The Secret Sauce to Creating Content that Sizzles | The UnNoticed Entrepreneur

Now, does your content sizzle? Does it get people on your website and across your social media channels excited to talk to you? I mean, do they want to come and reach out to you? Because if you are struggling to make content exciting enough and you're maybe dabbling with AI to make it, uh, a little bit more exciting but it's falling a bit flat, then my guest today is going to be someone that you want to listen to. Her name is Wendy Lieber and she's the co-founder and CEO of a company called Content Bacon. She's actually joining us from Florida where they've got some storms. We're hoping she'll be able to stay with us the whole way through. Wendy, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jim. Pleasure to be here.

Well, it's a pleasure to have you. I know that you've got some challenges in Florida now with the weather, so thank you for making the effort to dial in. And we're going to talk about content because there's the old saying, content is king and context is queen. What about AI? And how is Content Bacon, your agency, helping clients, entrepreneurs, and business owners to, to create content that really sizzles and gets people interested in their brands?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. I think one of the first things is this word content, right? A lot of people They don't even really know what that is because it's all-encompassing. And so, you know, we help companies tell their story through different types of mediums that their audience is using. So content is just all the different ways we communicate with our audiences, both internal and external. And how do you make it sizzle? How do you make it have an impact? Well, it starts with you have to have a good story and a story that's constantly evolving and a story that depth and breadth to it. It's not like a one-and-done, here's our story, let's tell it the same way 50 different times. It's, it's an evolving thing. And the way to have it evolve and get better is to actually do it, because otherwise you are just saying the same thing. And there's nothing better than putting it out there to see what resonates, what doesn't, and even just getting aligned internally. How do we talk about ourselves in a way that That's interesting and impactful.

Wendy, later on we're going to talk about some of the mistakes that you've made as a CEO and leader of a company when it comes to content. But first of all, we're going to talk about how you're doing it right. You, you've talked about content as being a story, and interestingly enough, you said that the content or the story needs to change. How does an entrepreneur, if you like, retain consistency which is essential for brand building and reassurance, with evolving the story? How do you reconcile that dynamic, Wendy?

Yeah, I think it's being willing to go a layer deeper than others are willing to go and have a point of view, have a stance, you know, almost be willing to make mistakes and say things that might be provocative. So it's the opposite of playing it safe, right? Which so many companies and brands want to do because God forbid, you know, we stir the pot and, you know, we live in a culture right now that definitely doesn't reward. But I think in order to stand out and get noticed, you, you have to, you have to have some passion behind you. You gotta, you gotta have a point of view. And so I think that's how you do it, is be willing to say what others aren't willing to say. Be willing to show your audience, you know, a little bit behind the scenes. So it's not just like keeping it safe, keeping guarded. It's, you know, it's very similar to having a relationship with someone, right? It's like if you don't go deep, the relationship doesn't go deep.

And I guess when, if you see it in the context of having a relationship, if you're with your children or your parents or your family or friends, you have some consistent values, don't you? Those don't change. Honesty, integrity, and so on. Humor.

100%.

But how you interpret the situations may change. Wendy, um, how does an entrepreneur not look as though they're being opportunistic? Because it's quite easy then to jump on something— AI is a good example— where people have a— but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it. How do you help people to not look as though they're just kind of paper thin on taking positions?

Yeah, I mean, don't be opportunistic. Don't be paper thin. It is like, don't just jump on bandwagons. I mean, I'm seeing it left and right, and I can get really riled up about it because there's so many companies out there, they're experts in AI, and they know how to do all these things. And it's like, bullshit. There are no experts right now. We're all figuring it out. So I think, one, don't do it. Be authentic. And as an audience, don't reward those companies. Don't jump on those bandwagons and reward them. So I think it's having that discernment and that feeling of like, oh, I'm missing out, so let me— everyone's talking about it, so let me do this. I mean, it's like, just think of Bitcoin. Not that AI is that. I think AI is here to stay and it's a great tool. But only to the degree that it serves us. You know, I always say AI serves us, we don't serve AI.

Yeah, and I think that's a really good way of looking at the tool and the technology. But it is that within Content Bacon, Wendy, you have multiple content formats. Can you just, you know, that you deliver for clients, can you just tell us the approach? Like what comes first? What's most important? You know, is it important for a client or an entrepreneur to have content across all formats— audio, video, text, etc.?

What—

how do you help people to navigate the volume of content they need to create and decide on priorities?

