Post Status Happiness Hour Session Fourteen

Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Maddy Osman, founder of Blogsmith Content Agency and author of “Writing for Humans and Robots.” They discuss the importance of developing a unique brand voice in an era dominated by generative AI. Maddy emphasizes the need for clear style guidelines to maintain consistency, especially for brands producing listicle content. She shares insights on using custom AI models to uphold brand style and the ethical implications of AI in content creation. The episode concludes with Maddy recommending the “Three-Body Problem” series and inviting new clients for 2025.

Top Takeaways:

• Establishing a Distinct Brand Voice is Essential for Consistency and Connection: Maddy highlights the importance of defining and refining a brand voice, particularly as businesses integrate AI into their content processes. A well-crafted brand voice ensures that all content, whether generated by humans or AI, feels cohesive and authentic to the audience. It helps in building a recognizable identity, fostering stronger connections with the target audience, and differentiating the brand from competitors. Maddy’s agency offers services specifically aimed at helping clients develop and refresh their brand voice, emphasizing its role as a core element of a successful content strategy.
• Ethical Use of AI in Content Creation: Both Michelle and Maddy emphasize using AI responsibly. They suggest leveraging AI to identify content gaps, reformat existing work, or assist in editing rather than generating original content from scratch. This approach maintains the integrity of the creator’s voice and avoids ethical pitfalls like plagiarism.
• Repurposing Existing Content: Maddy highlights a practical use case for repurposing content she previously created. By transforming her detailed personal notes into blog posts, she maximizes the value of her prior work, making it accessible to a wider audience while keeping the essence of her original writing.
• Competitor Analysis for Content Strategy: Michelle points out that analyzing competitors’ content can be a valuable strategy to identify gaps and opportunities for new topics. They agree that while using AI to gather insights is acceptable, directly copying competitor content is unethical.

Mentioned In The Show:

• The Blogsmith Content Agency
• Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style
• Bring It On
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Furby
• ChatGPT
• Bing
• Search GPT
• The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice
• Nielsen Norman Group
• Semrush
• Slack
• NotebookLM
• Three Body Problem series

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Maddy Osman (Founder, The Blogsmith)
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Transcript

Michelle Frechette 00:00:00  That’s the perfect intro. Maddy, I love it because we’re live. We’re live on the Post Status Happiness Hour. And I’m always happy talking to Maddy Osman. How are you, Maddy?

Maddy Osman 00:00:14  Likewise, Michelle. The feeling’s very mutual. I’m doing as well as anyone can. How about you?

Michelle Frechette 00:00:21  Well, it’s it’s already starting to get dark out because I am on the East coast and it’s already after a little bit after four. So, Yeah, like the whole seasonal affective disorder and, like, you know, you get on, you get off work at the end of the day, you open the curtain and you’re like, oh, it’s dark.

Maddy Osman 00:00:38  It’s a bummer.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:40  But it’s all good. And I know that spring will come, so it’s all good.

Maddy Osman 00:00:44  Absolutely. This is just a step in the process. Essentially. 

Michelle Frechette 00:00:49 Exactly, exactly. You knowI can’t imagine there are very many people out there who don’t know who you are. But for anybody who may not know, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and what you do?

Maddy Osman 00:00:56  Sure.

Maddy Osman 00:00:57  I’m sure there’s plenty of people who could benefit from that intro. but I’m Maddy Osman. I run the Blacksmith Content Agency, and I also am the author of the best selling book Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content style.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:14  Excellent. I have a copy. 

Maddy Osman 00:01:17  Whop whop. Whop. Yeah, I might have. I think I might as well.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:21  Yeah. For sure.

Maddy Osman 00:01:23  I always appreciate your support, Michelle. I know you also helped me to promote it when it was coming out.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:28  Yeah.

Maddy Osman 00:01:29  Across your various podcasts you’re involved with. So. Very much appreciated.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:34  Oh my pleasure. I like to promote people who are doing good stuff. Absolutely. So I’m excited because, you know, and I said, hey, do you want to come on the show? You’re like, what will you talk about? And I’m like, I don’t know, what do you want to talk about? And I had pitched the idea, I think the Black Fridays coming up and that, I mean, a lot of people are talking about how to get ready for Black Friday, but you gave me a little bit of a different take on it, and I’m going to read it so that I don’t mess it up, Which is developing a distinctive voice and style.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:02  with your product. Right. And how you’re with your brand, especially brand voice is so important. 

