Episode 56 – How AI Can Make Marketing More Human with Deanna Ballew

Join us for a conversation with Deanna Ballew, Senior VP of Digital Experience Platforms and AI at Acquia, where we discuss the fundamental shifts happening right now in the world of marketing. We cover: How heightened consumer awareness and stricter privacy laws are reshaping marketing strategies. Reclaiming the humanity of marketing from the data-centric focus of the past decade. How marketing will function in a “cookieless future.” And much more! Connect with us! Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn Deanna Ballew on LinkedIn About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.

In this episode, we're joined by Andy Earle, CEO and Founder of Write it Great, to explore how ghostwriting has evolved from a covert art to a respected collaboration, enabling professionals and thought leaders to articulate their thoughts more effectively. We discuss: How working with a ghostwriting team can crystallize your ideas, develop compelling metaphors, and ultimately make your communication more impactful across various channels. The types of content best suited for ghostwriting. The ethical and practical limitations of ghostwriting, particularly when dealing with deeply personal material. The transformative role AI is playing in the ghostwriting process. By handling initial tasks like transcribing interviews and generating first drafts, AI is freeing up human writers to focus more on creativity and refinement. Connect with us! Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn Andy Earle on LinkedIn Write it Great   About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.  

Unlock the secrets to a more intuitive and user-friendly artificial intelligence (AI) experience with our special guest, Greg Bennett. Journey with us through the fascinating history of user interface paradigms, based on Jakob Nielsen's insights, from the early days of batch processing, to today’s command-based interactions and intent-based AI interfaces. This episode does a deep dive into the shift from users providing step-by-step commands to simply stating desired outcomes, emphasizing the crucial role of usability. Discover why the future might render prompt engineers obsolete, much like how Google revolutionized search and diminished the need for specialized query skills. In addition to exploring the evolution of prompt engineering, we tackle the pressing challenges of AI accuracy and security, addressing issues like factual correctness and prompt injection. This episode offers a practical look at the synergy between graphical and conversational interfaces, such as the difference between filling out forms and engaging in extended dialogues. With an eye toward making AI more natural and conversational, Greg Bennett shares his vision for a future where users can refine outputs through iterative dialogue, making AI not just a tool but a seamless part of our everyday lives. Tune in to see how these advancements could revolutionize your interaction with technology. Connect with us! Greg Bennett on LinkedIn Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn Zeals About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.  

Discover the hidden biases in large language models and how they skew towards English, creating unique challenges for other languages when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). In this episode, Greg Bennett, head of prompt engineering at ZEALS,  dissects the influence of training data predominantly sourced from English materials and the subsequent effectiveness of English prompts. We reveal how tiny linguistic tools called discourse markers can significantly enhance conversational flow in AI-generated responses, especially when navigating non-English languages. Linguistics professionals play a critical role in prompt engineering; their expertise in language structures and sociolinguistics gives them an edge in creating natural and engaging AI outputs. Hear about the intriguing differences between OpenAI and Anthropic's language models and how each handles discourse markers. We discuss why Anthropic's models seem to have an inherent grasp of these markers, whereas OpenAI's models need explicit instructions.  Reflecting on the evolution of conversational AI, we go back to the early days of voice assistants like Cortana in 2014, sharing personal experiences and challenges faced in those formative years. Fast forward to the present and we illustrate how advancements in generative AI have transformed conversational UX. Learn how specifying discourse formats, whether for articles or chat messages, can guide AI to produce the desired style and register, making interactions smoother and more intuitive.  Connect with us! Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn Greg Bennett on LinkedIn About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Click here to learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.

In Part One of our three-part series with Greg Bennett, Head of Prompt Engineering at ZEALS, we demystify artificial intelligence (AI) prompting and effective outputs. This episode shows how crafting AI prompts is like giving clear, detailed instructions to an intern, ensuring they understand the context, objectives, and specific guidelines necessary for success. Discover practical techniques such as adopting personas and offering incentives to enhance the performance of AI tools. Learn why precision is essential, from setting word limits to specifying details for better AI-generated summaries. Greg shares the pitfalls of vague personas and the value of narrowing the scope to precise roles or attributes. We compare strategies for content creation versus research, emphasizing the need to consider the audience. Additionally, we introduce the concept of recipient design from conversation analysis, highlighting the importance of tailoring communication for intended recipients. Join us for an enlightening conversation that bridges AI potential with practical application. Connect with us! Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn Greg Bennett on LinkedIn About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Click here to learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.   