Yeah, I mean, it's really that— helping them decide on priorities. You know, we start with strategy first, which is really defining the set of problems that, you know, we're being hired to solve. And determining, you know, a very focused way to solve those. So to your point, it's not let's do everything. It's let's figure out the key things we're trying to solve and then put together a very strategic approach to solve those particular issues or to, you know, capture those opportunities. So that's, you know, from a content strategy perspective where we start and then determining the formats, we'd rather do less, you know, way better, you know, more depth, more quality than try to be on everything. And, you know, just like, you know, to use your word, be paper thin. That's not to say that over time utilizing multiple formats is certainly, you know, there's lots of tools that we can use in our toolbox where it makes sense. We want to use as many as possible because people do consume differently. Some people love visuals, some people love the written word. Depending on where you're at, you may like all of them. But if you're, you know, on the subway, you know, you may want to read versus, you know, listen to a video. So just factoring all that in and, you know, adding on versus trying to do it all at once.

So from reading that, then what you're saying is also about thinking about the customer journey as well, isn't it? Where they're going to access the content. Wendy, have you got a case study at the Content Bacon where you can just walk us through something that you've done that'll give an indication of what does work for a company? Maybe you can tell us what kind of company it was, because I understand the different industries maybe require different kind of content and different kind of distribution.

Yeah, so we work with a lot of technology companies, one in particular that we We've been working with for a couple of years. So, you know, really getting to know their story. They've expanded, you know, rapidly. And initially their focus was on new, new, new, you know, generating awareness. And we certainly had a great success in doing that for them. But what we realized is that they were neglecting the leads that they had, you know. So we— they were— they had developed a very robust database and as their CRM, but we weren't working on that for them. So, you know, we did some discovery with them on, you know, goals for the year and, you know, where some of their pain points were. And it was like, yeah, you know, we're just not converting leads. So we really went to town on finding the gold in their CRM and really nurturing those leads and providing, you know, content that helped those leads determine like, hey, we're just here for, you know, the information, we're not going to do business, versus the ones that were looking for that more in-depth information, which then queued up the sales team to be a little bit more intentional, unengaged contacts in their CRM, and re-engage them because we were, you know, really dripping on them way more. I hate that term, by the way. I can't believe I just used it. Emailing them, you know, more pertinent information. So re-engaging them and then really looking at, you know, kind of that middle of the funnel, middle of the flywheel, and giving them more in-depth information that had them ready to take the next decision. So, you know, able to reinvigorate their database and deliver a more steady stream of ready contacts for their sales team.

That's really interesting that actually there's a lot of gold in, in the CRM that most people have got. If there's a hallmark, Wendy, of that content that you can use to engage people in the middle of the funnel and move them to the— would it be the bottom of the funnel, I guess, where they fall out the funnel into you, into the customer database? Is there a hallmark of that content? Is it— does it have music? Does it have a short call to action? Does it have a picture of Somebody or something? Is there a hallmark that people can think about, or is there some other determinant?

It's not really one thing, you know, because people need multiple touchpoints. It's, it's in some instances it's meatier content. It's very resource-driven content. It's really, again, in this particular instance, the target audience was a more sophisticated buyer on the other end. So having meaty content that really had, you know, a lot of technical, technological expertise and went deeper. So for this particular customer, it, it was more of that. It was identifying some of the key issues that, you know, this audience was having and going deep and telling them how to solve it. And so that was really, you know, the hallmark For this particular customer, it may be different. It may be shorter, you know, wittier, funnier type content depending on the audience. And so I think that's a really important thing to uncover is what's important to your audience, not what you think important. Like, what are they dealing with? I mean, I like to really remind my entire team all the time that the person on the other end that we're talking to In many instances, they have a real problem that they need to solve. And like, that's what we're interested in is how can we help you solve it? And so it's really important. It's not just creating content for the sake of content. It's really how is what we're doing truly adding value, truly helping solve a problem so that this, you know, we leave the other person on the other end You know, better than we found them.

Yeah, and I think that's a wonderful point, Wendy, that almost in this day and age where we're not seeing people, in certain circumstances you'd have had a conversation with the customer that would have covered off information that they still needed after they've had the brochure. And sometimes maybe the content's not getting to the next level of complexity, as you say, answering the, the detailed questions about, for example, legacy implementation, for example, if it's in tech. Wendy, is there a a content that's being generated by, by AI? We're going to have one question about AI because this is your area. Is there content being generated by AI that you think is better than content generated by humans? What's your view on that?

Yeah, I think AI is a great tool. I think where we have found a lot of use for it is in, you know, some of the brainstorming aspects of the project. It's just, it's like an assistant, right? It kind of helps get the juices flowing. We've also found that we have, you know, every single one of our customers has a style guide and dos and don'ts, right? We have certain customers who, there's just certain words that they don't want to use, you know, that might be part of their industry, but they've made, you know, Like, for us, we use the word customer, not client. So if we were working with a content company that kept putting the word client, eventually we would fire them because it's like, listen, hear what we're saying. So we've used AI from an editor standpoint on those type of things that, yes, a human should be able to find that, but humans make mistakes. So Where there's very specific, you know, right and wrong, black and white, we found AI to be a great tool to help us find those versus always relying on the human. And so it's things like that that we're constantly uncovering where AI can do a better job because it can take direction and for the most part do it correctly, you know, 100% of the time, which it can't, but you know.

