Be the one who actually cares about content

[upbeat music] Hey everyone, Alex here. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Beehiiv. Newsletter growth used to be really, really hard. I remember my first newsletter, People Ops Weekly, that I wrote back in 2020.

It took over two years to reach the 10,000 subscriber mark, and that was with a ton of work from our team, and our email tool did not help out with that. These days, as I see more people moving to Beehiiv, they're hitting milestones so much faster than we used to. And a lot of that immediate growth comes from the fact that there are smart tools Beehiiv built right into the platform. Referrals let your readers grow your list for you, recommendations let you trade subscribers with newsletters you respect for free, and Boosts is a marketplace where you pay for readers who actually opt in.

Growing a newsletter audience from scratch has never been easier. And this month, Superpath members get 30% off with the code SUPERPATH30. That's SUPERPATH30. I'll have the details in the show notes here, so make sure to check that out.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Content Briefly. It's Eric here. Today I'm chatting with the wonderful Chloe Thompson to do a little content therapy. So Chloe had been in a bit of a funk lately, frustrated that nobody seems to care about quality content anymore, and it all spilled out into a great LinkedIn post that really resonated with me.

So we use that as a jumping off point to think out loud together about the shifting ROI of content effort. So we get into the argument, why the argument for content has changed from should we make content at all, to how much effort is worth it to make the content good. We talked about how the Google SEO era trained us to make commodity content, and why we should think differently about it now. And then we also talked about what it looks like to defend quality and effort when a blog post can be produced in 30 seconds with the click of a button.

And Chloe makes a really compelling case for being the person on your team who actually gives a damn, but I also push her on what that looks like when you're pitching to a CFO and not a fellow content nerd. So I hope you enjoy today's conversation, and let's get into it. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Content Briefly. This is my second time reading the intro to this episode wherein I said the wrong show name, and Chloe had to remind me what show I'm on right now.

So I'm Eric Doty, here with Chloe Thompson, and today we're gonna talk about, kinda like think through out loud this feeling we've been having about, like, the value of high quality content in the age of AI. I know that feels like a big nebulous, maybe, like, obvious topic, but Chloe, you had a really great LinkedIn post the other day that kinda got me fired up, and, uh, I think got a few people fired up as well. So I was hoping if you could just read it as a jump off point for our conversation, and then we can talk all about what, like, effortful content means these days.

Sounds good. Yeah, I was fired up. I think I was in my feels. I think I am- That sounds-...

vacillating between- That doesn't sound like you. Yeah. [laughs] I'm vacillating between those things lately, I think because of all the AI conversations. I think anyone that's kind of listened to me on this podcast or that follows me on LinkedIn realizes that I think of AI as kind of this double-edged sword.

Like a helper, but also has me in my feels. So I wrote this, I don't know, my call to arms, whatever we wanna call it. I said, "As a fellow content leader, I beg of you, be the one who's a stickler about quality. Be the one who questions whether something is unique enough for your audience.

Be the one who makes it sound human. Be the one who removes superfluous em dashes and keeps the one that belong there. Be the one who questions what at scale means, and at what cost, to your audience, to your business, to your sanity. Be the one who cares."

And it only took me, like, five minutes to write, because it was all in my brain, and I just have felt like no one cares about quality anymore, and it makes me really sad. It makes me question what we're all doing. [laughs] What we're all doing here. Yeah, and so I think part of the way we wanted to frame this conversation is we were talking this through beforehand about the ROI of content, and like the kinda history there.

Chloe, you kinda put on a nice timeline for me. Could you maybe walk through, like, I think the question is, like, how we've defended the value of content over time, and how that's kinda changed? Yeah. I think that everyone's heard this, right?

Everyone has heard, that is listening to this, has heard someone say, "Oh, well, anyone could just do your job." Like, "Oh, you're in marketing. That's easy. You can do that.

