🎤How has ChatGPT made community engagement faster?

00:00:00 Pushkar

Even for someone like me who has been doing this for years and I'm used to writing captions. I'm used to making content, it takes time and the thing is ChatGPT doesn't need time, it only needs a command.

00:00:24 Taapsi:

Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Down and Dirty. And today I have with me Pushkar Parmar, he is the community manager at Unagi. He's been there for a couple of years, 2 to 3 years I think. And super excited to have him on the show. He's a little bit of an outlier and yet kind of expected for someone who is in such a dynamic space as community management. He dropped out of college at 18, is self-taught, has done a bunch of courses on YouTube and kind of worked his way to this current position as community manager, something that Pushkar is very, very proud of and we're gonna talk more about that in a second, Pushkar, welcome to the show.

00:01:03 Pushkar:

Thank you so much Taapsi. I'm excited to get this going and excited to be here and share my journey and what I love to do as a community manager.

00:01:13 Taapsi:

Fantastic. So to get the ball rolling, let's start Pushkar with getting to know you a little bit better if I had to ask you what a day in your life looks like , you know,from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed. Can you walk me through that?

00:01:28 Pushkar:

Yes,absolutely. So I like to wake up early. I've always loved waking up early ,adds to that notion right, that yeah, you woke up early, What a great thing to do. So I wake up early, I go to the gym at 6 a.m I'm back by around 7-7:30 I don't go to my desk directly. That's something that I've learned with time that you don't go to your desk directly. So I do some Meditation and I think around nine after breakfast is when I reach my desk. So the funny thing about my work is, I work in a different time zone. So it doesn't start at 9 am, It starts, right now in December at 2:30 pm. So I have a lot of time leading up to work. So that's when I sit down, I do all of my research. Sometimes you'll have me, playing some geography games because that's something I'm madly into. So I'll get most of my research done. I'll do some client work. I'll edit some videos, I'll lay out what I have to do for the day. I made a list of what I did yesterday and what I need to carry on to today. And that's something that helps me stay on the horizon. And I know something that I've also learned with time is you cannot be at your 100% everyday. So I know, I'm not feeling super excited so I won't be working at my 100%. I'll give my 75% but I'll give it all of my time and all of my energy. So I make a list of my tasks and that's when I start working around 10-10:30 is when I start reaching out to the designer, I'll start reaching out to my colleagues. We need to do this We need to post this. This is something we need to take care of today and these are the things the community needs to note. So we might need an announcement. We might need I look into what calls I have , and which influencers I need to reach out to. I started the communication because I also take care of our influencers in India. We have started reaching out to a few in India. So it's good to get in touch with them early. Look at what we are planning to post on that day, in that week, or what the thing is, and then this keeps on happening. I take a few breaks. I'll watch a YouTube video maybe in between. I'll listen to a podcast, I'll listen to some songs and, then I go for lunch and once I'm back, that's when my work starts at 2:30. So it starts with a morning call. You meet everyone there in the morning and half of my day is already done.

00:04:26 Taapsi:

So, Unagi is in Paris, right, it's what 5.5 hours?

00:04:31 Pushkar:

