How a Copy Coach Can Help You Train AI

Your AI keeps giving you generic copy because it doesn't know your business the way a human copywriter would. Most people think the solution is better prompts, but that's like thinking good copy just means better grammar.

You're missing the entire strategy layer underneath.

In this episode, I explore why AI training fails for most business owners and how working with a copy coach can solve the real problem. We'll talk about developing the strategic foundation your AI actually needs, from specific brand voice definitions to clear audience insights, and why this approach improves all your marketing, not just AI-generated content.

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EPISODE 160.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: Coming Soon

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Here's info on your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about my VIP intensive options or just book a strategy session to get started right away
• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and products

Transcript

0:01

Your AI keeps giving you generic copy because it doesn't know your business the way that a human copywriter would. But what if you could work with a copy coach to develop the brand foundation your AI needs, and at the same time, learn how to train it properly? Today on Talk Copy to me, we're discussing why your AI sounds like every other businesses content and how working with a copy coach can fix that for you. Because here's the thing, your AI is only as good as the information that you give it. And if you've never clearly defined your brand voice, your audience, messaging, strategy, marketing efforts, you're basically asking AI to guess and do its best, and that is where the trouble starts. That's also where a copy coach comes in. I help business owners develop strategic foundation that makes all of their marketing more effective. And yes, I usually do this from a service provider perspective of doing the work for my clients, but that does not mean that I don't work with other copywriters. Yes, other copywriters and other small businesses who. Either because they can't afford, to hand off all of their work to a service provider or because they want to be part of the efforts and they want to really double down on their AI usage, , they need to bring someone like me in to help them do this. So. We are here to talk about why most AI training fails, what you actually need to train AI properly, and how a copy coach can help you get there. Because if you're going to use AI for your marketing and your messaging, I want it to at least be pretty good. So you don't just keep putting regurgitated content out on the internet and you're actually putting effort into. Brainstorming properly and having copy that sounds like you, and having copy that actually talks to your client's needs and addresses what they're looking for. Because if not, why else are we using AI for this? So let's first start by talking about what's not working. So let me just guess what's happening. You write prompts to the AI tools that you're using. You're getting back actual content from them, and quite often that content sounds fine, but it is mostly generic, so you try for more specific prompts and you keep editing and editing and editing, but yet everything still feels like it could be from almost any business. See what happens is you're spending way too much time, tweaking prompts and not getting results that sound like you. The problem here is not your AI prompts, it's that you're asking AI to create copy and to create content without giving it the strategic foundation it needs. Think about it for a second. If you hired a human copywriter, you wouldn't just say to them, write me some social media post, or, I need all new website copy. You'd brief them on your brand, your audience, your goals for those posts, and that copy for your website. You would talk about your voice and what your business's voice sounds like. And quite honestly, your AI needs that same information, but most business owners have never actually defined those things clearly. And I know I'm calling you guys out. What are we, just a few minutes into the episode and I'm just calling you out left and right. The truth is. Nobody really wants to do the more difficult marketing work. They want to jump into the fun things like throwing a reel up on Instagram or sharing their thoughts on threads. Because what they need to do is to do some, oh God, this is sounds so corny. It's not really what I wanna say, but do some soul searching to find out what their business stands for, what their values are, how they want to be perceived in the market., The types of clients that are actually right fit for them. And a lot of the times, none of that gets articulated. Maybe they have had brand voice work done in the past. If they've hired someone for sales pages or websites, and so I'm not calling you all out. I know that you know your business, but when you haven't articulated your brand voice in a way that someone else, like a copywriter or AI could replicate, it's kind of impossible to get a really high quality end result if you're just working from orders, let's say. So that's what I help clients figure out when we work together from a copy coaching perspective and we bring AI into the conversation. We don't start with AI training, we start with brand strategy, and that's getting crystal clear on voice audience messaging. And once we have that foundation training, AI kind of becomes straightforward. Yes, there is prompt engineering and, discussions that we can have about how you talk to an AI to get the best results a hundred percent. But when you're able to clearly represent your business in these conversations, that conversation overall is so much easier. So let's talk about what your AI actually needs. When I work with my clients on things like AI training, we start with a Brown brand foundation, as I just mentioned, and this is not fluffy brand strategy. It is practical, actionable