to quickly produce images in a specific style or experiment with a photographic treatment in real-time. This can often take hours of playing around on photoshop, but when I use DALL-E, I can produce images immediately.”
Do you have an example of DALL-E in action?
Jordan: “I’m working on a video project for a company who focuses mainly on creating and improving piping designs for various manufacturing factories. Most engineers would use a program called CAD to provide a visual for these new piping designs, but I've been experimenting with DALL-E to edit the CAD files and make them appear higher quality and more appealing in a video format.”
Here are some examples of some of these video images. See the prompts Jordan has written in the right margin? These are the cues the AI tool uses to customize the images:
Jordan says it can take up to 10 hours or more to create images and illustrations like these effectively and even then, the image in his mind doesn’t always translate to clients. But with DALL-E, this time is cut down significantly and he’s able to easily customize images to fit his vision and the client’s preference.
As another example, you can see the featured image of this blog post, and the prompt we used to create it: "Digital Art representing a woman on a laptop using AI to create images."
Jordan: “My team is very visual, so to be able to sit here and brainstorm in real-time with instantly-produced images is pretty amazing. I know many people are intimidated about this huge leap in design technology, but I think it’s incredibly useful and exciting.”
Meet Lily Johnson, our Senior Director of Production.
Lily is a master of audio and visual projects, collaborating across all of Beacon’s teams to create compelling videos, motion graphics, and podcasts that enhance and compliment client engagement.
“AI tools save so much time in production, giving us more time to get even more creative and produce even more content.”
Which AI tools are you using?
Lily: “Our team has been using Descript and REV for various production projects.”
Descript and REV are AI tools that instantly transcribes spoken words into written text, with features that also offer editing, caption generation, and voiceover capabilities.
How are you using them?
Lily: “They’ve been extremely helpful with Beacon’s podcast production. Specifically, producing and editing transcripts. Both REV and Descript offer an incredibly fast turnaround when creating transcripts from lengthy conversations– a tedious process that would typically take many hours!”
To Lily, Descript is a particularly remarkable tool. When editing and producing episodes with extensive content, Lily can edit transcribed text directly and remove any filler words or sections. Descript then automatically adjusts the audio and video to match these edits, saving her and the team hours in post-production.
Lily: “These tools save me multiple steps in the post-production process and have been truly transformative, allowing us to produce even more content for our clients — instead of one podcast episode per week, we’ll be able to produce multiple. We’re excited to continue experimenting with these tools to see where they can take us.
By embracing these AI tools, our team has positioned itself on the cutting-edge of marketing’s future — and will hopefully inspire others to follow suit!
Beacon Digital is always cooking up something new and exciting, and we want you to be part of it. Head over to our blog to keep up with the latest buzz!
Posted In: Content Marketing, AI
Kat Merry
Kat Merry is a freelance writer with an eclectic background in business development, recruitment, job coaching, and education- experience working & creating content across virtually all industries. She's based in the Hudson Valley in New York state.