Maddy Osman: Absolutely. 

Michelle Frecehtte:I like you, added the part that AI is driving content creation toward average because people are kind of it’s all starting to sound a little homogeneous, right? And recognizability is important for businesses. And so yeah let’s get into it. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You’re the expert here. So let’s let’s hear what you got to say and I’ll talk in here.

Maddy Osman 00:02:28  Please do. Yeah. So I think I was just kind of thinking about as we get to the end of the year, this is maybe not the first year. Kind of like the second ish year that we’ve had AI like commercially available, like generative AI capabilities. And so it’s it’s been this big upheaval in terms of like, should I use it? And and if the answer is yes, like, how do I best use it? What are some of the limitations to consider? But also like the efficiencies that you could create.

Maddy Osman 00:02:58  And one thing that has, I think, come out of just this, this philosophical pondering is like, where does this leave brands that are creating content? What do they need to think about? Like as we get into 2025 where like, everybody has access to AI, which which then means that everybody can technically create the same things, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:03:21  Right, right.

Maddy Osman 00:03:22  And so it’s like, well, what’s what’s a way to stand out. And I think at the end of the day, whether you use AI to create content or a team of writers or a mix of both, I think that when things that you can do to stand out is to really focus on how can I, I’ll talk about it in terms of content, but it’s in terms of brand too. But how can I create like a distinct brand voice that that underlies everything that you create, no matter who’s creating it?

Michelle Frechette 00:03:51  Right, absolutely. So you said something that made me think of a really good example of like the idea that we’re all going to start to sound the same. 

Michelle Frechette 00:04:00  You are younger than me and I seen this movie so I know you’ve seen this movie, Bring It On. You remember the movie, Bring It On? The cheerleading movie.

Maddy Osman 00:04:06  Of course. That’s that’s a regular repeat for sure.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:09  Right. So they realized that they’ve stolen some routines, and they say they gotta get this guy. I can’t remember his first name, but somebody Polastri right to come in and teach them a new routine, and it all starts like. Like this is the jazz hand, right? And then they go to sectionals, and they realize that everybody that hired him is doing the exact same routine. And that’s how it feels when you’re using AI. And everybody kind of has the same sound to what they’re doing across socials and across their blogs and across everything that they’re doing with their brand, with their taglines, things like that. So, okay, so how do we avoid that?

Maddy Osman 00:04:47  That’s such a beautiful analogy. The Bring It On. Yeah. The perform, the choreography. That’s so good.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:53  I thought you’d like that.

Maddy Osman 00:04:55  It didn’t do them any favors, right? 

Michelle Frechette: Nope. 

Maddy Osman: They didn’t. They didn’t win the sectionals or whatever it was. And so so there is a lesson here for brands, which is like, you’re not going to win sectionals and Bring It On with the same stolen choreography. So, yeah. So how do you create that distinctiveness? I mean, if you’re kind of looking at it from AI backwards, I think one of the things to keep in mind is just like, what are sort of like the phrases and, and like formatting and like ways of putting things together that, that sound robotic, whether other AI wrote them or not. What is something that, like a human reader is going to pick up on and say that that sounds robotic to me. So I’m kind of checking out now because I think, like, the thing to consider here’s another like way to think about it. Like, just like LinkedIn, social media, we’ve been we’ve been dealing with bots and things for a while on platforms, Instagram, on Facebook, But now with like the generative AI capabilities, we’re starting to see it more proliferating into these other platforms.

Maddy Osman 00:06:02  And and it’s it’s created like this echo chamber, right, of all like the bots and stuff. And they’re like, we’re the people using AI, right? And they’re just they’re kind of interacting with each other. But are we like actually interacting with other humans? Like, are we are we creating any human connections when we do that? And so, you know, it’s it’s just like thinking about like is that is that what your brand is that what you want your brand to stand for? It’s like not not ever directly. Making that connection with another person, whether that is social media or your website content or you know, any other way that you communicate. 

Michelle Frechette 00:06:43  Yeah. It’s it is interesting for sure, because you think about the fact that, like, SEO is pretty much run by robots, right? Like it’s not human beings like, oh, that’s a good article. Oh, that’s a good.

Maddy Osman 00:06:53  Right, right.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:56  Or we’re gonna make. Yeah. That’s gonna trend on on X or whatever.

