I built a framework for publishing AI content that isn’t cringe

I appreciate everyone’s calls, texts, and emails regarding the collapse of my favorite football program this past weekend.

Dabo Swinney was hired my freshman year at Clemson University. His tenure has been the most fun thing to follow as I became a college football fan, and we won two national championships during the Saban era.

I love the guy, and it's kinda like watching your favorite restaurant in your hometown not being able to keep pace with a national chain. Hope we can figure it out.

— Freddy

Gen AI has created one of the biggest writing booms in human history and has also made the internet a way less interesting place to read.

Seriously, there have been at least five articles cross my screen this week that made my eyes involuntarily roll into the back of my skull. And I definitely don’t need more long-winded, meandering posts from executives about the ~earth-shattering~ lessons learned while staring out the window of an Uber Black.

(Yes Greg, we can all tell you used ChatGPT to write your LinkedIn post.)

The em dash isn't what gives it away. Neither is “delve,” the inspirational conclusion, or the suspiciously well-organized lists of three (see what I did there?). It's that the writer suddenly sounds like a stodgy old HR department.

I say this as someone who uses AI for A LOT of stuff. My company, Freddy Media, uses it to research, audit, build software, analyze data, prep interviews, organize ideas, and transcribe meetings.

And clearly we are not alone. A recent Canva/Harris Poll study found that 97% of marketing leaders now use AI in their daily creative work.

But publishing AI-generated content is a bird of a different feather. The second your customer realizes they might be reading something nobody at your business bothered to write, think about, or even make interesting themselves, you've probably lost them. 87% of consumers say the best advertising still needs a human touch, according to the same Canva study.

So after spending an ungodly amount of time producing content with AI (and an even more unhealthy amount of time reading everyone else's), I built a framework for using AI to publish things that don't suck.

Before I open Claudezilla, I usually (sort of) know what I’m trying to say. Maybe not every supporting point, or the structure, and definitely not the headline, but the opinion itself.

If I’m writing about LinkedIn, that might be: LinkedIn is incredibly cringe, but it may also be the most valuable social network for business owners. That gives AI something to research, challenge, and tell me where the argument is weak. What I don’t want is to ask for “10 thought leadership ideas about LinkedIn for entrepreneurs.” Because now I’ve outsourced the one part of thought leadership that theoretically requires a thought.

AI has learned everything it knows from the internet. Feeding it more internet and asking it to turn that internet into slightly different internet is how we ended up here.

Instead, give Claude or ChatGPT or whatever, something it doesn’t have, like a customer conversation, a sales objection, a campaign that bombed, a screenshot from Slack, a mistake you made, or something weird that happened inside your business.

When I wrote about vibe coding, what resonated most with people was admitting I got addicted to it, broke my first project, and got made fun of by a 20-year-old UVA student.

A lot of AI-generated marketing is downright terrified of making the reader feel anything.

It wants to calmly establish context, explain the trend, define the problem, and eventually arrive at something worth caring about. But good marketing usually starts with curiosity, humor, surprise, frustration, recognition, aspiration, or some other reason to keep reading. Create some kind of reaction before the rational case begins. 

This matters more than ever because Gartner found that 59% of U.S. consumers prefer to do multiple media or technology activities at the same time. In other words, the person reading or watching your post is probably also watching TV, texting somebody, and wondering why their DoorDash order is late.

Basically, you do not have the luxury of being boring.

I am not advocating for some archaic return to writing everything by quill and candlelight.

Freddy uses AI constantly. I want it reading research, transcribing interviews, analyzing customer calls, finding patterns, organizing my notes, comparing drafts, pulling quotes, checking an argument, and turning one good idea into five other useful things.

But efficiency and quality are not the same thing. Canva’s study found that 41% of marketing leaders now say “AI slop” is becoming a real challenge.

At the end of the day, AI should dramatically lower the cost and time required to produce great marketing. But (and this is a big but) it should not lower the standard for what your business is willing to publish.

The worst writing workflow I see is basically: Prompt → Draft → “Make this sound human” → LinkedIn

By then, it’s too late. AI already shaped the argument, established the tone, and wrote most of the sentences. Adding a personal anecdote near the top is not going to perform a miracle.

Instead, I interfere constantly. I change angles, reject outlines, rewrite jokes, ask it to find false logic… you get it. Essentially, I show up for quality control, and the more annoying I am about it, the better.

I have two pretty simple tests for finished content.

When it comes to content marketing, there should be some evidence that an actual person made choices. (e.g., a strong opinion, an embarrassing story, a criticism, a joke your legal department does not find funny).

AI is exceptionally good at sanding those edges down, but I would rather read or watch something that has the cojones to take a stance.

That's sort of the point.

It helped me research the topic, find supporting data, poke holes in my argument, and organize an insane number of half-baked thoughts. But I still decided what I wanted to say, which stories belonged here, and what sounded like me.

Here’s a simple chart to help you stay on track. Save it or send it to your team for quick reference.

Our friend and colleague Adam Gaedke was in a cycling accident near his home in Kohler, Wisconsin, and suffered a critical spinal injury. He underwent major surgery and is now at one of the best facilities in the country for intense physical therapy and recovery.

Adam means a lot to me. He came to Freddy Media after a long career as the COO of the Van Horn Automotive Group. Adam built our dealer services team and will continue to lead it for years to come. He has become one of my closest friends.

Here are some products we find useful and would encourage you to implement in your company.