Tips for elevating meetings, skills and AI usage — Tips in Ten(ish) Minutes

0:00:06.5 Kirsten Lecky: Well, hello. Welcome to WG Contents Tips in Ten Minutes. We have some very special guests with us today. Three of our content strategists. So happy they could join me today for this conversation. We have Stella, if you wanna just wave a little bit there, Stella. We have Abbie. Wave. And we have Nikki. So thank you again for joining us. Like many of you, I’m sure we’re all talking about, it’s a new year, it’s new strategies, it’s new ideas, it’s new approaches. I invited the three of them to talk to us a little bit about what’s on their minds as marketing and communication departments are changing. It’s like the org charts are changing, the job descriptions are changing. There’s a lot more integration across disciplines of the departments instead of the silos. So there’s a lot, and of course that doesn’t even address all of the tactics and tools and technology and AI and all of the things that are certainly on the hearts and minds of our audience. 

0:01:05.6 Kirsten Lecky: So we wanted to just tackle maybe three of those three topics to help your teams become more strategic. The marketing teams to become more strategic as they move through their initiatives and strategies for the new year. So I think they’ve got some great insight and some great help for us. So the first question is how do we make meetings more strategic in 2025? And so we have all of these on our calendar already. Perhaps you have them organized by department. Perhaps you have them organized by strategy or tactic. But Stella, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about how marketing departments and communicators can make meetings a little bit more strategic as they move throughout this new year? 

0:01:45.6 Stella Hart: Yeah, I love this question. I think that the number one way that teams and meetings could be more strategic this coming year would be to bring your teams into alignment around outcomes. So more of an outcome-driven approach as a team as a whole. And then for folks, no matter what their role or what their expertise area is at your organization, really focusing on those outcomes. How are you solving problems for your consumers? How do you align user behavior and the objectives of your users with your overall business goals? In your ROI, having these team meetings be a very intentional place for different team members to learn more about their colleagues and have a greater deeper understanding of adjacent roles, not only at the organization but trends we’re seeing across the industry in UX and design and content strategy. Something that we’ve implemented here at WG that’s always fun would be to share ownership of different meetings to assign a different team member to lead each meeting. That’s a great way to energize conversations we found. 

0:03:12.4 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, I love that idea. 

0:03:13.6 Stella Hart: Yeah. One other thought would be to always be working from a larger strategic plan and timeline. So where are those clear deliverables that different people have a responsibility to create or review or approve? Where are those key approvals? Tying those to your larger overarching goals and KPIs and things of that nature will really help you make the most of your meetings and… It’s never fun to go to a meeting and there’s nothing on the agenda and you’re like, “Why are we even doing this?” Makes no sense. 

0:03:52.9 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, I love that. I think it’s changing the language of meetings from being so task-oriented or to-do list-oriented to becoming more outcomes-based. So how do you create… Nikki, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about this. A discipline around changing that language. So that people… You manage expectations coming into the meetings and you measure coming out of the meetings and have that accountability. Do you have any suggestions for that expectation of meetings becoming more outcome-based and not just like we’re going to go through our to-do list? 

0:04:25.0 Nikki Breen: I think it can be helpful when you have everybody giving an update on things. Either they’re seeing recent trends, just a quick recap or something that they’re working on that they notice is going on. And it can help drive that of what’s going on, what we need to be doing going forward, just keeping it a bit more engaging and active rather than let’s just check off the box on everything. One thing that can be helpful with that too is to use something like AI note-takers, because that can be a distraction for people in meetings, especially people who need to take notes and write down things to remember them or what have you. That can be kind of distracting to do that. And they’re also trying to contribute to the conversation, so that takes away some of that weight to be able to just engage with the meeting and bring up questions and all of that kind of stuff that you can’t really do while you’re trying to multitask while taking notes. 

0:05:17.3 Kirsten Lecky: I love the AI notetaker because too it summarizes and then it becomes… You take that meeting and it becomes shareable across disciplines. So if you are able to ask and say, “Summarize this meeting and what were the three key takeaways and what’s the accountability in place?” And then it’s shared across. It’s a really nice way to be able to bring the message across the organization for those that could not attend the meeting. Abbie, anything to add? 

0:05:43.3 Abbie Krajewski: I think both of them did a really great job of summarizing a lot of the methods that you can use. One thing that I like that we do here at WG Content is that we start our meetings off with a meditation. And I find that that can actually be helpful in aligning everyone to the intended purpose of the meeting. Sometimes you have those days where you’re hopping from one meeting to the next, and it can be kind of a blur and hard to remember, “Oh, what are we trying to do with this meeting?” And I found that the meditation at the start of the meetings can be a nice way to level set. Get everyone on the same page, and then align around finding those solutions and being really targeted on those outcomes so that all that extra noise is turned off or at least turned down. 

0:06:41.4 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, no, I think… And the meditations take a lot of getting used to if you’re not a normal everyday meditator, but they are great. A thought that came to my mind as you were sharing that too, is maybe even having a mission statement or a value proposition for every meeting. So that you know going into it and you start… So you’d have your meditation and then maybe say, “Okay, now just as a reminder… ” We hear this every week, every Tuesday at 11:00 AM when we have our meeting. The objective of our time together is to solve this. Or this meeting is designed to help us advance that. We’re gonna measure the success of this meeting by X, Y, Z. And so you’ve got to tell someone you’re gonna tell them, and then you tell them, and then you tell them that you told them. It’s like the whole idea of repeating the objective and the value proposition, and then why does this matter? Why are we having this meeting? So I love that idea of level setting, grounding yourself through meditation, then having some objective value proposition or mission statement. AI note-taking so you can share it across the organization. Stella, you had some great points and so I think those are all really good to help us take what we’re doing today and just kind of, “Well, how can we be 10% better? How can we be 10% more strategic with our meetings?” So thank you for those ideas. 

