The 2 keys to content success right now
If your top-funnel content is coming from your company page, you're missing out.
Joe Lazer is the best-selling author of The Storytelling Edge and the Head of Content at A.Team.
If there’s one mindset shift content marketers need to make to stay relevant, it’s this: People are more important than companies.
People spend the vast majority of their time online within the closed walls of social media platforms, and they don’t want to hear from brands — they want to follow other people. And the algorithms know this, which is why posts from your company page reach such a small percentage of your followers.
Successful content strategists today embrace two simple realities:
If you want to reach people at the top of the funnel, leverage creators and influencers. If you’re B2C, that means partnering with people who already have the trust and attention of your target audience. If you’re B2B, that means cultivating both internal thought leaders and external business influencers to create demand for your product. This approach extends across channels — even your email newsletter is better off if it’s a) personality-driven and b) hosted in an ecosystem like Substack versus on a traditional marketing platform.
Think of your website as a vessel for mid-funnel SEO and LLMO discoverability. The content on your website probably isn’t going to create demand, but it needs to be optimized like crazy to capture demand once people start searching for your solution. This is just product marketing 101: What questions are real people asking, what problems are they trying to solve, and how can you provide real value?
Make this shift, and you’ll be ahead of 90% of your competitors.
The AI Hype Matrix maps the latest AI news stories across an unimpeachable scale of Hype (everyone is talking about this!) and Fear (will this kill my career? Will this kill EVERYONE?). Here’s this week’s rundown.
OpenAI’s new ChatGPT model is pushing the boundaries of AI smarts: OpenAI o1 can supposedly reason through complex problems. In other novel model news, Google is releasing DataGemma, designed to connect LLMs with real-world data and curb pesky hallucinations.
The sooner AI stops telling us to eat rocks, the better: A growing number of Americans are turning to chatbots for high-stakes use cases like medical advice. Also under the umbrella of questionable decision-making: LinkedIn quietly opted all its users into a controversial data collection initiative to train AI, sparking backlash. Meanwhile, Meta’s apparently been fueling its own AI models with public social posts from as far back as 2007. (Try not to think too long and hard about your cringeworthy status updates from college.)
The voracious appetite for digital data is having real-world manifestations: Microsoft is turning to nuclear power to meet mounting demand for data centers and AI. And legendary designer Jony Ive is working with OpenAI to develop new AI hardware — which, if we had to bet, will be sleek, minimalist, and eye-poppingly expensive.
AI still lags behind humans when it comes to content quality
At Pepper, we believe in the power of AI and human creativity — for good reason. A study of 360 marketers found that AI alone still isn’t up to par when it comes to content quality. In fact, 42% say that “AI content is a bit worse” and 21% think it’s “much worse” than human-written work. The takeaway? AI content still needs a human touch to reach its true potential.
Alison Jarris on building capable content teams
Pepper Content’s CEO Anirudh Singla sat down with Alison Jarris to glean her insights on content marketing through her career at Google, Salesforce, and government consulting.
Here are five key takeaways from the conversation:
Keep messaging adaptable. Don’t get married to a singular message. Your content needs to be attuned to shifting trends and consumer behaviors, as well as cultural moments and current events.
Focus on quantifiable impact. You can — and should — put a dollar amount on the value of your content.
Prioritize quality and trust. In our current content-saturated landscape, high standards and integrity are critical. Building trust with your audience means putting in the time and effort to create high-quality content.
Build flexible team structures. Build on-demand teams of skilled content creators who can deliver quality work as needed, allowing for scalability and adaptability as your content needs ebb and flow.
Implement comprehensive analytics. Seek out advanced tools that can track a piece of content's entire journey through the sales funnel, providing insights from initial engagement to final conversion.
Read the full Q&A with Jarris here.
Put your brand’s best face forward with interactive AI avatars
Still forcing people on hold with your customer service department to listen to bad jazz on repeat? Maybe it’s time to join the chatbot club. You can even give your bots a friendly face with HeyGen’s Interactive Avatar tool, which lets you create custom AI-powered digital personas that can chat, gesticulate, and probably dance better than your IT team.
When AI meets 'Can I speak to the manager?’
Even chatbots need to be prepared for customer service curveballs. This week's prompt challenges you to brainstorm and plan for out-there customer service scenarios, which can help identify potential pitfalls and refine your chatbot's responses.
Suggested prompt text:
"Generate 15 unique customer service scenarios, ranging from common queries to bizarre edge cases, that an AI chatbot might encounter for [your product/service]. Then, craft appropriate responses for each."