The Complete Guide to ChatGPT for Small Business Owners

1. An Introduction to ChatGPT

Generative AI has probably been a buzzword or trend you’ve seen in the news for the past few months. While it has become a polarizing topic, platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have demonstrated their value, with some big companies like Buzzfeed, Bankrate, and CNET going all-in with generative AI content creation. As content marketing continues to play a major role in your business’ success, it’s crucial to identify opportunities to see how the resource can help you save time and improve your workflow. 

Content marketing is going to play a key role in your business’ success, especially within these popular trends:

So the question that comes to mind is, how can small businesses benefit from ChatGPT? What kind of opportunities are there to save time while improving your workflow? Between actually running the business and gaining traction, your time is limited. ChatGPT can help you turn your small team into a workforce without spreading them thin. Or you can use these recommendations to become an army of one, empowered to use ChatGPT for all of your content and marketing needs.

1.1 First off, what is ChatGPT?

There have been a lot of names thrown around recently from Google’s Bard to Bing’s Sydney. Like them, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot built from a large language model, created by OpenAI. The platform allows you to input a text prompt describing what you want the AI to do to generate a result, in this case a piece of content. ChatGPT has a lot of valuable applications for small business owners, going beyond just content creation including research, planning, and maintenance. 

1.1.1 How does ChatGPT work?

It’s a Large Language Model, which is basically a computer program that reviews and analyzes a massive amount of text and learns from its relationships. Using natural language processing it can create statements based on your prompt or request. As the name suggests, ChatGPT’s user interface mimics a conversation. For example these two prompts will generate two different results for basically the same question.

1.1.2 What is a Prompt?

As I’ve mentioned before, generative AI resources like ChatGPT, MidJourney, and DALL-E-2 work through text prompts.  A prompt is your request, usually starting with {Explain, provide, create, what is…}which helps the AI platform understand what is expected in the output. The more information you add to your prompt, the better the output.

{Explain ChatGPT}

{Explain ChatGPT in a way anyone can understand}

By process billions of word relationships in the content that it is trained on, ChatGPT mimics how humans write by predicting the next word in a sequence of words. It’s a pretty heady series of mathematical concepts, but what you really need to know is that it can help you save time in all of your writing tasks.

2. ChatGPT for SMBs

For many small businesses, you may not have the budget to allocate towards keeping a marketing agency on retainer, meaning you’re solely responsible for your marketing on top of your daily operations. The last thing you want to do is spend more time working on strategies after a long day of running the business. So how do you address both?

ChatGPT can help you do more in less time. Think of it as an army of writers, researchers, marketers, and editors ready to take on whatever you throw at it. 

Quickly create blog posts, social media content, email templates, business plans, press releases, ad copy, strategies and more with the platform. By using a collection of prompts you can easily generate content throughout the day as you are running your business. From there you just have to adjust or refine to match your company’s voice and factual accuracy. 

ChatGPT and resources like AIPRM are the cheat code for small businesses to level the playing field. Rather than figuring out the best ways to market your brand or identify opportunities to use ChatGPT, AIPRM has done all of the trial and error that could discourage you from using resources like these. Instead you’re able to leverage the platform right out of the box. 

If used properly, ChatGPT can really shine with small businesses in:

• Research
• Creation
• Maintenance

Ultimately, ChatGPT’s value is limited by your imagination. I bring that value right to the forefront with AIPRM’s prompts. 

2.1 Using ChatGPT+AIPRM Together

AIPRM and our community of Prompt Engineers have done the hard work of figuring out how to get the most out of your ChatGPT prompts without as much trial and error on your part. 

By using AIPRM’s Google Chrome Extension for ChatGPT you can gain access to public and premium prompts created by a community of content engineers. These can improve the quality of the outputs you receive as well as create more uses for ChatGPT in your daily workflow. 

In this guide, I’ll explore how ChatGPT can help with your marketing efforts, along with the best prompts I recommend trying out. The use cases for ChatGPT are endless, but these are some of the best ways SMBs can benefit the most.

For the purpose of this guide, I will act as a small business owner who just opened up a record store in Somerville, NJ, but the same methodology can apply for a consultant, plumber, accountant, lawyer, doctor, online retailer, or any other type of small business.

