Change is a constant in public relations and social media, but the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just another change – it’s a revolution. Generative AI goes beyond automating tasks. It has become a creative collaborator for many communication and public relations professionals, sparking fresh ideas for content creation, building media lists and helping overcome hurdles like writer’s block.

On December 6, members of Google’s “Internal Access” program (early adopters, influencers, employees, and researchers) flooded the web with videos of Gemini as the “CHATGPT slayer.” And then, just as suddenly, it fell silent as the public availability of Gemini was pushed to a later date in 2024. With details of the sudden change limited in online searches, we looked for answers by interviewing the one source we were confident would have the answers, Google Bard. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll find out what Bard had to say about the Gemini launch and the future of AI in marketing applications.

Recently, we onboarded a new client with a rapidly growing technology company. The company needed help in several areas, but most importantly, they needed a new website. In reviewing their current website, we noticed a stock photo we laughed about because we were certain we’d seen it many times before. After a quick Google Images search, we found the same image on hundreds of similar and competitive websites. Understanding that even the biggest of brands can, at times, rely on stock photography, in this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll look at the two factors that lead to most stock photography fails. Plus, we’ll discuss how to best avoid stock photography and how to best maintain brand authenticity when stock is your only choice. Then, we’ll look at the present state of AI as an alternative.

This year at Google’s I/O 2023 conference, Google unveiled a host of new products and features. Unsurprisingly, the focus was on efforts and advancements made by leveraging artificial intelligence (or “AI”). It was so important to Google to establish expertise, authority, and trust (sound familiar?) in all things AI that Google execs used the phrase “AI” more than 100 times during the two-hour keynote. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll discuss what we know (and what we don’t) about the future of generative AI in search. We’ll also share what you can do now to ensure you are capturing low-hanging fruit.

Just about the only person in the world who hasn’t heard of ChatGPT, GPT-4, or OpenAI is this woman who quite literally has been living under a rock for the last 500 days. Depending on whom you are listening to, artificial intelligence (AI) is either going to put you out of a job, make you millions (if you follow some simple 10-step plan), or is the start of a technology apocalypse. In today’s Plain Talk, we’ll address the worries and excitement head-on. We’ll share what you need to know about the pros and cons of AI in marketing.

For injury law firms, ChatGPT and Google Bard are already making an impact. If you haven’t heard of these tools, don’t worry. This edition of Plain Talk will get you up to speed. Both AI models are in their early stages. However, we’ve already been able to identify some exciting use cases for using LLM AI in legal marketing. You can up your personal injury law content game while gaining some valuable insights from Google along the way. If you want to understand how ChatGPT and Bard can help you with things such as keyword research, structured data, content development, technical SEO, and a better understanding of Google search, we will demonstrate by showing how these tools can help boost your online performance. And, of course, we’ll be getting some answers straight from the tools to demonstrate how intelligent they can be. Let’s dive in.

In his 1990 Canon ad, Andre Agassi famously stated, “Image is everything!” This is especially true when trying to impress Google with your newly created “Helpful Content”. So, why would you carefully handpick custom images and forget about image optimization? In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll examine SEO image optimization, which helps search engines understand images in related contexts and ultimately provides the best rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) and image searches.