12 AI prompts for small business owners
Paste these into ChatGPT or Claude, fill in the brackets with your real details, then edit the result so it sounds like you. The square brackets are the whole trick: the more specific you are inside them, the less you have to fix afterwards.
These are the prompts I actually use, not a list scraped from somewhere. Each one is written the way I would type it, which means they are longer and more specific than the prompts you usually see. That is deliberate. Vague in, vague out.
"Write a warm, professional 100-word description of [your service] for my website homepage, aimed at [describe your ideal customer]. Plain English, no marketing hype."
"Draft a friendly reply to this customer message: [paste message]. Answer their question directly, thank them for reaching out, and invite them to take the next step. Keep it under 120 words."
"Write 3 short Instagram captions announcing [your offer], each with a different tone: friendly, confident, playful. Under 40 words each. No hashtags, no emoji."
"Here are my raw meeting notes: [paste notes]. Turn them into a short summary with two sections: decisions made, and next steps with an owner for each. One line per item."
"Write a step-by-step standard operating procedure for [task], detailed enough that a new team member could follow it without asking me a single question. Flag anywhere they are likely to get stuck."
"Draft a polite but clear follow-up to a client who has not paid invoice [number], now [X] days overdue. Firm, not apologetic, and leaves the relationship intact. Under 100 words."
"Write clear, friendly answers to these questions my customers ask constantly: [list questions]. Answer in my voice, not corporate. Two or three sentences each."
"Write a job ad for a [role] at my small business. Include the day-to-day tasks honestly, what it is actually like to work here, and a closing line inviting people to apply even if they do not tick every box."
"I am quoting [amount] for [describe the work], which will take me roughly [hours]. Ask me the questions a careful business advisor would ask before I send this, then tell me what I have not accounted for."
"Suggest 5 promotion ideas for [your business] to run this month, each needing almost no budget. For each one, tell me the single biggest reason it might not work."
"Proofread this website text for grammar and clarity, then rewrite anything that sounds stiff so it sounds like a real person talking: [paste text]. Show me the before and after side by side."
"I need to tell a client [describe the situation]. Role-play as that client and push back the way a frustrated but reasonable person would. After three exchanges, tell me where my wording made it worse."
Do not stop after one attempt. The single biggest mistake I see is asking once, not loving the answer, and giving up. Treat it like a conversation. "Shorter." "Warmer." "That sounds like an ad, try again." Most good results come from three or four exchanges, not one perfect prompt.
Make them yours
Once a prompt works, save it. A note on your phone is fine. Better still, paste your own past writing in alongside it and ask the tool to match that voice. There is a full guide to that here.