Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist, specialising in lead generation and content marketing.
OPINION: The way I see it, one of the best long-term effects of the rise of AI is that it’s also going to lead to the rise of unique storytelling for brands and small businesses.
The more those in charge of marketing rely on ChatGPT and similar tools to create content that “Amplifies your Unique brand to give the Ultimate experience that Elevates your brand” (words I know are closely associated with ChatGPT), the easier it is to stand out just by keeping things simple and very you.
Of course the first step is getting over the two big hurdles of what to say and how to say it.
One of the blocks we often have when it comes to creating content for our business is we feel we need to focus on topics we’re personally not that excited about. That makes it tricky to come up with content.
One of the things I do with clients is get them to identify the areas of their business they love most, because these are naturally the areas they’ll find it easier to drum up some enthusiasm for.
The ‘how to write’ part is tricky. Writing feels completely natural to me now, but I also used to really struggle with the ‘how’ of writing. Being enthusiastic about the topic is a good start, but sometimes we second guess whether we sound good enough, and some of that fear can block us from telling the best types of stories.
If you don’t consider yourself a writer but you can tell a good story, try using a tool like otter.ai to transcribe you. What I suggest is to open it up and hit record, then open up another screen that has four to five talking points noted down on it and talk to them.
Once you are done, go back to otter.ai, copy the content and then go into ChatGPT to ask it to tidy up the transcript into proper sentences and paragraphs. Voila! A story you’ve told, in your own voice and in your own style.
You might need to tweak it here or there, but this can help you get over the “I can’t write” hump. Yes, it’s still using AI, but in a way that’s all about you and your own voice.
The rise of storytelling is inevitable as more brands use AI-generated content in their marketing. I can already feel myself switching off when I start to read a post that looks good on the surface and then realise it was a ChatGPT creation.
I know it will get cleverer but right now it wows us with big power words and snippy phrases, and we copy and paste it onto our posts, our landing pages and emails, and don’t see that it still doesn’t feel like our voice.
DAVID UNWIN
GhatGPT-4 scores better on law exams, and can tell you what to cook from a picture of your fridge, AI commentator Paul Duignan says.
Our unique business needs our unique voice. It’s the one thing no other business can take from us. So when we give it over to ChatGpt, thinking it’s going to magically get us better clients with better phrases, we’re just making ourselves sound more “samesy” as everyone else using it.
If you’re not sure you have anything different to say, I recommend starting to become more aware of your conversations during sales meetings and client sessions. Note down phrases you find yourself repeating. The more you use these in your marketing, the more you’ll attract your ideal clients. And these are not something ChatGPT can come up with for you.
I often look at the impact of social media as both making our world smaller and also making us all a little bit further apart. Because there’s less in person time, we’ve grown into an online world where we need more connection.
Some of us get part of this in developing para social relationships with brands and business owners, building connections that help us build connections that help us feel loyal, and ready to buy or refer, purely based on the online experience.
To build this, to build a community and win over the ease of a ChatGPT-written post or email, we need to be very human in our marketing. This means sharing our personality, having areas of our work life and even our personal life (within well-defined boundaries) shared.
We need to stop worrying about perfection and allow ourselves to have content that reflects the natural cadence of how we talk and share. It might have the odd imperfection, or even a swear in there if it fits your brand, and it’s real, relatable and trust building.
To get this, we need to focus on storytelling. Storytelling doesn’t have to be complicated. The hardest to write but the most effective are the personal ones.
One of my clients told a story a few weeks back that moved me to tears. She’s a photographer and she shared her own battles of showing up on camera with confidence. That story resonated with her audience and got her bookings.
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Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist, specialising in lead generation and content marketing.
Another business owner shared her decision to take a day a week to hang out with her children and shared a moment from that day. That again attracted her ideal audience.
One of my biggest ever posts was telling a “rock bottom” story of having to wash windows to feed my family when I was pregnant with my third child – a child who is now almost 18.
That one post netted me $35,000 worth of strategy work.
All of these stories are personal, but also written for a purpose of attracting our ideal clients and getting them to connect with us.
If telling stories like this feels like a no-go zone, that’s completely OK.
I do often encourage you to share glimpses of the person behind the business, and suggest you make a list of safe topics and areas of your life you want to share. It could be the books you love, the films you watch, how you spend your mornings, or your health journey. Make the boundaries you need to feel relaxed enough to be able to tell your stories.
Of course there are many other stories you can tell. Stories about your day at work, behind the scenes insights, team stories. I’m enjoying one of my client’s posts at the moment as she’s introducing her team one at a time. I love reading about them all.
You can also take moments from client sessions, or work with clients and use that as a starting point for content. You don’t even need to identify them. You can just take a moment and talk about it, knowing it might also speak to someone else at the same time.
The simplest way to rise to the top and be noticed is to be different. If you share your own stories, unique perspectives and ideas through your content, you are already different.
ChatGPT and AI content often looks and sounds better on a first read, and it’s also so beautifully fast to create. But our human brains want something with soul, with personality and with your unique take
People are very much still spending money. They are also being more selective on where they spend that money. Help them select you by telling your own stories. It’s one of the simplest ways to stand out.
