122: How to Use AI Without Sounding Like Everyone Else on Instagram (Part 2)

Written By Elizabeth Marberry

Every reel, every caption, every time you show your face on camera — you're building something you can't fully see yet. You never know where all of this will lead until you get into action and start finding your voice.

This is part two of my four-part series on how to use AI to market and grow your business on social media without losing what makes you you. Last week I covered the three biggest AI mistakes small business owners make. Today I'm diving into the four things AI actually needs from you if you want your content to stand out instead of blend in.

Listen on your favorite podcast app!

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • 01:19 Why Elizabeth is speaking to 150 people in Cincinnati — and what it proves about content compounding over time

  • 02:44 Why most small business owners are under-leveraging AI even though everyone is using it

  • 03:36 A quick recap of Part 1 — the three biggest AI mistakes (and how to avoid them)

  • 04:32 The missing ingredient in most people's AI content strategy: the human element

  • 05:00 Thing #1: Your stories — why your lived experience is the raw material of your brand

  • 06:52 Thing #2: Your opinions — where thought leadership actually lives

  • 09:34 Thing #3: Your client stories — what AI will never know unless you tell it

  • 11:50 Thing #4: Your perspective — the differentiator AI can't replicate

  • 13:44 Your homework this week: how to build your Story Vault in a Google Doc

  • 15:34 What's coming in Part 3 — the exact document Elizabeth built to train AI on her brand

  • 15:59 About the live workshop: Build Your AI Thought Partner

THE 4 THINGS AI NEEDS FROM YOU

#1 — Your Stories
Nobody else has your exact lived experience. Your failed launches, your first client, your daughter's comment on what you wore yesterday, your first speaking gig, your ADHD diagnosis — these are the raw material behind your brand. When you're creating content with AI, always ask: what story can I tell to help my ideal person feel seen, heard, and helped?

#2 — Your Opinions
This is where thought leadership lives. Your hot takes, your unpopular opinions, your frameworks — the stands you're willing to take in your industry. You don't have to be controversial just to be controversial. But you do need to know your industry inside and out and be willing to say something that only you would say.

#3 — Your Client Stories
AI doesn't know what your clients cry about to you. It doesn't know the five questions you get asked on every sales call, or the nuanced objection a prospect shared that connected back to a childhood wound. You are the ultimate connector of dots. Feed those client transformation stories, testimonials, and sales call insights into AI — it will dramatically change the quality of what it creates for you.

#4 — Your Perspective
Two people can teach the exact same thing, but it lands completely differently depending on who's teaching it. Your perspective — the way you break down concepts, your energy, your philosophy, your approach — is the "it factor" that AI simply cannot replicate. Even an AI twin wouldn't be the same.

YOUR HOMEWORK: BUILD YOUR STORY VAULT

Open a Google Doc this week and create a document called My Story Vault. Add these four headings:

  1. Stories from my life (mistakes, wins, pivotal moments, childhood memories that connect to your work)

  2. Client success stories (transformations, results, things clients have said to you)

  3. Things I believe (your hot takes, opinions, frameworks, things you'd push back on in your industry)

  4. Questions my audience asks (the same questions you hear on sales calls, in DMs, in emails — every week)

Add five items under each heading. That's it. Once you start feeding this into your AI conversations, the quality of everything it creates for you will shift dramatically.

Links Mentioned:

A Truth You Need to Hear:

"Your perspective is your differentiator. When you integrate your stories, your opinions, your client success stories — that is when AI starts to completely change the game for your marketing."

— Elizabeth Marberry

S3 Ep122 Transcript - How to Use AI Without Sounding Like Everyone Else on Instagram (Part 2)

00:00

landed on part two of my four part series on how to leverage AI to market and grow your business on social media. I don't know if you noticed, but Instagram is definitely filling up with AI generated content and a lot of it sounds exactly the same. So how do you use AI without losing your voice, your perspective and the things that make people want to follow, trust and buy from you?

00:25

That's exactly what we're diving into today in part two of this four-part AI series. I'll show you the four things AI needs from you if you want your content to stand out instead of blending in. Let's go.

00:40

Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole led work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place.

01:09

Let's dive in.

01:19

Welcome back to the show. I am recording this from a hotel room in Cincinnati, Ohio today. In a couple of hours, I am going to be speaking at an event with 150 people there in attendance, all about how to get seen and paid on Instagram. I am feeling so grateful when I first started showing up online and building both of my businesses on Instagram.

01:47

I seriously could never have predicted where it would lead. A speaking career, this podcast, the most incredible community of small business owners and entrepreneurs that I get to coach and work with every single day to grow their visibility, their brands, their impact. I truly could not have dreamed of any of this back in the day. And it's a reminder to you today, my beloved listener, that your content

02:17

efforts compound. So every reel, every caption, every carousel, every time you show your face on camera, you are building something that you can't fully see yet, right? Like you never know where all of this effort will lead until you really get into action and start finding your voice.

