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"A game-changer": 14 small business owners reveal how they are using ChatGPT

ended 06. November 2023

As AI becomes more entrenched in day-to-day business activities, 14 small business owners have shared how they are using ChatGPT to boost revenues and productivity.

One handmade knitter in Edinburgh uses ChatGPT to improve her page ranking for specific keywords, and has already seen an uptick in traffic as a result, while a Reading-based business coach uses it to write code to improve the appearance of the forms on her website.

A third uses ChatGPT to turn “vast information chunks into actionable insights in minutes” and a fourth to summarise thousands of free text survey responses in an instant.

Meanwhile, one small business author uses ChatGPT to give him instant feedback on the copy he is writing through beta reader 'avatars', which reveal boring sections and knowledge gaps in real-time — helping him to ensure that what he's writing will be well received by his target audience.

While many of the small business owners approached use ChatGPT to generate ideas for social media content and streamline the content creation process, one, a marketer with dyslexia, says the technology has proved invaluable in terms of spelling and grammar. 

The ways 14 small business owners are using ChatGPT can be seen below.

14 responses from the Newspage community

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John Lamerton
Small Business Author at Big Ideas... for Small Businesses
As an author of non-fiction books for small business owners, ChatGPT is a game-changer — and no, I'm not using it to churn out fifteen low-quality AI-generated books a week. Instead, I'm using ChatGPT as a research assistant, proof-reader, editor and — most impactfully — to get immediate feedback from my target readers. ChatGPT offers instant feedback through highly-specific beta reader 'avatars', alerting me to inconsistencies, boring sections and knowledge gaps in real-time, a process that usually takes months with the human option. With a highly-trained AI model and my personal writing style, I have an assistant who knows the subject matter even better than I do, and can focus on what I do best. My method? I follow the 10/80/10 rule. I spend 10% of my time training ChatGPT with precise prompts, it handles 80% of the 'grunt' work and I add my final 10% of unique brilliance and modesty.
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Lee Marples
Founder and Strategic Director at Think3
ChatGPT is totally transformative for small businesses. It's not just a content generator but a great resource that has revolutionised content strategy. At Think3, we've found ChatGPT to be invaluable in streamlining content creation. It offers brilliant ideas and recommendations, enabling us to produce engaging content efficiently. It's more than a text generator, it's a creative partner that enhances content creation, ultimately saving time and resources. However, our experience to date has shown that as good as it is, it still needs some level of human interaction to get it perfect for your own needs. But there's no doubt that it can provide a good baseline to work from. It should not be relied upon to create current content to engage with your audience as their own needs and motivations change over time, which still cannot be captured by ChatGPT.
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Leonor Calaça
Owner at Eleanor Shadow
I am starting to delve into the world of ChatGPT more and more. After teaching it how I write and how I should sound — a feature I only recently learned AI could do — I am now using it mainly to write product listings and help me create blog posts. There are other things I am also starting to use AI for, namely to search for areas of improvement on my website. By asking it specific questions such as "How can I improve this page's ranking for X or Y keyword?", it gives me back very specific information and I've already started to see an increase in website views after following its suggestions. In future, I expect to use ChatGPT even more as I learn all it can do. I've barely scratched the surface of its potential. Instead of daunting, I've been finding it rather fun.
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Victoria Canham
Coach at Victoria Canham Coaching
I love to use ChatGPT for writing simple code. I have used it to write some HTML and CSS code to change the appearance of some of the forms on my website. ChatGPT is also a really useful tool for any kind of small business when looking for inspiration on various topics when creating social media posts or even blogs. ChatGPT itself warns against using the results as is, without checking them as they may be deemed to be plagiarism, or factually inaccurate so always do your research and put your own spin on the results. I would recommend ChatGPT for understanding terminology like AIDA, or explaining concepts like "Explain The House of Lords to a non-British person", which do not change periodically. All in all, ChatGPT is a great time saver, so long as you don't spend all your time thinking about what to ask it for.
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Daniel Park
Head of Business Development at InTouchNow AI
We were an early adopter of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 and it has been instrumental in the transformation in our business operations. Our sales team uses it for on-the-spot query resolution, ensuring no potential client leaves without receiving instant, precise answers. It has also empowered our marketing team to craft more targeted campaigns: through its ability to analyse customer interactions, we discern what truly engages our audience. Lastly, data assessment is no longer a tedious, manual chore. ChatGPT helps in quick data interpretations, turning vast information chunks into actionable insights in minutes. For us, it isn't just a tool, it has become a virtual team member, working round-the-clock, enhancing productivity and redefining how we run our business. We have become masters in how to use it and regularly consult with clients in the public and private sectors helping them get the most from using it. More business owners need to understand what's possible.
