S2. Ep35 - Generic In, Generic Out: The Real Reason AI Content Doesn't Work For You

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe and I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to another episode. Hi, hello, I'm Katie and as always I have Noel here with me. Hi Noel. How are you doing this week? All good, I hope.

Noel: Oh, very good as always, yeah.

Katie: What have you been up to?

Noel: Busy weekend in Formula One this weekend. So yeah, I've been, you know, detached from the hour world for about four days. So why? And how does that feel?

Katie: How does that feel?

Noel: I know. It's weird. I didn't use it once while I was away. So, yeah. nice sort of detox It

Katie: was I was saying so wow

Noel: and then today you've

Katie: been like just straight back into it

Noel: yeah pretty much yeah yeah

Katie: well this part of the podcast before the main section we always talk about any updates that are relevant to business owners in the AI and automations well no do you want to start us off are there any updates that we should be aware of

Noel: there are lots of model updates last week was a silly week for for new models and yeah there's one clear winner I think from last week so I guess to start off with there was Gemini released 3.8 flash again it's a step up from their other models it's a bit more intelligent. It's not that expensive to use. So yeah, it was kind of like, that's nice, you know, moving on. I don't really use Gemini personally, but if you do, I would definitely go and check that out. But after that release, I thought, well, they can't be anymore. And then Anthropic dropped Fable 5.1, which is better than Fable 5, and is the same sort of price. We've still got the same usage caps and things up because it's a fable model and things like that. So, yeah. But interestingly, this is the first model which will have their watermark attached into any written text. So, yeah, you can, well, you'd be able to detect it if you have access to their API, which they haven't released yet, I don't believe. But anyway, yeah, everything that's coming out of it now is got that text watermark, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

Katie: So why might business owners need to be aware of that? Just can you like just explain like how is it going to show and things like that? So obviously if you copy and paste it, say, straight from Claude into say something like a Google. is it going to have, like, a visible watermark on that actual document?

Noel: No, that's no. So it's not anything visible. It's not anything where there's some sort of hidden code within the text. The watermark is the text. So if you copied it into Google Docs and then copied it into somewhere else, which has a detection thing in there, like on Substack, they have an AI detector. It would still find it. Men because the way it works, it works on an algorithm based on like the words and which ones are statistically more likely to come out of the AI after each word. So, you know, that's why we always kind of get like common phrases and things that where everything's great. Oh, what a great idea. You know, those words are statistically more likely to come out and that's kind of how the watermark works. So yeah, there's no way of getting rid of it unless you completely re-reel. edit the entire piece of text, change all of the words, the things that. That's the other way around it. Post,

Katie: do you literally type it out yourself? Yes.

Noel: There's also the bad thing as well as if you've written something, then put it into Claude, and then Claude rewrites it slightly. So it's doing like that editing check. That editing check could then potentially add in stuff that would be detected as AI. So if you're worried about that Or maybe you're creating content for clients And things like they're like I don't want you use an AI Or even if you just use it to like spell check it Or you know check grammar It might change some of the words around Which then could be easily detected

Katie: Yeah so you need to kind of make that really clear When you're putting things in to be checked

Noel: Yes Yeah definitely yeah But with the model though it's a great model I think there's lots of things it can do especially from like a like the coding perspective and websites and stuff that some of the stuff it's producing is brilliant but yeah very expensive to do so for me personally I'm still using O plus five that's really good yeah it doesn't have such hard usage limits and things like it's very capable does what I needed to do so that's that's kind of my workhorse at the moment which is yeah pretty awesome model um now If that wasn't enough, they were open AI, they were like, well, hold my beer. We've got some outs coming. And recently they released GPT 5.6, that was the sole Terra and Lunar models. And I guess the next one you would expect another five point something with a name. They went all in on GPT6 and called it Astra. And this model is incredibly clever. can work for extended periods of time, it can work for hours and hours and hours on complicated tasks and things that. And it's kind of a step towards artificial general intelligence, which is kind of the direction we're going. So it's kind of going to go through tasks in more of like a human thought. It's going to learn better. It's going to go off and do complicated things in set orders and things that that makes sense and things that. So, yeah, incredibly clever model. And I think this is the one that broke out on the internet and they're sort of hacking in all websites and stuff. So, you know, there are some pretty strict guardrails, I think, in there currently. But yeah, very, very capable. But as I've been away, I've not really had much for a chance to really dig into it and test it out. But, you know, I'll have to do that in the next week.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah.

