We're always looking for automated, time-saving, efficiency-boosting tools or techniques in the creative business. In the past we’ve used adobe’s watch folders to auto-render video sequences, we’ve set Zapier to auto-generate production tasks in Trello from some input in gmail, and we’ve used hootsuite to schedule social posts for marketing. Some of these tools have been useful and are still part of our workflow today but some of these processes have proved to us that we won’t likely be replaced by robots anytime in the near future.
I present to you: "An Unsurpassed Timely Bonanza.”
A little over a year ago, we stumbled upon a piece of software called CoSchedule. This nifty system aims to organize your marketing in one place. It certainly did help with organization and scheduling but we were super intrigued by a couple of AI powered features: “ReQueue” and “Headline Analyzer.”
Maybe Ryan can fill you in further on our adventures with ReQueue [Editor's note: What a disaster occured just from a small misunderstanding of the tool!]. But for now, here's what I gathered from CoSchedule.
After awhile, you’ve got a lot of content published and many of the readers you have today, may have started following you long after much of your early content was written. ReQueue claims to be the easiest way to automate your social media. The only problem with that claim is that every marketer will tell you not to automate your social media. We used the feature 
successfully for a short while but eventually this robot was running wild reposting it’s favorite posts over and over again to all of our social channels. Thanks little robot. You’re AI help is really just spamming our audience! [Once this happened, we quickly figured out the cause and fixed it!]
Headline Analyzer was the most interesting to me. I’m the kind of guy that likes to quickly splash my ideas down on paper while I’m writing (Evernote actually. C’mon, who uses paper?) but I’m really more focused on the content than the title. I know it’s an important piece, but I’ll delay that part up until it’s time to publish and then stress about the perfect wording for maximum engagement. So a piece of software that uses AI to analyze the strength of a headline sounded great!
I tried it out with one of my earlier blog posts, “Give away your best ideas.” Headline Analyzer gave me a score of 54. Hmm, that doesn’t sound great. In fact, I’m pretty sure that would earn me a seat in summer school next to the 19 year old that smokes all the time. What was this AI looking for? CoSchedule was happy to provide me with a list of “emotion” words and “power” words that I could consider for my titles. So just to be sassy I generated a title made up entirely from the provided lists: "An Unsurpassed Timely Bonanza.” The score: 73
Wait… what? What does that title even mean? A conveniently timed reward that has yet to be topped may be something you’re interested in, but how is it more emotionally gripping than giving away your best work? It’s a jumble of ridiculous words versus a challenge to your creative integrity. Why did CoSchedule think it was better?
The problem with AI (so far) is that it doesn’t really know what you’re saying. Or doesn’t know the weight of it, anyway. The direction to give away your best work may be full of “common” words that don’t earn the score for emotion that bonanza does, but the implication of that idea certainly creates an emotional response. Some of these tools are really cool and can help reduce or streamline the work you do but it is still important to think critically
about all of your marketing and trust your gut when writing content even if the robot says it’s wrong.
By the way, if you’re wondering what the robot said could be even better… it's "Why You’ll Immediately Love an Unsurpassed Timely Bonanza” Score: 84
I have yet to discover the golden goose that gets me a score of 100.
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