The best social sharing snippet from this interview is by far… “Don’t sound like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus.”
In this episode of the Small Business Sweet Spot, my copywriter, Rose Crompton, shares about the intricacies of creating unique and engaging content for small businesses. Rose shares her journey from journalism to digital marketing and highlights the transition in blogging from SEO-focused content to creating genuinely engaging, original content that resonates with readers.
She emphasizes the importance of original stats, quotes, and avoiding cliches to differentiate content from the AI-generated or content mill churn. Rose also touches on the shift toward quality and accountability in blogging, akin to journalistic standards, spurred by search engine updates like Google’s ‘Helpful Content Update’. The episode concludes with Rose’s perspective on using AI as a tool to enhance writing rather than replace human creativity and insight.
00:00 Welcome to the Small Business Sweet Spot
00:32 Special Guest Introduction: Rose Crompton, The Copywriting Expert
01:03 Rose Crompton’s Journey and Expertise in Copywriting
03:41 The Evolution of Blogging and Content Creation
06:37 Differentiating Content in the Age of AI
18:24 Practical Tips for Elevating Your Content
29:11 Predictions and Final Thoughts on Content Creation
30:46 Closing Remarks and How to Connect
Resources
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Raw Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the small business sweet spot. I’m your host Barb Davids, and this show is dedicated to helping small business owners like you get more organic website traffic and also to help create and distribute content and analyzing the numbers so that we can make better informed marketing decisions. It is action oriented, direct, and conversational. And if you’ve been looking for SEO or content marketing help, please stick around to the very end where I share about the group coaching program, small business sweet spot. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go.
This special episode features my copywriter, Rose Crompton. She is an amazing copywriter and an all around great person. And a recurring theme that we have is how can we make our content different? And she shared what she’s doing specifically. And I thought, what an amazing topic to share with my audience.
And so here we are, and I am going to read off your bio Rose. And then I would love for the listeners to hear from you directly about your sweet spot and who you help and how. So I’ll go right into the bio. Rose Crompton’s niche or niche has earned her the reputation of that sex copywriter. But it’s not just adult industries that come to Rose for feel good website and blog copy.
Fellow freelancers and small businesses use her inquisitive nature and upbeat energy to get copy they’re proud of too. So thanks for joining me, Rose. And now I will stop and let you talk about. Who you, what your sweet spot is and who you help and how you help them.
Sure. So I guess my sweet spot, as you mentioned, is writing blog and website copy for small medium businesses.
Yeah, mostly in the in the adult industry. So that could be everything, anything from, pleasure product companies and e commerce companies through to sexual education and not for profits. And I’ve been basically writing since 2009 when I graduated from university. I did my degree in journalism.
So my first job was actually working for a lifestyle magazine in the UK. And then when that folded, I kind of steadily moved to to writing for digital digital marketing specifically. So, yeah, I’ve, I’ve kind of moved from, from one discipline to another and have taught myself along the way as long as as well as learning from some excellent peers and other people.
And so, yeah, now I write, I write marketing copy for, for websites, sales emails landing pages. It’s anything but social media captions, I would
say. All right. That sounds good. I know you’ve been writing for me for, oh my gosh, how long has it been now? Almost five years, maybe four years? I
think, yeah, I think 2018 you got in touch with me.
So yeah, I think we’ve been working together and writing together since then with me doing the copy and you doing the techie SEO stuff. Yeah. For your business and for the clients that we share, which has been great.
All right. Well, I’m excited to talk about today just because of how we’ve talked individually with us with doing my copy and talking about the clients and trying to figure out how to be different from.
The AI bots or just all of even other competitors. I mean, it’s just a how to differentiate yourself in general with content, but specifically now, because AI is such a big deal and people are spitting out content all over the place. Maybe we can just start if there’s any place that you’d like to start.
I’ll I will hand it over to you first and see if there’s a particular. thing you would like to talk about?
Sure. Well, I think what makes sense to me is to talk about how I’ve seen blogging change. So as I said, I started my career in 2009 and my first experience or encounter with blogging that wasn’t just me being a teenager, pouring my heart out on the internet in a personal blog.
But from a business perspective was writing blogs for the magazine that I wrote for. So doing like an online version of the features we were running or I would do an abridged version. And so we were, we started doing that like a digital magazine. And that really was my first experience of blogging.
It was then that I moved after that magazine closed, I then moved to writing e commerce and I went freelance and I would get owners of businesses contact me or someone within their digital marketing team, which was still maybe new and emerging. And the focus when they wanted blogs then was to rank number one on Google or to rank.
You know, on page one of Google.
