AI for Small Business: 9 Unexpected Ways It Can Save You Time and Sanity

AI might sound like something only big companies use, but it’s becoming a powerful (and surprisingly simple) tool for small business owners too. In this episode, I’m sharing nine unexpected ways you can use AI to make your daily workload lighter and more manageable, without needing to be a tech expert or change everything about how you work.

Think of this episode as your starting point for using AI in real, everyday tasks you probably didn’t even know it could help with. If you’ve been curious about AI but unsure where to begin, this conversation will show you that it’s more accessible and useful, than you might think.

Chapters

• 1:22 Busting AI Myths
• 2:00 Dive into 9 Ways to Use AI
• 9:00 Where and How to Start
• 9:47 Final Thoughts + Free Resource

Transcript

Janice Hostager: 0:04

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing, hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of my Weekly Marketing. I am Janice Hostager, your marketing bestie and fractional CMO, here to simplify the chaos that is small business life. So today we're going to talk about something you might be avoiding, or maybe not. Maybe you've embraced it, and that is AI. But don't worry, we're not talking about becoming a tech guru or writing in code. I'm just going to walk you through nine surprising ways that you can start using AI right now to work smarter, not harder, especially if you're running a one-woman show or feeling stretched thin these days, and if you feel like you could use a little help with your AI adventures, I have a free list of Chat GPT prompts that'll help you get the most out of using that platform or other AI platforms. So stay tuned and I'll tell you how to get it at the end of the episode.

Janice Hostager: 1:22

So first up, let's bust some myths. Here's the thing AI doesn't have to be overwhelming or expensive or creepy, which I know it kind of can be sometimes. I firmly believe that AI will never completely replace the human voice. Only you can add stories and real world experiences that you've encountered. You're not replacing yourself. You're just outsourcing to an invisible intern who works fast, doesn't take bathroom breaks and doesn't skip a deadline. This is not about doing less. It's about doing what only you can do and handing off the rest. So here we go. Here are nine ways that AI can help you right now. So here we go. Here are nine ways that AI can help you right now.

Janice Hostager: 2:13

Ai can turn your voice into content. Tools like Otter AI or Descript will transcribe your thoughts into editable text, which is perfect for podcasting, brainstorming, writing blog posts while you're folding laundry or while you're going for a walk. You just need to talk and AI will write. When I lived in Wisconsin and I had to take twice weekly drives back and forth to Minnesota to help care for a sick parent, I would write full blog posts by voice using Otter while I drove. It worked then and is so much better now. If you're crunched for time or, like me, just can't stand wasting time in a car I know I'm a little type A this is a super helpful thing.

Janice Hostager: 2:50

Number two, AI can summarize long content into short nuggets of social media goodness. That blog post you just wrote? AI can turn it into a LinkedIn post, Instagram caption, emails and scripts. For years, we've been telling clients to repurpose content. AI makes that so simple. Start with your long-form content and let AI create the rest. It's the ultimate repurposing machine. You can try out ChatGPT, Jasper or Copyai and see which one you like the best.

Janice Hostager: 3:26

Number three, AI can auto-tag and sort emails. If your inbox is the digital equivalent of your junk drawer, hand raised here, AI can help. Although many experts recommend turning your inbox over to a virtual assistant, my experience doing that was a little nerve-wracking, so I was glad when AI came forward to do that task. Tools like Superhuman, Apple Intelligence or Gmail Smart Labels can prioritize messages, summarize emails and even suggest replies based on your writing style. Cool, right? I've been using Apple Intelligence for a bit to categorize email and although it works, I feel like I always need to check the various tabs to make sure nothing is misfiled. But once I decide if I can trust it, I think it will be a game changer for me.

Janice Hostager: 4:17

Number four, AI can spot trends that you can't readily see, AI can analyze your customer behavior, website analytics or sales data and pull out insights like what time of day people buy, what products are commonly purchased together. It can alert you to anomalies in web traffic or on certain pages of your site, and you can set up custom insights based on your own particular business and needs. Most of us, me included, don't look at our analytics nearly enough, because it's just a bunch of charts and numbers. It doesn't mean anything unless you can interpret the data. That's what AI can do for you. That will be a game changer for your business. If you use Google Analytics, you'll have to turn on Analytics Insights for it to function. Just Google Analytics Insights, or visit my show notes for the how-to link. Similar functions are also available with Shopify Magic and Notion AI, but I haven't tried those out, so if you do, let me know how they work.

