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Need an extra set of hands? How solopreneurs can lean on generative AI to scale their business

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Don’t go it alone

Solopreneurs, or those who launch and run their business on their own, can range from part-time freelancers who are slowly growing a passion project to full-time small business owners like photographers, sellers of handmade goods and personal chefs.

Solopreneurs face their own unique set of challenges as small business owners, and as you may have guessed, limited time and resources are at the top of the list. Without employees to help take on some of the work, solopreneurs need to manage their products and inventory, build a strong online presence, develop a sales and marketing strategy, curate social media posts, and draft and send email newsletters. And that’s just before lunch!

However, as generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard become more widely accessible, solopreneurs won’t have to wear all those hats on their own.

If you’re a solopreneur, here are five ways you can use generative AI as your first – albeit artificial – employee.

1. Upskill, upskill, upskill

You are one person and can’t possibly be the expert at everything that your business needs. But you can learn. Generative AI systems have access to millions of resources that you can use to help fill in the gaps in your current skillsets.

For example, an electrician might have a sixth sense for wiring a ceiling fan, but may not be a skilled marketer—they could use AI for help with content creation like advertisement text, social media posts, responses to customer inquiries, building a social content calendar and more. Or a graphic designer could use AI to conduct market research and gather insights on industry trends to identify new opportunities and make more informed business decisions.

Think of leveraging AI like you would a business partner. Use it to save time, improve efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage for your business.

Related: How to write a blog post properly using AI

2. Brainstorm new ideas

Not sure what’s the best domain name for your new business? Or have an email subject line, but wish it was a little more catchy? Use AI to brainstorm and bounce around ideas. Here are some fun things to brainstorm with AI to get the juices flowing:

  • Business ideas based on your hobbies
  • Names for your business
  • Hashtags for a social media contest or campaign
  • Email subject lines
  • Analyze across multiple customer reviews to highlight the key areas you should focus on
  • Alternative high-quality logo for your brand

Related: Everything you ever wanted to know about AI (but were afraid to ask)

3. Attract new customers

As a small business owner, you understand that helping potential new customers find you is key to growing your business. Doing this often involves multiple layers of marketing, including Google Ads, social media, strategic copywriting of your website and more. GoDaddy recently created a Small Business Generative AI Prompt Library designed to help you use generative AI platforms for this exact purpose. We have prompts that help you use AI to identify the best SEO keywords for your website, generate compelling social ads, write engaging product descriptions, create social posts that resonate with a specific customer vertical and more.

Before using AI, establish some clear guidelines for the type of content you want the model to produce—this can include anything from tone of voice to vocabulary, length or even specific topics to avoid. Pick from GoDaddy’s prompts or create your own and be sure to use very specific questions to guide the AI’s responses. The more specific your prompts, the more relevant and on-topic the content you’ll get back.

4. Retain your existing customer base

Acquiring new customers costs five times to 10 times more than selling to a current customer. You could also lean on generative AI to help encourage repeat customers as another highly cost-effective way to grow your business. You can use AI to:

  • Quickly craft responses to customer reviews
  • Draft personalized, automated thank you emails to send once a product is delivered
  • Write promotional emails around a specified subject, tone and target audience

As a solopreneur, consider using generative AI to provide around-the-clock customer support—for example, you can build AI into automated chatbots on your website to help handle common customer inquiries, like shipping information, returns and refunds. This will save both you and your customers time and provide a better overall experience.

You can use AI to help you at every stage of your business—whether you’re brainstorming a business name or making next month’s social content calendar. Having a built-in second “set of hands” available 24/7 will help you work more efficiently and ultimately propel your success as a solopreneur. However, as with most emerging innovations, there are guidelines on how to use it safely. Below are some tips for using AI that we recommend:

Do not enter personal or proprietary information into AI: As a general rule, only share content into AI that you wouldn’t mind other people seeing. Never enter your customer’s personal or contact information into AI, and keep any proprietary information or secret recipes off the platform.

Use human editors: Although AI is smart, it can sometimes share inaccurate or biased information and should be used as a first draft, rather than a final draft. There is also no telling if answers have been generated using another company’s intellectual property, which may create risks. You should regularly review the content generated by AI to ensure it aligns with your brand guidelines and business needs, and help you identify any potential biases or inaccuracies.

Always fact-check for accuracy: AI systems are always learning and pull from content all over the web. However, some AI systems were built using digital content up to a certain date, meaning their knowledge is limited and they cannot answer questions related to current events.

