It’s a good thing Sofie Andreou likes to learn and loves a challenge, because she has spent her career tackling and solving the questions of the internet so you don’t have to.
Now, she is focused on learning all about the tricks and trades of using artificial intelligence (AI) for business. Having already led several workshops and presentations, she is in the process of developing courses and workbooks that will help small and medium-sized businesses with their workflow and learn how AI can help them improve their productivity.
“AI is now available to the public and it’s something businesses need to learn how to use,” Andreou says. “If you don’t have any AI experience or you haven’t brought it to your staff yet, I’m here to help you wrap your arms around it.”
While developing a course on AI might seem like a challenge, it’s nothing new for Andreou given her history being on the forefront of emerging technologies.
With a degree in computer science and a master’s in engineering in information systems, Andreou moved to the Peterborough region in the early 2000s after working as an engineer for Bell Canada in Toronto. She was hired by Peterborough technology firm The Breken Group to sell their online business directories to municipalities, chambers of commerce, and other organizations across the country.
Around the same time, she also launched her own consulting business and began lecturing on online marketing principles at Trent University. A few years later, after Facebook and Twitter launched to the general public, she found herself fielding constant questions about how businesses could use these new online tools. That led to her offering popular seminars and workshops to businesses on how they could leverage social media.
“It was really exciting at the time because it was brand new, so they didn’t know why or how to do it,” Andreou recalls, noting that the early workshops were very different than they are now. “Everyone had to create an account and create their first post, and it was exciting when businesses started growing because it was a brand-new world.”
While Andreou admits that some longtime business owners were reluctant to embrace the new online world, she thinks it was her approach that helped her eventually get through even to those who were most resistant to the changing times.
“I’ve turned it into a science, and something they could relate to and use to help grow their business,” Andreou explains. “That’s what is unique with me — I will change how I approach my social media or digital marketing consulting based on how big or small that business is, what they can handle, and what their potential clients want. Every single business you talk to is totally different.”
In those early years, Andreou faced some skepticism about building a business around social media from those who considered it a passing fad.
“I remember my brother saying, ‘So you really get this stuff for some reason, that’s awesome, but you should ride the wave while it lasts,’ and I’m thinking ‘This isn’t a wave,'” she says, explaining she would use her engineering background to produce and analyze statistics.
“That’s really what enabled my direction because I remember always having these charts that showed the growth of all the different social platforms, and that’s what drove which ones I would teach, consult on, or recommend.”
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In today’s landscape, she predicts the same fast growth and longevity when it comes to AI, and businesses that refuse to adopt it will be left behind.
“I do believe they will fail in three years if they don’t bring AI into the mix of productivity,” says Andreou, noting that her brother, also an engineer, completes projects in half a day that took two weeks prior to AI. “If a company can do something in half a day whereas their competitors are still doing it in two weeks, their competitors won’t last.”
An example is online chat for customer service which, with newer AI capabilities, has a much greater scope than it had before. AI can now deal with sophisticated questions and help customers quickly find exactly what they need on a website.
“People have the attention spans of gnats, so if they can’t find what they want right away, they’re gone,” Andreou says. “If your website is doing this and someone else’s isn’t, they’re not going to last.”
Because of this, Andreou suggests that how we do business will undoubtedly shift as companies adapt to using AI, and that will also have an impact on who they hire.
“I think you won’t be able to get certain jobs if you don’t understand how to apply AI,” she says. “When Microsoft (Excel) first came out, you couldn’t get a job if you were in certain departments and didn’t know how to use Excel. That will soon be the norm — that you’ll need to know how to use AI in order to do certain jobs.”
Despite all the concerns about AI taking jobs away from people, Andreou considers AI to be a tool that is only as good as the person using it.
“When you look at something like a design that’s created by AI, you can tell it’s horrible,” she notes. “It needs a designer to actually understand the colour palette of a company and to understand the voice of a company, to be able to use the AI technology properly. Otherwise it does not work. You are using it as a tool.”
For more information about Sofie Andreou and her digital marketing agency 123DigitalPower, including her AI workshops and marketing workshops, visit www.sofieandreou.com.
