You took the leap of faith and started your own business. Or maybe you’re not quite there yet, but you’re seriously considering starting your own business.
Either way, congratulations!
If you’re still in that honeymoon phase of setting up all the different aspects of your business, such as planning, designing your logo and building your website, you’re in for exciting times, filled with the promise of wealth, freedom, and finally being able to do what you love.
And while you know you’re going to have to work hard to reach those ambitious goals, the work can seem never-ending, and dare I say, a little daunting…
So much to learn. So many new things to get your head around. An almost infinite choice of software platforms to grapple with, in order to automate your work, so you can focus on the important things, like building relationships with your customers and customers-to-be.
So much content to post on social media and your blog, to build an audience that’s wild about your community and your products. So many newsletters to write, product pics to photograph and edit, and social media posts and graphics to craft which will convey your brand and products accurately and impressively to your target audience…
Enter Artificial Intelligence. AI for short.
AI is everywhere. You can’t do a web search without it being mentioned in at least every second article. It pops up in ads and social media shorts. It’s seemingly been added into every content creation or editing platform you can think of, from browsers to writing software, to productivity apps and more.
There are AI-entrepreneurs lurking in every cyber corner flaunting the latest AI platform, course, webinar or ebook, rubbing their hands together gleefully at the thought of the six- or seven-figures they’re going to make training you, and thousands of others, on how to leverage AI for your business.
Whilst teaching AI is their bread and butter, many of them do offer value through providing useful advice and information on AI. Why not try some of them out? You’ve got nothing to lose, especially if their initial offerings are free, and your knowledge and understanding of the essentials of AI and how to use some of the most popular AI content-generation tools like ChatGPT will be fast-tracked.
Why is AI being touted as a revolution in the business world?
AI can be harnessed to streamline tasks and boost efficiency in almost every area of your new business.
From crafting content for social media posts, emails, and blog articles, to refining your knowledge and insights of your customer niche, to automating repetitive or complex tasks, AI can guide and facilitate the process, even doing many of these tasks for you (naturally with your input and oversight).
AI can be used to conduct detailed business research, generate professional proposals and reports, and produce appealing and attention-grabbing images and presentations, giving you a boost whenever you need it.
Utilising AI tools will definitely give you an advantage over your competitors. You can think of AI as a multi-skilled, talented business assistant in the background, which you can access any time of the day or night!
Which are best: general or specialised AI tools?
In my list below, I’ve included 15 mostly specialised AI tools or software which have been designed for specific business productivity or marketing functions.
But I’m not trying to overwhelm you. It’s not always necessary to use a huge range of separate AI tools, because language model AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Google Bard can do many of these specialised tasks.
Most of the specialised AI tools have OpenAI’s (ChatGPT’s) language model or similar under the hood anyway, with the main differences being the user interface which might look and feel different, and narrower functionality. This means there will usually have been some tweaks in their programming so they’re more focused on and suited to the specialised tasks they’re designed for, compared to the generalist AI tools.
Having said that, it’s always worth investigating various options before deciding which ones resonate with you and meet your business needs.
Why these 15 AI tools?
I’ve started with what I believe are the 4 main use cases of AI for new or small businesses:
- Generating new business ideas
- Understanding your customers
- Creating marketing content
- Task automation and data analysis
Within each of those, I’ve collated a list of some free (or initially free) AI tools which I think are worth exploring.
The AI tools mentioned below were included because they appear to do what they say on the tin, seem relevant for new or small businesses, and offer free versions.
Note that although I’ve briefly looked into all the mentioned AI tools, I haven’t tried all of them myself yet, and as I’m not an affiliate for any of these AI tools, my choices weren’t swayed by the promise of commission if you decide to buy their paid packages.
So here goes.
Use case 1: AI tools for generating business ideas
One of the biggest challenges for new entrepreneurs is coming up with an initial business idea, or fine tuning and developing the ideas they have. Here are some free generalist and specialist AI tools that can help with this:
- Google Bard: Google’s own version of ChatGPT which uses the familiar chatbot interface we know from ChatGPT, but is additionally empowered with Google Search for more accurate responses to your queries. For example, you could use Google Bard to generate a list of potential business ideas based on your skills and interests.
