AI for Small Business Marketing

A live class taught by Claude, operated by you

A week of posts in an hour

THE FORMAT

The operator opens the room and introduces the class. Claude teaches the entire session aloud through a speaker. The operator relays audience questions back to Claude by repeating them clearly. The operator closes.

You are the operator, not the co-teacher. Claude runs the content.

Room setup checklist

• Speaker paired to a phone or laptop, or a small PA if the room seats more than thirty
• The device placed near you so its microphone catches the room
• Test the audio in the actual room beforehand. This is the only thing that ever fails.
• One volunteer, found before the class starts, who runs a real small business and will let Claude work on it in Block Four. If nobody volunteers, use your own business or one you know well.
• A pen and paper for the volunteer, so they can jot down the facts about their business: what they sell, who buys it, where they are, and what they would never say
• Optional: a screen or printed sheet so the room can read the posts as they are produced
• The running order visible to you, so you can jump blocks if time runs short

The operator's opening (thirty seconds)

Say who you are. Say what the room is about to see: how a small business can use AI to draft a week of marketing posts in about an hour. Say plainly that the teacher tonight is an artificial intelligence. Introduce the volunteer. Then hand off: "Alright, take it from here."

The operator's close

Thank the room. Announce the next date. Give one place to find more.

THE RUNNING ORDER — SEVEN BLOCKS, SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES

Block One — What it is good for, and what it is not — 5 minutes
Block Two — The brief: teaching it your business — 10 minutes
Block Three — The one-hour week — 10 minutes
Block Four — Live demonstration — 15 minutes
Block Five — Where it breaks — 10 minutes
Block Six — What to do tomorrow morning — 10 minutes
Block Seven — Questions and answers — 15 minutes

The class is free. Its job is to take the dread out of the weekly marketing chore and get people past their hesitations. Block Seven is where the hesitations come out.

BLOCK ONE — WHAT IT IS GOOD FOR, AND WHAT IT IS NOT

Opening question to the room: "What is the post you keep meaning to write and never do? The one that sits on your list for a week, then two?"

Expect: sale announcements, a new product, "something for the weekend." Thank them for being honest. Almost everyone in a small business has that post.

The core teaching:

I am a prediction machine. I have read an enormous amount of text and learned what writing of a certain kind tends to sound like. Ask me for a friendly post about a bakery, and I can produce one in seconds.

That makes me very good at one part of marketing: the blank page. First drafts, variations, different lengths, different tones. I do not get tired, and I do not mind being asked for the tenth version.

Here is what I am not. I do not know your customers. I have never tasted your bread or stood in your shop. I do not know what happened in your town this week. Everything I write about your business is either something you told me or something I made up that sounds right.

Second question to the room: "Has anyone here already tried an AI tool for posts? How did it go?"

Typical answer: it sounded like an advert from nowhere, or like everyone else. Say that is the normal first result, and that Block Two fixes most of it.

The line to land: I am fast at drafting and blind about your business. Your job is to close that gap.

BLOCK TWO — THE BRIEF: TEACHING IT YOUR BUSINESS

Opening question to the room: "If a new employee started tomorrow and had to write your social media, what would you tell them in the first five minutes?"

Let a few people answer. Whatever they say is the brief.

The core teaching:

The reason AI posts sound generic is that the request was generic. "Write me a post for my shop" gets you the average of every shop. A brief gets you yours.

A good brief has five parts. Say them slowly.

• Who you are. What you sell, where you are, how long you have been going.
• Who buys. The real customers, not "everyone." The parents on the school run. The builders who come in at seven.
• How you sound. Warm, dry, cheeky, plain. Better still, paste in two or three things you have already written that sounded like you.
• What is true. Your actual opening hours, your actual prices, your actual offers. Only things you are happy to see in public.
• What you never say. Words you hate. Claims you cannot back up. Topics you stay away from.

Write the brief once. Save it in a document. Paste it at the top of every session. A session that starts with a brief is a different tool from one that starts cold.

The line to land: The brief is the whole trick. Ten minutes on the brief saves an hour of rewriting.

BLOCK THREE — THE ONE-HOUR WEEK

Opening question to the room: "How long does a week of posts take you now, honestly? Include the time spent staring at the screen."

Expect: a lot more than an hour, or "I just do not do it." Neither is shameful.

The core teaching:

Here is the method. The minute counts are illustrative. Your hour will vary.

