All Things AI: Recapping a Trailblazing NAWBO Panel on Emerging Technologies

October 30, 2023November 1, 2023

All Things AI: Recapping a Trailblazing NAWBO Panel on Emerging Technologies

When I first got an email about joining a panel at the 2023 National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) Conference, I honestly thought someone was trying to scam me. 😅

I had to do a quick Google search to verify the whole thing before even thinking of replying. With a slightly skeptical “sure, send me details,” I awaited their response.

I’m so glad I said yes!

Not only I had the chance to share my knowledge about AI, but I got to meet a community of inspiring business women.

Talk about unexpected twists!

NAWBO Conference Overview

NAWBO’s annual conference convenes a thriving community of women business owners to gain inspiration, education, and connections that empower them to new heights.

The 2023 Austin event lived up to this mission through rousing keynotes, enriching workshops, and ample networking spaces facilitating lasting professional relationships and friendships.

With the theme “Power Your Dream,” this year’s conference focused on propelling female founders to turn even their boldest visions into reality through courage, preparation, and embracing innovation.

If you’re in Austin and want to join a network of empowered businesswomen, click here to learn about NAWBO.

AI Panel Addressing Key Integration Questions

Moderated by Melinda Garvey, founder of Austin Women Magazine, the AI panel brought together diverse perspectives to address attendees’ most pressing questions around implementing emerging technologies.

Melinda’s extensive experience spearheading events and discussions focused on female entrepreneurship made her the perfect choice to facilitate insightful dialogue. Her thoughtful moderation style drew out the experts’ most constructive advice.

Our panel featured:

Dao Jensen, Founder of Oak Rocket: With a background in leading prompt engineering teams, Dao lent her technical expertise on AI applications like natural language processing. She provided a wide lens perspective on AI’s benefits beyond business optimization.

Suzi Freeman, CEO and Founder of Teen Warrior Academy: As the leader of a mission-driven nonprofit, Suzi offered a unique angle on easy-to-implement AI solutions for organizations with limited resources. She focused on entry points like conversational interfaces.

And…

Yours truly, Jessica Campos, founder of Marketing for Greatness. I was able to shared story of why I switched from attorney to marketer, and my perspective of how our marketing agency is embracing AI to scale, followed by an invitation to explore my ChatGPT for Business Kit.

Question 1: What’s the #1 challenge that you see AI and other emerging technologies helping to solve for today’s business owners?

From my perspective, AI serves as a tool we can use to heal from anxiety and burnout.

There’s a real flush of joy that comes when you’re playing with AI tools like ChatGPT. Not only you get to think with it, but you feel like you’re playing a game. For heavy tasks like data analysis, having a machine to go over boring spreadsheets for you, and get to “digest” them for you in seconds, is just gold!

Suzi Freeman shared how she uses to get ideas for her messaging and to gather different perspectives so she can communicate with her audience effectively.

Dao inspired the audience to generate better questions, such as: how do I speed up my sales processes with AI so we can build trust with our prospects quicker? She made $8 million as a team of 3, using tools like Fireflies.ai.

Question 2: One of the biggest concerns about AI is that it replaces people resources. How do you balance this for the best of both worlds – relying on the strengths of both AI and your people to meet goals?

Suzi Freeman countered fears about AI eliminating jobs, explaining it tends to create specialized new positions rather than outright replace existing ones, just as photography reinvented rather than replaced painting.

Dao Jensen stressed framing AI collaboration in an empowering way. For example, considering how AI can help salespeople build better customer relationships versus replace them.

I discussed how AI is framed as part of the digital economy. The digital economy has been rising and this isn’t a secret.

The consensus was clear – AI enables transformation rather than destruction.

Question 3: How have AI and other emerging technologies changed your business for the better, and how do you plan to leverage it even more in the future?

Dao emphasized AI solutions that foster employee autonomy by capturing leaders’ contextual knowledge. This allows teams to tap into expertise as needed rather than over-relying on founders.

