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5 easy ways to improve your AI content

It can be done, but is it worth it? You decide.

Copywriting

Content design

How to guide

Realised using AI to 'save you time' is just a big waste of time? You're not alone.

Contrary to popular belief, effective content has very little to do with how ‘good you are at English’ and everything to do with how well you understand your customer and how what you’re selling meets their wants and needs.

It takes a human to understand another human – their quirks, in jokes, etc. And that’s where AI still has a way to go. It can’t feel things like we do.

When you don’t know how to brief AI, you get jargon-filled, clichéd rubbish at best, and, even in best-case scenarios, it’s bad for SEO. It’s only ever a rehash of something that’s already online, so Google doesn’t find it particularly interesting and may even penalise it.

These basic principles will help you to speed things up, but is it worth it? Or is it best just to get a professional in. You decide...

1. Identify your customer: What do they want and need?

You know when you read those words that get you. Like the writer read your mind. Spooky isn’t it? Well, not really, because they thought about who they wanted to speak to, and spoke directly to you.

It’s nice to feel seen. And you can make your customer feel like that by identifying who you’re targeting and speaking purposefully to them.

Forget throwing meaningless words out and hoping they land somewhere. Ask: Who is your customer? What motivates them? What are their objections to buying? You can ham up the benefits of your products or services ‘til you’re blue in the face, but it won’t stick if you haven’t addressed your customer’s want or need.

Tip: Use HubSpot’s free Buyer Persona templates to build out your customer personas and tell AI who it’s creating content for.

A black and white sign reading 'We hear you'. Credit: jon-tyson-unsplash

2. Talk to them: Be interested, not interesting

Ever been in a room with someone who likes to talk about themselves? Boring, isn’t it. Yet businesses fall into this trap all the time by saying, ‘We do this’ and ‘We do that’. Which to a customer sounds like ‘Me, me, me, me, me, me…me.”

As the customer, you don’t care what the business thinks about itself. You care what it thinks about you.

In his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, author Dale Carnegie suggests being ‘the most interested person, not the most interesting’.

Tip: Tell AI to directly address your reader in second-person language, using words like ‘you’ and ‘your’, rather than ‘I’ and ‘we’, to show you’re interested in giving your reader what they want.

A mother reading her phone while sitting between two children. Credit: vitolda-klein-unsplash

3. Stick to the benefits: Don’t bore them with features

When you’re making a purchase, you want to know what you’re getting, sure. Listing features is handy, and you should do it. But not as a priority.

Painting a beneficial (and human) picture that validates your customers’ motivations and helps to squash their objections can be the difference between being memorable and forgettable.

As John Dawes mentions in this report, only 5% of B2B customers are in the market to buy right now. The rest? They’re most likely to return later to a trusted and familiar source.

Tip: Know your customers’ motivations and objections. Be clear that AI must speak relatably about why your products and services are beneficial to your customers.

Arial shot of hands writing in a notebook. Credit: cathryn-lavery-unsplash

4. Have a recognisable voice: make sure what you’re saying is consistent

It’s no good speaking consistently if you sound consistently as dull as ditchwater.

I spend a lot of time helping businesses develop brand voices that get them noticed for all the right reasons (here’s an example). So, I’m not going to pretend it’s easy to know what the right voice is for you.

But start here: think about your brand personality. Is it bold? Playful? Direct? Pick up to three adjectives that describe your brand voice, for example, Confident, Authentic and Fun. Tell AI to use this voice when writing for you.

Tip: This Asana brand voice guide offers a useful overview of what goes into creating a comprehensive brand voice – it’s more than worth looking into if you have time. Your voice is the foundation of every brand communication you put out (or should be).

A notebook with the words, 'Empower, Elevate, Leverage and Unleash' written in black marker

5. Ditch the jargon: Speak conversationally, i.e. ‘sound human’

So you briefed AI better – following the principles above – and were all excited for the results. Wait, what. It still sounds a bit stiff and jargony? Oh dear.

Here’s what else you can do…

Tell it to write conversationally, and see how it gets on. Conversational language is the difference between sounding robotic and like a human being. No one wants to converse with a robot (okay, maybe Johnny 5).

And to make sure you’re free of ALL jargon, use my ClearCut jargon highlighter tool to weed out those corporate-sounding words that you, I, and everyone else, are bloomin’ sick of hearing.

If all this sounds like a bit too much work…

Forget AI, and let me do it for you instead. You'll sound human, recognisable and relatable – and make more sales as a result.

Once your content is in order and we've sorted any backlogs, I can keep on top of things for you from as little as £400 per month.

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