The Overlooked Growth Lever: Mike Barton on the Power of Digital Accessibility

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Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson. And I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. I am really thrilled about the conversation we're having today. My guest has spent his career sitting at the intersection of storytelling and strategy, shaping executive messaging at Adobe across some of their biggest product lines, building a customer marketing function from scratch at Zenoti, and today as the Vice President of Corporate Communication and Content Marketing at AudioEye, where he's leading the case that digital accessibility isn't just the right thing to do, it's one of the most overlooked growth levers in marketing today. I 100% believe this. It's something I teach to my students. Welcome to the show.

I am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Of course. You've built communications and content strategy at 3 very different kinds of company, marketing software giant, SaaS scale-up, and now accessibility. Before we dig into the strategy and the through lines, take us back to what pulled you into content and communications in the first place.

Yeah, interesting story and question. So, I was studying at Northwestern at the time, integrated marketing communication, which back at that time was kind of a, some somewhat a new idea and a new intersection of like making data-driven decisions with kind of creative marketing and advertising. It, there really had been different disciplines.

Absolutely.

For so many decades.

Very siloed.

Yes, exactly. And, you know, so this was leading at the time, and I kind of wondered, well, yeah, what do I do with this? Like, I understand the importance of making decisions based off customer need, basing your marketing and your products off of how you can make your customer's life easier, things like that. And so, at the end of the day, To me, marketing that I found powerful in my own life was marketing that got me to think in a different way. It wasn't just that the product or the company services, like I said, helped me and made something more efficient or better, but it caused me just to think of the world in a different way. And then when I stepped back from that and thought, How does that influence what I do in my career? It was really that storytelling narrative and being a— and treating the end user, the customer, as a human. Especially kind of manifested itself later in my career when I started enterprise marketing and B2B. And I think the mindset there as well initially was very much like, oh, you're talking to a, a business person, you're talking about a— to a buying center. They think differently, they act differently. Like, here's how you have to talk to them. And I disagreed. And I think the— we've kind of quickly quickly come to that realization that at the end of the day, an enterprise buyer is a person at the end, right?

Exactly.

And, uh, they go home and they'll Netflix and chill to forget everything. And so, that to me, I think is the through line of all the different work that I've done, which is there are ways that are powerful to tell stories, to use data as well. So, I think we are able to reframe how people think, not only from like a, a a, a data perspective, but also an emotional. And when you have the logic and the emotion both headed in the same direction, it's much easier to reframe that conversation and to create a customer who is loyal to your brand and, and that idea that you've sold them.

Yeah. And we'll definitely hit on this in a, a couple of minutes because that's one thing I try to impart so often is we don't always get it right, but the more things we can do for our customer, the more ways we can show up for them, the more loyal they'll be. And we were talking about a mutual person in our lives, the blind blogger Maxwell Ivy, and that's one thing that he imparted to me was just the loyalty of an audience that is often overlooked. But be— before we get into that, I wanna talk about building your team from scratch at Zenoti. What was that like? And one, what's one thing that, one aha moment, I guess, when you realized you'd cracked something that actually worked?

Yeah, and we actually kind of went through the same thing at AudioEye as well when I joined, is we wanted to kind of take the function, which was very focused on writing, and expand that to encompass all the channels that the modern buyer use today. And so similarly, whether it's building a complete team from scratch, like building a customer marketing team at Zenoti, Or at AudioEye expanding and building out the content and the communication team. I think there's a few learnings that kind of came out of that. One is it's easy to get people to, especially within the company, to buy into a strategy at the high level. And where I've actually seen that fail in customer marketing, not necessarily at Zenoti, but in general in organizations, the idea behind it is, yes, it makes sense. We need to show value to our customers. We need to continue to reinforce that value in the right moments, whether it's in product or in email, you know, like you might get a Nest report that tells you how efficient you are and things like that. That's all in theory important, but I found that if you don't get the executives as well to buy into how you can accomplish that in a certain time period when it comes to investment in people, investment in programs, All of a sudden where the dollars come in, it suddenly becomes, well, it didn't make sense, but you know, now that it's gonna cost it. So I think as you're building a strategy, showing a level or 2 deeper as well of like, all right, this is why it makes sense, but here's how we're gonna bring it to life. And, uh, in the first 6 months, in the first year, in the first 18 months, and then from there, tying it to as many specific outcomes as possible. Because it's hard to invest in a theoretical strategy, but it's much easier to invest in customer marketing that has specific outcomes tied to it, like faster product adoption, reduced churn, you know, things like that that you can actually measure. So, as I built out those teams, I found driving towards measurable outcomes is really part of that. And then as you're hiring, It is looking for those skills that you've defined within your team that will be necessary for success. And that sounds like a, I think, an easy principle, but I think what a lot of leaders and teams tend to do is hire another version of themselves. And so you get a team of very similarly thinking people, and at the end of the day, your audience is very likely not a unified set of thinkers, set of backgrounds, set of experiences. And so I find that to build a team from scratch, you really need to identify what are certain skills that we need. You don't need somebody who has all the skills. In fact, somebody who has all the skills probably is kind of mediocre in all of them and not great in any of them. And so I think it's identifying those experiences that you're looking for. Again, those kind of differing skills, especially those that you as a leader don't have, so that you're building that team that can truly, as a combined unit, lift each other, lift the work. And then as a leader, again, you're guiding them, you're helping them develop the strategy, but then you're letting them with said skills and said differences go and build the work. So, I think those 2 things are really important. when you're building something from scratch.

