“AI is a race to the middle. Generative AI content is, by my definition, mediocre.”
-Mary Ellen Slayter
Summary:
In this episode I take a bit of a departure from the world of hiring to talk with my long time friend, Mary Ellen Slayter, the founder of Reputation Capital, a top notch digital content marketing firm.
Don’t be afraid of the fact that we do not talk about hiring. In this day and age creating great content is a critical skill for any professional, so don’t miss this opportunity to learn from the best!
Mary Ellen and I have a ton of fun exploring the evolving landscape of content marketing in the age of AI. Mary Ellen, with her rich background in journalism and content marketing, delves into how AI tools like ChatGPT are impacting content creation and thought leadership. Mary Ellen discusses the shift in content marketing strategies, the role of AI in generating and refining content, and the challenges of maintaining originality and quality in an AI-saturated environment.
The conversation also touches upon the importance of human creativity and critical thinking in the face of AI-generated content. Mary Ellen emphasizes the need for thought leadership that provokes public debate and reflection. The discussion further explores the use of AI in various stages of content creation, from ideation to final output, and how professionals can leverage AI without losing their unique voice and perspective.
Key Takeaways:
- AI’s impact on content creation and the challenge of maintaining originality.
- The importance of human oversight in AI-generated content to ensure quality.
- Strategies for effective thought leadership in an AI-dominated landscape.
- Practical tips for using AI tools in content marketing without compromising uniqueness.
- The evolving role of content creators and marketers in the era of AI and automation.
Listeners will gain valuable insights into the integration of AI in content marketing, strategies for maintaining authenticity, and the future of thought leadership in the digital age.
Full episode transcript
S4H Mary Ellen Slayter
Speaker 0: Welcome to Science for Hyre. With your host, doctor Charles Handler. Science for Hire provides thirty minutes of enlightenment on best practices and news from the front lines of the Impriment Testing Universe.
Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Latest Edition of Science. For Hire, I am your host, Duck Charles Handler, and I am here today with an awesome guest from outside the realm of the guests that we usually talk with on this show, but actually inside the realm as well. Right? My guess is Mary Ellen Slater, who is the founder and pulling all the strings behind reputation
capital and someone who’s been a great help to me over my career, especially recently. So Welcome, Mary Ellen.
Let everybody know a little bit about yourself. Who knows you? Better than you. So introduce yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I am I said tell people that, you know, I’m a former journalist, like, I don’t know. Maybe that’s probably not how I would describe it. So I’ve run a content marketing agency now, which means and I’ve and I specialize in HR, tech, insurance, and financial services, which were also the industries that I worked in when I was a more traditional journalist. So I think I’ve now been running this company, you know, for twelve years, and I think that’s actually longer than I was a journalist, which feels a little strange, but I wrote a career advice column for the Washington Post for many years, and I was a financial editor.
I worked, you know, around, like, I was at the Post, for example, during the two thousand and eight market trash. I think other folks are often interested to learn that I was also in the post for nine eleven. And I I’m not sure, actually, which experience is more traumatic, the financial crash or nine eleven. But either way, those things shaped me and who I think wanna look at the world and how I think about the stories that we tell. And now, I just really enjoy going out and helping people figure out how to find and hone their best ideas and how to express them. In the form of content. And content being the world’s biggest word. Right? Because we talk about what is content. Right?
When I started this, my business. First of all, I was a print journalist. And I like to do, I’m as a print journalist. Right? Which was the very serious kind.
And then I wound up making, you know, multimedia. You know, the business went from we used to make white papers and blog posts and now it’s more remember white papers. Right? Or at least so many white papers. Many white papers were, you know, I’m the only guy once whose whole business was, like, people just write white papers.
Like, what do you do? I just say white papers. And I’m, like, what So now it’s like white papers, podcasts, you know, video, and like figuring out which channels are the best for your audience, for your message, you know, and, like so I think I look back on that wave of change, and then I look at this new wave of change that we’re experiencing with AI, And I think things are about to get very interesting again in the content business. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It’s hard to get noticed. I mean, I I say this a lot back when I first started, you know, rocket hire actually nine eleven. I got laid off after nine eleven of my job at monster dot com, and they taught me everything I need to know working within an ad agency, how to create a brand, and drive traffic to your brand, etcetera. But there wasn’t a lot of other options when I started writing for electronic recruiting exchange. That was the the one place people went to look. So I got everybody’s eyeballs. Pretty easily, and that helped launch my career. But nowadays, you couldn’t repeat that very easily, I don’t think, because there’s just so much content. I mean, we both entered this call today feeling a little freaking overwhelmed. I know I did. And it’s because I’m trying to manage so many things. And then boom, bang, bang, bang, boom, this came and I can’t sometimes keep up. So when do I have time? To consume content. Oh, I try to get in front of people.