Uh…4.5 hours right now. And, because daylight saving right now, usually it's just 3.5 hours. I'm saying just 3.5 hours because I'm so used to it. So, it's their morning, but that's when my day starts. We have a few calls and then it's work. You need to see what's going on. You need to find some decent memes every, which is the best part about my work. So I scroll a lot of Reddit, a lot of Reddit. That's where the memes are born. That's what I believe in. So that's what you look into. It also involves me watching a lot of football games, so I have to watch a lot of games at night , s o I'll summarize everything. This is extraordinary that the community is going to love on Twitter. Maybe let's start a conversation around this on D iscord. Let's see how the Instagram audience reacts to a quiz about this. And that's what I communicate with my team and that's what we pounce upon. So the thing with social media, especially when it comes to something like sports is that you cannot plan it out for a week. You need to be very spontaneous. And that's something that I focus on. And that's how the day goes Sometimes I'll have three-four meetings. Some days like Thursdays, I don't have any meetings at all. So I'm completely focused on my work. The day gets over around 10:30. And yeah, it's a very long day. I've heard that already from a lot of people. Then I go play some football and that's when I relax. Then if I have to watch a game, I'll watch a game and once I'm done I'm in bed by 12 or 1 a.m. which is still very late. I'd like to sleep early. But yes, so that's mostly my day. I put in dinner somewhere in between these things and I'll put in a cup of tea with my mom in between these things. The best part about working from home is I get to spend a lot of time with my family. So that is the reason I wanted to transition into a remote setting , firstly… So, yeah, it helps. And that's what I believe, helps me in working very efficiently because I know I can always go downstairs, sit down with someone from my family , have a cup of tea , have a cup of coffee , and talk with them. If they're watching a web series, you'll see me sitting there for 15-20 minutes discussing that with them. So I take frequent breaks. I'll go for walks every couple of hours. I'll just, randomly stand up and do that bowling action that, most, Indians would relate to because you love the game. So you have to do it ,so yeah,that's my day. It's pretty chill. But, yeah, I've loved the way things are carried out at Unagi, especially because you get the space to think, you get the space to take action, which really lacked in the places that I worked, before in India. So, yeah, that is my day. Very expansive, I'm assuming. But yes.

00:08:05 Taapsi:

So,you know, I find it… I think you're so lucky. You love sports and you're connected to a gaming studio where your job involves, you know, reading about sports, researching what's trending, what would be exciting to the community of other sports lovers. So, you know, you're lucky. I feel like it's a combination of your manifestation, your energy, you've put it in that direction, that's where you want to go and the doors opened and allowed you know, this to also happen. So. Fantastic, great. So your day ends pretty late and then you get up pretty early because you said you're an early riser, so not a lot of sleep. So it makes sense that you're kind of taking breaks in the day to refresh right? Especially if you're not, it seems like it's not like you sleep for one solid chunk and then you work for someone solid chunk, it's much more fluid than that. So that is that's great. So tell me something who is Pushkar as a community manager? Like where what is your essence as a community manager?

00:09:19 Pushkar: I think that I've been a part of a lot of communities throughout before reaching, you know, being a community manager myself, I've played a lot of games. I've supported a club, that has a worldwide fan base. I've been connected to people across the world for over, I don't know how many years now. So it has developed me into a person who likes to listen to people, listen to their concerns, that likes to excite people with content, especially which I love working on. And that's how I have developed into a community manager, ike even if you look at me, talking to people on Discord, I'll be talking to them. Ok. It's so hot in India right now. Even though it's winter. So, things like that. I like to talk to people. That's me. I like to talk to people about any random thing, any random shit. You can pick up any topic and I'll probably know something about it and I'll be like, ok .. what do you know, tell me that. So it's not limited to football. So I as a person am very keen on conversation. I'm like, OK… what do you bring to the table? Let's talk about that. So that's something that has helped me immensely. And when I talk to people in a community that is mostly based in Europe, there are people from Russia, there are people from Indonesia, and everywhere across the world. I always end up finding a common ground. So that's something that has not only helped me as a community manager, it has helped me as a person. And most importantly, it helps me settle into teams where it's not usually very easy to go around and find your place. So I might only be a community manager, but I do various kinds of things and I think it's essentially very important to relate with your community. And no matter what community you're a part of, you need to relate with them in terms of what they have invested in the game in terms of assets, how they play the game, how involved they are, what they see. Like what's the long-term vision of the game? And it's not just limited to the game. It, of course, is an essential key point to managing any community. But the more you relate to them, the more that they feel you're a part of the community, which you are, of course, and the better it gets. So that's what it has been for me when I joined the Unagi I think I was just 22 years old and I was very young and you can say young, dumb, and bold. So, within the last 2, 2.5 years, I've learned this thing that age does that to you. I'm still young but I'm still saying that you become very calm and you want to listen to people and you need a lot of empathy to be a community manager.