I couldn't agree more. The best successes I've had have been when I've had somebody who has the opposite skillset that I have on my team as my right-hand person often. And you're also making me think, when we're talking about accessibility, inclusivity, and what our teams look like, that's a really important part of the process, diversity of thought, but also other types of diversity. Reminds me of Sprout Social had done a survey 'cause they wanted to prove that social media managers were not all white millennial women. And they actually found out that that was the truth for the majority, including on their own team. So, they were trying to pinpoint, oh, it's not true, but actually our own team looks like that. So, what we actually need to do better, and it's something I try to impart as well when I'm building my teams or I'm talking to other people is, You know, do you have people in the room who are not just going to say yes to everything and agree with you and have the same mindset? Do you have people in the room who are not just there to rubber stamp, but actually get to be included in the process? And for us, and part of this conversation today, of course, that leads us to AudioEye and to looking beyond orient— you know, are we male, are we female, what color are we, what background ethnically are we, to so many other things Such as, are you vision impaired? Are you hearing impaired? How are we making sure that we're— we are truly being inclusive of everyone? So, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what was that something that made you realize that, okay, I'm ready to move on to something else, and it's going to be a company that is making a fundamental difference in digital accessibility?

Yeah, so I came across digital accessibility, I think, in the same way that a lot of other marketers that I've talked to come across it, which is they spend a good chunk of their career never thinking about it, never being introduced to it. And then they have their aha moment where it's talking to the Max Ivies of the world, who, as you mentioned, is the blind blogger and is sharing a great message. Or in my case, I came across somebody who I had used to work for in another B2B company and They had gone to AudioEye and they had gone into the accessibility space and just kind of started talking me to it. And as I was just hearing it, it was like all these walls being broken down, all these misperceptions being broken down. I'd be like, oh, that makes sense. Yes, yes. Oh yes. I've never thought about that. And I very quickly realized that all my time at Adobe building content of almost every kind, right? Video, landing pages, interactive experiences, email, social. Not once had I— and I'm stepping in this story of Adobe to my personal experience, not Adobe's accessibility, because they actually have a very good approach to accessibility. But for the content I was creating, I never thought, can a person with a vision disability even consume this interactive experience with the screen reader that they're using? And so it was all these immediate, like, oh wow, I have not been doing this. at all, and that's the case for a lot of marketers. And so I think it's really important to just, again, share the message and like talk about what digital accessibility is, talk about the fact that, as we said earlier, we have all these different audiences and segments that we often think about in a business. Very rarely do we think about the people with disabilities as a segment and how they could be accessing our site and our content and our products and our services, and the fact that they have a huge— spending potential, right? That's another misconception. And the fact that they are trying to live digital lives just like all of us do. And so again, the more that I went through this myself, the more I see others have those aha moments when I'm talking to them about it. It's really not hard. It's just something— or to understand, it's really just something nobody's been introduced to. And despite the fact that 1 in 4 people in the US have a disability of some sort, A lot of those are invisible. So that's why I think when people hear that stat, they're like, oh, that's surprising. But with cognitive disabilities and things like that, but there is so much disability. So it's almost surprising that it is a new subject for so many people. But yeah, once I got into the kind of conversation about it, I was like, yes, this is something I want to be a part of because I've got all these skills that I can bring from the B2B world, the enterprise world, and now kind of join a purpose-driven company who, you know, at the same time is trying to increase revenues. And it's a business that runs by all the typical business metrics, but it's also making a significant difference. We're working with the Maxes of the world to understand how sites can be built for everybody. So.