That’s why I work with you a lot, you know, how you’ve been very helpful. So we were talking a little bit about What do we really wanna focus in on today? And we’re talking about AI, obviously, that’s inescapable. But I talk with pretty much everybody about AI. But not everybody, in fact, not anybody besides you that’s been on this show so far, has your real expertise and experience around thought leadership content, helping individuals understand how to market themselves.
Because you’ve gotta do that no matter no matter what how secure you are in your job, no matter how how you are on the top of the heat, you make a choice. If you’re in the game, you gotta promote yourself. Right? So So tell us a little bit about your your kind of foundational philosophies around this stuff.
Speaker 2: So this actually goes back to something that this is gonna sound a little crazy, but that I wrote that went up running in Forbes three years ago, which I guess it’s four years ago now given that it’s twenty twenty four. And it was about it was basically a defense of the liberal arts in the age of AI. Because at that point, we were already saying that the most important skills at work weren’t actually the technical skills. I mean, we’ve spent a lot of time at it thinking about our kids. We’ve got kids.
But what are they learning in school? You know, it’s this they’re training for jobs of the future. And, you know, I have an eight year old and a seventeen year old. And the way that I’m thinking about training them for the jobs of the future might surprise folks. It’s because I’m emphasizing art, and I’m emphasizing creativity.
And I have one child that wants to be an engineer and another one that cries in the corner because she thinks that if she becomes an actor or majors in theater that she’ll have to live with her parents forever, neither of those things are true. Neither of those things are true. That was actually she really did have a meltdown about this, and I asked her if she thought she’s a big doctor who fan, we watch it together. I said, do you think David Tennant still lives with his parents? Yeah.
She’s like, oh, no. But he’s he’s doctor and he’s the doctor. So
Speaker 3: What about that? I think
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Right. About live with his parents. I don’t remember
Speaker 3: how to.
Speaker 2: With the skills. Right? And this again, I wanna say even for you as an neuropsychologist, What are the list of things on those skills that we’re trying to we’re trying to use AI to discern the soft skills? What are
Speaker 1: they?
Speaker 2: Creativity. What’s another one that they’re looking for?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love my creativity, man. I love my creativity. Well, I would say, like, bigger picture thinking, like being able to string together multiple synthesize information into one kind of one kind of idea by making sense. Like, you got a lot of stuff flying around, see the patterns, figure it out, and become the whole as greater than the sum of the parts.
Like, you’re the person who makes the whole greater than the sum of all the parts that you’re working with. Right. Does that make sense? AI can do that too, but, you know, I guess, a kind of maybe
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Kind of. I mean, so I
Speaker 2: could make it easier to do it. But, like, so the argument that I was making is that, like, no matter what as these tools continue to develop, like, curiosity remains important. Agility remains important.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like, learnability is one of my other favorites. It’s like and so, you know, what I did in the time that article is I was connecting it to, like, if you want learnability, go hire a foreign language major. If you want judgment and decision making, go talk to those political science in history, guys. I mean, they’ve been studying game theory since long before that was a cool topic. You know, at dinner.
Like, so that’s, you know, empathy. We keep talking about empathy. So this is so so if you if this is one of the things, like, kind of interesting in terms of as a thought leader, right, as a person who wants to take their ideas. And I define, you know, a thought leader as somebody who is willing to to think in public. Right?
And to come out there with new ideas and that they’re willing to put out in the public sphere for debate in direct So that hasn’t gone away. Right? I think there’s been this interesting thing with AI where we had this panic last year of like, oh my god, I can sit down and I can write a thousand blog posts using this. Yes, and they all sound the same. Okay.
Now the tool’s getting a little better. How can I use this tool to make it not all sound the same? And So one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is how do we use these tools to make it easier to scale up the impact of our message like an idea. Without watering it down, because AI is a race to the middle. Gen AI content is is like my definition mediocre.