Oh, you're in content? Well, that can't be difficult." And I think that has always been frustrating to hear, for a variety of reasons. But I think over the years we were able to prove that, like, no, not everyone can do it.

We've proven that in order to build a marketing campaign, in order to, you know, sell a business, grow a business, you need marketing. And in order to grow marketing, you need some kind of content. Like, one does not exist without the other. So I feel like for a while, the conversation, depending on what stage of the business you're in and all that, content has more or less earned their seat at the table to be like, "Hey, we exist, and we make your marketing better.

We make your business better." And so for a while, like, that was the battle, and that was the conversation. And I feel like the tides have shifted, where now it's a battle and a conversation about, well, quote unquote, "Anyone can do content." Like, there's just not the level of quality and care and finesse that maybe people cared aboutI don't know, in yesteryear, before [laughs] before, before AI content creation kind of took over because we're getting back to those conversations where it's like, "Well, anyone can do that.

We'll just put that in ChatGPT. We'll just throw that in Claude, see what it comes back with." And so I just feel like it, it's a circular kind of argument that we're having, but for different reasons, and it's frustrating. Totally, and I'll give maybe the same history from a different perspective in how I've thought of it.

So before the value of content, a lot of it was, like, very commodifiable, especially SEO, and there's a reason that so many B2B companies landed with, like, box one to check is always SEO content, right? Like blog posts. You can say, "Okay, we spend, whatever, $1,000 on a blog post. We can guarantee with some predictability that we'll end up in the search rankings.

We'll get this much traffic. We can equate this much traffic to this much, like, business value or, like, conversions or something," and there's, like, a very... Like, the ROI is kind of easy to see. And then so the argument was, like, should this content exist or not, and you had to kind of fight the ROI battle for should it exist, and if the answer is yes, then, like, people would pay for content.

And then, like, yeah, people would quibble over, like, how much to pay a freelancer, how much to pay a salaried person. But the debate was, like, more of a light switch on or off, I think. And then now the challenge becomes, okay, content is really easy to make. You don't really have to defend content's existence.

Like, any of us can pull up ChatGPT, any person, and make a blog post in 30 seconds. Mm-hmm. So the ROI question becomes much more of a, or, like, you know, effort versus reward question, let's say, becomes way more like, how much effort do I need to put into this for it to make us money, right, is how a lot of CEOs are probably thinking about this, or CFOs or whoever, in that before it was kind of like, okay, if you're gonna make content, you unquestionably have to hire a content person 'cause they're the people who do this.

They cost this much. Now it's like, how much time and effort should we spend on this, and can something made by ChatGPT still make us money? Can something, like, like, made with ChatGPT, then edited for somebody for $50, can that make us money? Mm-hmm.

So there's this kind of, like, new era of I can see companies pushing the limits on, like, what is the minimum amount of effort we have to put in to make money, and which is a roundabout way of getting back to your, like, quality- Yeah, when it was, like, $50 for an SEO blog post, right? Yeah. Because there was no nuance to it. It was very formulaic.

It was very templated, and then you had a bunch of people that could do that at scale. Yeah. But it was still probably crappy content. [laughs] Yeah, exactly, and so I think, like, the new question of, like, content effort is, like, how much effort is it worth to put into something to making something good, right?

[laughs] And I think, like, the answer is going to shake out that it's, like, very important that content is high quality and it has expert insights and things like this, but I think, like, we as content marketers kind of have to, like, wrap our head around the new argument that we have to make to leadership in that, like, yes, the producing content, like, just to get something on paper and to have something in your hands and say, like, "We make content," that's easy. The much harder part is, like, can you please give me 10 hours to sit with this and make this good, or two months or whatever it takes- Mm, mm-hmm...

to make something good. Like, I think that's the new, like, hurdle that we're gonna have to overcome. What's your reaction to that? Yeah, I mean, we talked about it before.