Well, I guess AI doesn't lose concentration, right? It might hallucinate sometimes, but maybe as if we're So Wendy, which tool are you using for that checking, for example, against brand guidelines? That's useful.

Yeah, our team has created quite a few. We use quite a few. You know, we've created our own, you know, custom GPTs. We've used, honestly, I don't even know all the software we're using because our team is constantly testing and creating new ones. So if someone is more interested in that, reach out to me and I'll find out exactly what we're using because we are constantly testing and trying to find the best of the best. And we're also developing some of our own stuff.

Yeah, and I think one of my guests earlier on runs a company called Brandwatch, for example, which is tracking across all the brand creators for a company to make sure that they're on message. So, but interesting you say using ChatGPT and creating custom ChatGPTs as well, Wendy. So I think, as you say, we're all innovating. No one's quite at the other side yet. Wendy, you've had Content Bacon and you co-founded this business. You're in Florida and you're serving clients certainly all over America, I think also all over the world. Um, as an entrepreneur, how have you been getting Content Bacon noticed? Because, you know, you do things for clients, but love to hear whether you're— can I say eating your own bacon? Because, uh, yes.

I mean, not as consistently as we would like, but yes, we do. We, we do eat our own bacon. So we do quite a few things. I mean, we do the basics, right? So there is kind of like this mastering the basics that I'm a big proponent of, and that's creating consistent content in the form of articles, social media, you know, email content, you know, on a consistent basis. So it's like you know, the foundational content that every company needs to look alive, stay relevant. So we absolutely do that. We, we've also used, you know, webinars, speaking engagement, where really our, our focus is education. You know, we have always been big believers that we want to give, you know, a lot of information. We, you know, we want to be an educational resource. We truly want to help companies understand how to use content to grow. And so that's really been an effective strategy. It's not been a manipulative strategy. It's truly been how we feel. So, you know, doing webinars, doing speaking engagements has, you know, always been an important part of our strategy. Yep. See our blogs. So, you know, again, the give before you get, we've got tremendous resources on our website for any company that wants to do it yourself. You know, we're big believers that an educated customer is the best customer. So we certainly, we provide, you know, that, that information.

Wendy, I have to ask you, because it's all, you know, branded pink and you've got the pig, I would have to ask you why the content Bacon as a name.

Yes. So first we're going through a rebranding, so stay tuned. We have like our next level branding that we're gonna be launching soon that I'm super excited about. But Content Bacon, um, which is a great brand, it's one of, you know, probably the best decisions my partner and I made. We just went through a branding exercise. You know, we came up with a lot of different names and listen, bacon makes everything better. And you put, you can put bacon in almost anything and it's better as a result. It's sizzling. So, you know, from our perspective, it made perfect sense. And it is a memorable name that tells a micro story. So it's got the elements of a good brand. So yeah, that's how we came up with it. And we have a lot of fun with it. Maybe we've gone too far, had too much fun with it. So when you see the new branding, you'll see maybe an elevated, you know, look and feel, which again, you know, all companies, I think it's, you know, Constantly evolving, um, is super important.

But I love that, that you've, you've taken a position, as you say, with the brand in the same way you're suggesting people should take a position with their content. So I think that's really inspirational. I want to ask you that because it stands out, right? It really does. Wendy, um, as an entrepreneur, you've, you've had Content Baker now for a number of years, it's successful, but would there be something that you could share that maybe hasn't gone Quite as planned? A mistake maybe that you made? And I don't mean to embarrass you in any way, but always useful to hear what we shouldn't try at home.

Yeah, where do I start? So I think one of the mistakes, missteps I made recently was as we grew and as our team grew and I really developed my leadership team, and to the most part, you know, really wanted my leadership team to kind of have the reins. I made a decision to, to step back from our storytelling, if you will, and being out there and being the voice, to really let Content Bacon be the brand and be at the forefront. And sounded good in theory, right? Um, you know, not to be so attached and But what I found was that, you know, I am the co-founder, I am the CEO. The vision of Content Bacon, you know, was my— is my responsibility. And so not being at least one of the voices out there talking, sharing was a real misstep for not only, you know, the world, you know, our audience, but also even internally because What I say to you externally, my team hears, and that all works with our culture. So it was it was really you know I saw the impact, you know kind of the dilution of the brand, it not being as interesting and innovative. And so more recently, you know as I've stepped back into the forefront and started creating more content and started sharing our story, you know I've seen the impact again both internally and externally. So. Just a lesson. I don't know that I could have learned it any other way than actually making the mistake. So I'm grateful for the lesson.

Yeah.

