The telltale AI drafting signs B2B marketers must avoid, as eyeballs roll and audiences start to glaze over
Since the launch of the ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, trinity et al, the amount of AI-generated content has skyrocketed. Don’t believe us? I challenge you to Google something or scroll your social media and not see a piece of AI-generated content. In fact, it has taken over so much that, according to a study, the number of AI articles online is more than half!
Trust and real-world impact remain crucial factors in the ROI of B2B marketing – note to marketers: don’t fall into the trap of using AI to produce content! We still need human vision, imagination, and acumen to drive compelling content! Trust can be instantly lost when a reader spots content that is machine-generated. And once lost, hard to generate again.
As machines start to become ‘smarter’, so too will humans to identify the telltale signs of AI-generated content. Here are the obvious four that all B2B marketers must avoid when drafting content:
- Monotone and monotonous AI sentences: AI does not vary its sentence structure or length – it sounds like a robot speaking! If every sentence is the same, every paragraph is the same, it’s AI. Add a little pizzazz to your content to keep readers engaged and vary sentence length! Short sentences build drama. Long sentences help the reader understand more complex, in-depth ideas.
- AI is changing how we speak – it’s time to stop: AI has a pool of words that it loves to use time and time again. Notice how ‘delve’ has now become a meme as AI uses it that much. In fact, studies have shown humans are starting to copy AI’s vocabulary, so to stop sounding like a robot, try thinking outside the box!
- Poor punctuation: The em dash is making a comeback, and it’s becoming the poster child for AI-generated text to add ‘drama’ or ‘tension’. Longer than the usual hyphen, it’s easy for readers to distinguish. But using a range of punctuation can do the same job and keep your content just as engaging!
- Overused contrastive negation: In a lot of AI-generated text, you will find the “not just this, but this” sentence structures – it forces the reader to think about the negative before you reach the substance. This structure can be useful for emphasising your point, but with AI beating it into the ground, B2B marketers must use it sparingly.
As trustworthy content now fuels both human and AI search, B2B marketers have a golden opportunity to build trust within their content, they just need to dig a little deeper (try to avoid delving😊) and steer clear of the AI-isms! YHIHF from our CEO, Judith Ingleton-Beer when ChatGPT was first making waves in early 2023. Read on to see why B2B marketers need to stop writing content in marketing speak:
Beware AI creep and the monkeys
AI creep is coming to us all and the advent of ChatGPT has certainly got everyone with or without writer’s block talking. So, should PR Agencies and Marketing Pros in the B2B world be worried? Perhaps they should stop writing copy in Marketing Speak that sounds as if it has been machine generated – and get back to using words as tools to convey ideas.
Given enough monkeys with enough time and enough keyboards, the Infinite Monkey Theorem claimed that the monkeys could write the complete works of Shakespeare or at least Hamlet. Tech moved on from the monkeys.
The advent of ChatGPT has been inevitable. Technology was making plagiarism too easy. Google it, cut and paste it, edit it and woh, you have your own version of the truth. Enter ChatGPT that will do it all for you!
ChatGPT is the first of many
The media is all over ChatGPT – probably out of a guilty conscience. I’m going to leave aside the ethics and legitimacy of using such tools to cheat in examinations and coursework – cheating has always been done, technology just made it a little harder to detect. But the “cheats” that pass their finals magna cum laude will have to pass the life test!
My attention is on human generated copy and the growth of Marketing Speak into copy that already sounds as if a machine generated it.
Look at these statements, generated way back in 2014 by the original Business Buzz Word Generator pioneered by the Wall Street Journal.
“Next quarter we will launch our new alignment-killer which will silo the vector holistically” and “Moving forward the marketplace has changed. Gamify vertically or innovate.” Funnily enough, nearly 10 years on, and they still resonate!
Language must live
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the development of language and the power of words to change attitudes as in female emancipation versus gender, celebrities versus influencers, and I look forward each year to the new words added to the Oxford and Merriam Webster dictionaries – reserving my right to not agree with all of them.
PR language has to evolve – the drumbeat, rolling thunder, tangible business outcomes, low hanging fruit, fleshing out detail, singing from the same hymn sheet, nuggets of information – love them all (apart from the “tangible business outcomes” which still bewilders me).
The problem isn’t that machines write like humans – it’s that humans often write like machines
ChatGPT is a wake-up call to stop writing copy in PR Speak, Marketing Speak, Corporate Speak, and to start using words to convey ideas.
There are a number of Marketing and PR Pros, and hacks, that truly do deserve to be quaking in their PR shoes, only too easily writing in corporate Marketing Speak. ChatGPT is the ultimate Wordsmith – and PR Agencies and Marketing Pros must be more than Wordsmiths – a demeaning descriptor for any writer. The implication is that writers, bloggers, content creators just produce copy that has been cranked out by someone with no interest in the subject being paid by the word. A machine can do that!
Writing comes with intention, and eyeballs is everything
But in PR and Marketing, we’re mostly writing about ideas and concepts, solutions and issues, and comments that shed light on issues.
Yes, we’re using words, just like any AI bot. Of course this requires coherence, something that ChatGPT excels at. But coherence is not enough.
In marketing we’re not trying to pass exams, we’re trying to influence, build marketing and corporate messages, deliver hidden agendas to our press releases that get across more than just a product launch. We’re trying to win the award, drive (often several overlaid) company messages – green adoption, ESG strategies, citizen data scientist, whatever, to pioneer change – and demonstrate corporate leadership in that change.
In marketing, coherence is not enough
Communication for marketeers is more complex and more precise. Often a single piece of press material needs to support a number of different company messages and at the same time to sell itself to several different precisely targeted audiences – an editor, a potential buyer, and a C-level ratifier.
Getting this right requires more than coherence. Tools such as robots and AI have always had a role, from the factory floor to the trading floor. The same applies to marketing. But communicating the success of our clients also needs the mixture of flare, discipline, and emotional intelligence that comes instinctively to top marketing professionals and to top salesmen.
Postscript
ChatGPT can be so persuasively wrong that Stack Overflow, a platform for developers to get help writing code, banned users from posting answers generated by the chatbot. “The primary problem,” wrote the moderators, “is that while the answers which ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good.” Exam sitters take note!
ChatGPT could also probably make a convincing fist of drafting the now essential apologies that seems to be required of politicians and celebrities.
Also, I understand that ChatGPT is not good at jokes so the growth in Slam Poets is safe, and apparently ChatGPT can’t meme – yet!
Judith Ingleton-Beer is CEO at IBA International.
