Leveraging Content Marketing in An AI World with Joe Pulizzi

Welcome back everyone to another installment of Mastering Tech Growth. Today we have Joe Pulizzi, who's a content marketing guru. By the way guys, I went to Joe's LinkedIn page, you know, just to make the intro right now, and I was like, hey, This guy is huge. So I picked up a couple of details, Joe, but you probably will need to add more. So Joe is a founder of multiple startups, including content creator newsletter, The Tilt. He as well has a content entrepreneur event called Creator Economy Expo. He's an author of 7 books, one of, one of which is a must-read business book as coined by Future Magazine. He as well has multiple podcasts. Has a foundation, The Orange Effect, which delivers speech therapy and technology services to over 350 children in 35 states. Welcome, Joe.

Mike, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And so I'm glad I have all that stuff on my LinkedIn page for you.

It's a lot, Joe. I mean, I honestly, I was scrolling through the feed and your description. I was like, why can't I just pick to sort of give everyone the feeling of your persona. So can you give us a little bit of your background, Joe? How did you end up in content marketing? What are you currently doing? And what's in the future for Joe?

Yeah, I mean, the reason why I have all those things, Mike, is because I've been around for 25 years. So that'll do that. I started in publishing in 2000, so 24 years ago, and I fell in. And so business-to-business publishing. And as part of that company, I was in charge of the custom media division, which basically we're going to talk about content marketing, but it's basically in, in instead of what this company did was sell exhibit spots and advertising in print magazines and those types of things. We were reaching out to large businesses like Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and helping them tell their stories. And So we did print mag— custom print magazines for them, and that led into webinar programs, and that led into podcasts and social media. And so from there, you know, the content marketing revolution, as they say, happened, and I got really involved and went down the rabbit hole, left the publishing company. It was called Pent Media. We left, launched Content Marketing Institute, which is probably what I'm best known for, and then from there launched the event Content Marketing World, which became and still is today the largest in-person event for content marketing. I think in 2015, we had 4,000 attendees from like 70 different countries coming into Cleveland, Ohio. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, so coming into Cleveland, Ohio. And I've been talking about content marketing ever since. I fell in love with the practice. I think that it's very difficult to do. It takes a lot of time, but it is the absolute best form of marketing on the planet. And I'm partial. That's okay. Um, but, but we'll talk about the details of it. And then from there, you know, I've written a bunch of books, like you said, and I've just— I love talking with individuals and companies about how they can build valuable audiences through this philosophy of content marketing.

Well, we're going to learn a lot today, and I know I'm going to learn a lot today. And as in the podcast, we care about content as well. So just to give a flavor for everyone listening, so we'll go into the into the how, the what, and the why of content marketing in the beginning. And then hopefully we're going to touch on some bigger trends with content marketing, which is the short-term content. We all love it, or are we all addicted to it? You know, role of AI, generative AI right now in the content marketing and some couple other bigger trends. So Joe, just to kick this off, why should I care about— what is content marketing and why should I care about it?

Well, if, if you want to be part of an innovative company, you definitely want to care. By the way, not every company needs to do content marketing. You can, you can advertise, you can market very traditionally. There's a lot of businesses and industries out there that do just fine without any cohesive content marketing strategy. But if, if you want to, uh, really break through and grow significantly, I think you have to build strong relationships with your customers. And there's no better way to do that than with content marketing. So basically, you know, just to give people an idea, we're just throwing out content and marketing together. Traditionally, the way everyone did it is you had fewer media channels and we would then leverage. So let's say, uh, the New York Times or Financial Times or television or radio. So people own those relationships, media companies own those relationships with that audience, And we as companies would rent that space. We would buy advertisements in order to say, hey, you know, while they're listening to this really popular program that they like, we're going to try to distract them for a while and say, hey, I know you're listening to this thing, I know you're reading this article in this magazine, but here I am, buy my products and services. That's traditional marketing. That's basically interruption marketing. And because Google came along, because We have now the access to create content all sorts of different ways, and it's not as expensive as it used to be. We could say, like, we could still do advertising, we can still interrupt people, and it does work. I mean, look at Facebook ads, it works really, really well. But what if we want to have— build a relationship with that audience, have them come to know, like, and trust us over a long period of time? We actually want to be the media. We want to be the magazine they're engaging with. We want to be the social media that they're engaging with, the newsletter, the email newsletter, the event, the webinar series, the podcast. We want to build that relationship. So that's where a lot of companies are saying, look, we've done all this stuff in the past. That's great, but let's create our own podcast. Let's create our own YouTube video show. Let's create our own newsletter so that we can build a relationship. And the whole goal is, I mean, this is— we're talking about marketing here. So we want to focus on marketing goals. What are we trying to do? Are we trying to, uh, to, to get more people in our funnel that weren't aware of us before so we can sell them stuff? So lead generation. Are we trying to create more loyal customers so they stay with us longer? Are we trying to create customers who will buy more stuff from us? Those are all the types of content marketing goals that we might have. And then we do the thing, we do it over a long period of time, and we measure it and hope that it works. And It's worked fairly well. Just to throw up before we get to some more things, a lot of people think that content marketing is relatively new and it's not. It's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. There's really amazing case studies. For example, manufacturer and agricultural John Deere has had the Furrow magazine since 1895, and that's not even some of the oldest ones we could throw out. It's just evolved because now everyone can get media with them and, you know, in 2 seconds because they have a smartphone, and anyone can create media in 2 seconds because they have a smartphone. So that's changed everything. And now you've got every, you know, you've got so much content competition out there, you've got to be pretty good at what you're doing in order to build that audience.

