Susan Friedmann [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.Â
Today, my special guest is Kathy Farah. Kathy is a seasoned expert in email marketing strategy and implementation. She uses her smart strategies to build strong connections between businesses and their subscribers, making it easier to keep audiences interested and engaged. Online entrepreneurs hire her to reclaim their time and grow revenue with automated email marketing without getting stuck in tech overwhelm. Kathy, it's a pleasure to welcome you back to the show and thank you for being this week's guest, expert and mentor.
Kathy Farah [00:00:55]:
Thank you for having me back, Susan. I'm very excited. Is this sort of like snl? Have I become like I'm starting on the repeat path?
Susan Friedmann [00:01:03]:
I don't know if you want to position yourself like that. Why not? It's not a bad way to see yourself. But when you were on the show a few months ago, you shared incredibly valuable information about developing an email list and also how authors can effectively use email marketing to help market their book. But I know that there's something else that you are extraordinarily passionate about, and that is how AI can help with not only your email marketing, but your general marketing campaigns. So that's why I brought you back, because you dropped a little seed. I remember at the end of the podcast that we had last time and you said something about AI, and I was like, kathy, we've got to talk more about that. So here we are.
Kathy Farah [00:01:59]:
Yes. And I love AI. I have been using it since the very early days and have watched it as it's evolved. It's such a powerful tool. I've been through the phases of the oh no. What does this mean to writers? You know, as a writer, it was a little at first, not sure. And then as time's gone on, I've realized what a time saver it really is.
Susan Friedmann [00:02:23]:
Well, that's a great place to start, Kathy, because. Yes, I mean, like you, I've embraced it, I love it. And it's just saved so much time. It's even made things a little more interesting. And yeah, even though I thought my writing was interesting before, now I feel it's even more interesting. Let's talk about it. And always love starting from basics because I never want to assume that our listeners know exactly what we're talking about and where. So for somebody new to AI, how does it actually help with their book marketing?
Kathy Farah [00:03:04]:
I think the thing that you can look at the very first thing is it really does save time in synthesizing information. If, for instance, with marketing in particular, if you've started to have your book out there, and let's say you're getting reviews, copying and pasting some of the reviews that people have left, what you could start to get some ideas and you put that into the AI platforms, you could start to get ideas about like what is resonating with people and what the voice of your readers, what's the patterns that keep forming. It's a way to kind of bring it all together. One of the other things is, and I will assume that after our last conversation, Susan, that everyone rushed off to start doing email marketing as a result, if you're writing emails, the great thing about AI is it can help you to start to repurpose what you're writing in one area of your business and, and help you use it in other areas of your business. As an example, taking your email and repurposing it for your social platforms, there's a difference between the way you would show up on visibility on LinkedIn, let's say, versus Facebook, versus Instagram. Each of those platforms has a different way that you communicate with your audience on those platforms. And that's the reason for being in those different places. It's how you're reaching different, different people.
Kathy Farah [00:04:36]:
And the great thing about AI is it can help you cut the time and take that original writing and cut it to and make it work for these other platforms very quickly.
Susan Friedmann [00:04:48]:
You've said one of my most favorite words, and that is repurpose. How you can cut, slice and dice something and reuse it. Even articles that you wrote a year ago, you can repurpose your book.
Kathy Farah [00:05:03]:
Yes.
Susan Friedmann [00:05:03]:
I mean, your book is just chock full of articles that can be repurposed. One minute you talk about it from one angle and then you talk about it from another angle and this is how AI can help you, is that correct?
Kathy Farah [00:05:19]:
That's absolutely true. And in fact, you can upload your book into AI and start to brainstorm with it a little bit, prompt it to come up with ideas for ways, ways you can use some of the content from your book into other avenues for articles for different platforms, email or social media. It can start to help you when it has the knowledge, the context, like your book. Then it can also start to help you brainstorm ways that you can utilize that information in different, smaller ways.
Susan Friedmann [00:06:00]:
Another thing is that if you've uploaded your book, it's now able to analyze your writing style, which Then you can ask it to use in your articles and anything else, your posts, whatever you're using. I mean, I think that's such an important, valuable or invaluable part of the platforms is that to teach it how to write in your voice, Talk to us more about that.