guidelines that both humans and AI can use to create consistent copy. Okay, first we're defining brand voice with specific examples, not something like, oh, what do I see all the time? A professional, but approachable. That tells AI nothing. You know, someone could be approachable because they are loud and obnoxious and they're holding a sign that says like, you know, free hugs, come get one. Or someone can be approachable because they're smiling and they seem calm. Two different types of people. Still approachable and professional. Same thing. Professional could be buttoned up in a suit for one person or professional. Could be like a service provider in the midst of their craft. Like a, someone who is in pottery with their dirty hands sitting in front of a kiln. I don't even know if that's how you say that word. KILN., Making actual pottery with their hands. Both are professional, so we need to think about how we speak about these words. Let's think of a a, an example to make this easier. So you could say something like, we explain complex concepts simply without being condescending in any way. We use. Everyday language as if we were having a conversation. We do not use industry jargon. We acknowledge when things are difficult or challenging instead of pretending everything could work. You know that's not. The best AI brand guidelines. I'm really going off the cuff here, but it's a better starting place than most people have. If you have any additional info here, use it. You know, for me, I could add something like that. I use, um, Hamilton, Schitt's Creek, Ted Lasso, or Elf Gif in my emails or on social media that I like. Punny names and titles, just like Talk Copy to Me, the title of this podcast. Again, quick examples on brand voice. It's not something that I can explain just one podcast episode, which is why we already have multiple brand messaging episodes on this podcast, and I will try to remember to link to them in the show notes. But I hope that by sharing those things, you can see how. Specificity is helpful here. And specificity brings me right to my next point 'cause I want to talk about audience. This is not just demographics, but they're actual challenges. The language your audience uses, any hesitations that they have about solutions like yours, or maybe the opposite, what could be motivating them to buy? So, for example, if you're an A-D-A-D-H-D coach, maybe you would want to drill down on the fact that your audience are perimenopausal or menopausal women, and you can discuss how one of their fears is that their hormones are playing such a large role in how their, , A DHD is behaving, that they're finding it really hard to get control, , or at least. A baseline of quote unquote normaly. That's a real struggle that women have as they age with a DHD, whether they take meds or they don't. So an A DHD coach can be very specific on these things that their audience needs because the AI also needs to understand who it's writing for and not just what it's writing about. I'm sure that you've heard stories in your life where. Maybe you could just change the character and it really made no difference to the story, like what the character was about. But think of all of the stories that we hear, that the details are integral to the actual story, you know?. Little Red Riding Hood. If the main character was not a young child going to see a grandmother, but the main character was actually a serial killer themself that would change the entire story, like that serial killer would not be worried about the wolf, right? So having details explaining like your audience, your brand story, your foundations, your values, all of these things. And it's bringing me to the next point. I'm seeing my little outline on the side of me over here. Your core messages, they're all so important for your AI to be able to understand what you're looking for before it can give you any quality output. So I mentioned core messaging and positioning. What makes you different from all of the rest of the people in your field, your niche, your industry or businesses? If you're not a solo provider,, what do you wanna be known for? How do you want people to feel after reading your content? You know, maybe if you're a wedding photographer that you're already really booked out and you're really trying to hone down on that perfect fit client, and you want people to feel like you truly understand their lifestyle and not just the images that they're looking for in these pictures. You could use your website copy or your content to explain that. People who, love spending time in lush gardens or, find themselves camping frequently and hiking through forest. Are you. Favorite type of clients because nature is the core of your business. It is the core of what the end result photos are. It is who you are as a human, and you want to work with individuals that also have that passion and that, just earthy element. So you do that through copy and content, you're gonna start attracting those people who might wanna have a fun engagement shoe at a campground, or might want to get married at that campground, right? Whereas anyone else who would be turned off by those, that language, let's say a very modern couple who loved cityscapes and things like that, they can go find another photographer who's a better fit for them. And you're both doing each other a favor by being clear on who it is that you want to serve. Again, not the best example here 'cause I'm, I went from talking about audience to now talking about messaging, but if. That's kind of combining the two, right? If you are that camper at heart, if you, if you live outdoors and you're hiking boots cost almost the same as your camera equipment, maybe that is part of your message, that's your USP that sets you apart. So knowing all of this, regardless of whoever you are and whatever makes your business special. You need to take that information, all of it, and it becomes the strategic framework that's guiding your copy, whether you are writing it, whether a copywriter is writing it, or