For people like us who (1) have businesses that we need to market and (2) don't have the energy or the time to be promoting all day every day, marketing can feel like a huge time suck. How are we supposed to get everything done and then also work inside our business doing what we enjoy, plus have the time to live our lives? My answer is: AI.

To be clear, I'm not all-AI-all-the-time. I don’t believe AI can do the actual work for us because we need to include our own personal voice and style. So what I'm doing instead is leveraging AI to help me work faster.

Below are 5 of the AI tools that I use regularly, including how I use them to work faster and better.

ChatGPT​

If you still aren’t sure what it is, ChatGPT describes itself as “a powerful AI language model that helps you with writing, content creation, and finding solutions to your business challenges using natural language interaction.” (That’s what it told me when I asked!)

How do I leverage the AI? I use this powerful AI tool to get ideas and even give me initial copy for posts, articles, and videos. It gives me a place to start so I don’t have to begin with a blank page, which is my personal horror show. I've tried a lot of things to get ChatGPT to create content in my voice but it just never sounds like me. So I copy it into a Google doc and use it as a starting point. This process saves me hours of emotional anxiety!

How is this faster? Instead of staring at that dreaded blank page, I use ChatGPT as a sounding board. It speeds up the process and I believe I come up with better ideas because I have a thought partner who doesn’t get upset when I ask a thousand questions or 5 variations of the same question.

Descript​

This is an amazing video and audio editing tool. I use it to edit my YouTube and Instagram videos, and you could just as easily use it to edit a podcast. This platform uses AI in a lot of different ways, from video editing to bringing in a green screen after you've recorded the video.

How do I leverage the AI? In Descript, you edit the video by editing the transcript like you would a word doc or a google doc. When you delete the text, it deletes that part of the video! It is crazy! And so fast and easy. There’s more to it. This is a powerful platform with a lot of capabilities!

How is this faster? The ability to read through the text and delete chunks quickly and have the AI make the adjustment in the video is way faster than going through the video minute-by-minute. And there are more ways that it helps - like removing all the "umms" with one click!

Truth bomb: I avoided editing my videos for years because I thought it would be really hard. Instead, I would record all of my videos in one shot. Imagine recording a 10 minute video and making a mistake at the 9 minute mark!   The day I tried Descript and how easy it is to edit, my life changed!

Constant Contact

This is one of my favorite email platforms. (I also love ActiveCampaign but they haven’t brought AI in… yet!) I've been using Constant Contact for years and it's my #1 recommendation when my clients are ready to step into email marketing, especially if they want it to be easy and effective.

How do I leverage the AI? Just a couple of months ago, Constant Contact launched an AI tool (connected to ChatGPT!) that makes it fast and easy to write an email. You tell it the details and it turns it into 3 well-written email messages that you can choose from. So. Easy.

How is this faster? I don't have to sit and write the email word by word. I just put out the facts and it provides the details. I always still edit the final result because I want it to sound like me, but it helps me move forward much faster.

Later.com

I use Later to schedule my social media posts. I find it massively disrupting to stop my day to create just one social media post. Later.com enables me to sit down and schedule weeks of social media posts in one go.

How do I leverage the AI? I’ve already been using their hashtag suggestions and recommended post times, both of which are AI driven. And now they’ve added a new AI Caption Writer. Exciting! This feature is brand new and for paid plans only, but so far it’s been a game changer! One day last week, I was uploading a post into Later and I just wasn’t happy with the caption I was working with. So I clicked on the Caption Writer real quick, got some better ideas, and voilá! I was moving forward again!

How is this faster? I use Later.com to post quickly so I can move on to the next thing. When it comes to the Caption Writer, this is about making sure I don’t sacrifice quality along the way! And using the tool right there in the app was much faster than opening ChatGPT and creating just the right prompt to get what I needed. 

Canva

This year’s Canva update brought amazing AI functionality into this design space. They already offered the ability to remove the background of an image, which was amazing especially for those of us who aren’t designers by trade. But now you can “magically” erase an item from an image, and even change it out for something else! AI in Canva can also help you put presentations together or bring in animation. It’s stunning!

How do I leverage the AI? I use so many of these tools:

• The color filters to better align images with my brand colors
• The background remover - especially for my YouTube thumbnails!
• Mockups to show what you get if you buy one of my programs.

How is this faster? This one started out less about speed and more about giving me access to functionality that I don’t have otherwise. It’s enabled me to tightened up my brand and helped me create visual cohesion. As I’ve gotten used to using the tools, I have gotten much faster. You have to be willing to play with it in order to figure it out!

So those are five of the AI tools that I use almost daily. There are more, but these are the ones that float to the top. 

I’m wondering – which AI tools are YOU using? And what questions do you have about AI? Please post your answer in the comments. 

For a list of more tools that I recommend, check out the Marketing Toolbox.

Please note: I am an affiliate for some of the products listed on this page which means that I may earn a small commission if you purchase through the links. This doesn't impact how much you pay. I never recommend a product or service unless I have used it and believe that it will help you.