Kathy Farah [00:06:31]:
Yes, that is the key, is teach it. So AI, it needs you to guide it a little bit and putting your book in and then asking it questions like what is my brand voice and tone? And see what it synthesizes, see what comes back from that. Does it say it's more professional, conversational, and if you get back the results from AI and it feels a little off than what you intended, then you can actually say for certain platforms, like let me say I'm writing an email, I want in that platform, I want to write more conversational, a friendlier tone with pull out some tips, and I want to write it with one person in mind, with one primary goal at the end. So one call to action, one thing, and it could take that information. Not only can it help you identify what your tone is, does it feel like that's correct. And then also once you've identified what your tone is, you can start to also have AI help you write in a little bit of a different tone. So let's say LinkedIn, where you might want to be considered more of a thought leader, it can write more in that angle and still use your tone for the overall voice of the piece.
Susan Friedmann [00:07:49]:
One of the prompts that I've started to use much more now is to when I ask, you know, I use ChatGPT a lot. I know you do too. Although as we know, there are many other platforms out there and I'm happy for you to talk about some of the different ones. But when I use chat, I ask it, what else do you need to know? So that then it comes up with questions that I would never have thought to share the information that it feels that it needs in order to give me a better end product?
Kathy Farah [00:08:28]:
Yes. And let me just say let's add one other element. I actually will also say, ask me the questions one at a time. What other things do you need to know to be able to produce what the end result is, what the goal is? But then I'll say present those questions one at a time so that I can fully respond to each question. Because sometimes what I started to notice very early on, it would get overwhelming and have 10 questions for me. But then I'm trying to scroll back and figure out what those questions were. So I started Going, okay, give me question one and I would respond to that and then move to the next question. And then it's feeding it all along throughout the process to get the end goal.
Kathy Farah [00:09:10]:
And is there other questions that you need to to hear from me to be able to get the result that we're looking to do?
Susan Friedmann [00:09:16]:
What blows my mind too, is that it remembers things that you have told it in the past. It might have been several articles ago that I asked for something or I've asked it to help with some promotional material, and it refers back to that.
Kathy Farah [00:09:37]:
Yes. And in fact, the way as ChatGPT has evolved, there's two ways that that can happen. One is in something called memories, where it will capture certain content, but it now has been trained to look back through all the chats. So if you just hold on to the different chats that you've had, it can go back and take a look and start to pick up elements like what the title of your book is, details that you've included in the past. And certainly as you're trying to think through different ways to promote your book, it can kind of keep track of what you've done in the past so that you're not necessarily repeating if you don't want to.
Susan Friedmann [00:10:17]:
One of the things that you and I were chatting before we went on the air, and that is how to make your writing not sound as if it's AI written or partially written, you can identify. Now, having read so much that people have put out, you're like, okay, chat wrote that.
Kathy Farah [00:10:40]:
Yes, yes, absolutely. I'll give you a great example of that. And this is when it kind of struck me about the patterns that you see sometimes with AI. Now, my brain operates in patterns anyway, so I notice them right off. But one day I was looking at my email list, just my emails that came into my business account, and I had two emails that the subject line started with unlock, you know, whatever the topic was. And that's kind of when it struck me that I had literally in less than a minute, two different people had subject lines come to me with unlock the secrets of this book. Unlock whatever email marketing tips. It struck me that those are patterns that AI is starting to do.
Kathy Farah [00:11:25]:
You could start noticing things like EM dashes. And that was one of the things that, Susan, you and I were talking about of just writers know how to use an EM dash, but not the general public. So when you start seeing a lot of that, then you realize that AI has just started to produce it, telling the AI whatever source you're using. Whether it's ChatGPT or another type like Claude, one of those other platforms. If you tell it to avoid certain phrasing, please avoid using em dashes. I would rather use commas or something else instead. Avoid adverbs like you'd mentioned earlier, Susan, you know, telling it to avoid using certain phrases and you'll start to see, even in how it sends information back to you on the end result, the phrases. It starts to be common in your own text that you could start to say, everything is not going to be magic.
Kathy Farah [00:12:26]:
I don't want it to be described as, this is where the magic begins. Take that phrase out. It's really kind of. You don't want to just rely solely on the initial output from AI. You want to take a look at the patterns you start to see and ask it to change those specific things. And it will start to train your version of AI to not use that particular pattern within the text that it's writing for you.