00:12:39 Taapsi:

So what are, what are some challenges that you face Pushkar, in doing your job better? What comes in the way?

00:12:46: Pushkar:

The thing with communities is they don't have a defined mood. It's like dealing with someone who is very moody. So you need to be very patient and it is a characteristic of all communities as I've seen over the years. There will be shifts in what they think about a specific thing multiple times in a day and you need to be able to address that. You need to be able to calm them down. You need to be able to comfort them. That's the first challenge. You need to be very mentally involved with the community and then you need to build that trust. That's of course, one of the challenges then there is managing a schedule. That's crazy. You don't get holidays like you can but you can't. So even when I'm on holiday, I'm always on my phone, I'm always on my laptop. We have other community managers as well. I've seen them being available at two- three Am at night in their time zone. So it's a crazily hectic kind of job and let's say, it's not something you look at as a job. It's something you look at. Ok… I am a part of this community and this is an added responsibility to be available all the time on Christmas on New Year's. I've worked on Diwali nights.

00:14:22 Taapsi:

Because that’s when the community is active, right? The community is active on holidays and when they have the time to be active. So something's got to give and I guess what gives here is your time because you've got to be active. So what, what enables you then The flip, you know, one side is you know these two big challenges that you talked about, the moodiness as well as availability. What enables you to be better at your job or to do better? 

00:14:52 Pushkar:

I think the thing, that you love the most about about this specific job is that when you give them your best in terms of content, in terms of results, whatever it may be, the community appreciates you and they realize that you have put in a lot of hard work. And one of the great things about our community is that it's a bunch of very educated and very realistic people who realize that OK, these guys have put in crazy amounts of hard work to get, pull this thing off. Like we recently signed, I don't know if you have heard of this club. They're FC Barcelona. It's massively popular. It was a big deal for us and moments like these keep me driven. Like the moment we announced them, I knew it for a couple of months and I had it in my head, but you cannot let the community know. And the moment we announced it, they were like crazy happy. The reactions were wild and no one expected it. And we built up to that with clues over a span of a couple of weeks. So it's things like that… It's how you present what you have because I'm someone who's very excited about content. I'm very excited about exciting other people. So that's what keeps me going.

00:16:28 Taapsi:

So,if I had to, you know, stalk you for a day, come home and look over your shoulders and look at what you're doing on your computer. What would be a few things that you would always have open so that you could do your job every day? Like, what are those, I can't live without these things to stay excited to keep doing my research, to reach out to my community. What is that ecosystem or what does that stack look like? 

00:16:57 Pushkar:

I think you'll see around 30-35 tabs. 

00:17:00 Taapsi:

Firstly, let's try five or maybe seven. 

00:17:05 Pushkar:

No, I'll list down the easiest ones. Twitter is the first thing that's always open. I've never closed the Twitter tab. Ever apart from updating the browser, I've never closed it. I browsed Twitter like a crazy person. So you can count this as social media. There's Twitter, Discord, Instagram, Reddit. And you'll see me on a couple of Desi Indian apps. If I must say you'll see me on Hood, I'm using a lot of my time over there and at YouTube Twitch , so why not? Like? So these are like the social media things, Slack for communication. Then you'll see me use notion a lot and a wild crazy amount of using notion because I, I just love how easy it is to use. And I use Notion for my personal. I use it for my job. And then lastly, it's the Adobe Suite that I'll never let go of. It's like you can put me out of my house, take away my house, just give me my laptop, give me Photoshop, AfterEffects, Premier and I'll still earn a living out of it. So yes, that's, that's something you'll always see. So these are a few things Google Meets is like an extension of Chrome, of course, so there's nothing new about Spotify, I used to listen to music and like I've been on a subscription for years now, so I don't know what it feels like without being on subscription, you cannot change music and stuff. So Spotify, sometimes you do need music to calm yourself down, especially with. So I love music and these are a few things on my tabs. You'll see ChatGPT which I'll never stop using again. It's a part of my life. I wake up and I'll do my stuff. I'll go to ChatGPT OK… I missed you for the entire night. Take me back. So that's something. 