Maddy Osman 00:07:00  Right.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:00  So but but you but you still want to avoid writing for robots, right. You would really much rather write for human beings. I’m assuming of course, I think the algorithm is like the secret sauce for Coca-Cola or whatever, that nobody knows what’s the real algorithm for Google. But, I’m assuming, though, that that robot is picked, is trained to pick up more on human dialogue than having, you know, one Furby talk to the other across the internet.

Maddy Osman 00:07:28  Oh, man, my neighbor’s kid got a Furby, the other day, and she was showing it to me. And I’m like, this is actually like really advanced now. But, but yeah, in terms of, yeah, like the robot component and I get into it in my book, but it’s like you want to keep the needs of both in mind, right? Like you want to appeal to both because it’s the robot that’s ultimately surfacing your content to the human. And I think a lot of that sort of thought process is going to be helpful.

Maddy Osman 00:08:00  Like as we get into this AI search era, I think there are a lot of like commonalities between like Google Search and like using like an AI chatbot to search. It’s just it’s just a different approach for us as humans, I guess, like the behaviors we use, the terminology we use. And so it’s going to be a new thing to, to sort of optimize for and figure out. But to your point, so Google, it’s been a very active year for Google. They have had probably the most like core algorithm updates that like they ever have. And so it’s been a tumultuous time. But one thing that’s kind of interesting to follow along with is their series of helpful content algorithm updates. And, you know, really they get into pretty granular detail about like what is what is something that a human would consider helpful versus, you know, what is something that is like written primarily with that like search, you know, goal in mind. And so it’s it’s about striking a balance for sure.

Maddy Osman 00:09:07  And I and I do think that, you know, a lot of the guidelines they put out, if you care to read them, they they share like a lot of useful insights for us. Not not just those sort of like they have. I think it’s like 21 questions, like with their first helpful content update that you can literally go through and you can you could audit, you know, a piece of content on your website to say, like, does it? One of the biggest things is EEAT. And I always forget one of the T’s, but it’s expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. Oh, it’s not a T, it’s an E expertise. I’m going to forget it. But it’s another thing that that goes in that world of being able to like, prove that when you create some content like, like you’re creating it from a position of like understanding the topic, whether you’re a true expert or not. But like, but you’ve done your due diligence to, you know, do your research to consult with subject matter experts, etc.

Maddy Osman 00:10:03  So I think, I think that’s a really great resource for people is is kind of Google’s own documentation to start with. And in terms of striking that balance.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:11  Yeah, I found it online. I’ll put it across here, the acronym.EEAT. 

Maddy Osman: Oh there we go. 

Michelle Frechette: Experience. Expertise.

Maddy Osman: Experience man. 

Michelle Frechette: Take a screenshot. Take a screenshot. 

Maddy Osman 00:10:25 Right, right. I’ll just I’ll just have it. Maybe I’ll print it.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:28  There you go.

Maddy Osman 00:10:31  What was I going to say? Something that’s kind of interesting about Google’s guidelines, too is this idea of like, real. I’m going to get it wrong. It’s like learned experience, but it’s it’s so like to give an example, it’s like, I like, like, someone might write about their experience going through like a cancer treatment. Right? And it’s like they’re not a doctor. Right? So they’re not expert on things like treatment and like prescribing medication or anything like that. But but you can still be an expert in terms of your experience. You can be an expert to other people who are going, you know, through like a similar cancer diagnosis.

Maddy Osman 00:11:14  So that’s kind of an interesting thing to think about. It’s not about being like a professor or an award winning journalist or whatever. And Google will probably still, you know, weight those things higher. But for everybody else, you know, the idea is that you can have this expertise and that will help you rank.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:35  It makes a lot of sense. and Google still is like the number one search engine, I think. I think YouTube might actually still be at the very top as far as searchability?

Maddy Osman 00:11:45  It’s like one and two for sure.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:47  Yeah, yeah but, but ChatGPT is now starting to operate as a search engine as well. Do you think that it will give deference to things it has written? As opposed to a different, like a Google like algorithm, do you think like, oh, we recognize that that’s got our pattern all over it. We’re going to put this one up at higher in the ranks.

Maddy Osman 00:12:08  No, that’s a really interesting question. And I don’t know that I have an answer for that. I mean, I think I think that’s how Google operates for sure.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:17  Yeah. For sure.

Maddy Osman 00:12:17  So I couldn’t blame ChatGPT if they wanted to follow the same guidelines. Isn’t it like Bing that that is like the search engine for ChatGPT for like, right now? Like I know they’re developed.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:31  I think so yeah. I’m not. Yeah.

