Yesterday I had SUCH a fun Copy Strategy Hour with Emily, an Internet friend, a mutual follow since probably the 2020-ish era. We could have just small talked and chatted for the whole hour, but instead we focused on how she should structure her website, how she can have an elevator pitch without boxing herself in as a creator and writer and traveler and complex, multi-faceted person.

The word “holistic” came up a lot. She’s the sort of person that cares about living an integrated life, and COMMUNICATING an integrated life but somehow also having a brand, kinda? Providential we found each other because those are the veryyy things that I think about constantly.

The Internet only goes so far, of course, with communicating complexity. It can be difficult to communicate complexity in real life, in person, and even more difficult through a flat screen.

EVEN MORE SO when so little online content can be trusted, when it seems like every other piece of copy is ChatGPT generated. Even the content that says it isn’t touched by AI is still sometimes hard to trust.

So how do we market well in this complicated online world without buying into the rush toward less integrated, non-human, easy content? How do we not sign our lives away to robots just to make one more sale?

1. Don’t buy into it. AI-generated copy and content is completely a trap, I’m convinced. AI will only make you dumber, less able to write your own marketing, less able to articulate what you do and write like you mean it.
2. Resist formulaic writing. It’s ironic to me, actually—*AI has actually almost been HELPFUL for my writing, because its given me permission to (as a recovering perfectionist) stop trying to have perfect writing. If I need to write an academic paper, I will, and I know how. But for personal essays, blog posts about marketing, IG captions—it’s actually important that my writing reads as if an actual human wrote it. Sure, there are general structures we can follow, general outlines that can be helpful. But we’ll prove our copy/marketing is human by breaking out of them to something more genuine.
3. Write from your heart. I was just thinking this morning how you can just TELL when someone is writing from their actual soul. It comes across differently. It resonates more quickly. It doesn’t sound robotic.
4. Don’t feel like you can only talk about your business. People want to buy from people; you can demonstrate that you’re a person. No, that doesn’t have to mean invasion of privacy or exploiting your life for clicks. You can intentionally talk about other things besides just what you sell. Your audience will be glad, and you’ll demonstrate that you’re much more complex and interesting than ChatGPT.
5. Follow something deeper than trends. Trends come and go. Sometimes they’re cute, funny, helpful. But don’t chase the trends with your marketing. Don’t be a human robot, just copying and regurgitating what’s already out there. You’ll stand out as an actual person if you let creativity do its work in you and your brand. (Not that you shouldn’t hire professionals, or look legit, because you def should. But look for pros who don’t trap themselves in what’s currently trending.)

So, is it possible to market our brands holistically when so much of the online world is becoming AI slop? If anything, I think its maybe more possible now than it ever has been. The current AI saturated era makes it even more possible for real people to stand out for doing the slow, complex, non-formulaic work of understanding and sharing the heart of their brands.

*the presence of an em dash does not mean a robot wrote this. I refuse to get rid of my favorite punctuation just because AI is stealing things!!