So what writing blogs was, was getting keywords in there as many times as possible. It was linking to trusted sites. It was basically, as I put this, it just felt like you were crapping out content for the sake of it to get it ranking rather than really thinking about the person you were writing for. And that was hugely odd from the experience I’d had when we were creating content for the magazine and how we would go about writing those articles.
And I saw exactly the same thing when I moved into doing a digital marketing. Agency work as well, which I either worked in-house for them, or I did some freelance stuff and it just felt like, or I felt like a content monkey, so it just felt like I was there to sit, type out what they wanted, make sure the keywords appeared, where they, where they needed to be, make sure a certain product was mentioned and then it was done and you never really knew how the reader felt about it, how the business felt about it.
Like there was just nothing good and you could just write rubbish. Like it, there was stuff coming through that didn’t even have to make sense. As long as it ticked the SEO boxes. Now I realize how bad this is making your, you know, how SEO sounded back then, but it was a different world and how it was being run was, yeah, was so different than what was expected from content creators.
And, and so then this led to the rise of the content mills because it wasn’t about quality. It wasn’t about creating something that was wildly different or readable or even had to be engaging. It was just about ticking a box and getting a product or a service in front of people in a different manner that wasn’t on a product or service page.
So You know, that’s kind of interesting to think about in relation to AI and how you, you said at the start of the episode of we’ve got this, you know, huge number of blogs and content that is being generated rapidly using AI technology. But this isn’t the first time that the blogging industry. has experienced this because we’ve had content mills for decades, which is people sitting, writing, churning copy.
I’ve heard of bloggers who would have churned out 15 to 20 articles a day,
which
is just insane. And for next to nothing, you know, for a couple of dollars a post, you know, And so it’s not a new idea, but things are having to change. I mean, this never sat right with me. As I mentioned before, coming from a journalism background to me, when I’m writing content, I’m creating an article.
I want people to be engaged with it. I want them to feel something. I want them to learn something. I want a catchy headline. I want a hook. I want. I want them to feel emotion. I want credible sources to know that what I’m reading is legitimate and it’s not people just pulling facts or ideas out of thin air, which is how blogging has felt for a long time, whether it’s created by AI.
Or by people and, and low, unfortunately low quality stuff that is being published. And there are some businesses who are, who are happy to do that because they still just see blogging as a, as a tick boxing exercise.
But then that feels like they’re missing a really good opportunity to do more for their readers and to show that their customers and their readers that they respect them and they value their time and that it’s worthwhile. So yes, you know, blogging is a form of marketing. It is a form of content marketing.
When the time is right, it should promote product. It should promote services. It should promote your business’s values and how you feel and say something about your business, but it should feel natural when you do that. Shouldn’t have to be shoehorned in. So yeah, what I was seeing, as I mentioned, was a lot of businesses, big and small, that were missing out on golden opportunities to have.
Better communication with their customers and to do more for their customers and to build that trust and get to know them. And, you know, it kind of just been me feeling this, the search engines have been feeling this as well. And we can most recently see this through Google’s, you know, Helpful content update an algorithm update.
Now, I think this is where you and I kind of first chatted about what, what changes we could do in relation to, to seeing this update happen and how this whole conversation came up of search engines, just having enough of. Returning blogs that were keyword stuffed, that had crappy backlinks or were just full of backlinks and that was so lazy that they didn’t even make sense.
That says no good for the search engines. And it’s no good for us as people trying to use those and find the information that we want. So yeah, Google’s recent helpful content update, which came around in August, 2022. The whole idea was to put the emphasis back on creating content for people, not for search engines first.
So you put people first and think about the SEO stuff after, which is just music to my ears. And when I heard this happen, I was like, yeah, this is how it should have always been right. And, you know okay. They say that print media is, is dead or dying and everyone’s getting their content online. And so why aren’t we doing more?
To, to up the, the quality of what we’re putting in front of our readers on there. If, if people and customers are spending more time on there. So I’m just going to quote a little bit from Google’s helpful content update that they put together for the, what creators should know. So this is basically what writers should know or anyone who’s creating content that they’re trying to get to rank in Google.
So I’m just going to share a little bit from, from that article. So the helpful content update. Aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience while content that doesn’t meet that visitor’s experiences won’t perform as well. And that’s what I was saying to you a few minutes ago of at the start, or, you know, a decade or so ago, it felt like blogging was there to just churn out content, push product again.