Related: The essential small business guide to generative AI



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Revolutionizing Marketing: The Power of AI in the Digital Age

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Embracing AI-Powered Marketing: Transforming Brands in the Digital Marketplace

In the crowded digital marketplace, standing out is challenging. Enter AI-powered marketing, a revolutionary upgrade transforming brands into digital powerhouses.

Hyper-Personalized Campaigns: Beyond Basic Personalization

Gone are the days of generic marketing. Today’s gold standard is AI-driven hyper-personalization. This approach uses customer data analysis to create deeply resonant, individualized marketing campaigns. With AI’s ability to segment audiences based on intricate criteria, including purchasing history and browsing behavior, your messages can hit the mark every time.

Enhanced Customer Journey Mapping

AI’s capabilities extend to mapping the entire customer journey. By predicting needs and preferences at each stage, AI aids in crafting narratives that guide customers from discovery to purchase, integrating your brand into their personal stories.

SEO Wizardry: Mastering Search Engine Dynamics

With ever-changing algorithms, SEO is a complex puzzle. AI serves as a sophisticated navigator, deciphering these changes through machine learning. It aids in keyword optimization, understanding search intent, and aligning content with search trends.

Predictive SEO

AI tools offer predictive SEO, anticipating search engine and user behavior changes. This proactive stance ensures your brand’s prominent visibility in search results, capturing the right audience at the right time.

Social Media Mastery: Crafting a Digital Narrative

AI transforms social media strategies from uncertain to precise. By analyzing vast social data, AI provides insights into resonating content.

Content Optimization

AI analyzes performance data to recommend effective content types. This data-driven approach refines your social media content strategy.

Engagement Analysis

AI examines user interaction nuances, understanding engagement patterns. It helps tailor interactions for maximum impact, including adjusting posting schedules and messaging for increased relevance.

Conclusion: Navigating the AI-Driven Marketing Landscape

AI-powered marketing is essential for thriving in the digital age, offering precision and personalization beyond traditional methods. For small businesses, it’s a chance to leverage AI for impactful, data-driven strategies.

As we embrace the AI revolution, the future of marketing is not just bright but intelligently radiant. With AI as your digital ally, your brand is equipped for a successful journey, making every marketing effort and customer interaction count.

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AI: Your Small Business Ally in a Digital Age

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In the ever-evolving landscape of modern commerce, small business owners find themselves at a crossroads of opportunity and obsolescence. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) – once the exclusive domain of tech behemoths, it now stands as the great equalizer, offering small businesses a competitive edge previously unthinkable. The emergence of AI as a wingman for small businesses is not just a fleeting trend but a fundamental shift in how entrepreneurs can leverage technology to revolutionize their operations.

The 24/7 Customer Service Hero: Chatbots

In the digital storefront, customer service is the heartbeat of business survival and success. Chatbots emerge as the indefatigable heroes of this domain. Envision a customer service agent that never clocks out an entity that requires no sleep or sustenance yet delivers consistently and instantaneously. These AI-driven chat interfaces embody the essence of your brand’s voice, capable of handling a barrage of customer queries with a speed that outpaces the swiftest of typists. They are the embodiment of efficiency – ensuring that customer satisfaction is not just met but exceeded around the clock.

Unearthing Market Treasures: Data Dive

AI’s prowess in pattern recognition has catapulted data analytics into a realm once considered the stuff of science fiction. Small business owners armed with AI tools can sift through vast swathes of data to extract actionable insights. These algorithms act as modern-day oracles, predicting market trends, discerning customer behaviors, and offering sales forecasts with remarkable accuracy. Equipped with: this knowledge, small businesses, can navigate the market with the foresight and precision of an experienced captain steering through foggy seas.

Personalization at Scale: Customize Like a Boss

The age-old business mantra of the customer is king is given new potency with AI’s personalization capabilities. Tailoring the customer experience is no longer a luxury but a necessity. AI enables small businesses to offer bespoke experiences to consumers, making them feel like the sole focus of their attention. It’s personalization executed with such finesse that customers are left marveling at the thoughtfulness and individual attention, fostering loyalty and establishing deep-rooted brand connections.

Offloading the Mundane: Task Slayers

Repetitive tasks are the bane of creativity and innovation. AI steps in as the ultimate task slayer, automating routine chores that once consumed disproportionate amounts of time. From scheduling appointments to managing inventory, AI liberates entrepreneurs from the drudgery of administrative duties, freeing them to refocus on the creative and strategic endeavors that propel business growth.

Mastering Social Media: Social Savants

Social media – the pulsing vein of modern marketing – demands astuteness and agility. AI emerges as the savant of social media, capable of demystifying platform algorithms to optimize content delivery. It knows the optimal times to post, the types of content that resonate with audiences, and the strategies that convert passive scrollers into engaged customers. By automating your social media presence, AI transforms your brand into an online sensation, cultivating a digital community of brand ambassadors.

