👋 Welcome back to AI for SME Success, your weekly dose of practical AI insights that matter to small businesses.
This week: how to turn plain text into editable Instagram carousel slides (or any visual you need) in minutes, by repurposing content you already have. Plus, we break down XDA’s fresh comparison of which AI tool can build the best landing page.
We also unpack new data showing the AI adoption gap by SMEs is widening, and the factors driving it. Last, I’m sharing my list of the top AI tools.
✨ Text to Editable Visuals in Minutes
Tool Comparison
AI is built for repurposing content. Last week I tested four top AI tools (ChatGPT, Meta AI, Claude, and Gemini) to turn a newsletter segment into an Instagram carousel. You can use the same approach to convert text into a presentation or any other kind of visual.
I prompted each tool to keep the slides square, place my Instagram handle on every slide, and use my brand colors (deep blue, light blue, and peach). I split the newsletter text into sections and ran each through the tools. For comparison, I’ve included the first two slides from each in the illustration below.
First Two Slides of an Instagram Carousel Made by 4 AI Different Tools from Text
Here are my comparison results:
Scoring AI Tools Against the Carousel Deck Task
Claude and Meta are the clear winners. I ended up using Claude’s slides.
If you don’t want to pay for a Claude subscription, try Meta AI. It’s free.
ChatGPT’s output also looks so much like a “ChatGPT illustration,” the style you now see everywhere. I no longer use ChatGPT for business illustrations.
Editing
In-tool editing looked promising but turned out half-baked, so I didn’t use it.
Instead, I screenshotted the slides and pasted them into Canva. Canva’s Magic Layers feature is amazing. Click the image, hit edit, then select Magic Layers. All four illustrations were fully editable, text included.
Repeatable process
I built a new Claude skill with all the specifications — I’ll reuse it every time I need to turn text into a carousel.
💡 Can AI Build Your Landing Page? Three Models Tested
In a recent XDA article, I asked Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT to build a customer landing page, and only one nailed the brief, the writer gave three of the top AI models the same task to build a professional customer landing page. Only one tool got it right.
Her is a summary of the results:
ChatGPT 5.4’s ” build a page as a technically competent but creatively flat. A dark-mode layout that ticks standard web design boxes yet does nothing to drive conversions. Navigation compounds the problem, with call-to-action buttons scattered unpredictably across the product sections and footer. The end result reads like an abandoned template.
Gemini 3.1 Pro was no better, leaving Google and OpenAI’s flagship models trading places at the bottom. The same dark-mode styling was there, but the visual execution fell flat. Product pricing jumped erratically with no clear tiering logic. Even as a zero-shot blueprint, it failed to reflect basic industry fundamentals.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 operated on an entirely different tier. The output featured fluid animations, live benchmark visuals, and an interactive rig rendered on page load. Most telling were the trust signals and testimonial section, neither prompted, yet both fundamental to conversion.
The Takeaway. While AI isn’t ready to replace UX designers just yet, the test proved that for wireframing and prototyping with commercial intent, Anthropic is currently in a league of its own.
STAY TUNED! Next week we’ll share a step-by-step guide on how to use Claude Design, the new design tool from Anthropic, to create mock up options for your website landing page.
🐢 Established SMEs, Especially Solos, Are Lagging on AI
Key findings from the JPMorgan Chase Institute new report Understanding AI Use by Small Businesses:
- Newer firms adopted AI earlier and ramped up faster. Not a surprise. Many new businesses were built to leverage AI from day one.
- Small businesses have consistently paid for AI in recent years, using a wider range of services than before. This is a clear shift from experimentation to steady usage.
- Newer AI adopters entered at lower spending levels while established ones kept scaling. Cheap entry-level tools lowered the barrier for newcomers, while established firms used the same shift to deepen their stack.
- Employer firms adopted AI at nearly twice the rate of non-employer firms. Solopreneurs juggle every part of the business, leaving little time, expertise, or capacity to learn and adopt AI.
Takeaway: Established non-employer firms face growing competitive pressure to catch up on AI with newer, faster-moving peers. If you’re still on the fence, carve out the time and budget to start now.
🛠️My Top AI Tools
Some people assume the top AI tools are interchangeable. They’re not.
Here is a list of my top AI tools:
🧠 Claude: unmatched for repeatable workflows, agentic coding, and enterprise-grade security.
📚 Gemini: grounds answers in your own documents through NotebookLM and plugs straight into Docs, Drive, Gmail, Maps, and YouTube.
📊 Meta AI: lives inside Facebook and Instagram, which gives it a view of your audience that ChatGPT and Claude simply don’t have.
🎨 Canva: can make AI-generated visuals editable, including the text.
Thank you for reading today’s edition!
If this issue was valuable, pass it along to a fellow business owner. I’d love to hear your feedback at natalia@nataliabrattan.com.
See you next week,