Susan Friedmann [00:12:53]:
I just read an article about different ways in which you can ask AI to rewrite something. Because I've often said, just rewrite this, but that's not enough. Maybe it's paraphrase it or clarify this or write it from the reader's point of view. And so it's like, oh, these are extra ways in which you can say, hey, I didn't like what you wrote first time round. Yeah, let's try again.
Kathy Farah [00:13:26]:
Yes, that's right. And sometimes what I have done is just like, I have a story idea in my head of how I want to market something and I want to open with a story. I might write just sort of a stream of consciousness of a draft into AI and say, help me link this. Clean up what I've written, but help me link this to email marketing. Like, let's take this story that seems unrelated and help me make the connection to the topic that I want to talk about. It will do some of that. And then I can even go back and say, okay, I'd like for you to use a lot of the similar writing that I put in for my stream of consciousness, but tighten some of the things up so that it's not totally rewriting it for me, it's taking the way I write and it's giving me that back. But maybe cleaning up some of the grammar and doing some of the other things that just makes the flow of that writing smoother, smoother transitions between the story and the topic that I want to share.
Susan Friedmann [00:14:32]:
Yes, I love that because I was just. And I wrote an article recently it was on a coach going from Logan Airport to Cape Cod. And literally on the seat in front of me was the sign, fasten seatbelt. And I thought, I wonder how you can relate Farson's seatbelt to book marketing. So I was like, let me ask Chet. And sure enough, it's like, oh, yeah. And it came up with these incredible ideas that I think it would have taken, I don't know how long, if ever, that I would have come up with. I was like, that is just amazing.
Kathy Farah [00:15:15]:
It is amazing. Absolutely. And I was thinking about. I kind of used a comparison where I had written a story. It was meant to be a very heartfelt story about someone in my life when I was a child. And I remember writing that first. It ended up being published as an article in the local newspaper, but it took me weeks to fine tune it and tighten it and go from the messy draft to the final product and then fast forward to more recently. I wanted to write not similar, but I had this idea of how I wanted to make another connection to someone from my childhood, a heartfelt story.
Kathy Farah [00:15:57]:
And I wrote it using AI this time. And it took me a matter of a couple of hours to write something that I know with the same heart and same personality as my first piece on something else that took me so much longer. It was way faster to do it using AI and it still was something that when I shared it with the person that I was writing about, she talked about the fact that it made her tear up. And I was like, and that was AI that was AI So you can get some really great things from it. It's just a matter of really honing in on, let's keep the warmth of this and help me make it a little better, make it a little smoother.
Susan Friedmann [00:16:44]:
AI is open to umpteen mistakes that we've both made and everybody else using it has made. But what are some of the common mistakes that you see, especially first timers making?
Kathy Farah [00:16:58]:
I think one of the things that is not really guiding, giving enough clarity to what you want AI to do for you in that moment. So one of the things, very early prompt that people are a lot of times advised is to say, you are an expert in nonfiction books and this is what I want you to do. And if you're not guiding the AI in exactly what you're trying to accomplish, it's a little confused. It's almost like talking to an assistant or speaking to someone that you're trying to guide. You can't have it all in your head. You have to Tell AI. Okay, what's my goal here? Who's my audience? Giving it some context to work with so that it knows. Like even in the repurposing concept, I have to tell it that I'm taking this email and I'm repurposing it for Instagram and it's for small business owners, so I need to give it a container to know where it's heading to get the best results, what the final product turns out to be.
Susan Friedmann [00:18:10]:
Somebody I listened to recently talked about AI as an intern. You have to use it as an intern and never expect it to know what you're thinking, what you want it to do. And you literally have to be literal. And as you said, you've got to tell it exactly what you want. It's only as good as the information that you give it. That's why asking it questions what else do you need? When you think you've given everything it needs, but saying hey, what else do you need? Just again highlights things that you might not have thought about would be obvious in terms of AI helping you to formulate the end result.
Kathy Farah [00:18:58]:
I mean that's perfect because you're right and it is something that seems obvious to us. And at some point the interesting thing about ChatGPT in particular is it will start to learn a little bit more to where you don't have to be as specific every time you like. Especially if it's in one thread, chat thread that you're talking about promoting something, it will start to pick up that that's what we're doing here, what we're writing is promoting. When you get started, you do need to really help give it guidance as to what you're trying to accomplish and where you're heading with things.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:40]:
Yeah, almost like a true to someone he doesn't know, they don't know what they don't know unless you tell them.
