Welcome to Creators of All Trades newsletter #98!
With the previous issue of this newsletter, several significant milestones have been reached:
- Rebranding and repositioning of the newsletter
- Developing a new layout and logo
- Moving away from Mailchimp
The next milestone to reach is doing the same with the website. While endeavoring on the website relaunch project months ago, I figured out I needed to go back to the drawing board and work on the value proposition of Fresh van Root as a whole first. I have done so (with the help of a coach) and can now start turning the results of those coaching sessions into web content.
Thanks for being part of this journey. As always, I am eager to get your feedback on the changes – you will find a few callouts in this newsletter that ask for feedback.
Have fun exploring the content, and stay fresh. Rolf
Hand-Picked Content
AI Content & Google Bard
Lagging behind
AI-generated content is a real threat to Google products – regarding revenue, market share, and its complete business (about 80% of its revenue comes from advertising). Why bother using Google search if we can get our answers via AI bots?
AI content is now showing up on Google’s search results page. And, of course, this AI-generated content is often false or misleading. Two examples: An AI-generated image of Tiananmen Square showed up next to a search query, and the answer to “Can you melt eggs?” was pulled from Quora – which generated the response (yes) with an AI bot. How often does this happen? One out of 100 times, or one in a million?
And their own AI product, Bard, is behind the competition. You can now connect it to other Google services. So, you can use natural language to ask AI to answer questions about the data you stored on Google servers, such as your emails. For example, summarise the last ten emails I sent to person X. But as this NYTimes reporter finds, Google still has to come a long way regarding the quality of this AI service.
Knowing how to prompt an AI correctly is now an essential skill. This guide gives many examples you can customize for your needs.
From B2C to B2B
Blog, 5min
Masterclass is a site offering courses with celebrities. You probably have seen the ads: Learn filmmaking with Werner Herzog, get educated about Jazz by Herbie Hancock, or get taught about writing by Malcolm Gladwell, and so on. The company faces slow growth and wants to move from B2C to B2B. One of the problems: In B2B, having celebrities as educators is insignificant. You come for the content, not the star—an interesting case study.
Instantly applicable trick
Create beautiful website screenshots in seconds with Browserframe
Creators like you take screenshots all the time. But when you take the same from your browser, they might show lots of unnecessary stuff, like all the plugins you use, other open tabs, and more.
Here’s a simple way to change that: Take a screenshot of a website without the browser window and paste it into Browserframe. The service adds a minimalistic browser window without any gimmicks and improves the user experience. Try it out.
Tools & Apps
Wireframing Design Tool
Web App
You can turn your napkin sketch into a working prototype. Visily has a feature to upload a drawing, and it turns it into a wireframe. After that, you can build out your clickable prototype. That is just one of many features to speed up building prototypes with this app.
Social Media Management
Marketing
Pally is a social media management app supporting all major platforms. Create, schedule, and analyze the results of your published content. It has a free plan, which makes it especially interesting for small companies and independent creators.
Dark Design
Webdesign
Dark mode is no longer an option on websites – some are built only in dark design. This is a collection of such sites.
Placeholder Images
Design
If you need placeholder images until the final graphics arrive, you can add Doodle Ipsum.
Fresh van Root Updates AI & Prototyping
Speaking at SaaStock 2023 Dublin – Free Tickets
I am excited to announce that I am speaking at SaaStock in October. The topic of my talk is how to prototype products and marketing material with the help of artificial intelligence. As a speaker, I got two free tickets to give away. Check the conference page, and if you want to go, just hit reply to secure a free ticket. (LinkedIn post)
Deleting inactive subscribers
Keeping this newsletter list healthy is a priority. So, we unsubscribed about 200 people. These have been inactive for quite some time (did not open or click any link in the newsletter for an extended period). (LinkedIn post)
How do you like the new newsletter format? Reply with a comment.
Off Topic Links
50/50
Game
How good are you with visual measurement? Cut objects in half and get rated.