The Humanity Gap: What an Expert Content Creation Agency Owner Knows about AI

Priscilla McKinney:

Hello and welcome to Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Mama Bird with you as always. And today I want to talk about a problem that really I think nobody is naming correctly. And that is the humanity gap. And I want to share with you what I, as a content creation agency owner, know about AI and what it can do to boost your content.

Everyone keeps having the same conversation about AI and content. They're asking questions like, can it write? Should you use it at all? Is it going to replace writers? And I think these are the wrong questions. The real problem is that AI content is almost always just good enough.

It's blending in, it's not standing out, and just good enough is not safe. In fact, it's actually very dangerous. And it is actually more damaging than bad content because often that AI writer is kind of invisible to us. That is the real issue I want to spotlight.

So next time you are scrolling through LinkedIn, first of all, quit doom scrolling through LinkedIn, get into LinkedIn, do what you need to do and get out. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, please take a look at my social influence course under littlebirdmarketing.com/training, and you'll see what I mean. But anyway, next time you're on LinkedIn, pause on the next B2B blog post and ask yourself one thing.

Does this make you feel anything? Not is it accurate or does it have a call to action? But you want to ask, does it move you? Does it make you laugh? Does it make you nod? Or do you think, finally, someone just said it, right? Probably not.

Usually it reads like it's full of facts, but it really says nothing meaningful. And that's the sounds right problem. AI is quietly undermining B2B brands everywhere, and I see it.

Here's what Sounds Right actually looks like. Remember, AI is just a predictive engine. It's going to give you the most predictable next word in a string of words. And AI produces text that sounds authoritative and professional and it does it extremely well. I mean the grammar is clean, the structure is logical, the keywords are there.

It's very repetitive all the time, I have to say that. But technically it's not wrong. And yet you read it and you feel nothing. You couldn't tell me five minutes later what it said or which company even published it because it could have been any of them.

And there's a concept in animation called the Uncanny Valley. The idea that when you create a character that looks almost human, but not quite, something in your brain goes off. You don't think that's wrong. You just feel vaguely uncomfortable and keep scrolling. That's AI content in B2B marketing right now. It passes the test, it just doesn't pass the vibe test.

So this is the most common thing I see when companies go all in on AI-generated content. They end up with a library that is technically fine and spiritually empty. Not to mention all of the SEO problems that we have because everybody else is writing the same thing.

Every post is optimized, on brand on the surface. That logical structure is there, and it's completely interchangeable with something their competitor could have published. There's not really a single sentence in there that could have only come from that company. And generic content doesn't just underperform, it tells your audience something about you. It says, we're a generic company. And once they think that, and once that's really in their brain, even if they're not conscious of it, you're done.

So what sounds right content is missing is what I call scar tissue. See, AI has data points, but humans have scar tissue. We're experienced, we've been around the block. You think about that content that has stopped you mid-scroll, and it probably had a story in it. Not just a case study with the names changed to protect the innocent or not so innocent, but something that actually happened.

Something that went sideways, something where the person writing it lived through an experience and came out the other side with an actual opinion about it. AI can't do that because it isn't really lived in the experience. It's smart, but it's not smart in that way.

It has never had a client fire it or launched a campaign that completely flopped and felt the pressure or been kept up at night. That scar tissue is exactly what makes your audience trust you. And even when it is corporate company writing, you as a company have been through something. You have had hard conversations with your team, with the industry, with your clients.

Everybody has been reading B2B content for years, and I think that even without knowing it, we all have developed a finely tuned sensor for authenticity. And because of that, people don't always know why it feels hollow on your corporate posts. They just click away. And that click away is costing you more than you realize.

The second thing missing when you let AI run your writing is the writer's network. And I just don't hear this discussed enough. You see, AI doesn't have friends, it doesn't have colleagues, it doesn't have a mentor to consult. Or that spontaneous hallway conversation that reframes problems or a recall of an interesting conversation you had at an industry conference.

Original insights come from those real interactions, those real connections, those real dinner conversations, a peer's offhand remark that just hit you a different way. And that is original thinking born from relationships, those real conversations, and you can't prompt your way to it. A great content team brings those connections to the table as a part of their value proposition.

The third thing that is missing when AI writes your content is that emotional undercurrent. And a lot of people think they can train it to do it. But AI certainly can identify your audience's pain points and generate an efficient list of them. What it can't do is feel them. And there's that real respect, I think, from great writing when you want to react and say, I feel you, man.

There's a meaningful difference between writing about someone's problem and writing from the genuine experience of either having felt it or having solved it for someone else. Are you writing for a VP defending her budget in front of a skeptical CFO? Or for a brand new marketing manager who just built their first attribution model and has no idea if they did it right. Same topic, completely different emotional register, completely different content when you get down to it.

So AI can technically write both of them, but it won't feel the difference that a skilled human writer would. And your reader will notice. And that is what makes blogs engaging. It's not about interesting facts in logical order, but content where the reader feels like you get me, like you've climbed inside their specific reality of their job and their stress, what's keeping them up on Sunday night, and you're speaking directly to that.

Now, you need to do some excellent persona work, and of course, you can go to littlebirdmarketing.com/resources and get all kinds of free things about persona development, but you've got to do that so that you can feel right.

So I just want to remind you how important this is because research shows that the average buyer consumes at least 12 to 14 pieces of content before they make their buying decision. And if you're an expert in a particular field, you are hoping that most of those 12 to 14 are your pieces of content. It should be. And those pieces, those opportunities should be part of the process they go through, and that content could be a first impression or it could be playing on a loop.

And if it's generic, your prospect has already drawn conclusions about you before you actually get a conversation. They've decided you're probably a lot like their competitors, which means they'll make a decision based on something else, price, or whoever showed up in their inbox at the right moment, not because they chose you, but because they never had a reason to. And that is a very expensive problem to have.

So here's the thing though. The flood of AI-generated content has actually lowered the bar in a fascinating way. And standing out now does not really require you to be that perfect. It just requires you to be real. And you can use AI to get you to facts and structure, and I highly recommend it. And 90% of B2B content sounds exactly the same because people stick to all of that.

So there's good news in there. But if you're willing to do the real work, you can get beyond that 90%. It's really not that hard to get heard above the noise. And before you hit publish on anything, ask yourself three things. Is there a moment in this piece where someone would stop and say, yes, finally, someone said it? Is there a story that could only come from your company's actual experience? And does this piece have a point of view or does it just have information?

Because information is everywhere, including directly from AI. So you have to think about what your audience can get only from you, only from your perspective, the thing you believe to be true that not everybody would agree with. That's what builds a brand. That's what gets people noticing.

Our approach at Little Bird Marketing is that AI doesn't go in until the human insight is already there. We start with what our clients know that nobody else does. We dig into their experience and their hard-won expertise. We figure out what they actually think, not just what they do, but what kind of underpins their actions. And then we bring that in with all of the persona information that we have. So AI then is a tool in that process and it is not the author. It's never the author.

If you're going to evaluate any content creation agency or content writing services partner, the question isn't whether they use AI or not. Almost everybody does, including us. They'd really be dumb if they weren't. The question is where the human judgment lives in the process. Is it at the beginning? Is it shaping everything? Is it just a light touch at the end? Is it used to clean something up that was already founded on something erroneous?

You've got to have that conversation because if you don't really ask those questions, you will keep getting content that sounds right but doesn't land. Content that checks boxes, but doesn't build relationships. And honestly, your brand deserves better than that. And so does your audience.

So go pull three of the most recent pieces of content from your brand right now and ask yourself honestly, does this sound like us? Does it sound uniquely like us? Is there a story in here that only we could tell? And is there a point?