Kathy Farah [00:19:47]:
That's right.
Susan Friedmann [00:19:48]:
Yeah.
Kathy Farah [00:19:48]:
But once it does understand, then the wealth of knowledge is so far beyond like you think about. The reality is we've spent so much time, I mean really, it's starting to be viewed as a lot like a replacement for Google in some ways because you can really guide it and say it can go out and look for sources of information all over the place and pull in things that you hadn't even considered. The mistake sometimes people make when it comes to writing things that are fact based is verifying the facts that AI is providing. If you're expecting to find statistics and different elements like that in what you're pulling together, you always want to verify and check the original source. So the great thing about ChatGPT is you can ask it to share the source. Where did you get this information? Sometimes it will tell you and I've had it do this is, well, you told me to be the expert. It came from me. And then sometimes it will give a website.
Kathy Farah [00:20:52]:
Here's the sources of where I pulled this particular data and I've gone to those sources and realized that wasn't quite right. And even in when I have fed it like customer testimonials and ask for it to help me identify patterns of things that they maybe is coming out as things that are very positive for them. Sometimes it's writing a testimonial and I'm like, wait, where did that come from? That was not from the testimonial material slide that I gave you. You've created another testimonial and I want you to write it the way it came from the voice of the customer, not something different. And sometimes you have to verify and check where it's getting the information to make sure that it is what you're asking for.
Susan Friedmann [00:21:39]:
And that is a common mistake I think that people are making is that whatever it comes out, they're saying, oh well, it came out of it must know because it doesn't. And I've had instances where I've asked for examples and it's given me something totally fictitious. You know, so and so wrote a book on X. So I go onto Amazon and look for so and so's book and. And so and so's book doesn't exist.
Kathy Farah [00:22:05]:
That's right.
Susan Friedmann [00:22:06]:
I'm like, no.
Kathy Farah [00:22:08]:
Yeah. A good test is ask it to tell what it knows about you. And sometimes just asking, what do you know about Kathy Farah? It will come back and you'll find out like, wait a minute, that has nothing to do. That's not me at all. And where I went to school or whatever the case may be, it isn't the accurate and it's because it's pulling from a variety of different sources. And even when I've given it my own website and I'll say, where did you get the source? And it says my website. And I look and I'm like, that didn't come from my website. That is definitely a distinction about using AI itself in lieu of doing a Google search as an example is that Google searches are based off of what the keywords are on websites, whereas AI, kind of like our own brain sort of puts in filler or information that sounds good.
Kathy Farah [00:23:02]:
And I'VE had it. When I question it, apologize and say, oh no, you're right, that isn't correct at all. That's where you really need to just verify when you're expecting it to be factually based or from a source. Make sure that the source is correct at the end.
Susan Friedmann [00:23:20]:
We've talked a lot about ChatGPT, but there were many other platforms out there. Talk to us a little bit about some of the others and what are maybe the pros and cons.
Kathy Farah [00:23:31]:
One of the things in looking at AI platforms is think about how you are going to use it. Claude is one of the other AI platforms and it is known to be a better conversational platform versus ChatGPT. Especially if you're talking about two brand new like if I'm signing up for ChatGPT the same day I sign up for Claude, then just comparing them out of the box, Claude tends to be right, a little bit better and more conversational. The downside sometimes what I saw with Claude is it could be very AI repetitive phrasing, but so could ChatGPT at the beginning as well. But the thing that I noticed with Claude that worked really nicely was you could ask it to repurpose content between platforms and Claude understood better how let's say a Facebook post would look versus an Instagram post versus a LinkedIn post. Each of those platforms, it's more casual on Instagram, it's a little More formal on LinkedIn. Even if you have variations between how long content is between those platforms, Claude could do a little bit of a better job of understanding what the platform itself's requirement was versus chatgpt. Whereas you kind of had to guide it a little bit to say, nope, it needs to be a little more casual.
Kathy Farah [00:25:01]:
I had to guide the tone more with ChatGPT. There's Gemini, that's a Google based product, there's Bard. I think what it really comes down to, we could talk about all the different platforms, but it really is kind of what your preference is. It's what I would always recommend is, as you're starting with AI, is try to test and play around with the different platforms. Look at what they're saying that they're specialized for because ChatGPT can create images, but so can some of these other platforms that they're built solely for that. So sometimes the images are better from the platforms that say that's what they do, that that's their key purpose. Just think about how you're going to use. What's the use for the AI to figure out kind of what the platform is and then sort of play with little bit to figure out if it meets more of what your requirements.
