Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You know that feeling when you finish a podcast episode and think, I'm going to need to listen to that one again? Well, this is that episode because we've compiled the most watched and the most listened to moments of 2026 so far. The moments agents and advisors like you have found the most valuable.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: You're going to learn how to pronounce with AI, how consumers are making buying decisions in today's world, how to leverage email marketing, and one of my favorites, how to grow on LinkedIn. I'm Jo Barker.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: And I'm David Belleville.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And this is the Best of Amerilife Marketing Mentors podcast.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: So without further ado, Jo, let's jump right into it and set the stage for us. Why does prompting matter when we're having a larger conversation about AI?
[00:00:38] Speaker B: I think it just helps streamline. Actually, it does. It helps streamline that process of getting the result that you're looking for faster. So I think the sooner that you can learn how to prompt, the sooner you can understand those best practices, then you'll be that much happier with the results that you're getting out of AI. You know, I tell some people it's like going into Starbucks and if you're like, hey, I want a coffee, and I mean, they're going to give you a coffee, but if you really wanted a very specialized drink with certain milk and certain sugars, I mean, you have to say that and you have to, you have to give the direction. So that way the result is that much better. So, I mean, really, all in all, that's why it's critical and it just makes your life so much easier once you learn how to do it.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Well, not to mention too, if everybody's going into the coffee shop and ordering a coffee, everybody's going to end up with the same hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, I love that comparison because that's kind of where you can get into trouble if you're not prompting with best practices. You start ending up with content, ideas and generated responses that everybody else is getting as well, including your competition. So today we are going to talk about how to prompt with precision that will give you those responses that you're looking for and you can focus more time on other assets. Excuse me, aspects of your business.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: And so there's a formula that we like to follow and ensuring that there are are certain criteria in each prompt. Do you want to outline those for us?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So we know that there's certain things that we definitely want to hit and we can actually go through them one by one. If you want, and then explain kind of why it's important.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: So I'll start with the first one. The first one is the role. So the role is critical every time that you're starting a prompt to tell it who you want it to act as. And there's a couple of reasons why that's super important. One, it sets the tone of really who it is and what you're trying. It's almost like you're saying who the assistant is that you're working with. I want this to be an email, or you're acting as an email marketing specialist, you're acting as a content specialist, you're acting as a social media ads expert. As soon as you set that role, it says like, this is who my assistant is is the way I always look at it. This is who I'm working with right now. At the same time, from the AI's perspective, it brings in the knowledge of that person or of that role which is critical to meet those best practices of what would a social media expert or an email marketing expert know in order to build, you know, those best practices into it? So the role is critical, and that is definitely the very first thing. Before you start any prompt, tell it exactly. You are this, or I need you to act as this.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah, every single prompt should, should start the exact same way if you're following that best practice. So the second factor that you want to include in every prompt is giving it a goal. So we've established a role, now we need a goal. So if you're acting as a social media strategist, be specific, because there are many platforms out.
And so if your goal is to create social media copy, then that's gonna be a pretty general response and you might not get what you're looking for. But if you're specific about your goal, you need copy for an Instagram caption. Now you're starting to get closer to the response that you're looking for. But when you layer in all the elements, you really start to get ahead. So we've established a role, and you need a specific goal. Tell that role what to do. What's the third part that we need to.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: So another part that you have to remember is the format that you want it to give back to you. So you can tell it, I want it in a PDF format, or I want this for a certain platform, or I want this in a PowerPoint or I want this in PNG or JPEG. You can set anything that you want to set for that for whatever it is that you're looking for. And it will. It is amazing how many different formats that it can provide it to you in. You can even tell it. I want to be able to copy and paste this directly out of here. Um, so it's really important that you tell it exactly how you would like to see it as it gives that result back to you. So, and then that way the format's already done and you're not having to. To rearrange anything or reset anything.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah, well said. So we have a role, a goal and a format. The next pillar that you should always include is identify a target audience a hundred percent. Who is this content going to be for? Who is this messaging for? Be specific and ensure that ties back to your business goals. If you have audience, audience segmentation, ensure that you're identifying which audience that you're speaking to. But a goal without an audience, I mean, at that point you may as well just be shouting into the void. So whatever generated response that you're looking for, make sure that AI knows who it's generating it for. That becomes really important in our industries because how someone looking for Medicare benefits is going to communicate differently than maybe young families looking for life insurance. And so being specific about what target audience you're going after will definitely help your messaging and make your usage of AI much more efficient. One thing that is so vital, but can easily be overlooked within email marketing is the importance of subject lines. I mean, this is truly how you can hook somebody's attention. This is how you can get their interest and then once they open the email, making sure that you follow through on whatever claim or promise that you made in that subject line. But Jo, this is truly an element of email marketing that can make or break a successful campaign.