I want to dig into that relationship. It takes time, isn't it? So yes, I want to build trust, you know, and I want people to stay effectively, read my content, watch my content, consume my content. And then of course 'cause of their trust that I will probably be able to sell or convince them, whatever is the goals. Like, what should I expect? I'm a startup, maybe I'm just starting. Like, what's my game here? Like, how do I think about the strategy? How do I think about the type of content I want to do? Maybe distribution channel and what journey am I looking? Is it a year? Is it 2 years? Should I sort of brace myself and not expect quick results? Let's dig into that.

Yeah, so first of all, it is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes a long time to build an audience. If you look at any media company since the dawn of time that started, they do 3-year plans, and they do 3-year plans because it takes a long time to build an audience and monetize that audience. So the first thing you want to do is make sure when you think about the content you're going to deliver, this is not— it's not content about you. This is not content that's your products or your services. This is something that's going to help your customer, your prospect, your audience, whoever that audience is you're targeting in some way. Help them get a better job, live a better life, whatever it is. So the first thing you want to do before— don't just go start creating content. You want to figure out, okay, who's the specific audience that you're trying to target? And be very specific. If you're a business-to-business company, you might have 6, 7, 8, 9 different types of audience personas. So you need to pick one. And then once you pick that audience, you figure out, okay, what's their pain points? What keeps them up at night? Okay, that's my— and then you go back to your marketing. Well, what am I trying to do? Is this a lead generation goal? Is this, is this a loyalty goal? Is this a yield goal or whatever? So we want to make sure we figure out, okay, this is going to be built on some kind of measurement. We need to measure what I'm doing. That starts with goals. So what you want to do then is figure all that out and say, okay, what's my sweet spot? What is the pain point? What are the pain points of your audience on one side? And then on the other side is what are, what are you qualified to talk about, to tell stories about? What differentiates you? And you bring those two things together and then hopefully you have something truly differentiated that you can talk about. So, you know, there's a case study I've been using for years. Anne Reardon, she's known as the, the baking queen of Sydney, Australia. And she started more than 10 years ago talking about impossible dessert creations. So while everybody out there is just talking about, oh, food, we're going to do recipes, we're going to do what everyone else is doing, she says, well, there's so much content in that area, how can I differentiate myself? And she started to do like impossible cakes, impossible— like, uh, there's one that's really amazing, a YouTube that you can, uh, find on her channel called How to Cook That, where she has basically— it looks like a working camera made out of chocolate. Well, how did she do that? Well, she's targeting people that are interested in that, that want to do that, and she's going step by step through it. Nobody was doing that at that time. So figure out when you're looking at your sweet spot, how can you truly differentiate? And that's what we call the content tilt. How can you create content that differentiates rises above all the other content clutter out there. So that's where I want to start. And Mike, nobody starts there. Everybody starts by, oh no, I gotta be on Twitter, X, I gotta start doing YouTube videos, we're gonna do a podcast, oh, we're gonna do a Q&A with an industry expert. You know what? So does everyone. Everyone does that, guys. So figure out how am I going to do something different that really can break through so I can make an impact on this audience, on this audience. And then it's gonna take 12, 18, 24 months to, to do, to get to whatever kind of marketing goal you want to. And if you ask me, why does most content marketing fail, which it does, is because they don't have any kind of differentiation.

Mm-hmm.

And second is because they stop. So most companies treat their content marketing like campaigns. Oh, we're gonna do this thing for 3 months, or we're gonna do this thing for 9 months. Well, you're just getting started. Mm-hmm. You, it takes a long time to build. Like when we launched Content Marketing Institute, we launched it as a blog. We thought that we were trying to create, uh, really valuable how-to information for content marketers, for marketing people. And we're like, okay, how do we do that? We're gonna do that by delivering a blog every day. That, that blog's going to be 800 to 1,200 words. And from 2007 to 2010, I mean, we were just building that audience. So we got to about 10,000 subscribers, and once we got to that point and really started to see some growth, now that same newsletter is at 250,000 subscribers. But it took a long time. So that's, um, you know, almost 15 years later. So it does— so, so I'm just saying, if you're going to do this, you're not going to stop all the other things you're doing. You can still do advertising, you still do public relations, still do all the regular stuff, but it's going The payoff for somebody getting up every day and saying that you, you're the leading expert, you're the company I want to follow. It takes some time to do that because you have to deliver over and over again for every day, every week, every month. And then you get to a point where you are the leading informational resource for your customer, and you'll end up starting to sell them more. They stay loyal for you. Then you hit all those marketing goals you want to hit.

Okay, so distribution channels, you mentioned people effectively doing this upside down. They're going like, you know, I'm, I'm gonna be everywhere, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. I'll just do everything. Does it really matter? Like, if I, if I define my persona, should I look at the channels like that? Like, you know, should I go like, okay, that age group, you know, spends more time in this social media, that age group spends over there, and actually you know, place my chips more strategically, or, or should I just be everywhere if I really want to be seen?