It's like the speed versus quantity versus quality, right? It's like, just because you can create something, and I say this all the time, just 'cause you can create something doesn't mean that you should. Like, I've done a lot of work where I currently am in trying to streamline the amount of topics that we're talking about in market and making sure that we really do have, like, a cohesive content thread throughout what we're publishing. And right now I'm going through a massive content audit to kind of get rid of anything that doesn't follow that and that doesn't fall in line so that, again, we can have a more, like, cohesive, unified story in market, which is taking up a lot of coffee.

But I think, like, I think I'm just frustrated because it's always been about, like, what do you create? How do you create quality content? And even with all of this new, you know, SEO is now AEO equals SEO equals whatever Google has been telling you forever. Like, Google just comes about in this circular reasoning where they're like, "Just make quality, relevant content for your audience, and make it unique, and try to have proprietary insights into it, and have it written by a human."

And I'm like, why is this revolutionary? [laughs] And, like, when did we abandon it, and why is it coming back around? And if it's coming back around, that means that people have just forgotten, like, what good quality content is, and sometimes you have to sit with it, and it doesn't take 30 seconds to produce, and it takes digging through podcast transcripts, or it takes three conversations with people at your company as subject matter experts to find a cool angle. And, like, at the end of the day, shouldn't that make you really proud of what you've created?

Yeah, totally. And I mean, because you brought up the Google thing, I'll comment a little bit on that, too. So we're referencing, like, Google made, wrote an article the other day. It was about their guide to optimizing content for AI search, basically.

And in it, of course, they sort of said the usual Google thing on, like, to optimize something for search, just make it great quality content, and they kind of always said that. And I mean, if you've ever opened a Google SERP before, as somebody who works in SEO, you have probably found lots of content that isn't high quality. And so, like, the truth is that I think-Google was the main distribution channel for all these years, and so we all learned to, like, optimize content for, like, what worked there, and what worked there wasn't actually normally high-quality things.

It was, like, things that followed very formulaic structures. It was very predictable. Uh, and so that, like, got us into the mode of creating very, like, commodified content, which- Mm-hmm... you're saying, Chloe, is very, like, ironic 'cause now they're saying, like, "Don't make commodity content."

But, like, we're making that content [laughs] 'cause that's the only thing that showed up in Google SERPs. And so one nice thing about this, like, is the context of this conversation was we were talking about AI for producing content, but if we're also thinking about AI for, like, uh, you know, AEO and getting your content returned in LLMs and things like that, like, it will be very good news if it is the case that, like, those things do actually reward higher quality, like, more unique content.

I think the jury's still out. We don't know yet, but I'm very much hoping that that will be the case, or at the very least, like, Google's monopoly on search will be toppled and that, like, different... It could be the thing, I keep saying to people that different things work on different platforms. Like, OpenAI- Right...

will, could return things differently than Claude could return differently than Google, et cetera. There's gonna be other companies that pop up probably. And so it's not just gonna be the case that we all have to, like, sit and listen to Google now and tell us what to make. But going back to the point about quality, I think another way that I've been thinking about this as, as somebody who's not, like, pressured...

And so in my role, I'm not, I'm not pressured by anybody to, like, make a certain kind of content or, you know, work faster or whatever it is. Like, I'm very much given the reins of, like, do what you think is best, and that's, that's, like, a unique position to be in, and I'm grateful for that. But so the pressure it's created for me is, like, my managing my own time, and, uh, ultimately the question is, like, what is worth spending my time on to making sure it's really high quality, and, like, what can be a little more commodity?

And I think that's, like, an internal skill that we're all working on still. And so I wrote in the Superpath newsletter last week, I'm not sure when this podcast episode will drop, but I wrote on it about May 13th about, like, against taste, [laughs] and that, like, having too much taste can get you in trouble if you are, like, too much of a stickler for quality all the time. And I 100% agree with you that quality is, like, should be the pinnacle of your content strategy. But then there are things like, do you need to sit there and write Instagram captions by hand for every clip that accompanies your podcast?