The Verdict: Embracing AI

For a small business owner, AI is not about an overnight overhaul but strategic integration. The goal is to start small, allowing AI to shoulder incremental aspects of your business, learning and scaling as you witness tangible benefits. The transition to AI-enablement does not necessitate a background in technology; it requires a willingness to embrace change and a vision for the future.

In summary, as the digital revolution marches forward, AI stands ready to partner with small businesses, providing them with tools once deemed the province of giants. This partnership promises to elevate the small business landscape, ushering in an era of democratized technology where every entrepreneur can harness the power of AI to write their own David vs. Goliath success story. AI, the once-distant dream, is now the most loyal wingman a small business can enlist in its quest for growth and innovation.

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Apple’s October Scary Fast Event: Everything revealed about the new MacBook Pro, iMac and M3 chips

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It’s time for another Apple event, with a spooky twist. The company announced a surprise “Scary Fast” event last week, prompting the rumor mill to speculate that Apple would be revealing new chips to power a new lineup of Macs.

As our resident Apple expert Brian Heater wrote, a new 24-inch iMac and a MacBook Pro refresh would be the most likely new announcements to expect from the October event, and as it turns out, he was spot-on. Apple’s new M3 chip lineup was the focal point of the event, powering each of the devices Apple showcased in their half-hour prerecorded event that had some fog, some bats and ominous choir music…but no big surprises for those following the rumor mill.

Since the event kicked off off at the uncharacteristically late time of 8pm ET / 5pm PT, so you might have missed out out on the reveals while putting the finishing touches on your Halloween decorating, or watching Monday Night Football. No judgement, we’re here to recap everything the October Apple event showcased in one spot.

New M3 chips

Credit: Apple

The “scary fast” part of the Apple event, as expected, are the new M3 chips. Apple has announce a M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max, which will be included in Apple’s new 24-inch iMac, MacBook Pros.

This time around, Apple has placed an emphasis on graphical horsepower, with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, mesh shading and Dynamic Caching, which Apple claims “dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU” by allotting exact amount of local memory to given tasks. These new chips were frequently benchmarked against their M1 predecessor, with Apple claiming the M3 renders at 2.5x the speed of the M1 and its CPU is 30% faster than the M1.

Check out the full rundown of the three M3 chips right here.

New MacBook Pro models

Apple MacBook Pro 2023 Update in Space Black Color

Credit: Apple

Yes, the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros come with upgraded internals, but the first thing you might notice is the new color: Space Black. Beneath that color, you’ll find that new line of M3 chips. The 14-inch MacBook Pro can contain any of the trio, while the 16-inch model will only come with the M3 Pro or M3 Max chips.

As we’ve noted, the M3 chips packed into both models are putting an emphasis on getting the most out of the new GPU, though Apple also boasts that both form factors’ battery can last 22 hours on a single charge.

Both are available for preorder tonight, with the 14-inch MacBook Pro starting at $1,599 and going to $1,999 with the M3 Pro. The baseline 16-inch MacBook Pro goes for $2,499 and the pricing for the M3 Max chip upgrade for both models has yet to be disclosed.

And that space black color is exciting news for any Mac fan still pining for the 2006 MacBook, whose dark tone hadn’t been replicated in the MacBook iterations that followed, even those Midnight MacBook Airs.

Check out the full rundown on the new MacBook Pros here.

New M3 iMac

2023 M3 iMac Spec Rundown

Credit: Apple

Apple’s iMac line is getting a colorful refresh, with an added M3 chip to add horsepower to the palette change. Apple is sticking with the 24-inch form factor, and upgrading the screen with a 4.5K retina display, 1080p FaceTime camera and a six-speaker system supporting Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio. The new iMac will be available for preorder with green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue and silver options starting tonight.

The $1,299 baseline comes with a 8-core GPU and 8-core CPU, with a $1,499 version upgrading you to a 256 SSD.

For more info about what else is new in the M3 iMac, head here.

An sneaky iPhone showcase

You may not have noticed it, but at the very end of the event, Apple dropped a quick note on the stream: “This event was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac.” It’s a bit of a victory lap, but as our other Apple expert Darrell Etherington notes, it’s a pretty impressive flex for Apple to shoot its half-hour hardware showcase entirely on a phone.

Recap the full Scary Fast event

If you want to just dive right in and experience the October event all over again or for the first time, you can catch the entire archive via the YouTube embed below right on Apple’s website.

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