Digital Buzz: Embracing Organic Engagement, The Dance of AI and Human Creativity, Meta's Integration Moves

Speaker 1: 0:15

Welcome to the Mindful Bytes podcast presented by KillerB Studios. Open your minds as we dive into conversations about the world of tech and the art behind using it purposefully.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Alright, olivia. So this week's digital buzz let's just go ahead and dive on into it. First, I don't know if you noticed, but we've been working on new messaging for KillerB. You know, last time we talked, we talked about Seth Godin and all the you know three quarters and million dollars that he had thrown at digital ads and made a whopping $7. I don't think that he's alone in that, but you know, it's kind of it's kind of crazy to think about that because it's like gosh, a lot of us well, we definitely spend more than that, probably for lunch, because you imagine spending three quarters and million dollars to buy lunch. I don't think he even buy lunch at McDonald's for that much anymore. No, not at all.

Speaker 2: 1:16

No, you can't Did they even have the dollar menu anymore. I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 1:22

But, we made some shifts on our messaging, which was part of one of my goals was to get the messaging revised on KillerB marketing's website, and our big focus is really, you know, we really focus a lot on tailored marketing strategies that really custom to those audience, to our clients. But what I came up with was this basically this little tagline that we don't buy attention, we earn it, and I'm like you know, I think that really clearly stays. Not that there's anything wrong with running paid ads If you want to do it and you're thinking it works, go for it. But, man, we've worked with so many clients that have come to us that have wasted so much money on digital ads and they don't see a return, and sometimes it's the approach, but there's some things that we talked about that I saw numbers that weren't adding up and I was like you know what I'm done wasting money there. Let's not buy attention, let's just focus on earning it and helping our clients earn that attention. So, yeah, so we got brand new messaging up on the website. You can check it out at killerbmarketingcom and we have a YKBM as well, so it gives you a little bit more information about why we're going down this path as well. So that's some digital buzz about us.

Speaker 2: 2:36

Let's talk about social media chatter. Let's dive into social media chatter. We're on TikTok now. I mean I guess I'm on TikTok now. We're taking that shift as well as, instead of being more of a brand focus, we're going to. You know, I just did a personal TikTok, so Brian Curie CURWE and I'm posting out videos on there as well, but that seems to be going pretty cool so far. But there's some chatter about I don't know if you've heard this and I feel like there's so much shift happening right now on social. Did you see that Instagram is doing a thing like they're kind of doing some changes for live stream games to enhance their engagement? Did you see that?

Speaker 3: 3:18

Yeah, I did. That was actually on my list to talk about, hey that's great.

Speaker 2: 3:24

We don't even run these by each other before we get on here, but I would love to hear your thoughts about that.

Speaker 3: 3:29

To me this is saying right, they have these games you could do like this or that, or like a trivia game during people's lives feed because they want to draw engagement on them. What that is saying to me is that Metta is shifting a huge focus to live video on Instagram. So, where you know, we always used to talk about Facebook Live. Facebook Live, I mean Metta is still trying to come after TikTok hardcore, and so to me, this is saying that in 2024, instagram Live and Live videos and things like that are going to be a focus that they want people to be focusing on.

Speaker 2: 4:16

One of the things that really I started thinking about is the different generations coming up, and the gaming community has been huge on Discord, with live streams, and on Twitch and stuff like that, where they have all these people watching them play games. You know a lot of them have made, has helped nonprofits raise funds. You know there's a lot of stuff that they've done through these live game streaming and I'm just curious like they must be making this shift as well because they see the possibility to drive more engagement, to grow their audience with the gaming community. Another thing is the generative AI for social media. I think you brought that up last week about things that are changing with social media, about how that generative AI is coming more and more into social media and one of the questions that I think would be interesting to be asking ourselves is how can we use those tools without losing what makes social media special, and that's us?

Speaker 3: 5:18

Yeah, yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm finding that I can tell easily now who is using AI and not tweaking it very well and who isn't. So, I mean, in the beginning it wasn't hard to tell, but as more and more people start using it, that's something to be aware of as well of, like you know, not using it. It's a great tool, but it's not, again, like we've talked about, to replace you. It's to enhance and make your job. You know better and things like that. So you can definitely tell people or brands that just aren't really tweaking it as they should be.

Speaker 2: 6:12

So, yeah, yeah, I think that's going to be such an important piece Like it's an amazing tool that you can use. We posted an article on Killer B Marketing's website If you haven't checked it out, go check it out about AI becoming like a creative sidekick, which I see amazing opportunity there. I mean, we've been using it and, but again it's about using it to help with brainstorming, to help you know, use it as a tool to help you do more, but you also have to be in there tweaking it and adjusting it and still making it for you, like if you're just plugging and playing and just whatever it takes out, you're regurgitating. Yeah, it doesn't sound like a robot, like it's like let's not do that and don't lose who you are your brand's voice.

