3 AI that can help your small business marketing TODAY
Revolutionary AI can help small business marketing – but maybe not in the way that you think. How would we know? Well, we’re a small monthly marketing company that is already using AI for some of our daily tasks. It’s made our lives simpler and our content better. Here’s what you’ll need to understand to harness the power of AI for your small business marketing starting today.
Since ChatGPT’s release on November 30th, 2022, marketers have been going bonkers about the implications when it comes to nearly every facet of their industry. And while WE might be a little freaked out by what that means for copywriters and the like, what’s our disruption is your gain, right? AI isn’t going away, and the folks who adopt it early will reap the biggest benefits, but ARE there ways to use AI right now? You bet your bottom dollar there are! Let’s talk about how AI can help your small business marketing needs TODAY.
Social media scheduling
In a recent article on AdWeek, a prominent social media marketer for the L.A. Lakers said this,
“AI is fundamentally changing the way we interact with the internet and on social media. In the coming years, we’re going to see social following become obsolete. With AI powering what content gets seen, the number of users following a brand or creator will have a fraction of the weight on performance it has had in the past.”
While that might be true in the long-run. There are already great social media AIs that can help you with scheduling AND content production. One of our favorites, MeetEdgar, allows you to import content, choose where you want it to go (LinkedIn, Facebook, Etc) and then will give you several options for posts that may work. While MeetEdgar’s AI might not always come up with the best post copy of all time, they’ll give you four or five versions of a post that you can tweak to get it right where you need it. That’s a huge benefit to your social media person.
Employee Manuals
There are several options for AI workflows, which might help out bigger companies trim down their process, but for a small business? Well, maybe the best use of AI is for brainstorming and shortening development times. Here at Benchmark, one of our staff has been using ChatGPT to help them create an employee manual. We’ve given it our basic ideas for each section and then asked to write it out in-depth.
Using AI this way can be a boon, both for what it does right and what it does wrong. Revising core tenets is easier when you can see how it might logically play out in a manual written by AI.
Be a better writer
While some folks are moving over to AI completely for content generation, let’s be real: the tech still isn’t there. That said, it doesn’t HAVE to be as good as a human – if there’s still a human in charge. ChatGPT can be a great way to brainstorm ideas, then trim and edit them into something more usable. We’ve been experimenting with using ChatGPT for blog outlines, questions for interviews, and some basic brainstorming.
Does that still seem a little too AI driven? How about Grammarly instead?
Grammarly is an existing plugin that started as a blinged-out spell check, but in recent years has evolved into something more. These days Grammarly will scan your text for typos, yes, but it will also challenge you to use better words, shorten sentences, and even analyze your tone. As a copywriter, it’s become an invaluable part of my editing process. I trust Grammarly and the more I use it, the more it seems to understand what I need it to do. It’s a great extra set of eyes on everything we put out there — and could work for your business as well.
Tons more!
Look, this topic isn’t going away. We’re going to be revisiting it every few months to see what new tools are out there to help with your marketing. In fact, we’ll even roll out our own official policy on AI and marketing. The short answer? AI is an amazing tool that has the potential to totally change the way we do things – but marketing needs a human controlling the tool. The expertise, high-level thinking just isn’t there yet for AI. Are you ready to talk AI? Let’s do it.