So what, in your opinion makes a good subject line that somebody's actually going to open?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: I think it's making it relevant to the person who, who's reading the, you know, looking at their inbox and reading through them.
Look at your own inbox. So take your phone out and actually go look at the inbox and look through all the subject lines and see which ones make you pay attention. It could be little things like it's the smallest tweaks that you can make. And this is where testing with email marketing comes into play and keeping track of your analytics of what works and what doesn't. I received an email that the subject line was two words, but it stood out in my inbox when I looked at it on my phone because it was so much white space around it that it draw. It just automatically drew my eye.
Emojis. Emojis have always been good.
So utilizing emojis, you're going to hear, you know, a lot of people say lately putting in negative emojis. I think it's because people use positive emojis for so long, utilizing the negative ones just started performing really well.
So we saw that as a positive for a while. It was personalizing with your name. We knew if we put the name, your name in there that, that it was going to rise those or begin to see that rise. The problem is, is everybody starts catching on to it. Everybody's doing it. So you open up your inbox and you just see Joanna 10 times down. Right. None of it's drawing my attention.
The other thing I would say is if you're providing value, it's so much easier because if you're providing real value and you're communicating in a consistent manner and they like what they're receiving from you, they're going to want to open one. I have plenty of newsletters, I have plenty of places that I subscribe to and I religiously will open up those emails because I know there's usually something in there that I'm going to learn or that I'm going to find a value. And that is what's going to be key is, is making sure that while there's a lot of tricks to the subject line, if you provide value, it makes it so much easier and it just needs to be relevant to the person who's receiving it.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: And on the flip side of that coin, if it can be detrimental to you, your business, your reputation, if you're sending emails and not following through in providing value, constant.
So again, making sure you have engaging subject lines that hooks the reader and pulls them in. But then you've got to follow through and always be providing value.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah, let me throw something on top of that. Actually, David, is what and that's actually really important is years ago, the spam rate. So where people used to report spam, it was a near 1% that most platforms were looking at. Recently I was reading where it's 0.5% now and Gmail's even at a 0.3%.
So imagine 0.3% if they report you to spam, they're going to start blocking you. That's really, really, really important to do because as more if Gmail starts moving you to spam, that's across everything. So it's super important to make sure that you're providing value. You are not spamming and there's little things, I will say there are little things you can do to try to help with that. One of the things that you can do is add your unsubscribe to the top of the email. So when people open it, instead of going to hit the report to spam, hopefully they'll hit unsubscribe. There's little tricks you can do, but the biggest thing is just making sure that you're not spamming. And if you're providing true value, otherwise you are going to end up in the spam box.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's such a good point. It's always great to revisit that. I want to back up a little bit here because another element of emails that we all see are from addresses and from names. And so if you're sending an email, you want to make sure that the person you're sending it to knows where it's coming from. And so that's just another element to highlight is making sure that there's familiarity. Familiarity not only with you, but with your audience and that they know who they're receiving content from as well.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, if you're. Especially if they subscribe. So if they subscribe to you, make sure that. That way we know they're expecting it. So they subscribe. They said, yeah, I want to receive emails from you. So that's really vital to make sure that the, the from and. And the information within their matches, the name and everything. I will tell you, when we do email marketing, we do test it. So we will test the from line, we will test the from name, we'll begin to test all of that. The important thing is, is if be testing, make sure that you actually are following the analytics and looking at the results to see what that looks like. But it doesn't hurt to test it every once in a while. You'll see us come out with emails from Amer Life marketing mentors. You'll see my name come across, you'll see David's name come across. And that's what it should be. It's. We're testing, we're just seeing what works, what doesn't, and then we change it up every once in a while. But if it's newsletters or anything like that, it is very important to stay consistent and make sure that it's coming from the same brand.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: There is so much more opportunity that never would have existed for us because of our human limitations, but now we can leverage, you know, the knowledge of the world at a moment's notice in a conversational manner.
