Em ‘n’ M’s ‘n’ AI
ChatGPT has been coming up a lot in conversation lately, from simply choosing a film to watch to using it to supplement projects, creating an outfit, or a haircut idea. I’ve also heard a lot about its use in supporting a small start-up business for ideas and inspiration.
To tell the truth, AI scares me, so I was not really into the idea of using AI to support our small business in any way. I was worried about questions of authenticity of our product, service or content. BUT this week I have decided to have a play. After weeks of scrolling through Pinterest and seeing ChatGPT prompts everywhere, I thought I’d see what it could do for Em ‘n’ M’s.
Now, just before you get too far in, I want to warn you…this is NOT a tutorial, but merely a summary of my experience with ChatGPT and what I’ve learned along the way.
The semester is over so Millie and I have spent some time on business planning for tasks and content over the summer.
So, cue the first question to ChatGPT…
How do I start making a profit from my online business?
It outlined an 8-step guide to get us going, phrased in terms we understand. Some of these elements we have encountered and considered before, having addressed them in previous planning sessions. A system we found useful is the one laid out by The Humble Penny, through their ‘Take Control + Grow Your Money’ and ‘Rocket Your Income’ challenges. It was certainly worth reviewing these pointers though to get ourselves back in the mindset.
The Specifics
After providing me with some general business guidance, ChatGPT offered me some more targeted information; here they gave me 6 steps with actions to work through.
1 - Nail your offer
From this, we have put together some new packages and given good consideration to our pricing. This linked in with both steps two and five where we ran through our overall costs per element, including our time spent. We are excited to be including these now on the website, with more to add in over the next couple of months.
2 - Improve profit margins
3 - Get more leads
As we’ve been focussing on the online side of our business for a little while, we decided to boost the service side. We have searched and followed all the local wedding venues on instagram with a view to reaching out to them over the coming weeks, seeking new business relationships and networking.
4 - Website must-haves
Although we still don’t have very much traffic coming through our website as yet, we wanted to make sure we are keeping it up-to-date as we make changes. We have updated the packages and pricing, and plan to include FAQs next.
5 - Pricing strategy
6 - Build long-term revenue
We’re still thinking about how we’re going to do this as we develop our portfolio.
Choosing a focus point
One area that confuses me but that I know will help the online side of the business is Pinterest. I have set up a business Pinterest account and tried and failed to connect it up to the website. I’m not 100% sure on how it all works. Next question for ChatGPT; create a pinterest strategy for our online printables.
Using this strategy as a guide, I will hone my Pinterest skills while I still work on improving our online presence.
We’ve been focussed on the online aspect while I've been dealing with health issues and Millie has been concentrating on university, but what we both really love is the service side of what we do. We’ve been building our portfolio catering to friends and family weddings and parties, but we really need to generate leads for expansion.
For this they responded with another step by step plan:
I went on like this for hours, asking it an array of questions to test its capabilities and limitations.
My ChatGPT session culminated in a full content plan for Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok including hooks, captions, scripts and scheduling. It drafted out a plan as well as some Canva templates for reels and carousels. This is where my journey came to an end. The links didn’t work and I couldn’t access the resources it had created for us. I had no plans to use them as we have our brand format and templates already, but was curious to see how much it would do.
In setting up an account with ChatGPT, I can also revisit this stream if I want to refer back to it in the future.
My key take aways:
Step by step processes with simple action plans
Straightforward instructions on how to set up Pinterest boards
Inspiration for content plan
I was blown away by how much I could get from ChatGPT and I will certainly use it again for ideas and inspiration. I have no intention of copying and pasting what it has provided me with. Of course, not all of it is relevant to what we want to do, but we want our material to sound like it’s come from us, Millie and I, and one thing we’re not short of is our own ideas and creativity. Ultimately, we’re making this up as we go along and tend to get distracted by the fun bits and get lost in the business bits! What it has enabled us to do is create our next steps in tasking and goal setting. Each of these takes time and more work than I realised, and we are breaking it down. So for now, we are working through what I referred to as ’The Specifics’. Come back again and read my future posts about the other steps as I try them.