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Miles Phillips
Founder at Miles Marketing
I'm a subscriber to GPT-4 and, as someone with dyslexia, it's been invaluable to me. My strength lies in creative writing, though I sometimes struggle with spelling, grammar and coherence. That's where GPT comes into play. I draft my copy and then turn to GPT for enhancements. It's crucial to note that the quality of the output largely depends on the quality of the input, with clear commands essential. With that said, here's a thought for you: was this written by me, or by ChatGPT?
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Stephen Perkins
Managing Director at Yellow Brick Mortgages
ChatGPT is best for creating written content for websites, blogs or social posts. However, rather than using it to write the content and therefore risk this not being accurate or unique, it can instead be a great tool for suggesting topics and questions best to answer. For example, we ask it to list the most common questions from first-time buyers, and then we write answers to those as content.
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Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
As with any new and emerging technology, ChatGPT and other large language models create many opportunities and can help smaller businesses streamline and compete with bigger market participants. However, with anything like this, there are always risks. The biggest one for many will be around Data Protection. If you use the "free" version of the system then the data you put in is added to the system's library for use in other tasks by other users, which is a huge issue if you are adding in client data or confidential business data. It's the fine print in the T&Cs that will trip up many business owners if they rush to adopt without really understanding the full implications of what they are doing.
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Dan Reddish
Financial Services Business Consultant at Dan Reddish Consulting
I help mortgage brokers and IFAs with ChatGPT through an online coaching programme showing my clients how technology can help grow their businesses. We use ChatGPT to help with market research and to build a marketing persona of the ideal client, which previously took months of talking to people, putting out surveys and social media posts. Now, ChatGPT does this in seconds. We then prompt it to optimise clients' social media profiles based on the market research it has already given us and the psychology of their chosen market, which effectively turns their profiles into landing pages. We prompt ChatGPT to review LinkedIn profiles where it goes through every data point in the adviser's profile and gives suggestions to improve it while scoring it out of 10.
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Sheju John
Founder at Parakeet Books
We use ChatGPT for social media. If the post sounds naff we just change it up a bit to give a voice that sounds more like our own. But we haven't tried using it to write a book yet.
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Anna Hamill
Founder at And Hope Designs
I use ChatGPT to write copy on my website, specifically product descriptions and blog posts. Both these help my business to get found on search engines. I love to make my product descriptions and blog posts feel personal. I always want them to have my brand tone of voice so I alter them to include those personal anecdotes or words I use, but having a few words to describe my product helps generate ideas to include in my product description. Equally, having a good start to a blog outline helps take away the fear of the blank page. ChatGPT helps to give me ideas of what to write on a topic, uses adjectives that are sometimes wrong, but gives me ideas of what to include instead. I have been blogging much more actively since ChatGPT came on the scene.
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Lucy Moult
Digital Marketing Assistant at Twenty2 Recruitment & Consultancy
Working in a small team, our time is precious and every minute matters. Being able to input any question into ChatGPT and receive quick answers and ideas is invaluable. For a long time, the internet has been full of brilliant business learning resources, tutorials and webinars and. I see ChatGPT as their natural progression. But like everything you read on the internet, it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Not all the information provided by the chatbot is accurate and is often copied and pasted directly from the source. Ensure you are using the AI as a guide rather than a substitute team member. Make sure to fact-check and research any answers that are generated to avoid any copyright infringements, false information and general embarrassment.
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Ben Foster
CEO at The SEO Works
If you have a huge survey with thousands of "free text" responses, ask ChatGPT to analyse the responses and summarise the key themes. However, be sure you don't share any personal data with ChatGPT as the information you share is used to further train it, therefore you are essentially placing it into the public domain.
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Purdey Collier
Founder at TingTang - Wash Without Water
I've tinkered with ChatGPT for blog posts, press releases, newsletters and emails. I'm constantly amazed at the technology and the times it's made really large errors, such as when I asked it to transcribe an audio file and it fabricated a response before eventually telling me it didn't have the functionality for that. The best thing for me is to prompt ideas, inspiration, new angles, play on words and to see how it understands and interprets my business. The things it gets wrong I think are reflective of how the general public may view my new take on an existing product, so it's very useful.