3. Research

3.1 Competitor Analysis

With so much information in the language model, you can use ChatGPT with AIPRM’s prompts to identify competitors you were not aware of, understand their value propositions, and look for opportunities to stand out in the industry. This can help you make sure whatever you’ve allocated to marketing is being put to good use.

AIPRM Prompt: Competitors Analysis

Competitor Analysis is a great exercise to gauge your competitor efforts to craft your own strategy to level the playing field. This particular prompt works by just adding your product or service and your service area. For this example I added {vinyl record store online} to the Competitive Analysis prompt  As you can see, it pulls in relevant competitors, offers a tagline or description of the company, their acquisition channels, and what social media platforms they are utilizing.

Once the AIPRM prompt identified relevant competitors, I wanted more information about each of the company’s strengths and weaknesses. You can request additional information as a follow up prompt. With all of this information you have at your fingertips you can create a solid strategy that can improve your visibility in the competitive landscape. My prompt for this, as seen above, was {For each of the companies, provide their value propositions, strengths, and weaknesses}.

3.2 Audience Segmentation

So now I know my record store competitors, what’s next? How do I determine what content I want to create? The best way to figure it out is to identify the needs of my audiences. Audience segmentation can help me figure out their preferences, questions and needs which I can use for topics. Through segmentation, you can refine your messaging, offers, and improve engagement.

Persona research and development can be cumbersome at times forcing you to think creatively about what makes your audience tick. AIPRM has a variety of prompts focused on Buyer Personas. With the vast amount of information that ChatGPT possesses it can easily create buyer persona profiles to hone in on audience needs and preferences. 

AIPRM’s various prompts make it easy to identify customer attitudes, interests, and opinions, creating profiles to give you a closer look at your demographics. Some of these will result in insights that include their average shopping budgets, frequency, hobbies, and more. This information can help you create content that meets these needs or preferences. 

AIPRM Prompt: Buyer Persona Legend

So now I have more details on what entices a customer like Robert. I can make sure that our marketing and content initiatives accommodate this. All I needed to add to the prompt for this was {what the business sells} and {where my clients are located}.

AIPRM even has prompts that will make recommendations on how to market to various audience segments. This can help you refine your ad budget to ensure you’re wisely spending your money in the right places. 

AIPRM Prompt: Segment Your Audience

Here’s another example of ways you can use AIPRM and ChatGPT to get more audience insights. Unlike the first example that showed a specific persona, this prompt organizes your demographics into relevant groups based on their habits, uses, and interests. The output from this AIPRM prompt will also offer advice on how you can engage them using different initiatives. To get the most out of this prompt, make sure you name your category in simple but precise language.

Other Prompts to Explore: 

• Target audiences with places (media channels)
• Best Audience Targeting for ECommerce Products
• Pain Points of Audiences/Target Groups

The other prompts to explore all work and function in a similar way to the examples. Make sure you offer as much detail as possible when the opportunity presents itself. It will help you receive better results. 

3.3 Planning

Once I understand my audience’s needs I want to put a plan together to determine the best ways to reach them. Before ideating topics, I need to figure out how I want to deploy the pieces, what other components like social media should be considered, and so on. 

It’s one thing to generate and create content, but from there you need a plan to stick to. A schedule or plan should be consistent, avoiding any gaps in publishing that can disappoint your visitors or make you seem unreliable. 

AIPRM has a variety of prompts to use for strategizing, and can even assist in creating your local Google Business profile which has become much more important to your visibility. 

Other ways you can prompts from AIPRM are in creating content calendars, campaign timelines, and more. 

AIPRM Prompt: Local SEO Master Plan Generator

Using AIPRM’s Local Master Plan I was provided with the insights I need to make sure I’m doing the most on a local level, especially to get the most out of my Google Busienss Profile. Creating one from scratch can be somewhat daunting as there are a lot of options to choose from. Using ChatGPT and AIPRM can offer guidance and make this process much easier. 

Other prompts to explore:

• 30x Content Planner
• 1-Click Monthly Content Calendar
• Monster Marketing Plan Generator

These prompts are pretty straightforward and simple to use. By offering it some detail on what you want to accomplish, ChatGPT and AIPRM will use its resources to create a well-rounded plan for you to follow or adjust.