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And knowing that this is going to be an extra expense on one hand, perhaps, right? Time, talent, making sure that your website is set up with really clear UI and UX. To the other side of, there are also people like when the ADA first came out, right? Compliance. There are people who would be looking for things to sue, places to sue to make sure that rights were actually being implemented. And, and you, you see this for websites nowadays as well. So, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the push-pull between those to make the business case for people to make that investment from the very beginning.

Yeah. And then it is, it is totally that. It's a push-pull where so many people who come to us, and I've been at AudioEye 3 years, so this has actually shifted over that time, but more so initially, a dominant percentage of the initial conversations our sales team was having with somebody who's like, hey, I just got sued. Because a person with a vision disability couldn't access the checkout flow, or somebody who has another disability couldn't do X, Y, or Z, right? And so they're coming reactive, or, hey, I've had 2 of my close CEOs get sued, like, I don't wanna be next, what do I need to do? So it was very reactive, kind of fear-driven, or of the unknown of like, what do I even need to do here so that I don't get sued? for having a non-accessible digital property. But over time, as we've kind of gotten out there and talked more and more about it, we still see that, but we're seeing more companies who now are coming and saying, hey, I do want to be compliant, 'cause I don't want to be sued, obviously, but I see that there are so many business benefits that actually this is less of a cost center item. And a compliance item and more like, this is part of our marketing tech stack budget. And when you're able to kind of shift that conversation to say, hey, for whatever, 5% of your marketing tech stack invested in accessibility, whether that's internal or using a tool or a combination to create these accessible digital experiences, it improves your AEO and your—

Yeah.

GEO and your SEO, it improves your overall customer experience, as you hinted at, and we'll talk about it, improves customer loyalty and retention. So all these things that marketers care about and have dashboards about that they're checking in regularly, I kind of like to make the analogy, you know, the very common analogy that a rising tide lifts all boats. I like to say that the small percentage of your marketing budget that might go towards accessibility is going to be one of those key things that truly does lift the tide and lift the results of all those other channels that you have as a marketer that you're keeping track of. So it's definitely shifting towards an audience who says, okay, I need to think about this differently, accessibility. And it's in a world where knowledge is becoming a commodity with AI, arguably sites and content are kind of being commodified as well with AI. Where do we start to have that differentiation? And that is an area where with this audience of people with disabilities who are so often ignored, so often deal with friction and trouble on websites, the more that you can be a leader in your industry in being accessible, that puts you immediately ahead. And again, with a group who's very loyal.

So many things in there that are lines of questioning and for you to go down. I want to start with one, if you do have an example that you can share of a company that leaning into accessibility really moved the needle for their business, and they were, you know, they're able to see the results pretty tangibly, because I think for a lot of people, they're also like, okay, yeah, this is going to be part of my stack now, but it might, you know, they're thinking it's off in the future that they're going to start seeing results.

Yeah. Yeah. So, we have a number of case studies, and I'd say the common thread in those is kind of what I was just saying, which is they start at it from a compliance angle, but very quickly recognize that SEO and there's other impacts. And so, in one of our case studies of a large travel organization, actually had a number of travel websites, right? They came to that conclusion, people with disabilities, oh yeah, they travel too. They want to be able to understand where they're going and book travel. And so, they went through a big initiative to make all of their websites accessible, which was No small feat, but in so doing, they recognized, hey, this increased our traffic by, you know, 15% because now that our site was more accessible, it influenced SEO because all of the things that the, you know, a Google SEO crawler is looking for in terms of like what's on this page, the specificity that's needed in accessibility on link descriptions, on Uh, image descriptions, those types of things often get kind of not forgot, but passed over when you're just building page over page. And so having things like that, and again, for a travel site where you're describing the look of the room, you're describing the layout of the room, again, because a person who can't see, can't see those photos. So they need those good descriptions. Well, as Google is scraping your page, it has a much clearer understanding and definition. So when people are searching those things, your SEO is going to be impacted. And we're seeing that more and more as well with LLMs as traffic and users are going to the LLMs of their choice to research and even shop. In many cases, the LLMs do a similar exercise. They send their agents out to scrape pages, and if you have an accessible, clear, focused codebase, it's much easier able to pull that information and bring it back to users. So yeah, I think that's ultimately at the end of the day, these types of core values that the businesses are seeing then make it easier to continue that investment. And this travel company found that their return visitors as well were impacted by that in a positive manner. And again, We keep touching on it, but, and Max mentioned it to you, but people with disabilities are an extremely loyal group simply because it's so hard for them to find sites that work.