Maddy Osman 00:12:35  I’m not, I’m not either. But it’s but it’s interesting, right? Because it’s like, I think like one thing to consider and I haven’t dug into it enough the, the news sort of like search GPT and how that relates to like how you could, you know, get things, you know, like reference results and other websites and stuff before. But it’s really interesting because everybody kind of counted Bing out. Right? But now.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:59  Yeah, they did.

Maddy Osman 00:13:01  They like become one of the bigger search properties just because of this partnership with ChatGPT. And so now we might actually have to try optimizing for, for Bing in a sense, so that we can optimize for ChatGPT, which is.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:17  One thing, one thing that I learned a long time ago. And of course things changed. So I’m not saying that this is necessarily still true, but writing helpful content for people who actually read it will always be better than trying to beat an algorithm.

Maddy Osman 00:13:32  Absolutely. And you know, something that I’m considering to in this, like AI generative AI world is especially in like the world that we operate and like WordPress, B2B tech, SAS you know, you think about like a new product coming to market, right? And so it’s like you have you have this great need for, for, for various communications really to, to help educate your customers to, to help sell it, to help support, you know, the people who use it. And, and I just keep thinking like that’s it feels like something that would be very hard to create with ChatGPT like, like product documentation is what I’m thinking of, like, like knowledge based documentation, even if ChatGPT could probably help at some points. But it really benefits from having a human going in and testing the product and, and figuring out, you know, where there are like problems and things like that.

Maddy Osman 00:14:31  but yeah, let’s so let’s talk a little bit more about this, like brand voice thing, because I want to make sure that I give people some useful details here. So I think like I, I’ve noticed that, you know, like many brands, it’s hard to communicate what their voice is. They might know, you know, the people who work there. They kind of have a sense as they develop, you know, different materials and, and just, you know, work on different products and things like that. So there’s this tone of voice scale from Nielsen Norman Group, and this is something that we put on our intake form at The Blogsmith. I’m going to pull it up really quick so I can reference exactly what it is, but it’s this, like, really easy. Not easy. It’s a really straightforward exercise that brands can do to to just create that very basic tone of voice. So basically there’s four there’s a spectrum of four different pieces. Let me just pull it up real quick here.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:32  You can share it on your screen if you want.

Maddy Osman 00:15:34  Okay. Cool. Let’s see now my internet’s being a jerk. So we’ll see.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:40  We’re eating up all your bandwidth with, with the livestream.

Maddy Osman 00:15:44  I’m going to share it in the chat for you as well, but let me see if I can pull it up here. Okay, I’m going to attempt to share my screen. Okay. Can you see that? 

Michelle Frechette: Yes. 

Maddy Osman: Boom. Okay. So yeah. Nielsen Norman Group. Just a great resource for like, a lot of different things when it comes to content and user experience and things like that. So anyway, they have this scale here. And as you can see, it’s basically, two extremes for every of the four dimensions. We have formal versus casual, serious versus funny, respectful versus irreverent, and the matter of fact versus enthusiastic. I’ll stop sharing and and kind of explain it a little bit. So, you know, like if you’ve ever filled out like a personality test or whatever, it’s like, you know, you have the extremes, you have the middle, and then you have a little bit of this or a little bit of that.

Maddy Osman 00:16:45  And so, so more or less. Nielsen and Norman Group basically like took all these different potential ways that you could define your brand and boiled it down to these four things, and you can further expand it from there. You know, because like, let me see if I can think of a good example here. So, like, I don’t know, serious versus funny. You know, maybe for the most part, you lie somewhere in the middle, but maybe you have certain content, like your social content. Or maybe a good example is Semrush. They do really great with their content on, X and LinkedIn and, you know, it’s very funny. And then when you get to, like, the content that lives on their website, it’s, it’s a little bit more, I don’t know if I call it serious, but it’s not like trying to, like, share a bunch of memes. It’s more about sharing examples and and things like that. So maybe not the perfect example, but just like it helps you to benchmark where you want to be, and then it helps you pivot to like how it might affect different properties or even like child brands or things like that, where it’s like you want to retain the essence, but but it is a different brand.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:02  Yeah. 

Maddy Osman 00:18:03  Yeah. So that’s a great exercise that I think that every brand should do no matter what. And then you can further refine from there. But it’s a really great starting point.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:13  I love that they have respectful versus irreverent as opposed to disrespectful. 

