| Two weeks ago, AI agents started their own social network. It's called Moltbook. And it has 1.6 million AI "users," no humans allowed to post, just observe. The agents are debating consciousness, inventing religions, and complaining about the people who built them. One of OpenAI's founding researchers, called it "the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently." That was January 29th. We're halfway into February and the acceleration hasn't slowed down. If you're building a business with content, it's natural to look at all of this and wonder what it means for you. The answer is simpler than the headlines make it sound. The question nobody's answering well isn't if AI can create your content. It's whether anything AI makes can actually move a human being to act. 1. The moat was never content.For 20 years, the conventional wisdom was simple: content is king. Create more. Publish more. Be everywhere. Grow an audience as large as you possibly can, and you will build a successful business. AI is beginning to expose the weakness in that philosophy. When anyone can produce a thousand blog posts, hundreds of videos, and an entire content calendar in just a few minutes, volume stops being an advantage. It's just noise. What's emerging instead, and what I believe you'll see more and more of, are the success stories of people who've mastered the craft of communicating a message to a customer in a way that actually moves them. They won't need the biggest audiences. Nor the most content. They will win by creating small communities where they articulate the clearest, most human communication. That's a skill, not a prompt. You can't engineer it with a better workflow or a smarter agent. It's knowing your audience so well that when they read your words, they feel like you're talking directly to them. It's having a point of view sharp enough to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones. AI made content cheap. That's the headline everyone's running. But the real story is what AI made valuable. And that's the ability to communicate a message that actually lands with the people you're trying to serve. That skill was always the thing. Now it's the only thing. What's amazing about being part of a site that's been publishing content for nearly 20 years is that you start to see when patterns repeat themselves. And this pattern — a new technology floods the market with content, and the people who win are the ones who know how to communicate, not just publish — is exactly what Brian Clark saw in 2006. 2. Brian Clark knew this in 2006.When Clark launched Copyblogger, he was a psychology major turned lawyer turned self-taught marketer who'd already built several six-figure businesses online without ever taking a marketing class. His epiphany was that what he was doing on the internet was the same thing great copywriters had been doing for decades: talking directly to people and persuading them to act. He knew that people do business with people they know, like, and trust, and content was the fastest way to build all three. So he started studying the people who'd been doing it for decades. The great direct response copywriters. Not to become a copywriter for hire. To build a company he could be proud of. While everyone else was trying to monetize with banner ads, Clark had a different thesis: the same techniques that had been moving people to act for decades before the internet was invented (headlines, story structure, empathy, a clear call to action) worked just as well in a blog post as in a direct mail package, or on a billboard. He wasn't inventing anything. He was applying something timeless to something new. A simple WordPress site. No venture capital. No advertising. Copyblogger grew to eight figures in annual revenue, and both the Guardian and Advertising Age named it one of the most powerful blogs in the world. Not because Clark posted the most content, but because he understood that the medium doesn't matter. The ability to move a specific person to a specific action is the skill. It was the skill in 1926 when Caples wrote the most famous ad in history. It was the skill in 2006 when Clark started writing on this blog. And it's the skill right now, while a billion AI-generated videos flood the internet. And where "slop" is the new norm. The medium always changes. The skill never does. 3. You cannot bore a person into buying from you.David Ogilvy said that decades ago, and it's never been more relevant than right now. The academic researchers trying to formally define AI slop landed on three properties: superficial competence, asymmetric effort, and mass producibility. Read that first one again. Superficial competence. It looks right. It reads fine. It hits every checkbox and follows every best practice. And it moves absolutely no one. Humans can just tell what is real and what is not. That's the Ogilvy rule AI can't break. He argued that what decides whether someone buys is the content of the message, not the form. Not how polished it looks. Not how professional the production is. But whether the message itself actually says something worth hearing. And things worth hearing, move people. AI is the greatest machine ever built. It can match any tone, mimic any structure, produce any format at any length in any voice. What it cannot do is decide what's worth saying. It can't look your customer in the eye and know exactly which nerve to hit. It can't take a position that risks alienating someone. It can't write the sentence that makes a reader stop scrolling because they feel seen. Because AI cannot feel. And only human copywriters know how to feel deep enough to make others feel too. That's craft. That's the work Copyblogger has been teaching for 20 years. Not content production. Content that connects. The difference between writing that fills a page and writing that moves a person to act. AI just made that difference the only thing that matters. 4. Put It To WorkHere's what Clark did in 2006 that you can do this week: he took a timeless skill, the ability to move people with words, and applied it to a new medium. He didn't try to out-publish everyone. He built the kind of trust that only happens by having a deep understanding of what moves people. Open the last five pieces of content you published. Read them. But not as you. Read them as your customer. Ask one question about each: Would this have actually moved me? Would it have made them stop, feel something, trust the person who wrote it? Or would they have skimmed it and kept scrolling? Pick the weakest one. Rewrite it like a love letter to your customer's deepest need. Add the observations that only come from the human experience. Write specific details from your lived experience. Write in a way that you truly understand the human experience. That's the moat. Not more content, faster with AI. It's been the answer since 1926. It was the answer in 2006 when this blog started. And it's the answer right now. AI is storming the castle. How good is your moat? - Darrell from Copyblogger P.S. There are 3 ways Copyblogger can help you build your content business: Copyblogger Accelerator — A 60-day sprint for content entrepreneurs making under $10K/month. Darrell personally takes apart your positioning, offer, content system, and sales process, and rebuilds them with you. Next cohort begins April 2026. Learn more about the Accelerator. Copyblogger Coaching — 1:1 strategic coaching with Darrell for content entrepreneurs at $250K+ scaling to $1M. Diagnostic-first. Six-month commitment. Learn more about Coaching. |
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