00:19:32 Taapsi:

You're having a love affair with ChatGPT (Laughing)

00:19:34 Pushkar:

Yeah, I'm having an affair. Please don't tell my girlfriend and I think A I tools, I use a lot. I've been using Adobe Firefly just to test it out how it has been doing. There's a meme generator that finds you the best memes based on an A I search. So that's something I use. But ChatGPT ofcourse, hands down saves me a crazy amount of time every day.

00:20:04 Taapsi:

So, I’m gonna do a spoiler alert. We are gonna talk about GPT. So I'm not gonna ask you which tool you're gonna talk about. But because you said it saves you a ton of time. My question to you is not about how it saves you time, We all know how ChatGPT saves everybody time. What I'm more interested in is why is it important to get things done fast. I mean, it sounds a little redundant but I want to know in the context of your life, right? And what your priorities are, how is it that ChatGPT is helping you just manage life a little better?

00:20:36 Pushkar:

I think having a Chat GPT is like having an assistant , so it's like Siri is right next to you and you can tell Siri what to do. So saving time, especially in my scenario is a very key role. It plays a very key role because I have to do 10 things at once while something is going on Discord. I also need to get a tweet out. There's an email campaign that's waiting for me to check it out and get the go-ahead. So it has never been that I have the leisure opportunity to sit down, chill, OK. I'll write down this caption with all of my wit and get the best out of it. No. Sorry, that's not how it works. For community managers. You need to do tens of things at once. And when you have ChatGPT, I think it takes half of it away because see AI is not something you can rely on 100%. I still don't believe that A I won't take away your job just yet. So yes, it helps you in a way that I don't know how to explain, but it really cuts down on time in a massive way. So let's say, there's a player of Lewandowski has scored a hat trick in yesterday's game week and you have this set ready from your graphic designer. But you need a caption, you need a nice witty caption that goes down well with the community highlights what he has done , and also highlights the features of the game. And there are like 10 different things that you have to do in a caption that can only expand up to 280 characters. How are you going to do humanly do that? Like, even for someone like me who has been doing this for years and I'm used to writing captions,I'm used to making content. It takes time and the thing is Chat GPT doesn't need time. It only needs a command. So once you explain what you want it's going to produce 90% of what you want then you have to make some adjustments here and there change some things and within five minutes you're ready to go. Otherwise, it would take at least 30 minutes to an hour just to come up with something that clicks with the community.

00:23:14 Taapsi:

Got it. So if you had to, should we just do a share screen? I'd love to know what are some cases like, you know, what are for you as a community manager of you know, a gaming studio? What are you commanding ChatGPT to do for you?

00:23:29 Pushkar:

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

00:23:33 Taapsi:

And also maybe it would be helpful to also go through some examples where it didn't exactly hit the mark and then you could have prompted it to give it your voice because ultimately this has to come from you.

00:23:44 Pushkar:

[Screensharing] No. Yes, absolutely, OK. I'm just looking. Yeah. I just got the right to share my screen. Ah, There we go. I hope you can see it.

00:24:01 Taapsi:

Yes.

00:24:03 Pushkar:

So let's take an example. Let's say you want to tweet about something. OK. So you just tell GPT to tweet about let's say Frankie De Jong has scored 239 points in game week, 140 firing FC Barcelona to a 1-0 win over Atletico Madrid and that makes the MVP of the GW 140. Now, as you can see, I've used game week 140 twice in this prompt. But when ChatGPT produces a result, you'll only see it once, which is actually the right way to do it. You don't wanna do it twice. So, yes, give me that. Yeah, De Jong with the magic touch, it would have taken me time to come up with that. Scoring 239 points in Game week 140. He's the powerhouse behind Barcelona's one-nil victory against Atletico crowned the MVP of the game. So this is where they have made a mistake. He is the MVP of this specific game week, not the game only which is like complete sports.

