How Small Business Owners Should Get Started With AI (Artificial Intelligence)?

Are you as a small business owner looking to see how you should get started with AI? You need to start small and work up to real integration with your business processes. The major issue with AI is something called hallucinations — the situation where AI makes up content instead of returning “real” data. Here is an article by IBM that goes into what is in detail.

To start with, you should use AI as your personal virtual assistant. I recommend you use it to “answer questions/lookup content” and include the source of the content. For example, “How should I care for orchids….include source list?” This allows you to review the content sources to make sure it is not something like Onion.com or something that is fake!

Next, you should move to having it help you create content. For example, as a residential realtor, you need to write property descriptions. I can use something like ChatGPT to create this content as a rough draft that I can then polish up before publishing. In the AI, I would ask something like “Write a property description of approximately 350 words using Tom Perry tone for XYZ address. Please include property features (copy/paste list of features).” It will use various public databases and your personalized content to write a description that fits those requirements. Another example…..as a small business owner, if I have some artwork or logo that somebody has created for me, I can upload it into an AI and ask, “What are the CMYK, RGB, HEX, or PMS colors in this artwork file?” An AI will review the artwork and give you the specific colors used. This allows you to create a cohesive branding when doing things like making letterhead, creating a presentation, designing social media posts, etc…..

Now you are ready to start looking at a more integrated or complex usage of AI. This is where you need to start working with an IT professional that specializes in AI. For example, check in with Mike Cruz @ House Reno Profits! He has an AI virtual assistant tool that can be uploaded with your specific company information. We call this “training an AI”. Now this AI can reduce your human employee time spent to answer phone calls by screening out the spam, answering the general questions directly, and redirecting the calls based on content to the specific employee responsible for those types of calls (sales, account questions, product questions, etc…).

Give me a call if you want some help getting starting on your AI journey, or need some help finding the correct AI professional for the specific need you want solved. Tasks that are repeatable are prime candidates for AI. Some examples would be various invoicing/billing tasks, answering phones, responding to social media, responding to some website queries, etc….

Digital Marketing for Small Business Owners

Digital marketing has grown into a complete monster of opportunities, but if you don’t use it and use it well, you are simply not “heard” in today’s marketplace because of how much business leads has moved to the digital realm! Almost all of your potential clients are using social media and other digital resources. If your business is not visible in these platforms, you are simply not going to be seen by potential new clients.

Let’s first understand a little but about digital marketing. Digital marketing is the outreach we do using various digital tools, applications, platforms, etc…. For a more complete explanation, check out this breakdown from the American Marketing Association. To break it down into tools and/or categories most of us recognizes.

  • Social Media — Facebook, Nextdoor, Linked In, Instagram, etc…. Emo @ Street Team has an app that small business owners can set up to greatly expand their exposure on Social Media by leveraging their employees for very minimal costs!
  • Search Engines — SEO (search engine optimization) is where an expert (like Mike @ House Reno Profits) takes specific steps to position your company near the top of the results for the major search engines like Google….when related to topics like your company identity, your company product/services, and geographical location.
  • Email — Email marketing campaigns are really starting to either replaced or be coordinated with a traditional snail mail post card or flyer campaign. Alisa Cook @ Ally Market Systems knows how to make an email campaign that combines with LinkedIn that is painless and results in “real leads”.
  • Internet — The ability to host, post, search, etc… for information is almost limitless. This can be both a curse and a benefit. Curse if the information is slanderous, inaccurate, or bad and benefit for reaching potential clients you would otherwise miss, providing understanding without tying up your personal time, and really helping a client understand your product and/or services.
  • AI (Artificial Intelligence) — this is the latest to be added to your digital marketing tools or platforms. If you understand AI, it can be leverage to automate many of the tasks involved in your business processes including marketing, speed up but not replace the creative process for new marketing content, and provide summary or detailed research quickly.

An IT professional that understands digital marketing can help you navigate the best results with the most effective usage of your resources. For example, almost any business should start with a website. As a small business owner, you might even be designing the site yourself using something like GoDaddy. If you coordinate with an IT professional that understands marketing, they can help make sure the infrastructure of your website is set up to be easily found by various search engines, your website includes a “landing page” that an email campaign uses to capture new clients, and integrates with social media profiles to have a consistent unified branding presence across multiple platforms!

Give me a call/text/email to get started optimizing your IT resources and knowing when to call in a specific specialist as your needs grow.

Website Design — What Every Small Business Owner Should Know!

Are you a small business owner or person trying to do their own website….or hire someone but don’t really understand what they are asking you and/or what is involved? Let me walk you through the basics and what you should know as you set up, update, or maintain your website.

First, some basic knowledge. Your website most likely is set up with two main components.

  • The domain — this is the URL and you own it/lease it. Nobody else can have exactly the same address as you. In fact, it is really a good idea to grab more than just the one you want to use (Ex: yourdomain.com, yourdomain.net, etc…). You should grab very similar ones OR ones you don’t want people to use (Ex: yourdomainisstupid.com).
  • Web hosting and design services — this is your website design and the service responsible for having it loaded on a static internet connection (i.e., not a machine at your home connected to the internet via typical Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol — DCHP — residential service).

I HIGHLY recommend you have your domain and web hosting/design services from the same provider. It will help make sure you don’t have one expire and not realize it. If you own more than one domain, you only need to have your website hosted on the preferred address. You can then have all the other similar addresses automatically forwarded to your website, so if someone types in the wrong stuff (i.e., does .net instead of .com….they still end up at the correct place)!

Now you need to ask yourself some questions so you understand what your website is supposed to do, how it will support/grow your business, what features are nice vs. must haves, etc…

  • The MOST IMPORTANT question to ask is how will people be accessing your website. When a website is designed, we build it for a particular environment (desktop/computer viewing or tablet/cell phone viewing). At the same time, most website design software will automatically make a similar or nearly the same format that is supposed to be optimized for the other format. The big differences are landscape for computers and portrait for phone. The other difference is processing power. A very complex video/graphic intense website is NOT going to show well on most cell phones….especially if they have limited bandwidth cellular connectivity. While you want it to function in both environments, it should be “designed” for the environment your clients/the typical person on the street will use when accessing your website. The ensures it looks and functions exactly how you want, and the “close” approximation is the environment not used as much! Almost all website designers simply build it for a computer, even though most of us have primary usage by cell phone.
  • Now the next question is purpose. Why do you have a website? What are you hoping to accomplish with your website? Is it to educate the average person on the street about your products/services, or is it for your clients to review additional information so you can hopefully add additional services/products they didn’t even think about before.
    • Now that you understand the purpose, you can start considering must have features!
      • Do you want a real-time calendar/scheduler on the website, so a client can “book” directly to your schedule?
      • Do you want a form to capture information from a client so you can respond with customized and directly applicable content during your very first conversation?
      • Does your industry have some security consideration beyond the standard IT stuff that you must consider (Ex: HIPAA for medical, VPN or secured communications for financial transactions/privacy requirements, etc….)
  • What content do you already have?
    • Do you videos you need to load?
    • Are you on social media, and they need to be linked up?
    • Do you already have some branding standards that you need to follow (font, colors, specific artwork/logos, etc…) so you do not diluent your brand identity.
  • Now you can start having that budget conversation. Your web designer should be able to give you a quote or at least a rough idea, depending on what you want and what they will have to create from scratch. Depending on the number, you may need to re-evaluate some of your content and wants to ensure what you need is achievable within your budget.

Give me a call/text/email if you have a website, and you have got questions or want to make changes! If you need a website, I can help you figure out what you want and how that is going to happen.