whether AI is, oh, there's one more thing I wanna say before I move on here. And that's the last thing you really need to have. Complete and ready to go is examples. So again, you can, you know, talk to your AI tools all day and give it these very clear concrete descriptions. But one way that your AI will be able to give you quality output is by comparing your descriptions to content that you have already written. So if you can document what good actually looks like, you can use that to, to, to set a baseline of what you expect their output to be. You can also use it as editing tools. Same thing for really bad content. If you have written something that flops. You could, you know, especially if your AI had all of this input about you as a business, your brand messaging, you could say, you know, why did this flop? You know, what, what is different about this piece that I have written? And, how can I improve on it later? Or like, what should I not do? Instead of things that flop, I would also suggest having words that are not allowed or phrases that are not allowed. A super easy example here would be how AI loves to say something like, skyrocket your business or. Let's delve into, those are phrases you're not cool with, throw them in your brand messaging. These need to be documented so that way the output is good. I, I'm just, I feel like all I'm doing is repeating myself over and over again here.. Let's talk more again about how I help my clients and what copy coaching really can do within this world of AI training. I guess it all starts really after that brand foundation is documented, because then what we're doing is we're taking that and now we're translating it into. An AI training or AI speak, and this isn't just about writing better prompts, though, that's helpful. It's also about creating systems and processes that give you consistent results. We are developing prompt templates that include your brand context, voice guidelines, and specific instructions. And more importantly, I'm actually teaching my clients how to evaluate AI output, which is why working with a copywriter on,, AI training. Should not be a one-off thing. I do a lot of work with clients and strategy sessions for very different goals. You know, I just worked with someone recently where we redefined actually what her packages and services looked like, which seems like you've worked with a business coach for. But it really is relating to marketing specifically for her business, , because it's how is she positioning her business to clients and what clients are better fits or what packages is a better fit for the clients and so that she can serve them better. Before that, I worked with someone who had. Already written her entire website. So there was no need for strategy. She just wanted help making sure that everything made sense. We did a lot of work during that time together to move things up and down throughout the page because all of the content was there. It just truly, it wasn't organized in the way that, and the way sales, psychology, and marketing really play together. But again, off of what I've done with, with various clients for a strategy. One-off strategy cannot be AI training. I absolutely would suggest working with a copy coach, for multiple, sessions, if you can. The way that I've done it previously with clients is that marketing month. So we're generally meeting once a week for four weeks and we're. Doing the work together on the call. My clients are kind of taking home activities and doing some work on their own, and then we're reevaluating it on the next call. That whole time does not always have to be brand messaging and training, depending on how well the client knows their business and whether they've done anything like this in the past. We can very often do content creation or content editing. But again, it really. Really needs a copywriter or a content coach to understand your business so that they can help you make AI understand your business as well. So back to the point. My role during this time together is teaching you how to evaluate the AI output, because I keep saying like, if you do this, if you're not gonna get good output, or you need this in order to get good output, but what is good output? How do you know if the copy or the content that AI giving you is giving you is actually on brand? What are the red flags that mean that you definitely need to revise? How do you know it is not plagiarized? How do you maintain your voice, especially if it's across different types of content? Or if you're using tools like Claude, maybe with content that's happening in different, what are they called? Projects, right? Like, so if you have a. Marketing project, but you also have, um, using Talk Copy to Me as an example, like a, a podcast. Project. How do we know both of those projects are speaking in the same way? Chat GPT is the same thing. If you're using assistance, how do we know those assistance are actually giving you the same type of output? In addition to understanding the AI output and evaluating it, I can also help my clients create feedback loops. So when AI gives you something that just doesn't feel right. How do you go about adjusting the prompts to get better results? I have worked with hundreds of clients in this past 10 ish years that I've ran my business, and the one tricky thing I see from all clients is very often they don't know how to give feedback on copy or content that's been written for them. So a lot of the times I'll get clients who say. I loved this whole page, but this paragraph just doesn't feel right. I don't know why it doesn't feel right, but something is standing out here or. I don't love this word. I would never say this word, but I don't know how to replace it with another word. So it feels harder to give feedback than it does to like brain dump what their business is about or what their brand stands for. But it is vital when you use AI tools to have good feedback prompts so you can get better results. Because if you don't know how to explain how to improve on the