A small business guide to AI

With new AI tools emerging faster than ever, most businesses are turning themselves inside out to take advantage of new efficiencies and tools. Small businesses, however, are quickly left behind in the conversation, forced to choose between running their business or becoming an AI expert. Here at Effigy Agency, we have a slightly different approach to AI.

First, we acknowledge that AI is everywhere. What used to be a “what if” has become a “what now”. We, as individuals, need to come to terms with AI being implemented in just about every single aspect of our daily lives, and exponentially more so in our professional environments.

If you have a social media account on any platform, you are using AI. If you Google anything ever, you are using AI. As a small business owner, your job is not to decide whether to use AI, it’s to better manage how AI works for (or sometimes against) your business.

Here are 4 basic questions we often ask ourselves when using AI:

1. Is there a physical component to this task?
   AI can make recommendations but it can’t do physical work for you.
   

2. Is there a human element that should be present?
   Whether it’s emotional appeal in marketing messaging or specialized experience within an industry that gives you a unique advantage in a crowded market, more and more brands are updating their marketing to reflect human elements that signal trust, create connections, add depth, and differentiate themselves.
   Don’t let AI replace one of the few things it actually can’t do.
   

3. Do I understand how to do this?
   You are the singular authority on the systems, processes, and resources that make your business work. If AI did a good job, you should know what makes the work good. If AI did a bad job, you also need to be able to identify where the deliverable failed your standards. Not only does this help to make your future AI endeavors better, it also helps to inform how your existing processes need to change and improve as tools evolve.
   In the absolute worst case scenario, if something bad happens because of the work that AI did, do you know how to handle it?
   

4. Does AI add value to this?
   We’re all for new shiny toys but most of the work we see being done by AI is, frankly, mediocre. At this stage of AI development, the most significant value that AI can contribute for the average small business is efficiency. If your use of AI does not help you more efficiently manage your business and make critical decisions, you could have used your time better.

Fundamentally, we view AI as a wake up call for everyone. It is up to us (humans) to define the things that are intrinsically valuable about our work, ideas, creativity, connections, and even consumption. We see great potential in leveraging AI to move faster and be better informed, when that helps, but that desire for speed needs to be balanced (again, by humans) with friction that builds trust, time to process and appreciate value, and the experiences that come with being human.

For those of you looking for a short list of AI tools that we think help a lot, here are some places to start:

• N8n. AI automations represent some of the most valuable and most promising systems on the market. For Shopify brands, we really enjoy working with Streamline Connector to help facilitate that work.

• Claude. As a digital support agency, we think the ability to create functional prototypes for proof of concept or assist with code completion tasks is a stunning technological achievement.
  Seriously, we’re really impressed at what Claude can do.

• Google Gemini. While we have our reservations about Google’s expansive reach we also find many of the smart tools and web knowledge exceptionally helpful. Most of us are already on Google already, so it’s nice that Gemini has finally matured into a dynamic and intuitive framework for productivity.

• Canva and Adobe. We apologize for grouping these together but the use of AI within both these platforms is well-thought and really helpful for making complex changes quickly. While we don’t advocate for generative graphics as a standard practice, we can’t imagine giving up our background editors.

If you want help better understanding how to use (or avoid) AI within your business, we’d love to connect. Comment your questions or send us a note.