I can’t help but notice a growing sense of sameness online.
Whether I’m reading Substack essays, watching YouTube videos or scrolling through social media, I come across familiar hooks, frameworks and sentence patterns.
“It’s not about x, it’s about y…”
“The art of…”
“How to be distingustingly…”
It’s understandable why this happens. Many of these approaches work well at capturing attention, but as more people adopt the same techniques, individual perspectives can become harder to recognize.
I’m not here to criticize, but I want to offer some suggestions.
I get it, attention is important.
Whether your content has an immediate hook, introduces a psychological open loop or whatever tactic you might be using, many creators are beginning to sound increasingly alike. And that’s what prompted me to think more about brand voice. I suspect some people may be trying to express themselves online while still figuring out what they genuinely want to say.
It’s OK to use AI or use hooks, but let’s make it more you.
Right now, I feel like people sound the same online because they’re all using formulaic sentence structures, witty hooks and even similar stylistic choices, like all-lowercase typography.
In an era where everyone has access to the same tools, I believe that your unique story and perspective may be one of the few remaining differentiators.
Why content feels increasingly similar
Using hooks or trends that have been validated through virality
Sometimes it’s easier to adopt what already appears to be working than to spend time experimenting and discovering what feels natural to you. In the process, they aren’t incorporating their personality or unique perspective. These catchy hooks or edits are all intended to capture your attention, but rarely deliver something with substance. If they capture your attention, the attention is short-lived.
I’ve talked about this before, some people chase trends and seek virality, but once a single piece of their content goes viral, there’s usually no strategy, system or offer to hold that attention.
Skipping the reflective process
In some cases, AI may be replacing parts of the reflective or creative process in which people develop their own opinions and perspectives.
It can also be tempting to rely on AI-generated ideas when we’re feeling uncertain about what we have to say.
This is an important reminder that doing your own research, reading or watching for depth and context will help you formulate your own opinions and perspective and will help you in the long run.
Beginners may imitate at first before iterating
I get it, when you’re just getting started and don’t know how to begin, you may resort to looking to others for inspiration or imitate what your favorite creator is doing online.
I’ve talked about this before, and I advise against copying or trying to replicate someone else’s strategy, as it can keep you from mastering your unique strengths.
It’s important for you to remember that what you see on the surface of someone’s social media caption may not allow you to see the full scope of their marketing efforts and unique goals.
You’re unaware of someone’s audience engagement strategy, ad spend, brand voice, customer funnels, audience pain points or automations that they may have in place.
What is a brand voice?
Your brand voice is essentially how you see and process the world.
Your voice encapsulates your perspective and worldview, both of which are shaped by your lived experiences.
AI can imitate tone and structure remarkably well, but it cannot accumulate your lived experiences, values or memories.
The human experience is profound and is multi-layered. It’s something that other people will find relatable, inspiring, or perhaps contradictory to their own perspective. And that’s the point.
Developing a Brand Voice in the Age of AI Share on XYour voice is shaped by what you’ve lived through, what you pay attention to and the meaning you assign to those experiences. It’s the decisions, responses to life events and everything you have created so far for yourself in your own world.
There may also be patterns, themes or ideas you keep coming back to from time to time that have shaped your perspective.
All of these details become a common thread in your brand voice. They shape the words you use to describe your perspective and to tell your personal story. Your brand voice isn’t just encapsulated in how you write. It comes down to how you interpret the world.
It’s really easy to replicate formatting, a template or psychological hooks in seconds, but you cannot replicate lived experience. Your brand voice is an extension of your life, what you’ve paid attention to, how you have processed and navigated life’s events and emotions.
Why do people struggle to develop a brand voice?
I think some people lean into prompts, templates or AI because it might feel easier to replicate something that has been validated as performing well online than to create something unique, adapt it to their own style, or develop a perspective of their own.
On the one hand, these tactics lower the barrier to entry and make creating and producing something online very low-friction, but the unintended consequence is that we end up with a lot of content that becomes difficult to distinguish from everything else competing for attention.
On a deeper level, I wonder if part of this stems from a desire to belong, to be seen or to avoid creating something that goes unnoticed and falls flat. So people might adopt what appears to be working for everyone else.
This approach only works so well because these trends tend to live and die pretty quickly, so you’re back to constantly chasing a trend and not really making something your own.
I believe more people are developing their content skills faster than developing their own perspective.
I want you to take a moment to pause, contemplate, research, read, analyze, theorize, wonder about and articulate your perspective. While doing so, your unique voice will surface.
