3 Easy Ways to Use ChatGPT in Your Small Business
If your inbox and social feed looks anything like mine, you’re starting to see titles and headlines roll in about ChatGPT and A.I. technology.
And, if you’re anything like me, it feels overwhelming. We have so much on our plates with running a business, and now there’s this big new technology that we sense we should probably pay attention to. But it’s a huge, daunting topic.
This article is going to be in simple, plain language. If you’ve felt unsure of what all of this technology means - or what it does - you’re in the right spot. By the end of this article, you’ll feel more comfortable thinking about this technology and how to potentially use it.
Let’s start with a basic question that I struggled to understand at first:
What is ChatGPT?
The technical explanation: ChatGPT and other A.I. chatbots are “large language models.”
Here’s the simplest way I understand what large language models do:
When you ask ChatGPT (or Google Bard, or another A.I. chatbot) a question, it combs through the internet to collect the pieces of information that are most relevant to what you asked. It aggregates that information and delivers it to you in a tidy, easy-to-read format.
Imagine researching a topic in a library. You find a bunch of books on your topic, rip out all of the pages with relevant information, and then glue them together, in random order, to make a single document. What ChatGPT does is somewhat similar.
While we think of this technology as being “smart,” it’s important to know that A.I. chatbots are simply using the information we’ve given them access to. They aren’t thinking for themselves or coming up with new ideas.
So with that understanding, let’s talk about your business. This technology can help make your life as a business owner easier. There are also key things to be aware of as you use it.
This article will explore three things:
How to use ChatGPT if you haven’t before
Three easy ways you can use this technology to grow your business and save time
One thing to be super careful about
Ready? Let’s explore the world of ChatGPT.
How to Use ChatGPT: a Quick Tutorial
1. Go to ChatGPT and click into the field at the bottom of the page that says “Send a message.”
2. Type a question or topic into the field and hit “enter.”
Your question or topic can be extremely specific, like “three gluten-free recipes to make in under thirty minutes that use mushrooms, mozzarella, chicken, and basil.”
3. If you realize you want to narrow your topic further, click the “New chat” button in the upper left corner and ask your question in a different way. For example, you might add “in my Instant Pot” to the above query.
That’s it! You’re off and running with ChatGPT. So now let’s talk about your business.
3 Easy Ways to Use ChatGPT in Your Small Business:
1. Brainstorming ways to find new clients + partners
Finding new clients: I asked ChatGPT how to find clients for several different industries that I’ve worked in. Each time, the chatbot delivered a strong list of 10 ways I could develop client-attracting strategies. While each list contained primarily common-sense ideas, there was always at least one method I had not tried.
Tip for using this method: Keep your focus narrow. Rather than trying to implement three things from a list like this, choose the one thing you think will likely pay off with the least amount of effort and start there. You can always come back to the list to try another strategy later.
Finding new partners: if you’re working to grow your email list or your customer base, collaborating with folks in fields adjacent to yours is a great way to expand your audience quickly. For example, if you’re a music teacher, you might consider partnering with a dance or art studio to provide a summer camp. A yoga studio might benefit from offering a workshop with a nutritionist. If you’re a copywriter, partnering with a web designer is an obvious choice.
My brain tends to stall when I’m trying to come up with potential partner ideas, so submitting a query to ChatGPT is a good way to come up with things that hadn’t occurred to me.
2. Generating fresh social media ideas
Social media is a great way to keep your services at the front of your clients’ minds and begin to develop relationships with potential new clients.
If you own a business that builds community - such as a music or fitness studio, a private school, or a sports academy - social media is also a powerful tool to reinforce that sense of community.
But coming up with post ideas that feel fresh and engaging is exhausting work…especially after you’ve been doing it for a while.
Instead of using your creative energy on coming up with ideas for your social media platforms, ChatGPT can generate a list of highly relevant, usable ideas for you.
Try a question like “5 Instagram post ideas for my piano lesson studio” or “10 ways to market my hair salon on TikTok.”
Content generated by ChatGPT may lead you to using plagiarized content, so if it generates a list of post titles and captions, you’ll want to run them through a free plagiarism checker like Quetext to make sure they’re not closely based on someone else’s content.
I ran a list of generated Instagram post ideas for a Montessori school through Quetext and it was plagiarism-free. Great to know! …and always worth checking.
Let’s pause here, mid-list, to discuss something closely related.
Where to Use Caution Around ChatGPT:
1. Writing content
This is a super important question to think through. Here’s why I’m sharing it:
Since ChatGPT is an aggregator of information and not a thinking, discerning brain, it relies on content that already exists on the internet. The information it’s giving you was found someplace online and then formatted in a way that would be usable for you.
There are [at least] three issues with this:
→ A.I. chatbots are prone to sharing misinformation. This makes sense, since it’s simply using content that already exists; there’s no fact-checking involved.
→ A.I. chatbots - and ChatGPT in particular - tend to have a high plagiarism rate. I asked ChatGPT to write 350 words for the homepage of a piano studio website, and then I ran that copy through Quetext. It contained phrases taken from five different music studio and school websites.
→ Because it lacks a human “tone,” copy written by a chatbot tends to be a bit flat. I find myself skimming quickly rather than actually reading because it’s missing a certain spark.
There’s one more huge reason why I won’t use an A.I. chatbot to write my content:
→ Creating content challenges our brains in a unique and powerful way. When we write, we are flexing our creative muscles and keeping our brain active. The more we write, the easier it is. The more we create, the easier it is.
This potentially holds huge consequences for the creative writing skills of future generations, but also for me, right now. I don’t want my creative brain to atrophy. While writing is hard, it’s an invaluable human skill and one worth keeping.
(this last concern specifically, and my intro to the powers and pitfalls of A.I. chatbots in general, are thanks to Kate Scott. Kate is a Squarespace expert and teacher who has done extensive learning and research about A.I. technology this spring and has generously shared training and resources with our community over the past several months.)
Let’s move on to the third way to use ChatGPT to grow your business. This one is a big time-saver:
3. Writing content outlines
This is quite different from writing actual content - and can save a ton of time in the writing process without putting you at risk of plagiarizing content belonging to other folks.
Whether you write blog posts, newsletters, emails, guides, or another content format, a major part of the challenge is getting started. A.I. chatbots can create that starting framework for you.
I asked ChatGPT to create five bullet points about how to stretch without risking injury, and it gave me five solid points. They were more fleshed-out than I was looking for, but each bullet point started with a couple of summary words that felt incredibly helpful. If I was going to write a piece of content about injury-free stretching, I’d take the summary words from the bullet points and write my own content for each one.
If you’re feeling uninspired or stuck, this can be a powerful way to get your creative juices flowing. It can also save you a lot of time spent coming up with your own outline. There are times when a starting place is tremendously helpful.
What’s your favorite idea for using an A.I. chatbot in your business? Have you tried out ChatGPT yet? What did you think about it?
I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas, and hear what questions you have after reading this.
Did I use ChatGPT to assist me with writing this article?
Nope. I’ve spent some time exploring and playing with ChatGPT as mentioned in this article, but it’s important to me that my voice remains unique and recognizable in all of the content I create. I may use it to help create outlines if I’m feeling stuck, but for right now I’m going to try to stay with my current writing process.
Fun fact, though: Jeremy has used ChatGPT extensively to research cars here in Portugal as we get ready to buy one this summer, and it’s saved him hours of deep-diving. It’s allowed him to compare specific features and narrow his search much more efficiently than he would’ve been able to do a few years ago.
We both look forward to seeing how this technology grows to support us in our daily lives - and the [hopefully thoughtful] conversation it sparks.
