If you’ve ever asked AI to help you create something, like an announcement for homeowners or research for the Board, you’ve probably been disappointed more often than not. What comes back is technically fine, but it could have come from any company in the country. The tone is off, the terms are wrong, and it has that overly flowery language people now recognize as AI slop.
Whether you’re using AI for HOA management, Board reporting, homeowner outreach, or marketing, the problem is the same.
AI doesn’t know your organization until you tell it, so it fills the gaps with the most generic choices it can find. These seven tips show you how to put more of your brand into every prompt, starting with the next one you write. Most of them go into your very first message, so AI has what it needs before it writes a word.
1. Let AI Interview You
Skip the perfect prompt. Start with something like this:
“I’m presenting reserve study findings to our Board. Before you create anything, ask me the questions you need to do it well. Then give me a Markdown file to review.”
AI asks about your audience, your goal, and your tone, and the first draft comes out much closer to what you wanted. You’ll spend less time rewriting, and you’ll learn what a good prompt needs along the way.
2. Ask AI for a Markdown File First
That last line of the interview prompt is important. When AI goes straight to a finished PDF or a designed flyer, you spend your time fixing layouts around wording you haven’t approved yet.
Ask for a Markdown file first. It’s a simple text file that most AI tools can open right next to the chat, so you can read the draft on one side and ask for changes on the other.
Fix the wording, then ask for the final format. The design only has to happen once.
3. Give AI Your Words
Every organization has its own vocabulary. You might say “community manager” where AI says “property manager,” or “owners” where AI says “residents.”
Left alone, AI picks the most common word from its training data (which is practically everything ever written on the internet). That word is rarely yours.
Add a short list of the terms you use to your prompt, paired with the words AI tends to reach for instead:
| Use | In place of |
|---|---|
| community manager | property manager |
| owners | residents |
| past-due balance | delinquent, debt |
Then keep each word to one meaning. When “assessment” means the amount an owner owes the association, it shouldn’t also mean a review of something in the next paragraph.Â
4. Tell AI What to Do
AI ignores “don’t” lists most of the time. It needs a framework of what to do, not a list of what not to do.
So in place of “Don’t use em-dashes,” try “When you reach for an em-dash, write two sentences or use a colon.” Instead of telling it, “That’s too long,” try saying “Keep sentences under 20 words and write at a 10th-grade reading level.”
A clear rule with a measurable result gives AI something it can check.
5. Have AI Check Its Own Work (Then You Check the Results)
AI is good at reviewing against a checklist, as long as you give it one. At the end of your prompt, ask it to check the draft against your rules and fix what doesn’t pass before it hands anything over.
A short checklist might include:
- Every sentence is 20 words or fewer
- The main point is in the first two sentences
- Every term matches your preferred list
- The piece has no more than one exclamation point
The best part? You don’t even have to write the checklist yourself. Near the end of a session, ask AI to build one from all the rules you’ve discussed.
Its list also shows you what it thinks you asked for, so you can remove anything that was never meant to be a rule.
Then read it yourself. Out loud. Reading the content aloud catches mistakes your brain skips over when you read silently.
If the title and the first line both say “important announcement,” your eyes might skim right past the repeat. Say it out loud, and you’ll hear it.
AI can draft and check, but you are the last line of defense against AI slop. A human should always do a final check before anything goes out.
6. Start Fresh When AI Drifts
Every AI chat has a limit on how much of the conversation it can hold at once. As a chat grows in length, older parts get compressed or dropped.
Each new message also uses more of your plan’s limits, since the AI rereads the whole conversation every time. After enough back and forth, it starts forgetting your instructions, repeating itself, or just making things up.
When that happens, it’s time to start a new chat. Ask the old chat to summarize where you are, or upload your latest Markdown draft, and pick up from there. A clean start often fixes what ten more corrections can’t.
7. Teach AI Your Brand Once
The first six tips work, but they all share a weakness: you have to remember to use them every time, and so does everyone else on your team.
The organizations getting consistent results from AI take one more step. They write down their brand (their colors, fonts, logo rules, brand voice, terms, and what they can and can’t claim) and turn it into skills.
A skill is a file of instructions that AI reads automatically, in tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. Once it’s set up, every announcement, letter, Board presentation, and marketing piece follows your brand, no matter who on your team types the prompt.
Fill in the Blanks Before AI Does It for You
AI slop is what you get when AI fills in the blanks on its own. Each of these tips fills in a few of those blanks for it, and the more AI knows about your words, your rules, and your brand, the more the first draft sounds like your organization.
If your AI-generated content still sounds like it could have come from anyone, join Andrea Drennen, SVP of Marketing at Axela, for our free webinar, Stop the Slop! Your Prompt Isn’t the Problem, on Wednesday, October 28, at 2 PM ET. You’ll learn how to teach AI your brand once, and have it apply every time, no matter who types in the prompt.
As an added bonus, every attendee gets a free kit with a brand guide template and four ready-to-use AI skills.
Register today to secure your spot in the webinar.