00:26:00 Taapsi:

Yeah.

00:26:02 Pushkar:

Yeah. And his brilliance shines through feels like a bit too much. So I'm going to cut that down. So you just copy this. So I'll not open Twitter, I'll just show you right here. So De Jong with the magic touch. OK? That works. Not the best it can do that works. Scoring blah, blah, blah points crown the MVP of thought. You just change it to game week. You remove the last part. The best part about GPT is it gives you a lot of hashtags I don't want those. I want my game to be up here. So, yeah. And that's how you get a decent caption out of it. So it's super easy and I think this is one of the very basic things that people use GPT for. So I’ll show you something extreme that it can also do. So, yeah, we'll make it right an email, which still won't be perfect because AI is not perfect yet. But yes, it will produce something that you can just swivel around in five minutes and use instantly. So write an email to dominant users so we are going to write an email for dormant users and try to load them back through signed and short giveaways.

00:27:50 Taapsi:

So this is how and now when you're running an email campaign, would you say this is how you would start, they can start by getting slow in charge of GPT and then of course, tweaking it to, you know, your language and what works.

00:28:05 Pushkar:

Yes. So as you can see right here it has given me the major part of it that I don't have to write myself. So I'll remove the personalization stuff as a valued member, blah, blah .. OK. And so this is something that did not come to my mind, but it gave me this how do I explain it to a user who has only signed up once to the game that they need to come back ? So you just need to log into the game, update, your team register it for the next game week, and complete a match day prediction. We can just replace his with something like enter this specific tournament step or you're in the race to win, assign you and yeah, you put in a nice, sexy looking static right here and you're done and you're going to produce some 13-15% conversion rate and you're a boss of emails. So yeah, Chat GP T does most of the work. You just need to know how to get it done. So from tweeting email campaigns, you know, I'm assuming all types of obviously content creation, anything that you need to put out there, right?

00:29:28 Taapsi:

So let's stop the share screen for now and in the interest of time, I want to just go through a few more questions. Is there anyplace where ChatGPT falls short or where you might leave this? Leave ChatGPT and go to something else or use something else to do the same kind of content work?

00:29:46 Pushkar:

Yes. So the thing with ChatGPT is it's never going to be perfect, at least for me because I ask too much of it. So the thing is sometimes I feel irritated because I have to explain the same thing to it again and again, So that's the difference between a person and A I and you need to get a premium, of course, of Chat GP T. So it remembers all the stuff, but as a free tool and most people use it as a free tool. No one's going to, unless you use it as extensively as I do, you're not going to go out and shell out 20 bucks every month just to use it. So the thing is explaining the same thing, this is ultimate champions. This is a game developed by Unagi. That's a football and basketball, fantasy sports game. It takes up a lot of your let's say mental space. You don't want to keep doing that. And that's one of the drawbacks. Secondly, it's not, it has never produced a result that I've used like for like, and that's actually fascinating considering I use it at least 19 to 20 times every day and not once in a year and a half has it managed to produce a result that I could use like for like. So those are the only two drawbacks, but of course, I can work with them and it cannot produce images at least in the current form. So for that, I use most of the Adobe A I tools where of course the generative A I fill on Photoshop is a game changer, of course, in how graphic designers have worked so far. Of course, I'm not an expert in that domain, but I've managed to develop my basics through YouTube and working with, very skilled people in the past. So yes, I think these are the only two drawbacks.

