I feel like I’m living in two AI worlds right now.
In one, I’m having thoughtful, behind-the-scenes conversations with my co-workers about AI’s potential for marketers. We’re exploring what’s exciting, what’s tricky, and how we’re all experimenting. On the other hand, I’m scrolling through social media, where the conversation is a little more … surface level.
You have folks who try AI once, get a weird output, and declare it useless. Then you have the other side of the spectrum: people who see it as the absolute answer to everything.
I’m finding the reality sits somewhere in the middle. AI isn’t going to single-handedly run your marketing strategy or your department (take a deep breath of relief, marketers!). But it does have some pretty amazing capabilities that go far beyond the surface-level em-dash conversation. Let’s start there, shall we?
Retiring the “AI Giveaways”
One of the most frequent conversations I’ve seen lately is the notorious em-dash debate. You’ve probably seen the social media posts declaring, “If you spot an em dash, it must be AI!”
But if you’re a writer, you know the truth. We’ve been using them forever. I’ve actually never met a writer who didn’t count the em dash as one of their favorite tools. If you want a laugh, check out this piece written from the em dash’s POV. Apparently, it’s noticed all the buzz on social media too.
And the same goes for the cliché intro line: “In our fast-paced digital world.” In a prior life, I taught English at the university level, and I can tell you plenty of human writers have leaned on that line.
So these so-called AI dead giveaways don’t really hold up. AI detectors are unreliable, and any “telltale signs” you see now will likely disappear as users get better at prompting and editing.
What we’re really seeing is people engaging with AI at a very surface level and then posting about it on social media. And don’t get me wrong—I’m not mad about it (See? Humans really do really love their em dashes). But I do think we can have a more intelligent, nuanced conversation about its potential to transform us as marketers and expand what we can accomplish.
What Should Those Conversations Be?
I’ve found that AI’s real potential isn’t in pounding out a 1,000-word blog post. The opportunity is to push past those surface-level tasks and into something more.
We recently did some AI training here at Act-On, and I realized much of AI’s value lies in keeping the fun parts of your work for yourself and letting the robot handle the ones that aren’t so fun.
For example, can AI do content ideation? Yeah, of course it can. But that’s something I actually want to do. So it’s more about looking at your workflows and asking: What are the things in my day that are manual, time-consuming, and not really that enjoyable? Those are the places where AI can step in to make your job more fun.
Here are some of my favorite ideas:
Content audits and categorization. I once spent an entire summer manually reviewing and categorizing hundreds of blog posts. AI can now take on much of that work. It can scan your backlog, group content, find gaps, and suggest updates in far less time (and budget) than we’ve done in the past.
Adding structured updates. If you create content, updating and refreshing it is part of the job. Adding FAQs to old blog posts, for example, is the kind of repetitive, rules-based task that AI can handle well.
Organizing content assets. AI-based organizational tools might not be perfect yet, but they’re getting closer. Some of these tools can help you customize workflows, clean up messy file systems, and make your content assets much easier to find.
Supporting internal thought leaders. Teams are also using AI to scale content creation. Our team, for example, set up a tool that helps SMEs turn their expertise, industry knowledge, and real-time insights into short blogs. The AI adds structure, strengthens connections between ideas, and makes it much easier for internal experts to share their perspectives more often.
We’re at a point where we, as marketers, can control our destiny a bit and use AI to make ourselves and our creative work much more efficient, without handing over the best parts. It’s also a great opportunity to stop giving up the parts of your job you love most and start giving it the parts that slow you down.
Where Do Humans Still Fit?
In the background, there’s some fear in marketing about which parts of our jobs AI will replace and where humans still fit. One thing I’ve noticed is the level of oversight AI requires.
For example, right now it’s built to agree with you (finally, a co-worker who thinks all of your ideas are brilliant!). But it also can’t use human judgment to recognize when something is off.
Recently, I was reviewing historical data to understand which forms in our content generated the most leads. The dataset included many different form titles, including “book a call” (which appears throughout our website) and forms tied to eBooks.
After AI analyzed the data, it decided that eBook forms outperformed the others by a landslide. That just didn’t make sense. Looking closer, I realized it had lumped “book a call” in with “eBook” forms, which skewed the results.
It’s a small example with a big lesson: No matter how you use AI, you still need a human to catch the errors. Left unchecked, AI will swear up and down that an eBook form and “book a call” are basically the same thing. And of course, as humans, we know they definitely are not.
How to Spark Better AI Conversations in Your Team
If you want to step away from the surface-level discussions into something deeper with your team, here are a few things to consider:
- Find the people who are already doing interesting things with AI. They might be another department in your company, or individuals in your professional network. Invite them to share their processes. For example, what are your demand gen peers doing with AI? What are your content and creatives doing?
- Follow thought leaders experimenting with AI in your space. And avoid the ones that are basically posting “Just tried AI once; here’s my TED Talk.” You’re looking for marketers who explain the “why” behind their workflows, rather than just the wow factor. Want some inspiration? Check out Act-On’s LinkedIn feed where we regularly reshare and highlight top voices in AI.
- Experiment in small groups. With AI, it’s natural to feel cautious since we’ve all heard big promises before. That’s why it helps to stay curious, try new things out, and keep a healthy dose of skepticism without writing it off too quickly. One way to do that is by experimenting in small groups. Partner up to test new tools and workflows, then share what works and what doesn’t with the larger team to discover new uses.
As marketers, it’s important to keep our curiosity alive. Not every new AI tool will deliver value, and I have my own list of experiments that definitely missed the mark. But what matters is staying intentional. Protect the parts of your job that are best left to a human, and the parts that sparked your love for marketing in the first place. Because when you bring AI into the right parts of your process, you can create stronger results for your team and continue experiencing joy in your work.