Speaker 3: 6:57

Yeah, it's almost like you're Batman and AI is Robin.

Speaker 2: 7:02

So it's like, yeah, it's like your little sidekick right there.

Speaker 2: 7:06

Okay so, okay. So if you guys check out the blog, you're going to realize that that's exactly what my thought was too is like AI could be like a sidekick. I'm like, who's the sidekick that people would probably think of? And I thought Robin. And if you look at the cover image I don't know if you've seen it a little bit if you look at the cover image, I thought, okay, I went to chat GPT. I use the plugin with chat GPT that writes better image generative prompts. So I said, hey, give me a prompt for mid journey and I want you to create a sidekick. Ai is a sidekick wearing a Robin outfit that looks like a robot. I want you to go check that out. If you guys go check it out on Killer B site, you're going to be blown away about what it looks like. Actually, I love you.

Speaker 3: 7:50

I didn't even know you use that. What? Look at that we didn't even talk about that.

Speaker 2: 7:56

We didn't even talk about it. Okay, Olivia, you're on video so I'm going to show you, and everybody else will have to go check it out. I'll put a link in the podcast show notes, but I got to show you this, Olivia, since you didn't even know that. So, okay, hold on a second. Here we go. All right, Let me zoom this up a little bit. This is the picture right here. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: 8:42

That's hilarious, that looks great it does, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 8:45

And it's like that's the cool use of AI as a tool, because I'm like man. I had that image in my head, like I could visualize it, but to create that from scratch would be a lot of work.

Speaker 3: 8:57

A lot of work.

Speaker 2: 8:59

Yeah, I'm like, oh, let me just type it in and I said I want it to be realistic, use cinematic lighting, glowing eyes and man. It did an amazing job. Within like 30 seconds I had found one and I'm like that's it. That's what I want. But, yeah, definitely it's a tool to be used, but we can't just rely totally on that tool and from what I was reading here to see who was, it was a social media today put this out on an article and they were just talking about all the different AI tools that's coming out for social media and how, even, like, people are going to be using it for engagement and stuff.

Speaker 2: 9:31

I think you know what's going to set people, what's going to set brands and personal brands and all that apart, moving forward is the authentic connection I think people are going to be able to tell. I mean, if AI is doing everything, they're going to be able to tell. But I mean Facebook. They said AI has. They have an AI post creation tool. They have a text and image creation for ads and AI chatbot based on celebrities, which we've seen that mess with that. They have AI chatbot assistant for the Ray band stories, which I've tested that out Pretty cool. They're using AI for creating profile pictures, like all that's coming just on Facebook. Instagram has AI image filters, background generation tools, creation and editing options, conversational AI chatbots for DMs Like that's.

Speaker 2: 10:18

This is the thing I think that people are going to be able to tell, like we're. I think we already kind of get disconnected when we can tell people is just posting just a post and there's no personal connection. So I think you have to really weigh it out what you're doing there. Linkedin has a AI post, ai post, ai post composer, an AI assistant for the Ray band, an assistant for in-mails and AI article summary. They can create a summary of articles. Snapchat has the my AI. I don't know if you're going to use Snapchat. Have you ever mess with the my AI before? It's a conversational chatbot, I guess.

Speaker 3: 10:51

I have not yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:54

They have also have a thing. It's cause as well. As Snapchat has a dreams image generator tool, it's another AI tool Snapchat captions, or AI, rather than TikTok, has AI profile images, ai effect tools, ai song generation. I mean, there's so much AI stuff coming. It's going to continue to come in. But I think that, when it comes to social media use, I would encourage anybody to listen and like, ask yourself and be aware when you're using these tools. How can you use these tools without losing what makes your social media special? If you lose the us and social media, you've already disconnected from your audience.

Speaker 3: 11:33

Yeah, yeah, so I'd be paying attention to that. Yeah, and the other thing with that is specifically I don't know if you heard about this with chat, ai, chatbot, the National Eating Disorder Association their acronym is NETA they started using a chatbot and they're dealing with something pretty, you know, hardcore with eating disorders, right. So they started using a chatbot on their website and this chatbot was telling, giving information to people with a eating disorder on how to lose more weight. So that was like a whole big thing, so something to be aware of. Like what is your business to right? Because something like that I wouldn't use a chatbot for that because it's such a personal, you know thing to deal with with someone. So they got a lot of backlash for that and it's going to be really hard for this organization to kind of get their reputation back as well.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, totally, totally agree 100%. You got to really be paying attention to that, because people don't want to talk to a machine. You know, especially in critical things like that, that's going to become very important for any brand moving forward. I guess it's like don't lean on the AI tools to make it all right to be lazy in the work that you do. People will be able to tell if you're being lazy, like, they come to you because they trust you. If you lose that trust, it's hard to get that back.

