Effortless Content Creation: 7 AI Prompts for Busy Self-Care Business Managers

AI text generators can save you hours of writing on everything from social media posts to welcome emails

Self-care business owner, care for thyself. You’ve been running yourself ragged juggling accounting, payroll, business development, and scheduling, and you’ve still got to write a caption for today’s social media posts, draft personalized client emails, and brainstorm ideas for the blog. Or do you?

Any time writing is the order of the day, AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard can help lighten the load. With the right prompts, these solutions can turn one or two sentences into a few hundred words almost instantly. If you’re new to AI or just don’t know where to start, not to worry — we’ll walk you through the prompt-writing process and even provide examples to get you started.

How to write a good prompt

Writing prompts for AI chatbots is a game of specificity. The more context and direction you provide, the less you’ll have to edit what the bot gives you. Start by telling it how you plan to use the text: “Write an Instagram caption,” for example. Include any critical details, such as specific services, discount amounts, or dates. If you have a structure you want to use, such as a number of sections or the inclusion of bullet points, ask for those as well. It’s also worthwhile to name a word or character count — more on those later. 

Beyond nailing the shape of the output and its details, you can try giving the bot a tone or brand voice to sound like. You’ve worked hard to create a distinct brand for your business, and everything you generate with a chatbot should aim for that same voice. Simple descriptors such as “friendly” or “professional” can help the results stay in line with your branding. It’s a good idea to extend that simplicity to your prompts, keeping them as direct as possible. AI bots can struggle to understand more complicated syntax. A couple of short sentences usually does the trick.

No matter how good an AI text generator is, you must always give the final output a thorough readthrough. AI can quickly get something on the page (which is a huge help), but you’ll still need to do a little editing to get the best possible product. That can help you catch repetition, tweak the language to your liking, and ensure all the facts are in order.

Social media posts

With these general guidelines in place, we can get into actual use cases. When it comes to social media, you’ll want to consider the optimal word counts for different platforms. Brushing up on character limits for each will help you generate posts that start closer to the finish line. To run through a few important examples:

• X (formerly known as Twitter): 280 characters

• Instagram: 2,200 characters (though experts recommend 125 or fewer)

• LinkedIn: 700 characters for businesses or 1,300 for individuals

• Facebook: 63,206 characters (aim for around 40)

In terms of content, remember to keep your writing in line with your brand’s voice. You can use similar copy on each platform, but avoid a simple copy and paste job. Each platform’s user base has different expectations around word count. For example, Instagram users will read a caption, but they’re really there for the pictures. Best keep it short. The same holds true for Facebook.

X, meanwhile, is built around text, and users expect to read around 200 characters in a post. LinkedIn is similar, and you can write around 250 characters before triggering a “See More” button that hides the rest of your post.

If you’re sharing a link to other content, you can use that content as fodder for the chatbot. Some bots can parse a link, but you can get similar results by summarizing key points for the AI. If the link sends users to a blog post about your collab with a local charity, for example, you can describe the work briefly. That will give the bot enough material to produce a caption closer to your final product.

Marketing emails

Emails are one of the most effective ways to build loyalty between clients and your business. In fact, each dollar spent on email marketing has a $54 return on investment. The only problem? You have to keep writing them. All the time. Starting every single email staring at the blank page is a recipe for exhaustion. Even if you automate your email marketing schedule, you still need to fill in the content of your messages. That’s especially true if you’re using different campaigns with different client segments.

AI helps you skip from ideating to editing, saving you all the writing effort in between. You can use one AI prompt to generate snappy subject lines, and another to fill in the details of the email.

Where social media posts serve mainly to get in, share something, and get out, emails have a little more room to breathe. That lets them address more than one idea at a time. They can also incorporate segment targeting and personalization. Prompts for marketing emails should include word counts (rather than character counts) plus information about the intended audience.

Search engine-friendly web copy

Maybe the most time-intensive writing task a beauty business performs is maintaining a blog. Blogs can be a great way to funnel Google search traffic into your bookings while establishing your authority in the industry and your market. But they come with a lot of pressure to be a thought leader, to maintain a consistent brand, to share relevant insights, and to do it all in a genuinely helpful way.

Bringing AI in can put the pedal to the metal on writing, generating thousands of words in minutes. However, using AI to generate longform content comes with additional challenges. For one, AI bots don’t always nail the facts. They’re also pretty light on knowledge when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). If you decide you want to go forward with AI-written blog posts, you’ll need to do some rigorous fact-checking and editing to get them in publishing shape. Instead, consider using AI for idea generation and outline creation.

7 AI prompts to get you started

• Generate a post for Instagram that shares a link to a customer testimonial for [your business]. Use fewer than 50 words and at least two hashtags.

• Using [friendly/sophisticated/playful] language and fewer than 200 characters, write a tweet that sells customers on trying [your new service]. Explain some of the benefits of [your new service]. Use at least one hashtag.

• Write a LinkedIn post that previews a blog post discussing [blog topic] and that directs beauty business owners to read it. Use a helpful tone and break key points into bullets.

• Write a [playful/excited/urgent] email subject line that promotes a limited-time reward for referring friends to a [salon/spa/medspa] called [your business's name].

• Write a [conspiratorial/friendly/cheeky] email that is fewer than 100 words long and encourages lapsed clients to return for another visit with a 10% discount. Highlight [a particular service].

• Write an outline for a 1,000-word blog post about how to quickly onboard employees. Break it into five sections. Include an introduction and conclusion. Use a [professional/wise/friendly] tone of voice.

• Write a 1,000-word blog post about why barbershops need to offer employees health insurance using authoritative, professional language. Avoid citing statistics.

As a self-care business owner, you use tools from booking software to social media schedulers every day. All of them aim to make your life easier, and AI is no different. It may not be able to do every part of the job for you, but it can save you precious hours in your work week. And who knows, maybe you’ll finally find time for a little self care of your own!