3.4 Topic/Content Ideation

Now that we know our audiences and have established a plan, we can use that information to ideate new topics to address their needs. ChatGPT can help you target and ideate topics and strategies based on its insights. Instead of spending hours after closing up shop for the day brainstorming, researching, and reviewing best practices, you can accomplish the same in pockets of your work day through a series of prompts. There are a variety of AIPRM prompts that can assist, just by providing your service location and main offering. 

AIPRM Prompt: Generate a List of Content Ideas for a Local Business

The AIPRM prompt in the example takes ideation and planning to the next level. This can offer guidance on different types of content that would be effective resources to engage potential customers. Content topics cover everything from How to’s, versus, informative pieces, and more. 

All I needed to do to generate 25 topics in various formats was to type in the prompt [service type] in [location]. So for this it was {vinyl record store in Somerville, NJ}’

There are even prompts that can identify common questions relevant to your services or products for more topics to consider creating content around.

AIPRM Prompt: Find Questions

Another way to create content is to draft a piece that addresses specific questions associated with your topic. The prompt above works by simply adding your audience and keyword or offering. From there it poses 10 questions various audience groups have. 

Other Prompts to Explore: 

• Find Unmet Needs
• Find questions and article structure
• Analyze the Website & Summarize

The first two prompts function similar to the Find Questions example. You just need to add audience and keyword information to garner insights. The last prompt works well in concert with your competitive analysis research. If you add the URL to the prompt, ChatGPT will analyze and summarize the URL’s offerings and intentions. 

Now let’s see how long content creation will take!

4. Content Creation

ChatGPT uses the relationships in the data it was trained on along with your prompt to generate a piece of content. Because of this, there are various types of content you can create with ChatGPT. That said, ChatGPT is not a direct replacement for a copywriter, but a resource to help you improve your output and efficiency.

4.1 Exploring ChatGPT’s Capabilities

Prompting ChatGPT alone can garner mixed results, I recommend using specific AIPRM prompts to maintain consistency. Some things to keep in mind as you explore ChatGPT’s capabilities:

Add your tone and writing style

With AIPRM’s integration, you can actually set your own tone and writing style preferences in your Account’s profile. This can help reduce the amount of time needed to rewrite the content to align into your company’s voice. 

Learn more about the array of voice and tone options to choose from as part of AIPRM’s premium plans. 

Be direct and detailed

Make sure your prompts are direct but offer relevant details. Avoid unnecessary details so ChatGPT can draft based on the information that matters the most. The more relevant the information is within the prompt, the more detailed your output will be. 

Keep chats focused on one topic

For content creation, you should aim to keep each chat focused on a specific topic. This can help reduce the amount of ‘external noise’ that could explore points that are not as relevant and could distract from the content’s main intent.

Analysis can be limiting

Keep in mind that ChatGPT-3 bases outputs on the text provided and is trained in data up to 2021. However, ChatGPT-4 can crawl the internet and has more recent data at its disposal. For those using ChatGPT-3 that wants live crawling, you can still get this feature through verified prompts available in AIPRM’s Pro Plan. 

The platform is still learning

ChatGPT can be a great resource when leveraged in certain ways. The platform is still relatively new which means it may take some patience to receive the outputs you had in mind. 

Fact check everything

ChatGPT wants to fulfill your exact request and will do so even if that means it has to make something up or, as its called, “hallucinate”. This usually happens when it cannot locate the information you requested. Stats, sources, and even individuals mentioned should all be validated before you publish. 

When prompted to provide the sources for statistics, ChatGPT will do what it can to accomplish the task, even if it means making things up. Out of the three sources it mentions, only eMarketer’s report actually exists. 

4.2 What kind of content can ChatGPT handle?

With the prompts available from AIPRM, the short answer is everything. If you have a concept, ChatGPT can draft it. A great prompt will result in a solid content piece that needs minimal human interaction to adjust and refine. Content from ChatGPT should never be published live without review. 

Here’s a few of the different ways you can use ChatGPT for content creation when marketing your small business.