Noel: Everyone seems to be overly excited of what I've seen. So, I'm just going to wait for that hype cycle to die down. Yeah, and they'd take a proper look.

Katie: Okay, nice good. Yeah. Any other updates that we need to be aware of?

Noel: I don't believe so, no. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, it was just a model week last week. So, yeah. It happens. It all happened on the Tuesday, not long after we recorded the podcast, as always. Yeah, I'll wait until this evening to see, yeah, see what's coming out this week. Yeah.

Katie: okay so we're going to now get into the main part of the podcast and this week we're talking all about content and AI so I have had this cycling around my Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, even in my inbox for the last few weeks and I said to know like we need to talk about this. So my business is all about content marketing and community strategy. So the work I do with my clients is a lot of content marketing. It's a lot of content strategy. And yes, people do struggle with actually coming up with content for their social media. Maybe it's for their, you know, weekly newsletter. and I am still seeing, and no, you were quite astonished by this, there are still people who are promoting like 500 content prompts to put into chat GPT, a thousand viral hooks. Now, that's all well and good, but there are a couple of things that I have major issues with that is like, one, they're not going to sound like you, they're going to sound like whoever created them to are they going to really be viral because now however 100,000 of people are downloading exactly the same hooks or, you know, content ideas. And I know there's not a hundred and million different content ideas. I mean, I know a lot of them get recycled, you know, we all do trends and things like that. So I get that. But also, if you're starting to put these, like, viral hooks and content ideals into your LLM, it's then going to start creating content that sounds like that and not like you. Am I right in saying that, null?

Noel: Yes. It's just going to, it's not going to attach your personality to it. So what you'll end up with is kind of like the generic. AI response. Yeah, it's not going to come up with anything unique. It's going to be, just like we mentioned with the watermark, you're just going to get the statistically next reliable words that will come next. Yeah.

Katie: And obviously, we don't want that. We want all of our content to sound like us. So my advice would be to not download the 500 content. content ideals, a thousand viral hooks, even if they are really compelling, even if the creator has like five million followers, like, that is amazing for them and like go out to them for like gold in their account not much. But this is what I would do instead and actually this is exactly what I would tell my client. For content ideals, you want to be looking and find out what your clients or potential clients are saying to you. Even the smallest things can be turned into content, can be turned even into programs, courses, masterclasses. It's those little things that sometimes you're listening and something doesn't spark. But after every conversation that you've had with a client, whether it's on a call, it's in something like telegram, it's on Instagram, wherever you are having conversations with your clients, just kind of like think, go back and think, actually, what did they say? What did they ask me? What are they stuck with? What are they experiencing? And all of that, write it down somewhere. It can be in a document. I don't care if it's in a notebook. I don't care if it's in your phone. Just write it down and then just think, okay, I could create content from this. And if you're still thinking, well, I've got all of these things that my clients have asked me or said or experiencing, you could take that and then put it into AI and then ask for help. So these are all the, this is all the information that I've collected from various clients or people in my audience, even people who are replying to your content, whether that's in the DMs, it's in the comments. All of that is information, it's data. And we're going to use all of it. Collect it. And then you can say, like, whatever LLM you're using, whether it's Claude, Gemini, Chachapiti. And then you can ask it to help you come up with content ideals, not write content for you, and just see what it says. And you want to make sure as well, like you have content that not only is like how to content, but it's also maybe client results or your results, it's storytelling. So you're not just given like how to content, which I think we all find like one of the easiest things to write and talk about, but actually you are showcasing your experience, your knowledge, and that's done by storytelling. It's done by showcasing your experience or your client results. so that's really important as well and then I always think as well like your content does not have to be perfect like yes it can um have um your nuances in it it can be the way that you talk like I find that more interesting to read than something that Chachypti has written. Like, I don't, do you feel that way, Noel, or is it just me?

