Oriol Salvador

AI for news, as written by ChatGPT

ChatGPT processes my class notes to uncover how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used for news, considering many ethical concerns.

The main ideas in this article were processed by ChatGPT based on my notes from the course at Craig Newmark J-School in New York. The first draft of the article has been later revised by a human (It’s me, hi!), adding a personal tone and voice, and ideas that the original version left out.

And links. I’ve added so many links for additional context.

More than out of laziness, this exercise is done to show that artificial intelligence (AI) is getting extremely good at delivering decent and presentable work, but there’s still a need for edits from a human that adds some sugar and spice, to differentiate the final product from the vast amount of bland content out there, making it somewhat unique.

When AI took off as a buzzword, like the metaverse or blockchain before, I was on the fence, initially. When the AI-generated ‘magic avatars’ flooded your feed I voiced my concerns very loudly over what that meant for artists’ work and who was profiting from unreferenced work.

Seven months later, out of cynicism or simply survival instinct, I’m trying to embrace this change. AI is here to completely challenge all jobs that involve creative work or data processing, and we better cautiously adapt.

There is a clear need to legislate it, make sure there’s transparency on the datasets used and that original creative work is fairly recognized and compensated, but also an urge to welcome this inevitable shift.

Social media for news is dead

Canada’s Bill C-18 is a cautionary tale for news organizations that rely on social media to generate referral traffic.

As a journalist and digital media professional with expertise in social media management that wants to apply my skills in news organizations, these are difficult times to find a job.

Canada, where I lived and worked for more than four years now, is a cautionary tale for news organizations around the world on what can happen when most of your traffic relies on third-party social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, and is suddenly gone.

There was a time when Twitter was a reliable source for journalists to find and share information.

Facebook (and Instagram) were also a good place to find breaking news between pictures of your exes and invitations to that school reunion you didn’t want to attend. Facebook (now Meta) was investing in journalism, particularly local news, with their Journalism Project.

That ‘golden era’ for news content on social media was long gone before Elon Musk bought Twitter and Zuckerberg turned to vertical short video to compete with TikTok, but recent events have accelerated this shift.

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Add YouTube to your digital marketing strategy

Video content and social media influencers on YouTube can play a key role in the digital marketing strategy of your brand or business.

User habits to consume content in the digital space vary continuously. In this ever-changing environment, video has the highest value, relevance and capacity to adapt to the flexibility users demand.

Consumption of video content represents a third of the total time users spend on the internet and, according to the forecasts and trends from a white paper issued by Cisco, projections say this trend will do nothing but increase in the near future.

Other reports confirm you must invest on video as part of your digital marketing strategy. According to data from Hubspot collected by Forbes on a piece about the relevance of video in the future of content marketing, adding a video to your marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300% and embedding videos in a landing page increase conversion rates by 80%. Most importantly, 90% of customers admit to use videos to decide on the purchase of a product and 64% is more likely to buy it after watching a video about it. Video marketing can be the key to get ahead from competitors, 87% of digital marketers use video on their strategy. In 2017, video ads represented 35% of the overall ad spending online. Among the decision makers in a company, 59% of them would rather watch a video than read a blog post.

If you take a look at the digital marketing campaigns going viral lately, most of them are video-based. It’s virtually impossible to define what makes a viral video but data shows 92% of video consumers using mobile devices share it and a video is 1,200% times more likely to be shared than both links and text combined. A different report indicates 60% of viewers connect with to a video better than to a text.

With all these figures, it’s clear that your digital marketing strategy cannot forget video. And when you look for an online host service to your videos, YouTube stands as the most popular video-sharing platform with over 1.9 billion users who spend, at least, one hour everyday watching videos on average.

Creating a YouTube channel is easy and free. After the uploading process, you can embed videos on your website, a blog post, share on social media or promote them with a video campaign on Google Adwords.

However, considering YouTube is just a free and popular video-sharing service would be a tremendous mistake. The social element of the platform is growing in features and popularity, plus YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google and, according to internal reports, the consumption on mobile devices grows a 100% every year. Continue reading “Add YouTube to your digital marketing strategy”

YouTube for brands & businesses

If you are not on YouTube, learn why you should invest on this streaming platform and types of videos you can create today.

Maybe you have read my previous articles – and you know the 5 common mistakes to avoid as a channel manager, understand what a successful YouTube channel needs and creating the perfect thumbnail or an optimised playlist is not secret for you, anymore – but you don’t see how YouTube can benefit your brand or business, or you don’t even know where to start making and upload videos that generate leads.

Entrepreneurs, small business owners, communication managers, CEOs, CMOs and any other made-up acronyms that was invented recently, this blog post is (specially) written for you!