4.2.1 Outlines & Briefs

If you have a freelance writer or outsource design work, ChatGPT can help you quickly compile a brief or outline. Briefs are documents that outline the content piece, sets expectations, and offers important pieces of information such as voice, tone, structure preferences, and resources to use for inspiration. They’re extremely detailed, ensuring the writer has enough context to create the intended piece. 

Using ChatGPT and AIPRM to create briefs not only gives your writer or designer the context they need, but it also expedites the planning process by quickly compiling the information you provide into the proper format. 

In the example below, I’m generating a brief for a blog article for my record store. It gives an overview of all the subjects that need to be covered in the content and it took 30 seconds to craft it.

AIPRM Prompt: Outline for Blog Article

For this prompt you just need to include the keyword you want the content piece to target. From there, ChatGPT will use the keyword and information it has access to in order to create a detailed outline on what the piece should include. You can then use this as the baseline for your content brief. 

Other prompts to explore:

• Better content outlines
• Briefing&Outline Creation for copy assignments
• Upwork Proposals Based on Client Description

These prompts all work in a similar fashion to the example provided. Remember to really consider what keywords you want to target for the best results. If you tend to outsource a lot of creative work, using the Upwork Proposals prompt can help you quickly create job listings based on your brief description.

4.2.2 Product Descriptions

Quickly draft engaging, detailed product descriptions with the help of ChatGPT is a huge time saving that can yield better performance in search. Typically, retailers tend to use duplicative lines of copy and simply replace the product name or type from the OEM. This isn’t ideal and it’s always best to write your own product descriptions. That said, business owners tend to avoid this because of how much time this requires, especially if you have a large collection of products or services. 

Simply offer a few details or key points and let ChatGPT handle the rest. Rather than spending hours trying to figure out what to say, you can do large batches of product descriptions while eating some lunch.

AIPRM Prompt: E-Commerce SEO: Generate Enticing Product Descriptions

Like many of AIPRM’s prompts this one simply asks for a descriptive product name. Only one at a time. For the example above, I used {Limited Edition Wu-Tang Clan vinyl}. Based on that prompt it provided everything from headings, captions, and keywords that I can use for that specific product description page. 

Other prompts to explore:

• Write an SEO-friendly Product Description
• Generate Click Enticing Product Name & Unique Product Description

By using ChatGPT and AIPRM you’re no longer at the mercy of using the duplicative OEM descriptions. You can add your own personal spin to the description without spending hours on trying to make them all sound unique. 

4.2.3 Ad Copy

Find the right words to capture the attention of potential customers by letting ChatGPT do the heavy lifting. 

Rather than figuring out what to write, you can focus on other aspects like your ad budget, placement, and other important targeting details. While the prompts are focused on the digital realm, many of these can be adjusted and/or repurposed for billboards, signage, marketing materials, and more. 

AIPRM Prompt: Facebook Ads Hook Generator

For this prompt, AIPRM asks for three key points. First, what is it you are promoting, who is the target, and what is the benefit? Make sure you address these points in clear, concise ways for the best results. For the example I used ‘Limited edition Wu-Tang Clan vinyl, targeting collectors, who want something rare and exciting for their collection.’

Other prompts to explore:

• Google Ads Headlines & Descriptions
• Facebook Ads Primary Text
• Social Media Ads Plan in One Click

AIPRM’s community of prompt engineers have developed an extensive collection of prompts to assist with ad copy. Explore them all to see which works best for you particular workflow and preferences. 

4.2.4 Social Media

Like ads, ChatGPT can generate tweets, posts, and captions for you to use on your social media platforms. Just offer it some details on what you want to accomplish and let it do the rest. There are even prompts to create schedules, include hashtags, and more.

AIPRM Prompt: Create Best Caption for Facebook and Instagram Post

One of the great things about AIPRM’s prompts is the fact that you don’t need to go crazy in detail regarding what you want to accomplish. All of that is handled by how the engineer formatted the prompt. For this one, you just need to include the keyword you want to target with the posts, and the prompt does the rest. This one will even include emojis and hashtags. 