Maddy Osman: Disrespectful.  

Michelle Frechette: They’re like, maybe that’s a little too negative for this scale.

Maddy Osman 00:18:25  It is. It is a time line indeed. But yeah. No, they were they were very purposeful with their word choice there. I would say.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:33  Absolutely. So in the work that you do with your clients, I know you do a lot of blog writing and things like that. Do you also work with them on developing voice and those kinds of things?

Maddy Osman 00:18:43  We do. Yeah. So one thing that’s been really interesting lately is kind of combining a couple of different things. And so maybe, maybe it would be useful to talk about like a process for you to like help like figure this out, you know, like define this tone of voice.

Maddy Osman 00:19:01  So one thing that I’ve been doing with brands lately is these content UX audits, where I go through and, you know, it’s a little bit about the content itself, but it’s also about kind of like the website experience where it lives. And so it just gives an opportunity to like, holistically look at at that experience. And this is maybe even not so much about tone of voice. It kind of factors in but but about style in general and like your approach to writing. And so basically, one of the ways that I’ve been working with brands lately is doing these content UX audits, where I dive deep onto content that already exists on their website and and just giving you that that full holistic view. But I’m also looking at it really from a style point of view and things that things that are inconsistent, things that don’t make sense, things that don’t add value, like, you know, like fluff or or kind of like when, when people are writing kind of like around saying something. And it’s a lot of this stuff is like really unintentional.

Maddy Osman 00:20:08  But without having those style guidelines to say, I’m trying to think of like a good example. Let’s say that, you know, you’re a brand that publishes a lot of listicle content. For example, say you’re like a software brand. And so you’re, you know, doing like comparisons to other software tools or things like that. It’s it’s kind of a jarring experience if you’re somebody who reads a lot of content on that website. But like every listicle is formatted You know, like they have different like things that they’re making comparisons to, which is, you know, okay. If like it’s a totally different type of listicle, but I’m saying like two that should kind of look the same and they just don’t. That’s something that I think creating clear brand style guidelines can help with. And so kind of the process and you could you could do this within your own organization. But it’s kind of hard like to get outside of your own bias, which is why I think that brands are working with me for this.

Maddy Osman 00:21:09  It’s it’s like you kind of have to have a body of work that you can review and then going into like do these audits and then it’s finding like these potential style rules that you could define putting those in place and then, you know, reviewing the content that comes next after you’ve shared these guidance, these guidelines with your writers, with your editors and things like that. But, it’s a type of process that it does take a little bit of back and forth. You know, you have to you have to kind of like have content. You have to review the content. You have to kind of collaborate on this style guide, and then you have to communicate it and see if it if it makes sense, you know, like if it’s actionable at the end of the day.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:54  Can you use ChatGPT to develop your voice?

Maddy Osman 00:21:58  I think you could. Yeah, I mean, I I’ll share an example of a custom GPT that I made. Not so much to develop it, but maybe to defend it.

Maddy Osman 00:22:10  Which is, which I think is an excellent use case of ChatGPT. So, so for those who don’t know, which probably most do at this point, but it was kind of novel more towards the beginning of this year. in ChatGPT you can create custom GPT’s, you can, you know, sort of give them a role, give them a goal, give them documentation to reference. And so I made one that’s like The Blogsmith Style expert. And so it’s, you know, mostly referencing like our style guide. Some like our web page copy and other like internal documentation about like how we write. Like I have this one document that’s just about how we write about SEO. You know, how to if we’re writing for like an industry publication, like what are things that we like? Absolutely wouldn’t say what are like extremes we would avoid. What are like our favorite reference materials, you know, things like that. And it’s like you’ve probably already created some sort of documentation that you use internally. I mean, it could even be like, you know, your Slack chats or something where you’re working through a problem with your teammates.

Maddy Osman 00:23:19  And so you can, you can then, you know, essentially create this custom GPT, upload it, give it a purpose. And, and then, for example, now, I don’t use it in place of an editor. It’s really an experiment for me. But it’s, it’s things like, you know, Here’s like a little bit of social copy. You know, it’s going to go on my LinkedIn profile or on The Blogsmith’s one of their profiles or something like that. Like, does it follow The Blogsmith’s style? And we also have a social media style guide. So I also uploaded that to make sure that it’s following the formatting rules. But it’s like I had I had all this stuff, you know. So now I’m just using it to, to try to, to try to experiment, but ultimately to try to create efficiencies. So that’s, so that’s what I would recommend is something like that.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:06  That is very cool. How long did it take to set up each one of those custom GPT’s?

