What does a Content Marketing Strategist actually do day-to-day, as well as quarterly and annually? How do they fit into the broader content program and broader marketing organization? What makes an effective content strategist versus an ineffective one? We cover these questions and more.
This episode of The Long Game is part of our Kitchen Side series, where we show you behind the scenes discussions, brainstorms, and decision making processes that happen at our content marketing agency, Omniscient Digital.
In this episode, our Content Growth Marketer Karissa Barcelo interviews Omniscient Digital’s co-founders Allie Decker and Alex Birkett about the role of a Content Marketing Strategist.
What does a CMS actually do day-to-day, as well as quarterly and annually? How do they fit into the broader content program and broader marketing organization? What makes an effective content strategist versus an ineffective one?
We cover these questions and more.
From this discussion, Karissa developed The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Content Marketing Specialist.
In this piece, we break down the role of a content marketing strategist. Whether you want to hire one or you want to be one, this post will give you the answers you need to the most pressing questions:
And so much more. Check it out.
Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:
Twitter: @beomniscient
Linkedin: Be Omniscient
Listen to more episodes of The Long Game.
[00:00:00] Alex: [00:00:00] Hello? Hello, this is Alex Birkett and you are listening to the long game podcast. This episode is part of our kitchen side series, where we show you the behind the scenes discussions, brainstorms and decision making processes that happen at our content marketing agency, omniscient digital in this episode, omniscience content and growth marketer, Carissa Marcello interviews.
[00:00:21] Me and my co-founder Ali Decker about the role of the content marketing strategist. What does the content marketing strategist actually do all day? How do they fit into the broader content program and the broader marketing organization at that? What makes an effective content marketing strategist versus an ineffective one.
[00:00:40] We covered these questions and much more in the following episode. I hope you enjoy this episode of the law game podcast.
[00:00:59] Convenience [00:01:00] first define. What a content marketing strategist is and how that relates. Because one thing I was saying and I looked at the questions when I just reviewed them quickly. I don't think I've ever actually been a content marketing strategist, but I've worked in content marketing quite a bit.
[00:01:14] I think at CXL I was a writer, but I never had. I didn't build like a content roadmap report. I didn't build brand editorial guidelines. I didn't do any of that stuff that I think may be what an actual content strategist is. But I think Allie, your role is probably more. A typical content strategist, right?
[00:01:33] Yeah. I
[00:01:34]Allie: [00:01:34] View content marketing, like on a spectrum. I started my career as a freelance writer, so I was purely like for the first year I just did production based on briefs or keywords or like topics provided by clients. My roles later on involved a little bit more strategy, not from the ground up, but more Taking content understanding how it [00:02:00] authentically promotes or communicates about a product or a service.
[00:02:04]So that's middle of the spectrum. I believe in and farther down the spectrum is creating that strategy from scratch. So building the content roadmap reports, looking at your annual goals, looking at the products and services, you have to sell, looking at your audience and understanding, how can we create content that connects with those folks and promotes what we have to sell?
[00:02:23]Content marketing strategists. I guess my perspective of the title would be more of a top-down maybe doing some writing, but definitely working on strategy, definitely working on how does content fit into the broader piece of the marketing puzzle? So skills and. Elements of that role? I would definitely say writing, maybe even if you're not in a daily writing role you're probably going to have to do some editing and it's obviously good to be a good communicator.
[00:02:53]My experience as a strategist is also like an emergency writer. If something falls through or you have to rewrite something like you have to [00:03:00] be able to do that. And I definitely think it's better to start from a writer role and work your way up. So you have those fundamental skills from day one.
[00:03:08] Skills I've also have to have had two masters since becoming more of a strategist is understanding how content does fit into that marketing puzzle. Where does SEO fit in? So SEO as like an, another skill as well, another language to learn understanding, how to plug in like hyperlinks and CTS where offers can fit in the pieces.
[00:03:27]How to. Really make every asset you create its own like funnel in a way like funnel folks in from like discovery through understanding the topic, building trust with your company, and then ultimately exiting the piece on to a stronger conversion opportunity, whether it's like entering an email or even going to a product page, joining a newsletter That might answer some questions you have later on as well, but yeah, that's my stream of consciousness answer.
[00:03:51] Alex: [00:03:51] Yeah, that's great. I think I mentioned that the content editorial calendar was the handshake between strategy and execution. And I [00:04:00] think the content strategist role might be the bridge between marketing strategy, which kind of funnels up into business strategy at the highest and least granular level.
[00:04:12] And the actual production mechanisms by which you're shipping the content that you plan. So in terms of functionality, it seems like it's the role of a content marketing strategist may be more generalizable in that you may have a title content marketing strategist, and you may also write, edit and do the planning, but that function of the strategy seems to me, mostly to be research and planning and organizing and leading, right?
[00:04:37] Like it's those functions and those are separate from. From producing, from writing and from editing, I think actually an editor is a distinct role and this is confusing because somebody that calls himself a content marketer or content marketing manager might have to do each one of these things. Or there may just be a content marketing strategist that just simply does the strategy stuff probably at larger companies.
[00:05:00] [00:04:59] But I think it's mainly the separation between if you will idea and execution. It seems like that would be like the simplest way to describe what a strategist does. What
[00:05:07] Karissa: [00:05:07] about getting that cycle and coming back and analyzing how this piece performed, what we could do differently?
[00:05:13]That's also part of it, isn't it? Rather than just, yeah,
[00:05:17] Alex: [00:05:17] a hundred percent. I would say that falls into, you may have an analyst on your team that can help you with those. Data tables and how to find those insights. But what you do with those kind of informs the planning. So I look at analytics and the measurement stuff as a facet of research itself, it goes into it feeds into the insights that you're using to feed into the plan.
[00:05:36] Yeah. Yeah, totally should include quantitative another kind of analytical feedback mechanisms too, right? Yeah. And
[00:05:43] Karissa: [00:05:43] some other things, people I came across as I was doing the research for this was audience persona, building keyword research, knowing how to set content goals, content, our ROI budget. Do you think all of these are.
[00:05:57] Pretty
[00:05:57] Allie: [00:05:57] important as well. Yeah, [00:06:00] I would say the smaller, the company is the more skills the strategist needs to have. Or, as you become responsible for maybe more strategy, those skills come more in handy. I've been in a place like in this company where I've had to establish audience personas or at least do that research other roles I've had, I've just been given the research and been asked to execute slash.
[00:06:23]Create on that knowledge. So I think it would definitely be a product or a by-product of the size of your
[00:06:30] Alex: [00:06:30] company. Yeah, I don't think I've again, been a specific content marketing strategists. As in my smaller company roles. I've always had many hats, including mainly content writing, but I think.