I shared my process to turn a webinar into a book, fully protected by copyrights, because I am not using AI to generate the strategies. I am prompting it so I can communicate better. Something that I treasure tremendously, since I no longer need to hire contractors to read my content, due to the fact that English is my second language.

Question 4: What do you think is the top tool right now that can be easily and cost-effectively applied?

Jessica Campos highlighted ChatGPT’s immediacy and affordability. Dao Jensen suggested no-code workflow automation tools like Zapier to get started without technical expertise. Suzan shared her love for Grammarly.

Question 5: How can a business owner get ready to take advantage of AI—for instance, making sure her data is accurate, complete and relevant?

Jessica stressed the importance of centralized, well-organized data, comparing it to the structure of a library’s Dewey Decimal system. Dao advised starting with strategic questions to hone the AI approach.

Key Takeaways to Guide AI Adoption

By exploring AI integration through an accessible, solutions-focused lens, the NAWBO panel achieved its goal of equipping attendees to harness emerging technologies to serve their unique business goals.

Some of the key takeaways for female founders looking to leverage AI included:

Start small and focus on addressing specific pain points with the right AI tools. Prioritize immediacy, affordability, and usability.
Frame AI collaboratively as an assistant rather than replacement for human roles. Emphasize how AI augments talents like creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.
Be proactive with change management and training to smooth workforce transitions as AI alters certain roles and workflows.
Centralize data and spend time improving its quality before feeding it into AI systems. Their outputs are only as strong as the inputs.
Create detailed prompts and iteratively refine them based on initial AI results. Provide ample context and examples to “train” tools over time.
Explore paid ChatGPT to become comfortable. Then progressively expand your integration sophistication.

The NAWBO AI panel made emerging technologies feel within reach, providing a roadmap for female founders to harness AI in ways aligned with their human-centered values and vision.

The Path Forward: AI as an Ally, Not Adversary

Rather than reacting from fear, the experts emphasized cultivating an empowered, solutions-focused mindset where AI acts as an ally, not adversary.

“AI isn’t magic; it’s simply the latest innovation accelerator. And now, it’s finally accessible to women looking to change the world.”

NAWBO aims to democratize access to emerging technology education through ongoing mentorship and training initiatives. Its tight-knit community provides the perfect forum for women entrepreneurs to learn from each other’s AI integration journeys.

By proactively seeking AI knowledge within a supportive ecosystem, female founders can tap these exponential technologies to bring their entrepreneurial dreams to life faster than ever before. The future beckons.

August 10, 2021August 10, 2021

How To Make Your Blog SEO Friendly: 10 Unmissable Steps

Are you a blogger or small business owner looking to make your blog more SEO friendly so that Google will rank it higher when people search for the same topic? This is the post for you!

In this post, I’ll cover the basics to help you get started and do some basic SEO on your blog.

What is SEO friendly?

Being SEO friendly means that you have created a blog and its content to make it easier for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. to find your site when someone searches for the same topic or keyword phrase.

The purpose of doing this is so people who are looking for information on the subject can easily find your post related content instead of having to go through hundreds or thousands of results.

There are many ways that you can do this, and I’ll cover some basic ones for creating a blog post with SEO in mind below:

Step One. Pick your focus keywords

Picking your focus keywords is the first step in making your blog SEO friendly. Be sure to choose a handful of keywords that are relevant to the topic of your blog so that you can target these words throughout your content and link back to them in your URL. More targeted keywords will be found by more people who are searching for what you offer, and this will lead to higher rankings in Google and higher traffic for your site.

The goal is for the content on your blog post to be helpful and insightful so people will want to share it with their friends and followers through social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter.

Not sure what are your focus keywords? Check our SEO tips on keywords here.

Step Two. Optimize your on-page content with these keywords

Use all of those great keywords in headlines, subheadings, image captions, videos, descriptions, etc. Make sure you use some form of call-to-action as well and entice readers to click, subscribe or buy.