Perhaps the tradeoff of living in an age where information moves quickly and production tools keep improving. We are becoming more efficient at publishing our ideas than sitting with them long enough to understand what we actually think.
I’m here to say you should consider honing your brand voice. Why? This is so that you can actually stand out in an endless stream of noise.
Related: How to Define and Refine Your Brand Identity
More people are developing their content skills faster than developing their own perspective, says @nancycasanova Share on XWhy voice matters more than ever
The pace at which we consume media today is faster than ever before. Every week there’s a new trend, a new “it” item or person to follow, new hobbies and other shiny objects vying for our attention.
If you don’t have a strong sense of identity and haven’t taken the time to define or decide who you are, it may feel easy to adopt these aesthetics, trends and communication styles that don’t fully reflect who you are.
You don’t need to have every part of your identity figure out before developing a voice. Sometimes writing, reflecting and paying attention to your own reactions is how you discover your identity.
Lately, the pervasiveness of recycling content for the sake of posting or virality has made content creation a louder, more noticeable echo.
A trend catches on, people adapt it and before long the original message becomes difficult to distinguish from everything else competing for attention.
Using a catchy hook might earn someone’s attention once. It’s your distinctive perspective that will give people a reason to come back. People follow creators because they enjoy the way they think.
Your unique voice can create familiarity with your audience and familiarity builds trust.
Trust is what eventually supports communities, products, services and long-term creative work.
Related: 7 Key Habits of Great Content Creators
Five ways to cultivate your voice
You can make a message or idea unique with your voice, personal experiences and stories.
This is how you make it new and exciting for your audience. More importantly, it shows that there’s a real person behind the words. This is what makes people remember you.
I’m asking you to pause before prompting your AI and copying and pasting the response without adding your own flair and take. Sure, AI can help you organize your thoughts, brainstorm and refine ideas, but it shouldn’t replace your perspective.
Your own POV is critical. Perspective is everything. And this is something that not everyone can easily replicate.
Developing your own voice may seem daunting or confusing, but I’m here to help guide you.
Remember that your voice is something that you cultivate.
It’s a collection of living your life, reading, writing consistently, spending time reflecting, experiencing failures (and hopefully learning or growing from them), having moments of honesty about your patterns or emotions, being curious and experimenting. It also takes time to develop your taste and preferences.
So how exactly should you begin to develop your own voice?
- Note-taking system: Start by creating a place to store your notes and observations. This could be to capture things you tend to repeat, in terms of habits, behaviors, responses and even words you tend to reuse.
- Research and learn new things: Make learning a consistent part of your daily life. What new skills, concepts and ideas are you learning about? How are you researching these topics further and what are you learning from them? How are you developing your own perspective on the topic?
- Establish your values: Sometimes just knowing yourself is a helpful step toward finding your voice. What do you value? How do those values influence your perspective, your decisions and the goals you pursue?
- Observing your pace, tone and inflection: When you speak, what’s the pace of your delivery, and how is your message delivered? What’s your tone? Is it calm? Is your approach aggressive? Do you notice if you have an inflection in how you deliver your message?
- Create a library of words or phrases: Are there words, phrases or a collection of words that are in your vocabulary? Think about the words a life coach might reuse or the words a relationship therapist might regularly use to express their message. Create a word bank that you can always come back to that reflects your brand voice. Your words shape your worldview and also help people connect with you. Remember that words have the power to heal and harm, so choose wisely and with the best of intentions.
There are more ways you can hone your brand voice, but these are few places to begin. I want to invite you to become more observant, reflective and self-aware. Take notes and practice developing your perspective.
Developing your voice isn’t something about becoming someone entirely new. Remember that this person and this voice are already within you—you just have to be more attentive.
Remember that your perspective is shaped by the books you’ve read, the things you’ve watched, the ideas you’ve studied and the people and conversations you’ve learned from.
Next time you see something online or sit down to create, observe the thoughts that come to mind. Is it, “What should I create today?” or is it “What do I think about this?”
As you begin to find and develop your voice, you may also find that you stop worrying about whether every post follows a proven formula. Or people may begin telling you that they can recognize your writing or content without seeing your name attached to it. Or you may find yourself disagreeing with popular advice and feeling comfortable explaining why.
All of these changing trends will come and go and frameworks will evolve, but your voice becomes stronger every time you pause long enough to process what you think, what you believe and how you want to say it in your own words.
You don’t need to abandon trends, frameworks or AI—but if everyone has access to the same tools—then perhaps the most valuable thing you can contribute is the perspective that only you can offer.
Share this with others who may want help developing their voice online!
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