Every industrial marketer has heard horror stories: AI writing cringe-worthy copy, auto-posting off-brand tweets, or hallucinating facts. So how do you tap AI’s power without embarrassing your industrial brand?
The Answer: Human-Guided Automation
AI is your assistant, not your brand manager. Set guardrails:
- Upload brand voice guidelines into your AI tools
- Use structured prompts that include tone and persona details
- Always edit before publishing ... AI gets you to 80%, fast
AI for Structure. Humans for Soul.
Let AI do the heavy lifting … outlines, first drafts, bullet points … but always keep final brand voice and positioning in human hands. For example, AI can generate 10 social post variations. Your savvy marketer picks the one that’s on-brand and polishes it.
Avoiding the Robo-Tone
To keep it human:
- Use industry-specific examples (AI won’t know your shop floor unless you tell it)
- Inject real customer stories or use cases
- Avoid jargon soup … keep it tight and relevant
Bottom Line: AI speeds you up. Your brand guidelines keep you grounded.
Action Step: Build a 1-Page Brand Voice Brief for AI Use
Create a simple 1-pager that outlines your brand’s tone, vocabulary, do’s and don’ts, and key differentiators. Then upload it or reference it in every AI tool you use …from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc. This helps align every blog, post, or email draft with your brand’s identity and avoids robotic, generic output.
If you have multiple engineers or technical folks writing blog posts, make sure each one creates their own persona, tone, style … as well brand voice guidelines for your company.
(You can learn how to do this quickly by using Jonathan Mast's brilliant webinar replay titled, SELFscribe Challenge at https://go.whitebeardstrategies.com/selfscribe-join-the-challenge You will not be dissapointed.)
Keep it personal, human and on brand.
AI without context is a risk. AI with guidelines is a rocket.
Want to know more, go to What We Do or Contact Me in the menu above. Or give me a call at 269-375-0349.