And what’s the reader getting out of that other than maybe just feeling a little bit frustrated or seeing a link that they might click on, but could they really be bothered like there wasn’t that, that effort that energy, there’s no emotion in it, there’s no thought about why do people want to spend their time reading these, these articles. I think it’s a fantastic shift that Google is pushing content creators and writers towards that we need to start thinking people first. And I’ll talk more in a moment about how we’re, specifically how you can differentiate your content so that it is that higher quality and raising the bar a little bit.
But I do just want to flag that already, You know, there are examples of Google penalizing websites. And it says quite clearly in its guidelines that sites and content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations is not going to perform as well. So, you know, they’re not hiding anything from us. And there are already examples of businesses who have you know, gone gung ho with using AI, generated hundreds or thousands of blogs.
They’ve posted them all, not checked them, not proofed them, not done anything to, you know, increase the readability or make it more human friendly. They’ve just taken what the bot has done and published it and their sites are suffering for it. There’s an example we can maybe share in the show notes later of one company who, they posted thousands of, of these.
AI generated blogs. And although their traffic spiked for a short amount of time, it then tanked to zero. So Google is picking up on this. Google doesn’t want this. You know, and, and other search engines won’t want this, but not just that Google doesn’t want this. People won’t want this. It will be low quality.
If your content reads badly and doesn’t look attractive, it’s not going to, to rank so well.
Right. And then real quick too, to say that I think, cause I think some people are thinking it’s just any AI content, but I think to your point, it just has to be helpful. It can’t just be spit out without any thought process or.
regurgitated 20, 000 articles, but as long as it’s helpful, then it’s okay.
Yeah. As long as it’s helpful. I mean, we’ll talk a little bit more about other things that maybe Google is starting and other search engines might be starting to look for to, to see that it’s not just helpful, but that it’s human.
And that it’s relatable, which I guess kind of falls into that, that helpful thing. And that’s the, that’s the problem with AI of, yes, it can be helpful, but it’s not helpful in the sense that it’s teaching anyone anything new, because the way these tools work is by scraping content and information that is already in existence.
So it can be helpful to a point. Like you said, this, this AI generated content, it certainly can be helpful to a point, but it’s not going to help anyone learn or discover anything new. And I think that with the, the number of blogs that are created daily, which is millions, millions of blogs are published daily.
Millions of articles are published daily, all wanting the attention of, of audiences. So if you can offer something different, something new, something original, which is what I’ll, I’ll get onto in a moment, then you are, yeah, you are elevating your copy Instantly, and your content instantly, and you’re going to outperform anything that is just AI generated or, you know, human written, but is just scraping information from other websites and isn’t really adding anything new to the, to the conversation or the topic that, that people are searching for.
So, yeah, I think that that’s that kind of leads us nicely onto differentiating your content. Is there anything else you wanted to say on that from what we’ve chatted about?
Nope. I think it’s great stuff. I think it’s really great going into the background of that too and what you’ve seen progress over the years.
It didn’t occur to me the part about the content mills were here first before the AI generated it. Batching that has been happening. So that was a really nice, like, highlight to see that it’s, it’s, it’s not entirely new. And I think that this goes into the same idea of I forget what the example is, but it’s, oh, it’s kind of like with Canva.
With designers and people that use Photoshop and it, it, it may have affected some, but it’s not like it just took all the jobs away. It actually enhanced it, at least from my perspective, some of the stories that I’ve heard, it’s actually enabled more more opportunities or more time to actually sit and think about the content and be able to work with the people who create the content, but it didn’t really like, for example, like graphic designers, I have a client who’s using Canva, but they still use the graphic designer for it.
They did. It’s not that they wanted to do it like, and, and to the point of the copy with me, I don’t want to write it still. I don’t even want to learn how to do the writing with the tool like that. In that, in the way that it’s typically being used, because that’s not where I want to spend my time, so.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. And, and this is the thing of how, how AI and copy can work together and fit together. So, how I could use it as a professional copywriter versus just, It’s just a business owner who’s just looking to, to churn something out. You know, I would maybe use it as a tool to enhance and help my writing, but understand that what needs changing, what needs doing differently, what might need adding to elevate that piece from being just an AI generated skeleton, if you like, of an article to it being something that better fits this idea of helpful content and.
And it being more, you know, and it giving something new to the readers and something different. So yeah, I think, I think that, yeah, how we use these tools and who can use these tools and not who can use these tools. Anyone can use them. That’s part of the beauty, but just thinking then how would a professional writer use it as opposed to someone who’s not a writer and they just want to get something churned out.
Like there’ll be differences in, in what’s created and what’s published them.
Yeah. Okay. So how can we differentiate our content or how can you differentiate my content since you’re my copywriter?