Well, first of all, if you're everywhere and you have limited resources, you're not going to be successful. You're going to be mediocre at best on every channel. I mean, the average— according to Content Marketing Institute, the average company, uh, middle-sized company, distributes and creates content in 13 to 16 different ways on all these channels. Well, when I hear a stat like that, I mean, there's I think, well, there's a lot of really bad, mediocre content out there on all these channels because how can you be great 13 to 16 different ways? You can't. So yes, to your point, you definitely want to choose, but you can choose based on where your customers are at, which I think is a very strong strategy. But at the same way, what are you good at? Like, are— do you have some, some talent on your staff that are really good at podcasting? Or YouTube videos, or maybe you've got strong writers. So maybe you're thinking something more like a newsletter. So you do have like, kind of like Harry Potter's sorting hat, if you will. You have the sorting hat will tell you where to go. It's like, oh, your audience is over here. But at the same time, what are you good at? How are you good at telling stories? And you wanna take that into the mix. So for example, I'm targeting entrepreneurs today. I wanna target entrepreneurs who are trying to build a content business. Well, where are they at? They're probably on Instagram. They're probably on Threads. They're probably on X. They're probably on YouTube. But I am best at writing. The thing that I do best is writing. So I'm going to choose a newsletter to build my audience, an email newsletter, and then I will leverage maybe one of those, maybe Instagram or maybe Threads or maybe YouTube. I'll leverage one of those channels. To try to get attention on and, and rent my audience on those channels and hopefully drive them to something that I have more control over, which is an opt-in email newsletter, and then just stop there. You want to pick maybe 1 or 2, 3 channels at most that you can spend some time on and resources, and then you have to forget the rest. And you've seen it as well as I do, and you got companies that are everywhere. It's just like they don't deliver on this day there's really bad content on this day. What are you doing wasting your time with the resources over here? You can't do it. Now, when you get to a point where you are become an expert at those channels and you start to get more resources, then you can expand out like a media company would. But at the start, 1, 2, 3 channels. Focus on delivering consistently over a long period of time there, hit your goals, and then move on.

Okay, I love that. Um, strategically speaking, you, you do want to think about everything we just talked about, your personas, using the channels. On the other hand, you do have that potentially fear of doing things. And I'm going back to like startups, or maybe it's like a solopreneur, you know, people who just, who just want to start, right? And, you know, maybe they don't have the knowledge to actually create the strategies and you go like, you know what, I'm just going to take my phone and I'm going to start doing things. Hopefully for quite some time, at which point, you know, you basically go and become strategic. You know, it's like, sure, effectively where I'm going is like, I've seen a lot of startups in UK who just basically wing it. And it's almost like you, you know, you're becoming like an archeologist, you know, you're just like brushing, you know, in this area, brushing in that area. And you're just almost like looking what sticks because you yourself, you don't maybe have knowledge or resources or time to really investigate and create that strategy before you actually do the content. Is that approach, like, which is upside down, is, you know, valid to some extent?

It— no, it's— there absolutely is a place for testing. So if you go out there and you're like, well, I'm not sure what's going to resonate, let's try some things, I don't have a problem with that. As long as you're using it as a learning platform, you're totally fine. I mean, look at MrBeast, right? So MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, maybe the, the number one creator in the world. And it's built whatever, he's got 150 million, uh, subscribers on YouTube, multi-billion dollar brand now. So he's doing all the things. Well, for the first 3 years, he was just testing. He did different topics, he did them different ways, he did them different lengths. He was trying to figure out the YouTube algorithm and he didn't even get to regular posting and regular, uh, content. And for like 3, 4 years after he started. So I started in 2012. He got— he ended up getting, I think, 30,000 subscribers by 2016, didn't hit a million until 2017. So there's 3 years of just testing. And now he set the expectations where that he had the time, he made the time to do that. So let's take your example of a startup. If you're gonna go and say, okay, I don't know, here's a topic area that we can try, let's go out there for 30 days and try it, let's get out the, the smartphone camera and let's record some stuff. And as long as you're consistent about it and you know sort of what you're measuring for— you're trying to get some more followers, you're trying to get some more shares, you're trying to see if there's some feedback, somebody's commenting, you know, whatever you're looking for, for positive affirmation— that's fine. Then use that and take that into something more strategic. I don't have a problem with it because most of us that launch these things, you're not going to be right from the start. It— maybe you'll get lucky, but you probably won't. You're going to put something out there in order to get feedback. We call it putting up listening posts. How can I put up as many listening posts as I can, gather as much information as I possibly can to inform the next iteration of what your content marketing plan is going to be? So totally agree with that. It can absolutely work.

I love the listening post as a— as a— what's the word I'm looking like— abbreviation, or Just a label of things you can do. A listening post. That sounds like—

that's an old— yeah. And Mike, that's an old publishing term. So back in the early 2000s, what I started in this thing, like when we would put together an editorial plan for the magazine. So this is back in the print magazines days. We were like, how do we put— how do we create listening posts so we can understand the needs of our readers more? So that we can be successful. So we'd like, oh, we gotta— we're gonna do surveys. And then Google came out, it's like, oh, let's use Google Trends and figure out that. Oh, we got Twitter. Oh, okay, can we— can we figure out what's— what's— what's hot, what's moving, what were the trends on Twitter, and using— and then you get Instagram, then you get all these different things. So the number one listening post that you could do is actually talking to your customers. That is the absolute best. So you could use all the electronic stuff that you can, and that's wonderful. But I would also recommend, like, do you— if you have real customers and you could talk to them on a regular basis and figure out, hey, what keeps you up at night? What challenges are you having? What are you really struggling with right now? Those types of things. That's, that's what a media company would do, and that's what we all are. We're all like little media companies trying to figure this thing out.

