Giving New Words a Try, More Issues with AI

Announcer: Welcome to The Briefing. Today's report will provide you with the latest insights and analysis regarding the current state of humanized content in our world. You are here because you believe in what humanized content stands for. Standing out and truly connecting with the people who matter most. You are also here to help not only defend humanized content, but maintain it by learning more about the fakes, the threats, and the best examples of it.

And we are glad you are here. This is the human content brief. Now here with today's intel, Scott Murray.

Scott: Hello and thank you for being here today. This is your human content brief a report on what's happening in the world of content strategy from a human perspective. Today's briefing includes how language we see in email spam might influence other decisions made by email readers. How employee advocacy is the latest piece of content that shouldn't seem scripted.

Some key differences in human behavior when it comes to search and social. Finally some insights and stories from a series of conferences that shed some light on ai, humans and content. But before we get started, I wanted to let you know about a new resource I launched recently. It is an email newsletter and it's called the Human Content Code.

Now I have a link to it in the show notes. If you're interested, you can access it on my website, Scott Murray online.com, and of course, I'll have it on my LinkedIn profile. You know, it's once a week. I write it in a very natural conversational style. Like I sat down to send this to you. It's not really designed to sound corporate marketing.

That shouldn't surprise you. Um, or something that's just promotional. I try to actually take, uh, a little more of a personalized approach to it, like I am, you know, just wanting to sit down and share something with you for the week. And again, it's once a week. I need to make that clear because, man, I tell you, I've signed up for some and I'm getting 'em like twice a day and I'm going, what is happening?

No, once a week and I just share some thoughts and stories and ideas about humanizing content that I hope is interesting and helpful to you. This past issue, I told a story about how my wife saw this sign in a drive-through one time that said something like, we won't serve you if you're rude. So I share how that applies to human behaviors that tend to get habituated without realizing the impact they have.

Just like in content. Again, it's called the Human Content Code. And if you subscribe this week, you'll get your first email next week, and it will be issue number three. First page. Martin Sayers, who is a health and wellness copywriter, wrote this a couple weeks ago on LinkedIn and I wanted to share it with you.

He says, freelancers, please, I beg you, stop writing stuff like this at the beginning of your emails. He also admits I do this myself sometimes, so slapped wrist, which is good because that's self-awareness. He says quit writing things at the beginning, like just wanted to check if, or just a quick email to see if, or I wonder if you have an update on.

He says this stuff is wordy and lacks confidence, and it's especially dangerous if you really need something like an invoice paid language like that will send you straight to the back of the queue. Believe me, he says instead, have some ka

Brooke: nuts.

Scott: Stand up for yourself. You're not doing anything wrong. He says, open with stuff like I'd like to know.

Or I need an update on, or please get back to me regarding, he said, that's how you get what you want. Now when I see this, the other reason why I personally think when it comes to reader behavior, you know, consumer behavior, in this case, the consumer of this written content. The other reason why I think some of this gets pushed to the back of the queue is because we see this language or similar language all the time.

When we get crap spammy emails from other sources. You know those who go. I just wanted to see if you got my last email, the one you ignored. And for some reason when I think I send this one, you're gonna look at it. Of course they don't say that, but you know what I mean. There's tons of stuff like this. I just wanted to follow up.

I just wanted to bump this up. In case you missed my last email, I'm sending this one and it just boggles my mind. 'cause that's when I want to go. Seriously, would you respond to this email if it landed in your email box? And I don't need you to answer that because I know the answer. So why are you sending this to me?

And if you look at that language and this language, it's very similar. I mean, I understand what Martin is saying because it sounds like you're being too careful to just simply ask for something. But I also think. Just wanted to check is no different from, just wanted to see if you got my last email when I pitched this service to you, or just a quick email to see if you saw my last email.

The other thing that I thought was interesting is this generated 179 comments. You know, again, when you talk about simple things that can get people talking, this isn't complex, but everybody's got a take on it. And right at the very top we have, uh, Cassidy Grigg. Who is a copywriter and content strategist, and she said, my whole vibe via email changed when someone told me to stop saying, just crazy.

