Embarrassing or not, I couldn’t do my job without AI anymore. Once you get used to it, it’s hard to go back.
It’s a bit like how we just went out to eat in the early 2000s without checking the restaurant’s vibe and reviews. 😱
But not all AI tools are created equal.
Although it feels like AI companies are printing up like mushrooms, only a few become part of our daily routine — or is it just me? I’m not a big fan of stamping solutions with AI just for the sake of it.
What makes an AI tool stick? 🕹️
For me — and I suspect, for other small-team managers — there are three “qualification criteria” that must be met. It must:
- Be easy to set up: I’m often time-poor so if I have to spend hours figuring stuff out for myself, it’s likely I’ll grow impatient and drop it.
- Raise efficiency: It needs to save time or money, but ideally both.
- Solve a problem & work: You can give me the most clever AI software, but if it doesn’t solve an actual problem or doesn’t consistently do what it says on the tin, I don’t care if it’s AI-powered.
So without further ado, let me share my current favorites — and I’d love it if you reached out to add to this list.
HeyGen
No matter how often I hear how important video content is to boost reach, I’m still not overly confident to stand in front of the camera and create videos. Enter HeyGen.
What it does:
HeyGen is an AI-powered platform designed to create and personalize videos. It offers a range of features aimed at simplifying and enhancing the video creation process. Key aspects of HeyGen include:
- AI-Generated Videos: Users can create videos from text inputs, with the AI generating relevant visual and audio content automatically.
- Customization: The platform allows for extensive customization, including the addition of custom avatars and specific branding elements.
- Ease of Use: HeyGen provides an intuitive interface that makes video creation accessible to beginners while offering advanced options for more experienced users.
- Applications: HeyGen is suitable for a variety of use cases, including marketing, education, personal projects, and social media content.
- Efficiency: By leveraging AI, HeyGen significantly reduces the time and effort required to produce professional-quality videos.
Why I find it useful:
There are more and more human-like AI avatar generators available (take Synthesia for example), but I find that HeyGen leads the way with their ‘Deep Fakes’. This tool can create scarily accurate copies of you based on a 3-minute video. Take a look at my AI copy 👇
HeyGen helps me repurpose written content into videos within minutes, easily, without the stress and time involved in video production. If you don’t have a team member focused on video content and you want to produce relatively simple concepts, you’ll love HeyGen.
A new feature that absolutely blows my mind is their Streaming Avatars: a live avatar you can ask questions and chat with. I can’t wait to see some engagement statistics on these AI video chatbots.
Tl;dv
When a meeting is Too Long so you Didn’t View it, tl;dv is the solution. The only thing I hate more than unnecessarily long meetings is when I have to watch the whole recording or sift through the million pages of transcription.
What it does:
Tl;dv is an AI-powered meeting recorder and notetaker — no shit, Sherlock... Key features include:
- Meeting Recording: It records video meetings from platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
- Transcription and Keywords: The tool provides automatic transcription of recorded meetings, making it easier to search and reference specific parts of the discussion — including keyword search.
- Highlights: Users can highlight important sections of the meeting within the tool, which helps in capturing key points and action items.
- Timestamped Summaries: tl;dv generates summaries of meetings with timestamps, allowing users to quickly navigate to specific moments in the recording.
Why I find it useful:
In my opinion, its built-in competitors are inferior to tl;dv. The note summaries are concise and accurate and the timestamps are useful. But most importantly, you don’t need to worry about what platform your next meeting is on and who you will need to chase for the meeting recording.
A marketing use case for the recorder is, of course, transcription for podcast and webinar recordings. The notes are so accurate that you can turn any voice recording into a blog post in just minutes, and jumping through the timestamps will make scripting videos a breeze so you can slice and dice them for social media.
NotebookLM
NotebookLM by Google is a recent find and a new favorite of mine. At the moment, it is my most used AI tool and I can say without exaggeration that I couldn’t write content without it for the business I’m currently working for.
What it does:
NotebookLM, formerly known as Project Tailwind, is an AI-powered note-taking application developed by Google. It leverages machine learning to help users organize and generate insights from their notes and documents. Key features include:
- Enhanced Search and Organization: It can sift through large volumes of notes to find relevant information, making it easier to locate specific details or topics.
- Automated Summarization: NotebookLM can generate summaries of documents or collections of notes, helping users quickly grasp the main points.
- Question Answering: Users can ask questions about their notes, and the AI provides answers based on the content it has analyzed.
- Contextual Assistance: It offers contextual suggestions and insights as users work on their notes, potentially identifying patterns or connections they might have missed.
Why I find it useful:
When you work in a field you don’t know enough about, it’s hard to write marketing content that passes the ideal customer read test. This is especially true for STEM or highly technical software products.
For example, I currently work for a B2B eCommerce organization that offers scientific materials and services. I almost failed in chemistry and was very bad in science subjects in general, so you best believe I seek help to create content that resonates with the audience.
What I find with most generative AI products is that you have limited control over what they are trained on. Seemingly, they pull information from thin air so the result is rarely accurate — especially in the case of highly specific topics with little training data available. With NotebookLM, you can upload PDFs, reference websites, paste in text, and even sync documents from your Drive, meaning you have full control over what information is used to generate your content.
What I like to do is to hop on a call with a subject-matter expert, ask all the questions I can think of, and transcribe the meeting (with tl;dv). I then upload the transcription to NotebookLM alongside other internal content on the topic. All that’s left is to choose the format of the output (landing page, podcast interview questions, marketing email copy, etc.) and the tool will generate perfectly accurate content. I also found that when I use meeting notes in the training mix, and I have identified an angle for the content during the call, NotebookLM picks up on it and weaves it in.
In summary, NotebookLM is fantastic if You don’t really know what you’re talking about but can tap into Somebody’s brain who does. Or if you have multiple information sources that you want to bring together.
( 💡 Psst! I’d imagine it’s a great tool to aid job seekers in writing cover letters and preparing for interviews.)
Bonus track 🎵
I think we can agree that most SaaS companies have jumped on the bandwagon of adding AI features — some more useful than others. HubSpot has released dozens to the public or as part of one of their Beta programs.
These features didn’t make the cut for the main piece because…
- Not everybody has the budget for HubSpot.
- Many of these AI features don’t really work. Yet!
The one that I’m most excited about, is HubSpot's AI report generator.
I love HubSpot’s reporting capabilities, but sometimes it can be a pain to figure out what objects and properties to connect and how to end up with the desired report. In theory, the AI report generator should solve this problem. But it doesn’t really work that well yet. Even if you tell it exactly what properties to use, it still gets confused. Nevertheless, the more training data it has the better it will get, and I truly believe it will revolutionize the way we build reports and the accessibility of data for non-data-centric marketers.
Let’s leave it on that note. Comment your favorite tools and the innovations you’re most excited about.
Share your thoughts...