I love that. Okay, so let's talk about that. Uh, let's, let's go from like -1 to 0, right? It's not like from 0 to 1, but We're at minus one. We just starting, you know, we started doing some content in maybe we have like 20 or whatever episodes on like, you know, podcast and some on YouTube, maybe some shorts on TikTok or whatever. We have some followers, you know, we're getting some views, but we don't really know who these people are. Right. So how do I go from, I don't know how to reach to you because I know, you know, I know you're watching me. I know you're listening to me, but I don't have a connection with you. Like, how do you close that gap? Like, tactically speaking?

Well, if I'm any size business today, but let's just say we're a small business with limited resources, you're probably setting up camp somewhere where there is an audience. That means it's probably TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, maybe Twitter/X. I don't know. But let's just start with the 3 that I mentioned. So, and you're going to do something consistently and try to build an audience, and great, you're seeing some followers, you're, you're seeing some likes, uh, but you don't have no idea what, what these people— but just like you're getting some positive affirmation, you're feeling good about it. You want something that people can come to you to sign up for so that you can start to figure out who these people are and get opt-in permission to communicate with them. That could be a webinar series, it could be an ongoing email newsletter. It could— I mean, I love podcasts, but still, even with a podcast, you don't know who these people are. So at the end, maybe it's a report series, something where they can sign up on your website, get this information, and then you have the ability to communicate with them. Like a lot of— there's a lot of younger companies out there that are just thinking social media channels. Which is fine, but you gotta remember you are renting their property. You have no rights. They will change the algorithm at any time. They will block you at any time. So you're getting free, free access to this audience. You're going to do the most with it that you can right now, but at some point you have to think like a marketing strategist and say, I need to have the data. I need to have the first-party data of who these people are and then communicate with them outside of the terms of whatever— of TikTok, of YouTube, of Instagram. So that's why I want to see a regular newsletter. So that's what you're gen— what you generally see. Somebody, some young company starts out doing YouTube Shorts. Great, they're doing YouTube Shorts, they're starting to build something. They're like, okay, now let's do a regular YouTube show, let's not just do Shorts. Okay, they have the Shorts, then they're doing the YouTube show, maybe it's a weekly show. They're starting to get some subscribers, they're starting to get some followers. That's great. And then when you get those followers, during the program you're like, hey, you like the show so much, We've got a weekly roundup that you can sign up for on our website. That's your newsletter that they can sign up for, and you're going to deliver that every Friday morning, every week. And then you've got that, and then you're building that. That's an asset. All these other things that you're building, not assets. You don't control them. You, you don't own them. You can't do anything with them. So you have to take that energy that you get from those social media platforms and get into some kind of asset. And that comes down to an email address. And I hate to be so old school, but it's been the same way for the last 20 years. Like, if you don't get that email address and you don't have a way that they're going to actually open this up on a regular basis and give you permission to communicate with them, all the work you do on social media can be over in a snap. And so I want to make sure that doesn't happen for you. So you got to build a program to get them back to your website and sign up for something.

I love that. And people do tend to underestimate emails. I don't know why, you know, as well, but I do see it's getting jumped over. It's still the medium where, where you get majority of eyes, like every second hour or so. I would say maybe a phone number is, you know, very good as well because you can just add people in, in like WhatsApp groups and then just have like a very close reach to potentially, you know, your customers or listeners. But yes, email is probably the first milestone we're going after, right? So, so we just started, and when we're thinking about measuring our success, let's just put that goal. We just want to get people emails because that will allow us to talk and potentially niche down and, you know, find better topics. So that's like our first, you know, success metric, right? Is there any other bigger metrics I should be looking at when, you know, I'm thinking about content marketing strategies? I know it's probably, you know, almost like contextual to everybody, but are there like generic ones such as like getting an email, definitely a success? Like, are there, you know, bigger generic ones?

Yeah, I mean, you could look at all kinds of— first of all, there's nothing wrong with some of the vanity metrics. You could look at, oh, I'm getting traffic to the website, I'm getting, uh, look at, look at all the impressions I'm getting on LinkedIn. Like you could see over time, like let's say that you have a YouTube show, you can see your analytics. How long are they watching your YouTube show? Um, how many people are you getting? Uh, so you can see those types of things, and that's what I would call vanity metrics. But it's like good, it's positive, you're seeing impressions, things are good. Then you get into a little bit more serious metrics, and that's when you have somebody's information, somebody's data. So to your point, You get their email address. Wonderful. Then once you have that, then you can start to put— take that email information and put that against buying behavior. And this is where you get to the holy grail of marketing measurement. And you can say, okay, this— let's say that you have— you've started a podcast, and then from that podcast you get people to sign up for something in email. Okay, so you got them in through the podcast, you get them in, then an email, and then you could say, oh, okay, I'm going to take that email and put that against our customer database. Who's buying? Are they buying more? What are they buying? So you can, you can draw a direct line and say people that listen to that podcast buy more, stay longer, share more, whatever, because you have that data to do that. Until that point, you don't have it. So we've got to use these vanity metrics for a long time until we get some type of data. Now, you could do it on the back end where you could say, well, how did you hear about us? Did you hear about us on the podcast? Did you? So that, but, but that's harder to get because you never know if you're going to get the right answer from a customer. You can get direct data that way. So that's where it comes in is what is your marketing goal? Is your marketing goal to, if it is a loyalty-driven goal, that's where you might even want to go old school and say, I already, I already have my customer information. Maybe we're going to send out a quarterly magazine to them. And when we send out that quarterly magazine, God forbid we're talking about print magazines, but it— but there's very little competition there. You could send that out, and then after a year of sending just certain people, certain customers, that magazine, you can measure their behavior. Are they buying more? Are they staying longer? What are they doing? Are they using the QR codes in the publication? Like, what are the— what are they doing? So that's the kind of stuff that gets really magical that's hard to do in when you don't control the media channel.