Yeah. Okay. Well, things that I, I’ve been working on especially and, and trying to do more of since the, since AI has come into play more, but something that I’ve always tried to do to again, differentiate stuff from content mills is the first thing is to get yourself some original stats, facts, or quotes.
So as, as I mentioned already, the way AI works and the way some, some bloggers work in order to generate a large volume of content in a short amount of time is they just use the information that’s already out there which is, which is okay. You know, there is a lot of, Stats research, papers that are published, academic research, you know, I spend a lot of time on Google Scholar, believe it or not, and going through that and trying to find you know, information that I need that fits the topic that I’m writing about.
But. If the opportunity affords itself when you’re writing about something to get an original quote, so you talk to an expert in the field that you’re writing about, or you talk to another voice that isn’t just yours, isn’t just your businesses, but is someone else in your industry that can lend credence to your to your argument and what you’re writing about, then interview them.
Like it doesn’t have to be a long interview, you just do it. Drop them an email, say I’m writing this thing. Would you mind contributing to it? I can plug your latest book, podcast, whatever, website, whatever it might be. And all I’m looking for is 50 to a hundred words and, and you ask them to just contribute that way.
Because. Then you’re instantly adding content. You’re adding material that has never been read before. It might have been said before, the sentiment that someone is sharing might have been said before, but it’s not been said, it comes back to that whole idea of, you know, the way you say it is different to the way anyone else says it.
So it’s going to be original, it’s going to be different, it’s going to make your articles stand above anything that’s just reusing what’s already out there. Similarly, with stats and facts, you don’t have to run a massive survey if you’re just a small company, like you, you can invest money in that and time in creating that depending on what your aims and, and your goals are and the points you’re trying to make.
Or you could just run a really simple survey on On your social media sites, just asking people, Hey, we’ve launched this new thing. What do you think about it? And then when you come to write your blog, Oh, 7 of our Instagram followers think it’s blah. Again, it’s just something new. It’s something that is yours, that you’ve spent time creating this original source and these original, this original information.
So that’s, that’s kind of my first, my first point. And if you can’t do it originally, then dig out little known sources, if you can’t generate your own, and put those in. What do I mean by little known sources? So, yeah, have a dig through some academic papers, or have a look through some, you know, I’ve got books behind me.
How many people still use books in, when they’re researching their articles? See what’s being published. Offline, as well as online, and quote those as well. Just always remember to reference and cite where you’ve got them from, so that you’re not plagiarizing anyone. And, and again, that’s just going to give people something new to read, that isn’t just the same old stats that they’ll see in the first, you know, five or ten blogs that seem to just regurgitate the same information.
Yeah, if you can offer something more, then that’s, that’s gonna make you stand out. So that’s, that’s point number one, is yeah, get yourself some stats, facts, and quotes that are yours, rather than just the ones that have been shared around the houses already. So point number two, make sure you don’t sound like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus.
Or that you’re repeating cliches, which yeah, I like this one a
lot.
It’s an easy trap to fall into because you start looking at everything that your competitors are saying and what they’re saying and you think, Oh, their website looks better. They’re doing better than us. So the way they’ve said it and the words they’ve used must be the ones that we should use.
Not true. Break that break that cycle. Do something different from what they are doing. Don’t use the words that they are using because you want to be memorable. You want to stick in the minds of your readers for being, you know, the bubbly, upbeat copywriter rather than the the, the professional.
Jargon free copywriter, which is not, not a bad thing to say, just think about how you say it so that you’re not just repeating similar words and cliches. So, I, I kind of like to think that if you’ve read it on at least three other sites, phrased a particular way, a particular message, do something different.
Whether that’s, using different words or taking a different angle or presenting the information in a different way, then just try to be different. Yeah. And don’t be, another thing you could do to help with that is don’t be afraid to share your opinion. That is, that is a great way to, to make your language and your tone of voice Stand out and I’ll talk more about that in a minute.
And then the last point I want to make on how to make sure you’ve not swallowed a thesaurus or just repeating cliches is if you check out Amy Williamson, so she’s another copywriter she’s on Instagram as damn right copy. And she has done a lot of a lot of content about how. Writers can work with AI generated content, and she’s done a short series called Pulse Check on there, which are, I think she’s got maybe five or six posts of things you can do to make sure that your copy doesn’t sound like AI generated copy.
So there’s things. Such as avoiding jargon. So ditch the professional, the, you know, the 10 X or the level up your blah or whatever it is and, and use alternative words as well. She’s got a post on there about how you might use linking words and transitions between paragraphs. There are some, which apparently the AI bots.
tend to favor. So don’t use any of those. And she’s got a list of those on, on one of her posts. Yeah, so it’s just to make sure you don’t sound AI ed or your AI copy doesn’t sound AI are little things you can change to, to bring it back to sounding more personable, I guess. And then the third point is to build trust by letting people see and hear you.
