Blog: Strategy Matters! -

The Human Touch: What Content Creators Can’t Outsource

AI-generated content is often dull, repetitive, and prone to inaccuracies.

AI is a powerful content tool. It’s not a content strategist, a storyteller, or a brand voice. Here’s the distinction that matters.

By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR, Strategic Communications, LLC

Human content creation is the development of original content drawing on lived experiences, domain expertise, audience empathy and understanding, and brand judgment. These are human capabilities that AI tools can approximate but not replicate.

Yes, generative AI (GenAI) has great value and application for content creators. But it’s not a replacement. As GenAI is used more and more in the content production and distribution process it’s important to understand where it’s best applied—and where humans still have an important and unique role to play.

I’ve been writing since I was a child and writing for publication since I was 18. I’ve seen a lot of changes over the years. Most recently, of course, the rapid advancement of GenAI and tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude (my current favorite).

GenAI does have a place

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From Blog to Brand: The Smart Content Repurposing Playbook

Strategically repurposing your content helps drive greater exposure and optimizes your budget.

Don’t let your carefully crafted content die a slow death.

By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR – Strategic Communications, LLC

Content repurposing takes the approach of “create once, use multiple times.” It’s designed to extend the life of your copy to both leverage exposure and gain efficiency. By adapting a single, well-crafted piece of content into multiple format and channels you maximize your return on every hour invested in creating that content.

Done well, it’s one of the highest-leverage moves in a content marketer’s toolkit. Done poorly, it’s just copy-paste.

The difference is strategy.

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Brand Voice: The One Thing AI Can’t Clone

Voice is the underlying personality of your brand that shows up across every piece of content you publish, regardless of topic or format.

In a content landscape flooded with AI output, your voice is your fingerprint. Here’s how to protect it—and use it strategically.

By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR – Strategic Communications, LLC

Brand voice is the consistent, distinctive personality and perspective that an organization expresses across all of its content—regardless of topic, format, or channel. Unlike tone, which shifts situationally (warmer in a condolence message, more energetic in a product launch), brand voice is stable: it is the underlying character that makes a brand’s content recognizably its own. In 2026, with an estimated 57% of all online content now AI-generated, brand voice has become the primary differentiator available to content marketers who want to be heard.

Last fall I wrote a post about Pinterest’s decision to give users controls to reduce AI-generated content in their feeds. The stat that prompted it was startling: an estimated 57% of all online content is now generative AI (likely even more now…).

That number has stayed with me.

More than half of what’s published online was produced by a machine.

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Content Calendars That Actually Work: A Practitioner’s Guide

The calendar is infrastructure. The content is personality.

The goal isn’t a perfect plan. It’s a plan you can actually keep.

By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR – Strategic Communications, LLC

A content calendar (also called an editorial calendar) is a planning tool that maps out what content an organization will publish, in what format, on which channels, and on what schedule—typically planned one to three months in advance. An effective content calendar balances evergreen and timely content, builds in flexibility for responsive publishing, and is designed around a publishing cadence the team can sustain—not around an aspirational schedule that collapses on contact with competing priorities.

Many companies and individuals these days continue to be focused on creating and distributing content in a never-ending cycle. It’s a cycle that demands new ideas, new copy, new images, new hashtags, new social media posts, new, new, new, new, new…

At the same time they need to ensure that their content is relevant and, to the extent possible, capitalizes on current events, news cycles, holidays, and emerging audience interests.

That can be a challenge.

Content calendars can help. Or hurt.

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The 2026 Content Marketing Imperative: Know Your Audience

If you can understand who your shadow buyers are and what they need, you’ll get to a place where you truly know your audience.

Copy that resonates requires knowing your audience—intimately. How are you doing with that?

By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR – Strategic Communications, LLC

Audience understanding in content marketing is the practice of developing specific, research-grounded knowledge of who your target readers or customers are—their challenges, motivations, behaviors, and preferences—and using that knowledge to create content that resonates precisely rather than broadly. It is widely considered the foundational competency of effective content strategy: content that doesn’t know who it’s for cannot connect with anyone in particular.