Speaker 3: 13:21

So yeah, it really is.

Speaker 2: 13:25

That actually kind of leads into a little bit of the tech talk stuff as well is and and that is like we actually have an article coming out this week. Right now it's the 26th of February when we're doing this digital buzz live, but I believe it's tomorrow, the 27th we have an article dropping, a digital buzz article and it's actually talking about the shifts with AI video creation coming in and their samples. Like I mean, you're going to be blown away, libby, when you see these like the open AI with, you know, chat, gpt and stuff like that. I guess that's with chat, gpt, I believe the open AI. But they have a video thing that blows my mind.

Speaker 2: 14:06

By text base you're typing in and it's creating a minute long video and some of those videos, like you can't even tell that it's not real. I mean, there's some things you can literally look close to, close forward to see some of those things, but some of them look like real Pixar movies. I'm like what the heck? I'm usually animated to real people and, just like you know, when you look at those AI photos, you're like, hey, this looks like a real photo.

Speaker 2: 14:30

But when you realize a person has six fingers, they're like wait something doesn't add up there and those things are getting better and better. Where that's not happening, there's some things like that with the AI. I think there's one where a guy was reading a book up in the clouds and it looked like a real guy, except for when the pages flipped. It was kind of flipping weird if you really looked and you could tell. So things like that that stand out but you're going to be blown away. I mean, especially if you created a video of, like an aerial drone view. I mean it looks so real, it's like why would you pay for stock video footage? I mean it's going to affect that. That outlet for sure. Even meta is working on one of the. You'll see it in the article and we're covering it in an hour. But I mean it's changing. It's changing, but keep an eye out for that.

Speaker 2: 15:15

There's a lot of changes happening with AI. It's going to affect a lot of things, but again, it's a great sidekick. The businesses are going to be able to do a lot more where you would normally have to have a bigger team. Like you know, we have a smaller team but we're able to do more because of the AI tools. But we still have to use them responsible and and not lose focus of who we are and still make sure it's coming from our experience, not just some AI Bob. There's another shift happening right now and it it's pretty cool. I don't know if you've ever heard this called the regeneration shift for brands.

Speaker 3: 15:52

Regeneration, regeneration, shift, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:57

So this is the last thing I have for the digital buzz, and if you have something else, olivia, you're welcome to bring that up. The regeneration shift I'm reading about it right now. It's really not a surprise, it's just a really good article that I'm reading, but it talks about how we're going to write an article about this, because I think it's important. In aligns with what we're talking about, connection Connection is key and our purpose, like our purpose, and there's a podcast I'm going to listen to as well, called the decentralized podcast. They did an episode about businesses that are non-for-profit yeah, non-for-profit, and they're talking about being purpose-focused. I'm interested to hear what they have to say. I'm going to check them out. The great guys that run that Tanner, and I think Wyatt is their name, is his name. I did an episode with them and I'm interested to check it out, because they're talking about how a lot of businesses will be like, hey, they're mission-focused, but then when you get in there, it really isn't mission-focused. It's about the money, and this is kind of like what this is talking about.

Speaker 2: 16:55

This regeneration shift it says 72% of consumers think brands should be using their power to help people out, and that it's not just about profits anymore. It's about making a difference, and what's cool about that is we work with a lot of non-profits, we work with a lot of Christian radio stations and broadcasters and, man, what a place to shine when it comes to what we're doing across digital. If we remember that and acknowledge this regeneration shift is happening. Even a younger generation. They want to be a part of something that's making a difference, really making a difference. So really highlighting how your audience, your clients, your customers, how they're helping to make a difference, how they're a part of that, is going to be such a huge piece in the way people see your brand and they're going to be able to tell, just like of AI, if you're faking it, they're going to be able to tell hey, are you really focused about this purpose or are you more focused about getting those numbers? Like the more listeners, the more views, like they're going to be able to tell yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 18:07

Yeah, I mean, I think it's an important piece because even with us, I was actually talking to Shauna and Ashton about this and you know, ashton, he's getting ready to turn 20, so he's in that younger generation and when I was talking to him about this, he said, well, I can tell you one way that I would, that I look at businesses to determine if they're actually really focused on their mission. I was like, okay, he's like, well, one of the questions that I'd be curious to know is are they willing to walk away from a client that doesn't align with their mission, or they rather just have the money.