How much one word can make a difference in perception. It's true because I'm actually giving a presentation this week for a virtual summit, mainly focused on, um, government employees and government offices and agencies and internal communication. And one of the things I talk about is internal emails. I know we're basically talking about external, but the same thing applies.

And I did some research to, uh, help kind of frame what I was saying 'cause I was talking about automated choices. It's not hard to imagine that the word just, just automatically comes out without us thinking about it. And clearly someone had to say, Hey, quit using that because I interpret it to be this.

Someone had to snap us out of it. But I even found other things. I found, uh, a study that showed the words well done, like from, I guess a supervisor or something. 60% of the people in this survey that I'm sharing at the summit said that well done. Felt sarcastic to them. And the other thing they pointed out in this study, and I'll, I'll share it in the show notes, is they thought that the word thanks with a period could come across Curt or rude instead of grateful.

And it's not hard to imagine, right? Because some element of this comes down to the voice in their head when they read it. If you were with me when I talked about how this applies to like email marketing copy and how copy that reads like a radio ad can literally be read like a radio ad in somebody's head, and that's just, you know, killer right out of the gate because who wants that in their inbox and how neuroscience proves this when it comes to voice familiarity.

And it got me thinking, and I use this example in the presentation. I wonder sometimes if people either have generic voices that make thanks. I mean, how, how did you read it? Basically, what this might boil down to. Is, how are they reading these words? And it's clear. You might be thinking, well done is well done, but they're reading it as well.

Done. Isn't that wild? Or instead of thanks, it's thanks.

But the other thing I started to think about when it comes to voice in their head. Is, and this is, I'm gonna share a couple other parts of my presentation here just because I found this interesting. Sometimes it's tone. You know, I've worked for a couple of people, you know, back in the day, you know, they just look like unhappy people.

Did you, have you ever worked with somebody like that? You know, a boss or something that just always looked unhappy? You know, I remember a boss's boss one time talking about my boss and said, I never see her smile. And he was right. I didn't see her smile much either. So all, all I could do was think of Mr.

Shirley from uh, Christmas vacation. It's like if you had a boss like that and you got an email from him, wouldn't you read it with the same angry tone You always hear from him even, even if he's not like snapping at you, still. Everything he says. Sounds that way.

Announcer: Write up a brief summary and have it to me by the end of the day.

Scott: So if he said, well done, if Mr. Shirley said well done or thanks, wouldn't it be in that same tone and could that mean that the way he thought he was saying it in words and how you heard it when you read it was different While piecing this together, I thought about stories. I've heard when it comes to, you know, sometimes how people will write emails quick just to get 'em out the door and not realize the mistakes they're making by just quickly writing it without.

Again, self-awareness, stopping and thinking, how is this gonna be interpreted because they're too busy just trying to get it out the door. Now granted, there are a lot of examples out there about people who will write an email and they don't give all the details 'cause they're trying to be quick and get out the door.

And then of course they spend the next, you know, 30 to 45 minutes answering questions because they didn't put all the details in the email. But then there's this other case where I've read people say that they've gotten an email from their boss. That would say, we need to talk. Come see me at 11:00 AM and that's it.

The ominous music might as well start playing, you know? And what if when they say 11:00 AM it's like eight. You've got to obsess over what this means, and that's why we have to be so careful with all of these things and think it through and find out how people are interpreting these things. But when it comes to something like that, I mean, that's nothing more than our brain desperately trying to fill the gaps that are missing in the content, in the communication.

In this case, you know, obviously we're unsure of what this means, but our brain is also potentially saying that the reason we're not getting more context is because it's bad. And I wanna say I've seen cases where they just wanted to talk about this, that, or the other, but they were sweating for the last three hours because of what was written, by the way, that survey that was talking about, well done and thanks.

That was a survey, uh, conducted by Babel, the language learning platform, and they collaborated with the research agency one poll, to put together these insights. And, uh, like I said, I'll share that with you in the show notes. Alright, next page. Alright. Andy Crest has shared a really interesting breakdown and I wanted to.