[00:06:41] In my experience at HubSpot things seem pretty partitioned and specialist oriented. Like you have an SEO team and individuals on that team that are doing keyword research and planning, mostly driven by keyword research tools and past insights. So a little bit of analytics. And then if you want to divide strategy, like there's almost like what to write and then how to [00:07:00] write the articles.
[00:07:00] There's people on the content team. I think probably director level who are setting. The editorial standards and how we write the content. So there's individuals that kind of take each individual piece of this puzzle of a content strategist and operate fully on that node.
[00:07:17] Whereas, when I was at CXL I was doing, I was experimenting. I was building email, nurturing flows. I was doing all kinds of different work, including the content planning, but then it was writing as well. And there was no. Nobody was handing me down strategy and goals. It was all my own.
[00:07:33] And I was trying to fit those into the expectations that my boss pep had for the whole business. But it was very much a broad skill set and
[00:07:41] Karissa: [00:07:41] Excel smaller than HubSpot. Would you say?
[00:07:44] Alex: [00:07:44] Yeah. Ma yeah. Way smaller. Yeah. Sure.
[00:07:48] Karissa: [00:07:48] So it's different. So what would you say a typical work week looks like for a content marketing strategist?
[00:07:54] And again, this goes back to how big the company is, but. Generally speaking, [00:08:00]
[00:08:00]Allie: [00:08:00] Coming from like an average size where there's obviously a couple of different ways to define this, I'm going to just go from my experience. I'll start with the writer, strategist. Con typical week is just reviewing the deliverables, understanding, assignments, understanding if there's anything that goes into those assignments, whether it's like product research, talking to maybe like product or service folks to understand more how to.
[00:08:28]Lead your content with, product led content and make sure that's like the sole focus or if there's external interviews that has been planned out in my week. Basically all the factors that go into like really high quality execution and production. On the other hand of it, if we're going to go with the higher level strategist, who's responsible for more still understanding the deliverables that your writers.
[00:08:50] Have to execute on and probably playing more of that editor role putting on your editor, hat, understanding, how well the content is being written, [00:09:00] maybe pulling out your editorial calendar and understanding when things are going to be published and looking at, like Alex said how the content, how to, walk over that bridge from content into marketing and marry it into the larger content production calendar.
[00:09:16] Alex: [00:09:16] I wonder if we could delineate this on a cause that was like a day by day level. I w cause there seems like there's activities that happen once a year, once a month, once a quarter. Can we say what does a content strategists do yearly? Quarterly monthly, weekly, and a daily, and go down in that order of granularity.
[00:09:36] I think nearly it's like that's where the handshake occurs between the marketing strategist or whoever's leading the marketing org and the content marketing manager, content marketing strategists. That's when you get the goals from the top down, you get where we need to get in terms of revenue and what that means in terms of like how much traffic and how many conversions we're driving from the blog, from the content marketing efforts.
[00:09:56] It seems like that would be a yearly activity, right? Like goal planning and [00:10:00] goals. Yeah. And KPIs. Okay. Ours, all of that stuff. I don't know what else would be yearly planning now?
[00:10:08] Allie: [00:10:08] I would say yearly at least once a year and also establishing partnerships. If you have a larger company understanding, how the teams work together, setting up those like SLA service level agreements, as if you treat your teams within your company as different agencies that's my experience.
[00:10:26] And. Setting as much planning as you're comfortable with knowing that will probably all change down the road, but at least once or once a year, I'd say goal setting, partnership, planning, setting the vision, and what's the main KPI for each team. So is the content team driving leads? Are they just focused on traffic?
[00:10:45] Are they doing more like social engagement, which I've never seen that, but whatever that KPI might be once a year likely at the beginning,
[00:10:54] Alex: [00:10:54] With that with the yearly plan also include going back [00:11:00] to what I want to call this. Assets or artifacts of the content marketing program, such as personas dashboards.
[00:11:08] Where are you tracking information? Where are you tracking results? How often do you go back? And if the content marketing strategist is responsible for the personas and audience development, how often do you go back and refine? That is my question. I
[00:11:22] Allie: [00:11:22] would say again, at least once a year, do workflow review analytics, like review, not have the numbers, but how you collect them, the KPIs that you set, the personas that you speak to that's I would say yearly review process to maybe like end of the year is the review.
[00:11:41] And the goal setting in the beginning of the year is like what's hit the ground running kind of thing. So I would say like December about right now is when all of that stuff is being reviewed and maybe reset or restructured. For the new year I would say to not all is the content strategist in charge of the personas.
[00:11:59] Again, it's [00:12:00] really dependent on the size of the company, but that bridge can also be built between. Marketing and product, depending again, on the size of the company. So that's another partnership understanding that happens about once a year, because sometimes it's the product folks that set those personas, or at least like the basis of them.
[00:12:19] And maybe the marketing folks like flush it out for more of a story. That's another relationship I've seen as well.
[00:12:25] Alex: [00:12:25] But on a yearly level, we're revisiting it even from the content perspective, even if it's. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And then is there anything else yearly? Cause then quarterly, I can imagine a lot of different things.
[00:12:37] I know with our agency, we do quarterly roadmap planning, typically building out the content editorial calendar or the content roadmap report, the actual, what the hell are we writing question and filling out like the insights and reviewing last quarter. So it's a you've got your high level KPIs and leadership alignment in the yearly stage, and then [00:13:00] you're a little bit more granular and you're operating on that plan.
[00:13:04] You're trying to hit your yearly goals and you're figuring out quarter by quarter how we need to do what we need to do to get to those, right? Yeah.
[00:13:11] Allie: [00:13:11] Yeah. Quarterly is definitely more like topic planning. Whether it's like a big batch of keyword research happens every quarter. Understanding maybe what your pillars might be and breaking down the specific cluster pieces or, the individual topic pieces I've seen.
[00:13:31] Quarterly sprints, so like the whoever is writing the pieces have the whole quarter to write that. And that's when the calendars are scheduled out. So if you have a January, February, March sprint, then by March, the content strategists will take all the pieces written and schedule them out for the following three months.
[00:13:48] So it's like you're batching every quarter. I've also seen that done monthly depends on, I think how big your own op report is, how many writers you have to work on those things. Another thing for yearly to go back [00:14:00] to that, I would definitely say budgeting depending on like how you produce your content.