00:32:01 Taapsi:

So, you know, you mentioned early on in the podcast that one of the things that matter to you was or, rather one of the ways in which your life unfolds on a day-to-day basis is this kind of ebb and flow, right? Like you have this burst of work and then you take a break, you make some time for chai, hang out with family work again, then maybe listen to the music and you know, go for a walk, take a stroll, right? So every tool that we use, right? We use it because we want to make our life easier, faster make it faster, productive, efficient here right? In the context of how your life is the ups and downs the ebbs and flows of how your work happens. How would you say ChatGPT is similar to any other tool that kind of just does the job better or is there anything that makes it better or not as good as you know, some other productivity Because, at the end of the day, it's also a productivity thing, right? It's saving you time and effort, not just giving you content. So where does it fit into the scheme of what is important to you in terms of your pace of day?

00:33:14 Pushkar:

I don't think it's a tool that can like be compared to any other tool that I use. And the reason for that is to see every tool, as you said, makes our life efficient, but there's been no such tool that makes it as efficient as GPT. And I don't think there will be one unless Microsoft jumps on the bandwagon and creates something crazy that we did not expect. We did not expect that GPT to exist a couple of years from now. I personally feel like what GPT adds to my life is it makes it more relaxing because this is a tool I can 100% rely on with my closed eyes. I know I want this. It will take me five minutes and it's going to produce this. You cannot rely on a living breathing human like you can rely on ChatGPT. And that's something that I absolutely love and even adore about GPT that I can go, have five extra minutes of you know, chat time with my brother with my parents and I know ChatGPT will cover those five minutes for me when I'm back on my desk. So I think that's the best part about it.

00:34:42 Taapsi:

If you had to complete this sentence for me, ChatGPT is a great tool for people who want to dash. how would you fill in the blanks there?

00:34:53 Pushkar:

ChatGPT is a great tool for people who want to do, Absolutely anything with content. Absolutely, Anything with content. I've spent a good amount of my time writing YouTube video scripts and writing articles and whatnot. I wish they created it before. So I did not have to, And yes, you can do absolutely. Anything related to content with ChatGPT if you know how to create the right prompts. If you don't start using it, you're going to learn it in no time. This is a tool that you grow with. Every time it gets updated, there's a new version. I don't think it's a very difficult tool to use. Not at all.

00:35:42 Taapsi:

OK.The last thing we have left is a rapid-fire round. Are you ready?

00:35:46 Pushkar:

Yes.

00:35:47 Taapsi:

OK. First question, name, one item on your bucket list.

00:35:51 Pushkar:

I want to see the northern lights.

00:35:55 Taapsi:

Nice. OK. Which social media platform are you most active on?

00:36:00 Pushkar:

Reddit… No, I'm not. I use it the most, I'm most active on Instagram.

00:36:06 Taapsi:

OK.I was just gonna clarify. OK. So Instagram, what comes to mind when I say happy? 

00:36:16 Pushkar:

Enter into winning the 2010 Champions League?

00:36:20 Taapsi:

OK. Do you own a vehicle?

00:36:24 Pushkar:

Yeah.

00:36:25 Taapsi:

What do you own?

00:36:27 Pushkar:

I own a two-wheeler and a car.

00:36:30 Taapsi:

And which two-wheeler and which car?

00:36:32 Pushkar:

I own a Maestro. I don't know if you know which one that is. I can't ride a bike and I own a Maruti Suzuki Reza.

00:36:41 Taapsi:

Ok. Awesome. That was it super painless, rapid-fire down Oh,completely random questions. Not connected but but gives us another glimpse into who you are and Pushkar. Thank you so much. This was a great session. I've not had a sports aficionado like you on the show before. So it's cool to see just how he is dropping names and dropping like game, game scores, and names of players, things that are completely out of my world. But it was wonderful hearing you talk about it and you know, I wish you a wonderful rest of the week.

00:37:19 Pushkar:

Yeah, it was lovely being here. Thank you so much for inviting me it was an absolute honor to show people around what my day and what my work is like, which I love to talk about all the time. So yes, thank you so much for inviting me and I hope you and whoever is watching this have a great day and a great week ahead.

00:37:42 Taapsi: Thanks, bye-bye.