Infrastructurally speaking, Joe, is like these tools, can I get by with the free ones like Google Analytics or am I looking if I want to get advanced view on everything you just talked about? Am I going to be paying for these tools?

Uh, most businesses run to a tool first before they need it. Uh, what I like to think of for technology is It should hurt so much, it should be painful. And then I want you to wait as long as possible before you actually buy a software license for something, because to your point, you can do so much with the free tools. So use your Google Analytics. Uh, you probably will need some type of mail program, email program. I'm, I'm not going to throw out names, just whatever your favorite email program is, use your email program because we want to make sure we get through all the op— you know, we can make through all the spam filters, get your opt-in permissions, and then you can see who opens it, who's sharing it, how much are they, you know, are they looking at it, are they not. And then you can match that data up with your CRM system. So whatever you use, whether you use a Zoho or a Salesforce or whatever. So create your small little package of tools. Don't overdo it, you know, even if you have to use spreadsheets on occasion. I would say keep it as minimal as possible because the last thing you want to do is start to buy all these packages and then not use them. And they say, I'm spending thousands of dollars a month on the software and I don't need it. So I would rather you start with, maybe we have to use Excel spreadsheet for a while or Google Sheets for a while until we get to a point where we're seeing enough impact where we can actually buy a Salesforce license or HubSpot license. Or whatever the case is.

I love that shout, Joe. People do run to tools and it's marketing of the tools, which clearly works well because people go like, oh my God, this is a silver bullet, it's going to solve all my problems. But then there's a learning curve, there's an integration curve. And then before you even get— do you actually have data to utilize that tool? And yeah, I love that shout. Just use free tools, spreadsheets. Come to the point where you actually go like, okay, well, this is becoming quite annoying. Maybe there's a lot of admin time and we have very clear requirements for a tool. Let's see what we can get. Okay, so we got good foundations now. We have some ideas. So let's look into that short content media trend. It's like, what's your personal take on it, Joe? Like, do you use it? Are you participating? Are you creating? It's like like your personal view of it?

Uh, so my personal view is it, if done right, it can be extremely successful. I mean, there's no denying it, where you have people that have leveraged Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and, and YouTube Shorts and done tremendously well. Now, I think the best way to do it is to do a show, like have something like, for example, the, the Kelsey Brothers here have done their their podcast show that's been really, really successful, and then they take clips of that show and make Shorts out of them. I think that's the easier way to go. So create something that's an actual thing, like a long-form YouTube show, a long-form podcast, something with a lot of content that is not high production, and then you can cut that up however you want to. So Robert Rose and I have a podcast called This Old Marketing. It's been around for, shoot, since 2013. So 11 years we've been doing a podcast on this thing. We record the podcast, it's no frills. We use StreamYard, it's, uh, it doesn't cost us very much to do that. Boom. And then we have a couple people that'll take some of those and put some clips together. Some of those clips work and some of them don't. We put those clips on, um, on YouTube and TikTok and whatever, and great. And hopefully people will find out about send them to the longer-term, longer-form show. That's how I like to see it done. Now, if, if you have a show that's a short form and you're just doing, you know, 6— 30 seconds, 60 seconds all the time, and that's your thing, that's fine. But I hope it's just about something. It has like— what is the show about? Like, what are the stories that you're trying to tell? That's what I've— what a lot of individuals and entrepreneurs do. They just like, oh, I'm just going to get on and start talking about stuff. Are you? You're gonna— so you're gonna do basically what another billion people are doing at the same time. So then you are at the, uh, you're basically, um, the TikToks and the Instagrams of the world are going to choose you and your content over and above everyone else's. And maybe they'll do it one time and they're not going to do it the next time, 9 times, and then maybe they'll do it again. Fine, whatever. You never know when viral content's gonna hit. So focus on something consistent over time to do. That would be my recommendation. I, I don't have any problem with, uh, short form. The reason why I don't love it, Mike, is the fact that I don't have any control over it. I'm giving all my content to another company, and I'm hoping that I have gamed that algorithm so much and figure that out that they're going to share to my followers, which they've said— I mean, if you look at Instagram CEO Adam Asari, he's come out and said, even if you have a follower base on Instagram, we are going to show, uh, as the same preferential treatment to somebody who just comes on the platform for the first time as we do you, because we want to give a break to new content creators. So what does that do to somebody who's built an audience? Means we're all starting from zero every time. And, and then he could change the rules tomorrow, and that's fine, it's their prerogative to do that. I'm not negative social media platforms. They can do whatever they want, but we just have to be realistic that we're playing their game. And we don't, you know, we, we need to make sure that we leverage those channels and build some asset when it comes down to it after the fact.

I love that, Joe. Effectively, the lesson is get close to your listeners, get close to your customers, as close as you can be. Get the emails, get the phone numbers, be able to reach them on your own terms. Because when it comes to social media or Yeah, social media platforms, things can change quite quickly. There's many stories as well, you know, around where people build lives and businesses around the channel. Something switches, they get maybe censored somehow, they said something wrong, and suddenly everything's through the window.

