You sit down to write or shoot a short video. You want to sound smart, credible, professional. So you run with something about how your solution “empowers teams to streamline workflows and drive measurable results through innovative approaches.”
And congratulations: You just wrote a sentence that could describe literally any B2B company on earth.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most B2B content is completely interchangeable. You could swap logos and nobody would notice. Same structure, same phrases, same safe takes that say nothing anyone would disagree with or remember.
The question is why. And more importantly, how do you fix it?
The Safety Trap
Most content sounds generic because teams are optimizing for safety, not connection. They’re afraid of saying something wrong, so they say nothing specific. They’re worried about alienating potential customers, so they speak to everyone and resonate with no one.
This shows up in a few predictable ways. You hedge every claim: “This approach may help improve efficiency in certain contexts.” You use abstract business jargon instead of concrete language: “leveraging synergies” instead of “working together.” You avoid taking any stance that someone might disagree with.
The result? Content that’s technically accurate but completely forgettable. Nobody quotes it, nobody shares it, and nobody remembers you wrote it.
The Phrases That Give You Away
Here are the words and phrases that instantly signal “this could be written by anyone”:
Empower.
Streamline.
Leverage.
Optimize.
Drive results.
Do these sound familiar?
Innovative solutions.
Best practices.
Cutting-edge.
Game-changer.
Revolutionize.
Seamless.
Robust.
Scalable.
Next-level.
Butter-adjacent.
OK. That last one was a joke.
These are all empty words that mean nothing. They’ve been used so many times that there’s just nothing there anymore, and your reader knows it. When you write “we empower teams to leverage innovative solutions,” you’re saying nothing.
Try this: Read your draft out loud. If you wouldn’t actually say these phrases in a real conversation, cut them. If they sound like they came from a corporate press release, they probably did, and your reader will tune out.
How to Find Your Actual Point of View
Here’s the fix: stop trying to sound professional and start trying to sound like yourself. Or more specifically, like the smartest person at your company explaining something to a skeptical customer.
Ask yourself: what do we believe that our competitors don’t? What conventional wisdom in our industry is actually wrong? What do customers misunderstand that we keep having to correct?
Those answers are your point of view. That’s where your differentiation lives. Not in “innovative solutions,” in the specific ways you think about the problem differently than everyone else.
For example, don’t write: “Our platform empowers teams to optimize their workflows.” Write: “Most project management tools assume your team works in a predictable rhythm. Ours doesn’t, because we’ve never met a team that actually does.”
See the difference? One is generic. The other has a perspective.
The Dinner Party Test
Here’s a simple filter: would you say this sentence at dinner?
If someone asked you what your company does, you wouldn’t say “we leverage cutting-edge technology to drive measurable outcomes.” You’d say something like: “We help sales teams stop wasting time on admin work so they can actually sell.”
That’s the voice you want in your content. Conversational, specific, and clear enough that a stranger would understand it.
If your content sounds like it was written by a committee of people afraid to offend anyone, it probably was. And that’s exactly why nobody’s reading it.
Simple Editing Moves That Add Voice
Go through your draft and look for these patterns, then fix them:
Replace vague claims with specific ones. Instead of “increase efficiency,” say “cut meeting time in half.” Instead of “improve outcomes,” say “close deals 30% faster.”
Cut the hedging. Delete “may,” “might,” “in some cases,” and “often.” If you’re not confident enough to make a direct claim, don’t make it at all.
Add examples. Every abstract point should be followed by a concrete story or scenario. Generalities are forgettable. Specifics stick.
Use shorter sentences. Long, winding sentences feel formal and distant. Short ones feel direct and human.
Read it out loud. If you stumble, your reader will too. If it sounds stiff, rewrite it until it doesn’t.
When to Break From the Pack
You don’t need to be contrarian on everything. But you do need to be willing to stake a claim somewhere.
Pick one thing you genuinely believe that goes against the grain. Maybe it’s that your industry’s “best practices” are outdated. Maybe it’s that the problem everyone’s focused on isn’t actually the real problem. Maybe it’s that the conventional solution doesn’t work as well as people think.
Whatever it is, say it clearly and defend it. That’s how you build a point of view. And a point of view is what separates content people remember from content they scroll past.
The Bottom Line
Your content sounds like everyone else’s because you’re playing it safe. You’re using the same words, making the same safe claims, and avoiding anything someone might push back on.
But safe is forgettable. And forgettable doesn’t build a brand.
So cut the jargon. Get specific. Take a stance. Sound like an actual human explaining something they understand deeply to someone who doesn’t.
That’s the difference between content that blends in and content that stands out.
And standing out is the whole point.