In this episode, the three co-founders of Omniscient Digital, Allie Decker, David Khim, and Alex Birkett, come together to discuss the ideal ways of content creation and marketing.
Although content creation and content marketing may be defined differently, they both have the same ultimate goal- to drive traffic and conversion. In this episode, the three co-founders of Omniscient Digital, Allie Decker, David Khim, and Alex Birkett, come together to discuss the ideal ways of content creation and marketing.
As experts in content creation and marketing, the trio share invaluable information and thoughts on the use of internal company influences as opposed to the conventional hiring of external ones. Allie, David, and Alex also weigh into the controversial debate on the impact of content marketers in companies.
This discussion offers insightful information that will propel personal and company growth in content creation. Grab your drink as you enjoy the episode.
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What is Kitchen Side?
One big benefit of running an agency or working at one is you get to see the “kitchen side” of many different businesses; their revenue, their operations, their automations, and their culture.
You understand how things look from the inside and how that differs from the outside.
You understand how the sausage is made.
As an agency ourselves, we’re working both on growing our clients’ businesses as well as our own. This podcast is one project, but we also blog, make videos, do sales, and have quite a robust portfolio of automations and hacks to run our business.
We want to take you behind the curtain, to the kitchen side of our business, to witness our brainstorms, discussions, and internal dialogues behind the public works that we ship.
Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.
Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:
Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)
Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)
How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)
Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)
Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)
Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:
Should You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?
How Do Growth and Content Overlap?
Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:
Twitter: @beomniscient
Linkedin: Be Omniscient
Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/
[02:57] The Creation of Internal Content Marketers
The social media has made it easier for individuals to amass large following, along with the company brand
“I saw it more in 2020, and 2021, with like, freelancers, consultants, folks who had to build their audience for their own business. And I think it's an interesting trend of folks in house and larger organizations. I don't know if, if it came from the perspective of this is a marketing play for the organization, or if it was just folks trying to develop their own expertise, build their own leverage for maybe job hopping, like jumping out on their own. But there's been a really interesting impact on what I assume would be gants traffic,gants sales, you know, it's like kind of an unintentional impact there. And now, you know, as we talk about decentralized content marketing is, I think we're approaching it in a more intentional way, not just to build our individual audiences.”
[05:40] Individuals Vs the Company
Individual influencer employees can be used to bring traffic to the company
“Yeah, and it's like these platforms. It's no longer I think, many years ago, it was make sure to post your blog to Twitter and LinkedIn or whatever, like it was just a URL that was it was submitted to Hacker News or whatever that forum was back then. And now they become their own thing. And substack is also a thing. So it's almost like people are more used to just following individuals than these brands anymore. Like, I don't subscribe to New York Times anymore. I don't think I subscribe to any news thing. I subscribe to individuals. Like, I was just reading Benedict Evans newsletter today. And as I look forward to every week, it's super long newsletter. But I click almost every single link in there. There's like 20 links, and I read every article, because it's interesting, and I'm curious what he finds interesting, and I want to learn more about it. And what Tracy Wallace is working with, what's that publication that? I guess they sponsor a bunch of individual newsletters? That was called workweek? Yeah. So I think there's something to it.”
[15:53] Using AI Tools for Content Creation
The IA tools make the best content creation partners but not the sole content generators
“Yeah, to me, it's, it's the bare minimum of content creation its valuable. You know, we had a conversation about how, Alex when you've used Jasper or another tool it, if anything, it just presents a case that you can argue for or against. Which is another way I think of saying writer's block, you know, gives you a couple paragraphs, and you're either like, oh, yeah, this is starting in a good direction, right? Because it's just the start, or it's like, this isn't what I want to put my byline on, or I don't like where this is going, I'm going to like argue against it, and therefore my writing will get started. But yeah, it's the bare minimum folks that can deliver that kind of content on their own, like they, in my opinion, they should be kind of pushed out. Because that isn't the content that I would want published, just like straight run out of Jasper and published which, talking to the team, like, that's not why they created it to begin with, it's more of a content partner, content creation partner, or a copywriting partner. So I have lots of opinions about this.”
[20:22] Can AI Beat Human Writers?