Like... [laughs] With a quill pen, preferably. Yeah. No, I mean...

And, uh, yeah, and there's that quote, right? It's, what is it? "Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress," or maybe- Yeah... I just flipped that around.

I think that's it. But you know what I'm talking about, right? Like, and, and I- Socrates... definitely agree with- I'm just kidding.

I don't know who said it... that. [laughs] Sorry, I'm- Is, is that how it is, or is it backwards? Yeah, no, I think you're right.

I think you're right. Okay. I can't remember, but y'all know what I'm talking about. So I do agree with that.

I mean, I think the beauty of working in digital content and, like, you know, putting a blog post out or putting an e-book or a guide or whatever is most of the time you can go on your website and you can edit it [laughs]... after the fact. So, you know, typos are terrible, but if you find one, it's not the end of the world. Like, today we found a typo in an image on a blog post, and I was like, "Well, crap, we probably should have caught that."

We shipped it back to our design team, they fixed it within 30 seconds, and we uploaded it, and I'm pretty sure no one in that five minutes besides myself saw, you know, the error, right? So, like, I do think that eventually you need to kind of, like, let your baby go and into the wild, but I also think the idea of taste and quality and all of that is really challenging because it's all subjective as well, and I, I can't remember exactly... I've been reading a lot of LinkedIn post about this recently, just about taste in general, right?

It's, like, the new buzzword right now, like storytelling, taste, like qual- like all of these things. Editorial. And it's all subjective. Like, at the end of the day, you do want content that drives your business forward, that resonates with your audience, that is helpful to your audience, and that is relevant.

Those things are not subjective. Those are things that you can measure against, for the most part, and that you can, you know, rate your content against. So I think, like, in my mind, maybe I'm substituting quality with relevance, uniqueness, and just, again, I just keep on going back to this word about just caring. Like, it is so defeating to me to publish something that, you know, it took me 15 minutes to create, and then I just move on to the next thing and I completely forget about it.

Like, I like content that sits with you. Like, we just published an e-book that I worked across with several different stakeholders and our freelancer, and it was, you know, one of the first big pieces that I worked on here, and it took a lot. It took a lot of wrangling, it took a lot of editing, it took a lot of, like, asking questions, asking hard questions, and I'm really proud of, like, what we produced, and I just feel like as a whole we need to get back to maybe the time spent is also, you know, if we wanna talk about it in a ratio about, like, how memorable is this piece?

Like, how proud are you gonna be when this goes out the door? Because if it's something that you don't care about, that doesn't need to be memorable, then sure, spend 10 minutes on it. But if it's something that you really think is gonna make a difference, like, spend the extra few hours on it. To me, that makes all the difference in the world.

Yeah, I also think effort is highlyCorrelated or the opposite of correlated with being easily replaced by a competitor or by someone else. Mm. Like, the more effort you put into a project, like, the harder it is for someone else to replicate, right? And so even just from, like, a pure sort of, like, commodified SEO perspective, I've been thinking about that a lot.

Like, what can I make that will be a lot of effort for me but will be very hard for another company or, like, an AI search overview window to replace? And so, like, the one thing I came up with that doc was to build this revenue archives, which was just, like, a big library of asset examples of, like, sales decks from companies, one-pagers from other companies, and it took, like, going through companies' websites, finding PDFs that were, like, stored on their content management system that they accidentally exposed to the whole internet.

Like- Oh my God, I know. I- Literally grinding, grinding for, like, hundreds of hours to find these, and I was like, okay, that is something that is like, maybe quality isn't the question here. It's like, but there's an effort that went into it that made it worthwhile 'cause I could produce an asset that is useful to people and also very hard to replicate. Very hard to replicate.

Other than if you stole my examples exactly and just, like, copied it. Please don't do that. But, like [chuckles] the, th- that's something where now, like, that content ranks super well for, like, one-pager examples, slide deck examples because I... The actual asset produced in the end is, like, true examples and not just a blog post with SEO optimized titles.

