Today, you can’t throw a stick without hitting yet another headline screaming…
- “AI is Taking Over!”
- “Thousands of Jobs Being Lost to AI!”
Or, conversely…
- “Use AI and It Will Run Your Business for You!”
- “Nobody has to Write Anymore–AI Does it for You!”
Now, ALL of those headlines are ridiculous–and flat out wrong. But people who haven’t worked much with AI can be easily duped because they’re not aware of its strengths (which are considerable) and weaknesses (also considerable).
As a result, many people are overreacting to the whole AI phenomenon. And the overreactions go both ways.
Notice that the first two headlines above are of the “gloom and doom” variety. “Hide your children!” “The end times are near!” “Dogs and cats living together!”
Hogwash.
Yes, there will be upheaval and some people will be impacted and have to adjust–the same as it is every time something new comes along. Every. Single. Time.
But also check out the last two headlines. This type of “pie in the sky” headline is just as prevalent as the gloom and doom type.
And again I say, “Hogwash!”
AI is NOT going to run your educational consulting business for you. Yes, you can use it to automate some mundane tasks in your business, allowing you to save time that you can then put toward more creative work. That’s a good use of AI. But you can’t use it for everything.
Also…
While many educational consultants will try to use AI to write their consulting business website, their email copy, their blog posts, their workshop descriptions, etc.–those people will eventually lose out to those consultants who actually write to their audiences as human beings speaking to human beings.
And that’s something AI can’t do.
I repeat. CAN. NOT. DO.
Let me explain why.
Here’s a breakdown of the advice I’ve shared in my last four blog posts about how to create a Persuasive Persona as the face of your educational consulting business–a persona that your Ideal Clients will resonate with–and how AI does at these four tasks:
- Balance Credibility with Empathy–Your ideal clients want both things from you. They want to know that you know what you’re talking about (credibility), and they also want to know that you understand their challenges (empathy) and that you offer solutions to those problems. And while AI might be prompted to pull details from your CV and create a list of credibility bullet points to establish authority for you, it totally sucks at empathy. I’ve played around with this a bit, and if you give it a detailed enough prompt describing the intended audience and their challenges, it can produce copy that’s sort of semi-empathetic. But even then, it just always comes across as a little fake.
- Balance Professional with Personal–Again, AI can do a decent job of one side of this dichotomy–the professional side. Given enough context in the prompt about your background, your credibility factors, and the type of expert your audience finds influential or authoritative, AI can write copy that positions you as a professional thought leader in your space. What it’s NOT good at–in fact, what it simply can’t do–is share your own personal stories and the life lessons you’ve learned from your experience. The AI doesn’t know any of that.
- Don’t be Afraid to Share Your Character Flaws–Again, this is something that AI simply can’t do. How is it going to know what you consider your character flaws? And how is it going to know which character flaws you’d be willing to share with other people, or how far you’d be willing to go with that sharing before it started making you uncomfortable? It doesn’t know any of that and never will–because these are “feelings” issues, and AI doesn’t have feelings.
- 3X One or More of Your Attributes or Character Traits–Once again, the AI doesn’t know your character traits. And it certainly doesn’t know your audience well enough for it to know which of your character traits would resonate with them if emphasized. It takes a human with judgement to do that.
So, let me pull all of that together…
One, the four moves I’ve suggested to you over the past four posts have all been proven by savvy marketers to work for attracting an audience to a personal brand.
Two, all four of these moves–showing empathy for your audience, sharing some details about your personal life, showing vulnerability and admitting to character flaws, and selectively over-emphasizing certain attributes you possess–help to humanize you in the eyes of your Ideal Clients.
And three–most importantly–AI sucks at all four of these moves!
Meaning that, those people out there who try to use AI to write all their marketing copy and emails are going to be writing blah, boring, middle of the road AI slop that has had all the humanity sucked out of it.
It might be competent. It might be technically and grammatically correct. But when it comes to attracting an audience, it’s slop.
By the way, let me acknowledge the 800 pound pink elephant in the room…
I know that some of you guys are thinking, “Wait a minute. Aren’t you on record, talking about all the wonderful things AI can be used for in one’s educational consulting business?”
Yep. Guilty as charged.
And I stand by that. There are a number of uses of AI (researching, brainstorming, summarizing, outlining, repurposing content) that are valid and worth exploring and using.
But notice that all of those tasks are things AI can do much faster than a human, and do reasonable well.
But what it can’t be is human. It can’t tell stories (at least not yours). It can’t truly be empathetic. It doesn’t know how to be vulnerable. It has no sense of humor. It doesn’t get irony.
There are so many ways that AI will never be able to replace you, the HUMAN element, in your business.
So, let it do the other stuff–the stuff it’s good at, the stuff that saves you time.
But YOU have to be the human in the room. Follow the advice I’m sharing in these Persuasive Persona posts and talk to your audience like the amazing, imperfect, nuanced human being that you are, and they will flock to you like bees to honey.
And avoid AI slop at all costs!
To Your Success,
Willy
P.S.–Today’s post was a recap of my past four posts about the Persuasive Persona. I wanted you to see how all four of those elements are different ways for you to come across as more human.
I’d love to know which one(s) of the four tips covered resonate most with you.
Just type either “credibility and empathy,” “professional and personal,” “character flaws,” or “3X” in the Comments.
Willy