0:07:49.9 Kirsten Lecky: Anybody else have anything else to add before we move on to the next question? Great. All right. Well, the other thing we’ve been talking a lot about is skills. We are all… We all have our skills but now we have to level up even more because what we do in our roles is changing. And especially in marketing, it’s rapidly changing. And you can’t hire every time there’s a new need. Right now I do see org charts changing, and I do see the structure of teams changing. I mean, we’re hiring for prompt writers and AI specialists… It is just different and that will never stop. But how do we take our existing team that we have today and help them become more prepared for the changing landscape in healthcare marketing? What are some things they can start adopting, doing or practicing so that their skills are always evolving. Abbie, any initial thoughts on that? 

0:08:46.2 Abbie Krajewski: Yeah, so once again I wanna reiterate what Stella said at the beginning when we were talking about meetings which is: Make sure that you have that vision of the big picture and you have an idea of what outcomes and goals you’re setting for the year, because I think that can be a really powerful way to organize where your priorities lie as far as gaining those new skills, finding new training opportunities and things like that. It will show you the places where there may be skills gaps or maybe you need a depth of knowledge that you don’t currently have and allow you to all organize around that one unified vision of what your team can become. There’s also a lot of different ways that you can get those trainings, and so you might wanna talk to your vendors or partners and see if they have any topics that they wanna share with your team or any things that they wanna share through lunch and learn that can help you stay ahead of trends rather than reacting to them. 

0:09:58.4 Abbie Krajewski: Looking at your local marketplace is also really a powerful tool. Finding things like local meetups or local conversations or coffee chats around specific topics. AI is one of those that every major market in the country at this point has an AI meetup group for people who wanna stay up to date with the latest trends. And so look for those opportunities to really expand your knowledge and expand your learning while getting closer bonds to your local community, because you never know there could be a reporter for your local news station and you’ve been trying to get a press release accepted by them for a while, and so while you’re learning together, you create that relationship. 

0:10:43.9 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, I know Cincinnati has a ton of AI meetups and tech meetups and all kinds of things. So lots of great opportunities to tap into your local markets for those training. And I love the idea. I mean, we’ve been invited to do trainings with clients and doing those lunch and learns, and it’s a really nice way for us to continue to add value and for them too to be able to tap into these existing partnerships. We know them, they know us, and be able to provide them with some training. Nikki and Stella, do you guys have anything to add? 

0:11:16.2 Stella Hart: Yeah, just quickly getting your team up to speed today with trainings and workshops and things of that nature. There’s a lot you can do during those actual conversations to maybe record the training or meeting, creating documentation, especially those living, breathing documents that everyone on the team can review and has access to. And they’re able to see that information. That’s not only helpful to the ongoing success of your team, but maybe you do hire some new employees or someone in the organization comes and joins your team. Having those training resources readily available and in your library there. That can be a great way to help with onboarding and getting them up to speed. 

0:12:03.9 Kirsten Lecky: Yeah, I think as long as you always have in the back of your mind knowledge sharing. So it’s like everything that you’re absorbing, how do we transfer this knowledge to the rest? It’s like the meetings with AI notetaker, it’s the things that you attend… Knowledge transfer, knowledge share. How do you create efficiency around that? We’re already at 10 minutes. I think we may even be at 11 or 12, but I do wanna round robin really quick. Because, of course, we’re all using AI. We’re using it in different ways. So, Nikki, I’d like for you to just kick us off one thing that you love using AI for to help you become more strategic and that others can maybe use as well, and then we’ll just close. 

0:12:41.4 Nikki Breen: I would say being able to quickly identify any content gaps. It can be very helpful. You can throw in your list of URLs for current website into an AI tool and ask it what are some other gaps going on that are of interest to my target audience. Give some information about what your target audience is. It saves a lot of manual work that way. 

0:13:01.4 Kirsten Lecky: I love that. How about you, Abbie? 

0:13:06.6 Abbie Krajewski: I know for me, one of the worst things is going to a brainstorming meeting and all of us sitting there silently for the first 10 minutes because nobody can think of anything because we’re just staring at a blank page. I really love the use of AI to get those gears turning to start that brainstorming process because having something to react to even just if you’re reacting to it, if you are tearing apart the AI prompts or you are like, “Oh, that’s interesting. What if we took it here?” It’s better to have something to react to than to be staring at a blank page. So I love using AI in that ideation phase. 

0:13:50.2 Kirsten Lecky: And I think that goes back to the meetings like you were just saying Abbie. So your meetings are more strategic. Use AI as your partner to be prepared for those meetings. Stella, anything else to add? 

0:14:00.6 Stella Hart: Yeah, I will say AI has really taken my pun-based jokes to the next level on many occasions. Something else that I’m really excited about is using AI for enhanced user testing. So there are a lot of guardrails you’d wanna put in place around using synthetic users to help make decisions about your user experience, your content, but there’s a lot of promise there, especially if you’re an organization that really sees the value of user testing. But it can be time-consuming or costly to implement. Depending on synthetic users to help you make data-driven decisions. While it should not replace testing with real users, of course, that can be a great way to accelerate your user-focused… Consumer-focused strategy. 

0:14:56.3 Kirsten Lecky: Great. I love it. Well, these were all really great tips all three of you shared, and I think we’ll summarize the tips in a blog post to make sure they get added to this short video. So I thank you again and just encourage everyone to… As we are here at WG Content, how can we be 10% better? It’s not about getting to the finish line, but just really the progression and the journey and adopting a lot of these practices. So thank you again for sharing and enjoy the rest of your day. Happy New Year everyone. 

0:15:23.6 Stella Hart: Cheers.