Step Three: Create XML sitemaps

I’ll assume that for most bloggers, it’s not enough to make sure Google can find your content because you want your blog to appear in Google’s search results. To do this, create an XML sitemap that will let the big G know about all of your content and where it can be found on your site.

Step Four: Generate blog categories using your keywords

As you write posts, categorize them with keywords that are relevant to the content. This will help Google find your blog and rank it higher in search results for those topics.

Step Five: Generate tags using your keywords as well

Tags work like categories, but they’re better because people who use Google’s site-specific search can find your content much more easily.

Step Six: Add social media buttons to your blog

One of the best ways to get people who are not on your site to visit and potentially share it is by adding these widgets next to each post. You can include options like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever other networks you use for SEO purposes.

Step Seven: Create backlinks

Finally, go out there and create some quality backlinks from other sites to your blog. This will help Google find and rank you higher for keywords that are relevant to the content of your site.

A quality backlink is one that comes from a site with a high domain authority.

Step Eight: Create content frequently

Hopefully, you’re already doing this because it will help your blog rank better and keep people coming back for more!

Step Nine: Promote your articles on social media

Sharing your articles across all the social media platforms will help you generate traffic to your website, plus you’ll have the chance to expand your content based on the comments from your audience.

Step Ten: Monitor your blog performance

Monitoring your blog performance is essential because you want to make sure it’s running smoothly and that Google hasn’t penalized it for any reason.

As a forensic marketer, I am always paying attention to metrics (as you may know). The following are trackers that your blog must-have, so you can run reports, check performance, and plan future content:

Facebook pixel. Make sure your blog has a Facebook Pixel installed, along with custom events, so you can see important metrics such as article views and clicks on your call to actions. You can even build a custom audience from your article visitors.

Google Analytics tracker. A tracker will allow you to gather information on your article visitors, the time they have spent reading, other pages they visited, and depending on your settings, you can set up goals and campaigns to find specific users’ behaviors.

UTM codes. This tool allows you to easily add campaign parameters to URLs so you can track Custom Campaigns in Google Analytics. Watch the video below to see a quick tutorial on how UTM codes work.

We’ve covered a lot of ground today. But don’t worry, if you feel like we missed something important or left anything out, just let us know! If you want to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to SEO and blog posts, be sure to give our free SEO audit a shot. We will send you a video with our findings and schedule a call where you can ask us anything.

Ready to boost your SEO? We are an Austin-based online marketing agency specialized in performance based marketing

Are you a business owner in Austin and want to take your online marketing needs to a local marketing agency? Schedule an appointment with our online marketing experts!

Empower your blog with these 10 simple steps to make you the most search engine friendly blogger on the web. No matter what kind of content you are blogging about (health tips, business hints etc.), following these 10 steps will catapult your traffic and see a major rise in ranking.

August 9, 2021August 9, 2021

How to Know Which Keywords Are the Best for Your Website: Advice That We Think Will Help

When people are thinking about best keywords for their website, they often get confused with all of the conflicting advice out there. There’s a lot more to SEO than just picking the best keywords. In this blog post, we will go over how to find best keywords for your website as well as best practices on how to rank higher in Google search results!

What are keywords and why are they important for SEO?

Keywords are the words that best describe what your website is about. They will be used to help people find your site when they search for a topic related to yours on Google or other search engines (like Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask).

For example, when you are searching for “best social media marketing agency in Austin”, the keyword is only one: “best social media marketing agency in Austin”. If you, on the other hand, search “social media Austin”, that will be the keyword.

Why are keywords important for your website?

Keywords are the best way for people to find your site. They’re important because when they search Google, it will show them the best result that is most relevant to their query.

How to find keywords for SEO? What should you do first?

For best results picking keywords:

– Do some research on what potential customers might be searching for: For example, you might want to take a look at what keywords people are using on Google and other search engines for your business.