See if you had had a chance to take a look at this or not, because it has a lot to do with the very thing we're talking about right now. What's going on in people's heads when they are doing certain things, and in this case, he's got a breakdown here of search versus social, but he's trying to show you where everybody's head is when they're in these two places.

Where is someone's head when they're in search? And where is someone's head when they're in social? And just showing you the differences and how to consider this when thinking about your audience. So for a quick example, when it comes to search, the visitor is very, very busy 'cause they're looking for something, whereas on social, they're probably bored and they're just kinda looking around.

When they're searching content meets expectations. On social content is unexpected. Well, to me, I would say content is unexpected as long as it doesn't look like everything that they're used to seeing every day in search detailed text works best and in social strong visuals work best. And in search, you know what they're thinking, not who they are.

And in social, you know who they are, but not what they're thinking. Andy points out. They aren't just different channels, they are opposite channels. Some topics do well in social media. Others do better in search. A pro content strategist can predict this and knows how to align topics with the channels.

The key to great content promotion is knowing the difference between social media and SEO because topic slash channel fit makes all the difference, and that's why they broke this down. What I just highlighted to you was kind of a, um, summary of what these other points get a lot more specific about because if we look at it, he breaks it into audience psychology, content, topics, formats, paid targeting, upper limits, conversions, and measurement, where we're getting some of the specifics behind what we just went over.

So for example, when it comes to content topics. On the search side, they align with intent. We're talking about provide answers to questions and meeting expectations. Meanwhile, on the social side, it's about aligning with interest. You're going to trigger emotion very quickly. Be unexpected and there's no better way to trigger the unexpected and the emotions connected to the unexpected than doing something different than what's out there, which most people you see aren't willing to do that.

It's much more about. Feeling comfortable about what you're posting because you literally are by default copying what you see so many other people do. It's everywhere. When it comes to conversions on the search side, visitors from search are more likely to buy or become a lead higher intent, but only if their questions are answered.

Meanwhile, on search, visitors from social are less likely to buy low intent, but more likely to share and grow awareness. Finally in the measurement component we have on the search side, visibility and traffic is easy to report, but engagement is harder to measure. Behavior metrics for specific key phrases are not available on the social side.

Engagement metrics, shares, likes and comments are easy to see, but total visibility from social traffic. It's harder to report. So I'm gonna share this with you in the show notes. And while that breaks everything down into a guide for this post, Andy also points out that this is a small part of a larger guide, which is their book, content Chemistry, the Illustrated Guide for Content Marketing, which I got, I think my first issue of that several years ago, and I got my first edition of that back when it was.

I think edition five and they are now on the seventh edition of Content Chemistry. Next page here is a video clip from Brooke Sells from her social CX podcast.

Brooke: Employee advocacy works when it's authentic. Your job isn't to script people, it's to give them frameworks, tools, and the freedom to be human.

That's what builds trust. That's what builds connection.

Scott: I really like this point and I wanted to share with you, uh, a little bit of my experience with employee advocacy because I feel like this could eventually become part of my work because I'm noticing that especially in the C-suite, the presence online and communicating with people online from the business individually is becoming something that a lot of organizations are looking at.

Of course advocacy is, goes beyond the C-suite. Um, because essentially what you're doing is you're trying to encourage other people from the company to share stuff and hopefully it's relevant stuff and it's not just selling stuff. But I remember working for this tech company and I helped them launch an advocacy program.

Everything, almost everything at this company was just so almost overstructured, so there wasn't a whole lot of room for the authenticity that Brook's talking about because the company just didn't work that way. So as I started to work with the organization and launching the advocacy program and finding out who would be willing to get involved, part of what I had to do was send everybody examples of what to write on their own platforms, on their own social feeds.

Which I hated doing because I really just wanted to be able to say, you know, say this like you would if you were sharing it with anybody. And I think that's what you have to do because man, you want to talk about just an extra layer of who cares, you know? If it is pushing something that isn't going to appeal to the people on their feed, especially if it's something salesy, you know, or what if those people don't have a tech audience, they're not gonna care about this.