Remember when podcasting was just an audio medium? Now it’s virtually understood that a podcast will also have a video component because of the popularity of viewing video. In this episode, we sit down with Bob Bowdon, the visionary behind Vidafair, to uncover the transformational journey from text-based tutorials to dominant video platforms like YouTube, now the second largest search engine.  Bob brings decades of expertise in video and broadcasting, sharing how video has become indispensable for various aspects of content marketing. Bob’s new firm Vidafair empowers content creators to set their own fees, ensuring fair monetization. From TikTok's snappy clips to Joe Rogan's marathon podcasts, we unpack how different formats engage audiences – short-form videos keep users glued to the platform while long-form content builds deeper connections with creators.  This week’s episode invites viewers to ponder how they would like to use video and how artificial intelligence will or won’t play a role. Connect with us! Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn Bob Bowdon on LinkedIn VidaFair About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Click here to learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.   

This week, join us as we sit down with Jim Vomero, Senior Engineer at Four Kitchens, about AI's impact on content creation and CMS platforms like Drupal. Discover how AI improves authoring experiences and addresses backend interface challenges, as highlighted by Jim's recent university project. Explore AI's role in transforming website navigation and SEO, focusing on meaningful content associations and automated taxonomy management. Jim and Todd discuss AI's enhancement of site search through vector databases, making it more personalized and user-friendly. Learn about AI's potential for recommendation engines and comprehensive content management within CMSs, facilitating better content personalization and supporting educational and advocacy efforts online. Don’t miss this insightful discussion shaping the future of digital content. Connect with us! Jim Vomero on Linkedin Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions. Click here to learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.   

Unlock the potential of AI in content management with Sebastianna Skalisky in the latest episode of "Future of Content"! Learn how a chat GPT-style chatbot with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) can revolutionize university communications, enhancing response quality while safeguarding data. Discover strategies to optimize your content for AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), blending traditional SEO with AI requirements for improved accessibility. Dive into prompt engineering, token usage, and the importance of clear, concise content for both AI and human audiences. Gain practical tips to elevate your content strategy in today's AI-driven landscape. Ready to learn more? Sebastianna Skalisky on LinkedIn Todd Ross Nienkerk on LinkedIn About Four Kitchens Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions.  Click here to learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good. 

What if content was no longer confined to just a screen? The rapid advancement and integration of artificial intelligence and augmented reality have begun to push these definitions, allowing everyone, from content creators to compliance officers, to rethink what is possible. From revolutionizing everyday tasks to creating a universal CMS where content authors can edit and update content across platforms, our conversation bridges what is to come.  Preston So joins “The Future of Content” to discuss not just the creation of content but the creation of experiences that are as intelligent as they are intuitive.  Ready to learn more? Preston So on LinkedIn  Preston So Preston So’s Books Todd Ross Neinkerk on LinkedIn Your website needs to fulfill your mission and stand the test of time. We have a long history of helping teams like yours — those who educate, advocate, and inform — realize their website’s potential and make a positive change in the world. At Four Kitchens, we make the web a better place to teach, learn, and advocate for all. Driven by our content expertise, technical excellence, and a shared purpose of doing good, we craft websites that help organizations fulfill their missions.  Click here to learn more about how Four Kitchens makes websites with love. For good.

We spend so much time and resources on frontend development, isn’t it time we give the same treatment for content authors? Greg Dunlap, the director of strategy at Lullabot, joins “The Future of Content” to discuss the relationship between user-centered design and quality content.  Drawing from decades of experience, Greg shares his insights into involving authors in the development process. From utilizing paper prototyping to researching ways to reduce cognitive load, our conversation outlines practical strategies to create more efficient and user-friendly systems. Greg also shares the process of drafting his book, Designing Content Authoring Experiences, which aims to serve as a guide for crafting better author experiences.  This week’s episode invites listeners to rethink CMS from the ground up, ensuring it meets the needs of those it serves. Connect with Us!  Designing Content Authoring Experiences Kickstarter Greg Dunlap on LinkedIn  Lullabot Todd Ross Neinkerk on LinkedIn