Writers who add value to their articles will always be indispensable
“Well, speaking from a content writer, freelance writer and house writer, whatever position it's been an interesting transition to watch the last few years of folks coming into writing, primarily b2b content writing because it's pretty straightforward. When I got into it, I liked writing. And I had a lot of relevant experience. I started a business in college that I later sold, my parents, own their own businesses, and I got to see like behind the scenes, and a lot of that, and that was how I chose my niche because I had my own stories to tell in my own experience. I could get a keyword or a topic and write all about it and not have to go to Google for a lot of relevant terms. That's what I think helped me get my job at HubSpot. When I got to HubSpot. I learned about SEO and when when all that was, but looking at what can't be systemized what can't be democratized. Whatever phrase you want to use, it's going to be that personal experience that personal interest, whether it's educational experience, or firsthand, like boots on the ground experience. And it's been interesting watching a lot of folks that I was freelancing alongside early on, you know, get into the online course the coach in the community building as a way to up their income without upping their output, which is totally valid. But I think what that did is it assisted this turn of all of these writers coming into the fold. And I think everyone has their own right to do whatever they want to do in that sense. But that those are the folks that don't have much else to add. Outside of let's say an AI tool is folks that joined the writing field became writers, because it was easy because it was quick hits of 500 bucks, because you could subcontract. Like if your reasoning is wrong, it's probably going to be easy for you to get beat out by a tool like Jasper.”
[28:55] The Vanity Content Measuring Metrics
Content should be measured against revenue growth instead of traffic
“I mean, I wonder if there's a couple of different things here. I mean, content marketers are typically, at least at HubSpot, they were hired some straight out of college, lower wages, and their junior, not given any training or medium to learn about business metrics, or what matters except write four articles a week and publish and drove traffic and that sort of it. And maybe it's it's this spiral that keeps feeding itself. But I'm starting to see more folks in content I don't know about in house, but I pay attention to some competitive agencies and I'm seeing their messaging also be less around traffic and more about conversions and revenue growth. I don't know if maybe they're seeing us and changing their messaging, or if that's just something everyone is trying to update. But the thing that's fascinating to me is you can have a director of content and a director of demand gen peers reporting to the same VP or whatever. And the director of content is probably paid less than the Managing Director, because they're held to different success metrics and their work as measured differently. And maybe just the culture that's been built around what content means, has been around us vanity metrics, which maybe over the last decade was around traffic and not as helpful business metrics. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to grok like, how do we change that if we were to help level up the content marketing universe? Do we pull content marketers up to be like, hey, stop thinking about just traffic and think about this impact? And I think we've in a previous episode, we were saying like good content strategies actually comes from good business strategy. At the end of the day, I think that almost all marketing, all marketing is content. It's just different forms of content. And so it's figuring out what's, what's the right path forward, and how do we create it in a way that meets our business objectives. And typically, when content isn't, doesn't have a seat at a table was probably because it's not aligned with those objectives are unaware.”
[38:52] The Long Term Goal of SEO Content
SEO Content has long term results and you need to exercise patience as you wait for its results
“Yeah, I mean, the by nature content, especially if it's organic, or SEO related is going to be a longer play. So if you come into the door, like you won't be able to deliver immediate value food traffic in that way. But I think a lot of folks don't ask like, tell me about the customer journey. Give me a product demo. Like what are the pain points? What are questions that are being asked at sales and the customer success level? What are my conversion opportunities. Like there's a lot of larger questions that almost every marketer should be asking that I don't think content does, or at least they're not challenged to. It's more of like, what are the topics? What are the keywords? Like, let me get started writing, which that's great. That's a tactic. But that's not a strategy. Nor does it encompass like what content could be.”
[42:26] Dealing with Burnout
When it comes to workload, just bite what you can chew
“It's also up to everyone to set boundaries. Like if you get a ton from your VP of Marketing, it's too much like say something and start on what you're most passionate about. So you're not bored, but chip away at stuff. It's not like oh shit, I have to do everything in one day that I need to do for the whole year. Like no, that's not the expectation either but I would rather have all the information so I know what I'm working with and why I'm doing what I'm doing. Then have this like spoon-fed process where I'm like, of course gonna get bored or don't get challenged.”
[47:30] Building in public Marketing Technique
The building in-public technique is overrated and often creates a marketing illusion to many creators
“David from Jasper tweeted something about like how building and public is overrated. Not because it doesn't work necessarily, but because it masks your lack of a marketing strategy. And I thought that was really interesting. Because in hindsight, like, I've actually noticed that quite a bit, I think, like building in public and the whole transparency marketing when it came out. Like I feel like Buffer was one of the first companies that I saw really do that…But like, you know, they've been stagnating the last couple years as well. So it's like, did they actually have a marketing strategy? Or was it like kind of a splashy thing, and it was novel at the time? Now, so many people are building in public? And I think it does give you a little bit of like, safety net, because you think you're, you're doing marketing by doing that. Yeah. So I just I don't know, I thought about like, like, how many ways you can trick yourself into thinking you have a plan? Because it's like that what you're doing with building in public, because you're speaking to a very narrow set of people, like it's a lot of other like kind of entrepreneurs and like founder mindsets, and it's like, maybe that's your customer. But in most cases, it's probably not your customer, like your biggest persona. So I don't know if there's too much more to say about that.”