Like, best practice, like, use scannable text. Yeah. So you talked about all those, like, points of quality, and I think, like, effort could also just be a, a measure in there for, for certain things like that, where, like, there's no taste really involved, it was just effort. Yeah.

I do think the end result was, like, content quality that was worth it, and it has, like, measurable business results for us. I mean, I sound like a fricking broken record, but I always just, I talk about quality and I talk about, like, strategy. Talk about why you're doing something. If you're doing it just to do it, like, go create 50 shitty blog post in, like, 40 minutes.

Like, I don't know, have fun. [laughs] But, like, why? Why are you doing that? How is that gonna move the needle?

How are you gonna actually show that had an impact? Totally. I just, I don't get it. Just feel like the care has gone out the window.

Yeah, and I think the example I gave you before we talked was about LinkedIn posts, and, like, I think pre-AI, the conversation was, like, how to convince your founder that it's worthwhile to post every day on LinkedIn, and now it's like how to convince your founder that it's worth putting the effort in to hand write those posts that they've been, like, ChatGPT-ing- Mm... every day on LinkedIn. And I think that's, like, the general theme of this conversation is, like, the underlying question is when to use AI for content versus not, but the, like, ugly personal dynamic internal battle question is, like, be prepared to, like, defend the value of writing things by hand sometimes, or doing an extra level of research beyond what ChatGPT can do, and I think that's, like, a skill that, like, arguing for content skill has a different shape than it used to take.

It's always been an important skill, but I think people are gonna kinda have to wrap their heads around, yeah, like, what does that, like, internal slide look like when you're arguing for content now. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think that one other thing I'll say, too, that I just thought about was the idea of just content hacks, and I think we're starting to see that with LinkedIn as well.

It's like people are deciding what makes a good hook on LinkedIn and what makes a post go viral, quote-unquote, so now everyone is kind of doing the same thing, and so therefore all of the posts and everything is starting to sound the same. Like, you can tell, for the most part, I mean, maybe I would fail a test of, you know, 20 different posts if you put them in front of me, but you can tell what's been written by AI versus what's been written by an actual human, maybe even what's been edited by a human.

And I think that we did the same thing with SEO posts as well. Like, we tried to hack the hell out of them, and so then a lot of them wound up, like, sounding the same, looking the same. People are doing the same thing with AEO because, again, there's this list of, like, 10 best practice hacks that are gonna get you multiple returns, blah, blah, blah, so now everything is just sounding the same. I think everyone is just so scared of not falling into whatever those hacks might be, that all of the humanity and all of the care is just going away.

So what's the solution, Chloe? How do we save the world of content? [chuckles] For me, have a glass of wine. No, I'm kidding.

I'm not, actually. I probably am gonna have wine. But the reality for me is just, like, fight against the tide. Like, be the one who actually gives a shit.

The amount of times that I've heard in my career, "You really care about content," or, "You really love content," like, my boss just put that on our Slack channel the other day, and, like, I'm proud to fly that flag. You're damn right I do. Like, be the person that cares. Be the person that asks, like, why we're doing something.

Be the person that is like, "Actually, I wanna spend 10 more minutes with this because I'm not super happy with it, and I think that we could do better. This conclusion isn't landing for me." Like, why do we have the bottom line or conclusion above this? Maybe we can take the extra two minutes and write a headline, right?

Like, little small things like that. If we have small little movements in the sake of quality content that we care about, we can move mountains. Wow, that's beautiful. [laughs] And I think about the influence you can have on a team, and again, I work alone, but you work with a team of other marketers, and so I think there's the influence you have on the people around you that, like-You're modeling the behavior you wanna see, right?

Like, we see it a lot in Superpath, people saying like, "My, someone reporting to me is overusing AI, uh, how do I talk to them about that?" And like, if you're overusing AI in your day-to-day, it's hard to like then coach a new person to do something else. But I also think the, just the care that you show and the effort, like you said, your boss is recognizing that, that in and of itself is like an, like a selling point for caring, right? Like, it just, the, it's like infectious and catches on.

