AI for Small Business Communications

Every part of a small business needs good communications, and no department needs to build more efficient communications than marketing. Training and team communications are the same way. So, how can AI help with these two areas of your business?

We’re covering it all for you in this two-part blog series: Tools, best practices, and prompt examples.

Read “Three Useful AI Prompts for Small Businesses – Part 1” of the series on communications for recurring customers here.

Content Creation for Blog and Social Media

Businesses that serve other businesses, such as accounting firms, law firms, and business brokers, to name just a few, commonly host webinars for clients about highly relevant topics. Did you know you can quickly record, transcribe, and break them down into blog content with AI?

Again, you will not get finished products from these AI tools; you want to eliminate the time and work to transcribe, re-listen, and draft the rough versions of blog posts. They will read as if an intern wrote them, but you’re getting there with less work or expense than an agency writer.

Here are the tools that some businesses use for this process:

Sign up for otter.ai to record and transcribe your webinars or live events.

Then, after the webinar, go to otter.ai’s transcription and search for exclamatory or descriptive words, such as: Interesting, wow, great, remember, best practice, note, or new.

Work your way through each search for those words, deciding if the point/s made around those words are worthy of a blog post.

Copy-paste those key points into a separate document and organize by topic. (ChatGPT can also do this if you ask it to.)

Then, enter a prompt into a tool like ChatGPT that provides specific direction about your business, the content’s purpose, and its tone. Also, include what the finished product should be (aka a blog of 500 words) and the key topics and elements to include.

Here’s an example generated by ChatGPT and edited by a human:

Using these points from our recent webinar on ‘Estate Planning for Growing Families,’ create a 500-word blog post that explains the importance of early estate planning, the key documents families should consider (such as wills, trusts, and powers of attorney), and common mistakes to avoid. Write in an informative and approachable tone, making the content accessible for individuals new to estate planning. Include an introductory paragraph on the benefits of estate planning for securing a family’s financial future based on the webinar’s description in the source material. Also, use statements from our attorneys, which are set off by quotation marks, in the blog. Here is the source material:

Hit enter if using ChatGPT and then copy-paste in the webinar description, key points, and quotes – be sure to label so the AI knows which content to use to fulfill your instructions.

ChatGPT will create a 500-word output you will want to fact-check, proofread, and edit before publishing. You can even ask ChatGPT to “redraft this blog but make the language more familiar in tone.” Commonly, people using AI for drafting will ask to tell it to use fewer compound sentences or fewer comma series.

Tracking Takeaways from Meetings

Businesses choosing ChatGPT and Otter.ai spend about $20 monthly on each. Getting the most out of these tools can go a long way in justifying their cost. Otter.ai, for example, can be highly beneficial for capturing meeting takeaways or for training new employees – no prompts required.

Often, interns, entry-level hirers, and people in a new job will engage their manager – usually the owner in the small business world – with many questions. You’ll meet with them and get them set, and then their takeaways are dependent on their memory and the notes they took.

Otter.ai provides a shareable link for each meeting. What if you archived transcripts of those meetings, as recorded by otter.ai, and saved them to a shared document in Google Drive or SharePoint? The employee can quickly go in and “Control F” search on a Windows computer for the keyword and relisten to their question and your answer. No need to have that meeting again!

Otter.ai will also create draft summaries of meetings. What if you copy-pasted them into a document in Google Drive or SharePoint and then edited them for correctness? Your team would then have their to-dos and search transcript to check their understanding without rehashing your conversation. Another way to avoid wasted time!

Take the first step into using AI for your small business using these use cases and prompts. Or, start with a similar and straightforward communication task. Just dip your toes in—you might be surprised at how easy and helpful AI can be!