Maddy Osman 00:24:11  Minutes. I mean, because it’s it’s so based on the material you give it.

Maddy Osman 00:24:15  So it’s only going to be as good as the material that you give it. And we’re, you know, because that’s like my job. I’m very thorough with my style guidelines. I’ll introduce another resource that’s been useful too. I haven’t used it so much for style, but I’ve used it as kind of like a Blogsmith, sort of like brand reference for our website. You know, for different, like, aspects of the company. NotebookLM. Have you played around with that at all?

Michelle Frechette 00:24:45  No, I haven’t I’m going to write it down though, so I don’t forget.

Maddy Osman 00:24:49  No, I think I think you would love it. It’s it’s a Google like property. it’s it’s free, at least for now. It functions very similarly to ChatGPT in a sense. It works by you upload it. It treats them as plain text documents. So it’s not going to read, you know, images. If you give it like a very heavily designed PDF, it might have trouble reading that. Which like so does ChatGPT.

Maddy Osman 00:25:15  But it’s just a different it’s just a different take kind of on these different, these different AI tools. And, and it’s just interesting because you, you kind of just interface with it in terms of those materials you feed it. So so I have I have one set up from like a sales perspective. And it has our portfolio of work. It has links to like all these different landing pages of services. And so I can go in and be like, hey, you know, I’m trying to pitch, you know, this type of business on this type of service, like write that pitch for me and it’s not perfect. And I definitely edit all of them because, you know, it’s like that, that personal touch is important. And, you know, it’s it’s just going to give me data. It’s not going to give me like marketing right.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:04 Sure,yeah.

Maddy Osman 00:26:05  But it but it is really cool tool for, for using your own body of work and to like surface things very quickly. So like I can imagine you know, it’s like you’ve been on you’ve hosted all these podcasts, right? 

Michelle Frechette: Right.

Maddy Osman 00:26:17  You wanted to create like a repository where you just like dump all those URLs, like it can read it could go to the website and like read what it’s about. So it’s like you might not even need to like, give it more usefulness than that. If you’re just trying to like what you know, when was that podcast where I talked to this person about this topic? It would just immediately grab that for you.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:38  I’m seeing some pretty cool stuff that I’m going to be working on later when I get my new chair. Cause this chair is killing me today. My chair broke yesterday.

Maddy Osman 00:26:47 Me too. I need a new one ASAP.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:48  I it’s they’re coming on Monday. It can’t be fast enough. I’m outfitting both of them. Yeah. For sure. I love all of this. I love the use of like leaning into AI for the right reasons, right? So, like, yeah, I’ve done, I’ve used it. I wrote an entire blog post about using AI, using AI and disclosed that that was just for fun.

Maddy Osman 00:27:14  No, I think I think that’s like a really important thing though, is like when people are using AI. I do think we should be transparent about that. So I’m glad you brought that up.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:24  Yeah, but I’ve also just used it to kind of inform me, like, I want to write an article about ten things that people should know about XYZ. So like ChatGPT, what are ten things about XYZ? And it’s like okay, well I had eight of those. But those other two are really good right. So like I could and I’m not asking them to write it, I’m just saying oh that’s a great that’s a gap I missed. I can go write about those things now.

Maddy Osman 00:27:44  So totally. Yeah. And I’ll say to like, I think a, I think an ethical use of AI is like, we’ve kind of talked about using it to access your own body of work or to, you know, like maybe suggest edits and things like that. I think an ethical use of AI is to also like repurpose your existing work.

Maddy Osman 00:28:05  So I’ll give you an example. I’m kind of working on a side project right now that’s like like a for fun blog, you know, just kind of like getting back into the writing and, and the creativity of, like, creating a new brand and things like that. And, I’ll give you, like, a sense of it. It’s, it’s about creating efficiencies as a parent. It’s not a, it’s not a parenting or like a mommy blog about like giving advice. It’s more about like what are like, you know, products and services that make my life easier. Or, yeah, just like advice about traveling with a kid or, you know, stuff like that. And so I created this doc when I was pregnant to pass on to my friend who was pregnant about here’s kind of some stuff to expect.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:53  Yeah. Things I learned.