As opposed to, you know, spending an hour doing research online, clicking through links and searching with, with just a few keywords, as you said. So now that we've kind of set the stage and I, I have to say it's always fascinating to hear you walk through how we got here today because it's also fascinating to see how each layer kind of feeds into the next. And so now AI is revolutionizing the Internet, our smartphones, social media, smart assistants. I mean, it's totally rocked the marketing landscape. And so what do you think is the biggest advantage for agents and advisors out there now that we're in this era specifically?
[00:11:33] Speaker B: I think, you know, AI did it has done a couple of things, but one thing and one advantage that it really gives all of us is it's driven the need for human interaction more than ever and authenticity more than ever.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: And I really think that's going to be advantage for all of us. From us as marketers in, you know, in our industry, from agents and advisors in their industries, we're all still doing the same things. We're all out there building, you know, and building upon our knowledge. And this is where we're going to be able to share our insights, our expertise. And we are what sets us apart. And that is when a world of AI and everybody being able to create 10,000 pieces of content every single month, it's us that's going to set it apart. And I think more than ever, those personal brands and us being able to show who we are, I think that is going to be the biggest advantage that many of us are going to see. People are going to crave that human interaction more than ever.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's important to, to talk about too because we are in a relationship trust oriented industry where no matter what advances there are in technology, consumers that are making decisions that are going to impact their lives and their family's lives, you know, are much more prone to wanting talk to a person. Absolutely want to get in front of a person. But for those that are listening today, that doesn't mean you can't use AI or that you shouldn't use AI. AI is there to enhance messaging, to find unique ways to approach your audience and your outreach and to really leverage it to set yourself apart from the competition.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a couple of things that I think we're seeing with that consumer shift that's happening is it used to be they were out there researching and they were out there trying to click on all these different blue links to learn as much as they could from all these different areas.
That's all changed now. So now when they go to AI, you know, it's not putting in five words, it's having a conversation and it's saying, hey, I'm looking for the best digital marketer that's in the Clearwater area that specializes in this industry. And they're, it's very long winded and it's a full conversation. When AI is coming back, it's already giving its recommendation. And that's going to be the critical piece that everyone's going to have to realize is getting in those AI recommendations. But here's the other big consumer shift by the time they come to us. So by the time somebody comes to me and says like, hey Jo, this is what I've learned, they already know everything they want to know. They probably already know everything about me by the time they found me. And so it's almost like by the time they get to us, we're not having to teach, we're not having to educate, we're not trying to tell them what is best. They probably already know. We're more validating and we're saying if what they learned is accurate and what may not have been accurate and more of them, they already trust us at this point because AI recommended us. And so it really is a shift of like realizing by the time they get to us, the trust is probably there, we're validating and then it's just, just giving that confirmation and being there for them and, and helping them through the process at this point, because people still want that. That last piece of the confirmation is this, right?
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: And that's going to be a shift
[00:14:36] Speaker A: that validation is the key word there. From everything that you just said, you are, you're just sincerely validating the consumers research that they've already done closer to the buying stage than they've ever been before when they approach you.
Another major consumer behavioral shift that we've seen, and this started before AI, but AI has just accelerated. It is how consumers are expecting personalized experiences.