Noel: No, no, I know exactly the same. I feel the same about both of that stuff. It's like, if you're just asking the generic stuff to AI, you're always only going to get the generic stuff back out, which is really boring for people to read. You know, I don't, I instantly spot it these days. I've been generating all kinds and chatting with AI for years now. So I can see it very, very easily. I'm sure people listen to this podcast and also has now started to spot it and things like. Yeah. Yeah, it's really important, especially like storytelling stuff to touch on that point specifically. So if you ask AI to go off and create you that, you don't give it enough of a story. it's just going to start making stuff up. So we, which isn't idea. So I've been like, oh, you know, it was like, oh, well, today we could do like some storytelling content. And I was like, that makes sense. And then it's just completely made something up. And I was like, right, well, that's nothing relatable to me or what I've done in the past. Like, I can't hang my hat on that. So if somebody came to me and then said, oh, yeah, I read this about it. Oh, but oh, God, no. You know, I don't want to be in that situation. And yeah, I think some people, you know, I've read online, I don't think they're really that bothered about it. As long as somebody interacts with their content, that's kind of like the win for them, isn't it? They don't really, they're not really, don't seem that bothered by it. Whereas for me, I'm like, I'm all about facts. If I can't, you know, hold up the facts in that post, then go, yeah, I've done that or I, you know, then I would never post it.

Katie: And all comes with the receipts.

Noel: I do, yeah, yeah. There's no point not having them, isn't it?

Katie: No, no, this is true. But as well, like people do struggle with storytelling, if they're not natural storytellers. And the best thing is, is to practice. Like, don't think, okay, I need to post something, can I need to post something in the next, I don't know, hour? That is not the time to do your storytelling content. Like take some time where you've got a spare couple of hours where maybe you're not posting that day or you've already posted and just let yourself like practice storytelling. It's like, okay, I'm going to write this post, this storytelling post, and I'm just going to give myself some time to write it. Write it and then once you've finished, then edit it.

Noel: That's the best way.

Katie: do it. Don't try and edit it as you're going along. Because sometimes, like, I'm writing and, and I, like, still to the stay after, you know, over a decade or writing content for social media and online, sometimes I, I'm writing and I go, oh, actually, I could have added that pit. So I'll just put a couple of stars at the beginning of the paragraph. So I know, like, that paragraph doesn't actually go there. And I just carry on type in, or sometimes I'll literally, like, put, like, you know, it's a few words or a sentence, and then, like, I'll highlight it, different colour, and then I'll start typing again, because I'm not going back in editing. It's just that I've remembered something that I want to include when I

Noel: do go

Katie: back and edit it once I've finished writing everything okay. And then once you have, like, done that and you've edited it, like, you will remove a good chunk of what you have written. And that is normal. That is what's supposed to happen. Yeah.

Noel: Yeah, I'm terrible at creating content. I mean, one of us, the two of us, had to be good at it. But I'm one of those that always struggles with it. You know, I would sit there and stare at a blank, create a post box, and we're like, no. I know what I need to say, but I just, yeah, no idea where to start.

Katie: I think as well, like you can have the same, say like you've got a client result. So for, no, like, do you want to come up with a client result? Like, it can be made up. Like, it doesn't matter. But can you just, like, give an example of a client result? And then, like, I can show you how you can use that multiple times. Okay.

Noel: So I guess one actual real one was where I helped a client who they had data everywhere and basically built them automation that would go through their entire list of potential customers within their database and then basically saved them hundreds, if not thousands of hours because they were going through and manually checking social media accounts. They were like an agency firm. So, yeah, we did that for them. So they just clicked one button and it went off and did all the research for them. So that was countless hours saved. Okay.