output. Your, your output's just not gonna get better. So we're looking at things like, how do you refine brand guidelines based on what you've learned? Working with a copy coach means you're not figuring this out through trial and error. You've already built a proven framework or a proven, you know, set of guidelines for what you want to stand for, and you're getting guidance from someone who understands. AI capabilities and brand strategy. So you're not starting from scratch trying to get AI to listen to you and serve you well. It's kind of like you have someone to hold your hand through this until you feel so much more comfortable stepping into the role of editorial manager stepping into the role of, um. Content strategist stepping into the role of SEO strategist, stepping into the role of copy editor, stepping into the role of, , content editor, you get what I'm saying? You get a lot of roles. Even if AI is doing this for you, you have a lot of responsibility. Having someone's hand to hold as you figure those responsibilities out, I think is very important. Okay, so once all this is done. What do you have to look forward to? Well, it's basically that your AI will actually start producing copy. That sounds like your business, your prompts will be more effective, which means you are getting better results quicker because they're including real strategic directions. You'll spend less time revising the output because it is closer to what you actually wanted from the start, because now you've gotten better at giving directions. But it's not just about ai. I feel like I'm coming full circle here. Having a brand foundation improves. All of your marketing, when you know exactly who you're talking to and how you want to sound, every piece of content you create becomes more intentional and more effective. And dare I say that this is not just about copy content or other marketing campaigns, but. Talk about the confidence that you have when you're out networking and how you speak about your business or how you explain it so that your referral relationships can have, a better understanding of who you serve and why you serve that type of person or, or customer. And who wouldn't want that, right? The goal here is to set you up for a long-term success because once you understand how to give AI the strategic context that it needs, you can just apply that to any new platform or content type. You are not dependent on finding a perfect prompt. There is no such thing. No matter what anyone tells you, there's no like, oh, this one prompt solves all your problems, and here's the only prompt I use in order to get quality blog post. Now, that's not how it works at all, because the blog post depends on the content that you're writing, on the topic that you're sharing on the audience. Can I just keep this like on and on and on? It all depends on so many things, but once you get really good on prompting, you won't rely on a perfect prompt because you understand the principles behind effective AI training. And you'll also understand things like quality control and editing. You know, because while you're doing the editing, you are reviewing things like, does this serve my business goals? Like, is this consistent across different types of, of content that I have? And it's easy to answer those questions once you know what that brand messaging, those foundations. And once you've played the role of an editor for a little while. So I think to kind of sum up here, most people are training their AI tools by tweaking prompts until something works for that individual end result. But that's, that's the backward way of approaching it. What you need is strategy first and then tactics. You know, I keep talking about brand foundations here and brand guidelines, but I would even go back, besides the brand messaging episodes we have, I'll see if I can link some of the strategy episodes that we just did earlier in the year, because I think it really sets that foundation for why strategy is so vital in all marketing approaches. Because when you have these things figured out that AI training you're doing is gonna be more straightforward, it's, it's really the same principle that's making copy coaching effective for human written content you know, the more clarity that you have, you know, the better brand clarity, the more effective the messaging is that you have, the better systems you have, the more time you have to improve the results of AI tools. Because again, brand foundation on that AI training, it's all more straightforward when you know. What your business? No bananas for that. All of this work that you are doing, really, it serves your business for a while to come because it doesn't matter if you're just working with ai, you know, you could grow to a place that you've decided to hire freelancers. I know many businesses I've worked with in the past who really went heavy into AI once it first hit the scene a few years ago, are coming back and hiring freelance writers to step in and fill that role for them. Or if you create content yourself, right? Again, any of those three ways you choose to create content, having that strategic foundation set for you makes it all so much easier. So if this approach to everything sounds really helpful. Like I mentioned before, I work with business owners exactly through this process, developing foundations and translating it into AI training systems that get you better results with less effort. Next week we're gonna talk about using AI for brainstorming once it actually understands your business. Because when it understands your voice, your audience, and your goals, it, it can. I hate to say this, but it can act like a strategic thinking part partner instead of just a content generator. Does that mean I'm giving you full permission to think of it as your one and only strategic partner? Absolutely not. But it can act like a partner, to really get your own creative juices flowing. So thanks for listening to this episode of Talk Copy to Me. I'll see you next week where we'll keep talking. Copy. Okay.