Kathy Farah [00:25:56]:
Are you getting the output that is good? Does it feel good? I will say one of the things why I've stuck with ChatGPT is it learns and gets better and better as I have worked with it. So because I've used it for years, the results tend to be better than if I go and try Claude Fresh for the very first time. I was still getting better results from ChatGPT because of our training and working together.
Susan Friedmann [00:26:23]:
So one, a really fun exercise is to give, let's say three different platforms, Chat, Claude and maybe Perplexity, which is also another good platform. Put the same prompt in and see the different results that you get. And they're like day and night sometimes.
Kathy Farah [00:26:46]:
Yes. Oh my God, yes. So if you think about how a lot of these platforms are trained, it is based off of the original people, you know, building the system so the sort of the way they think. Yeah. So it is interesting how you'll see it evolve and that's why you may notice on some of these platforms, like on social media platforms, Instagram, there'll be a trend, try creating your Barbie or try creating, you know, like put in this prompt and see the results. There's some fun things like your drunk bestie or something like that of describing you. Each of those platforms would probably spit out something slightly different for those same things.
Susan Friedmann [00:27:31]:
And I think at the end of the day it's like, don't be frightened of it, just try it, take it for a test drive, you know, play with it. You can't break it, it can't break you. Or it might, it can overwhelm you. But yeah, so I think just try it. Any event, Kathy, this is a great time for you to tell us more about your services, how our listeners can find out more about you and what you do with AI with your business.
Kathy Farah [00:28:05]:
Thank you. I work with email marketing primarily, so the way I tend to use AI is helping my clients in putting together emails. I also will analyze the statistics of things, the results of different campaigns as we do different promotional campaigns. I can use AI to help me kind of fine tune what seems to be missing, what maybe might be a point to where the buyer might be a little confused by the wording and to make sure that I have very strong call to action. So there's different things like that that I can do. Now, what I have done for your audience is I created 10 AI prompts to use as a co-creator with book marketing.Â
You can find that at kathyfarah.kit.com/prompts and I imagine, Susan, you'll probably have that in the show notes.
Susan Friedmann [00:29:05]:
Absolutely.
Kathy Farah [00:29:06]:
I have created, like I said, a set of prompts and then given some real-world strategy examples like how to mine your reviews for reader language and things like that so that you're writing some of your social media or email marketing in a way that resonates with your readers.
Susan Friedmann [00:29:26]:
Oh, that's so generous. I love that. Thank you, Kathy. This is a wonderful opportunity. Thank you first of all for your generosity with that. Now you get to leave our listeners with a golden nugget. What's your golden nugget?
Kathy Farah [00:29:42]:
Well, what I would say when it comes to AI, you don't need the perfect prompts. You just need real curiosity and a willingness to lead the conversation.
Susan Friedmann [00:29:53]:
Yeah. You can buy prompts and I've done it. I've bought. People are saying, oh, I've got a hundred prompts and I bought those. I've hardly used them. It's more a matter of, yeah, just test it, play with it, see what works, see what you like, see what you don't like. As you said, you train it to work with you and your voice and how you want to come over to your target audience.
Kathy Farah [00:30:20]:
Yeah. Talk to it like it's a co creator. Yeah, I think that will make a difference. As time goes on, as you use it more and more is as you talk to it naturally it starts to pick up more and more about how you interact with it.
Susan Friedmann [00:30:38]:
Yeah. A co-https://kathyfarah.kit.com/promptscreator. I love that. Treated as a co creator. Brilliant. Kathy, you've been amazing as I knew you would be. I'm sure there's opportunity to have you back again. We'll find another topic, but.
Susan Friedmann [00:30:52]:
Or maybe in a few months, AI is going to be a whole new animal that will have you.
Kathy Farah [00:30:58]:
There's going to be something that changes.
Susan Friedmann [00:31:00]:
Right. It's changing daily, if not by 10 minutes. Yeah. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
And listeners. If your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and me jump on a quick call to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. Because you've invested a whole lot of time, money and energy and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. So go to bookmarketingbrainstorm.com to schedule your free call. In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books.
Until next week, here's wishing you much. Book and author marketing success.
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