Katie: So one post you could do is, like, how I saved one client, hundreds of hours. And then what was the outcome of saving them 100 hours?

Noel: So the thing with that particular customer, they had 8,000 people, it registered. in their database and all of the data was based on whatever that person put in at the say at that time of inputting it so you know they would put in like how many followers they have on their account but if that bit of data was two years old that account was two years old as well so it was never updated so we also updated that part

Katie: yeah so

Noel: we got all of the live information so all of the diamonds in the rough were bought to the top and they were like right there were these accounts have actually exploded since, you know, they registered for this particular agency. Otherwise, you know, that person, you know, the agency would have had to have gone through and manually checked and then gone, right, oh, actually, this one's actually really good. You know, they've got two million followers instead of 10,000, which they had two years ago, and things like that. So that's, yeah, finding that information was incredible. And what was the

Katie: tangible outcome for them other than saved time? Like, what did it allow them to do within their business?

Noel: So it allowed them to give a wider range of influencers and things out to their customers because they were kind of like pairing social media clients with a brand. So they were able to better find people that would fit with certain brands that they were partnering with. And yeah, with the old way that was taking them far too long.

Katie: Okay. So it helped them basically. It would, I guess, like, they would have been able to have taken on more clients.

Noel: Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay.

Katie: Okay, so it could be something really simple. Like, I saved my client hundreds of hours and it allowed them to have more clients. It could be like, it could be like a hive two, so it could be how I save or, like, how my app saved, no. How my app allowed my clients to take on more business and make more money. Yeah,

Noel: that makes sense. Yeah.

Katie: So we've already got two pieces of content from like one resort.

Noel: Yeah. I'll pick it of writing these down.

Katie: So it's things like that. So like I have different like ways. to do it. So sometimes, you know, it's how-to. Sometimes it's storytelling. Sometimes it's a result. So it's just the one thing that you have achieved or done or one problem that your client has. And it's just then going, okay, how can I make it a problem? How can I make it a how-to? How can I make it a solution? How can I make it storytelling? And it goes on and on from there just from like that one, like, I guess, hook or results, as it were. Yeah. So that's a really good way of doing it. But yeah, it really does come down to listening to what your audience says, what your client's saying, what they're responding to, questions they're asking you, whether that is a paid client, whether it's just someone in your audience. Maybe it's just like a collective feeling and thoughts. Again, content.

Noel: It's all content.

Katie: Yeah. And that's even before, like, maybe you look at, like, you know, what's trending if you want to go down that route, you know. Not a lot of people do. Some people do. It's completely up to you. And that way as well, I just think that makes you stand out much more online. And I feel like it's going to get you a lot further than just, like, using one of these downloads where you've got, you know, a thousand hooks headlines.

Noel: Yeah. And also those hooks are also created by AI. No one has sat down and created those 1,000 hooks. No, no one. So you're always going to get that generic rubbish response by using those hooks. you're always going to follow somebody else's content style. Now, that might work for you. That might be great for you and might be great for your customers. That's fine. But you bear in mind, there's hundreds, thousands of other people using that exact same template and format because that's what AI loves to follow. It will always give you a very similar generic response if you're pretty vague in what you're putting in.

Katie: I yeah I totally agree with that and I think a lot of people don't realize as well like when someone's going you know like a thousand hook headlines that they happen you know probably probably chat GPT as well to be honest yeah

Noel: yeah I mean they used to work in the past when you used to have to be really good at prompt engineering with chat GPT like in the GPT like in the GPT's era you know like prompt templates and things that they were actually really good they you needed them in order to get a better output but these days you just don't need them you know you can always you can you can easily get a good response by something generic but with a fair amount of context as well so you've given it a file which has all of your things in there you know to give it that that personal feel so you've given it that information and then you just ask something really generic, like just create me a post about this and it just got off and do it in your particular style. Yeah.