You get booted. Hey, I started on Twitter in 2007. I was an early person to Twitter. Uh, in like 5 years I had over 100,000 followers on Twitter. It was working great for me until it wasn't. And when they started to tweak the algorithm over and over again, the content that I was putting out wasn't the kind of content that they wanted to promote. And then by 2017, 2018, really wasn't working for me anymore. So I got 150,000 followers on Twitter and what's it doing for me? Nothing. Hmm. So what? So hopefully over that time, if I was smart and I like to think that I did a good job of it, I was moving people from following me on Twitter to some of my other things. But here you can go buy my book here so I can get that data. You can go check out our podcast. Here's my email newsletter. Other things to move them off that platform.

I love that. Okay, so we're not against short content. It can really work well. You just need to be sort of thinking about it. And do you have a preference of a platform where you think it works better? Because everybody does the short, like Facebook has Shorts and Instagram has Shorts, YouTube has Shorts, you know, TikTok has Shorts. Like, do you have your, like, choice of distribution channel, or all of them pretty much?

Well, they, they all— so basically Instagram, uh, and YouTube have basically copied TikTok's algorithm, or trying to. So TikTok was the first that really did the vertical scrolling short-form video, and now everybody has them, to your point. So I would To me, it doesn't matter. I would say choose one. I would say really figure out, like, let's say you choose TikTok, which I'm not on TikTok personally, uh, I don't know, who knows what's going to happen if it's going to get banned in the United States, whatever. We don't know. But let's just say that you believe that TikTok is the way to go, then go all in with it. Like, go on and say, I'm gonna post 3 times a day, here are the times I'm going to post, here's the content I'm going to post, Here's how I measure it. I'm gonna— we're gonna do this for 45 days and we're gonna see what happens. And you know what, put Instagram and YouTube Shorts off to the side. I know a lot of people say, oh, I'm gonna take my TikTok, I'm gonna put it on Instagram, I'm gonna put it on Facebook. I'm gonna just do one platform, figure out that platform, what's working there, what are the— how, how, what are the hashtags that are working, what are the hashtags, and figure— and then once you do that, then you can make a decision of whether you want to go more all in on TikTok or then say, that's not working, let's try something else. Or now we can spread out to the other channels. I think we've just gotten into this point where, because all these things are free, or free, that, uh, we should just distribute everywhere. And I think that you do— we don't have the time, we don't have the resources to really figure out all these channels and do what we need to do. So just choose one, whichever one makes the most sense. Like, for me personally, I'm not doing that. I'm all in on LinkedIn. Most of my audience are business-to-business marketers. LinkedIn is their channel. So, and it's also a channel that I like because it has preferential treatment to writing over video right now. So I can write something and do really well with it to my target audience and then get them to sign up for my newsletter directly from that. But I'm all in. I'm trying to figure out LinkedIn's algorithm all the time. That is the one social channel I'm using. So everyone listening to this is pick your channel, learn that inside and out. You, you can be successful on any one of those channels, I think, if you focus on it and spend some time there.

Okay, what about automation tools like, let's say, you know, like Hootsuite, Buffer, which effectively, you know, you just connect up your YouTube, your TikTok, your LinkedIn, and you post on them and they just distribute on all of the channels.

Sure.

Is that too much? Like, am I just like, I don't know, spreading myself thin or something like that? In theory, I'm working with one automation service, which— but then covering all the social media.

Sure. I have no problem with any of the automation if you're using it, and you have— especially if you have a team. So if you've got multiple accounts that you're, uh, posting to and you want to do them at a certain time in a certain way and and link in with your analytics, wonderful. If it's a great way to measure. If you're starting, I wouldn't use, I wouldn't do that when you're starting. I would get started first, figure out how to distribute on the core platform, and then when you get to a point of, hey, this is just way too much in scheduling and I can't track it and whatever, then you can go to something like a Hootsuite and take it up a notch. But I wouldn't necessarily start there. Uh, and you don't have— again, some people might disagree with me, but I think you don't have to say, oh, here's the video, and now I'm going to— from my account, I'm going to post it here, here, here, here, and here. So I blast it out. And I don't think that's a good strategy. Even if you're going to leverage on 3 or 4 different channels, I think you should have different content. Who's the audience you're trying to target on TikTok? Are they the same that's on Instagram? Are they the same that's on YouTube? Or LinkedIn? Probably not. Are you telling a different story here versus here? Probably yes. So your editorial calendar, your content's going to be different on this channel for this, this, this channel. So I just want to make sure that if you use those tools, which can be very valuable, you're not just sending out the same message and spamming everyone at the same time.

Yeah. Investing your time and energy and then going like, why doesn't it work?

Yeah.

Okay. Did you ever notice, uh, you said you're all in on LinkedIn. Did you ever notice, um, that you get this, uh, I want to say penalized, like being penalized, but it's more like for, for a segment of time LinkedIn goes like, you know what, I'm just gonna give you less impressions. And you're actually seeing like in your statistic, you actually see like a dip, uh, maybe, maybe because of a content, maybe because of like automation tools or something like that.