Mm-hmm.

And so logically, it also makes sense that if somebody finds a travel site that makes it very easy for them, uh, where they're actually able to accomplish the checkout process and, you know, book something, or research something effectively, the first thing they're gonna do is tell their other friends and family with disabilities like, hey, next time you're going to travel, use such and such, 'cause I was able to do it, you know, perfectly. And in addition to other people with disabilities, which again, they're a very tight-knit and big community, they've got friends and family who might not have the same disabilities, but I, as a person who has a brother or sister or a friend who has a disability, If I find out there's a site and a company that's prioritizing their needs and actually thinking about them as an audience, that makes me more likely to use that company and that site as well because they're looking out for this group who is often not looked out for. And again, this group, it's numbers in terms of conversion, it's numbers in terms of dollars, but they are people.

Yeah.

I, that at the end of the day is the strongest when it comes to retention and when it comes to loyalty. It's those authentic connections that are your biggest driver, and that's what you're dealing with here.

Oh, just thinking about people as people. What, you know, what a unique thought. You touched on LLMs for search, and that is a way that anecdotally we hear a lot of people Finding things, we still know that Google and YouTube and TikTok are also search functions and you know other search sites, and that the crawlers are looking at two things now. Right? They might go to Google, and they're also going over here. They're looking at our sites. They're looking at reviews. So I appreciate that you mentioned some things. You know that this is actually really helpful because it creates a lot more clarity for these crawlers who are trying to find out and index information about our sites or our. Any of our materials.

Yeah. And there's a principle in there that also impacts another very hard-to-measure benefit, but I'm a firm believer that when you're following accessibility best practices, yes, you're making it usable and better for any person with a disability, but anybody without a disability, you're making it more clear, you're making it easier to navigate. So, like, another thing that just happens on almost every B2B site. And you could extrapolate that to any site in general. They use jargon, they overly speak in overly complex ways about the simple benefits that they provide. And they kind of forget again that at the end, on the other side of that screen is a person who's maybe multitasking, who has many things going on, and they don't have the mental capacity to interpret your jargon or your product marketing positioning and how that influences them. So when you're writing for a person with a disability, especially if you're thinking about people who might have cognitive disabilities, and you write as focused, as simple, using, you know, as few words as possible to get an idea across, those are all principles that if any marketer or website were to implement, they'd probably see immediate impact to their, all of their metrics because that message gets across more clean. And That's the same thing that these LLMs are looking for is they get a question, they want to be able to very succinctly answer that question in 2 to 3 lines. And if you have a one page on one website that takes its time to answer that question and wants to tell a really compelling story and set it up, like that sounds good on paper, but if you have another site that just very succinctly answers that, The LLM is going to pull that in because that's what it's trying to do is give a succinct answer. And so in, again, building, these are also overlapped that you see the benefit to the user with a disability. You see the added comprehension and clarity for any other user to your site, and you make it easier for the LLMs to pull in those very simple answers that their users are looking for as well.

I love it. Is there a misconception that marketers have about accessibility that you find yourself having to correct?

