The signs of AI slop are pretty easy to detect - the "not this, but that" phrasing, the overuse of 'quietly' and 'genuinely,' are two of the most common. The worst one, in my opinion, is the total lack of a real, specific point of view.

Part of the Busting the BS series by Sonder & Media - where we trade comfortable half-truths for things that actually help you grow. There's no shortage of marketing advice on the internet. What's harder to find is marketing advice that's actually true and specific enough to be useful to a founder who's past the basics, has tried a few things, and is still not seeing the results they expected. This is a list for the business owner who's been showing up, putting in real effort

Your engagement didn't collapse because your content got worse, because the algorithm changed, or because you posted at the wrong time. Those things matter, but they don't explain a broad, sustained decline in public interaction that almost every brand and creator has experienced over the past few years. There's a better explanation - it comes from a sci fi book, and if you've ever been in a hostile comment section, it'll ring true for you. The Dark Forest, briefly Liu Cixin'

In 1928, a man published a slim book called Propaganda and laid out, with complete transparency and zero apology, exactly how he intended to manipulate public opinion at scale. He wasn't embarrassed about it. He thought mass psychological influence was not only inevitable but necessary - a tool that a well-functioning modern society required. And he spent the next 67 years proving, in campaign after campaign and client after client, that he was right. His name was Edward Bern

You've been posting consistently. The content looks good, and it gets some engagement, and yet the people actually reaching out to book your services are not coming from Instagram in any meaningful way. This is one of the most common frustrations we hear from service business owners - and in almost every case, the problem is the same. It's not the content itself; it's the lack of a funnel behind it. A content funnel is not a complicated concept. It's just the recognition that

Most brands treat Q4 like a megaphone - louder, brighter, more promo. The difference between those who win and those who feel frantic is...

It starts with a scroll. She (your perfect, ideal, target customer) is curled up on the couch, unwinding from a long day, phone in hand....

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, I know the difference between your and you’re. I can spot a dangling modifier from 10 paces. But I still post content with the occasional typo. And I do it on purpose. Not because I don’t care about quality (I care deeply). But because in the world of digital marketing, perfection is a bottleneck.

Most service business owners have systems for everything that matters in their business. Their finances have a process, their client onboarding has a workflow, and their invoicing runs on software. They've thought carefully about each of these things because they understand that a business without systems is just a series of problems waiting to happen. And then there's social media - which gets treated like a completely different category that you get to when you have time. S

Let’s talk about the thing no one really wants to talk about, but that every business needs to be aware of. When conflict breaks out -...

OpenAI has rolled out a massive update to ChatGPT’s image-generation tool, and the internet hasn’t stopped talking about it. We’re...