Award-Winning Storyteller
Breadcrumb Trailblazer
Making YOU Googlicious & Unforgettable
Judges aren’t stupid. They read hundreds of entries and can spot the AI written ones by the second sentence. Not because AI writes badly, it doesn’t, but because it writes safely, generically and loves using nouns that say a lot but nothing at all (think transformation, impact, visibility, ripple effect). Smooth, clean, and as forgettable as a beige suit.
If you want your entry to land, you have to give the AI something to work with.
Talk out your answers. Record your answer to the question and then transcribe it. That transcript is worth more than any brief you’ll ever write because people are completely different when they’re speaking. Looser, more honest, and specific. Us humans say things like ‘we nearly lost everything in March’ instead of ‘the business faced significant challenges.’ That’s the version you want. Upload that to your AI and tell it to write in that tone, using your words.
Feed the beast. Feed into AI posts you’ve done on LinkedIn, emails, Instagram captions or texts you’ve sent or if you’ve a video of you speaking, transcribe that. Tell AI to use this as a voice reference “This is how I talk. Sound like this.’
Do an ugly first draft. Give it your best shot first. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re a crap writer, just brain dump your answers into a word doc. Use words you use, it doesn’t matter if the spelling or format isn’t perfect. Tell the story in your words. Don’t try to copy anyone’s style. Feed the hungry AI beast that mess. While the structure and writing may be terrible (it’s probably not that bad). the voice will be gold. AI can fix structure. It can’t invent your personality.
Make your hot mess specific. Real entries have names, numbers, months. The point is every award entry needs facts, figures, details, and specifics. Create a document with all the numbers you can find – revenue, client growth, sales, social media stats, retention – things that prove you have a business. This will take you AI assisted entry from generic to specific.
When you’re done, read it out loud. AI content has this weirdly frictionless quality, too smooth and no catches, like it’s had too much plastic surgery. Human writing has a slightly uneven rhythm especially if we’re writing from the heart and how we speak. If your entry sounds like a brochure or you’re delivering a report of the board, AI wrote it without any input from you, beyond telling it to answer the questions. If it sounds like someone who believes what they’re saying, someone who lived and breathed the moments, challenges and highs, your response will sound more genuine.
Now open your AI tool. Paste everything you’ve collected, the transcript, voice reference posts, your ugly draft, AND numbers document. It also helps to share with AI the award website, guidelines and judging criteria as a guide. Tell AI that’s what it needs to refer to as it goes about writing your responses. Now, upload the first question and ask it to get writing.
I’ve created a prompt to add to AI that will help write an entry that sounds more like you. If you’d like a copy, email me and I will send it to you – annette@awardwritingservices.com
One off entry
Projects are the smartest way to do this because the prompt lives permanently in the background and applies to every conversation inside that project.
Multiple entries
Claude.ai (Custom Instructions)
If you want the prompt to apply to every conversation, not just one project:
ChatGPT (Custom Instructions)