Other prompts to explore:

• Captions – Hashtags – Tags Generator
• All in One Social Post
• 1-Click Weekly Content Schedule for 10 Platforms

Like I mentioned, you can quickly use this collection of prompts to quickly create and plan out your social media posts. This can help you expedite the process so you just have to setup the posts themselves. 

4.2.5 Long form

The most obvious way ChatGPT can add value to SMBs is through generating long form pieces of content. You can literally use ChatGPT to ideate, create briefs, and then draft content based on the information it has compiled. This can be applied to:

• Blog posts
• Guides/eBooks
• Video/Podcast Scripts and Transcripts
• Landing pages
• Infographics
• Surveys
• Printed marketing collateral

Going back to the chat containing the content brief I put together earlier, I used {Draft post based on outline} and received this output: 

Another option you have is to use the various AIPRM prompts to draft the post as well. They make it simple, you just need to provide a keyword you want the post to target and you’re all set. 

AIPRM Prompt: 1-Click Blog Post

ChatGPT will determine the relevant pieces that should be included and will draft accordingly. After it is done, you can prompt ChatGPT to expand on certain areas or adjust the piece to include or remove other points. 

If I decided to, I could combine these two drafts that took me less than a minute each to generate to create a well-rounded piece.

Other prompts to explore:

• Outrank Article [Live Crawled]
• 1 Click Presentation
• Create the Perfect Landing Page

These prompts work in a similar fashion where AIPRM requires minimal amounts of information from you to get started. This may require some additional refinement to make sure it is the content piece you had in mind, but the time is substantially less than if you were to draft it from scratch.

4.2.6 Recaps

By copy and pasting your blog, guide, white paper, etc into ChatGPT you can prompt it to offer a recap, summary or TL;DR that covers all of the important points in your long-form piece of content. 

TL;DRs and summaries can also be repurposed for other forms of content such as social media posts, emails, and more.

AIPRM Prompt: TLDR – Extract Facts and Summarize

For the example prompt and the ones offered below, all you need to do is copy and paste your piece of content into the chat field. From there, ChatGPT will review the content provided and determine the important key points. Depending on the prompt, you may receive a bullet list, a paragraph summary or both. Some will even include items such as emojis and hashtags.

Other prompts to explore:

• Summarize in Bullet List
• Summarize & Highlight Most Important Points of a Text
• Summarize Text to Bullet Points, Organized in Headings

4.2.7 Email templates

Email correspondence is a must for a lot of small businesses and can become tedious when you have to start from scratch each time. Even creating templates can take hours which can lead to putting it off. ChatGPT can assist in a variety of ways, from outlining details you should include, to generating templates to assist with your sales and marketing funnels.

With ChatGPT’s assistance you can create a series of templates to nurture potential leads into fully converting customers. From initial welcome emails to feedback requests, drafting copy for emails is no longer an arduous process. You can batch out and template your various email types to create consistency throughout your messaging. 

Some of the various ways you can leverage ChatGPT and AIPRM’s prompts for emails:

• Templates
  • Outreach
  • On-boarding
  • Follow-ups
  • Product announcements
  • Customer surveys
• Cold emails
• Drip campaign outlines
• Subject lines
• Rewriting emails

AIPRM and ChatGPT can also help you refine an email to sound more professional, can offer advice on how to improve an email, or even create a cold email template for prospecting like below. 

AIPRM Prompt: Cold Email for Your Prospects

For my record store I know there’s definitely one group I want to reach out to, which would be the collectors I’ve accumulated in my CRM. I want to reach out to them first about this limited edition vinyl. This prompt works off of just a single keyword, crafting an introductory email to assist in capturing more conversions. 

As one of the main forms of communication between yourself and your customers, you want to make sure you are doing everything possible to keep them informed. ChatGPT and AIPRM can support you in this, saving you time and energy in the long run.

Here’s another example of how you can use prompts for new product announcements, keeping your customers informed without spending too much time determining what you want to include in the message. From here, you can adjust or refine some of the points before scheduling it to be sent out to your mailing list. 

AIPRM Prompt: Proven Email Templates

By using these two AIPRM email prompts I was able to generate two different styles of emails that I can send out to my customers and collectors. All I have to do now is refine where necessary, before scheduling them to be sent out. 