It's— yeah, it's strange. I mean, some of these algorithm changes happen on an every other day basis. I mean, obviously they are, they're updating it. So you're thinking, okay, well, if I— sometimes when I tag people, it doesn't do well, and sometimes when I tag them, it does do well. And sometimes when I share somebody's post, I don't get anything. It was sometimes what— so it's very, very difficult to figure out. The one thing I do know for sure, because I've tested this personally over the last few years. If you deliver consistently over a longer period of time, you're going to do better than if you don't. Than if you just say, hey, on— I'm gonna do a post on Tuesday and then a post in 2 weeks and then 3 posts in a row the next week. But if you deliver something of value, let's say every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it's targeted to your audience, it's thoughtful, it's original, you're going to get more people to view that and sign up for your newsletter or whatever than if you're just sporadic about it. So I would say more than anything else, consistency wins.

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the formula. The consistency. The algorithms need to develop a trust with you. They need to be able to go like, yeah, this guy doesn't fail every day or every week, whatever is your, you know, your schedule. I've been told by someone that if you use APIs, the platforms actually penalize you. It's not like penalize you, but they just give you, you know, less views because effectively they draw this conclusion that if you're using API, you're probably using the same content with other platforms or you're giving the same content to other platforms. So they basically go like, you know what, for this particular post which came through APIs, we're just gonna show it to less people. And I was like, that can't be right. I mean, you created those APIs. You gave me the ability to use those APIs. Like, why I'm getting less views? And I give it a go and it actually did that. Like, on LinkedIn, it sliced about 40% for these posts which are going through API, which was just surprising. That's, you know, where my sort of question came from.

Well, you know, I mean, to you, but to your point, we— this is what it comes down to. If you're a content creator and you are focusing on other channels to help you in your marketing, you are sorely mistaken. They, they are— LinkedIn does not want to help you with your marketing. They want to help themselves draw more advertising and more revenue and more premium subscribers and all those things. So whatever is going to help them do that, then they're going to help you. So just remember that even if you have find amazing success and you found the, the the formula that works on LinkedIn or X or wherever else, it'll all come crashing to an end. And it always does. It did with— it did with MySpace, it did with Google Plus, it did when Facebook cut out all their APIs and, and, uh, and changed their algorithm. It did when certain people get— got kicked off of Instagram. I mean, it just happens over and over again. So I just want to make sure that when we're thinking about a content strategy and using social media Social media, it is a secondary form. It should not be your primary. Your primary should be something that you can actually control.

Yep. I love that. And it's like you scratch my back, I scratch your back type of situation. Like, you know, if the platform or in this case algorithms go like, you know, I think you're working just with us and you are just in our, you know, platform, say LinkedIn for the sake of argument. They will just go like, I love it, you know, you love us, so we'll love you, so we'll, you know, give you more impressions. But if you have, you know, other friends, let's call them other platforms, they're probably not going to give you that much love to your content, which, you know, again, makes sense, right? Okay, so, so we chose the strategies, we know the, our customers, we have our platform, we have a little bit of like schedule, we are being consistent, uh, more than anything else. We're getting somewhere, right? But it's taking a lot of time, right? So I'm doing podcast. There's another person doing the Shorts. There's another person, you know, doing some ghostwriting for the newsletter. You know, there's another person talking. It's all basically a huge operation now. And I'm like, how can I make it faster? And here you go. We got generative AI. You put in some prompts, boom, you get stuff. Can I use this and not really lose my authenticity? Like, is it possible to really leverage AI in the whole content marketing situation?

Well, first of all, it's possible because there are a lot of companies that are leveraging it, that are using ChatGPT 4.0 and Claude and whatever other— Perplexity and whatever other tools out there, and they're taking that content, they're using it.

So maybe I'll rephrase, Joe. So sorry, I'll rephrase it. What's the trade-off of using AI for your content marketing strategies?

So I think you're in trouble if you're getting your content from an AI tool. I think long term that, that whatever you got in your content is— a thousand other people could be getting the same thing, a million other people could be getting the same thing, and they're using the same. So basically you're, you're losing your originality, you're losing your content tilt, then you don't want to do that. Now what do I like AI tools for? I love it for ideation. I love it for brainstorming. I love it for figuring out, okay, maybe there's some things that you missed that you should— so I'll give you a really good question, or really like a use of AI that I actually— and I did this a couple weeks ago. So I wrote a novel called The Will to Die in 2020, and I'm working on the second version of that. There's parts of that book that I don't remember. I— and I wanted to— and I didn't want to have to read the whole thing over again, and I needed to know some detail. I uploaded the manuscript into ChatGPT-4.0, and then I could use that as sort of a CliffsNotes version and ask it questions based on that. Those types of things are great if you have to throw a report into AI and get like, give me the detail, give me the bullet points of this one quickly because I can't read this 50-page report. That's an— that's— those are amazing things, part of AI, that they can help and be insightful for your content creation. I think the worst part about AI for content marketing is actually the output of content. So it's not that you can't do it, a lot of people do it, but I think that that's, uh, I just don't feel that long term you're going to create original content to target your audience that's going to help, help your, uh, solve your marketing problems. I really don't think it will. But I think if you use it as an assistant and get rid of maybe some of those components that were unnecessary before because you don't have to do all the reading, you don't have to do all the research. That's where AI comes in. So that's what— that would be my first impression. If people are looking to use those tools, I would use it to just be smart, just be smarter about your research into how you create your content, but don't use it necessarily for final output of content.

It's not like, hey, ChatGPT, give me a post about content marketing, you know, make it funny, friendly, you know, add some good hooks so people click and leave comments. Boom, you get an output, copy paste the link, then, you know, click yes. That's not what we want to do, right?

That's, that's not what I would do.

Yeah.

That's, that is absolutely what some people are doing.

Yeah.

