Technology & AI for Business
AI can fill a content calendar in minutes. Filling it with something worth reading is still your job.
Many owners have no marketing team and no time. AI can help with ideas, first drafts and tidying, but left alone it produces posts that sound like everyone else's and claims nobody checked. This session shows where it helps a small business's marketing and where it does harm.
Explore this page6 sections
More content is not the same as better marketing.
When producing a post costs almost nothing, the temptation is to produce a great many. Customers can tell. What a small business has that a template does not is specific knowledge: its own customers, its own work, its own way of explaining things.
AI is useful for the parts of marketing that are slow and mechanical. It is weaker at knowing your customer, and it will not stop you claiming something untrue. This session separates the two.
What the session covers
32 topics across 7 areas. Seven parts, worked on each participant's own business.
Start With Your CustomerAI works from what you give it.5
- Who buys from you, and why they choose you
- What they ask before buying
- What you do that others nearby do not
- Writing this down in plain words, once
- Using that description every time you ask for help
A vague request gets a vague, generic answer.
Ideas and PlanningA starting list, sorted by you.5
- Ideas for posts, offers and seasonal occasions
- A rough month-by-month plan
- Questions customers ask, turned into topics
- Choosing a few ideas and discarding the rest
- Matching ideas to the channels you can actually keep up
Drafting CopyFirst drafts are cheap; the edit is where it becomes yours.5
- Captions, short descriptions and message broadcasts
- Several versions to choose from
- Cutting exaggeration and filler
- Adding the detail only you know
- Reading it aloud as the customer would hear it
Language and Local ContextWhere a draft may sound wrong without looking wrong.4
- Drafting in the language your customers use
- Having a fluent speaker check any translation
- Local festivals, names and expressions it may get wrong
- Not assuming one version suits every region
Claims, Offers and RulesAnything you publish is yours.5
AI can produce confident-sounding claims about results or quality. If you cannot prove it, do not publish it.
- Making only claims you can back up
- Not inventing reviews, testimonials or endorsements
- Stating offer terms, dates and conditions accurately
- Remembering that misleading advertising has consequences
- Checking current rules for your trade, and asking a professional where unsure
Images and VisualsUseful, with limits.4
- Layout and caption ideas
- Not presenting generated images as photographs of your real work
- Checking the tool's terms on commercial use
- Using your own photographs where trust matters
Customer Data and Looking at ResultsKeep the numbers real.4
- Not pasting customer lists or messages into a tool you have not checked
- Using AI to help describe your own simple numbers
- Not trusting any figure it produces without a source
- Tracking one or two things you can actually count
Practised in the room
- Writing a one-paragraph description of your customer and your offer
- Drafting three captions and turning one into your own voice
- Spotting an unsupported claim in a deliberately flawed post
- Planning one small week of marketing you can really do
A checklist before anything is published
- Is every claim true, and can I show it?
- Are the offer, dates and terms exactly right?
- Does it sound like us?
- Have I used any customer information I should not have?
- Has someone fluent checked any other-language version?
How the session runs
A practitioner who does marketing for a small business shows how they use AI for planning and drafting, including output that is bland, wrong or risky. Participants write a short description of their own business, draft and then rewrite a small piece of marketing, and check each other's work against the checklist. No product is recommended, and examples are hypothetical.
What your students leave with
- A clearer written description of their customer and what they offer
- A simple month of marketing ideas drafted and then sorted by a person
- A method for turning a first AI draft into something in their own voice
- A checklist for claims, offers and promises before anything is published
- An understanding of what customer data should never go into a tool
- One small marketing task to hand over for a month, and a way to judge it
Scheduled sessions
Nothing scheduled yet
Sessions are arranged with a college once a date is agreed. Ask us and we will find the right person for it.
A student rather than a college? See what is coming up, or ask your placement team to host this.
Use AI to save the time, and spend it making the message truer.
Tell us who your students are and what stage they are at. Sessions are free for participants.