– Use Google Search Console to look at your best selling or most popular products to see if there are any keywords that they share. If your website is new and you don’t have enough data on your Google Search Console, you can still pick keywords based on a competitor analysis (no worries, keep reading, we’ll explain what this means!).

– Use Google’s Keyword Tool and other tools like it to find best keywords related to the information on your website. These will be words that best describe what your site is about and most importantly, the questions that your future buyers are asking.

– Look at the keywords that are already ranking highly on Google for content similar to yours: This will give you a good idea of how competitive it is, but also show you which words might be best associated with your website.

What should I do next? Best practices for optimizing keyword usage.

Once you know about 10-20 fundamental keywords that will take your future buyers to find your site, you’ll use those keywords and variations to create your content.

– Use best keywords in titles, headlines, and content: Titles are the first thing searchers see on Google’s search results page. Putting your best keyword at the beginning of the title will help you rank higher. It also helps to use it in a headline and throughout your long form content as well when relevant!

– Try using your main keywords in your URL:

Example: If you are creating a page for your fitness coaching services, your URL will have www.websitename/fitness-coaching-city.

– Use keywords throughout the content of your website, not just at the beginning or end and make sure they are naturally part of what you’re saying: It’s important to use them where it makes sense to, not just where it’s best for SEO.

– Use keywords in your meta description: This is the short piece of text that pops up when you do a Google search about your topic and it will also show up on other sites like Facebook or Twitter. The best way to optimize them is by picking one or two best keywords from your best content and using them in your meta description.

– Use keywords when posting on social media:

Content you post to Facebook, Twitter, or other sites like these will often show up on Google’s page as well for people searching the same topics that they’re interested in. If possible use best keywords followed by a short sentence about what you’re posting about, for best results.

– Add keywords to your backlinks: One way that people sometimes try to hack the system and rank higher in Google is by getting their link on another site where they show up highly ranked already (like a best website directory). These are called “backlinks”. It’s important not only to add best keywords, but to do so naturally and not make it look like you’re trying too hard.

– Make sure best keywords are in the title tags: If your website uses HTML code that’s visible on a web page then best keyword should be at the beginning of each relevant line, before any other text is displayed. This will help your best keywords show up on the top of your page.

How many keywords do you need for SEO?

The number of keywords will depend on the content that you are trying to ranking for. The more competitive the topic, the more keywords and keyword variations you’ll need.

You can have a high converting page with a handful of keywords. The number of keywords doesn’t matter. What matters is that the website page fulfills the user intent.

For this reason, we recommend taking a page by page approach.

SEO Competitor Analysis

SEO competitor analysis is an important step to SEO. It will help you choose what keywords to focus on and which ones to ignore.

What’s in a competitor analysis?

– The best keyword rankings for your competitors: This will give you a good idea of how competitive the topic is, and which words are best associated with it so far.

– Best pages to compete against using best keywords: Once you know what’s ranking well on Google in terms of content similar to yours, you can decide which best keywords to use and target.

– Best pages that rank well with best keyword variations: This is really important if you’re targeting a competitive term like “best marketing agency”. The best way to do this would be by using best SEO tools or best social media marketing agencies in Austin as your best keywords.

– Best keyword searches: If you’re targeting a specific best word it might be helpful to know what people are searching for when they enter the term in Google. This list will show that information as well and help give you an idea of how many keywords or variations there are on your topic.

It’s important to take these SEO recommendations into account on a page-by-page basis.

Take Your Online Presence To The Next Level

If you’re looking to take your site to the next level, it may be time for a full SEO audit. You can definitely do some self-auditing with tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush, but they are far from foolproof. The best way we know of is by tapping into an expert who knows how search engines work. We have been in the online marketing business since 2008 and pride ourselves on being the go-to experts when it comes to website optimization. Schedule a visit today so that one of our team members can review your site during a free consultation session – no strings attached!

July 7, 2018April 13, 2020

Category: Blog