Ai Slop and content marketing
Ai Slop – How people use Social Media has changed – Ai Slop is the next corpus.
Mark Zuckerberg said today that we are entering a “Third corpus of content” First we saw posts that were updates from friends and family, then content creators uploading, we are now exposed to low quality AI generated content. AI Slop. Ai slop is not content marketing.
– BBC Website – Zuckerberg News Article.
I personally cannot wait for this corpus to corpse. Social media is full of fast, loud, colourful but ultimately bland content. But it’s popular all the same – with little to no benefit to anyone other than the creator.
Ai Slop damages businesses – This is not content marketing.
Businesses using Ai generated content run a huge risk – posting imagery that does not accurately represent a customers experience – the worst example being restaurants posting images of dishes created in Grok, OpenArt, Artist.io or BananaPro.
Dishes of food, oozing juices from plump buns, with melting cheese dripping unrealistically and portions that defy logic, give no true representation of what will actually be served up to a paying customer
Sloppy burgers and sloppy content marketing.
Does this ruin the experience? Even someone that has identified an image as Ai might still visit with their appetite heightened and excited to eat the towering burger they saw on a restaurant’s Facebook page, only be served up a smaller, less appetitising version, regardless of the quality, reality might not meet the expectation perceived from seeing an AI Sloppy burger on social media.
I think the risk of using an AI image is too great – particularly when it is simple for Avant Commercial to create stunning, enticing, appetising images for real, at your restaurant, with real dishes. We can make you look good with genuine imagery.
AI caricatures Ai slop is not content marketing.
The Cartoon Craze – the usually dry, professional, sober universe of LinkedIn has been swamped by the cartoon illustration craze – if you haven’t seen it, basically, a bobbleheaded illustration of a person is seen smiling inanely, with doe-eyed, rosy-cheeked glee, whilst surrounded by all the tasks they usually perform as a business owner.
Invoices, ledgers, calculators and vibrating phones surround the accountant, flying grease, oil and tools encircle the car mechanic, whilst beauticians have all sorts of hair and manicure equipment I don’t know the names for whizzing around, whilst their client sits grinning in a chair behind them with their hair on fire.
It’s bizarre, but beneath this horrifying cartoon image is 200 likes and 100 emoji comments that the algorithm doesn’t know what to do with and the salon owner ignorantly shows off her vanity metrics to anyone that’ll listen.
Vanity metrics and feeding the machine by jumping on the bandwagon does not reach your customers – People who buy from you are not doom scrolling #CartoonMe
Again – even if you don’t like having your picture taken, business portraits can be taken that will flatter, impress clients and introduce you to your customers, connecting with them far more effectively than AI Slop.
Social media trends, Ai slop and content marketing
Joining in with trends on social media is just feeding the churning, commercial mincer. YOU are the product – which might sound like an alarmist conspiracy theorist point of view, but boosting a trend just surrenders you to the influencer, building their metrics so they can market you to large corporations that pay them for views.
Joining in does not connect you with your customer base – you have missed the point, you’re not joining the conversation, you are feeding the beast. You’re just another scream in the dark, another numeric on an analytics chart.
Connect with your audience more directly – speak to their inner voice and communicate with them in a way that might jolt them out of their doom scrolling behaviour and get them to connect with you and engage with your business and eventually buy something real.
How to engage clients online?
Use storytelling photography. Book a professional photoshoot. Tell a unique story, and share it. Somewhere, a customer is waiting for you. They’ll hear you.
Am I anti AI?
No, not at all – for tasking the preparation for marketing strategies for my clients, for example; “ChatGPT – when are people from 35-55, male in the SE of the UK, and at a higher managerial background in manufacturing most active on LinkedIn?” I get an answer quickly, and then prompts for deeper insight. This is priceless.
In photography, removing a distracting element with the clone tool is now vastly improved with AI.
But, posting an entertaining image is a novelty – a short-lived trend. How beneficial is that to your business?
I would argue it isn’t very likely to do any good. Flash in the pan internet sensations, like posting your own attempt at Tik-Tok dances, doing an ice-bucket challenge, or posting an AI generated version of yourself fighting in full camo gear to represent how you are out there working hard for your clients, are not brand building.
I am not certain that cartoon social cards and obvious AI imagery influences buying decisions, or increases trust in a brand. How can it?
If you’re posting fake imagery on your business accounts, what else may people think isn’t authentic about your services or products?
Content Marketing Vs Ai Slop
Genuine storytelling, sharing relevant engaging content in your marketing, will build trust in your brand. It will clearly communicate the ethos of your business. You can present a narrative that resonates with your client base. An insight to your business through professional photography will have a deeper effect on your clients than Ai Slop. A set of images that evokes an emotion stimulates a totally different area of the brain; an area where long term memory is stored, rather than just a dopamine response.
And that’s another important point – humour, or many other responses to social media posts, releases dopamine. That neurotransmitter in all of us, causing that craving feeling for satisfaction – and you know something? Your fake imagery elicits its release.
Dopamine and online content.
The problem with this is that dopamine is addictive – Regular stimulation from a similar source soon doesn’t hit it. The rapid effect and release of dopamine starts to diminish. The stimulation falls, and another source is hunted down like crack. Heavy social media users are dopamine junkies, and their addiction isn’t loyal. They doom scroll their way from one stimulus to another, thumbing their way past your attempt to jump on a trend quicker than you can say “Ibiza Final Boss”.
Relevant, informative and useful content sits deeper in the mind of a viewer. Regular storytelling about your business builds familiarity and overtime a memory of your business within a customer. Ai Slop doesn’t – it is consumed, and any value is exhausted within moments
What is the alternative to Ai Slop?
Take a browse through any of the other blogs here for stories, insights to marketing and how to use photography to promote your business.
If something resonates, you think it’ll be useful to your business, then get in touch – start telling the story of your business with an Avant Commercial photoshoot.