How to Use AI for Social Media Without Sounding Like AI
AI can save you a lot of time on social media, but it can also make you sound exactly like everyone else.
If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner trying to keep up with social media, AI can be incredibly useful. It can help you brainstorm ideas, organize your thoughts, write a first draft, or get past the blinking cursor.
You do not have to choose between using AI and sounding like a real person.
You just need to give AI the right job.
Let AI help with the structure. You bring the part people actually connect with.
Should you use AI to write social media posts?
Yes. (I do!) But I don’t think the goal should be to type “write me an Instagram caption about X,” copy the result, and hit publish.
AI is really good at giving you something to work with.
It does not automatically know:
what you actually think
what happened with a client yesterday
the weirdly specific thing your customers always say
the hill you’re willing to die on
the story behind your business
the joke your audience will immediately understand
what you would NEVER say
That’s where you come in. Add your point of view, don’t outsource it to AI.
Why does so much AI content sound the same?
Because AI is very good at predicting what a reasonable answer should sound like.
Reasonable is useful, but it’s also how we end up with 47 businesses posting some variation of:
“Running a business isn’t easy, but remember to stay consistent and believe in yourself!”
Technically, that’s fine. But it’s not particularly memorable or unique.
That’s one of my favorite tests for social media content:
Could this post have come from any business in your industry?
If the answer is yes, you’re probably not finished yet.
Add something “owned” to anything borrowed
I heard this idea recently, and I think it’s a useful way to think about AI-assisted content:
For every borrowed element, add something owned.
A borrowed element could be:
a trending audio
a popular hook
a Reel format you’ve seen everywhere
an AI-generated first draft
a common content idea
Those are all good things to use, and then add something that could only come from you.
Maybe that’s:
your opinion
an actual customer question
a candid photo
a personal example
something you learned the hard way
a voiceover in your actual voice
a reference your audience will immediately understand
You can absolutely ask ChatGPT to help write your caption. Then add the sentence ChatGPT could never have known to include.
That’s usually the best part anyway.
How do you make AI-generated content sound more human?
One of the easiest ways?
Get oddly specific.
Broad content tries to appeal to everyone, while specific content gives the right person something to grab onto.
For example, I could tell you:
I really like caffeine.
True. Or I could tell you:
I have a very serious relationship with an extremely crispy McDonald’s Diet Coke.
Also true.
One gives you information about me, but the other gives you something to respond to.
Maybe you’re also a Diet Coke person. Maybe you’re going to tell me Diet Pepsi is better. (You’d be wrong, obviously, but now we’re having a conversation.)
Your business content works the same way.
Instead of:
“Running a small business can feel overwhelming.”
Try the version that actually happened:
“I was answering work emails from the bleachers at my son’s Little League game, sitting next to the snack bags I was about to hand out.”
Now you can see it.
That detail tells you more than “business ownership is busy” ever could.
Specific details make content feel lived-in, and AI can’t know those details unless you give them to it.
Give AI context before you ask it to create
There’s another reason AI content tends to sound generic: We give AI generic information.
If ChatGPT knows almost nothing about your business, your customers, or the way you think, it has to fill in the blanks.
And it fills them with averages.
That’s how you end up with phrases that are technically correct and completely forgettable. So, give it better source material.
Tell it:
who you help
how you talk about your work
what you believe
what you disagree with
examples of things you’ve actually written
what your customers care about
phrases you’d never use
You can also give it examples of posts that really sound like you and explain why the examples sound like you.
Do one final “human check” before you post
Before you publish something AI helped you create, ask:
Where is the evidence that I made this?
Can you find your opinion?
A specific detail?
A personal example?
Something your audience associates with you?
A sentence that sounds like something you would actually say out loud?
If you can, you’re probably in pretty good shape.
If you can’t, don’t throw the whole thing away. Just add some of yourself back in.
Want AI to be more useful without taking over?
I put together 7 Plug-and-Play ChatGPT Prompts for Social Media to help you brainstorm, write, and repurpose content without starting from scratch every time.
They’re practical, copy-and-paste prompts you can actually use when your brain is done and you still need something to post.
