How AI Is Transforming LinkedIn and Changing Professional Life Forever

This article is based on a LinkedIn Live hosted by Lynnaire Johnston who spoke at length with MARY BRANDT about how AI is changing the face of business today. The full event can be watched here.

Introduction

Fewer than 10% of business currently use AI. This is being driven by our fear of the unknown.

This is not the first time. When emails took the place of letters and the typewriter, we were all a little distrustful of typing information on a screen and sending it to someone. So it's human nature that when we don't understand something we are hesitant to dive in.

Mary is all about relationships. She connects people, places and things. When in early 2022 AI became widely available, she was determined never to use it – and it was not going to happen on LinkedIn. She posted about it and commented about it, but then saw the writing on the wall. In this article she shares her experience and how her business has been much improved by adopting AI.

Why are we terrified of AI?

Two reasons. One, you think it's going to take your job. Two, it's not going to sound like you, feel like you or have your energy. Those are the two biggest obstacles that prompt people to push back.

Nobody wants to see someone lose their job, but things change and evolve, and they're going to continue to do so. If you apply for a job today and say you can type 60 words per minute or you understand how to use the top ten fastest-growing AI tools, which is more valuable?

We have to keep our skill sets up to date to become and remain relevant. AI is not going anywhere and as a business owner, I can see there will be two types of businesses – those that keep the doors open by integrating AI, and those that don’t because they put their head in the sand and don’t adapt.

Will jobs disappear? Absolutely. Will new jobs be created? Yes. It will be just like what happened with the advent of computers, which was a revolution on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. And it will happen again and again.

So I encourage people to learn about AI and figure out how to adopt or integrate it into their business and life.

I look at AI as a productivity tool. It is not here to replace humans. It is here to enhance the work we do, to make it easier, more effective and more efficient.

I'm dyslexic. Do you know how hard it is for someone who is dyslexic to write? I was always afraid, because I put words in the wrong order. AI is a tool to help me be a better writer. The ideas are still my ideas and the writing starts with my writing. Then I can just enhance it and improve it.

Take creatives. Their brains are always firing. “I have this idea.” “I'm going to make this design.” “What about that email?” AI can help put ideas into action.

I'll say “here's what I want to write about, this is the tone” and AI will put it in a logical order because my brain doesn't work that way.

It's a tool – it’s not to replace humans.

To get good results, you need to train your AI. I help people set up AI assistants that do all the heavy lifting and we spend more time setting it up and training it than we do executing.

It's not a question of IF AI will need to be used in your business, it's a question of when and that’s right now, today – not in six months and not in a year.

How can we use AI in business generally?

There are a lot of different ways to use AI and content is probably where most people start, by having it expand on your ideas. It can help you come up with new ideas, create email funnels, content proposals, sales websites and landing pages. It can analyse the data, your posts and tell you why they were so great. It's underused for analysing.

AI can help you make decisions faster. I use it for laying out marketing strategies with my clients and then executing each piece of that separately. So, if you come up with a 90-day marketing plan you can have it break down your first 30 days, then break down the next 30 days and then the next 30.

It can summarise and assist with research and repetitive tasks.

It can create your standard operating procedures which I’ve done with a videographer. He had a team of four and every time they had a video shoot, he created a list of who goes where, at what time. We created his SOP's for the week before, the day before, the day of the shoot and the day after.

Likewise, an event planner was spending a lot of time launching amazing events and spent hours on the phone with clients doing branding exercises to understand each client. I used ChatGPT to design a workbook to answer clients’ questions and create emails to reduce her workload.

What other tools can marketers use?

You can take the transcript from a live show on LinkedIn and put it through Chat GPT to summarise it. I use Vidyo.ai to chop up my videos and make micro clips. So, after a videographer filmed me doing a 40-minute AI talk, it came up with 42 clips that were all captioned, on-brand in pink, and it ranked them with the keywords and text saying what each clip was about.

Are they all great? No. But I have a 90/10 rule: AI gets you 90% to the finish line and your human eye takes you the last 10% to cross the finish line.

