Y'know—she says while sipping one of those smokey cocktails you get at a speakeasy in Barcelona—if you don't know how to write with personality, you are about to get crushed.

Oh god, you're going to think I'm the worst. Am I the worst? Maybe I'm the worst.

But, one thing has been made clear to me in the seventeen years that I've been writing content on the internet and making it my entire career:

You can't write with the personality of a potato.

Nobody wants to talk to a potato, and nobody wants to read what a potato is thinking, either. Which is a problem for people with potato-itis: they are likely very smart people, trapped in a potato body.

WRITING IS A VERY WEIRD, VERY CROTCHETY THING.

When you sit down to do it, you pull out your essay voice and it all goes to hell. In the past, you could sorta get away with it, because at least you were putting content out there (more than most people / brands could say). But now?

Content is the default minimum expectation.

Everyone's got it. Sorta like a podcast.

Which means that: the only thing you can compete on now is your personality. Because there are lots of people out there who can say the same thing as you, but your ability to succeed depends on your ability to say it in a way that's more interesting.

That wordddddddd: interesting.

Lot of pressure trying to "be interesting."

But, you don't need to have competed in the ice luge in the 1980 Olympic games at Lake Placid in order to be interesting. You just need to find interesting ways to say what you mean.

There's a difference between writing:

• I poured you a drink
• I poured you a Negroni the size of a birdbath

It's the same idea. But, only one of them makes you actually like the writer. And, that's how you know if enough personality is in it: could someone actually love you OR hate you on the page? Or do you sound like an empty carcass with crispy, mummified fingers? (I mean, have you ever seen a mummy in a museum? My first was at The British Museum in London. Crispy, I tell you! Crispy!)

Case in point: just stumbled across this guy. Read his bio. Instantly wanted to be his friend and/or his Doordash driver. I mean, I'd totally be his Doordash driver.

This is the power of writing with personality. It's never, ever been about being cutesy (unless you are a cutesy person with pink, sparkly makeup, in which case, please see yourself to the nearest car wash), but rather, it's always been about being real.

Real is (still) what we want to read.

And no AI command on earth can give us that.

Share this one

LinkedIn  ·  X  ·  Threads  ·  Facebook  ·  Email

P.S. Here is a well-articulated argument by Nicholas Cole on commodity content vs personality content. Worth a look.