Every day, without fail, two very different kinds of content appears in my inbox and on the various social media channels I follow.

One kind captures my attention and gets me to start reading, sometimes dragging me down a rabbit hole that I really wish I hadn’t been dragged down…

The other kind: meh. Generic, boilerplate, trite. Copy that literally any brand could have created. It’s not personal. It’s not specific. It doesn’t speak to me.

The difference between those two experiences has nothing to do with budget, production value, or even writing skill. It comes down to one thing: how well the brand actually knows its audience.

This is not a new principle.

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Why Storytelling Still Wins in the Age of AI

The brands that are succeeding in this new AI-fueled reality aren’t succeeding because they have better AI tools. They’re succeeding because they’re telling better stories. — The story you tell—your perspective, your experience, your voice—is something no AI can replicate.

The most powerful marketing tool you have hasn’t changed. Here’s how to use it.

By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR – Strategic Communicaions, LLC

Storytelling in content marketing is the practice of structuring marketing content around narrative—a relatable situation, a turning point grounded in real experience, and a clear takeaway—rather than around information or promotion alone. Research consistently shows that narrative content is more memorable, more persuasive, and more likely to build the kind of audience trust that drives long-term brand authority than factual or list-based content.

Let’s address the elephant in the room right out of the gate: AI. In the age of AI content creators are feeling stressed, questioning their worth, even questioning the likelihood that they will be able to continue to practice their craft.

But here’s the thing.

The brands that are succeeding in this new AI-fueled reality aren’t succeeding because they have better AI tools.

They’re succeeding because they’re telling better stories.

Storytelling is not a soft skill. It’s not a nice-to-have. It’s the engine of every piece of content that has ever actually moved an audience. And in 2026—with AI capable of producing technically competent, grammatically correct, utterly forgettable content at scale—the ability to tell a real, human story has never been more valuable.

Why stories work when information doesn’t

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LinkedIn Newsletters: Best Practices for Success

You should be using this cost effective marketing tool

LinkedIn suggests that LinkedIn Newsletters are one of the most effective features for content distribution, and they’re certainly growing in use but individuals and companies. But, do they really offer value, and in what way?

We sought input from LinkedIn experts who are using LinkedIn Newsletters—some with a great following and some just starting out—to get their insights, best practices, and actionable tips on how to make the most of this platform to grow and engage with a LinkedIn audience.

What you need to know about leveraging LinkedIn newsletters

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Best Practices for Finding, Connecting With and Engaging “Shadow Buyers”

Are invisible prospects costing you sales?

Today’s digital commerce environment means that marketers can learn a lot about consumers who are interested in their products and services. But while that can be a boon for marketers, it’s not something that all prospects feel favorably about.

In fact, a rising number of consumers are actively taking steps to avoid being detected. They don’t want the bother. They don’t want the intrusion. And they don’t relish the feeling of violation that comes from being served up offers immediately after checking something out on your website.

How to bring them out of the shadows

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Using Generative AI (GenAI) to Create Video Marketing and Sales Content

GenAI tools are dramatically simplifying the video production process

Video used to be very expensive and time-consuming for companies and individuals to produce. Then, with the widespread adoption of smartphones that came with the ability to capture video seamlessly, and an associated drop in viewers’ expectations of high-quality output, the cost and time requirements for video production have declined precipitously.

The most recent impact on the cost and time required to produce video content is generative AI (GenAI) which has become a transformative force in video production across the entire creation process.

Ongoing Popularity of Video Prompts Adoption

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Event Marketing Looks Very Different Post-Pandemic

Flexible options are the norm as events cater to varying preferences

Since the pandemic halted in-person events five years ago, interest in getting together in real life (IRL) has soared. Event marketing is making a resurgence, but these aren’t the events of the pre-pandemic era. Expectations have changed and new technology has emerged to help event planners better engage with their audiences—wherever they are.

How planners are embracing the shifts

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