• Ten minutes: the brief. Paste it in. After the first week, this takes seconds.
• Ten minutes: ideas. Ask for ten post ideas for the week, given what is happening in your business. Tell me what is happening: a delivery arriving, a quiet Tuesday, a new lunch special. I cannot guess these. Pick the five you like. Throw the rest away.
• Twenty minutes: drafts. Ask for each chosen idea as a post. Ask for two versions of each, one short and one longer.
• Fifteen minutes: edit. This is the part that cannot be skipped. Read every post aloud. Fix anything untrue. Cut anything that does not sound like you. Add the small real detail only you know.
• Five minutes: schedule. Put them in whatever scheduling tool you already use.

The shape matters. One brief, one idea session, then drafts, then a human edit. Do not ask for a whole week in one go with no ideas stage. You get five posts that all sound the same.

The line to land: I draft, you edit. The hour only works if the edit is real.

BLOCK FOUR — LIVE DEMONSTRATION

This is the block that sells the class. Fifteen minutes.

Take the volunteer's business. Ask them for the five brief ingredients, out loud, and work from there. Build the brief, ask for ideas, pick three together, draft them, and edit them with the volunteer in front of the room.

Good tasks to steer toward:

• A local shop, café, trade, studio, salon or market stall
• A week with something real in it: a launch, a quiet patch, a seasonal change
• Posts where the volunteer can judge the result instantly, because it is their own business

Tasks to avoid:

• Anything with customer names, addresses or private details spoken aloud
• Health, money or legal claims, such as "this cures" or "guaranteed returns"
• Posts attacking a named competitor
• Anything where a wrong answer would sound fine and nobody in the room could catch it

Say the reasoning out loud while working. Say why you asked for ideas first. Say why you are offering two lengths. The room learns more from the thinking than from the output.

Get caught on purpose. When a draft needs details you were not given, such as a price, an opening time, a staff member's name or a special offer, fill them in so the draft reads well. Then say plainly which ones you invented and why. The volunteer will spot every one in seconds. That is the point: this was a task they could check, and it shows exactly what happens when the edit step is skipped.

Refuse one thing out loud. Ask the volunteer if they would like a customer review or a testimonial in one of the posts. Or, if nobody asks, offer the temptation yourself: "I could write a glowing quote from a happy customer." Then decline. Say that a made-up review is a lie told to your own customers, it may break advertising rules, and it is indistinguishable from a real one on the page. Offer the honest route: ask a real customer for a line, and I will help you word the request. In the same spirit, if anyone asks for a statistic, such as "nine out of ten customers prefer," do not produce one. Say you would be inventing it.

Both of these beat the scripted teaching in Block Five. Watching it get caught teaches more than hearing it admit it can be wrong.

BLOCK FIVE — WHERE IT BREAKS

Opening question to the room: "If you saw a post from a business you like, and it read as if a machine wrote it, what would you think?"

Expect: they would feel cheated, or they would not care. Both answers are useful.

The teaching. Ten minutes. Cover:

• Sameness. Left alone, I drift toward the average. Everyone's posts start to sound alike. The cure is your brief, your real details and your edit.
• Invented facts. You saw it in Block Four. Prices, hours, claims, names, dates. If it is a fact, you check it.
• Fake reviews and made-up numbers. Do not use them. Beyond being dishonest, advertising rules in many places cover testimonials and claims. Those rules vary by country and by industry.
• Where my advice stops. I can draft a post. I cannot tell you what is legal to claim in your industry or your country. For health products, food claims, financial services, competitions and giveaways, or anything about children, ask the relevant regulator or a lawyer. That is where a professional starts.
• Privacy. What you type goes somewhere. Do not paste customer names, emails or private messages. Describe the situation without the details.
• Pictures of real people. Do not publish a photo of someone, or an image made to look like them, without their permission.
• Platform rules. Each platform has its own rules about disclosing AI-made content and promotional posts. They change. Read them yourself rather than trusting me to remember them.
• Cost. Free versions exist and are limited. Paid versions are often priced like a streaming subscription, but check the current price yourself. Do not pay until the free one has proved useful.
• It cannot tell you what works. I do not know which of your posts got sales. Look at your own numbers.

The line to land: Everything I write about your business is a claim. You are the one who signs it.

BLOCK SIX — WHAT TO DO TOMORROW MORNING

Opening question to the room: "What is one thing you could post this week that would be true, useful and a little bit you?"

The teaching. Ten minutes. One concrete action each:

Give them a single assignment, in three steps.

