The 12 Best AI Tools for Small Businesses and How to Use Them
You know you could be using AI tools to save time (and money) in your small business. But with thousands of AI tools available, how do you actually figure out which ones to use, and how to use them? As a business owner myself, I struggle with that question.
I’ve searched sites like FutureTools.io for ideas, but quickly get overwhelmed. At the time I wrote this article, that site lists nearly 2,500 AI tools, and that number will likely be higher by the time you read this.
Perhaps sheer overwhelm is part of the reason AI adoption among small businesses, especially very small businesses, remains fairly low. A recent Bredin SMB Pulse survey of business owners found that:
- 27% of small businesses (20 to 99 employees) are actively using AI and 19% are piloting it
- 8% of very small businesses (fewer than 20 employees) report actively using AI, and another 7% are piloting it
- Nearly 40% of mid-sized businesses (100 to 500 employees) are actively using AI, and 28% are piloting it
If small businesses want to keep up, they need to find tools that work for them. So to find out what tools entrepreneurs are using, I queried members of the AI Copy Club community and asked them to share their favorite AI tools for saving time in their businesses. Here’s what they use and recommend.
AI tools for small business owners
1. Content distribution and design, customer service
Kym Tolson, founder of Clinical AI Club and Thetravelingtherapist.com
AI tools have been instrumental in freeing up hours for entrepreneur Kym Tolson, thus allowing her to concentrate on growth, client engagement, and strategic planning in her business.
One tool she uses is Canva.
"Canva has been a transformative tool for my business, particularly in the realm of graphic design. Previously, crafting professional-level graphics for social media and marketing efforts was a substantial time commitment, often stretching over several hours each week," she says. “Now, thanks to Canva’s intuitive interface and AI enhancements, I can produce eye-catching graphics quickly and efficiently, reducing what used to take hours into mere minutes. This significant time-saving aspect allows myself and my team to dedicate more attention to other critical business areas.”
Another tool she loves is Repurpose.io, a repurposing and distribution platform for video and audio creators, which has streamlined her content distribution process.
“Before its integration, manually uploading and adapting content for various social media platforms was a four- to five-hour weekly endeavor," she explains. "With Repurpose.io, this task is now fully automated, enabling instant content redistribution across multiple channels. This automation not only conserves time but also amplifies my content’s reach effortlessly.”
Finally, she likes customer support tool Pickaxe, which allows users to create AI-powered tools and embed them into their websites. Tolson uses it to create bots within her membership communities; the bots address routine questions from members, a task that previously required a notable time commitment.
She says, "This automation has significantly reduced the time I need to spend responding to member inquiries, allowing me to focus more on enhancing the value and experience within these communities."
2. Creative help
Bethany Bayless, graphic artist and founder of Wildwind Lane
Bethany Bayless uses two different AI tools to speed up her creative process.
The first, Midjourney, is an AI image generator that works on prompts. She explains, "I use it to generate images to be used as assets in my design work. Good AI imagery is hard to find and takes a level of skill to work with the bot to curate usable images. As an illustrator, I could draw these pictures with software, but it would often take hours for one image. Using AI cuts that time down to mere minutes.”
Bayless likes using Adobe Firefly to generate alternative color palettes. “I can take a single image or design and instantly create a range of options with the color variation tool. This especially helps when creating something like surface patterns or stickers that would benefit from a range of colors.”
3. Content writing
Shelley Hunter, founder of GiftCardReform.com
Shelley Hunter says her adoption of AI is a story in “three parts: resistance, acceptance, and adoption.” She wrote over 400 blog posts under a former personal brand, but she recently left the company–and that content– behind.
She wanted to start a new blog, but did not want to produce new content, because as she puts it: "I'm a slow writer. I have no problem communicating verbally. Whether conducting interviews, being interviewed, talking on live radio or TV, or filming a video, I make quick observations and can easily articulate my thoughts. But when it comes to writing, I obsess over crafting perfect sentences, minding all grammar rules, adding purposeful transitions, and more. It takes me forever."
But she still went ahead and created a new blog. “People said, ‘Use ChatGPT.’ I replied, ‘No, it's garbage,’" she recalls. “I tried a couple of cursory queries and got such ignorant, lackluster results that I dismissed the tool entirely.”
Hunter did more research and found that she could combine ChatGPT and Grammarly to make the process move smoothly. “More importantly, I start each piece of content with the part I'm best at,” she says. For example, for a piece about gift card hacking, she interviewed a white hat gift card hacker. In another post, she recorded a video of a gift card experience, And in another, she wrote a script to capture her thoughts. And then that’s where AI steps in.