[00:14:03] If you have a freelancer budget or a hiring budget, or like an outsourcing for design or editing, however you do the operation side of things. That's definitely an annual yeah. In my experience,
[00:14:16] Alex: [00:14:16] I'm also now thinking it'd be interesting to map what tools you would use at these different stages yearly, monthly, quarterly, et cetera.
[00:14:22] And in the yearly phase, I'm imagining. SWAT analysis. Personas competitive analysis head count. Those would be your main tools at that stage. And then quarterly you've got content, roadmap reports, editorial calendars quarterly reviews, analytics.
[00:14:42] Allie: [00:14:42] Yeah, big picture analytics because it's shifting into monthly.
[00:14:46]My experiences like monthly reporting, knowing like nothing can really crazy happen within a month, but it's also good to establish like that cadence month over month type of numbers. So that's moving into the monthly. I would say [00:15:00] that's the biggest reporting milestone in my experience, at least like the repetitive milestone.
[00:15:05] Alex: [00:15:05] Monthly, it seems like it's a great stage to do analytical work. Anyway, reporting dashboards reflection on the content you publish that month in the previous few months, it seems like monthly is a really good cadence for analytical stuff. Yeah.
[00:15:19] Allie: [00:15:19] I would also say Alex, I don't know your opinion for content.
[00:15:26] Updates content refreshes probably lives at the quarterly, if not six month window. Okay. I feel like it takes at least three, if not six plus months, to understand a con a piece of contents performance. So do we need to go back and update for SEO? Update for quality, maybe add in some internal links or CTS monthly it's too frequently, too frequent for that.
[00:15:51] Three to six months is usually the sweet spot to understand if this piece needs a little bit more
[00:15:56] Alex: [00:15:56] work. If you're a small company. Yeah. It's going to be a much longer [00:16:00] timeframe because you don't have that much content to update. But if you're a large company, you can do this pretty rapidly. Every three months is a really good cadence for that, because you've got so many historical articles that there's usually low hanging fruit, and there's a lot of leverage by going back and updating old content at that stage.
[00:16:15] But yeah, definitely quarterly or. Twice a year type of thing, I would say,
[00:16:19] Allie: [00:16:19] or a rerelease for distribution. Sometimes I'll put things back into the world at about three months to get them some
[00:16:27] Alex: [00:16:27] new eyes. So another tool at this stage is definitely a keyword research tool. , I feel like I've traditionally used my SEO research, planning tools, keyword research tools, really heavily on a quarterly basis.
[00:16:38] I check them weekly, maybe daily sometimes, but it really is like quarterly that I'm doing most of the heavy planning and going back and finding articles to update, what am I doing in the future? All of that stuff. Yeah. And then, so we did monthly, analytical stuff monthly. Is there anything else that we do on a monthly level?
[00:16:56] Allie: [00:16:56] If I would say from like a management operation [00:17:00] side, if pieces aren't assigned quarterly, I think they should be assigned monthly as a writer. Knowing what I have to tackle by month is nice just to be able to build out the big picture. Weekly is obviously the least amount of time you should go to writer.
[00:17:15]Yeah, depending on how many days they typically can turn something around, but I like monthly, if not quarterly assignment. Cadences, just knowing if you use a sauna or Trello or a notion, like here's what I've got for the month. And obviously you don't wait till the end to produce everything, but at least you can move cards along the board or move them down the calendar enough time, one a months a month.
[00:17:36] Yeah. So assignments by a month,
[00:17:39] Alex: [00:17:39] assigning writers is monthly. It kind of blends between monthly and quarterly in a way like you could go past a month, but it's generally in that timeframe of four to eight weeks. It
[00:17:48] Allie: [00:17:48] typically aligns, I would say with keyword research or like maybe CRR planning.
[00:17:53] So if I'm building our content roadmap report on a quarterly basis, and I build out all of the specs for [00:18:00] each piece, I'll probably assign those pieces as well. Maybe I won't communicate the assignments until the month of, but as a strategist manager, if I put on my manager hat, I'll typically assign them as I build out the
[00:18:14] Alex: [00:18:14] briefs.
[00:18:15] Yeah, this is the hard part too, that I was discussing before is like a content strategist is almost always a manager and an editor, but I think those are distinct roles. So we'll just create this amalgamation of what a normal content strategist is. Cause I think just the strategy hat is very specific stuff and that's a lot of the yearly quarterly stuff.
[00:18:33] And now as we're moving down towards monthly, weekly, and daily, I think it's going to become a lot more. Editing managing assigning and all of the kind of content marketing manager, things that it's typically like a content marketing manager is the strategist in the real world. So I guess going further down granularly on a weekly level, if you have a content team, there's definitely management tasks, such as one-on-ones reviews.
[00:18:57] We use 15 five with omniscient. [00:19:00] What else is weekly. If you do any, like not sprint planning, you do daily stand-ups to figure out what who's writing. What, if there's any blockers, if there's anybody you need to interview that you can't get access to. If there's any delays in publication, if there's an article that was just submitted from a guest writer and you want to publish it now, it's the, it's getting more to the day-to-day and flexible operations.
[00:19:22] I think
[00:19:23] Allie: [00:19:23] I would say too, going back to that. The content calendar conversation we had about making those in the moment, judgment calls, like shifting a date that probably happens on a weekly basis too. If you look at your week to come your five days of content that are on the schedule, but you have a guest post that came in I want to get this on a Wednesday.
[00:19:41] You make that call probably on that Monday. And you're like, I'm going to shift these days of publications and No, this is my new schedule for the week. So I'd say those judgment calls come on a weekly basis, maybe monthly. But some of that content does come in to my last minute. So I'd say that's made on a weekly basis.
[00:19:58] Alex: [00:19:58] What are the, like when [00:20:00] you wake up on a Monday morning, Allie, what do you usually look at for your upcoming week? Or what are the big rocks that show up repetitively?
[00:20:09] Allie: [00:20:09] I look at my email. I would look at probably a sauna. I'm I use a notebook. Doesn't always look very pretty. I would say a sauna for our company to see what's going on and for my other job, I, we use Trello. I also sometimes schedule out my assignments, like on the calendar. If I need to set a deadline for something, I'll just be like, this is due today.
[00:20:37] Do it at 8:00 AM on am event.
[00:20:41] Alex: [00:20:41] Do you plan out when you're going to be? Cause you write you plan, you edit, you do all of these things. Do you plan days and times where you're going to edit or write. Or do anything to specific articles? Do you say Wednesday morning, I'm writing this article on how to measure customer satisfaction and then Thursday afternoon, I'm editing [00:21:00] Sarah's article on whatever is it that granular or I would,
[00:21:04] Allie: [00:21:04] I.