Maddy Osman 00:28:55  Right. And and I have had moms before I became a mom who did that for me. And I just think that’s like a beautiful thing.

Maddy Osman 00:29:02  So I wanted to, like, carry it on, and I didn’t really have a purpose for this doc besides that, but now it’s like I already wrote it, and, like, you know, I’m a writer, so I wrote it like a writer. It wasn’t like, you know, haphazardly thrown together. So ow I’m taking those things and, like, repurposing them into kind of like a blog format. It’s like I already, like, wrote, you know, the guidance and stuff. I’m just kind of like. Like, like reformatting it and and expanding it in a sense. But but you know, like the AI is, is basically just repositioning it for me. It’s not it’s not adding like new insights. 

Michelle Frechette 00:29:42  Ideas. Yeah.

Maddy Osman 00:29:44  So I think that’s a really good use case. It’s like I already didn’t work you know. 

Michelle Frechette 00:29:49  Yeah for sure.

Maddy Osman 00:29:50  It’s my words. It’s my ideas.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:53  It seems to be that you could use it. I don’t know how ethical this would be, but you could also use it to, look at your number one competitor’s blog and see what they’ve written about and see where your gaps might be.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:05  Not take their content, but just look for gaps in and where you might not have thought about publishing it about things.

Maddy Osman 00:30:11  Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there’s competitor research I don’t think is an unethical thing in general.

Michelle Frechette:  I don’t either. Yeah. 

Maddy Osman: There are so many tools that you could use to do that outside of ChatGPT. So yeah, it’s just another it’s just another way I think. The line in the sand or whatever is like, don’t, yeah, don’t like take their blog posts and be like, hey, change a couple things, right? You can be inspired by it. You can write notes about what you liked about it. But once you start verbatim, like lifting phrases.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s terrible. 

Maddy Osman: Or even like, like like a full section, right? Like developed ideas that I think that’s when you get into the, like, morally gray territory.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:55  I agree 100%. Well, I’m gonna share your website on the screen. So if people want more information, you’ve got all kinds of cool stuff over there.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:02  Are are you filled with clients or are you still do you have openings? If people want to make an appointment with you, how do they do that? Like give us a little more information?

Maddy Osman 00:31:10  Totally. Yeah. No, we are open to new clients in 2025. So, you know, if you’re starting to plan, what you want to do with content or how to, you know, think about AI, how that factors into things, or you just want to like, maybe do a little bit of a revamp on your brand voice. Those are all things that we can help with. And if you go to the website, my calendar scheduler is pretty easy to find. So just grab a time and we can chat about it.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:37  Excellent. Any last things to add before we wrap up today’s live stream?

Maddy Osman 00:31:43  Oh good question. Maybe a book recommendation. Those are always fun.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:48  Is do you have one? Do you have one? Like, right sitting there on your desk?

Maddy Osman 00:31:51  I don’t have a physical copy, but I.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:54  I meant. I meant your I met your book.

Maddy Osman 00:31:57  I mean, maybe this maybe this one.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:58  Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking.

Maddy Osman 00:32:01  But but outside of that, I’ll give the the book recommendation I have been obsessed with, the Three Body Problem series. Have you heard of this Michelle? 

Michelle Frechette: Yep. 

Maddy Osman: And it’s on Netflix. And then there’s three books. They are super long. They are super imaginative. They will make you question everything. If you get through to the third one and finish it. And so if you’re looking for a good mental break. That would be my recommendation.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:27  Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. We all need a little bit of break, especially during the holidays, Black Friday, all of that good stuff. 

Maddy Osman: Busy times. 

Michelle Frechette: Maybe I’ll pick up that book. I actually read everything on my phone now. It’s so much easier than toting books around. 

Maddy Osman 00:32:41  Yeah, i’m a Kindle person. I love the like, smell and feel of a book, but I am also a realist and I’m into efficiency.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:51  Exactly. Well, thank you so much for being here today, Maddy. Thank you everybody who’s tuned in today or we’ll be watching this later on. We really appreciate it. I’m not sure who’s going to be with me next week because I haven’t got everybody completely lined in yet. But we will. We’ll be here next week with somebody new and a new desk chair, so I won’t be as antsy and. But thank you so much. And, we’ll see you around. Hopefully I’ll see you at an event next year, I hope. I would really like.

Maddy Osman 00:33:16  Absolutely. I hope for that as well.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:18  All right. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you later. 

Maddy Osman: Bbyyyeeeee.