Your audience doesn’t want cookie-cutter content—they want you.
But if you’ve tried using AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude or Writer and ended up with bland, off-brand results, you’re not alone. AI isn’t a mind reader. Vague prompts like, “Write me a blog post” or “Create a LinkedIn update” will always churn out vanilla, blah outputs.

It’s not the AI’s fault—it just doesn’t know your voice.

Think of AI tools like a junior copywriter. If you don’t give it a solid brief, you’ll get woolly drafts that miss the mark. But with the right training you can turn AI into a personal assistant that actually sounds like you.

The Problem with Crappy AI Outputs

AI struggles with tone of voice because:

• It’s not trained on your unique style. AI relies on specific examples and context to mimic your voice. Without that, they’ll guess—and guess wrong.
• Generic instructions don’t cut it. Asking it to sound “professional” or “conversational” are too vague to reflect the nuances of your voice and brand.
• Most prompts lack detail. Asking for a “LinkedIn post” without additional instructions leaves AI to fill in the blanks.

The result? Dull, uninspiring content that just doesn’t feel like you.

3 Simple Steps to Fix It

Step 1: Gather Examples of Your High Performing Content

AI can’t replicate your voice unless you show it how you sound. Start by gathering examples of your best-performing content – the more the better. 

What to include: LinkedIn posts, emails, blogs, or website copy —anything that captures your tone.

What to look for: Choose pieces that represent your tone and resonated with your audience.

Step 2: Train the AI

Now it’s time to teach the AI your tone of voice. Here’s the prompt you can use:

I need you to create a tone of voice guide for me, specifically designed for use with tools like ChatGPT. It should be concise but detailed enough to give the AI everything it needs to produce content that sounds exactly like me.

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Read and analyse the examples of my writing that I’ll share with you.
• Focus on the tone, structure, and style of each piece.
• Spot the patterns that define how I communicate.
• Build a clear, practical tone of voice guide that I can reuse with AI tools to get consistent, on-brand outputs.

Upload your writing examples into ChatGPT (or a similar tool) and run the prompt. 

The AI will analyse your samples and create a tone guide. This guide will describe your style, preferred structure, and even spot personal quirks like using anecdotes, bullet points or starting posts with bold statements.

Step 3: Test, Critique, and Refine

Once the AI creates a tone of voice guide, it’s time to put it to the test.
Ask it to write something: Start with a LinkedIn post or email based on your tone guide.

Review the result: Does it sound like you? 

My favourite prompt “1-10, how much does this sound like me?” 
The tool will give me a score back eg 7/10 and make suggestions for how it can be improved. 

You can also give specific feedback to iterate and improve.

For example:

“This feels too formal. Make it more conversational.”
“Too waffly. Focus on shorter sentences and remove the jargon.”
The more feedback you give, the sharper the AI will get. Think of it as training a junior copywriter—the more specific direction you provide, the better the results.

Why This Works

AI isn’t a magic bullet and it won’t replace the art of human copy anytime soon, but it excels when given clear guidance. Preparation and training is key and investing in the upfront work will save you a tonne of time in the long run. 

By gathering examples, training it with detailed prompts, and refining its outputs, you’ll be able to create a reliable writing assistant that save time and delivers usable, on-brand draft content.