AI is developing every day. Many freelancers and businesses are asking the question - will it be a friend or foe?
This post isn't going to answer that question - no one can. Instead, this is how AI could help you save time, conduct faster research, pitch more clients, and more.
Automate time-consuming tasks
If planning a social media content calendar or writing a pitch email makes you want to do literally anything else instead, AI could be a solution. The time-consuming jobs which prevent you from doing your actual work can now take up a much smaller part of your day.
According to Daniel Thornton, a Content, SEO & Social Media Marketing Freelancer writing for IPSE, generative AI still needs human fact-checking to be reliable but can "help you work more efficiently and productively by automating repetitive tasks".
AI solutions to cut down admin time:
- Simplified's social media marketing tool will help create posts and schedule them for you.
- Numerous thinks of spreadsheet formulas so you don't have to.
- Turn audio into text with Speechify and never transcribe ever again.
Faster research (as long as you fact-check)
Thorough research is a huge part of many freelance roles. AI gets a bad reputation for producing unreliable information - just ask the New York-based lawyer who cited non-existent case law in court.
It goes without saying that any research conducted online needs to be fact-checked with multiple sources. AI tools can enhance your existing research abilities, creating lists of sources for further reading and extracting the most useful information to cut down on reading time.
AI solutions to speed up research:
- Consensus scans 200 million academic articles to produce evidence-based answers and reference lists.
- ChatPDF.ai uses AI-powered text recognition, table extraction, and data analysis to pull the most important details from reports.
Easy lead generation and proposal-writing
Selling yourself can be tough for a freelancer. Proposal generators and writing aids can make your pitches more effective and faster to put together. Instead of creating your own PDFs, decks, and reports, AI design tools can produce beautiful, compelling documents automatically.
Stand-out AI solutions to help you win new clients:
- Lyne will find potential clients and construct personalised cold emails.
- Durable can create landing pages, websites, contact forms, and portfolios.
- Grammarly can give all your client-facing comms more polish, correcting grammar and spelling and making your writing more impactful.
Make it easier to do the things you're not so good at
Everything from logo design to social media content creation can now be done by AI to some extent, speeding up ideation, creation, and execution. You could fill your social media profiles with more promotional, engaging content, create your own logo for a fraction of the price, and generate sophisticated graphics with zero design skills.
- Logopony uses its library of 100,000 icons and templates to create a logo for your freelance business.
- Supercreator AI turns your video scripts into short-form videos for TikTok, YouTube and other social media sites.
- Canva’s Magic Design™ tools can generate presentations, graphics, and documents from your instructions.
Get more out of meetings and calls
If your client calls sometimes feel unfocused, or attention spans drift easily, these AI tools can help you and others make them more productive. These tools can automatically take notes and extract the most important points, giving you something to work on after every conversation.
- OtterAI will transcribe your Zoom meetings, even in noisy settings.
- Dialpad can generate action points and summaries after each online meeting.
Get your invoices paid 3x faster on average
With Solna, freelancers can set up automatic invoice reminders for all their clients. Set the frequency, create the message, and sit back while your late-paying clients receive a polite nudge.
in LND