Aiming for Authenticity: GenAI Words To Watch Out for in B2B SaaS Content

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Author: Ella Paul
Ella Paul

As many freshman composition teachers have said, writing is just thinking on the page. But as a member of a B2B SaaS PR agency’s content team who works with many, many words every single day, sometimes that blank page is a seemingly insurmountable 8.5”x11” barrier between me and a completed writing task. 

Overcoming writer’s block used to entail a lot of pacing and typing, then deleting, then typing, then deleting again, but now, Generative AI tools can be the wrecking ball that busts that wall down and helps get ideas flowing. When used properly, GenAI can dramatically increase efficiency when writing anything from an email to a long-form thought leadership piece.

What GenAI is and isn’t 

Enough time has passed since its buzzy debut that the hype around GenAI has died down so we can see it for what it actually is: a really, really good brainstorming partner. GenAI can augment your brainstorming sessions and help speed up your writing process, but successfully leveraging AI tools for writing requires you to remember that they’re the first mate. You’re the captain here. 

Your unique ideas and viewpoints are what your readers are after, not a copied and pasted ChatGPT output. Readers crave authenticity, and if something sounds like it was written by a robot, they’re going to lose interest fast. GenAI should be treated as an idea springboard, not a substitute. As an agency, we want to make the most of the tools we have in front of us, but we also want to do so thoughtfully and ethically so we can continue to create fresh, meaningful and thought-provoking content.

Nuance and authenticity are two essential features of good writing. Whether you’re writing something for media or your own owned content, the voice must be genuine. If it’s not, readers will notice.

This, of course, does not mean that you shouldn’t use GenAI tools when you’re writing — quite the opposite, in fact. Because GenAI tools can boost productivity so much, you’ll be at a disadvantage if you don’t use them — but they must be used thoughtfully and never to draft content from start to finish.

Avoiding AI-isms

As you use GenAI tools to write, be aware of potential “red flag” words and phrases that LLMs spit out with annoying frequency. If you don’t recognize this tell-tale language, your readers may think you relied on GenAI to create your content (even if you didn’t!) and lose trust in your writing. Plus, since these words and phrases are so commonly generated, keeping them in can make your writing sound unoriginal and stale. 

To keep your writing fresh and authentic, avoid using overly dramatic language and purple prose. These conspicuous turns of phrase can make your writing seem very stiff and heavy and indicate that you may have used AI to create it. If an LLM generates a sentence about a “groundbreaking breakthrough in this complex environment that is poised to revolutionize the industry,” you should definitely tone it down before putting it into your draft.

Another AI giveaway is repetitive phrasing throughout the piece. If the intro, a body paragraph and the conclusion all use nearly identical language, that repetition needs to be reworked to add some variety into the content to make it more interesting to read. No one wants to see “this cutting-edge technology” more than once in a piece, and even once may be too much. 

This brings me to my next hot tip — specific LLM words to watch out for. These are just some examples of “AI-isms” to avoid if you can, but use your judgment when it comes to identifying these words and phrases. Trust your gut! If it sounds canned to you, it most likely will sound like that to your reader, too. Some examples include:

  • Ever-evolving or ever-changing
  • Treasure trove
  • Poised to revolutionize (see the above purple prose example)
  • Harness the power
  • Skyrocket 
  • Various aspects
  • X is just one piece of the Y puzzle
  • Goldmine
  • Lodestar
  • Cornerstone

These are just a few potentially problematic words and phrases you may see in AI responses (what human is using the word “lodestar” in their writing, really). While we’re at it, avoid using too many bulleted lists in your writing — stick with one or two per 1,000 words, max, because GenAI loves to provide a bunch of bulleted lists in one output.

Using GenAI to amplify and accelerate your writing can help you power through blank page paralysis, dig deeper into topics or even just give you a jumping-off point for how you might write a concluding paragraph. No matter the use case, injecting additional humanity into your writing by avoiding common LLM language pitfalls will help prevent AI accusations and maintain the trust you’ve built with your readers while also keeping your content sounding so novel and natural that even your freshman composition teacher would be impressed.

Want our content team to do the dirty work for you? Reach out to see how we can help!