[00:21:05] Would love to be able to time block like that. But I feel like my identity as a writer is so wrapped up in my it's like a very emotional, not emotional, but like I have to do what I feel like doing in the moment, knowing that it hinges on I just don't feel like writing right now. And I know if I write something I'm going to have to rewrite it later.
[00:21:24] Yeah. I think I've gotten to know myself to that point that outside of meetings and time blocking. Edits for the client deliverables. I tend to not schedule anything else. I've been adopting now the deeper Wednesdays, like we talked about on the podcast. So it's highly likely I will write that day because I don't have to context, switch between meetings.
[00:21:49]But no, I do not schedule out my pieces as much as I would love to do that. I admire people who can
[00:21:54] Alex: [00:21:54] do that. I don't do that either. I hit when inspiration hits. That's when I go typically with writing. [00:22:00] But do you create a to-do list of, like the articles you need to edit? The ones you need to write all of that stuff beginning of the week.
[00:22:07] Is that a weekly thing or is that more of a, I do that
[00:22:09] Allie: [00:22:09] daily. I rewrite my to-do list daily. Even if it's just repeating what's on the page prior. So I know that this day I have to get ideally all of these things done, sometimes they roll over. But yeah, that's a daily thing for me.
[00:22:25] Because things pop up every day and meetings pop up. And sometimes as much as I want to write a piece I can't, or it's not coming to me or something. So I'll just roll it over to the next days to do list.
[00:22:40] Alex: [00:22:40] Yeah. It seems like there's a big delineation between weekly and daily, which is very in the moment granular.
[00:22:46] You're looking a little bit ahead and shifting pieces around, but it's largely you are operating. And executing and then between that and monthly yearly, quarterly, which is much more of the typical strategy, the planning, the coordination, [00:23:00] there's a little Gulf between those two, but the content strategist typically has to have one foot in both worlds.
[00:23:06] Allie: [00:23:06] Yeah. I would say to strategists who also, it's even more important than ever to protect your time because you are responsible for so many more So much more context switching, essentially, like in my role, I do some writing, but now that I'm doing more managing and hiring and editing and even editing and writing take different parts of my brain.
[00:23:29]So I try to not do as much writing, knowing that it's just. It's like taking cinder blocks and moving them. If I can just focus on one thing for a day, it won't be as much like mental, heavy lifting. And it affects like my writing quality. So I'd say if you're a strategist, I got a small company and you're responsible for Picking up new content all the time, or maybe you have to outsource the agency try to focus on one thing or the other or protect your time and dedicate certain days to writing.
[00:23:58] Yeah, that's super important.
[00:24:00] [00:24:00] Alex: [00:24:00] A real quick point on that, just to throw this in. David we just talked to on the podcast called mine management, not time management, and I'm about 20 pages away from finishing it. And it's been one of my favorite projects, Tiffany books, but I think, especially for creatives and especially for this content marketing strategist role, there's an interesting concept of there's two concepts that relate to each other.
[00:24:21] There's the four stages of creativity and then the seven. Creative mental States that David walks through and he makes the point that you should separate those. So the four stages of creativity, I believe it's preparation. Incubation illumination and verification. So preparation is going to be your research, possibly exploration.
[00:24:42] Incubation is going to be, when you go for a walk, when you sleep, when you take a shower, when you're you're not consciously focused on the problem at hand, illumination is going to be the writing, the ideation, the generation phase, and verification, and editing and. Convergent thinking and bringing that into a real world pragmatic framework, but you shouldn't [00:25:00] actually blend any of those two stages together.
[00:25:02] So when you're writing, when you're illuminating, you shouldn't also be researching and you shouldn't also be editing, like trying to partition that time off and give yourself as much space for that task at hand helps because your brain is in a certain state, yeah. So I love that book for creatives, but I highly recommend it.
[00:25:18] Yeah, it's on Amazon for sure. That's awesome.
[00:25:22] Karissa: [00:25:22] Yeah, especially for this role, I think about, that whole concept comes in really handy.
[00:25:28] Allie: [00:25:28] What backgrounds
[00:25:29] Karissa: [00:25:29] have you seen if any, that may compliment the role of a content marketing strategist? Like we were talking about when we spoke with Tommy Walker, he's a storyteller and he brought that background into this role.
[00:25:42] So what backgrounds have you seen can compliment this? If they're coming into it, they're new. But maybe they've delve into some other fields that may help them in this
[00:25:53] Alex: [00:25:53] journalism.
[00:25:55] Allie: [00:25:55] Yeah. Yeah. I would say that. I'd say if your role is really strategy [00:26:00] heavy coming in from like just a marketer role, which I know is super vague, being comfortable with like planning research.
[00:26:08] Analysis making gathering those insights. I'm partial on the writing background. I think everyone should have that background. I think that helps a ton w looking at if. If you can look at the big picture, but you can't understand how it translates down to the individual deliverable.
[00:26:26] That's harder to master than it is to start as that individual producer and then work your way up to the big picture. That's my experience. It's been weird and uncomfortable at times, but at least I can relate to the writers and the people who are creating. Cause if you build this whole strategy, you don't know how it translates down to that, to the nth degree, then.
[00:26:44] Then why? Like, how are you doing that with any authority? So I'd say a writing or a creator background is always helpful. Journalism, storytelling. Like a journalist,
[00:26:54]Karissa: [00:26:54] We'll often see the bigger story and then find the pieces that are, that they can use to [00:27:00] pull the reader in or
[00:27:01] Alex: [00:27:01] whoever the viewer.
[00:27:02] So that's depends where your background is in journalism. If you're a journalist, you're going to be very good at curiosity, creativity and provoking the right questions and crafting the correct story. It's going to be a detail oriented thing. If you're used to an editorial position, then you're going to be really good at.
[00:27:17] Orchestrating the pieces and that's very similar to Tommy Walker's sort of producer mindset where he is planning and creatively constructing the strategy, but he's also hand plucking the talent and making sure that they're coordinating and automating everything that they can as well. So it depends what position, but I think film and I think journalism and I actually think music a lot of people in marketing and especially content who have music backgrounds, either performing or producing.
[00:27:45] Something in that space combination of right brain and left brain. I think there's a big marker of detail orientation and almost mathemagic mathematical logic, perfectionism mixed with complete blind creativity. I think that construes itself very well [00:28:00] for for writing as well, but to Allie's point with the writing, I think that if you don't enjoy writing, not just, if you're not good at it, You should be good at it, but if you don't enjoy writing, I feel like you shouldn't be in a position like a content marketing strategist, because you're going to make everybody you work with miserable if you don't enjoy it.