02:44

Speaking of voice, I don't know about you, but my feed is absolutely filled with AI content right now. And that is why I really wanted to do this four part series on AI and how we can leverage it as a competitive advantage in the market because everyone and their mom is using AI right now, but most

03:08

people, most small business owners are still really under leveraging it. And you, my beloved listener, have cozied up today to part two in my four part series on really how to use AI to not blend in with everyone who's currently using AI on the platform. And last week I talked about the three biggest mistakes small business owners are making when it comes to AI. Of course, I know these mistakes because I've made them all myself.

03:36

So my goal is to shortcut that learning curve for you. So if you missed that episode, go back and check it out. But today in part two, I wanted to dive a little deeper into the secret to using AI without sounding like you're using AI, right? And this is really the missing ingredient in so many people's AI content strategies right now is that AI is so great at

04:04

organizing information and even supporting you and brainstorming and ideation and all those things. The missing piece is the human aspect of lived experience and connection, right? Humans are great at creating connection. AI can fake connection, but AI can't believe or lock into your intuition inside of your gut.

04:32

The AI doesn't know all of your stories from childhood or the day that you launched your business and you thought you were going to barf or the day that you left your corporate nine to five job to go all in on entrepreneurship. Right. Like that's not in the AI that is inside of your brain. That's inside of your heart. In today's quick episode, I want to teach you the four things the AI needs from you.

05:00

so you can really start to stand out on Instagram with your content. Number one is your stories, right? I just touched on that. Nobody else has your exact story or lived experience or perspective. So think about it. Think about all of the mistakes, all of the failures, all of your wins, your gratitudes. This is where when you think about storytelling, you can think of the hero's journey.

05:28

Right. When you watch a Netflix show or a movie, right, you get to meet that main character and then there's some sort of conflict and they have to work through that conflict and fight and make it out to the other side in whatever the resolution is. And you are the hero in your own journey as the founder, as the entrepreneur, as the small business owner. You are that person. So you have your own stories.

05:55

So whether that's your failed launch, your first client, your daughter's comment on what you wore yesterday, your first speaking gig, your recent ADHD diagnosis, your stories are the raw material behind your brand. And so when I'm working with AI and I'm specifically working with it in terms of content creation and how I'm going to reverse engineer viral hooks or write my captions or

06:25

any of my messaging, my emails, everything. I'm always thinking about like, what is the story that I can tell to attract my ideal person, help them feel seen, heard and helped. So they're gonna want to follow me. They're gonna wanna work with me. They're gonna wanna take that next step with my business. So I want you to think about what is your story? Number two, your opinions.

06:52

This is where thought leadership lives. So how do we showcase our opinions when it comes to social media marketing? Well, you see it, right? Unpopular opinion or hot takes. It's the people and the creators who are willing to take a stand for a thing, right? And it could even be as simple as a creator saying hashtags are dead or another creator saying

07:18

The people who are saying hashtags are dead are completely wrong. They're very much alive. It doesn't even have to be that deep, right? Like hashtags are not that deep of a conversation, but think about your industry within your scope of the work that you do, your products, your services. I'm sure that you have varying opinions with people in your industry, or you might see things that are happening that you're not for, right? Or you have your

07:48

own special frameworks or methods that help your ideal people get to their solutions so much faster than maybe another creator in your niche who has a different way of going about it, right? So your opinion, your hot takes are really where your thought leadership lives and you have to be willing to take a stand, right? If you don't take a stand for something, and when I say that, I don't mean...

08:14

you know, inviting people into arguments with you just for the sake of arguing. That's not what I'm talking about. But knowing your industry inside and out, weaving in your lived experience within your business and outside of your business. I mean, that's the reality of being an entrepreneur is that we don't have to separate our work in a way, right?

08:37

what is happening in my personal life with my children, with my husband impacts how I can show up for all of you on this podcast, right? And so that's why sometimes I will bring in personal stories into my work or my background as a professional dancer and everything that I learned, all of the rejections that I faced when I was living in New York City and I was auditioning for different shows and I wasn't making anything.

09:04

and the resiliency and the relentless passion I had to have to keep going after my dreams, those lessons apply to the work I do now, right? And those lessons, not only do they apply, but they shape my opinions and my perspective about how I approach content creation, right? So maybe one of my opinions is for highly creative people like me, it's actually not helpful for us to batch content.

09:34

all of the leaders in this space are telling you to batch content, but what if I told you that's a disservice to you and your creative genius, right? I'm just riffing here, but I'm trying to show you how your past stories can help shape your opinions and how you're showing up through your content. And when you're willing to take a stand, the right people, your ideal clients or customers, meaning your ideal followers, right, are going to gravitate towards you and

10:02

That's where content becomes very magnetic for your brand. Number three, your client stories. So this is huge, right? Like AI doesn't know what your clients cry about to you. Or AI doesn't know the same five questions that you get asked every single week via email or sales calls, right?

