You know you should post more, update the website, answer reviews and send the newsletter you promised in March. You also have a business to run. So you tried one of the AI chat tools, asked it for a blog post about your bakery, and got back something that could have been written about any bakery on earth. You didn’t post it, and you were right not to.
The tools are useful. I use them every day and I’ve built a business on them. But the way most people try them first, typing one line and hoping, gets the worst out of them. This is how to get the best out.
What it’s genuinely good at
Getting past the blank page. The hardest part of writing anything is the first bad draft. AI will give you one in ten seconds, and it’s much easier to fix something that exists than to start from nothing. Even a draft you throw away tells you what you don’t want to say.
Turning your notes into sentences. You talk well about your work. You know what customers ask and what you tell them. If you can get that down in a messy list or a voice memo, the tool can arrange it into paragraphs. This is the most valuable use, and the one I’ll spend the most time on below.
Rewording. “Make this shorter.” “Make this less stiff.” “Say this so a customer who’s annoyed won’t feel brushed off.” It’s very good at taking text you’ve written and giving you three other ways to say it.
Translating jargon. Paste in the paragraph your accountant, your supplier or your industry newsletter wrote and ask for it in plain English. Or paste in your own and ask which words a customer wouldn’t know. Trades are full of words that mean something exact to you and nothing to the person paying.
Structure. Ask it to turn a long email into a checklist, or a list of points into an FAQ, or a page into something with headings that make sense. It’s good at shape.
What it’s bad at
Your specifics. It doesn’t know that you’re the only shop in town that sharpens Japanese knives, that your Tuesday class is the one for beginners, or that your best customer has been coming for eleven years. Unless you tell it, it fills those gaps with plausible generic material. That’s why the first try reads like it’s about any business: it is.
Your voice. Left alone, every model has a house style. It’s upbeat, smooth, slightly breathless, and sounds like nobody in particular. Customers can’t always say what’s wrong with it, but they notice it doesn’t sound like you.
Facts. These tools produce text that sounds right. Most of the time it also is right, and that’s the trap. When a model doesn’t know something, it usually doesn’t say so. It writes a confident sentence that might be invented: a statistic, a regulation, an opening date, a feature your product doesn’t have. It isn’t lying. It has no way of telling the difference. That’s your job.
A workflow that works
This is the process I use for anything that goes out with my name on it. It takes longer than typing one line. It takes far less time than writing from scratch.
1. Start with your own words, not a topic
Don’t ask for “a blog post about kitchen remodeling.” Give it raw material. The best raw material is stuff you already have:
- The answer you gave a customer by email last week
- Your notes from a phone call
- A two-minute voice memo of you explaining it while you drive (most phones will transcribe it)
- Real phrases from customer reviews and messages, which tell you how your customers describe the problem in their own words
Customer words are gold. If three people have written “I didn’t know who to call when the pipe burst at night,” that sentence belongs on your website more than anything a model will invent.
2. Give it the job, the reader and the rules
Tell it who’s reading, what you want them to do afterwards, and how you sound. A prompt like this:
I run a two-person plumbing business in Mesa, Arizona. Below are my
notes and three things customers have said to me. Turn them into a
short page for my website answering "What should I do in the first ten
minutes after a pipe bursts?"
The reader is a homeowner who is panicking and reading on a phone.
They should come away knowing where their shutoff valve probably is,
and that they can call us at any hour.
Write like I talk: plain, calm, short sentences, no exclamation marks,
no sales language. Don't add any facts that aren't in my notes. If
something is missing that you think a homeowner would need, list it as
a question for me at the end instead of making it up.
My notes:
[paste]
What customers said:
[paste]
That last instruction does a lot of work. Asking it to list gaps as questions, rather than fill them, cuts down on invented facts.
3. Show it how you write
If you have a few emails or posts that sound like you, paste one in and say “write in this voice.” Two or three paragraphs of real writing beats any description of a tone. Some tools let you save instructions like this so you don’t repeat them every time. Use that.
4. Then edit hard
The draft is a draft. Read it out loud. Anywhere you wouldn’t say it that way, change it. Cut the first paragraph, which is almost always throat-clearing. Cut the last paragraph, which is almost always a summary of what you just read. Put in a detail only you know: a name, a street, a number from your own records, a thing that went wrong once.
You can ask for help with the edit too:
Here's my edited draft. Point out any sentence that sounds generic or
like marketing copy, any claim I should double-check, and anything a
customer might not understand. Don't rewrite it. Just list them.
Asking it to point at problems, rather than rewrite, keeps the voice yours.
Prompts worth keeping
A few I come back to. Change the details.
