As a business owner, you’d be making a big mistake not to take advantage of AI. This nascent but thrilling technology could be a big help for you in pretty much every area of your business; whether it’s customer support, content generation, or HR (or anything in between), there’s almost certainly an AI tool out there that can help you.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the 12 best AI tools for small businesses to help you get an idea of what kind of apps and software you should be using!
1. Originality
AI is getting pretty smart. It’s now possible for AI to generate content that looks passably like what a human could create, and that’s where tools like Originality.ai come in. You can use this tool to help you figure out whether content you’re reading has been created by an AI, which can, in turn, help to inform your own content strategy going forward. Don’t sleep on this incredibly useful site.
2. NeuralText
Describing itself as an “all-in-one content marketing platform” designed to save your business as much time and money as possible, NeuralText essentially generates content based on a prompt you input. You can also use it to generate content outlines and product descriptions, making your life a lot easier when it comes to creating and executing a content strategy.
3. Legal Robot
One of the biggest obstacles for many small businesses is the legal side of things. Legal loopholes and endless amounts of legalese text can make it very difficult for your business to simply get things done. That’s where Legal Robot comes in. It deciphers lengthy legal contracts and documents for you so you can figure out exactly what they mean without all the obfuscation.
4. Textio
Textio is a pretty smart little tool. It scours your job listings and internal documentation to figure out where there’s some socially coded language and removes it for you. For instance, if you’re accidentally using gendered language that favours men over women in listings, Textio will identify it and recommend that you remove it. In our increasingly inclusive world (we hope, at least), tools like Textio are invaluable.
5. Fireflies
Taking notes for meetings and other business events can be a tiresome and mundane endeavour, but introduce Fireflies into the mix and things get a lot easier. It’s an automated note-taking service that helps you to “record, transcribe, search, and analyse” your conversations. No more will you need to sift through the minutes for a meeting looking for that great idea one of your team members had.
6. Grammarly
Grammarly is a great additional tool when you’re generating content. You shouldn’t be overly reliant on its recommendations; sometimes, it can misunderstand the register you’re going for, or just recommend changes that are flat-out wrong. For the most part, though, Grammarly is an excellent tool to help you identify spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and tonal shifts when you’re constructing a piece.
7. Zendesk
As part of a wider suite, Zendesk offers a function that allows your users to chat with an intelligent bot that can provide them with quick and easy answers. This frees up your customer support personnel to answer more difficult and complex questions, and it’ll also help customers to get the support they need more quickly. Customer service doesn’t have to be annoying with Zendesk.
8. Timely
As an entrepreneur, you’ve got a busy schedule. That’s why you need an app like Timely to help you with the time management side of your business. Automate your schedule, receive suggestions as to how you can optimise it, and book appointments using Timely’s smart AI system. Timely may not be quite as awe-inspiring as ChatGPT in terms of functionality, but it’ll help your business a great deal.
9. Acrolinx
“Content governance”, as Acrolinx calls it, can make all the difference between your brand feeling consistent and everything feeling slightly off. This tool will help you to bring all of your content up to the same standard, using brand-specific wording and certain registers in order to create a cohesive image for your brand and your content. It’s invaluable for adding that all-important professional sheen.
10. DeepL
It’s probably fair to say that machine translation has a long, long way to go before it can accurately depict things like nuance and slang. After all, language is a constantly-evolving beast. Even so, DeepL gets much closer to this dream than we’d imagined possible at this early stage. It’s arguably superior to Google Translate and other protocols for this purpose, so if you do a lot of translation work, DeepL is essential.
11. Brand24
Brand24’s self-description as a “social listening tool” isn’t anywhere near as sinister as it sounds. This handy app will search the web for everything that’s currently being said about your brand and collate it all into a handy impressions view. You’ll get to see how popular your brand is, whether the public perception of it skews negative or positive, and much more useful info besides.
12. Emplifi.io
Another invaluable customer support tool, Emplifi will help you to provide the best service possible to your customers. It’s a sort of one-size-fits-all tool that encompasses social media marketing, commerce, and service, with AI driving insights and analytics across all of Emplifi’s different fields. Give this a try and you’ll wonder how you managed to run your business without it.
