Essential AI Chatbots & Strategy Tools for Startups and SMBs

Jacob Lee

6 min read

August 26, 2024

Essential AI Chatbots & Strategy Tools for Startups and SMBs

Startups and small businesses are always looking for ways to boost productivity. One of the best ways to do this is by using AI tools, such as AI chatbots. AI can streamline operations, automate routine tasks, and provide insights that drive better decision-making.

Here’s a detailed guide on essential AI tools that can significantly enhance productivity for startups and SMBs.

1. GitHub Copilot

One of the most talked-about AI tools for developers is GitHub Copilot. It’s an AI-powered code completion tool that integrates directly into your IDE. It’s like having a co-pilot who suggests how to write code and provides contextual recommendations that align with your project’s AI strategy. It’s especially helpful for startups and small businesses where time and resources are often stretched thin.

Main Features

  • Code Suggestions: GitHub Copilot offers instant suggestions for code snippets and functions as you type. This feature alone can save hours of development time each week.
  • Contextual Understanding: It understands the context of your code, providing more accurate completions that fit your project’s specific requirements.
  • Learning from Codebases: The more you use it, the better it gets. GitHub Copilot learns from your code, improving its suggestions over time.

How it Boosts Productivity

For developers, this means less time searching for solutions online and more time coding. It allows you to focus on higher-level design and architecture rather than getting bogged down by the minutiae of coding syntax. Given developers’ high rates, even saving a few minutes daily makes the $10ish monthly fee for GitHub Copilot a bargain.

Tips for Using GitHub Copilot

  • Follow Your Lead: Let Copilot follow your lead rather than trying to follow it. This ensures that you remain in control of your coding process.
  • Be Wary of Long Suggestions: Long code suggestions can be prone to errors. It’s always good practice to review and validate these suggestions.
  • Context Matters: Provide as much context as possible by keeping related files open. This helps Copilot provide better, more relevant suggestions.

Notion AI

Notion AI is another powerful tool designed to streamline work across various departments, from sales to marketing to operations. Notion itself is a popular productivity tool, and the integration of AI takes its capabilities to the next level.

Notion AI works across various platforms, including desktop and mobile, and integrates with popular third-party tools.

Main Features

  • Idea Generation: Notion AI can brainstorm ideas for email campaigns, blogs, and other creative projects. This is especially useful for small teams where everyone wears multiple hats.
  • Meeting Summaries: It can quickly generate summaries and action items from your meeting notes, saving you the time and effort of sifting through long notes.
  • Content Translation: Notion AI can translate content into different languages for businesses operating in multiple regions, making it more accessible.
  • Script Writing: It can help generate initial drafts for video scripts, which you can refine and perfect.

How it Boosts Productivity 

Notion AI enhances productivity by automating the creation and management of content. It saves time on drafting and summarizing, allowing teams to focus on strategic tasks. Its integration with other apps ensures a seamless workflow, reducing the need to switch platforms.

Salesforce Einstein

Salesforce Einstein is an AI platform within the Salesforce ecosystem designed to bring advanced AI analysis capabilities to customer relationship management (CRM). It is a valuable tool for any business focused on building and maintaining customer relationships.

Main Features

  • Predictive Analytics: Predictive lead scoring helps sales teams prioritize leads likely to convert, ensuring efforts are focused on high-potential opportunities.
  • Machine Learning automatically learns from data and improves over time, offering insights and recommendations that get better the more you use it.
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP): Enables sentiment analysis, chatbots, and voice recognition, allowing for more personalized and effective customer interactions.
  • Automation: Automates routine tasks with features like Einstein Bots and Einstein Voice, freeing time for more strategic activities.

How it Boosts Productivity

Salesforce Einstein enhances CRM by providing predictive insights and automating tasks. This means sales teams can focus on high-value leads, customer service can be more responsive, and marketing campaigns can be more targeted. The automation of routine tasks ensures consistency and efficiency across the board.

Content at Scale

Content at Scale is an AI-driven tool leveraging multiple AI engines, including GPT-3, to produce diverse, SEO-friendly content quickly. Content creation can be a time-consuming task for startups and SMBs. Content at Scale aims to alleviate this by automating the process.

Main Features

  • Rapid Content Generation: This tool generates 2,600-word articles from a single keyword in five minutes. It is ideal for maintaining a high-volume content strategy.
  • Structured Writing: Provides article blueprints for organized content creation, ensuring consistency and quality.
  • AI Content Detection: Ensures content isn’t flagged by search engines, maintaining SEO integrity.
  • Direct WordPress Integration: Simplifies publishing by integrating directly with WordPress.

How it Boosts Productivity

Content at Scale drastically reduces the time needed to produce high-quality content. Bloggers and content marketers can maintain a consistent posting schedule without sacrificing quality. The tool’s structured writing feature ensures the content is organized and comprehensive.

Custom AI Solutions

In addition to these ready-made tools, startups and SMBs can benefit immensely from custom-built AI solutions. Unlike generic tools, custom AI models are designed to address specific challenges and optimize operations in ways that are uniquely suited to the business. This tailored approach ensures that the AI solutions are not only effective but also aligned with the business’s unique needs and goals.

Examples of Custom AI Solutions

  • Proprietary Data-Based Content Generation: Tailoring AI models to generate content based on your specific data, ensuring relevance and accuracy. This can be particularly useful for businesses that produce a large volume of content and need it to be highly specific to their industry or audience.
  • Chatbots Trained on Company Data: Developing chatbots that understand and respond based on your company’s unique data. These chatbots can provide more accurate and personalized responses, significantly improving customer service and engagement.

How Custom AI Solutions Boost Productivity

Custom AI solutions allow businesses to address their unique challenges with precision. By focusing on the business’s specific needs, custom AI solutions can drive efficiency and effectiveness in ways that off-the-shelf tools simply cannot.

Final Thoughts

By carefully selecting and optimizing the right AI tools, startups and SMBs can stay competitive and agile and maximize their resources and time. 

Whether through tools like GitHub Copilot, Notion AI, Salesforce Einstein, Content at Scale, or custom AI solutions, the potential for productivity gains is immense. The key is to understand your specific needs and choose the tools that best address them.

At Linkt.ai, we specialize in creating custom AI solutions that fit your needs. We understand that a one-size-fits-all approach to AI won’t work, so we design each model tailored to your use cases from the ground up. By using AI in sales and leveraging your unique data, we build AI models that analyze data to provide precise and actionable insights, enhancing your operations and driving productivity.