Oh hey - look who made it to day 5 of my Beyond the Em Dash: The AI Tells Sabotaging Your Copy series. Three cheers for you, Reader! 🎉

Let’s close this one out with the sneakiest of the bunch, because this one can be wayyyy hard to catch in your own copy. (No matter how many times you reread it.)

Tell #5: an overreliance on outdated + overused copy clichés and patterns.

Not to get on my copy high horse (though let’s be fr, that’s literally what I’ve been doing all week), but AI doesn’t know what’s actively converting right now for your industry, for your specific audience, for your specific category of offer.

After all, that stuff changes so fast that, despite what all the internet gurus will tell you about this new-fangled MUST TRY NOW OR ELSE PERISH copy technique/tip/whatever…

This just isn’t something that’s neatly documented online for an AI model to pick up on.

So instead, AI defaults to the same stale, overused clichés & patterns it’s seen most often, regardless of whether they’re still “working” or whether they actually sell.

(Which just means more people leaning on the same handful of copy moves, which makes it even harder to stand out, which pushes even more people toward AI to try to “fix” it. ‘Tis a vicious circle)

Now, what’s tricky about this is that it isn’t just an AI problem.

It’s a non-specialist problem.

Because most likely, you’re not spending your days steeped in copy.

Constantly reading it, reviewing it, watching what converts or what flops...

Seeing what’s changed, what buyers are sick of seeing, what makes them scroll right past without a second thought – even when the copy itself sounds fine...

Instead, you’re spending your time doing whatever it is Reader does best. (Hit reply and tell me what that is, if you feel so inclined!)

So here’s the honest, slightly uncomfortable truth behind this whole series: you can read all five of these AI copy tells, nod along at every single one, and still not be able to catch them in your own copy.

For one simple reason: you’re a liiiiittle too close to your own copy, and what you want it to say.

And yeah, you also haven’t spent the last decade studying and actively testing what makes copy sell. Nor reviewed hundreds of pages across dozens of industries, watching in real time what’s currently converting VS what’s merely popular.

But hey, nobody expects you to!

That’s not your job. Though it is – oh so conveniently – very much mine. (I was not-so-subtly hinting at myself above with that “haven’t spent the last decade” bit, just in case that wasn’t obvious 😝)

To be clear: this isn’t a knock on you. It’s just the nature of being inside your own business.

Which is exactly why a second, outside set of eyes catches things you never could on your own.

More on that very soon.

But for now… enjoy the weekend, folks!

~Nicole

P.S. Missed the others in this week's 5-day Beyond the Em Dash series? Give ‘em a read (each one is short!) below:

​[Day 1 of 5] Everyone sounds the same 💔 (and we hate that for us)

​[Day 2 of 5] “Oooo that’s a sexy sentence!”

​[Day 3 of 5] Everything but the kitchen sink

​[Day 4 of 5] Some assembly required 🛠️

Nicole Elliott Human-First Conversion Copy & Messaging Strategy Non-salesy sales copy that sells w/out the sleaze   hello@nicoleelliott.co www.nicoleelliott.co

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