Key Takeaways
- Automate your repetitive tasks with AI to save time and streamline workflows, from email writing and scheduling to content creation and project management.
- Improve your workflow with templates by using AI for proposals, contracts, invoices, and other documents, ensuring consistency and reducing the effort required for routine tasks.
- Enhance productivity with productivity and accounting automation software, enabling you to work smarter without straining your budget.
A “work smarter, not harder” guide for small business owners
There’s a classic children’s story about a peddler who walks through town selling caps stacked on his head. That theme of wearing many hats has become a metaphor for multitasking in business and in life.
Small business owners know all about the need to juggle responsibilities, including communication and marketing, project management and document control. When being a jack-or-jill-of-all-trades comes with the job, AI tools and other technology can help you work smarter, not harder—improving your bottom line.
Here are time-saving tech tools to help streamline your workload.
1. Use AI To Improve Email Efficiency
AI can help you optimize email campaigns by automating tasks like content creation, segmentation, personalization and scheduling. These tools can polish your messaging and boost engagement and conversion rates.
Tools like Salesforce use machine learning to support content personalization and audience segmentation in your email campaigns. These email enhancements are integrated into the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which starts at $25 a month.
But you don’t need Salesforce to benefit from AI. Google Gemini brings AI to Gmail and Copilot supercharges Outlook. Both tools can summarize emails, help you write messages and suggest or automate send times.
2. Create Marketing Materials With AI Apps
You also can use Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms to create marketing content such as blogs, social media posts and website copy. Generative AI can help you build a content strategy, refine your messaging and personalize content at scale. AI enables small companies to reduce or eliminate outsourcing costs. It also can give in-house marketing teams more ability to focus on strategy and execution.
A hair salon owner, for example, could use AI to create social media posts that focus on client transformations, introduce stylists or promote seasonal offers. AI also can help showcase your brand’s personality by creating a 30-second video that can be re-purposed for Instagram, TikTok or your website. Video tools may require a paid plan with some AI solutions. Others such as Canva, Runway ML and Pika Labs have free options that can help you get started.
3. Improve Efficiency With Templates
AI also can save you time by creating templates for recurring business tasks such as proposals, contracts, invoices and financial plans.
Once you have a template idea, ask your AI to help you create it. Keep polishing until it’s customized to meet your business needs.
These five steps, which you can implement yourself or with the help of AI, will help you get started with template creation:
- Define the purpose and structure
- Add placeholders for inputs
- Format for easy reuse
- Store and organize your templates
- Refine based on user feedback
4. Streamline Your Project Management
Automation extends beyond content creation. Tools like Trello and Asana can simplify and organize your project management workload, saving you 30 minutes or more every day.
Trello’s drag-and-drop Kanban-style boards are simple to use. This tool is ideal for businesses like hairstylists, restaurants and photographers. The software’s visual layout and intuitive interface make it a practical option for small teams that need to organize tasks quickly without a steep learning curve.
Asana is a more structured project management platform with timelines, dependencies, calendar views, reporting and collaboration features. It’s more powerful than Trello, but not as intuitive. Asana may be a better fit for businesses with more complex workflows, such as software developers, consultants and medical providers.
You can start with Trello’s free plan and upgrade to paid options that begin at $5 a month. Asana offers a free Personal plan with paid plans starting at $10.99 a month.
5. Manage Money With Accounting Automation
Tools like QuickBooks Online can streamline invoicing, expense tracking, bank reconciliations, financial reporting and payroll integration. Plans start at $19 a month.
Accounting automation can help you save time by:
- Auto-importing bank and credit card transactions
- Sending recurring invoices
- Generating automatic reports, such as profit and loss statements
- Reducing manual spreadsheet work
The Proof Is in the Pudding
A good starting point for automation is to track how much time a task takes, and then test specific technology tools to determine what solution works best for you. Just one shortcut that replaces a tedious, time-consuming task might just get you hooked on the value of AI for your business.