But you know what? So are another dozen companies and a dozen on top of that. They're doing the same thing. So how are you any different? You're not getting original content. You're not the— this is not generative, like, this is not full singularity AI right now where you're getting something truly original. We don't even know if we're gonna get there. You're not getting it. You are getting something that's already been rehashed because they've learned off of this language model. That means that anyone else who has that license to ChatGPT is going to get the same thing.

Yep.

So if you want to go out and put out the same thing as your competitor, fine, you can do that.

Yep, we wouldn't advise to do that though, but you're absolutely right. I mean, I personally see that all the time and I'm always wondering like, how does it get so much love so it actually reaches my feed, right? And I see that on LinkedIn, like I see a post and I go like, I know it's generated because like after some time you just get a sense of these, like, you know, how they generate. So there's some dots and sayings and whatnots. And you go like, that's not real. Like that, you didn't wrote that. I know that. But people still seem to be like clicking, engaging and having chats. So it's probably that, you know, why we're seeing it still happening because it, you know, people are getting engagement, they're getting traction and they're still using it. But as a long strategy, effectively what we're saying, it's not really going to take you where you want to go, isn't it? Like you want to be original and 10 things about the content you're sharing.

I think this is a short-term— this is a short-term period of time where this is happening and some of this stuff is getting through and some of it's successful, but long-term it's not going to be successful from purely an output. I remember back in the days of— it was a company called Ping.fm where you could take a piece of content and I could distribute that piece of content to 90 social media sites at one time. And when it first came out, it was amazing because I could be in 90 places at once and And then people realize that, oh, I'm just sending the same thing to die. I'm just totally spamming. Yeah, we're in a very— and that worked for a very short period of time. I think we're in a thing where, oh, you're seeing that now and it's sort of getting through. The social media sites will figure that out. They're not going to let that through long term. So you're going to have to figure out how you're ultimately going to create valuable, relevant, compelling information on a consistent basis to a target audience. That is truly differentiated.

Yeah.

And AI content right now isn't differentiated.

Yeah, I agree. And I'm always wondering, like, there has to be a team sitting there and going like, okay, well, you know, we have ChatGPT, can we just take people's content, put it in ChatGPT, and go like, hey, is this your content? It's just sort of like, go like, yeah, that was generated, so, you know, we're not gonna get your views or whatnot. I'm sure team's thinking like that, you know, everyone wants original ideas. They want to be the social platform which, you know, gets real creators on it and gets real content rather than, you know, just GenAI-generated content. So I'm sure they're coming up with tools which will eventually be either publicly spoken about or you're just going to not get any traction around that content.

I would agree. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. If you're doing that, if you're leveraging AI for like final output of content, you, you might want to look at another strategy in the future. That's— I would, I would agree with that.

All right, so that's a lesson takeaway. All right, Joe, we have this, um, question which is in the spirit of the show, and it goes like this: What is one, and you can only choose one, factor in your view, uh, most important one for any tech venture growth?

Oh shoot, well, the first one that came to mind was patience. Uh, and the reason why I say that is, is that when we launched our media company back in 2007, uh, I would— but by September 2009, which is about 2 and a half years later, I was ready to quit. I mean, I, I had not, uh, I had not realized how long it takes to build a business. Um, and it, it takes sometimes longer than 3, 4, and 5 years, and if you're a company that you think that you're going to have immediate success or success inside 3 years, that's a rarity. It takes a long time to build a business. So what I would do in building up that patience is get your expenses down to as small as possible. Like when we— when I decided to leave the media business and launch a business, we're like, okay, well, we might have to get rid of a car. We might not be able to go on vacation. We might, you know, we had to make specific decisions so that we can get our cost of living down so low that we could survive anything coming our way. And the same thing goes for any innovative company out there. I mean, look at your costs. Don't spend frivolously. Don't be on every platform. Be strategic. When you go and choose one thing, go all in on that thing. But you might have to say no to a lot of different things. So I guess that's the whole thing is patience and saying no to as many things as you can so you can say a big fat and emphatic yes to 2 or 3 things and be great at them.

I love that. I would, I would add like endurance or resilience to some extent to that patience because you're absolutely right. You know, we had the startup we were building out for like almost 7 years before we exited. And along the way of that journey, there was so many, I just want to take a break, you know, to the point where, you know, maybe you're thinking about quitting, but then You know, you have to sort of get that endurance into you, go like, okay, well, it is a marathon. Like, you know, it's gonna take years. You know, let's just, let's just go over that challenge. Let's just go over that challenge. And, you know, that patience is hell of important. And all of these success stories which you mentioned, maybe you will get lucky, you know, maybe you'll launch and in the next year you're gonna be like huge. I always think about them as like a lottery winners. Like, you know, like suddenly there's, there's a guy who, who's basically not nobody and then boom, he's in the news because he just just won like a jackpot of like, you know, $250 million or something, and everybody like, yeah, you know, I want to be that guy. That's pretty much like one-night successes. You get them sometimes, but that's such a, such a, such a low percentage. And it's literally like winning a lottery where 99.9, it's going to take you years, and it's going to take you sweat, tears, and blood basically to get—

that's right—

a proper, you know, endeavor off the ground. Okay, I love that. Patience, the one of the most important factors. All right, that was lovely, Joe. Thanks for being with us. There's a lot of knowledge and a lot of tactical things we shared about content marketing. Thanks for coming.

Thanks for— thanks, Mike, for the time. I appreciate it.