The robots are taking over!
Just kidding…sort of.
There is no doubt that AI has been taking the world by storm. It’s been baked into our societal infrastructure longer than most people realize, but has only recently been embraced by the public after the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Now, everyone wants in. There has been an explosion of free and easy generative AI tools coming into the market for both text, images, and even video.
While the nature of some jobs and industries might change, AI is not something to be feared (at least not until it becomes self aware!). Like the industrial revolution of the last century, the rise of AI has the potential to profoundly transform the way business is done. These tools can help improve efficiency, enable faster content creation, streamline customer service, and lead to more sophisticated automation. In fact, the only limit to what you can do with AI is your imagination and your ability to prompt these platforms to create high quality, unique copy and refine the output for your specific business needs.
Here are a few ways that you can leverage generative AI tools for your small business:
This is the probably most obvious way to use something like ChatGPT. Email campaigns and website content are some of the most time consuming tasks as a business owner, especially if you’re not a naturally skilled writer. To be honest, even as a professional writer, ChatGPT helps me generate fresh ideas, rewrite awkward sentences, or just get me started. It has legitimately saved me HOURS of work.
However, using content generated by ChatGPT comes with some big caveats. First of all, if you put in a generic prompt, you will get generic content. To get something new or unique, you will need to provide specifics and a lot of feedback. Also, you should always check the output for accuracy and bias. And you’ll want to ensure that the text you end up using in your marketing or communications is consistent with your brand voice. But even with those cautions, using AI is an incredibly useful tool for streamlining your content creation so that you can spend more time focusing on other aspects of your business.
Ah yes, social media. Every small business owner’s favorite activity. I know so many entrepreneurs go back and forth about when and how to use social media, and it’s so easy to let it fall by the wayside because it seems like the most time-consuming and the least fruitful part of your marketing strategy. But you and I both know it’s so important when it comes to maintaining relationships with your customers and reaching new audiences.
But guess what? AI can help with social media in SO many ways – beyond just writing your captions! It can write video scripts, create a content calendar to help you plan out your posts, and generate prompts to use in other tools like Dall-E to create images that you can post! The possibilities are endless, and it can absolutely take the edge off of social media marketing.
It’s actually kind of crazy what AI is capable of. Market research is another one of those tedious, time-consuming tasks that is incredibly necessary, but probably not why you started your small business. Insert AI: you can ask for insights on your target demographic, gather data on your competitors, and analyze market trends. You can even get feedback from your customers, either by having AI create prompts for customer surveys or by inputting customer conversations to analyze trends. AI can detect patterns and help you figure out what changes to prioritize as your business evolves. This is probably one of my favorite uses, because AI can gather information so much faster than I can on my own!
One note on this: ChatGPT was trained on data created prior to 2021. So it does not have access to the latest research and news. Make sure to take all research with a grain of salt and fact check everything before using it!
Did you know you can integrate ChatGPT into your customer service platform as a chatbot? I know sometimes we get annoyed with chatbots as consumers, but they definitely provide information much faster than waiting for a customer service rep – especially if your small business “rep” is you! And think about this – AI can speak every language. Can you? So if you have customers who speak a different language, AI can provide the support you need in the language they can understand. It’s so simple, but it has the potential to expand the reach of your business.
This is just the tip of the iceberg! There are countless other ways to integrate AI features into your business. There’s no doubt in my mind that AI is here to stay and is reshaping what it looks like to run a small business. I, for one, am so excited to see what you can accomplish!
Are you using AI tools in your business? Tell me your thoughts!
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With over 15 years of experience, I've worked with countless small businesses just like yours. I can provide you with the tools and resources that will help make marketing less overwhelming.