The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered digital tools by small businesses is on the precipice of a sharp upturn, according to Thryv small business expert, Greg Nicolle.

In Australia, the number of businesses in the AI industry has grown 6.9% per year on average over the five years between 2019-2024, which is a steady increase and reflects the demand Australia is seeing nationwide.

Commenting on the rise, Greg says, “As the understanding of the power of digital tools increases, Australian small business owners are showing a growing interest in digital innovation and how technology can transform their businesses for the better.

“For larger corporations, the implementation of AI technologies can be seen across areas such as cybersecurity, internal operations and customer experience,”

However, on a smaller scale, business owners are quickly realising what a powerhouse generative AI like Chat GPT can be for their small businesses. An area where we’re observing this emerging trend and its impact is content generation for social media,” said Greg.

For a small business to be competitive, a strong social media presence is more important now than ever before. This is no surprise, given over 50% of Australian internet users aged 16 to 64 use social media to research brands and products.

Research shows that more than half of consumers won’t trust your business if it doesn’t have an online presence. Appearing in online search results isn’t enough anymore.

Greg predicts that in 2024, small businesses with a strong organic presence on page one search results will struggle to get traction and build a foundation of trust with prospective customers without a social media presence to solidify their brand reputation through reviews.

“Therein lies the challenge of content generation and social media management, and in turn, the transformative value that AI has to offer.  

“We know it’s important to have an engaging social presence with great reviews, but how does a business owner already wearing so many hats find the time to create engaging content – let alone consistently post across multiple social platforms?

“AI-powered digital tools are the trump card that small business owners have been searching for, and can be utilised cleverly to handle the creation of content,  manage postings and request reviews in a fraction of the time.”

Small business can consider feeding simple prompts to free or paid generative AI tools (eg. “create a post that talks about the upcoming hair trends for autumn in Australia”) which is an infinite and ever-growing resource of engaging posts to suit all social channels is at the fingertips of small businesses – emojis, hashtags and all.

Chat GPT, DALL·E 3, Co-Pilot (Microsoft) and Gemini (Google) are the titans of AI content generation and social media planning, making it exceptionally easy for small business owners to generate visually engaging images and platform-tailored copy to accompany their posts.

As of this month, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) has also entered the social media AI arena launching their generative AI assistant, offering image generation, responsive chat and search functions. 

“We’re also seeing an increase in the integration of AI into small business software such as generative social media tools, removing the necessity to navigate outside of familiar software to harness AI power.

All that’s left to do for small businesses is to post the content to social platforms of their choice – which, of course, can also be taken care of by AI.

“It’s undeniable these tools will have a transformative impact on Australian small business owners as we continue to see uptake increase. For those utilising these tools already, the proof is in the pudding,” said Greg.

According to Slack Workforce Lab, AI’s positive impact on productivity in the workforce could be a major contributor to the usage uptick, with 79% of Australian respondents acknowledging an overall increase in productivity.

Greg concludes, “Creating and maintaining a positive online image for your business doesn’t need to be as time-consuming or creatively demanding as small business owners may have initially thought.

With an open mindset towards using some of the latest AI and automation tools, keeping on top of content, social-proof and trends is no longer time-consuming, giving business owners back time in their days to focus on more crucial-to-business tasks.”