It's not a question of is there, it's a question of which one do I want to talk about today, right? So I think there's probably 2. The first being people with disability aren't a segment of mine, or people with disability don't use my product or service, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Uh, when you just have that in there. So when I first came to AudioEye, I was talking with somebody who said, what is digital accessibility? He owned a company, had a website, and until I explained it to him, he's like, oh, that's interesting. That doesn't really apply to me in, in my situation, but like, I see the value. And I was like, well, hold on, let's talk about it. Like, so he sold, um, like post-workout supplements, uh, protein. And I said, yeah, you might make the assumption that people with disabilities don't work out, but the reality is that they do. And some might not go to a gym, they might do it in their house. But think about it this way, that you've got that segment, which is your typical workout segment that might include people with disabilities, but also people with disabilities need to be healthy. Protein is, is, is something you also need to have. So there could be a market segment here that you're not even thinking about of people people with disabilities who just want to eat healthier in their life. And, you know, because you have that perception, you know what I mean? And he's like, oh, that is a really good point. So I think that, you know, it goes back to your point before of hiring people who are similar on your team or have the same experiences. That limits the potential of your marketing. It limits the potential of your products and your services. So I think by bringing down those walls of like, people with disabilities don't wanna engage with my company. If you take a step back, 9.9 times out of 10, there's an opportunity for them and you as a business. And related to that is just the idea that also people with disabilities aren't a big spending population, which is categorically untrue. You know, trillions of dollars of spending potential. And then again, when you work in their friends and family, who are also loyal to the similar businesses, that just expands exponentially. So that's the first 2 that I say to people who kind of initially are thinking, all good, sounds good, but apply to me is it does. And there's likely a lot more opportunity that you're leaving on the table by having those misconceptions.

Yeah.

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And as you were saying that, I'm thinking One of the other people I had on my— I've had somebody with Tourette's on the podcast. I've had somebody who's known as Jimmy the Crazy Fitness Guy, who has a few different things going on, but he's been able to monetize despite his disability or celebrating his disability by having a podcast, by being a workout person who's showing that yes, everybody needs these. I've had— I have a whole bunch of other examples I could share. And every single one of those conversations helped open my eyes to it more and more. But also to your point, people want to go on podcasts, even people, you know, even quote people who might be differently abled and share their messages. So yeah, I mean, I'm just—

That reminds me of a campaign which I love called Assume That I Can. So I would recommend your listeners go and check that out. It's on YouTube. But it was a campaign of somebody with Down syndrome and kind of going through daily examples of things that she can and wants to do, but people assume that she can't. Going to the bar and drinking with friends, working out, going to the store, all these things where she says, my limitations are generally defined by your assumptions. And So, you know, the whole crux of it is stop thinking that I can't do things and just assume that I can. And it's super powerful because again, it gets you to kind of have that personal reframe. It gets you brought into the story as well, where you're probably like, I probably have done that. I've probably made those assumptions and I've limited other people's potential or other people's ability to do X, Y, or Z because I just assumed that they can't. And so that to me is like one of the most powerful videos and examples that all of us, I think, can relate to and come out watching it being like, yes, I need to think differently about people with disabilities and how it, how it applies to the work that I do.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to check that out. And I'm also probably going to use that in my classes. So, on LinkedIn, you call yourself a content sourcer. You're half joking, but it does point to something real about modern marketing and what we have to do. What does the job look like today versus even 5 years ago?

You know, that's an interesting question, especially with AI. And my perspective of AI 6 to 8 months ago was like very much offended to a degree. Like I took it very personally, right? It's like, I'm a writer, no machine can write better than me or no machine can replace. And I very quickly kind of changed that and recognized that using AI in the right ways can actually amplify the work that I'm doing. In many cases, it can speed it up. I think where kind of content and AI, where the friction happens is when you see these videos or these people who are like, I created 10 AI agents and content agents and they went out and wrote all these articles. They post them to the site. I just sit back and let it all happen. That is where AI slop comes from, right? We see LinkedIn very recently added a little button where if you are reading something that you feel like was just all AI, you can tag it as AI slop. So I think for like the modern content strategist, a modern content marketer, it's finding that balance of how do I use the power of AI, but still infuse it and still make it human, still make it me. I think that's where the content success of the future is. To an ironic degree, I think the last couple months have really highlighted that AI will not replace human thought. It will not replace human creativity and storytelling. But there are ways again that it can kind of speed it up, it can open up new doors. So I think to me, that's how content has evolved is you're just using the current environment, you're understanding how those stories should be delivered, how ultimately they're being consumed differently by the person at the other end. 'Cause by this, this other thread that we keep coming back to is that people are people. And so people want authenticity, they want that story, but what we have to figure out as the months and the years go on is how do we deliver it the right way for today based off of how that end user is going to be consuming it. So that's to me how content changes. Like those underlying principles are really not changing, and which is a good thing, I think, for again, the, the human who's trying to, to tell those stories and trying to connect and get people to think differently. It's just being a few months ahead and keeping your eye out to understand where do I need to be and how do I need to be sharing it so that that consumer is able to, to get it from me.