Other prompts to explore:

• Email Marketing Series Outline
• Email Marketing subject line
• Create a Pro Email Newsletter

These other prompts will help you plan, ideate, and create other pieces of content in regards to email marketing. This can include drafting subject lines (which I all dread), create the perfect newsletter format and copy, and even offer you guidance on how to plan and approach a series of emails to your prospects. 

4.2.8 Metadata

Meta titles and descriptions should offer context to potential visitors as you appear in search results. These statements are all constrained to a specific character count limit, and creating titles and descriptions to fit within those parameters can be difficult, especially if you’re new to it.  With ChatGPT & AIPRM, you can quickly generate these in a variety of ways. 

In this example, we’ve got a press release that we’ve generated and we want to prepare a meta description to go with it. Using the “Best Meta Description from Text” prompt summarizes the press release into a solid meta description.

AIPRM Prompt: Best Meta Description from Text

All of the prompts featured in the example and list below work within the same approach. Copy and paste the long form content into the chat and ChatGPT and AIPRM’s prompts will review to create an engaging title or description to catch the attention of your audience. 

Others to Explore: 

• High CTR Meta Description
• SEO Meta Description
• Meta-Title and Description

4.2.9 Prompts for other Generative AI Platforms

ChatGPT isn’t the only generative AI platform available. There are other resources like MidJourney and DALL-E 2 that use text prompts to create images. If you thought creating prompts for blogs, emails, and business plans were complex just wait until you see how a few keywords you need to include into usable prompts to get the visual you had in mind. 

AIPRM makes it much easier to generate the results you imagined, along with others that you may have not considered. Many of these prompts will actually offer create multiple prompts with variations to each image. 

Using ChatGPT to create prompts for other platforms can help reduce the amount of time it takes you experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Let’s generate some images to go with our limited edition Wu-Tang vinyl.

AIPRM Prompt: Midjourney V5 Prompts

The prompt I used was ‘Limited Edition Wu-Tang Clan Vinyl Announcement’ and these were the prompts AIPRM generated. As you can see, there is a specific format that it follows which can be difficult to draft. 

These were the results:

Prompt 1 – Vintage style

Prompt 2 – Comic/Digital Illustration

Prompt 3 – Oil Painting

Prompt 4 – A 3D Pixar-Style Image

Other prompts to explore:

• Midjourney Prompt Generator
• Prompt Generator for AIPRM Prompts
• Universal Awesome ChatGPT Prompt

Besides creating prompts for other resources like MidJourney, you can leverage AIPRM to create other prompts for ChatGPT to address the specific need you are looking to accomplish with a new piece of content. 

Let’s see what how long it will take to use ChatGPT and AIPRM for Maintenance and Review tasks. 

5. Maintenance and Review

5.1 Review

Similar to the approach with summaries and recaps, ChatGPT can review your content piece to identify areas that need to be edited and opportunities to improve the piece overall. There are even prompts that will take your content and translate it into another language for additional visibility. The example below handles basic copy editing.

What was copy/pasted:

How the prompt rewrote it:

AIPRM Prompt: Grammar Perfect: Correct and Refine Text

Working in a similar way to the summary or meta description prompts, AIPRM has a variety of resources to ensure you never post or send a piece of content riddled with errors. This example will review the copied and pasted content and rewrite the content to address all of the errors. For visibility, the rewrites also include a list of changes it made:

Other prompts to explore:

• Best Proofreader for Daily Use
• Best Email Corrector for Professionals
• Plagiarism Checker

Overlooking some of these small, avoidable errors can sometimes determine whether or not a prospect converts to a customer. They want to make sure you are a trusted, knowledgeable, professional in your field. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors can hinder your efforts. 

The last point, the Plagiarism Checker is extremely useful if you are outsourcing your creative work. You want to make sure that the freelancer isn’t lifting any text or long form pieces that come from competitors and other resources. In the end, you will be the one penalized, not the freelancer. 

5.2 Optimization

ChatGPT wants to help you identify ways to have your content rank higher. AIPRM’s prompts help you find linking opportunities, generate titles for higher click-through rates, optimize your headlines, and more.