10:25

or AI doesn't know the objection this potential client had in the sales call and how nuanced that objection was in relationship to their childhood wound that they shared with you. mean, there's so many different layers of like connecting the dots, right? And yes, AI can read transcripts of calls, absolutely, but you are the ultimate like connector of the dots. You can give the inputs into the AI.

10:54

but there's those nuances of client stories or customer stories of transformation or why people are wanting to bend your product over a different product or why they're buying it. Maybe it's because you're ethically sourcing your beans like my husband does with his coffee company. know, someone who cares about ethically sourced coffee beans direct from the farmer are gonna want to invest.

11:20

in a bag of duality coffee because that's part of their value system, right? And so all of this to say is that AI can learn these things about you and your business, but it doesn't have it to begin with really is my point, right? So client stories, customer success stories, who they are, the psychology behind them, the details of these stories is a marketing goals and

11:50

It's important that AI gets that context before it's going to create content for you. And number four is your perspective, which we've really touched on a lot. You know, there's a lot of crossover in these points I'm sharing with you today. It's this idea that two people can teach the exact same thing, but it's gonna land differently when you listen to person A versus when you listen to person B, right?

12:18

And you can think about this podcast. One of my clients, Krista, who is a Hot Reels client, Hot Reels is my 12 month Instagram content lab, my group coaching program. She was saying, you know, I knew that you were the right Instagram mentor and coach for me because I was listening to your podcast week after week. And I really liked how you taught. I liked your voice. I loved how you broke down the concepts. So I felt really simple and doable for me.

12:48

I loved your mindset, your energetics, like your approach, your philosophy, right? So there are so many Instagram coaches and mentors, but what makes you want to listen to me, right? It's my perspective. It's the way that I show up. It's that if factor, right? That you can't just duplicate. AI can't just show up and be me, right? Even if I had an AI twin, which I know that's a thing, but it's not the same, right? It's just not the same. And so,

13:17

Your perspective is your differentiator. And when you're able to use AI and integrate your perspective, your client stories, your opinions, your founder stories, that is when AI starts to completely change the game for you and your marketing. So I want to give you one tactical takeaway, and it's this.

13:44

This week, I want you to open a Google Doc and I want you to create something called your story vault. Then I want you to create four headings. Stories from my life, client success stories, things I believe and questions my audience asks. So I'm going to say that one more time. Stories from my life, client success stories, things I believe, questions my audience asks.

14:14

Then I want you to add five items under each heading. That's it. Okay. That is like your homework. And I want to tell you that I was doing a refresh on this exercise on the plane ride here to Cincinnati from Denver, where I live. And it was the stories from my life. And I was actually reflecting back on some stories from when I was 10, 11, 12, 13. And really the purpose is to discover like

14:43

What are the threads and themes in my life that have carried me through to this moment today and the work I do with Instagram? Instagram is just a vehicle for me to help you really live into your purpose and be seen and be paid and do your life's work, right? Like that is my passion. I want more people living into their most authentic.

15:09

selves and expressions and serving their people and working in their zone of genius. That gets me so excited and it's so imperative to pause and kind of look back at your life. We all have so many beautiful stories, but sometimes we just don't take time to even think about them. So I want you to start with that one piece stories from my life. If you get to the other three, great. If not, I got you.

15:34

But once you start to dig into the stuff and start to use it with your AI in those conversations with the AI when you're creating your marketing content, it is a total game changer. So next week, I'm gonna show you the exact document I built that really organizes all this information in one place. So AI can become a true thought partner in your business.

15:59

And if you'd like me to walk you through building this document step by step, like with you live on Zoom, that's exactly what we're going to be doing inside of the build your AI thought partner workshop. It is going down and I am so excited. So head on over to Elizabethmarberry.com slash AI dash hub and you will get the full details of the workshop. Whether you can come live or not, you will gain access to the replay for 30 days. It's gonna be so incredible because like I said, you're not just gonna be watching and learning, we're gonna be doing it together. So that way you can really build that AI thought partner that's gonna help you really blow up your marketing.

16:57

efforts on Instagram and beyond and attracts more of your ideal clients or customers. I am so excited and we're going to drop that link in the show notes below so you can always grab it from there. And if you haven't already, make sure you're following the show so you do not miss when we drop part three next week. Thank you. I hope you loved today's episode and got so much out of it. If you did, do me a solid, share it with a business bestie or a colleague who's also trying to figure out this whole AI social media marketing

17:26

world. I so appreciate your support and I can't wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're going to want to grab my free monetize your IG guide where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at Elizabeth Marbury dot com slash freebies.

17:56

That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.

Elizabeth Marberry
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121: Everyone Has AI. Here's How to Stand Out Anyway (Part 1)