Whereas there were people from the organization that did have that audience, you know? So you can't be so obsessed with as many people as possible, you know, turning this stuff out for you or sharing this stuff out for you. Because you're gonna run into a lot of people that are gonna be sharing stuff on their feed that's not consistent with everything else.

So their audience is gonna be like, why the hell is she sharing this? Oh, probably. 'cause her company's forcing her to, so what good has that done anybody at that point? Right? So I hated doing that. I hated saying, okay, so when you share this with everybody on LinkedIn or wherever it was Twitter or wherever, you could say this.

You could say this, but. I felt so much better if I could say, you know, Hey, you might highlight this or that, but say it the way you would. But even then, it can't be, check this out or. Telling people what to look at or check out for your company. 'cause that wasn't gonna do it. It still was gonna have to follow a lot of the same principles of having meaningful interest.

And then if it's a video or something, having something written in a way when they share it, that sounds like something of interest. And they're explaining why anybody's gonna care. And it can't be because we made it. You know? It's like one of those. Early examples I learned in podcasting. I've been podcasting since 2011 and I earned very, and I learned very early on, and this is me doing the very thing I tell you to watch out for.

I had seen other podcasters, and of course at that time, like a lot of people would, I'd say, okay, well how does everybody else share their content? Oh, they go online and say, episode 13 is out. Check it out with no other context. And I learned very early on, that's not what you do because nobody's gonna care.

So same principle here. The other thing I think about is other things that get scripted this way. You know, I, I've, I've talked in the past with companies about scripting calls, call scripts, and how tricky that gets, especially when you've, you've got somebody reading that sounds like they're reading or it's written in a way that sounds like a script.

So the other person's already out at that point because they know you're reading. And that's why so many customer service calls can go south. Some of the situations I've seen where somebody's gotta reach out and talk to somebody about something, you know, you wouldn't necessarily call and wanna talk to somebody about, but you have to have that conversation.

You know, maybe it's about insurance or something like that. Some of the most effective conversations and customer service people I've seen are the ones who are not totally scripted. They maybe have like some parameters in which to make sure. You know, they're gonna highlight. But as far as how they talk to that person, there's room to talk naturally and more like a human in that call.

That's what we're talking about here with authenticity. This is true what Brooke is talking about when it comes to not scripting your people. You know, especially if you've got people that may be perhaps better than you. Just have a great way of articulating things that are happening in your company.

And if you're like corporate wants you to write it like this. There's a missed opportunity there. And again, this, this is so self-awareness, predictive intelligence, meaningful language, because we're stopping to think about does this person have an audience on their social feed that's gonna care about this, no matter how good it's written.

You know, is it gonna sound like we're trying to get our people to do employee advocacy by making 'em talk like a corporate marketing team instead of how they usually talk on their social media feeds. So it's a good reminder. All right. Next page. Okay. I wanted to share with you some LinkedIn posts from Marcus Sheridan of they asked you answer an endless customer's fame.

He just got done completing another long speaking engagement trip all over the world to talk to audiences at different conferences, conventions, workshops, but at the same time, he's also been to a few. Sessions and to nobody's surprise, a lot of them have been about ai. And I wanted to show just kind of how all these things are connected, these three posts, and what we can maybe pull from them.

So this first one from a couple weeks ago, he said, over the last year as a speaker, I've witnessed over 100 talks on ai. And here's the honest truth. Most of them have very little impact on the audience. The primary reason the majority of the speakers are too technical, and the audience is utterly intimidated by what they hear and see.

Here's the part, every event organizer needs to realize. Number one, telling an audience what AI can do produces little results. This constitutes about 90%. The AI talks at events. Number two, showing an audience what AI can do produces solid results. And he said this is easily less than 10% of what he sees.

And finally, work shopping with an audience, what AI can do produces extraordinary results. He said this is about 1% or less of what he sees, or less than 1% of what he sees. This is to me another example of what happens when people get so consumed in it and then you know, the problems that can cause, I mean, we, we don't have to go to a conference to see this disconnect from creator to audience.

