How SMEs are saving 10+ hours a week using AI to create content

The promise is big: artificial intelligence can save business owners time and make them more money. But it’s not always clear how. Without technical knowledge or a thorough understanding of the concept, SMEs can find themselves confused and overwhelmed. They advance a few steps only to hit blockers and give up, going back to the drawing board and reverting to their manual ways.

The following business owners have found a way forward and are sharing their knowledge so the rest of us can take note. Follow these tips to save over 10 hours every week using artificial intelligence, in various areas of your business.

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Conducting research

Once upon a time, research was a full-time job. A necessary evil to get sorted before the real creativity could start. But not anymore. That initial hurdle can be slashed right down with the help of a trusted robot friend. Freelance writer and consultant Ashley Couto doesn’t write her articles using AI, but she uses it to, “do initial research or an outline, and sometimes for specific angles or preliminary pitch ideas.” She instructs ChatGPT to, “think like a journalist” and gives it detailed prompts, sometimes alongside nearly a page of example content to work from. 

Kate Sophia, writer at Cross Culture Love, is also continuing to write articles and books herself, but using ChatGPT to collate sources. “I don’t yet trust AI to give unbiased or completely correct information, but it’s useful for gathering official sources for my own critique based on the work that I’m doing.” Writing about coaching? Ask for some recent stats on the coaching industry. Writing about a specific country? Find a bunch of people who have published books on the topic. Less googling, more prompting; hours saved every week.

Supercharging content creation

Content production is no mean feat. Coming up with ideas for social media and website posts, then creating them from scratch, can be a huge time suck. Being creative doesn’t come naturally to everyone, so AI can be a valuable sidekick. Helen Neale, founder of KiddyCharts, is using Pictory AI to generate videos for social media, including reels and stories on Instagram and Facebook. She’s using Canva’s graphic design tools to improve her photo editing and create additional graphics for articles and social media. She’s then using Surfer SEO to help with the search engine optimization of existing articles on her website, presumably by adding more information to thin content, and creating better meta descriptions and headlines.

Matt Coyne, content writer at WavesConnect is repurposing webinars into social media posts with the help of Otter AI and Jasper. “I use Otter to transcribe, punch the words into Jasper to summarize, then create a series of social media and blog posts. Although they always need an additional human touch, it saves days of time!” Bryn Fallon, director of client relations from Kayley Media, has the process on lockdown. “I have ChatGPT generate two weeks of content ideas, I select enough for one, then I use Canva to create images or Munch to create videos, automatically generating content.” Lastly, Fallon uses CopyAI for caption generation. “All I actually do now is plug and post!” she says.

Producing podcasts in half the time

If your business has a podcast, AI can be your best friend. Jason Scott, podcast producer and author, uses a stack of tools to create production quality podcasts faster and better than ever before. “We use Podium to speed up the post-production process. It lets you quickly create transcripts, highlights, chapters, and show notes with episode summaries.” Scott’s team doesn’t stop there. “We also use Whisper by OpenAI, which has been trained on 680,000 hours of audio data, so it can generate some of the most accurate auto-generated podcast transcripts to date.” 

After the structure and transcripts comes the audio quality, which Scott says matters because, “poor sound quality makes listeners lose interest.” He recommends Auphonic, which solves this problem by “using AI-powered algorithms to improve the overall sound of your content.” After the podcast is recorded they use Speechtext.ai to transcribe the episode quickly and accurately, then Descript for editing and its “video, storyboarding and overdub features.” Finally, they use SumlyAI, which provides free podcast summaries, so busy podcast listeners can keep up with their favourite shows and find new ones without having to listen to entire episodes. 

What are you waiting for?

There’s no doubt that the research and production of content is a major benefit of artificial intelligence for entrepreneurs. By using the tools that other entrepreneurs are launching, research can be done, posts and articles can be collated, and podcast episodes can be published without weeks of back and forth with editors. As long as increased quantity doesn’t come at the expense of quality, this can only be a good thing for business owners in 2024.

Want to read more about AI in the SME arena?

• 10 AI changes about to hit your workplace
• Building a website with AI: everything you need to know
• AI in retail: what are the benefits?

Jodie Cook - business journalist and founder

Jodie Cook started her first business at 22, straight after completing a business management degree and one-year graduate scheme. As she built her social media agency over a ten year period, she started writing for Forbes on the topic of entrepreneurs. In 2021 Jodie sold the agency for seven figures. Since selling, Jodie has written a book, “Ten Year Career”, created courses for entrepreneurs, and mentored start up business owners on accelerator programs. In 2023 she founded Coachvox AI – a platform for creating AI coaches, where you can train an AI version of you to coach, mentor and answer questions just like you would.

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