I’ll start with a confession. Most mornings I scroll LinkedIn with a coffee, and lately I’ve started playing a little game. I read the first line of a post and guess whether a human actually wrote it, or if it’s AI content marketing. I’m right far more often than I’d like to be.
You know the drill – “Here’s the thing nobody tells you about leadership.” A punchy one-line hook, a stack of short sentences, an emoji at the start of every bullet point, and a question at the end asking what I think. It’s polished, it’s tidy and I’ve forgotten it before I’ve finished my coffee.
That’s AI slop, and there’s an awful lot of it about.
Why isn’t AI content bringing in clients?
Now I’m not anti-AI, far from it. I help women in business get to grips with these tools, and I use them myself every week. They’re brilliant for getting unstuck, organising your thinking, or turning a rambling voice note into something you can actually work with.
But businesses have discovered they can produce a month of content in an afternoon. So they do. They type “write me a LinkedIn post about customer service”, copy, paste and just post. No training the tool on how they speak, no stories from their own work, no opinion, editing and no personality!!
And then they wonder why nobody’s getting in touch.
The problem was never a shortage of content. Your ideal clients aren’t sitting there thinking “I really wish there were more posts in my feed” – trust me it’s the opposite. But they are looking for someone they trust. Someone who properly gets their problem and someone who sounds like a real person they could pick up the phone to. Generic content can’t do that, however nicely it’s formatted.
Is LinkedIn penalising AI content marketing?
It isn’t just your audience switching off, the platforms are too.
Back in May 2026, LinkedIn announced changes aimed squarely at low-quality AI posts, comments and automation tools. That content isn’t being deleted, but it is being held back from anyone outside your immediate network. Their newer system reads a post a bit like an editor would. It looks at what you’ve actually said, whether it fits the expertise on your profile, and whether people stop and read it or scroll straight past. Generic, opinion-free, could-have-been-written-by-anyone content is exactly what it’s learning to quietly bury.
From what I’ve read, it’s less about LinkedIn magically sniffing out AI and more that bland content behaves like bland content. People don’t stop for it and the algorithm notices.
On the visual side, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn now flag AI-generated images and video with a little label on the post. However, audiences are getting very good at spotting it with or without one, and they’re not happy!
So the shortcut is turning into a detour.
Is AI replacing copywriters?
When ChatGPT first landed, so many copywriter friends (and myself) were genuinely worried. Why would anyone pay for words when a machine can churn them out for free?
I think a lot of us are about to have a very good couple of years. The market is now flooded with words, which means words that actually sound like someone, that carry a point of view and land with the right people, have become far more rare. And rarity means more valuable. The skill hasn’t been replaced. If anything, it’s been shown up as the thing that mattered all along.
No time for human content marketing? Read this
I hear this so regularly. So many business owners tell me they simply don’t have time to create content, check it, edit it and then schedule it. And I get it, I really do. Many of the people I work with are running the whole show.
Part of my work is very gentle. I’m also a trauma-informed coach and somatic hypnotherapist, and a lot of what stops people posting isn’t time at all. It’s fear. Fear of being seen, of getting it wrong, of being judged. So yes, I’ll put my arm around you, help you calm your nervous system and help you feel safe enough to show up. That matters, and I’ll never skip it.
But there’s a fine line between that and letting us both off the hook. So here’s the blunt bit, said with love.
You have to do the actual work.
If you want results, it takes time. There’s no version of building a business where the visibility, the trust and the clients just turn up without you putting something in. Of course simplify. Of course prioritise, and focus on the activities that genuinely move the needle. (Spoiler alert: that includes sales, you know – real conversations with real people, not just posting and hoping.)
And if time really is the issue, ask yourself the grown-up question. What can I outsource?
Not to a bland AI bot that sounds nothing like you. A bot won’t pick up on the throwaway comment a client made that turned into your best idea. It doesn’t know the story behind why you started your business, or why you do things the way you do. It can’t read the room. It can’t decipher all the nuance and context that’s unique to us as humans. Outsource to a person who’ll take the time to learn how you think and how you speak. Or keep hold of the bits that need your voice, and hand off the rest: the scheduling, the formatting, the admin.
How to use AI in your marketing without losing your voice
AI isn’t going anywhere. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, and I wouldn’t want to. So how do we find the balance?
For me, it comes down to who’s in charge. AI can be your assistant. It shouldn’t be your voice.
- Start with you. Your ideas, your stories, your opinions, even the slightly spicy ones. A voice note on the school run counts.
- Let AI help you shape it. Find the structure, tidy the edges.
- Edit it back into your own words. Read it out loud. If you wouldn’t say it to a client sitting across the table from you, change it. I never use the word “fluff” – it’s just not me.
- Train your tools properly. Give them your real writing, your phrases, your way of explaining things, so what comes back is closer to you in the first place.
- Have an opinion. The posts people actually read are the ones where someone stands for something. Stand out!
Full transparency
I’ll be honest with you. Claude has helped me finesse this article. It’s helped me tidy my thoughts and shape the flow. But the raw material is me. My opinions, my conversations with clients, my thirty-odd years of doing this. And it will always come from me.
Because people will always buy from people.
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Want help finding your balance? Whether it’s getting your content back into your own voice, working out what to keep and what to hand over, or simply feeling confident enough to post, book a Power Hour with me and we’ll work through it together.