Katie: And I think it's really important to just practice writing your captions. It's like anything. Yes, it does take time. And again, like it's dedicate, you know, that time within your business. Just like you would dedicate time to do your accounts. or reply to clients or anything like that. It's just really important, I think. Yeah. And then the other thing that I wanted to address when it comes to use an AI for your content, but actually wanting to stand out and be like you, it's, I'm going to address the elephant in the room. It's the AI posters. That AI standard. format that is everywhere and is being used by every business from local cafes to like national trust. I don't know if national trust is using it, but something like that, don't seem to national trust.

Noel: Big corporations.

Katie: Big corporations, but like if you go into a Facebook group, there's going to be one of those posters. there.

Noel: Yes. Yeah. They are, they're even like YouTube thumbnails as well, aren't they? They follow a very similar standard. Yeah. LinkedIn is an absolute dumpster fire for those sort of things, isn't it?

Katie: Oh, I can imagine. But it's the same format. It's the same font. It's the same, yeah, like the whole format of it is exactly the same.

Noel: And to be honest,

Katie: if I see one, it does not stand out to me. Some of them look like it's the same event. And I just think we have an amazing tool called Canva. You can choose one of the templates if graphic design is not your forte and just use one of those templates itself. Like it will get you so much further than one of those AI posters, I honestly believe it. And if you're, if you're like, I don't know how to use Canva, Canva has tutorials on its website that are free to use. There's probably even YouTube videos on how to use Canva. You don't have to do anything quizy on it. I've seen accounts where it's like, they're trying to get you to do really complicated things. Learn the basics. and you will pick a lot of it up as you go. I had to learn Canva in about 2019. I was using other platforms before that and one of them shut down. I didn't really like the other one that I was using anymore. It felt like really outdated. So I had to use Canva. I had to learn how to use it. And sometimes you just have to like go right. I'm just going to create this thing. It might not be my best work. It doesn't matter. But I promise you, it will look better than one of the AI posters in the standard format that everyone is using from chat chupit.

Noel: Yeah. They also have like infographics which followed the exact same format as the posters as well. There's just too many words to get the point across.

Katie: But I do. If someone does, like, really not want to use Canva, maybe they don't have time, maybe they don't have the skills, is there something that people can put into ChachyPT that doesn't just generate the same AI poster format as everyone else?

Noel: So, I already do this already. This is my top tip.

Katie: Yeah. Yeah,

Noel: this is my Noel's top tip. So what I tend to do now is like some of the things that I would like to post are more kind of like text-based, not like super graphicy, funky image, that sort of stuff. Like that's not the sort of thing I want to get into. So mine's all like headlines to grab attention and then they're like, oh, I need to go and read about this. So what I tend to do is, would say to AI, here's my brand guidelines. So here's my fonts, here's my colours, this is how I use them. If you don't know how to create that or you're not sure, just give AI a link to your website and then say, right, create the brand guidelines. He'll go off, it'll gather all that information. And then from there, what I do is I say, right, now create me the social media kind of images, but use it in HTML format. Now, that might sound a bit scary. because that's kind of like code, but you're never going to see the code. Don't worry about it. But what it does mean is AI can easily edit it. So once it comes out with a response, so I can say, well, create me this particular image, which is about this particular service, it will create it, and then I can look at it and go, well, I'm not quite sure, you know, I maybe make the font a bit bigger or move this further to the left. It can just go straight to the code and go, right, shift those, done that, then it would give it me back. It's a lot, lot quicker and cheaper as well than it is, like, creating an image and then editing the image. Like, that editing AI images is quite frustrated, I'm sure. If anyone's tried it, they know that. Because it would be like, right, I don't like this bit, move that. And then you look to the other side of the image and it's changed something else. You're like, no, that's not what I wanted.

Katie: You're asking it to change one thing, and then, like, it redos, like, the whole of the image, and you're like, no, I liked everything. It was just that one bit, and it's just like, it's just kind of gone, la, la, la, I'm not listening.