- IdeaBuddy.com: IdeaBuddy assists you with developing, researching and launching your business idea, including generating start-up ideas, researching competitors, creating financial plans projections, and providing templates for professional business documents.
- Ideanote.io: IdeaNote’s Idea Generator utilises AI to assist you to expand and fine tune your initial ideas within certain contexts into workable concepts for your business.
- Namelix.com: Namelix uses AI to help you craft a suitable and unique name for your new business.
Use case 2: AI tools for understanding your customers
The key to any business is having detailed insights into your target audience and niches, as well as their problems, needs and wants. There are a number of free AI tools that can help you with this, such as:
- AnswerThePublic.com: A great tool for seeking what customers are searching for in specific niches, dishing up longtail keyword phrases and information relationships so you can fine-tune your understanding of your potential customers and their wants and needs, as well as use these to produce SEO-rich content.
- CrystalKnows.com: CrystalKnows helps you to uncover the personality-based nuances of your colleagues and customers, and to optimise your communication styles in ways that speak directly to them.
- Chat.openAI.com (this is good old ChatGPT): You can write prompts requesting customer niche personas to help you imagine your customer types more easily, assisting you to finetune and focus your marketing. For example, the following prompt, edited with your own business type/specifics, will usually generate at least 5 marketing personas, complete with names, ages, values, interests and pain points: “Suggest some customer personas representing different niches for a new business selling natural homemade beauty products.”
Use case 3: AI tools for creating marketing content
Marketing is essential for any new business, whether that’s via social media, paid ads or traditional media. There are a number of free AI tools that can help you create unique content for your brand, products, social media posts, and ads, such as:
- Canva.com: Canva, initially an image creation platform, has expanded to become a general content creation platform, enabling you to also create documents, videos, social media posts, posters and so on. Canva now offers built-in AI tools including Text to Image AI image creator, Magic Write, and Magic Design. Note that some of the AI capability in Canva may not come with the free package.
- Designs.ai: Designs.ai assists you with sorts of graphic and creative work for your business, like logo design, mock ups, videos and social media images.
- Synthesia.io: Synthesia uses AI to generate marketing videos from your text inputs, saving you tons of money and time by creating professional brand and product videos for your business, complete with realistic and natural-sounding AI presenters and voices.
- Copy.ai: Copy.ai is a specialist AI content generative platform, focused on helping you write both short and long copy, such as adverts, sales pitches, blog posts and landing pages.
- SEO.ai: This platform will uncover keywords for your niche and help you produce optimised content such as website text, articles and blog posts.
Use case 4: AI tools for task automation and data analysis
AI is great at automating some of the boring or essential everyday tasks, such as collecting and categorising your notes, transcribing meetings, and even analysing and providing insights from raw data. Here are some free AI tools which can do this:
- Zapier.com: Zapier is a well known workflow app and platform which can connect and automate apps and platforms to work together, for example, adding customer emails to a database stored elsewhere, or add bookings to a calendar when customers email you. Now integrated with AI, it can suggest and build workflows for you and automate numerous other aspects of your business.
- Slidesgo.com: Create impressive and visually stunning slide presentations with this AI tool, simply by choosing your template and inputting your information.
- PolymerSearch.com: Polymer is a clever AI tool for analysing large data sets, suggesting data insights and building visualisations of these such as graphs and charts, all from your uploaded data such as spreadsheets.
The key is to start small and gradually incorporate AI tools into your daily business activities. Experiment, learn and adapt to find the perfect combination of AI tools that align with your business goals and objectives.
Don’t forget to have fun too, because starting and running a business should be enjoyable, at least some of the time!
I think AI can be a game-changer for solo business owners, helping you save time and energy, reach your personal and business goals more quickly, and make a difference in the world (after all, isn’t that the big ‘why’ for choosing this path?).
This blog post was mostly written by Kathryn (I’m human!), with occasional assistance from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Bard and Writesonic.