Janice Hostager: 5:22

Number five, AI can write emails. Confession time. I have used ChatGPT for emails for months. AI can help you generate subject lines, personalize the follow-ups or write a launch sequence so much faster than you can do it yourself. However and this is a big however I always just use it as a starting point. People will always connect with your personal stories and real-life examples better than AI can, but AI does make the process much faster and much easier. Here's a tip for ChatGPT users. If you go into your settings and click customize, you can give it the backstory about you, your ideal customer, your brand voice and other things about your business, so it will sound more like you and understand your business for its replies. That way, you don't have to give it new information every time you ask it a question. That makes working with it so much easier and it'll be a definite game changer if you haven't done that already.

Janice Hostager: 6:23

Number six, AI can write code for your website. If you go to my website, you'll see that I have added three new calculators that will help you determine your marketing budget, customer acquisition costs and lifetime customer value. These are important numbers in any business, for sure. So what I did to create those is that I typed what I wanted the calculator to do. Then I told ChatGPT that I wanted to create it in HTML for my WordPress site and, presto, it came up with code, although I had to do a little tweaking, and I just dropped the code right into my webpage, wrote some instructions and published it. I had each of those done in less than 30 minutes. Cool, right?

Janice Hostager: 7:09

Number seven, AI can design like a pro, even if you can't draw a stick figure. Back when I had a design agency, I would have to work four hours in Photoshop to remove things from client photos like hair from eyes or a random person from a brand shot. AI has made it possible to do that with the click of a mouse. And it's not just in Photoshop. AI is inside Canva and Adobe Express too, and it can remove backgrounds, resize for different platforms, remove unwanted parts of a design. It can even design an image that you want for a blog post, your website or for other uses. It can also suggest layouts and font pairings. Pretty cool, right? Wish I would have had that years ago when I had my agency.

Janice Hostager: 7:56

All right, number eight. AI can answer FAQs automatically without being glued to your DMs. So use AI-powered chat box like ManyChat or Intercom to answer common questions on social media. It can guide, leads to your offers or even schedule discovery calls. This is a game changer on apps like Instagram, because you can have it send messages automatically to their DMs without lifting a finger. I haven't really scratched the surface yet with tools like ManyChat, but I have used it a little and I know it has amazing potential, so I'm really excited about it. I hope you are too.

Janice Hostager: 8:33

And last number nine, AI can ethically spy on your market. Use AI tools like SparkToro or ChatGPT to research your audience. You can find out what people are asking on Reddit. What hashtags are your ideal customers using? What are competitors doing or not doing that you could do better. This information is golden for messaging, positioning and social media content.

Janice Hostager: 9:00

So, wondering where to start If you're feeling a little like whoa, that's a lot of information. I'm right there with you. So here's a three-step action plan. Number one, pick one task you hate doing each week. Number two, Google the words AI tool for that task. And number three, test it out.

Janice Hostager: 9:20

on one thing. Don't go to a full robot army just yet. Just dip a toe into the AI lake and see if it helps you out. Remember you don't need to automate everything, but if AI can give you back two to three hours a week, wouldn't you say that's a gift? You can use it to create or connect or even take a nap. Right, it's all time that we can get back, and that's a rare thing in our world right now.

Janice Hostager: 9:47

All right, friends, that's a wrap on your not so scary guide to AI. If you found this helpful, send it to your small business bestie, who's drowning in admin work and can use a techie sidekick. And if you want more help with AI, download my free ChatGPT Starter Kit, which literally has more than 100 ChatGPT prompts that will make your marketing so much easier. You can find that at janicehostagercom. Forward slash chat GPT, and you can find the links to all the resources and anything I talked about in today's episode in my show notes at myweeklymarketingcom. Forward slash 107. As always, thanks so much for joining me today. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.