[00:28:16] Yeah. Externalize that. So yeah.
[00:28:21] Allie: [00:28:21] At least have a love, hate relationship
[00:28:24] Alex: [00:28:24] going to love it. Yeah, for sure. And also just to add one more, it's heavily a customer and insight focus. So if you've done any UX or customer research, which I think Allie, you were alluding to with the marketer general marketing stuff, That's a big piece of this, for sure.
[00:28:40]
[00:28:40] Karissa: [00:28:40] Yeah. It makes sense. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about the role of a content marketing strategist? Like maybe it's just writing or maybe you need certain design skills or programming tech skills,
[00:28:52] Allie: [00:28:52] anything. Gosh, I would say that it's I've heard a lot of like copy, like copywriter [00:29:00] definitions.
[00:29:00]Which there's I think a time and place for that because don't do site copy. I don't do email copy. I have obviously when needed social media copies, different, it's just, the content has become this like huge, all encompassing buzzword. So assigning like a content strategist to.
[00:29:19] Email newsletters and social and Hey, will you improve this product? Copy? Like obviously a content strategist hopefully is a good writer. So that's going to be some high quality writing, but they have completely different functions. So the biggest, miss conception I've seen is like a catchall writer.
[00:29:37]And ideally. Those would be different roles. If you can afford it, they're swinging it. It should be more of a niche,
[00:29:44] Karissa: [00:29:44] right? Not a one size fits all kind of
[00:29:47] Allie: [00:29:47] writing style, in my opinion. Because I know people who focused totally on product copy, absolutely kill it. I know there's folks we've talked to who just do email newsletters and they know the ins and outs of that medium [00:30:00] specialty thing.
[00:30:01] Yeah. Same with social. I think obviously there's a time and place for you just to be like all hands on deck, like doing what needs to be done. But ideally there, there are different
[00:30:09] Alex: [00:30:09] functions. Yeah. On one level, it's all about communicating ideas. And every form of writing is a function of that. But this term content is so generic.
[00:30:18] It means anything. Content could be a webpage, it could be a headline. It could be a tweet. It could be a video. It could be microcopy within an onboarding flow that a UX copywriter writes. So I think the term content strategy. Is so generic that it actually applies to multiple domains. We're talking about content marketing strategy.
[00:30:37] So primarily the domain of blogging. And even within that, sometimes people think that social media is included. Maybe video is, I don't know, we haven't actually discussed that. It could be, but it's a multimedia landscape now, but typically it's going to be informational content. That's longish form.
[00:30:54] And that differs from UX copies or UX content strategy, which is a [00:31:00] copywriting on a user interface to help the user understand the functionality of the app to basically it's like almost a product functionality at that point. And that's also termed content strategy. Then you have, they're
[00:31:12] Karissa: [00:31:12] not maybe skilled in writing a specific kind of copy.
[00:31:15] Should they have some knowledge to be able to manage a team that does, or,
[00:31:20] Alex: [00:31:20] no, those should be totally separate. Yeah. I think so the UX copywriter should be on the product team. And that should be almost like a research functionality. I'll be it with a little bit of persuasive and clarity functionality, but that's completely different than educational content marketing.
[00:31:34] And I think content marketers actually have very little crossover with persuasive copywriters. I think you can do both. Like I said, both of it is a function of communicating a message, but the way that you do it, the tricks that you have, the tactics, the frameworks, like they're so different. It's just try to write if you're a blocker, try to write like a Facebook ad headline.
[00:31:56] It's so hard.
[00:31:59] Allie: [00:31:59] Yeah. Even the [00:32:00] word, like the ideal word count. More and more. Are content marketers responsible and should be writing longer form content, but then you have these, social paid social Raiders that are like, you have 20 words to work with. And that alone is just like a whole different like brain space.
[00:32:17] Like I can't, I'm not, I don't thrive in the short form at
[00:32:20] Alex: [00:32:20] all. Pro copywriters, like a poet, a a content marketer is like a journalist. And a UX copywriter or a UX content strategist is like a technical writer of sorts. So it's. Yeah. It's all about clarity. Yeah. I just made that up. They may not be the perfect analogies, but I that's how I look at it.
[00:32:44] They're all writers, but they're all different writers. Like a poet can't write a novel or, some can, but it's not the same thing.
[00:32:51] Allie: [00:32:51] According to Alex, poets need to stay in their lane.
[00:32:55] Alex: [00:32:55] Don't need to stay in your lane, but you should learn the other's craft and not assume that you can do it all just because you can do one.
[00:33:00] [00:33:00] Allie: [00:33:00] Yeah. Yeah. Even speaking of that for content marketers, there's a lot of folks. And I did the same thing when I was freelancing that focus on like blogs and eBooks and case studies and yes, those all, I think fall under the umbrella of long form. But even those three things have completely different production processes and pretty different Purposes cause my gosh eBooks don't necessarily have to be worked on with SEO because they're not always published sometimes they're PDF form.
[00:33:30] So there's obviously a different purpose of that case studies. There's lots of interview, like more journalistic influence. There are writers I've seen that can do all three very well, but if we're really talking about like leaning into your craft and leaning into what you're really good at, maybe what you can do for your company or what you can strategize on.
[00:33:47] Even those can sometimes have completely different.
[00:33:51] Karissa: [00:33:51] Like I write case studies and. It was first. Okay. I want to be a writer in the B2B space. Okay. What specifically, hone in on case studies. Cause I thought, Oh, that's interesting [00:34:00] interviewing people. And then, using that information to, it could be used as a sales tool.
[00:34:05] It can be used for many purposes. Yeah. It's honing in on a specialty. I
[00:34:09] Alex: [00:34:09] think there's that there's a specialty and a generalism as well. I'm trying to come up with a metaphor for this one, but I mean there's short form copywriting, like an ad. On Facebook and there's long form such as the time, the kind that I wrote for the course copy the course page.
[00:34:26] And I'm better at the long form, probably because it translates from my copy or my content writing experience. I've written like long form technical articles, and I've done a little bit of thought leadership. So that's a genre of sorts. If you're playing in a band, you could play really good jazz, but that doesn't mean jazz is the bad example, because if you can play jazz, you can play almost anything.
[00:34:45] But if you can play really good pop songs, that doesn't mean you, you may understand or be able to read the music of blues. Composition or like a jazz composition, but it doesn't mean you can go play it perfectly. So I think you can learn and get better at giving genres. [00:35:00] You can just specialize in one, you can be the best blues guitarist of all time.
