I’m fresh out of the Content Marketing World 2026 conference, and it’s time to debrief. To write this blog post, I could have put my copious notes into Claude, asked it to synthesize the best points, and “write an 800-word blog in my voice.” Instead, I stopped short.
I’m going old school *gasp* and writing entirely without AI’s help. Because this was something that shocked me at CM World: We’re all using this technology and too many of us are starting to sound the same.
My job as a content strategist is to deploy tech wisely so it doesn’t remove the soul of the person or brand I’m writing for. We all talk about keeping a “human in the loop,” but there’s not much being said about how to maintain humanity’s voice for the humans we’re marketing to. This is where I’m pitching my flag.
People in general are getting super savvy about AI tells; even infuriated when they see posters generated by local restaurants that don't feature actual pictures of the food. And it’s happening in B2B, too.
You might save time with AI’s speed, but you unfortunately sacrifice quality. If you’re an executive reading this, I know you want your content to scale quickly at volume. But you also have to take a step back and see if how you’re using the tool is helping your brand voice, or unintentionally harming it.
The tough part is, AI’s proliferation means ownership over your brand narrative is eroding. Some 86% of brand mentions in AI answers come from third-party sites, not the brand’s own domain, according to an AirOps study. So when you add AI to your content workflows (which is expected and perfectly fine), you need to know how to use it well.
Because I work in these tools daily, my brain has become hyperattuned to AI copywriting. It’s become a super power, kind of like spotting typos in my early days as a copy editor for the college newspaper.
Once you know the tells, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. It’s like telling your toddler to look for red cars; all of a sudden, there are a lot more on the road than you thought.
Here are a few of my AI verbiage pet peeves:
It’s our job in content marketing to push back on AI sameness so each specific brand remains true to its north star. Slop is solvable! While you’re marketing to bots, you don’t have to sound like a bot.
At Kuno, we create foundational brand systems so when you’re using AI tools, they begin with your company’s context: voice and tone, value propositions, brand design architecture, messaging and mood.
But if you don’t know how to prompt well, even that context can spit out slop. Having an expert strategist and writer on your team — someone who knows how to write without AI — is the best quality control against slop.
You’ve probably seen a decrease in organic traffic and clicks to your website over the past few years. This isn’t a new trend sparked solely by AI. The zero-click environment (to quote Amanda Natividad) has been happening for years.
According to a SimilarWeb and SparkToro June 2026 study, 68% of U.S. Google searches end without a click. When compared with previous years' numbers, they found this trend has been increasing over time, and that AI is simply accelerating it.
Content should still have a clear purpose, goal and CTA. Just because someone’s not clicking doesn’t mean that the AI Overview with your company’s name in it was worthless to try to rank for. Or the LinkedIn post that got picked up by AI didn’t lead to booking a demo two months later.
We’ve all been used to measuring KPIs that “prove” our content did something right at the point of publication. These days, it’s about optimizing for the long-term brand narrative so you can capture the 95% of folks who aren’t currently ready to buy in the market.
Before LLMs, we used to create content for search engines. The pact was that they delivered the most relevant content based on how well we could write and structure our content to rank for keyword relevancy.
Now, Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, etc., deliver answers that are opinionated, not neutral. And while these are sycophantic platforms, they won’t be shy in showcasing your brand’s not-so-favorable aspects when asked. Visibility in AI isn’t always positive.
Try it out for yourself. Type the prompt “What is [your company]’s weakest skill/product/service?” and include your website URL. While painful, this is useful information because now you can start owning the narrative instead of letting one negative Redditor or 10-year-old G2 review tank your reputation.
Double down on publishing positive content on your website. You know the kudos you share internally about positive customer service remarks? Get them up on a page so LLMs crawl the greatness along with the grousing.
AI has an insatiable appetite for content (just like social media), and all the different platforms have their own cadence for crawling, learning, and keeping citations in rotation before they drop out in favor of something new. Presenters at the conference noted that to show up in an AI, you have to constantly refresh pages and publish new content. A few proof points:
Take note that AI is programmed to answer with specificity, so if you’re using marketing terms like ‘enterprise-grade’ or ‘best in class’ on your website, you won't stand out against everyone else using those terms. AI doesn’t know what makes you the best choice until you teach it, so give it specifics in your marketing copy.
As of October 2026, Reddit is a top cited domain in AI search, while Linkedin remains the most cited domain for professional queries. You’re most likely already on LinkedIn, but how do you break into Reddit and should you even?
Do a Google search for your brand and see if the autocomplete bar pops up a "[your brand] reddit" recommendation. If it does, there’s a good chance people are talking about you already on Reddit.
Start by creating a subreddit for your company. That will look like r/yourcompanyname as well as creating “name_company” admin profiles for the individual chatters. Being transparent and putting the company name in the profile is now seen as tolerable, and even welcomed in some subreddits, depending on their mods.
Begin by posting weekly in your own channel to establish yourself as a resource hub on Reddit. From there, start to branch out to other subreddits relevant for your niche. Crossposting and commenting in those threads will drive traffic back to your company.
But beware: read the rules of each subreddit, which is governed by the person who started it, and don’t go around spamming your company’s link. That’s a sure way to get banned and blocked on the platform. Follow the zero click rule here, and focus on adding genuine value, not CTAs.
Everyone’s trying to game the system to get cited in AI, while simultaneously not wanting to sound like AI, but here’s what I’ll leave you with.
I talked to one person who had an insider friend at ChatGPT and even that employee isn’t sure of the playbook yet. That’s how fast the tech is moving, when employees don’t know the exact success formulas.
At least for now, your content should deliver on the actual questions people are asking about your brand, with specific USPs that get to the heart of your strengths (and weaknesses). LLMs ultimately are using their reasoning and logic to give a good answer to any question asked.
Showing up online requires a robust content strategy with quality content you can scale using AI... as long as that AI plays by the ruleset of the person who’s leading the charge. And please — can we bring back the em dash?