So, yeah. I love that you're talking about this because I have seen so many big brands have to come out and say, no, we didn't use AI when we created this logo or we created this video or this commercial. Here's the process behind the scenes because they're losing that brand trust and that consumer confidence in their brands. I think today was the first time I actually saw something on social media where it was like labeled as AI, because I think a lot of times people put up AI videos and they don't label it properly. But we just have, we have the EU AI Act, which is now, as of, you know, a little less than 2 weeks ago, in effect. And I mean, Anthropic is changing the way that they watermark things. So, I, I think we're gonna see— this shift, and I do completely agree with you that the storytelling, right, that narrative, that connection we make, like doing— if we were doing this podcast with just our AI voices going back and forth or letting agents write our conversation, it would not be anywhere near as rich and we wouldn't be able to, to go off on different tangents and talk about different things that would not have otherwise come up in the conversation. So, yeah.

One of my favorite principles in a team to get the best story. And really, again, when you're trying to say, all right, we've got the needs of the customer, we've got the business things that we want to sell and do, finding the overlap and finding kind of the story that brings it all together. The idea of the brain trust, where you have a culture on your team that you can share your idea and have it torn apart so that you get to a better idea where there's the, you don't have fear to share your ideas. You accept the criticism, you accept the other ideas because almost nobody will have the right idea initially. And the idea that's the 3rd or 4th or 5th one is almost always a much better one. And so there's this culture where you have to be able to within teams go through that and go through the pain of hearing that your idea isn't quite there and it's not quite where it needs to be. I think there are some ways where you can use AI to be that other voice for you, where you can train it to disagree with you, where you can train it to poke holes in your thought process. I still don't think that replaces a group of people in a team, but that's, I think, how an example of where AI can help you push your thinking, push your ideas, not ask it for the ideas, but help you to get to a stronger one as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So, when people hear AudioEye, what are they thinking that you do versus what you actually are able to deliver?

Yeah, that is a good— I think they don't know initially because they also don't know what the request really is, so they don't know. If you don't know what it is, it's like, well, I don't know what solution I need either. So it is a lot of education in terms of digital accessibility is just the making your website so that people with disabilities with different types of technology. So somebody who's blind, we've talked about, uses a screen reader that literally reads the code to them and goes through the headers and the, you know, the image description and the copy. And so if that's all labeled out of order and not clear, they have no idea what's going on and they don't know where if they click, they're going to. Some people can't use a mouse, and so they're only tabbing on a keyboard. And unfortunately, a lot of sites, if you're just trying to tab through, you'll get stuck somewhere. So in understanding that it's super complex, I think also companies get overwhelmed and there's like, my developers, my content marketers, my designers, they don't know the best practices. So like, I guess maybe we'll get to it next year or next quarter, right? So what AudioEye does is combines both technology to scale it for websites where you can install some code and that automated code will find issues on your site and make fixes based off of, you know, years and years of data. But the reality is websites and, and things like this are so contextual, so personalized that automation just can't do everything. So it is a balance of using technology. Mm-hmm. Where it makes sense and where it works. And then also we have expert auditors who go into a company's website and say, let's look at your checkout flow, let's look at your key conversion pages and opportunities and make sure that somebody with a disability on a screen reader or using just a keyboard can navigate all the way and purchase a product as an example. And then we would take the things that the human finds, write the code fixes and also implement those as well. So at the end of the day, AudioEye is a company that helps make it easier to be digitally accessible so that companies don't have to go out and hire developers who have that expertise or deprioritize other revenue-driving initiatives that they have because they've got to take time. So we found an approach that makes it easier for companies to be accessible While kind of avoiding some of the pains that keep them from investing or focusing on it in the first place.

Yeah.

Mike, where do you see content marketing and executive communications heading over the next couple of years?

