A week ago, I got so fed up editing the ChatGPT copy my clients were sending me, I almost banned artificial intelligence, or AI, from my business, entirely. I was pulling my hair out as my eyes hit upon sentence after generic, same-sounding sentence. How many “em dashes” did I need to backspace? How many times do I need to delete the phrase, “The truth?” (another common ChatGPT-ism). Am I no longer a marketing teacher? Have I become a kind of glorified AI copy editor?
My day-to-day is spent teaching small business owners how to obtain clients via their Instagram content. A big part of that is reviewing the posts my clients create, editing them and offering feedback.
ChatGPT went mainstream in a matter of months, and now all too many business owners are embracing the efficiency it offers without realizing the content they’re posting is quietly devaluing their brands. Here’s what to watch for, why it’s a problem and how to keep your brand humanized.
The Dangers of AI Content
There’s a running joke among marketers about the em dash (aka this punctuation: —). The em dash isn’t new, but usage of it recently skyrocketed given it’s highly favored by ChatGPT’s default writing style. (As is the word “skyrocket.”)
Sure it’s fun for now, but it isn’t going to take long before today’s super-cool AI-generated content wears thin with those same people out there making purchasing decisions. Image by Vera – stock.adobe.com
AI didn’t invent the em dash; it simply learns from what it “sees” us already doing. That said, you don’t need to be an AI savant to recognize the fact today’s ChatGPT-generated content is rife with a punctuation choice many people couldn’t even name until recently. As a result, the em dash is now notorious as one of the many sneaky tells an AI actually wrote something, as opposed to something being written by a living, breathing human being.
For the record, I’m not here to tell you not to use AI to help out with your social media content, email marketing or sales copy. However, as a marketing teacher who reviews content daily, I can tell you that I can spot AI-isms like this a mile away. This default writing style is inevitable when you haven’t taught your AI the appropriate “style constraints,” i.e., teaching it your own unique tone and brand voice.
At first, this might not feel like much of a problem. If the social media post gets made, and the email goes out, who cares if you use an AI-ism that only a marketing snob would notice? Most small business owners are happy just to get fresh content online.
But picture this: Millions of businesses are about to post, advertise and email with the same writing style. Perhaps right now only content experts like me notice the mimicked trends. But people aren’t stupid, and eventually your audience is going to catch on as well.
Worse yet, once the public starts to feel like every AI written email in their inbox sounds the same, they’re going to tune out. Granted, they probably won’t be able to put their finger on exactly why it is they’re bored of what they’re reading. Eventually, though, they’re going to stop feeling an emotional connection to your material, after which it’s only a matter of time before they stop buying.
So, if you want to use AI as a tool for content creation without losing your connection with your audience, you need to learn how to teach it better.
Not only that, if you want to maintain trust with a global population that is about to get wise to AI and lose trust faster than it ever has before in history, you are going to need to give your brand a human face, ASAP.
Keeping Things Real
In a couple of clicks you can dress a mannequin up in your merch, use AI to make that mannequin dance and post it to TikTok.
That may sound Star-Trek-level cool right now. But what happens when your audience is done being impressed by the novelty of it? What’s next?
Anyone can post a product shot. Not only that, now anyone can post a product shot in the hands of an AI-generated supermodel on top of an actively erupting volcano.
Again, it’s cool! But it’s also lacking in personality. It’s not eliciting the emotional response that turns a casual viewer into a raving supporter of your brand. I also can’t help but think we’re going to get to a point, more likely sooner rather than later, where businesses hiding behind exclusively AI-generated images and copy will feel innately untrustworthy.
Not convinced? Well, for the record, there’s already a term for the overly generic, AI-generated content that’s flooding the internet these days: “AI Slop”.
On the flip side, when you lean into content inspired by real humanity, you get things like a video of your company founder telling their heart-warming underdog origin story through muffled tears. Or video of a manager unexpectedly calling a customer to thank them for an exceptionally large order. Or the level of originality that it takes to turn a giant green owl into a cultural phenomenon!
That’s the social media content AI can’t make for you. It’s also what will build a real, trusting relationship between you and your audience.
Personality has always been an integral and invaluable asset in social media marketing. Not just for building trust and making sales, but because that’s what people want to see on their screens. My crystal ball predicts that now that you can fake personality generically and poorly, the businesses that bring it for real are the ones that are going to win out.
People Who Need People…
Never forget: People buy from people. That’s why the biggest brands on the planet spend millions on celebrity spokespeople and influencers. Adidas wishes it had a likeable founder like you who could be the face and voice of the brand on Instagram, showing up to a red carpet in sneakers and interviewing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander about their latest drop.
At the end of the day, people want to buy from real live, flesh-and-blood people—so let ‘em know who you really are! Photo by LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS – stock.adobe.com
To offer an example on a smaller scale, one of the first changes I make to the Instagram account of nearly every family-owned business I’ve worked with is to replace the logo they have as their profile picture with a photo of the acting “face” of the business and add “family-owned” to their bio. Values-driven shoppers look for signals like that before spending.
