Using AI on Your Dark Data

This data was originally featured in the May 28th, 2025 newsletter found here: INBOX INSIGHTS, May 28, 2025: When AI-First Goes Wrong, Using AI on Your Dark Data

In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s discuss some of the dark data you have laying around.

Somewhere on your computer or your server is a folder that’s stuffed full of data. You’ve got reports, analyses, white papers, webinar transcripts – piles and piles of stuff.

Maybe it’s stuff that you swore you’d get around to reading, like that pile of books on your nightstand. One of these days, you say to yourself, I’ll set aside some time to read that stuff.

But we both know that if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s probably not going to happen any time soon.

Yet you know there’s value in there. You know there’s something useful to be learned.

So this week, let’s talk about two tactics for working with it.

Tactic 1: Put data in motion

Data at rest is decor. Data in motion is value. When we don’t use our data, when it sits on a shelf, it’s just decor.

Take a paper like our Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide for Marketers, or the Marketing AI Institute’s 2025 Annual Report. Maybe you really want to read them, but they’re super dense.

So take each one and put it in a separate notebook in the free NotebookLM software from Google. Then give it a short prompt like this in the Audio Overview (you have a limit of a few paragraph):

Hosts focus on topics relevant to Trust Insights, a management consulting firm focused on midmarket and enterprise companies needing help with analytics, data science, and AI, especially AI implementation, strategy, and change management. Focus the discussion on what Trust Insights should take away from the report and what they should consider adding to their strategies for marketing the firm to prospective customers.

Obviously, modify it for your own purposes.

When you’re done, you get an audio overview, a synthetic podcast summary of the report. Now you can take it with you, literally putting it in motion. You can listen to it anywhere you listen to other podcasts – at the gym, in the kitchen, on the road.

Tactic 2: Put data to work

Suppose you’re so busy that you don’t even have time to listen to podcasts. How could you make use of this dark data you’ve got laying around?

Feed it to generative AI. Suppose you downloaded our Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide for Marketers. You know that it’s valuable, that there’s useful tips, but you just can’t make the time.

Here’s what you do. Drop the PDF into any existing generative AI workflow. I talked about how to do this at length in my personal newsletter, but here’s a very simple example. Take your social media calendar for LinkedIn. Take the Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide for Marketers. Ask the generative AI tool of your choice to audit your calendar based on the guide and do some QA. Here’s an example starter prompt.

Audit our LinkedIn content calendar using the Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide for Marketers as a reference and best practices. Explain what in our LinkedIn content calendar works well with the Guide. Explain what does not work based on the Guide. Explain what is missing from our content calendar based on the Guide. Explain what is unnecessary in our content calendar based on the Guide.

Modify this prompt to be as robust and as detailed as your marketing needs it to be.

Data in motion is data in action, and that means unlocking the value of your data. Take anything you’ve been meaning to get to, and try one of these two straightforward tactics. You’ll start unlocking the value of your data.

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.