How small businesses can use AI to work smarter

Save hours every day!

Running a small business often means wearing a lot of hats: sales, admin, marketing, customer service, invoicing, you name it. It’s easy to feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

That’s where AI can make a real difference.

We started using ChatGPT back in December 2022, after discovering it on TikTok, and it’s completely changed the way we work. No more staring at a blank screen or blank piece of paper, it’s given us ideas, taken the pressure off and helped us get more done, faster. 

A question I often get asked is: “How can we actually use AI in our business?” So I though I share with you some practical ways you can start using AI today to save hours, just like we do. And yes, I did use ChatGPT to help me writing this post.

1. Writing emails and customer replies

 Struggle with writing replies or follow-ups? AI can help you:

• Draft responses to common questions
  
• Write polite reminders or chasers.
  
• Always, check and make it your own before you hit send
  

Example: Use ChatGPT to write a professional response to a tricky customer question, then make it your own. Don’t just copy and paste. You have your own style.

2. Creating social media content

No need to think too long about what to post. AI can help with:

• Writing interesting posts for Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn
  
• Suggesting video ideas and scripts
  
• Reworking old content into something fresh
  

Example: Ask Gemini: “Write 4 Instagram posts for a rural B&B targeting families over the Easter holidays.”

3. Planning campaigns and promotions

 Use AI to brainstorm and structure campaigns:

• Social media marketing campaigns
  
• Seasonal promotion ideas
  
• Content plans and blog post ideas
  

4. Summarising documents or notes

Got a long email, PDF, or meeting notes to go through? These tools can summarise it all in seconds.

Example: Need to get through a long PDF? Upload it to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Copilot and get a clear summary in seconds. Just double-check you’re not sharing anything personal or commercially sensitive.

5. Recording and summarising your meetings

Tools: Fireflies, CoPilot, Gemini, NotebookLM, Otter.ai, ChatGPT
Stop wasting time rewriting meeting notes or trying to remember who said what. AI tools can record, transcribe, and summarise meetings so you stay focused on the conversation.

• Use Fireflies, Otter.ai, Copilot or Zoom’s transcription to automatically record and transcribe your meetings (acknowledge that you are recording the meeting)
  
• Drop the transcript into Claude or ChatGPT to pull out action points and decisions. Often these tools already summarise it with action points and next steps anyway.
  

6. Creating forms, surveys, and policies

Whether you need a basic GDPR policy or a customer feedback form, AI can write the first draft for you.

Example: “Write a privacy policy for a self-catering business in Scotland that takes online bookings.”

There’s so much more AI can do, but hopefully these ideas give you a good starting point. I’ll keep adding to this list over time,

In the meantime feel free to share in the comments how you’re using AI in your own business!