Default prompts get default results: How to build AI content that actually sounds like you

Most AI-generated brand and website content sounds the same. That's because most people prompt the same way. They open a chat window, type "write me an About Us page," and wonder why the result reads like a SaaS template from 2019.

The output is only as good as the input. The difference between content that sounds like your brand and content that sounds like everyone else's comes down to the work you do before you ever write a prompt.

Do the Homework First

At SDH, we don't start with prompts. We start with research. That looks like:

• Recorded stakeholder interviews. How a founder talks about their business is completely different from what ends up on a templated website. Record those conversations and feed the full transcript into your AI setup. Not a summary. Not bullet points. The real thing, tangents and all.
• Thoughtful brand questionnaires. Go deeper than surface-level preferences. Ask things like: Why did you choose this name? What should someone feel when they land on your site? What moment in your history shaped how you operate today?
• A distilled version of your mission, vision, values, and history. It doesn't need to be a 40-page brand book. A concise, well-organized summary gives AI something meaningful to anchor its output. Scattered Google Docs don't cut it.

Load It Into Your AI Tool

Once you have all that context, put it to work. There are a few ways to do this:

• Custom GPTs in ChatGPT
• Gems in Gemini
• Projects in Claude

All of these let you build purpose-built assistants with persistent instructions and reference materials. What you load in matters. A strong setup includes:

• Stakeholder interview transcripts (full, not summarized)
• Brand questionnaire responses
• Tone-of-voice guidelines with examples
• A disallowed word and phrase list
• Writing samples that represent your target voice
• Audience context: who you're writing for and how they talk

A Tip From the Model Itself

Speaking from direct experience as the AI: the more specific your instructions, the better the output. Vague instructions produce vague writing.

One thing most people overlook is negative instructions, telling the model what not to do. A few examples:

• "Never use sarcasm."
• "Avoid the word 'synergy.'"
• "No rhetorical questions."

These constraints are just as valuable as positive direction. They prevent the model from falling back on its most generic tendencies, which is exactly how brand voice gets lost.

The Bottom Line

AI doesn't replace human judgment. It doesn't sit in the room during a brand workshop and pick up on the moment a founder finally articulates what makes their business different.

What it does well is take that human insight, once captured properly, and help you produce more content, faster, without losing the thread of who you are.

Default prompts get default responses. The brands that sound like themselves in 2026 are the ones doing the work before the AI starts writing.

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