But I can at least share it because other entrepreneurs that maybe aren't the forefront of their brand and maybe aren't spending the time sharing, it could be and probably is a missed opportunity to have that leadership position and really be at the forefront because It's humans, right? Like, at the end of the day, we're humans connecting with humans. And if your brand doesn't have that human voice, that human connection, it's, you know, I think you're missing a big opportunity.

Wendy, I think it's a wonderful point, and, and thanks for the honesty there. And I think that, you know, we all, me included, uh, go through some fatigue, right? Um, I certainly had this with one of my companies in the, you know, uh, after about 10 years, you just sort of feel a little bit of fatigue. And rather than walking away, we need to find a way to recharge and then come back in, which is plainly what you've done. Wendy, you are plainly charged and coming back in and running Content Bacon. If there's a tip, you remember also the Entrepreneurs Network, the Global EO, and that's a wonderful group.

Yeah.

And I was involved in that in Beijing and starting that chapter there with Rich Robinson. So you've got a huge amount of experience and you must be successful to be in that chapter. So what would be a tip that you'd give to my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs?

Yeah, I think it's never stop telling your story and never stop evolving your story and, you know, being passionate and having a burning desire for what you're up to. And again, that may wane at times. And so figuring out a way to to tap back into that. And for me, you know, one of the ways was being the voice again, starting to create my own content, starting to think about what's interesting, what do people, you know, want to hear about, what, what am I passionate about, you know, why do I have this company still, what, what is next. And so tying all that together has really like reinvigorated me. We've created new offerings as a result, and that's where you know, my passion is, and then that overflows into my team. So I really do believe, you know, storytelling, telling your story, figuring out what your story is, refreshing your story, evolving your story, all of those things go hand in hand to build a company that, that wins. And, you know, I'm all about winning. I'm all about attracting, you know, winning team members, winning, winning companies. And I think it starts with You know, you winning and what does it look like to win and, and just making sure that you're able to tap into the why and that all, you know, bleeds into your story. So never stop, stop telling your story. And when you feel stuck, that's a really good indicator that you need to go deeper.

Wendy, Wendy Lieber. Well, if we want to go deeper into what you're also learning, how you learn, is there a podcast or a book Uh, that you've used on that journey? As you say, you've dropped out of the business, come back in, recharged leading that. So any particular book or podcast that you've been reading that's given you some inspiration or some guidance or reassurance?

Yes, I am obsessed with Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Goddard. So it's, um, it's a, a book, um, you can listen to it on audio. There's It's amazing. And it's really about— Will Guidard owned Eleven Madison Park, and, you know, which was, you know, one of the top— the top restaurant in the world. And he— this book is really all about how to provide unreasonable hospitality, you know, service to others. And I am so passionate about that. And this book, like, to me, was just— I was just reading it, I would get too excited. I would have to stop because I wanted to, you know, implement so many of the things. I made my whole team read it. But to me, the reason why is it's really about, you know, serving your guests, serving your customers, providing something that's out of the ordinary. And I think in this day and age where we're trying to automate everything or use AI for everything or, you know, hide behind, you know, email and technology for everything, The human experience, the human connection—it's it's why we're alive. It's what it's where the magic is, and so I just believe that the more you know service is part of our businesses and really serving, which means you have to really listen, really be curious, and you know empower your team to provide that service and go the extra mile. I'm obsessed with it. So I guarantee if you read this book or listen to it. you'll be thanking me because it's amazing.

So it's called Unreasonable Hospitality, is that it?

Yes.

Unreasonable Hospitality by Ben Goddard. Wendy, if people want to find— Will Goddard, sorry. If people want to find out more about your unreasonable, unreasonably good content, which is sizzling at Content Bacon, how can they do that?

Yeah, so you can email me, Wendy, with a Y, old school Wendy, @contentbacon. You can go on LinkedIn. You can go to our website. Yeah, I'd love to hear from you. I love having conversations with other business owners, entrepreneurs, and I'd really love to hear from you. So those are some of the ways that you can reach me.

Great. And on contentbacon.com, there's also a website grader.

Yes.

So you can also get your website checked, which I should be doing to get mine done. Wendy Lieber, thanks for braving the Florida storms and joining me on The Unherself Entrepreneur today.

Thank you, Jim.

Well, it's been a pleasure. So Wendy, an impassioned conversation really about the benefit really of staying human and staying involved in your business. And in this day of AI, what I love as well about Wendy's approach is that it's, uh, actually she can't even remember the AI she's using because it's actually not the most important part of her business. Which is great because it's about the human touch and about the passion and the leadership and about the innovation and ultimately about the customer service. And that's something that AI will never understand because it doesn't have a heart and a soul, but you and I do. Thank you to Wendy for joining us on today's episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Hope you've enjoyed it. If you have, please do review it and share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur because we don't want to leave anyone behind on this journey. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.

Thank you.