You know, we've seen a lot of cases where. People are trying to force AI into their social media posts and their content 'cause they know it's hot and they're just trying to kind of hijack the topic when really maybe the depth of what they know isn't there. It's no different from companies that have tried to shove AI into different functionalities, and of course with mixed results.

And some of it's because they were in such a rush to be able to say, Hey, look, we, we, we've got ai, we got AI too. Look, look, this, this AI thing is in our solution, and then it can happen when it comes to presentations. But there is an element of self-awareness here. You know, it just goes back to the fundamental premise of, okay, what, what would I want if I was in this audience?

Would this be enough? And I actually think there's more to this than that. And I mean, I've talked to you before about some of the experiences I've had. Talking about humanization in AI heavy conferences and how at first that was a little intimidating because I thought, gee, you know, are they even gonna care about how I'm not going all in?

They would say, thank you so much for talking about, you know, human marketing for a little bit. We were starting to wonder if that was even a thing. So if you're going to have AI. What Marcus is saying here is it's gotta be more than, Hey, look what AI can do, or what AI's gonna be able to do, especially considering that we're still in a phase where businesses especially are still trying to figure out what it's going to do well, even two or three years from now.

So here's the next story from, uh, his travels. The other night after I'd spoken about the future of AI search, a businessman came up to me. All excited, Marcus. Good news. When I asked chat, GPT, who are the best plumbers in Dallas, Texas. My company was one of the ones that recommended Excellent. Marcus said, are you sure?

Yeah, I just tested it. It said my name. Marcus then pulled his chat, GPT account up, ran the same query, and guess what? This company wasn't mentioned at all bogus, and the owner was stunned. Now, why did it not come up for Marcus? He said because chat GBT is not Google. It's not giving a single universal answer.

He says, please repeat this statement again and again until it sticks. Chat GPT is not Google. It's not giving a single universal answer. He said, you have to understand that it's pulling from context, memory, and other subtle cues. In this man's case chat, GBT recognized he owned that company and fed him the result it thought he wanted.

It's not lying per se, but it is bias, and that is why AI visibility is a whole different beast than traditional SEO. He says, remember, you must understand this about ai. Search ranking number one doesn't mean ranking number one. It means maybe ranking if the conditions line up. And if you are in the early stages or if you still find yourself experimenting a lot with chat, GPT, this is an important thing to remember no matter how you're using it.

And sometimes you have to create bots or you, sometimes you have to create parameters or limitations. And some of those might need to say, anytime I ask you a question, don't tell me what I want to hear. Be completely and totally honest with me because it wants to please you and trust me, there are lots of ways wanting to please, you can get content in trouble.

I've seen it do this when it comes to research. You know, maybe you're writing a, a book or an insightful blog and you wanna back it up with some resources and you tell it. You know, go out there and find me some good thought leadership or articles or blogs that I can include in this that talk about this very thing.

And what people say about it. And it could come back and say, yeah, this CEO of this company said this and you can find it here. And then you click on it and you go, Hmm, let me read it. Let me read it. Uh, I don't see this. And then you go back to it and you go, you said this. CEO said this in this article, but I don't see it.

Where is it? What paragraph is it? And it says, oh, well he didn't actually say that, but he's in this article. And I just wrote that to fit what you needed. And imagine the trouble that can cause if you didn't even bother to check, right? So there are all kinds of things that can be a little misleading when it comes to ai, just wanting to make you happy.

You know, you have to check it and you have to tell it. Sometimes, you know, don't tell me this 'cause it's what I want to hear. I, I want an analysis or I want something, you know, that is going to help me make a decision. And then in Marcus's case, we've got another circumstance here too, where you have to remember that its motivation is to make you happy.

So finally, I was telling you that Marcus just got back from this big tour, where in this post he said, 18 days, three countries, nine events. Now that he's back, he shared four key lessons from this trip. Number one. It's not about the industry, it's not about the geography, it's about the buyer, and most buyers are pretty much the same.

