The success of any digital strategy largely involves staying on top of the latest marketing and technology trends. These days, it may feel impossible because everything seems to evolve very quickly.

A part of our mission is to set small businesses up with the online tools they need to compete with large corporations – and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important part of that. 

While AI is a hot topic, its development and operation come at a substantial cost. However, readily available, free options like Chat GPT exist for anyone to use. You, as a small business owner, don’t have to build custom processing software to utilize AI thanks to many existing online solutions.

While we are excited for what the future brings, as AI will save us a LOT of time in certain ways, we fear copyright issues and misuse.

While AI can do many things, at the moment, there are limitations and things to watch out for. You have to know how to use it and how to teach it what you are looking for.

But, isn’t AI taking over marketing?

To address the elephant in the room: No, we are not worried about AI taking our jobs. Yet. 

An AI system that knows how to create, publish, and manage your entire digital presence (like we do) will likely be faulty and very expensive for the average small business for years to come.

There are free ways to use AI to your advantage while you market your small business online.

First, let’s dive into where the technology is at the moment, and what to look out for:

A Brief Introduction to (and History of) Artificial Intelligence

In layman's terms, AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems and machines.

One of the most common uses for AI is voice recognition, used by Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. Both systems can listen to your voice and use a simulation of human intelligence processes to respond to what you’re saying.

OpenAI is a company that was the first to market with a large language model called ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT is essentially a program that can predict the next word in a sequence. It is trained on a large collection of books, website pages, and articles. 

Much like Siri and a simple Google Search, ChatGPT gives you an answer to your questions.

AI Language Models

Instead of returning a list of web pages that may answer your questions, ChatGPT can generate a logical and specific answer to your query. 

Unlike a Google Search, ChatGPT doesn’t tell you where it got its information from, and you won’t have easy access to further reading on the internet. Instead, you can continue asking questions or simply say “Tell me more” until you find the information that you are looking for on a topic. 

Google Search makes it easier for you to do your homework, while ChatGPT does your homework for you. It can complete math equations, solve problems, analyze graphs and charts… It can translate, edit, rewrite, summarize, or even lengthen articles, essays, emails, website pages, and documents.

 Here are some examples of the things that ChatGPT can do for everyday life:

• You can tell it ingredients that you have in your fridge, and it will give you a recipe using the ingredients you have.

• Language Translation

• Writing/proofreading/editing

• You can even have a conversation or debate with ChatGPT

AI is making daily life better for many people around the globe, especially for those who cannot see. Our favorite use of AI (so far) is an app that uses a camera on a phone to verbally describe what is in view to help the visually impaired.

Text-to-image

Now, OpenAI has a text-to-image technology called DALL·E, which can create realistic photos, artwork, and images. Sometimes it is very easy to spot an artificially generated image, other times there are no obvious clues.

There are some bugs to work out, but this is the worst that this technology will ever be. 

Text-to-Video

The latest development from OpenAI is a program called Sora which can generate video from a text prompt.

These videos can be extremely convincing to anyone unfamiliar with this technology.

This is where AI technology has the potential to disrupt major industries like animation and video production. 

Videos that used to take hundreds of man-hours and huge budgets will be created in a few seconds for a tiny fraction of the cost.

It sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it may be.

Technology is developing faster than rules and regulations can. So far, AI is not regulated, but one of our favorite comedians, Sarah Silverman, and many other writers have sued OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, for essentially stealing their material.

At this point, AI may seem scary and dangerous. Not in the Terminator sense, but more likely it will be used to spread disinformation through articles, images, audio, and videos that are completely fabricated.

It has already been used to prevent voters from going to the polls in the 2024 New Hampshire Democratic Primary. A political consultant for Dean Phillips, a democratic candidate running against Joe Biden, sent a robocall to 20,000 primary voters urging them to stay home for the primary to “save your vote for the November election.” The robocall was created using AI generative software that is free to the public.

Thankfully, large corporations like Meta and Microsoft, are pledging to prevent their AI technology from being used for election interference. 

If you are ever wondering if the content you are reading has been generated by AI, this AI Content Checker will let you know with impressive accuracy.

One of the Biggest Downsides of AI: No Personal Experiences

AI typically spits out information in the form of facts, processes, and opinions, but never includes personal experiences. 

You know, the other day, Carson and I …HAHA you thought I was going to throw in a personal experience. That was just a plug to ensure you know a real human (me, Elle) wrote this paragraph at 8:59 pm on Tuesday, February 27th. 

All jokes aside, be aware of this. You won’t want to copy and paste an AI-written article for your blog, because, even if you ask the AI to load it with SEO strategies, the blog won’t have a real human’s perspective included in it.

ALWAYS go through and edit everything AI creates for you. 

Try to reword it, and make sure it reads well. We make it a practice to read aloud everything we plan to publish online before sharing it. No matter how much I edit, I always hear more opportunities for improvement when I read it out loud. 

Is AI Reliable?

Our response to that is - is a Google search reliable? Not really… Google relies on the internet for its information. It also pairs you with results that Google’s algorithm thinks you will like, results that others have clicked on and looked at for the longest, etc.

