Google Bard: A Powerful AI Tool for Marketers, Sales Professionals, and Developers… With One Heck Of A Roadmap!

The other day, I was in a presentation for a large publishing company with whom I frequently write guest articles. One of the topics they covered was a new policy requiring the authors never to utilize artificial intelligence writing (AI) tools in developing their content. This ridiculous policy will surely fail their publication as a whole. While I agree that having a platform write an article for you isn’t a good practice, utilizing AI to assist in developing your content can surely make your content richer and more engaging.

Even before generative AI tools launched, I utilized tools to help me write better content. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, and video. Grammarly doesn’t just check grammar, spelling, and for plagiarism; its AI engine generates better sentence structures that I almost always use to improve my content. And it doesn’t just correct my content; it’s also educating me to be a better writer over time. I don’t get nearly as many recommendations as I used to in using the product. It’s not just an editor; it’s also a teacher.

The Case For AI Writing Assistance

Google has even clarified its guidelines on indexing AI-produced content. In their words:

When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years. Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies. This said, it’s important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. Automation has long been used to generate helpful content, such as sports scores, weather forecasts, and transcripts. AI has the ability to power new levels of expression and creativity, and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web. This is in line with how we’ve always thought about empowering people with new technologies. 

Google Search and AI Content

This is how I have utilized AI to assist in my writing. I ask the Bot for clarification, specific questions, ideas, quotes, timelines, and tables of contents, and then I craft a more well-rounded article. AI often gives me additional information that is infinitely valuable to the content I’m writing… so why would I possibly want to stop our authors from using it? I don’t! I want Martech Zone authors to use it wisely to enhance their article, not to write it on their behalf. All other publications should want this as well.

Google Bard

Google Bard is a new AI-powered tool that can help marketers, sales professionals, and developers be more productive and creative. Bard is powered by Google’s LaMDA language model, which has been trained on a massive dataset of text and code. Bard understands and responds to many prompts, from simple questions to complex creative tasks, and maintains context throughout the conversation.

The word bard comes from the Celtic word bardos, which means poet, seer, or learned man. Bards were professional storytellers, verse-makers, music composers, oral historians, and genealogists employed by a patron to praise them or their ancestors. They were trained to remember and recite stories and poems and often played instruments to accompany their performances. Bards were an important part of Celtic culture, and they played a role in preserving and transmitting the stories and traditions of their people.

Google Workspace and Google Bard

If you’ve tried to use Google Bard with a Google Workspace account, you’ll notice that you may not have permission. Your Administrator must enable Early Access apps under Apps > Additional Google Services for your account.

Once Bard is enabled, you can start using it by typing a question or prompt into the Bard window. Bard will then respond with a comprehensive and informative answer.

How Sales, Marketing, and Developers Can Use Google Bard Today

While Bard can fully understand your questions today, it’s not too accurate in many of its responses. I asked Bard how marketers could use it, and it responded that it could help them decipher critical questions regarding their Google Analytics account. That’s a problem since Bard cannot currently access any data sources (read about their roadmap below).

What Bard currently does well is generating content for you as an AI writer. When I asked Bard to describe Martech Zone, here’s what the response was:

Not bad!

I asked Bard to write a short sales email to a prospective B2B SaaS company on why they should sponsor Martech Zone. Here’s the result:

And, if you’re a developer, Bard can be instrumental! Bard can be used to generate code, debug code, explain code, and even write functions for Google Sheets. You can use it with C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, C, C#, R, Swift, Kotlin, PHP, HTML, CSS, SQL, Bash, Perl, Ruby, Lua, and Rust.

I asked Bard to write a PHP function that would post to the Bard API and then echo the response:

function postToBardAPI($query) {
  // Create a new cURL handle.
  $ch = curl_init();

  // Set the URL of the Bard API.
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://bard.ai/api/v1/query");

  // Set the request method to POST.
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

  // Set the request body to the query string.
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $query);

  // Set the response type to JSON.
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
    "Content-Type: application/json",
    "Accept: application/json"
  ));

  // Execute the request.
  $response = curl_exec($ch);

  // Check for errors.
  if ($response === false) {
    echo "Error: " . curl_error($ch);
    exit();
  }

  // Close the cURL handle.
  curl_close($ch);

  // Decode the JSON response.
  $result = json_decode($response, true);

  // Echo the response.
  echo $result["text"];
}

$query = "What is the weather like in San Francisco?";

postToBardAPI($query);

It is currently 65 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in San Francisco.

Unlike other generative AI engines, Bard also can display images, video, audio, tables, charts, graphs, diagrams, maps, 3d media, and even interactive games, quizzes, and simulations. For example, I asked it for the Martech Zone logo, and it displayed it!

Google Bard Roadmap

The exciting part of Google launching its own generative AI bot is that it can be easily integrated into Google products and others. If you ask Bard for a roadmap for integrations, here’s a list of some of the currently planned integrations:

• Google Analytics: Bard will be able to access and analyze Google Analytics data to provide insights into website traffic and user behavior.
• Salesforce: Bard will be able to integrate with Salesforce to provide sales professionals with insights into leads, opportunities, and customers.
• HubSpot: Bard will be able to integrate with HubSpot to provide marketing professionals with insights into website traffic, leads, and customers.
• Zendesk: Bard will be able to integrate with Zendesk to provide customer service professionals with insights into customer interactions.
• Slack: Bard will be able to integrate with Slack to provide users with a way to get insights and answers to their questions in real-time.

These are just a few of the integrations that are currently planned. In addition to the integrations listed above, Bard is also planning to develop its APIs. This will allow developers to integrate Bard with their applications.

Try Google Bard Today!