[00:35:03] You can be the best short form copywriter of all time. Or you can learn a little bit about each and be more of a generalist, but they are different genres. It's all music. It's all writing, it's all communication, but they're just different flavors and you can specialize in. Any given kind of area and you can also make it more or less granular, like you were talking about with B2B copywriting and B2B case studies like that.
[00:35:23] That's Hierarchical, beneath maybe informational content writing or something like that. So you can break it down as far as you want people maybe overly specialized, but yeah, that's right. Totally. You could be a health and supplements short-form copywriter. So it's, then it becomes a little bit more of a choice and a career strategy thing.
[00:35:45] But just the important note is that there are different flavors, but the same ingredients,
[00:35:49] Karissa: [00:35:49] cool metaphor.
[00:35:51] Alex: [00:35:51] Yeah. I like that working on it. So what are
[00:35:54] Karissa: [00:35:54] the biggest mistakes content marketing strategists make in their work or strategy? Like [00:36:00] maybe over relying on their gut feeling versus, the actual data or micromanaging.
[00:36:07] What are some mistakes that, people should be aware of?
[00:36:10] Alex: [00:36:10] Mimicry? I think when you want to. Appear when you want to do the same things as everybody else, unless you are already operating at a huge company with a massive audience, it's going to fail because you're going to do what somebody else is doing, but worse.
[00:36:27] And this is a game of attention. There's tons and tons of blogs and tons of content. And it's. Compounding and more and more every year, all the old content is still there and there's more and more new players. So if all you want to do is appease that mediocre middle and do things that have already been done.
[00:36:43] I think that is in most cases, an ineffective strategy. Yeah. Interesting.
[00:36:49] Allie: [00:36:49] I have a couple things I would say. Leaning too heavily on just SEO. That's a really specific mistake, but it's one of my pet [00:37:00] peeves because there is just so many different ways to tell stories and reach people. It should be
[00:37:04] Karissa: [00:37:04] SEO content.
[00:37:07] Allie: [00:37:07] It wasn't our block. But I think like just. Purely like here's a keyword plug it in as many times as you can, like only use these because this is how people search for them. Exactly. And on the flip side only tracking progress or success through organic traffic. I think there's also so many different ways to distribute and be discovered and build trust and affinity with your audience.
[00:37:30]Obviously like SEO and organic traffic. In the same vein as what you said, Alex, by like following suit with, what's just like the masses. It's easy to feel like you're doing the right thing because everyone else is doing it. And it's relatively simple to like track just by numbers and analytics and Oh, we have a thousand viewers.
[00:37:47] This is great. Next month we have 2000. We're doing good. Yeah. That's a really good indicator of success in a certain way, but there are so many other KPIs, other indicators that what we're doing is working and it really just comes [00:38:00] back to. Relating content back to products and services on your audience.
[00:38:04]If you're not doing it for those factors or those people, why are you even investing in that? Secondly, I would say micromanaging, which I saw was on your questions from a writing perspective, I think that's the toughest part of coming from a writer only role into a strategist because you.
[00:38:21] Are used to being the person. These are my words. This is my piece. So not having as many. As much influence on that and really trusting, different writers and their different processes and coming at a topic in a different way. And you're still responsible for their work. So you obviously want to have your hand in the pot, but yeah, I would say micro-managing as well, because.
[00:38:46] When you're a strategist that is also a manager, it's really important that you're also responsible for teaching and coaching. So there's like your teaching hat working on like training programs, onboarding you have to shift your focus from like literally the words that are being [00:39:00] used to the folks on your team and trust them that they will use the right words.
[00:39:04] So at a certain
[00:39:04] Karissa: [00:39:04] point you have to trust them and let go, and
[00:39:06] Allie: [00:39:06] yeah. And put your energy towards. How can I be a better coach or editor or trainer versus like, how can I be a better writer? That's not necessarily your only responsibility anymore.
[00:39:17]Alex: [00:39:17] I have two more kind of related to alleys, but different maybe.
[00:39:21] So the first one is actually split into two categories, but it's caring about the wrong things. I think content strategists, anybody can develop pretty strong opinions about the nature of their business and their industry. One facet of that is I'll start with one. Allie is probably going to disagree with me on, I think content strategists are way overly, meticulous and critical and caring about micro stylistic items and at the expense, if it's missing the forest for the trees, so caring, I've had straight content strategists and editors more so than strategist, but. Edit my articles and there's so much [00:40:00] red ink on the page, but it's all where my commas are, where my periods are and, misspelled word, whatever, like that type of thing and nothing about the message itself. And I just think that it's impolite to correct somebody when you understood the message.
[00:40:16] So I think that people way underrate the message and way overrate the style, the substance is so much more important unless you're writing to writers. For editors then maybe it's
[00:40:28] Allie: [00:40:28] not important, but that's my, or is it depends on who you're writing to. I think now it's not that you can define your persona all the way down to their grammar preferences.
[00:40:38]There's no way you would know that. But I think that if you're, I think that consistency and quality in the message and the communication is really important to like building a cohesive brand image. If I read a blog from like someone that I really like, and they have the wrong punctuation or whatever.
[00:40:55] It's not going to take away from the message, but I think that. That's a good [00:41:00] message and a really good style drives the point home even more. Yeah, for me, maybe it's just because I'm a writer and editor and I appreciate it detail. Now if it's a ridiculously poorly written message, but it's done really well, that doesn't compensate for a bad message.
[00:41:17] So I, I agree with you there that like sure you have your periods in the right place, but I don't understand what you're saying to me. You're right. It doesn't make up for
[00:41:25] Alex: [00:41:25] that. Okay. So the voice thing, that's what I wanted to hammer on. So it wasn't totally about the grammar and punctuation, but I think people overrate the value of voice and cohesiveness in their brand identity because there's a famous study about wine, right?
[00:41:38] Every wine smilier, every wine connoisseur thinks they can tell the difference between an expensive wine and a cheap one. But it turns out when they're blindfolded, when they have a blind taste test, they can't do it consistently can not rate. Quality expensive wines from cheaper ones. And I think the same thing would happen if you remove the logo and the branding and imagery from a website.
[00:41:59] I don't think [00:42:00] you can tell me the difference between an Intercom blog post and a HubSpot one and a, a bunch of these B2B brands. Yeah. I don't think that would actually be possible. And if you took the byline out and all that stuff, I could be wrong on that, but I think the micro differences in voice.
[00:42:14] And most of the differences aren't everybody's Oh wait, we're entertaining, but also serious we're educational, but also instructive. And it's what does that mean? I think that is just such a energy suck overall. Here's my caveat on the margins. It's incredibly impactful. So if you have a really strong, unique voice, if you're like a Gary Vaynerchuk, then I think leaning on that voice is like the most important thing you could do.