So in the social media era, we started to have content come to us rather than us doing the legwork to go find it just by simply scrolling. And as these social media platforms have evolved and gotten smarter, their algorithms have too. And so now they're recommending content based, based off of, you know, what you've enjoyed in the past, what you've interacted with in the past, what your interests are. And so really we're on social media and we're getting content recommended to us.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: And that extends beyond social media to apps like Amazon. You're getting recommended products. Netflix, you're getting recommended shows. And so now the strategy with AI is to leverage it to create those personalized experience for your audiences. And especially with AI, all of those things that we just talked about is just getting smarter and smarter because it's also leveraging.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I think as you, as you bring this back to the agent and advisor perspective of what does this mean for us? It means that the expectations from the consumer is changing. So the expectation from the consumer perspective is everything is going to be customized to them. Everything is. You should know who they are, you should know what it is that they want. That is a shift that we have to realize how critical that is. So if you're blast messaging out of your CRM and you're sending an email to everybody, it's probably not going to do very well as if it used to, because the fact is, is if you've already sold them something or you already have a relationship with them, you should not be interacting with them or having emails with them the same way as somebody that you, you know, have been working with for years or just met like that. Those conversations need to be segmented. They need to be separate, and you really need to know your audience.
And I think that's where it's critical to really tie that together, to say their expectation now is changing, for everything to be personalized to them, including your interactions with them. Don't treat everybody the same anymore. You have to know whether I've been working with you for 10 years, five years, or I've never met you before. And we're beginning a conversation.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Let's take this a step further, Jo, because there's a lot of people out there who claim that they have the. The secret sauce in terms of how much you should be posting on LinkedIn or any social media platform, or the times of day, the best days of the week.
Let's get clear on that a little bit. For those listening today, do you think that there's any truth out there for, like, the magic day or the magic time frame that you should be posting on LinkedIn?
[00:17:30] Speaker B: LinkedIn's unique because LinkedIn recycles posts that are two to three weeks old. And so I would say the more of what I've noticed is it doesn't necessarily matter what time or what day of the week. So I try to change it every week is I tried different days and I tried different times just to compare it later and see what worked and what didn't. Work. But the life cycle of A post on LinkedIn is so long compared to other platforms. So don't be surprised when you're on LinkedIn and you're seeing posts for, from three weeks ago and it's popping up in your feed. Now. That's normal for LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a, has a reputation of going after old posts and recycling them. And for a long time, I mean, I see posts for events that have passed, asked all the time, and I'm like, oh, that looks pretty cool. Let me go like, click that. And it was two weeks ago, right? And I'm like, why am I getting this in my feed? But that's just, that's the LinkedIn algorithm right now. What's really crazy is how many posts you see that of the people that you're not connected with at all. So it doesn't necessarily have to do with followers, it doesn't necessarily have to do with who you're connected to. It's trying to give you relevant content based off of the topics that it thinks you're interested in. LinkedIn's goal is the same as everybody else. It wants to keep you on their platform as long as they can. The easiest way to do that is to give you relevant interest, interesting content and what it believes you're going to interact with and that you're going to find interesting.
The cues from LinkedIn I've always found super interesting is the, the, the amount of time that you stop on a post is being measured. So whether you interact with it or not, whether you hit like, or you hit anything doesn't matter. And so you have to watch those impressions on LinkedIn, not necessarily how many people liked it or how many people comment it. Because of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn has the mo, has the least, least true engagement of likes and comments. Most people just scroll on there. But what's really cool about it is it's tracking everything. So you can, it's tracking if people hit the more button and if. And it, it's tracking how long it's saying in the view of the user. And so those type of things help every single post that you get out there and they hit that more button. Even if there's not a lot of likes or a lot of comments, you're still getting credit for getting people interested, hitting more and staying on your post longer than they stay on other posts. So to me, LinkedIn is, is pretty interesting. I like the algorithm. Personally, I feel like LinkedIn is a level playing field for everybody. It doesn't matter how many followers you have, whether you have a hundred followers or you have a hundred thousand followers, it doesn't matter because right now, the way that the algorithm's working, it's feeding everybody the same, as long as it's good quality content.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: And that's a trend that we're seeing across social media, is that these algorithms are less, less and less based off of who you're following or connected with and more and more based off of your own behaviors and, and usage of those platforms. So you mentioned earlier the importance of crafting an audience or connecting with people that are relevant to your niche or the topics that you'll be talking about. And then the same goes, it sounds like for what type of content that you engage with yourself. Because if you're staying in your lane and within the realm of digital marketing, then the content that you're going to delivered in the algorithm is going to be within that arena and that's how you start to build out your network and connect with other people who also share those same interests.
