Advertising educators face the problem of equipping college students with sensible expertise that replicate present business tendencies. One development is the combination of generative synthetic intelligence (GenAI) into digital advertising practices. To deal with this, I designed an task for my on-line, college-level Fundamentals of Advertising course that teaches enterprise college students the necessities of branding and social media technique and offers hands-on expertise with GenAI instruments. The task, “Write a Fashion Information and Use GenAI to Write Social Media Posts,” is a fascinating method for college students to use advertising ideas in a real-world context. The educational goal for the task is for college students to generate partaking social media posts that adhere to a method information, successfully aligning with a model’s id whereas reflecting on the method of utilizing GenAI in content material creation.
Task Particulars
The scholars are tasked with creating an in depth model information for an actual firm, Health Components MN, a boutique private coaching, pilates coaching, and dietary teaching enterprise. I interviewed the house owners of Health Components MN and realized they had been battling how a lot time it takes to put in writing and publish social media content material. They sought help with partaking their Fb and Instagram audiences and differentiating social media content material for every viewers. Health Components MN’s mission is to “assist actual individuals be robust, wholesome, really feel good, and rework their existence by bringing the private again into private coaching” (“Health Components”, 2024). The first aim of their social media technique is to extend their variety of private coaching shoppers.
The task created a bridge between academia and enterprise (Rohm, 2019), and emphasised energetic studying by requiring college students to develop a method information (“Sprout Social”, 2024) and use GenAi instruments resembling ChatGPT, an AI software owned by Open AI, to generate social media content material for an actual enterprise. Earlier than the scholars started engaged on their model guides, their textbook readings revolved round how social media retains altering, how social media can generate publicity, the position of social communities, and methods to use social media as a promotional advertising tactic (“Rules of Advertising”, 2015). The task was divided into a number of elements. First, college students used Health Components’s web site, Fb, and Instagram to analysis and develop a method information that included brand utilization, model colours, emoji utilization, typography, and model voice and tone (“Sprout Social”, 2024). Voice and tone needed to embrace facets resembling whether or not the social media content material ought to be cheerful, upbeat, humorous, daring, or sarcastic. Then, they used their model information to immediate the GenAI software of their option to generate ten social media posts for the Health Components MN Fb. They had been requested to regenerate the ten Fb posts till they had been proud of them, and duplicate and paste the posts right into a Phrase doc. They had been requested to repeat the identical course of for Health Components MN’s Instagram. Lastly, they mirrored on the method, analyzing the effectiveness of GenAI-generated content material and its alignment with the model id that they had established with the model information.
The second a part of the task requested them to put in writing 200-250 phrases describing insights into the method, effectiveness, and challenges confronted utilizing GenAI to put in writing social media posts. Moreover, they had been requested to research the effectiveness of GenAI in creating content material that aligned with Health Components MN’s model id. Lastly, they had been requested to deal with the moral implications of utilizing GenAI in content material creation. They mirrored on how utilizing GenAI to create social media posts may change client engagement with social media and what moral issues may come up when shoppers turn out to be conscious that content material is AI-generated.
Grading
The scholars had been instructed I might select a number of the accomplished model guides and social media posts to ship to Health Components MN, with all names and identifiers deleted. Grading was primarily based on a number of guidelines grading standards, together with the comprehensiveness of the model information (30 factors), the creativity and engagement stage of the social media posts (15 factors for 10 Fb posts and 15 factors for 10 Instagram posts), and the depth of reflection of their essays (40 factors). The scholars and I had been shocked by how effectively GenAI differentiated Fb posts from Instagram posts, particularly the way it used completely different hashtags, completely different emoji’s, and completely different writing types. I individually instructed college students when grading their assignments whether or not I despatched their model information and social media posts to Health Components MN. The house owners appreciated the completely different student-written model guides I despatched them, as that they had by no means used a method information, and had been amazed on the GenAI-created social media posts. They appreciated the breadth of matters the social media posts coated that had been particular to their aim to extend the variety of private coaching shoppers.
Reflection and Subsequent Steps
Once I train this course once more, I’ll preserve most facets of the task, and make minor modifications. Some college students instructed me they don’t use GenAI of their each day work or lives and want instruction on methods to use it. I overestimated their GenAI information base. Including instruction on immediate engineering, particularly particular immediate engineering for creating social media posts, will probably be necessary. Secondly, I’ll ask college students to put in writing a draft of a method information, give them suggestions on it, after which ask them to put in writing a closing model information. Creating the model information is an efficient option to have college students critically look at an present web site, particularly its voice and tone, language and grammar, use of hashtags, and the way the content material ought to or mustn’t point out opponents. Lastly, I’ll make clear that the model information ought to be written with no help with GenAI. I used to be not clear on my expectations that I would like the model information to be utterly human-written.
Total, college students gained sensible expertise with cutting-edge expertise that’s more and more utilized in advertising (Bruns & Meißner, 2024). College students might see for themselves how GenAI can be utilized to streamline content material creation, evaluate and distinction posts created for 2 completely different social media platforms, and grapple with the moral implications of utilizing GenAI to create social media content material. Moreover, the task allowed college students to decide on the GenAI software they felt most comfy utilizing. Some college students had been shocked by the prime quality of the AI-generated content material and in addition expressed issues in regards to the potential for AI to depersonalize social media interactions. It is very important preserve authenticity in advertising (Bruns & Meißner, 2024) and prioritize GenAi as a software to help, slightly than exchange, human creativity (Pearce & Littlejohn, 2017).
Dr. Molly Wickam is a program director and professor of training & enterprise/management at Bethel College, St. Paul, MN.
References
Bruns, A. (2019). Social media: Key ideas for constructing model loyalty. Routledge.
Brüns, J. D., & Meißner, M. (2024). Do you create your content material your self? Utilizing generative synthetic intelligence for social media content material creation diminishes perceived model authenticity. Journal of Retailing and Client Providers, 79, 103790.
Health Components MN. (2024). Be wholesome. Be robust. Really feel good. https://www.fitnessformulamn.com/
Pearce, W. B., & Littlejohn, S. W. (1997). Ethical battle: When social worlds collide. Sage.
Rules of selling. (2015). College of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/principles-of-marketing
Sprout Social. (2024). How one can create a social media model information: 10 issues to incorporate. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-style-guide/
Rohm, A. J., Stefl, M., & Saint Clair, J. (2019). Time for a advertising curriculum overhaul: Creating a digital-first method. Journal of Advertising Schooling, 41(1), 47-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475318798086