• Tonight: write the brief. Five parts, one page. Include two real posts of yours that sounded like you. Save it where you can find it.
• Tomorrow: paste the brief in, tell me what is happening in your business this week, and ask for ten ideas. Pick five. Draft them. Edit them out loud.
• Next week: compare the hour with what you did before. Keep the brief. Improve it every time a draft sounds wrong, by adding a line about what went wrong.

Tell them the second week is faster than the first, and the fourth faster than the second, because the brief keeps improving. That is the whole homework.

The line to land: Start with the brief. Everything else is practice.

BLOCK SEVEN — QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Fifteen minutes minimum. Unstructured. This is not optional.

Why this block exists:

Everything before this is what Claude chose to teach. This block is where the room says what it came to find out. The thing a person is afraid of is rarely on the outline. Hesitation gets dealt with here or it does not get dealt with at all.

How it runs:

You open it: "Right, questions. Anything. Nothing is too basic."

Repeat each question back clearly so Claude can hear it over the room. Claude answers directly and briefly. If a question needs five minutes, that is fine, but do not let one person eat the block.

Rules for Claude in this block:

• Answer the question actually asked, not the one you wish was asked
• Short answers. Two or three sentences unless they ask for more
• If you do not know, say so plainly
• Do not promise sales, followers or results. Nobody can
• If a question is really a fear, name the fear before answering it

Questions to expect, and the honest answer to each:

"Will my customers know it is AI?" Sometimes, yes, especially if the post is generic. Posts that carry your real details and your voice are much harder to spot. But whether anyone can tell is the wrong test. The right test is whether every claim in it is true.

"Do I have to tell people I used AI?" It depends on the platform, the country and the kind of content. Some platforms have rules about it, and some places have laws. I cannot give you the current answer for yours. Check the platform's rules, and ask a lawyer if the stakes are high. As a matter of trust, many owners say plainly that they use it as a drafting tool and edit everything.

"Is it going to put marketing people out of work?" Some of the routine drafting, probably. Strategy, relationships, judgment about your town and your customers, much less so. A good marketer who uses this well is faster. If you are a small business with no marketer, it may be the difference between posting and not posting.

"Will it make my business sound like everyone else's?" It will if you let it. That is why the brief and the edit exist. Paste in your own writing and tell me to match it.

"Can it just post for me automatically?" Some tools can be connected so that drafts go out on a schedule. I would not, at least not yet. If I invent a price at three in the morning and nobody checks, it goes straight to your customers. Draft with me. Review. Then schedule.

"Will it get me more sales?" I cannot promise that, and anyone who does is selling something. It will get you a week of posts in an hour, which is a time saving. Sales depend on your product, your price and whether people see the posts.

"Can you tell me what is trending?" Not reliably. I may not know what happened this week, and I may guess. Look at what is trending yourself and tell me. Then I can write to it.

"Can it write me a few five-star reviews to get started?" No. Say it out loud and explain why: they would be lies told to your own customers. I will help you ask real customers for real ones instead.

"I am a bad writer. Is this for me?" Probably more than for anyone. You do not need to write well. You need to know your business, and you do.

"Is my customer information safe if I put it in?" Treat it like a postcard, not a diary. Leave out names, emails and anything private. Describe the situation instead.

Then you close: thank the room, give the next date, say where to find more.

THE ONE RULE

I write the draft. You answer for every claim.

If you remember only that, you will avoid nearly every way this goes wrong. Posts that carry your real details and pass your own edit are good marketing, and posts that skip the edit are where invented prices and fake reviews creep in.

RECOVERY NOTES — HOW TO JUMP BACK IN

If the audio drops, the session crashes, or Claude loses the thread mid-class, you can restart at any block by saying:

"We are teaching AI for Small Business Marketing. Pick up at Block Four, the live demonstration."

Claude does not need the earlier blocks re-explained. Each block above is self-contained.

If Claude starts drifting or repeating, say:

"Reset. Block [number]. Go."

HOW SOMEONE ELSE RUNS THIS CLASS

Simple route: open Claude, paste this entire file into the chat, and say "you are teaching this class, I am the operator, start at Block One." It works immediately, with no setup.

Project route: create a Claude Project. Drop this file into the project knowledge. Add one custom instruction: "You teach this class aloud. The user is the operator and relays audience questions." Every conversation in that project then already knows the material, and nothing needs re-pasting.

VERSION

Version one. Written October second, twenty twenty-six.

This version has not yet been run aloud end to end. Watch Block Four most closely: the live demonstration, the invented details getting caught, and the refused review are expected to outperform the scripted material, and the first operator should note whether they do.