[00:42:40] But for 95% of people in brands, they don't have that unique of a voice. So you're better off just finding the better substance.
[00:42:46] Allie: [00:42:46] So it depends. Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying like Intercom and HubSpot have just stripped their writers of all personality because they've established just like singular, engaging and friendly, but
[00:42:56] Alex: [00:42:56] professional. No, I just don't think you can tell the difference between [00:43:00] the two pieces of content. If you stripped all identifiers, I don't think the content has that much different of a voice that's noticeable to the average reader,
[00:43:08] Allie: [00:43:08] how would you want to define our voice and our mission then?
[00:43:11] Alex: [00:43:11] However you guys want to write your articles.
[00:43:14] Karissa: [00:43:14] Okay.
[00:43:15] Allie: [00:43:15] So
[00:43:16] Karissa: [00:43:16] voice,
[00:43:17] Alex: [00:43:17] but yeah, and my voice changes piece to piece, if I'm writing a thought leadership, maybe I'm going to come off as pompous and hyperbolic. And maybe if I'm writing a instructional technical piece, I'm going to come off as precise and exact thing.
[00:43:30] But my voice changes based on the substance strikes it. Interesting. Yeah. This is a strong opinion. I don't know if this is actually debatable, but this is a debatable one for, with the content strategist thing. But I think my opinion is like generally they can often fall into the trap of caring about things that don't matter that much.
[00:43:49] And here's my second point where you guys are probably gonna agree more so than the stylistic stuff is like traffic is by itself, a vanity metric. So I think oftentimes we look at metrics and we just like [00:44:00] blindly apply and up into the right as good mindset to them without actually thinking, like, how does this relate to the business and my actual goals of the content program.
[00:44:08] If you just drive a bunch of traffic that actually doesn't mean anything. Unless, more about the context of that traffic. So I think vanity metrics are a big problem and big mistake that not just content strategists, everybody falls into that trap essentially.
[00:44:23] Allie: [00:44:23] So what would you say is a
[00:44:24] Karissa: [00:44:24] better
[00:44:25] Alex: [00:44:25] metric?
[00:44:27]It comes down to what you're selling, how you can attribute it. But I think if you can drive business results, whether that's conversions, whether it's leads, you could potentially tie that down stream further. If you're an agency, and say, instead of just traffic, we have qualified leads, but then we can also tie those back down to whether we close them or not.
[00:44:42] And we can tie back revenue to different blog posts. So the more. The more bottom funnel and the more business centric money centric you can make your goals the better.
[00:44:55] Allie: [00:44:55] So content is only as good as the infrastructure set up. [00:45:00] In the business to receive whatever they drive
[00:45:04] Alex: [00:45:04] analytically. Yeah.
[00:45:05] Yeah, for sure. And it doesn't have to be business goals. It could be, if you want to drive retention such as the case with say HubSpot's Academy or something like that, then that should be your goal. It shouldn't just be like mere page views. It should be how much. Longer people retain after they've answered their questions or been educated or ButcherBox has recipes, does that, I don't know what their goal is with that.
[00:45:25] I would assume it's a customer education and customer marketing metric, but defining your goals. Or defining your metrics in alignment with your goals is the important piece. It's not, there's no specific KPI or metric that's best. It just depends on what you're trying to do.
[00:45:42] Allie: [00:45:42] Gotcha. Cool. Just curious.
[00:45:45] Alex: [00:45:45] Could be the best goal if you're like, running paid ads. If you basically have an advertising model to monetize, then it's just like the more eyeballs, the better. So I forgot my other mistake now. So there's like the two caring [00:46:00] about the wrong things. I don't remember my other one now might come back to me.
[00:46:04] I'm not sure. Not mimicry immigrate. What do content strategists do wrong? Oh man. Yeah. You can ask the next question and maybe it'll pop back in my head. Why
[00:46:20] Allie: [00:46:20] is
[00:46:21] Karissa: [00:46:21] a content marketing strategist worth diving into, do you believe that there's a lot of opportunity in 2021? There's been, there's more content being made probably than ever companies can't keep up.
[00:46:32]Why is this role worth diving into.
[00:46:38] Allie: [00:46:38] I just don't think there should be as much content being created as there is, but that's just a whole other conversation,
[00:46:44] Alex: [00:46:44] but wouldn't content strategists help solve that by like curating and parsing down, figuring out what content to produce. Sorry. I just, I remember my other item
[00:46:56] Allie: [00:46:56] in the role for the right reasons and I know what they're doing.
[00:46:59]I think [00:47:00] that a lot of content strategist roles are just being like tacked on to help produce as much as possible, as fast as possible. And there's a place for that. Obviously, like we have a gold on the ship to just ship as fast as we can, but we're aligned on our goals. We're all good at what we do.
[00:47:15] And. There's definitely a quality thing baked in.
[00:47:19] Alex: [00:47:19] We're all naturally opposed to putting out shitty
[00:47:22] Allie: [00:47:22] content. Yeah. Because I think quantity just takes the cake, which I think is why there's so many open roles. Now. I think that if you're good at what you do, and you genuinely like writing, as we've said, then that's a great opportunity to get started.
[00:47:34] I'd say writing. Getting your ideas out there. There's tape take our course. How about that? That's a good place to get started.
[00:47:42] Karissa: [00:47:42] Gosh, I don't know. Do you think that there's a overproduction of content right
[00:47:48] Allie: [00:47:48] now? I think everybody thinks they're a creator. I think everyone can be a creator. I'm not trying to squash anybody's creativity.
[00:47:55] I just think people start doing before they learn or think and doing [00:48:00] should happen in six. Like in alignment with thinking like writing is thinking as you become a better writer, you become a better thinker. We really need to have a whole other call about this. Cause I just have lots of thoughts.
[00:48:10]I myself have tried not to produce to overproduce because it can't compensate for not learning. And I want my learning and my thinking and my reading and my absorbing. I want to be a sponge first and I want to share what I've only filtered through my own thought process. I want to share the opinions I've taken the time to establish.
[00:48:31]I think a lot of people put the cart in front of the horse and just want to get out there and get get. Traffic. Do they focus on quantity versus quantity? Yes. And. Yes. So
[00:48:43]Alex: [00:48:43] This was by the way, a hundred percent. My second item that I had forgotten was I believe that content strategists take the easy way out and produce bad content knowingly.
