Let me start by saying that I think AI is great. But, yes, there is a but. Too much of a good thing can end up being a bad thing. The slippery slope of leaning on a capable tool is that you end up relying on it too much.
Then there is more tool, and less you. And your prospective customers are starting to notice.
AI fatigue is real, and there’s a good chance it’s creeping in to your content, your nurture flows and your brand.
B2B and automation are life-long friends, and replacing manual processes with efficient automation is the promise of many B2B businesses. But if you promote your products and services with bland, repetitive and predictable AI-generated content, then you are just publishing easily ignored wallpaper.
Emails that read like they are from bots; blogs and articles full of verbose and recycled phrasing; and LinkedIn thought leadership that lacks any original thoughts.
Sorry to say, your prospects can smell it a mile away, and they are turning their backs in droves.
There are signs that your content is over-automated, and reasons why your customers may be over your automated content.
We’ve all seen the posts and articles about the ‘tells’ of AI copy, from the dreaded em dash to the overuse of capitalisation. But beyond nitpicking grammar, there are bigger issues that are consigning your content to the mental dustbin of your customers and prospects, or just putting them to sleep.
When your content is too polished, it just blends into all the other bland stuff out there. And if you don’t have a viewpoint or distinct voice, you are just publishing verbose vomit.
This means that, although you may be becoming a prolific publisher of marketing content, that content will be extremely slow to connect (if successful at all).
The main reason you are susceptible to these problems with AI-generated content is because you fail to correctly use the tool. Think of it like a brief to an agency or supplier – rubbish in means rubbish out. The lighter the brief to AI, the less of ‘you’ that will be in the output.
Taking this to its natural conclusion, eventually ‘you’ won’t be needed at all. On the other hand, if you can brief AI thoroughly to bring your original thoughts and ideas to life, it is a powerful tool that can bring a new level of quality to your work.
And it can free you to spend more time on your ideas and thinking, while outsourcing some of the grunt work to AI. It’s not a substitute for strategy, but a powerful way to scale your output.
To re-inject some humanity or more of yourself into AI-supported content, think about:
When speed has become commoditised, sincerity is your differentiator. Don’t aim for AI-free content, instead you should focus on AI assistance with hands-on human oversight.
If your content is causing AI fatigue, it’s time to add a human touch. If you need some help with this, the lovely (and very real) humans of The Content Stream are standing by to talk to you – yes, in person!