You need to train your AI on what words not to use because I can tell when something's written by AI. In the beginning I didn't know you could train it to never use certain words or never to start an email with a particular sentence.

You can also train it to write in your own brand voice with words and sayings that you use so it sounds like you. So that 10% mentioned above is becoming smaller as you use it more.

If you're employing somebody and training them to write in your brand voice, over time they get better at it. It's the same concept.

When I set up AI assistance for my clients, they're human-like AI assistants, and with the rapid evolution of AI tools and platforms such as Chat GBT, Claude, Gemini and Co-pilot, they are learning faster and becoming more conversational.

There are so many changes it's hard to stay on top of them, so I'm always testing new tools.

?? Pro tip: If you see a tool that looks really cool, give it a try. If there's a free trial, give it a try. If there's not, sign up for one month and as soon as you have access, cancel. That way you don’t get stuck with 10 different subscriptions and it gives you 30 days for around $20 to play with the tool.

If you're just getting started make a list of what you hate to do. Is it emails, content, coming up with new ideas, chopping up videos, repurposing your content? Use AI to carry out those tasks for you.

Mary's top 10 tools for using AI effectively:

How can we use AI to repurpose content?

We all create a lot content so we don't always have to write from scratch. Here’s an example: I took a favourite story blog, put that into Vidyo.ai and cloned my voice. It sounds just like me and now I'm reading my blogs aloud to turn them into videos. I use images from the blogs, change some things around, and now I have movies with my voice, plus text and video. Then Vidyo.ai chops them up into pieces which I put on multiple different platforms.

Vertical videos (those recorded in portrait mode) are all the rage on LinkedIn at present because of the recently launched standalone video feed. (LinkedIn often gives new content features an algorithmic nudge, sharing them with a wider audience than normal.)

For these, I use Capcut because it's super easy to create vertical videos that are one to two minutes long max. You could do a whole series on tips and have a vertical video every Monday. Or, on Friday it could be things for you to think about over the weekend.

Did you know you can create a presentation using AI? I just created two presentations for the Marriott using Gamma.app. I just put my branding colours in and my own photos. What I love about Gamma.app is you can upload a Google doc with all the points you want to cover and it formats them and puts the content in. Then I go back and put some more work into it to make it exactly how I want it to be.

Most of us did not get into business to create content. We got into business to work with people, to help and educate them. So if AI can take the content and email off your plate, that gives you more time to cultivate relationships. And to me, while I love AI, relationships are more important.

What are your thoughts on LinkedIn's AI?

I don't use LinkedIn's AI because it doesn’t give me the output I desire. I use Chat GPT, Claude and other apps to create content. I do not create content using LinkedIn's AI or DM messages.

I still send all my messages organically but I do see coming a time when AI sends out initial connection requests. I don't think that's wrong because you're trying to start the conversation but when you get into the conversation, it needs to be you.

If you don't know how to comment, you may need a little help. There are tools such as Flymsg that can help you start a comment. But remember my 90/10 rule. Use a tool but as a starter, not to write the whole comment because you can tell when comments are generated by AI. We want interaction and engagement.

I see AI as a productivity tool which allows me to have more human connection. It does the heavy lifting so I can spend my time on live shows and my podcast.

Should we tell people when we're using Chat GPT or any AI tool?

I did at the very beginning, by saying “This image was created by AI”. I was trying to do what I thought was the right thing, but does anyone care at this point? Probably not.

We can still tell when it's AI. I use an image of a pink robot at a desk with a turquoise laptop, which you can tell was generated by AI. Do I need to say that every time? No.

LinkedIn is not a level playing field for everyone so I like that AI can be used to help people overcome challenges such as dyslexia, are introverts, or with other issues.

Final thoughts?

I want people to engage. I want them to feel comfortable creating content and comments. So if you’re new to this, use some of the AI tools.

I want to encourage and inspire people to use LinkedIn and to use AI. Some of that might cross over. I don't want people to be afraid of AI. I like to teach people how to use it ethically, efficiently and effectively. So, find the right tools for you.