Ever since the introduction of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a hot topic, popping up daily on social media and has been the subject of numerous articles. There are those who support it, those who doubt it, and those who oppose it. However, very little attention has been paid to how small businesses can use this new technology. Amid all the hype, the question arises whether there are AI applications that can really make life easier for small businesses. This is the question I’d to answer in this article. I will show you some digital tools that we have tried at Minup and that could help you too.
What is AI?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s first clarify what AI is. It’s a technology used by computers and programs to behave and think intelligently like humans. It is important to note that although AI can perform a wide range of tasks, human thinking, emotions and creativity are still irreplaceable.
In practice it means that we give a program different pieces of information, which it tries to understand and analyse, so that it can react to them and perform the tasks it is asked to do. It learns as it goes along, so that it can produce better and more accurate results later. For example, for writing this blog article I used artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT. I wrote down approximately what I wanted to write about, who the article is for and what the intentions are. I was given an outline and I was able to use some of it. For me, writing is still a creative thing, with my own tone and message, so I just took a few phrases and sentences, so that I wouldn’t have to spend hours on an introduction, for example. But now, let’s get down to business, let’s take a look at some useful apps you can use.
ChatGPT
Let’s start with the most famous program that has brought AI into the mainstream. Developed by the OpenAI research lab, ChatGPT is essentially an AI-based chatbot that lets you chat and ask questions, just like you would text a friend on Messenger. The difference is that ChatGPT has a wealth of information, so it’s likely to be able to answer your questions on any topic and even write complete texts if it needs to. Plus, ChatGPT can also speak other languages, so you don’t have to worry about language barriers.
In my opinion, for small businesses, ChatGPT is most useful for creating marketing content, such as social media posts, blog articles or email campaigns. If you haven’t had enough time or felt that marketing wasn’t your strong suit, ChatGPT now makes it easy to get started. All you need to do is visit the ChatGPT website, sign up and you’re ready to go.
Minup
Minup is the first appointment booking system to integrate ChatGPT. Right now the feature can help you with writing the intro for your booking page. All you need to do is answer a few questions about your business and the AI will write a customized intro for you.
Next up: we would like to apply AI in other areas. For example, to describe services and events, or to create images to make your booking page even more unique.
Pro tip: Treat the AI-generated text as a draft that you can edit to your own taste. You can add to it, take from it, place links, emojis and whatever else you like.
Midjourney
Midjourney is an AI-based image generator that enables you to create custom images by simply entering text commands. For example, you can describe that you want a picture of a person who is writing a blog post about AI, specify the style parameters and voila, the picture is ready (that’s what I did when writing this blog post).
As an entrepreneur, you no longer need to use stock photos or spend hours editing images, or even worry about copyright. Midjourney generates completely unique images for you based on the millions of images it knows.
Midjourney is a bit more complicated than ChatGPT, because there’s no standalone application where you can type in what you want, it works through Discord. Discord is a well known chat application especially in gamer circles. You can write what you want to the Midjourney chatbot and it will send you the requested pictures as a reply. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend their official documentation, which is clear and simple.
Important: the free trial is temporarily unavailable because the system can no longer cope with the large number of users. But it’s not too bad to subscribe, you can create an infinite number of images for only $10 a month.
Elementor
Elementor is a super useful WordPress plugin that allows you to create a website without coding (Minup’s website was also built with Elementor). They have recently introduced AI, making it even easier to build custom websites.
Elementor AI can do lots of things, including generating images, writing text and even translating. Simply click on the “Create with AI” button in any image field, describe your idea, set the style parameters and the AI will offer you a few versions of the image. If you don’t like any of them, you can try again with slightly different text or even customize the image to fit your website perfectly.
For written content, click on the “Write with AI” button, write down the content you need and the AI will create the text, which you can then edit as you wish.
Notion
Notion is essentially a digital notebook where you can write down your to-dos, organize your projects, write a short story or a simple shopping list. It’s not an exaggeration to say you can keep your whole business in order with Notion.
Recently, the Notion team also introduced AI, which can make writing text incredibly easy. Not only can it generate text, but it can also summarize longer content, create to-do lists, shorten, lengthen and anything else you can imagine.
And that’s the end of the list. I hope we could show you some apps you’ll find useful. If you have a favourite AI app that you think should be featured, let us know at [email protected] and we’ll add it to the list 😉