Yeah, I think it's, um, more of kind of what we just hit on with finding that balance of AI and human. I think unfortunately, I think our lives are just going to become even more inundated with messages from entertainment to people connecting with us in LinkedIn and immediately trying to sell us something to the various websites. But we are going increasingly digital. And so I think the marketers and especially the content marketers of the future really do find a way to say things differently. And find a way to break through the clutter. Again, I'm not saying anything that's revolutionary here. It's just the things that most marketers and most content marketers don't take the time to think through and don't take the kind of step back to say and evaluate, is this great idea that I just put on paper, is it any different than anything else our competitor's saying? Is the way that we are planning on sharing it gonna be different than not even our competitors, but the other 100 business-related messages that they might get in a day in their inbox, in LinkedIn, in ads that they're being served on their various social presence. So I think being able to simplify a message in a way that resonates and stands out is super simple, but at the same time, extremely difficult. And that's why so many companies fail at it, right? There's the old attributed to Mark Twain quote of like, he writes a letter and, I would've written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time.

Yeah.

And that, I love that overused quote because it's so accurate, which is getting an idea succinctly said, is one of the hardest things that a writer does. So I think the successful writers of the future will do that. And again, it's a battle with AI because AI is trained on the internet, it's trained on the generality, and it's trained on all those generic ideas that don't work are a lot of what it will feed you when you're asking it for ideas. So that's the content marketer of the future is dialing in those core principles, which will be even more needed in the future.

100%.

The, our human advantage over AI, as we continue seeing what are those advantages going to be, how can we really truly differentiate ourselves and not go into that sea of sameness?

Yes.

Yeah, I appreciate that. That was a really great quote, but I do always ask if my guests have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, Do you have another quote you'd like to share to end our show today?

Yeah, this isn't a quote and as much as maybe a thought. I have like thoughts with my family that like, you know, if like you'll be out and about and something will happen, you might, that just kind of becomes a thematic thing. So the one this time is that life's detours are not detours, but they're the path you're supposed to be on. And I think that applies in the work world as much as it implies in the personal world that, you know, you might have, which is every time that I thought in my career something went wrong, maybe that's getting let go. Maybe it's that my idea didn't get selected for such and such campaign. The direction of the company strategy isn't where I— insert whatever it is here. The majority of time, that detour that I thought was taking me away from kind of where I needed to be and where I was gonna go eventually was actually the road that I was supposed to be on. Or it was the idea that we were supposed to run with. It was the campaign. It was the layoff I needed so I could get to the next step in my path. So that to me is the kind of the current one, which is if you feel like you're on that detour, which sounds so trite when you're in the middle of the fork or when you're going down it. But I think it helps with that larger perspective of where can it take me? How do I seize an opportunity from this different path that I'm on? And I think if you have that perspective shift, you get to that kind of the end of it sooner and you're able to take more advantage of it than rather kind of just, why am I on this road.

So, yeah, I think that's a really important one, particularly in light of all of the changes that are going on in the world and the digital world with people looking for jobs, you know, with, with everything going on, thinking about the detour being the best part of your destination, right? Yeah.

The detour is the journey, not the— yeah, I like that a lot.

Yeah. That's really, really beautiful. Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show and validating all of the things I've been telling my students about accessibility and why this is— do not overlook, and we can't impart this more deeply to everybody who's listening. You know, 1 in 4, 25% of people in the United States, we're not even looking at the globe, just in the United States, has something that they're dealing with, right?

Yeah.

And that is the audience that you're leaving out. When you don't speak to them, when you don't provide clarity to them, when you're not making it easy for them to find and use your product, your service, your website, right?

Yeah.

Even your social media content.

Yes. And, you know, I love the fact that you are teaching that. I think that is missed in so many colleges and curriculum. And for students who are learning that, that is another differentiator for them as they're going into the workforce. And they might be looking at a job with a similar candidate, with a similar background, but if they're able to say, you know, I've got this kind of mindset of thinking accessible, of thinking of different audiences, thinking inclusive, that can and is a big differentiator for them as well as they're going out. So, that's, I think, a fantastic way to set them up for success also.

Well, thank you again. This has been such a lovely conversation, and I'm grateful that you had the time to come on the show today.

Yeah, it was my pleasure. I loved it. Uh, appreciated the time.

Awesome. And thank you to everybody who is listening to this episode or watching it with or without captions on your favorite site. Um, I'll be back again with another amazing guest to share their story, their journey, and some things that you should think about for your business. But this is definitely one to think about. How are you implementing these best practices? And, you know, they don't have to be difficult. They just need to be. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

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