If you rely on SEO and information-based content to grow your audience, it’s time to rethink your approach with personality content.
Informational content used to be the main method for building brand awareness and driving growth. And it was a pretty simple process: ranking for key search terms, driving web traffic and converting leads.
But with the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence, this category of content has become commoditized—easy to generate, widely distributed, and harder to differentiate from the competition. As a result, it is increasingly difficult for brands to maintain a unique voice and stand out in an oversaturated market.
Here’s where personality driven content is coming. By tapping into storytelling and the human experience, it connects with audiences in ways that AI simply cannot. But what exactly is persona content and how can you add it to your marketing playbook?
In a recent episodes of Marketing Against the GrainKieran and I are exploring the shift from informational content to a personality-driven approach. We also cover five practical tips to help brands regain control of their narratives and create content that stands out from AI-generated content. Let’s dive in.
Informative vs. Personality Content: What’s the Difference?
Information-driven content — also called ‘educational’ content — is all about delivering facts, data and answers to specific questions. Consider resources such as how-to guides, tutorials or product comparisons. But with AI tools now able to generate those answers in seconds (and with even greater accuracy than Google), this type of content has become less valuable and much harder to rank in search results.
Personality-driven contenton the other hand, it connects with the audience through storytelling and real-life experiences. This could look like behind-the-scenes videos that give a peek into your brand culture, insights from leading industry thought leaders, or influencer-driven stories that build trust by featuring familiar faces.
Especially as attention spans shrink and competition for audience engagement grows, personality-driven content gives businesses a strategic advantage by fostering authentic, emotionally driven connections and making them more memorable.
Practical tips for building a personality content strategy
Interested in implementing a personality-driven content strategy? Kieran and I have identified five key tactics to help your brand thrive – even as AI-generated content continues to grow.
1. Fix your recruitment strategy.
One of the best ways to start your personality-driven content strategy is rethinking how you structure and staff your marketing team.
Take Mohak Nahta, for example, a founder in the travel industry. He realized that SEO-driven content dealing with common travel issues – such as visa applications and logistics – was losing its impact, as AI could easily throw out that kind of information.
Instead of continuing with the same approach, it turned to a personality-driven strategy and hired in-house influencers to share their personal travel experiences on the company’s marketing channels.
This not only made it harder for AI to replicate content, but also helped the brand grow its audience on community-driven platforms like TikTok.
2. Incentivize your creators and influencers.
Among them are creators and influencers most trusted voices today, but working with them can be challenging.
Many prefer to build their own platforms rather than fully commit to a brand, especially if they have the skills to develop their own channels. As a result, influencers willing to work with brands are often either early in their careers or less established. To bridge this gap, offering the right incentives is key.
One approach is to hire ambitious influencers as in-house content creators and invest in their development. The better they do, the more training and opportunities they will receive.
Alternatively, you can attract established influencers by offering incentives such as revenue-sharing models, exclusive brand deals, or access to premium experiences that align with their personal brand.
Whichever path you choose, the key is to align their success with your brand goals, ensuring a win-win for both parties.
3. Differentiate in key areas.
Instead of trying compete for web traffic everywhere, zoom in one or two places where you really can win. That means obsessing over a few key areas – whether it’s a single platform or a certain style of content – and becoming the best in those areas.
As Kieran points out during the episode, the market is even more saturated because you’re no longer just competing against brands – you’re also competing against individual influencers. So you have to really know: Where am I unique? Where is the differentiation?
By narrowing your focus, you can develop content that stands out from the competition and resonates with your audience in a way that AI-generated content cannot.
4. Own your content infrastructure.
Modern Creator B2B marketing should be structured like the Marvel Universe. For example, just as Marvel owns the IP, characters and story, companies must own their most valuable assets — social accounts and platforms, strategy manuals, content libraries.
Creators themselves, like actors, can come and go. You may have different people playing a role depending on the project or message, but the core infrastructure and brand identity remains consistent.
5. Immerse yourself in expertise.
Deep expertise is what sets truly valuable content apart from the rest. At HubSpot, for example, we took all of our news content, sorted it into categories, and identified the pieces that could be best defended.
From there, we go deeper, adding unique value to those posts in ways that AI can’t easily replicate – video, customer statistics, interactive features — which ensures that our content remains highly specialized and unique to our brand.
Personality content is the future of content marketing.
Personality-driven content is the key to surviving and thriving in the face of artificial intelligence. By focusing on authenticity, differentiation and the strategic use of creators, marketing executives can protect their brands and maintain control of their narrative.
To learn more about personality content, see full episodes of Marketing Against the Grain below:
This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, a video podcast. He digs deeper into the insights shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they uncover growth strategies and learn from notable founders and peers.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/personality-content