The companies that get this are winning. Number two, marketing for the most part hasn't really changed for 20 years. Most companies continue to do SEO, paid ads, some social and a little bit of video. This needs to change and companies need to evolve. Gosh, I feel like I've been saying that for years. 'cause that really has been the core of my work is helping people do that.

Not in all of those areas, but in probably more of the content oriented areas like social and video. Not only in the content, but the strategy and the approach. Because yes, lots has changed. Number three. This is the one that is really disappointing. Most businesses are not as obsessed with making a human to human connection with their customers as they need to be.

He said, this has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with put yourself out there. And the fourth thing was speaking of ai, roughly 50% of my audience members say they are using chat GPT more than they're using Google for search. You know, really to me, number two and number three go hand in hand.

And what do you hear me talk so much about here? When it comes to Stamp, it's the reason why Stamp is so relevant, because there's so many elements here. Marketing for the most part, hasn't really changed for 20 years. Most companies are continuing to do SEO, paid ads, some social, a little bit of video. For some companies, I'm sure that means they've been doing it that way for 10 plus years.

Others, maybe five plus years or six plus years. But what we're talking about there is recognizing habituation, recognizing that we've been locked in the same process and have given ourselves no opportunities to learn what's changed. And it might be right in front of our face as to why content is underperforming or connection isn't happening.

There's an element of that that is predictive intelligence and self-awareness, and of course, adaptability and having an adaptable culture. Most businesses are not obsessed with making a human to human connection with their customers as they need to be. I mean, that's two-way communication and predictive intelligence and meaningful language.

If you're not obsessed with making a connection, none of those things are probably in play. It's gonna be one-way, communication, the usual, typical way that marketers have been speaking and communicating with their audience for more than 10 plus years, and they're stuck in it. It. Here's what this could mean to your business.

You know when he's saying businesses, he's still saying most businesses are doing this. That means your competition is probably also stuck. So if you make the changes that Marcus is talking about here and that I talk about here, it could be a game changer. And by the time your competition recognizes it, it's gonna be too late.

Because what we're talking about here with human, human connection is a relationship that's gonna be built. And there's no way your competition. It catches up with that. Unless you do something to damage the relationship, there's an opportunity there, but then they're gonna have to be listening and paying attention.

They're probably not doing that either. That's why Marcus is talking about this has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with putting yourself out there and making that connection and doing it in a way that is human and yeah, that, that requires change. And that's why people like Marcus are out there.

It's why people like I'm out there. People say, we've been developing content this way with this approach. How do we break out of this language or this approach to make that connection? To tap more into connection. It's really kind of interesting because as we talk about competition, that's kind of what some of my competition is probably doing.

You know, there's still plenty of people out there that are teaching businesses, things that are rooted in something that's 10 years old are rooted in a one-way communication approach, which means it's all about us and what we're getting out of it. And more often than not, those companies are making money off what those other companies don't know.

That's why you're seeing so many agencies have their relationships cut because companies that are hiring those agencies have noticed that many of them, not all of them, but many of them are just automating this process, charging a ton of money to do it, and at least just showing, okay, we're taking this over for you so you don't have to do it, but there's no results, or you don't feel like you're seeing much of a difference between something you could probably do in house.

Or maybe hire somebody like me or Marcus or somebody else to just come in and work with you as somebody who was personally invested in the success of your business and cares to know more about that before we start talking about solutions. And that just means we are practicing what we preach. We're not just telling companies to make a human to human connection.

We also practice that in how we help them do that very thing. Because if I'm not taking that approach with you. So I'm really hoping that those two things, those two takeaways, when Marcus goes on his next trip, I hope there'll be some, some better results on people breaking outta some of these old habits, and then maybe they're not obsessed yet, but they become at least a little more passionate about that human to human connection.

Well, that's today's briefing. I'll have links in the show notes to the reports and insights you heard in today's briefing. If I can help you empower your content to stand out and connect with your audience through humanized communication and strategy, you can email me at Scott at Scott Murray online dot.

Or there's a form on my website if you'd like to do it that way, which of course is Scott Murray online.com. Thank you so much for being here today.

Announcer: That concludes today's briefing. Keep your communications clear, your content human, and your mission steady.