I just realized I have this. This is an Anne Handley mug that says Justice for Em Dashes that I bought, and it's hilarious 'cause she went on this whole crusade about how em dashes are still cool. Like, be the nerd. Be the content nerd in your organization and just, yeah, keep fighting the good fight.

Okay, I really wanna ask you this because as a content marketer, like you've appealed to the emotional side of me, and like I'm in, I care about quality, but like I'm not really the one that has to be convinced, right? Like, there's a CFO or there's a boss, someone with like a budget line item that's, that you're saying like, "I need extra head count because we care, and we wanna do this well, and it takes me like more than 30 seconds to do all these things that I care about."

But like you kind of have to make the internal like ROI argument, and I think that's kind of the core topic of this episode is like what's the ROI of like caring about quality and putting in the effort. So like how would you, like other than Chloe being like, "I really care," and like stomping your feet. I'm sure you've never done in a meeting, but maybe, depends on which wine you've had. Uh, like what, what is the like rational, quote, argument for like caring about quality?

I think you have to prove it out, right? I think that the argument to prove content ROI is not going anywhere. You still have to prove impact, and I mean, I don't know if it's as simple as being like, "Here's what we did that was AI generated, and here's what we did that was quality, and we're gonna pit them up against each other," because I'm not sure, quite frankly, that level of testing is necessary in a company. But I would say look anecdotally.

Like at my old company, we would hear from, you know, prospects and from customers that, you know, they really loved our content, that they were learning from us, that, I don't know, like they liked our brand. You know, like sh- try to find, I guess, like your evangelists that show that caring is worth it. Mm-hmm. Because of the, the amount of care that you put and the quality that comes out of it, I would say, I guess, is what I would do.

Yeah. And to your point about the AB testing stuff, like I think there's a reason that those posts on LinkedIn recently that show the companies that made like hundreds of AI-generated articles just watching their traffic tank. Like, I think as much as like I might take a little bit issue with those posts like dunking on companies' SEO strategies, I think they're popular because it feels icky, and none of us want to be the content marketer that creates hundreds of thousands of AI-generated articles for the purpose of SEO.

And so like we kind of want that strategy to fail. You don't want that to be the solution. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. And so I think like it does help to kind of, every time I see a thing like that, I just send it to my boss and say, "Look, like AI content, not necessarily the way to go." And so I do think it helps, like keep adding those like case studies from other companies or anecdotes in your back pocket, like making sure that the- That's a good point... they are accurate, uh, 'cause I think some of them are kind of just inaccurate dunks for the sake of getting LinkedIn engagement.

But, so yeah, I think like that's a good place to end. We've sort of come full circle here. And thank you for coming on this journey with Chloe and I, thinking out loud- [laughs]... about what is like the value of caring, putting in extra effort when creating content is like as easy as clicking a button, and we're gonna have to defend our own existence in this world.

So if these like big existential questions are interesting to you, if you think about them a lot, if you're often thinking like, "How do I build this argument internally?" Superpath is like exactly the community for those types of questions. They're the kind of questions that come up most often. How do I make the case to my boss for another hire?

How do I make the case for this campaign that I know is a good idea, but I need to convince people? Join Superpath. That's in superpath.co.

You can sign up for Slack there. There's a 30-day free trial, and you'll get lots of advice from other very smart content marketers. So check out Superpath. Chloe, thank you for, A, being such a valuable member of Superpath, and B, joining me today for this episode of Content Briefly.

I remembered the title this time. [laughs] We're winning on all fronts. Thanks for having me, Eric. Thanks for everyone coming on this content journey with me- [laughs]...

as we're feeling our feels. Yes. Okay. Go enjoy a glass of wine, Chloe, and thanks everyone for joining us.