“After recording the video, I turn to ChatGPT and the Video Captions plugin to write the post. I still spend a couple of hours working on the message, going back and forth with the tools, and pushing until I get an authentic piece I am proud to put my name on," she explains. "The time it takes me to write a blog post may be the same, but I no longer struggle laboriously. The content and ideas are still mine, but I am less frustrated with the writing process and can better focus on communicating the message I want to share.”
Note that ChatGPT plugins are currently available with a paid subscription to ChatGPT. ChatGPT has also recently introduced the ChatGPT Store, currently available with ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users.
4. Creating chatbots
Vix Meldrew, online learning expert at VixMeldrew.com
Another vote for Pickaxe comes from Vix Meldrew, who used it to create a “curriculum bot” for her courses and programs. She says, “I taught the bot the entire curriculum of my new program, so that rather than students asking me questions that the program answers, they can ask the bot! That will save me time answering questions already answered in the course materials and save me outsourcing community management. My students can ask questions about the curriculum, and also things like billing and account enquiries.”
5. Meeting notetaking
Karen Carey, founder and lead systems strategist at Structure Over Chaos LLC
Karen Carey uses AI as a virtual assistant for meetings. According to Carey, “Fireflies.ai is a virtual notetaker that attends all of my virtual meetings. In addition to taking very detailed notes, Fireflies categorizes and calculates the number of questions asked, the number of tasks discussed/assigned, the number of dates mentioned, and categorizes the content of the meeting for ease of review. Additionally, it breaks down sound bites of what it considers notable quotes (and) sayings.”
6. Content repurposing
Dianne Shelton, business coach and offer strategist at Passion Breakthrough
Dianne Shelton loves WritePanda for content repurposing. “This tool allows me to repurpose my long-form video content into multiple types of short-form content with ease," she says. "It has the capability to create short videos (reels), blog posts, newsletters, tweet-worthy highlights, and more. Not only that, but it also allows me to automatically create time stamps and notes for both my business podcast and YouTube channel.”
Her favorite feature is auto-caption for the AI-generated reels. She says, "These captions are customizable and allows me to stand out in the saturated online space. A bonus feature is the face-tracking capability to create reels based on the speakers on the long-form video. Unlike other AI repurposing tools out there, this one seems to have some pretty powerful tools under one roof.”
Shelton also finds Cheat Layer to be useful for automating time-consuming tasks. “It's a no-code automation tool that allows me to have an AI assistant do certain repeatable tasks that would otherwise take more of my time or have to hire out a team member for," she says. “This tool is quite complex and very flexible to meet each user's needs. Personally, I've only begun to scratch the surface by having simple tasks, such as automatically creating Canva images based on keywords (which it can research), and auto posting Facebook posts.”
7. Video repurposing
Katie Goebel, CEO of Katie Goebel LLC
Katie Goebel recommends OpusClip, which repurposes long video clips into short ones across multiple platforms.
“As a social media strategist, I love using OpusClip for my clients' video interviews," she says. "Within minutes, I can load a video interview link from YouTube or Vimeo and generate 10-plus short viral clips. The AI technology sweeps through the content so quickly to find clips with high viral potential. Plus, I love the way it generates captions automatically."
Goebel adds, “It saves me the time of tedious editing and combing through hours of footage to find good 60-second sound bytes. Plus, my clients can focus on creating a high-quality video interview once and then run it through OpusClip to generate nearly endless clips to repurpose across multiple platforms.”
8. Scheduling
Kelsey Silver, founder and operations strategist at The Neurospicy CEO
One of Kelsey Silver's favorite AI tools is Motion. The reason why: “After trying damn near every system out there to solve this little war my brain and I have between needing to plan and hating schedules, I stumbled upon Motion. I can tell you I’ve never whipped out my credit card so fast in my life.
“[It] syncs all my calendars, completely replaces Calendly booking links and makes sure everything fits in my preferred meeting times, and eliminates blank page syndrome by scheduling my tasks in available windows based on the 49,283,409,283 different schedules I have—(okay, it's really just three: personal 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., business 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., and special stuff 24/7).”
AI tools can help small businesses save valuable time
From calendars to creatives, these business owners show the myriad ways AI tools can be used to save time. And of course, in business, time is money.
Tracking your time will allow you to see where you’re spending—and perhaps wasting—time. From there, you can identify your high-value activities and look for AI tools that will help you streamline less valuable ones.