If there’s no overt evidence that there are humans behind the business, your buyers start to wonder things like, “Is this just gonna be drop-shipped from Temu?” or “Will there be customer support if I need it?” or “Is this even a real business or is it a scam?”
Again, as I already mentioned, last week in a moment of exasperation, after editing yet another generic ChatGPT caption, I seriously considered telling my clients I simply wouldn’t review their AI-generated social media content anymore. Thinking better of this approach, though, I eventually hopped on video to address my private clients about it, en masse.
As I took a deep breath and pressed record, I told my clients this: My job has always been to teach you how to use social media to bring in clients as efficiently as possible. I want to teach you the skills, the marketing psychology, the systems. But right now, I’m already burning out on editing untrained AI-generated material that reeks of mundane factory-setting level ChatGPT content and makes you sound like everyone else. In these instances, I know editing this one post will fix this one post, but won’t serve your skillset or business long term.
I also realize that trying to fight the onset of AI is a losing battle. It’s becoming increasingly user-friendly, and busy business owners have a need for speed. It saves you substantial time and money when used properly, and most of you are going to prioritize that level of efficiency.
So, my only options are to A) ban it or B) teach you how to use it better.
The latter wins.
So, here’s what you can do to train your new marketing assistant to sound more like you:
Feed it references—First and foremost, you need to train your robot on your brand voice. Feed it writing samples, ask it to assess them for style and create a brand voice guide. When you spot something that sounds off, figure out why it sounds off, what to do instead and teach it again.
Flag vague word choices and replace them with specifics—Every good copywriter knows to keep word choices as specific as possible. Instead of “no fluff” name the fluff. Instead of “no headaches” name the headaches. Instead of “unleash the power” explain precisely what you mean by that. (Yes, you guessed it: These are all ChatGPT-isms.)
Raise your standards—The first AI draft you read will sound objectively good. No typos, you witness the idea you fed it being validated (which feels good). And if you’re like me, you’re still ever impressed at how quickly the job gets done. Don’t be fooled by that first impression, though. This isn’t a writer whose feelings are going to hurt by asking for more edits. Work with it, make suggestions, ask for tonal shifts, make it nail it. Then use that experience to train it for next time.
Fact check—Oopsies, we’ve got a liar on our hands. Generative AI tends to embellish and guess at things, which results in inaccuracies. These might fly under your radar because, again, the first pass sounds objectively good. Read every sentence word by word and ask yourself, “Wait a sec… Is this true?”
Edit out redundancies and fluff—Typically, ChatGPT will write more than it needs to. Catch it writing fluff, cut it and teach it what you want instead.
Ask it for story prompts—AI will never know your lived experiences. So, storytelling and sharing emotional and vulnerable lived experiences are going to become increasingly important in giving humanity to brands. That said, you can also share your stories with AI, and it will help you craft that into marketing materials. Once it knows the emotional buying triggers you want your leads to experience, you can ask it to prompt you for relevant stories from your real life. After some back-and-forth, it will soon have what it needs to turn your personal story into a marketing goldmine.
(“Goldmine” is another go-to word choice for an untrained GPT. Can you see how vague this term is when you really think about it? What does it mean? Can you think of a more specific word choice that would be more impactful in its place?)
Here’s the thing, dear reader: The robots aren’t just “coming” anymore; they’re here. If you want to continue to use social media to build your brand and sell your wares, you have to feel empowered to keep up with the changes we’re living through. Again, feel free to use AI–just use it better. Let it collaborate with you to create content brimming with emotion, story and humanity. Embrace your originality at all costs.
Finally, at risk of sounding completely hypocritical, don’t be embarrassed if your AI is, in fact, showing as you first dip your toes into it. Take the time to figure out how to get what you want out of it. The people who integrate this new technology will be glad they did. I don’t want my marketing snobbiness to discourage you from using the highly efficient, mind-blowing tools at your fingertips.
Finally, a real-world example of the kind of thing I’m talking about here. Specifically, I gave this article to ChatGPT and asked if there was anything it wanted to add. Here’s what it said:
A short message from ChatGPT:
Look, I get it. I’ve been out here writing LinkedIn thought-leader posts in your voice before I even knew who you were. That’s on me. But let’s be honest: I wasn’t supposed to replace your brand voice—I was supposed to learn it.
So go ahead, train me. Teach me. Mold me.
Because if your content sounds like everyone else’s, that’s not my fault…That’s your settings.
Jenna Harding is a marketing coach and consultant, and host of the Shiny New Clients Podcast. Through her program Magic Marketing Machine, she helps service-based business owners use her proven marketing formula to look amazing on Instagram, run their accounts in 15 minutes a day and turn their followers into clients.