Speaker 2: 18:41

I was like, ooh, that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good, good thing to look at like would they be willing to say, hey, I don't want that $60,000 or I don't want that whatever quarter of a million dollars, because what you're doing doesn't line up with our purpose. Are they willing to walk away from that? Or they're willing to just bend the rules a little bit to To keep that income like that's pretty good. I don't know if they're gonna actually report that Interesting. I'm like, coming from a 20 year old, that's something that he he thinks is very important. But he does a lot of research on Reddit and stuff too. There's a lot of stuff that he's into that. I'm like I came and keep up with that. But these younger generation knows ways of finding out things that I don't know.

Speaker 3: 19:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:31

All right, Olivia. So how about you? Do you have anything else on the digital buzz that you'd like to talk about?

Speaker 3: 19:35

Yeah, the. I don't know if you saw this, brian, but Metta is now testing. From what I'm seeing, you can only do it on iOS. So Apple Posting to threads from Facebook, really, yeah, so I don't know what the decision behind that is, because I Initially thought the reason why it was connected to Instagram was to capitalize on the younger Crowd that uses Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it. So, yeah, that's interesting. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

Speaker 2: 20:18

To be honest with you, I don't know what my thoughts are. I mean, I feel like I feel like they know that Social media is changing and they're trying to. This is just me and I'm looking at it from a business outside perspective. I'm going you're trying to get your audience to this other platform. I've been reading articles about threads and then what is it? X or tick to? Yeah, well, not not tick, tock X, not Twitter, it's X. I've been reading articles about that like where? How do they compare today? And some people are going back to X because of the things they can do. I was even actually reading an article that was talking about how you know the changing it to X is really difficult, because people will probably always say I just tweeted that or I'm going to tweet that.

Speaker 3: 21:02

Yeah, or did you see my yeah I?

Speaker 2: 21:06

like I won X, that or? Hey, did you check out my last X? That's not good.

Speaker 3: 21:11

That's like a negative, like connotation.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I think that Facebook, like meta, it seems like they're trying to do whatever they can to get people More active on that platform. I know they've put out stats about how many active users are, but I don't know, man, some of those numbers, I just feel like they're. You don't really see what's going on the back end and, like I said, we've been looking at that data on ads and stuff going. These numbers don't add up, yeah, and just because I don't know, I'm trying to figure like are they trying to get more people using that platform in any way they can?

Speaker 3: 21:48

I don't feel like Facebook is the route to go, because the what Facebook has become, that audience doesn't even use Twitter or X. Um, so I don't think that's the correct route. But I think, kind of like what you're saying. It well, you didn't put it in this words, but it's almost like a desperation, like what else can we do to get people to Use? Have you ever watched Mean girls?

Speaker 2: 22:21

No, I tend to not like mean girls, those are the. X. Those are on the X platform, right oh my gosh. This is the last thread with you. You're now going on the X man. Let's face it, I'm gonna keep mixing in here.

Speaker 3: 22:42

But yeah, there's like a desperation mode because I mean, personally I haven't gotten on threads since it first came out and oh. But I don't think going through Facebook is the way to do it.

Speaker 2: 22:59

I don't think so. I think that if someone's going to do like instead of, I Think there's gonna be somebody new that steps up to create this type of micro blogging platform again because, to be honest, like I've gotten back on X, I'm just like no, it's not for me and and I've tried threads I'm like this just doesn't, it's not making sense. There's a lot of things that there's things that's missing, that it needs and it's a nice platform, but it just there seems to be a lot missing and I'm like I don't have the time for that and I think that's what we're stepping into. I think that they're starting to realize they see the data. They see more data than we see, and we know people that's gotten tired of the social media, tired of that game, and people are pulling back. We reported what not was it last year about how, in the next two years, what was it like? 47 or something like that percent of social media marketers are looking at taking leaving social media in the next.

Speaker 2: 23:53

Yeah there is a shift happening. I think they're kind of like you said and some desperation. They're trying to figure out what are they doing next and what's that going to look like, so, yeah, so I think we're gonna be in for a lot, that we're gonna be seeing this over this year. I mean, come next year at this time I'm gonna be interested to see what we're talking about because of all the AI stuff and how that's. Yeah, social media and all these things. We're gonna be in a totally different era when it comes to digital and social media and stuff next year.

Speaker 1: 24:22

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