Similar to Google Search, AI scans its training data to determine what “it thinks” is the best answer to your questions. By “it thinks,” we mean, depending on the software you’re using, AI has an algorithm and data it depends on, when it decides how to respond to your prompt. 

In fact, Google purchased data from Reddit to train their AI to be as helpful as many find Reddit to be. Now, sometimes Google’s AI tells people to kick rocks or eat dirt because Google’s AI took Reddit’s jokes too seriously. Google has been working to update its AI as the hilarious (and dangerous) responses went viral.

We strongly advise everyone to be skeptical of what they read on the internet, which goes for AI-generated content, too.

You can ask AI to write an article, and 95% of it may be written well. The other 5% may be incorrect, which discredits your article. 

For example, the American Bar Association has said that ChatGPT was able to pass the Bar Exam in the 90th percentile. But, don’t go running to ChatGPT to be your lawyer yet, because one lawyer was fined $5,000 for citing bogus cases and judgments fabricated by ChatGPT.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still use AI to create a reliable brand. A trustworthy brand starts with reliable marketers. Always do your research, and cite your references every time you talk about them. 

So, if we don’t trust the facts that AI generates, then what is it good for?

Ways to Use AI for Your Small Business Marketing Plan

Let us be the ones to tell you that, AI isn’t expensive. It’s free from many software companies:

The best way to get better at using AI is by using them. Here are some tips to get the most out of text-based AI generative systems:

• Start by giving the software information about your business, what you offer, and how you want your brand to sound: professional, knowledgeable, uplifting, informative, for example

• Specify what content will be used for a blog post, email copy, Instagram caption, etc.

• Specify the length: Generative AI is very good at following character and word counts

• Rewrite and revise: As we have discussed, AI systems are not perfect and sometimes they are downright cheesy. Always read through the AI output to determine if it is something that fits your brand. You can rewrite it yourself (recommended) or ask the AI to create a new output without the unlikable characteristics

• Add your damn personality: AI will not add personal or emotional anecdotes which can leave many artificially written texts dry and lifeless

If you have a paid Canva subscription, then you already have access to it. 

How to use AI for free

Google’s AI- Gemini, ChatGPT, and Microsoft- Co-Pilot have paid and free versions of AI chatbots. Meta has also released a free AI chatbot accessible through Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

One of our favorite AI tools is made by Canva (we pay $12.99/month and use Canva daily for design and photo editing). You can use its AI features to rewrite a blurb of text to fit a specific “brand voice.” It can also be used to edit, create, or expand photos and videos.

Set up your brand voice on the branding page, then type something into a design. Click “rewrite using AI” and watch Canva AI work its magic. If it doesn’t sound right, update your brand voice until it spits out exactly what you were hoping for.

What to use AI for

The limit does not exist! You can use AI for just about anything you can think of.

Since AI isn’t entirely reliable, here are a few of our favorite ways to use it:

OUTLINES

If you are new to a topic, AI is a great place to turn, as it will quickly and thoroughly summarize almost anything you can think of. It can point you in the right direction, and give you an idea of what you need to look into more.

INSPIRATION

We dare you to upload a photo in ChatGPT and ask it for a good Instagram caption with hashtags. You may not love what you see, but it can inspire you when you get stuck.

To us, we lean on AI as if it’s the person sitting next to us in class. They may know what they’re talking about, but they also may be wrong. We’ll take their advice and make our own decisions. 

PHOTO AND VIDEO EDITING

Important note: we did not say photo and video creation.

AI provides fantastic photo and video editing tools that can take your basic, average-ass photo and turn it into something you are proud of. 

With AI, you can remove the embarrassing background, add a cartoon effect, change the color of your scarf, or make whatever changes you can think of. The key to effective photo editing with AI is being able to describe the edit you are looking for. 

There is a big buzz going around about ChatGPT’s AI-generated videos. It is tricking people with mostly correct-looking videos, that often look more real (and higher quality) than anything we can capture on a video camera. Sometimes, people have three hands, or a birthday candle has two flames.

Using AI for video creation is not reliable yet, but it could be a great source for stock footage. 

CODING ASSISTANCE

If you need help writing code, in some instances, AI can be a huge help.

For example, if you are adding custom CSS to improve the visual appeal of your website, and it isn’t working, you can ask a language model of AI to de-bug and correct the code for you.

If you’re new to coding and don’t know where to start, AI can answer most of your questions about it.

You can ask an AI chatbot to create new coding for you to improve the functionality of your website. We have experimented with this and found that the code wasn’t perfectly lined up with the settings of our website, so some of our coding knowledge was required to make it function properly.

Use AI to your advantage

AI is an exciting technology that has the potential to disrupt many industries while improving productivity across the board.

Large corporations are using AI to create marketing campaigns and seeing major success. There is no reason why your small business has to fall behind in terms of technology.

Use AI to bring out the best version of your message and save you time, but remember to be cautious and infuse your personality to achieve the best results.

Disclaimer: We did not use AI to write this blog post. Sometimes the best writing comes from real human experience and research. We did, however, use AI to create the featured image for this post (see it again below). Thanks for reading!