Claude

What is Claude?

Claude is an AI assistant made by Anthropic. If you've heard of ChatGPT, Claude is the same idea (a conversational AI you can ask anything) but many people find it better for writing and nuanced reasoning.

What it's actually good for in your business

Writing anything well. Give Claude a rough idea and it'll produce a polished proposal, email, job description, or marketing copy. It doesn't sound like a robot.

Summarising documents. Paste in a long contract, report, or email chain and ask Claude to summarise the key points. Huge time saver.

Answering complex questions. Not just factual lookups. Claude can reason through problems, weigh options, and give you a considered answer.

Customer communication templates. Build a library of responses for common customer questions. Claude writes them in your brand voice.

What it's not great for

Real-time information: Claude's knowledge has a cutoff date, so it won't know about things that happened recently. For that, use Perplexity or ChatGPT with web browsing.

How to get started

1. Go to claude.ai
2. Sign up for a free account
3. Try this: "I run a [type of business]. Write me a one-page proposal for [service] to send to a potential client."

The free tier is genuinely useful. Pro is worth it if you're using it daily.

How to get set up

1. Go to claude.ai and click Sign Up
2. Enter your email address and verify it, or sign in with Google
3. Once inside, you will see a text box. Paste in any document, email thread, or block of text.
4. Try typing: "Summarise this in plain English and list the three most important points"

Time to get started: Under 5 minutes Do you need a credit card? No — free tier available