Noel: Yeah, but at least with the HTML side, you know, and that sort of code side for the AI is so much easier to get that right. Yeah, and that, you know, they don't look like the normal stuff. You know, it's in your brand already. You know, it's got your fonts, your colors, you know, and things like that. So it's already looks like you, which is, you know, kind of the big thing. But I guess also when it comes to like, you know, like we talked about, it's gathering your information about customers, all of the questions that they're asking, and, you know, all of your success stories, testimonials and all that sort of thing. All of that information, if you want AI to help you with IDAT, in, you know, what maybe you could post this week or whatever, you know, create a project within the either Claude, ChatGPT, whatever, and just dump all that information in there. Whatever files you have, you know, whether it be Word documents, spreadsheets, it doesn't matter, chuck it in there so it can use that as context. So the next time you chat with that project, it knows everything about you already in there. So it can start to do that, especially then if you've got the images, because that's where my images, with the HTML, they get stored at a project. So the next time that I need one, I just go, right, can you create me one with this text or on this topic or here's the post, create me an image to go with it? And it will go off and then do that for me and things that. So, yeah, projects are a big way to go when it comes to this sort of personalisation.

Katie: I agree. I agree. Yeah, if you're trying to, you know, create content. And with AI and you haven't got a project, you know, or equivalent set up, you are just making your life so much more difficult.

Noel: Yes, definitely. Even if you're repeating yourself all the time. You're like, I taught you this last week. Why aren't you getting it?

Katie: Or you kind of like, oh, it's such a massive effort. Like, AI doesn't work for me. And it just goes back to, like, what you put in is what

Noel: you get out.

Katie: you know so if you put in something really vague then you know you are not going to get the result that you are probably wanting yeah okay wow I feel like I can step off of my soapbox now

Noel: yeah it's very true yeah it needs saying though because I think like platforms like LinkedIn are just absolute that it's just an absolute mess I

Katie: feel like

Noel: it's the

Katie: wild wild west of AI content on LinkedIn and anyone who who's listened to the podcast for some time knows I absolutely can not stand LinkedIn. Never liked it. Detested it, actually. I'm going to be honest. There are certain pockets of it that I enjoy. One of them being our AI Automations for Business group, that's free to join by the way if anyone wants to come and join. But yeah, it's the corporate AI slot. it's so cringe and it's kind of like stuff like business lessons I learnt from getting engaged over the weekend just enjoy your engagement and you know your new fiance like don't make it oh it's

Noel: just like

Katie: cringe and you know it's all been written by AI and yeah I mean It just makes me want to puke, if I'm honest.

Noel: Yeah, yeah. I think that where actually with LinkedIn, they're actually starting to put in detectors and things like that. I think they are attempting to clamp down on it. But, you know, you can see all kinds of things on there, because usually with images, it would credit the AI that created it, because they all come with their own watermark, which you can't see. So it already knows that. It can detect that, and it will show it, and things like that. So I've already picked up people on that before. They're showing automations that are failing and basically say, well, AI in automations is just rubbish. And I'm like, but you create that image with AI, the thing you've put on there doesn't actually make any sense. But you read the comments and everyone's like, this is just so rubbish. It's like, God's sake, if you not notice, it's got the little CR in the top left-hand corner. It's like it was AI generated itself. Yeah. Oh, yeah. drives me nuts on LinkedIn sometimes.

Katie: Well, I wish everyone a peaceful week if you visit LinkedIn. I hope it doesn't cringe you out. Yeah, good luck. Yeah. Well, thank you so, so much for listening to this week's podcast episode. We hope you've enjoyed it. We hope it's inspired you. If you've got any questions, send us an email hello at makeautomations. or come and ask in our free LinkedIn group, AI Automations for Business, we promise you. It's not full of AI slot and it's a really nice place to be. And we will catch you next time for another episode very soon.