There are a million reasons why your brand or business should be on YouTube. First of all, you must do it the right way, not simply upload a couple of videos on a basic channel, put a real effort and resources on how you position these videos on the platform. When done right, a YouTube channel will improve your organic positioning on search engines (SEO), help you connect with a potential audience, find better engagement for your brand and increase the return on investment (ROI) from your video assets. Continue reading “YouTube for brands & businesses”

Grow your audience on YouTube with optimised video playlists

Use YouTube playlists to keep the audience engaged with your videos and grow the total amount of views and watch time of your channel.

YouTube playlists are essential to position your video, but they are often treated as a secondary feature that goes unnoticed when you are managing a channel.

A fully optimised YouTube playlist can make your content more discoverable on the platform, increase your views and, by keeping your audience engaged, grow the total amount of watch time on your channel.

Using a playlist you can organize the content from your channel, help users find specific types of content or one of your series and facilitate they stay on the platform binge-watching similar content, ideally remaining on your channel.

Even more important, a good YouTube playlist influences the algorithm that selects recommended videos or what video is played next automatically. Continue reading “Grow your audience on YouTube with optimised video playlists”

How to create eye-catching YouTube thumbnails?

The secrets to create custom thumbnails that boost views and watch time while keeping a consistent visual identity for your channel.

When YouTube users make the decision to watch a video, even before they read the video title or identify the uploader, the first thing they see very often is a little window with an image as a preview of the video. If that’s the first thing viewers will associate with your video, you should put some extra effort into making it, don’t you think?

In the process of uploading a video, you can choose one of the three still images automatically taken from somewhere around the introduction, middle and end of your video. However, using one of this three would be a lazy decision that could impact your channel negatively.

Do better: upload a custom YouTube thumbnail that includes an attractive image with additional information to, ultimately, get more clicks and, consequently, more views, watch time and a better engagement indicator for your video and for the channel, overall. Thumbnails are also a great way to keep a consistent branding and visual identity across your channel, to make all your videos easily identifiable on search results, suggested videos, etc.

This is all you need to know to create eye-catching YouTube thumbnails that will turn all the eyes towards your videos, from the image size to other best practices and special tricks. Continue reading “How to create eye-catching YouTube thumbnails?”

The keys to a successful YouTube channel

Success on YouTube is not only defined by the production value of your videos. Data optimisation and analysis are important, too.

You can have a beautifully shot video that is informative, entertaining or educational but — unless you are considering the specific requirements of YouTube, making the most of all the available features and looking at the analytics regularly to get some data-based feedback on your channel performance — it will be really hard for you to become a successful youtuber and make your channel a sustainable long-term business, no matter what kind of content you are producing or who is your target audience.

Use the following best practices to manage and optimize your YouTube channel: learn how to make a video that works specifically for YouTube, optimize all the necessary metadata and use of all the metrics available on YouTube Analytics to improve your strategy. Continue reading “The keys to a successful YouTube channel”

5 mistakes to avoid as a YouTube Channel Manager

From forgetting about SEO to ignoring the data on YouTube Analytics, these are common mistakes to avoid, followed by best practices.

YouTube is king (or queen) of the Internet when it comes to watching videos online. The video hosting service, founded in 2005, grew to become the second largest search engine after Google, its parent company since 2006. Therefore, YouTube is the essential platform to promote your brand, products and services through video.

In just a single minute, 400 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube, according to a keynote by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki at VidCon 2015. With so much competition, how can your content stand out?

Actually, nobody has the answer (sorry!). YouTube’s algorithm is a mystery, but tests have proven that overall watch time, video title, description and even the Likes/Dislikes ratio will affect the position of your videos on search results, related videos, recommendations… On top of that, the algorithm also considers each user’s watch history, preferences and more. Not easy, right?

My message here is that your video content itself is as important as optimizing it for YouTube through metadata, playlists and more.

If you are struggling with it, fear not! Get in touch and I can help.

Barring that, here are five common YouTube mistakes that you shouldn’t make as the person responsible for managing a YouTube channel.

Continue reading “5 mistakes to avoid as a YouTube Channel Manager”

Gord Downie y el oscuro pasado de Canadá

La música de The Tragically Hip y principalmente de su líder y letrista, Gord Downie, es clave para entender el rock alternativo de Canadá y, más importante todavía, ha ayudado a reconciliar a la sociedad canadiense con uno de los episodios más tristes de su historia reciente: el abuso sistemático a su población aborigen.

Arcade Fire fueron uno de los nombres más destacados en los pasados premios Juno 2018, que anualmente reconocen los mayores logros musicales en Canadá. La banda de Montreal se llevó el premio al Álbum del Año por su Everything Now y el International Achievement Award, que reconocía la carrera de la que, hoy en día, es una de las bandas canadienses más conocidas en el mundo. La gala también reconocía a Gord Downie, desconocido internacionalmente, como Artista del Año.

Continue reading “Gord Downie y el oscuro pasado de Canadá”