For a reply to an unhappy review:
Here's a 2-star review and what actually happened from my side. Draft
a short public reply that thanks them, doesn't argue, says plainly
what we've changed, and invites them to call me directly. Under 80
words. No "we apologize for any inconvenience."
For the “about” page you’ve been putting off:
Interview me for my website's About page. Ask me one question at a
time, ten questions total, about why I started, who I work with, and
what I do differently. After the last answer, write the page using my
answers and my phrasing as much as possible.
The interview one is the best trick I know. People write stiffly about themselves and talk easily. Let it ask the questions.
For checking a page from the customer’s side:
Read this page as a first-time customer who has never heard of us.
What would you still need to know before you'd call? What's confusing?
What would make you leave?
The tells, and how to get rid of them
Readers are getting good at spotting AI text, and once they spot it they trust the rest of the page less. These are the common giveaways. Search your draft for them.
Certain words. “Delve”, “tapestry”, “elevate”, “seamless”, “robust”, “unlock”, “empower”, “navigate the complexities”, “in today’s fast-paced world”, “whether you’re a first-timer or a seasoned pro.” If you’d never say it out loud at the counter, cut it.
The “it’s not just X, it’s Y” sentence. “It’s not just a haircut, it’s an experience.” One is fine. Three in a page is a pattern people recognize.
Everything in threes. “Fast, friendly and reliable.” “Quality, value and service.” Models love a list of three. Real writing has twos and fours and ones.
Rhetorical questions as openers. “Looking for the perfect gift?” “Tired of slow internet?” Just say the thing.
Exclamation marks and emoji, especially emoji used as bullet points.
Bold everywhere, and headings in Title Case Like A Brochure.
The summary ending. “In conclusion…” or “Ultimately, …” followed by a paragraph that repeats the post. Stop when you’ve finished.
No specifics at all. This is the biggest tell, and it’s the one the word list doesn’t catch. A paragraph that would be equally true of every business in your trade is AI-sounding even if a human wrote it. The fix is always the same: a real detail. Not “we care about every customer” but “Maria will text you a photo of the part before we order it.”
Before:
Whether you’re a first-time homeowner or a seasoned DIY enthusiast, our team of dedicated professionals is here to help you navigate the complexities of plumbing repair with seamless, reliable service!
After:
If a pipe bursts, turn off the water at the main shutoff first. Then call us. Dave picks up at 3 a.m., and he’ll talk you through finding the valve if you can’t.
Try this now (ten minutes). Open your website’s home page and the “about” page. Read them out loud. Mark every sentence that could appear on a competitor’s site without changing a word. Replace one of them with something only you could say. That’s the whole method, done once.
What you should never let it write unchecked
Some text costs you nothing if it’s slightly off. Some can cost you a customer, money, or a legal problem. These need a human checking every word against reality, every time:
Prices, hours and availability. A model will happily fill in a price that looks reasonable. If it’s on your site, a customer will expect it.
Policies. Refunds, cancellations, warranties, deposits. Write these yourself, or have them checked by someone who knows your obligations. There’s a well-known case from February 2024 where a Canadian tribunal held Air Canada responsible after its website chatbot told a grieving customer he could claim a bereavement discount after flying, which wasn’t the airline’s policy. The airline argued the chatbot was responsible for its own words. The tribunal disagreed. Whatever is on your site is your word.
Health, safety, legal and financial claims. If you run a gym, a clinic, a salon, a food business or anything near money, don’t publish a claim about what something does for the body, what’s legal, or what will save someone tax, unless you can point to where it comes from. Models will produce these sentences fluently and with no source.
Reviews and testimonials. Never generate them, never “improve” them, and never post them as if from customers. Beyond being dishonest, the Federal Trade Commission’s rule on consumer reviews, in force since October 2024, specifically bans fake reviews, including ones generated by AI. You can use AI to help draft your reply to a real review. You can’t use it to write the review.
Anything about a named person, including staff bios. Check the facts with the person.
A note on what you paste in
Be careful about putting customer details into these tools: names, phone numbers, addresses, health information, anything you’d be embarrassed to see leaked. The big tools have settings about whether your conversations are used to train future models, and business plans often handle that differently from free ones. Look up how the tool you use handles it, as of the day you read this, because these policies change. When in doubt, swap names for “Customer A” before you paste.
The honest part
AI won’t make you a writer, and it won’t give your business a voice. You already have one. You use it every day on the phone and at the counter. What these tools are good for is the dull part in between: turning what you’d say into something tidy enough to publish, faster than you’d manage alone on a Sunday night.
The standard I hold myself to is simple. If my name is on it, I read every word, and I’d say every word to a customer’s face. If it fails either test, it doesn’t go out, however good it sounded the first time.