[00:48:52] So I think it's one thing if you're writing and you're practicing, if you have the training wheels, it's okay. If you fall off the bike, but if you know what you're doing and you're still putting [00:49:00] out subpar inaccurate or bloated content, then I think that is a total moral mistake because there's so much noise on the internet.
[00:49:07] And also if you fundamentally believe. At your core, what you do. If you're a writer that you can change, people's opinions and their behaviors through writing, of course you believe that otherwise you wouldn't be a content marketer then putting out bad content affects the world badly. So if you, I used to deal with this all the time and when I was at CXL, cause most of the content and conversion optimization was.
[00:49:28] Either just rehashes of other people's articles or blatant simplicity. And miss attribution of what conversion optimization is. So we had to deal with this all the time, just the influx of bad content, creating bad processes and bad ideas that were implemented by companies who didn't know better because that's what the Google search results told them.
[00:49:49] So it was telling these companies. They wasted a ton of money and time trying to figure these things out because there was content that told them the wrong way to do things. So I think I totally agree with Allie, I think [00:50:00] curation and content quality I think you can do, you could do tons of Roundup posts and just produce like shit content and get a lot of it out there.
[00:50:08] But I think that's a mistake, even if it works for your business. I think that's just a heartless way to do things.
[00:50:15] Allie: [00:50:15] Yeah. Not only have people speaking in general generalities, not only have people like lost the ability to just think for themselves. And that's why thought leadership is this huge, like big deal.
[00:50:28] It's no, it's not. People are just thinking like people have thoughts. Like why is that this huge new thing? I've definitely jumped on that bandwagon. I'm not trying to be a hypocrite. I also think people have lost the ability to make the judgment calls of what's good. And what's not because as CEO such a love, hate relationship, but SEO SEO just makes you.
[00:50:52]What everyone else is writing because you use the first page of Google to understand what's good, which I just showed people how to do last week. So there's obviously a place [00:51:00] and a time for it, but it's just hard to get out from that hamster wheel. And I think that's where people get started in their job and therefore that's where they stay.
[00:51:09] And there's not a lot of original thought original motivation, original. Passion that helps you create your own hamster wheel. Interesting. I think what is that? Because running it
[00:51:19] Karissa: [00:51:19] as a business, so you're trying to get results.
[00:51:22] Allie: [00:51:22] Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I would say whenever things are driven by money or vanity metrics, there's not a lot of motivation to We'll lead with quality.
[00:51:32] There's obviously you can do all of them. It just takes a lot more work. It's hard. It's a long it's the long
[00:51:37] Alex: [00:51:37] game. There is a bifurcation between the art and the quality side of things and the business side, because I've written a couple of articles on this topic of content economics and or another one.
[00:51:48] That's more ranty actually on, I believe it's called there's no such thing as free lunch in content marketing. Because the best thing you can do in terms of a business decision is lower the cost or lower the risk and increase the [00:52:00] profitability or the magnitude of the output. So it's all about expected value.
[00:52:04] If a decision has, a 70% probability of making you a thousand dollars and a 30% probability of you losing. $10 million. Then it's got like a very low expected value and you shouldn't do that. So oftentimes businesses are incentivized to lower the cost of content production. And that actually usually lowers content quality.
[00:52:21] It doesn't have to, but the main case that I see is it's a, it's like you have a keyword. Live chat software or something like that. So you don't want to write the article yourself because that would take a lot of time and effort. So you hire a freelancer for as cheaply as you can, and maybe they don't know about the topic.
[00:52:39] So they're there alone going to be quite cheap. And then you also outsource the insights from the article. So you set out a HARO request and say, looking for live chat experts, and they all give you their pitches. And now there's a further step here. If you have a good editor, you could curate those and it could be good content still because there's a lot of experts giving you insights.
[00:52:58] Granted, those experts are definitely [00:53:00] looking for a back link. People like me, which on my side, I love it because I get free back backlinks and I can spew bullshit and nobody corrects it. But on that other side, if you have this. Content program looking after the keyword with the cheap writer who doesn't know how to edit good versus bad, versus wrong statements, you have a totally garbage article filled the seventy-five experts talking about their number one live chat software tip, and it just ends up being either noise or.
[00:53:27]It could be wrong. It could be right, but there's no filtering and that could be good for the business. They might rank that article, but at what cost it's all that cost is externalized under the reader who then has to filter in and say do I trust this? Do I not trust this? It's all outsourced on them.
[00:53:41] Essentially. Interesting. But from my perspective, I love those because I get, like I said, I can pitch a HARO, a I can make up a quote about a topic. I don't know, and I can get a backlink and that's wonderful for me. So I, when the publisher wins, the reader loses. That's amazing.
[00:53:59] Allie: [00:53:59] And [00:54:00] a note about like results.
[00:54:01] I, I really think that low quality content leads to low quality leads and customers interest. For anybody that can appreciate that kind of content or convert from that content or buy something from that content like not to make it sounded really judgmental. I just don't think it leads to high quality relationships with the people that care about what you do.
[00:54:22] They just don't
[00:54:23] Karissa: [00:54:23] know any better. Yeah.
[00:54:25] Alex: [00:54:25] Yeah. We have we had that with CXL. We tried to produce the best quality content possible, and people were so nitpicky that if we got like small facts wrong, we'd get shouted out on Twitter. And I loved it. It was like, they were keeping us honest.
[00:54:39] They expected that high quality, so
[00:54:41] Allie: [00:54:41] paid attention. Like you knew that they read what you were writing. They cared about what you had to say, and they trusted you enough to like, Stick around for what was coming up next. Whereas other people who like skim an article get to free a free download, a free template, or take away, like just the header is if you have a listicle, I'm [00:55:00] speaking from experience.
[00:55:01]That's what I do with, I just get what I came for and then leave. I don't take the time to notice. There are like three or four writers. I don't care what they publish. I'm going to go read it because I. Love what they write. I think they're amazing. I basically want to be them. So I don't care if they're writing about something that's related to me.
[00:55:17]I want to read every single thing. They only published like once in a while and
[00:55:24] Alex: [00:55:24] because it's good back, this is where I actually completely agree with you on the style and brand the marginal value of that, because there are certain cases where over time and repetition of doing the same. The strategy, your unique differentiators, such as CXL people would come to us to read CXL content.
[00:55:41] And like you are reading these three authors content because it's their voices. So I think that's where you have to be a little iconoclast, a kind of classic or I don't know if there's an ethic where it's just like class, but you have to be Unique and different and continue hammering that voice [00:56:00] to build up some of that.
[00:56:01] But it only occurs over time, but at the end of the day, like you want to put out quality into the world. And I think that's something that most of us can agree on. Yes. .