by JCM | 27 Nov, 2025 |
If you’re happy with platitudinous banality for your “thought leadership”, GenAI is great!
The trouble is, this isn’t just a GenAI issue.
Many (most?) brands have been spewing out generic nonsense with their content marketing for as long as content marketing has been a thing.
Because what GenAI content is very good at exposing is something that those of us who’ve been working in content marketing for a long time have known since forever:
Coming up with genuinely original, compelling insights is *incredibly* hard.
Especially when the raw material most B2B marketers have to work with is the half-remembered received wisdom a distracted senior stakeholder has just tried to recall from their MBA days in response to a question about their business strategy that they’ve probably never even considered before.
And even more especially when these days many of those senior stakeholders are asking their PA to ask ChatGPT to come up with an answer for the question via email rather than speak with anyone.
If you want real insight that’s going to impress real experts, you need to put the work in, and give it some real thought.
GenAI can help with this – I have endless conversations with various bots to refine my thinking across dozens of projects.
But even that takes time. Often a hell of a lot of time.
Because even in the age of GenAI, it turns out the project management Time / Cost / Quality triangle still applies.
And you still only get to pick two.
{Post sparked by a post about how NotebookLM can now produce entire, quite decent-seeming slide decks, based on a few prompts)
by JCM | 12 Nov, 2025 |
GenAI content is neither good nor bad:
– Bad AI content is bad.
– Good AI content is good.
We were having the same arguments 20 years ago about blog content from actual humans.
The problem is not with how the sausage is made but, as Sturgeon’s Law states, that “Ninety percent of everything is crap”.
(Of course, on Linkedin this quite simple – and surely obvious – statement led to lots of debate about the *ethics* of AI content rather than the quality. That’s a different matter altogether…)
by JCM | 10 Oct, 2025 |
The rhythms and tone of AI-assisted writing are now pretty much endemic on LinkedIn
And I get why: GenAI copy is generally pretty tight, pretty focused, and flows pretty well. Certainly better than most non-professional writers can manage on their own.
Hell, it sounds annoyingly like my own natural writing style, honed over years of practice…
But people I’ve known for years are starting to no longer sound like themselves.
Their words are too polished, too slick, too much like those an American social media copywriter would use, no matter where they’re from.
None of this post was written with AI.
And despite (because of?) being a professional writer/editor, It took me over half an hour of questioning myself, rewriting, starting again, looking for the right phrase. Doing this on my phone, my thumbs now ache and the little finger on my right hand, which I always use to support the weight while writing, is begging for a break.
With GenAI I could have “written” this in a fraction of the time, and it would have been tighter, easier to follow.
But it wouldn’t have been me – and I still (naively) want my social media interactions to be authentically human to human.
(Of course, the AI version would probably have ended up getting more engagement, because this post – as well as going out on a Sunday morning when no one’s looking, and without an image – is now far too long for most people, or the LinkedIn algorithm, to give it much attention. Hey ho!)
by JCM | 21 Aug, 2024 |
The default writing style of GenAI is becoming ever more prevalent on LinkedIn, both in posts and comments.
This GenAI standard copy has a rhythm that, because it’s becoming so common, is becoming increasingly noticeable.
Sometimes it’s really very obvious we’ve got bots talking to bots – especially on those AI-generated posts where LinkedIn tries to algorithmically flatter us by pretending we’re one of a select few experts invited to respond to a question.
???
Top tip: If you’re using LinkedIn to build a personal / professional brand, you really need a personality – a style or tone (and preferably ideas) of your own. If you sound the same as everyone else, you fade into the background noise.
So while it may be tempting to hit the “Rewrite with AI” button, or just paste a question into your Chatbot of choice, my advice: Don’t.
Or, at least, don’t without giving it some thought.
???
There are lots of good reasons to use AI to help with your writing – it’s an annoyingly good editor when used carefully, and can be a superb help for people working in their second language, or with neurodiverse needs. It can be helpful to spot ways to tighten arguments, and in suggesting additional points. But like any tool, it needs a bit of practice and skill to use well.
But seeing that this platform is about showing off professional skills, don’t use the default – that’s like turning up to a client presentation with a PowerPoint with no formatting.
Put a bit of effort in, and maybe you’ll get read and responded to by people, not just bots. And isn’t that the point of *social* media?
by JCM | 25 Apr, 2020 |
Finally, some good news!
Word is going to start showing double spaces after a full-stop/period as a mistake, preventing the daily howls of frustration from copy-editors worldwide who are continually having to find/replace the damned things.
(And yes, I know lots of people were taught to type with a double space after a full-stop. I was too – because I learned on a typewriter, which is where this came from: to improve the kerning and create more readable text. Computers / word processors are rather more sophisticated than typewriters – they sort the spacing out for you. This means using a double space on a computer actually *increases* layout issues – especially when justifying text – so achieves the precise opposite of what people who do this think it does.)
I’m fairly flexible as an editor most of the time, but along with *always* advocating the Oxford Comma, killing post-period double spaces is one of the few editing hills I’m prepared to die on.
by JCM | 5 Apr, 2020 |
Behind the Economist paywall, sadly, but this is the key point – always worth remembering beyond the current crisis, and something a number of political leaders need to learn:
“Recommendations that sound more advisory than mandatory seem to presume rational adults will do the right thing with accurate information. The central insight of behavioural economics is that they do not…”
Clarity of messaging is more vital now than ever – it’s become a literal matter of life and death. “Practice social distancing” is vague, confusing, advisory. “Stay home” is clear, unambiguous, mandatory. Guess which has worked better?
This is also a lesson we should take with us after this crisis has passed: If you want to be understood, make your point as clearly and plainly as possible. Otherwise you have no one to blame but yourself when people don’t pay attention to what you’re telling them – or, worse, start believing simpler-sounding misinformation.