So, You know, a robot is a robot. It’s going to generate content. It might have like a little silhouetted face or something. They might stick on the end of it in terms of a bio, but you don’t really know who’s written it. Whereas it’s going to be a lot more meaningful for a reader if they can see your byline.
If they get to know, well, hang on, there’s all these thoughts, these ideas, these opinions, but who are they coming from? What if I want to dig more into that person and find out more about Yeah, what are their motivations? What are they aligned with? What’s their business? Where are they coming from? Show that human side of you, that person side of you, by adding your author bios, putting in your own tone of voice.
A, I can do tone of voice, you can put in prompts to get it to write a particular way, but it’s, it’s still not clever enough to look at all of the different styles and tones of voices and emulate them. So it might not be good enough for your business and how you want your business to sound. So yeah, that would be my recommendation would be to make sure you are writing in your own voice, read your copy back.
Are you writing things the way that you would say them? And that’s, that’s going to make a big difference and that’s going to sound different and that’s going to read different to, to stuff that’s just being crapped out, whether it’s by a person or by a robot.
And then you can also do that by adding your personal experiences. This is something that AI can’t have. It, it won’t have touched or felt or use the products that you’re writing about or the service that you want to review or whatever. So add your personal experience about how you felt, what you thought when you use these things, because.
That can’t be copied right now. Yeah. There we go. So they are, yeah, they’re my, they’re my three points for how to differentiate yourself from AI. So original stats, facts and sources make sure you don’t sound like you’ve just regurgitating a, a thesaurus or using cliches through and through and build trust by letting people see and hear you.
That is some amazing, amazing stuff. If I’m going to ask you something, maybe on the spot a little bit, out of all of that, what would you say is the one takeaway that you would like somebody to walk away with from this episode?
The one takeaway that I would want someone to walk away with from this episode is to know that differentiating yourself and your copy doesn’t have to be as sad, as hard as it is.
As it might first appear. It honestly doesn’t take much to do something new because we’ve had so long of people just regurgitating and using the same information that even if you can get a line or a sentence from a different expert or find a different book that your competitors aren’t writing about in their blogs or on their website Bye.
And use that, that’s going to be different and that’s going to stand out because the reader’s going to think, oh, I’ve not seen that piece of information before. So it doesn’t have to take a lot to be better and to be different.
Ah, I didn’t do my prediction bits at the end. Oh, do you want to add it? Do you think that’s enough though? I think so. I think, well, have a read. They’re a bit one of them is quite cynical because, yeah, I’ve kind of wondered if this helpful content update is, you know, if we’re scraping everything from AI, and that’s getting boring or it’s going to get penalized.
Google needs a whole heap of other information and Google are making their own, you know AI mind or they have it already, don’t they? Like one of the most powerful ones.
Yeah.
So is this just like the, the conspiracy theorist in me is wondering, is this just another way of them to get even more information, new information, different information?
It’s a bit of a big idea.
It’s a very interesting thought.
And my other prediction is that blogging is moving the way of quality journalism, as I mentioned about using original sources and how they have to cite references and how they have to check that what they’re putting out there is, is true, you know, and, and are held accountable for that. It feels like business blogging.
Because of what the search engines are requiring is moving that way too. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think that being pushed to having a more journalistic based set up will, will benefit users and customers. But of course then how that’s managed and regulated would also need to be, be looked at.
But yeah, I think, I think that’s a step towards blogging.
Okay. Good predictions. Thanks.
Good stuff. Good stuff. This was super meaty information. I love it. And if somebody wanted to reach out to you, Rose, about your services, where’s the best place that they can find you?
Yeah. So my website is rosemcrompton. com or you can just search me. Search, Google search Rose Crompton copywriter and I’ll, I’ll come up. Yeah, so I’m taking a bit of a break from social media. I am on Instagram again as Rose M. Crompton, but yeah, you’ll find me just more active on my website or on my email list right now.
All right. Well, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. So thank you for that. And that wraps up today’s episode on how to differentiate your content from AI for your small business. Stay tuned for more episodes on making your business thrive online. See you in the next sweet spot.
Cheers.
Thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’re looking for SEO and content marketing help, consider joining the small business sweet spot. It’s a group coaching program where you can get answers to your questions about your business directly and clarity around the marketing strategies that you would like to implement in your business.
You can find all kinds of information at compassdigitalstrategies. com. And if you liked the episode, please tell a friend. Cheers.