And so for half of us, that’s an improvement. Okay? Let’s not forget. For half of us, that is better than what we would have written like.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For the other half, like, that’s not gonna be good enough. So I wanna actually push this back on you because, you know, I’m a journalism. I’m always asking questions. What are some of the ways that you have experimented so far with using AI to produce your content?
Speaker 1: I’ll tell you right now, I was gonna talk about it. So I’m writing a blog right now, which I’ve started doing vlogs. I did one a couple weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it. I got I got a green screen and I got eKAM live, and I’ve been able to put, like, wacky, doggy, you know, generated stuff behind me, which is really cool. And I I really like the the wacky image generation for making my points, but there’s no shame in admitting you’re using these things. Right? And and so I know that I’m a great writer. I have I’m working on this vlog. Right? It takes me a long time.
I’m getting faster. I have a whole outline of of stuff that I’m working with, quotes, all kind of stuff. I haven’t done it yet literally this morning. The chatGTP store opened. Right? So I went on there and I’m just playing around what’s there. There is a there’s an app or whatever in there that you give it some of your writing and someone has engineered it to describe your writing in a way that you can put the prompt into chat GPT, and then chat GPT can take your content, it’ll either generate content from nothing, which I would never do, or it can, you know, massage your content into your voice. Now I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m gonna read, actually, hear what How it described my writing because I thought this was great. Write with the following style and tone. Combine a reflective speculative style with a direct analytical approach Use a first person narrative to create a sense of personal engagement, integrating conversational and formal tones, incorporate rhetorical questions and hypothetical scenarios alongside factual statements and analysis, balance enthusiasm and kepticism presenting ideas with a mix of hopefulness, caution, and critical examination.
Blends shorter impactful sentences with longer explanatory ones for rhythmic variation. Use metaphors and analogies to make abstract concepts tangible while also employing precise language to discuss specific details and implications. The voice should be that of an informed enthusiast who is deeply immersed in the subject, yet critically aware of its complexities and potential pitfalls. Ensure accessibility to the general audience maintaining a balance between technical details and broader implications. I mean, that’s a lot of frigging detail And that summarizes my writing style.
So I have
Speaker 2: It does. I’ve actually I
Speaker 1: haven’t done it yet. I haven’t tried it yet. So that’s one of the things I would say it writes podcast show notes for me, but I always go back and and massage it. Like, so to your point, it it gets you to a place But if you’re just gonna accept that place and regurgitate it right back out, you’re doing yourself a disfavor. Mhmm.
If you take that place, it gets you to and say, okay. A lot of the heavy lifting has been started here. How can I come in and put my own personal touch on this, nip and tuck, cut and paste, that kind of thing? So that’s generally how I’m doing it. I mean, I’m experimenting with using it for more technical stuff, not in my writing and things, but but that’s that’s where I’m at. I mean, I’ve also gone in and said your content marketing strategist helped me do this or that, and Usually, it comes up with stuff that I already know. And so it’s more about the execution of those things to me. Right? That so that’s it. So you’re you’re working with a lot of content creators and
helping a lot of companies.
How are you using it? What’s the secret for you?
Speaker 2: Okay. So there’s a couple ways what I consider like a good the entry path here. The first thing I have people do is use it for adapted content. So you kind of jumped ahead to what I’d almost consider my stage two. Right?
Or that that kind of work. I think you’ve done this too. So let’s say, you mentioned podcast that’s actually a good example of this. So I’ve made content in one format that is original. So for example, this conversation that you and I are having when it’s over We use in the AI, like, go into edit it, AI can help generate the first draft for the show notes.
When those are done, we can also ask AI to write the social post and we can get specific about, hey, you know, it’s gonna run on Instagram to the channel. This is where you can use the safest thing you can do like it’s based on your voice to begin with, go and use a tool like lately, is built for purpose for that if you need to do it at scale, and it will take and in your voice. Right? Like, that way it stays in your voice, it’s easy. I think that’s very safe.
And you can take when you make a big thing, you can turn it into all those little things really easily, like, really fast. And then you just review it and then you can publish Right? But you never just hit you don’t let it auto publish. You’ve always got to take a look at it. The second thing that I usually sort of want people through is using it in a little more of co creation model instead of taking something that already exist and creating all the little spin off pieces. I say, okay. Well, let’s you’re stuck and you’re trying to write you said you gotta write a blog post. But you’re not sure, like, quite how to get started with it. So we would use it, give it, you know, a good a good prompt and have it write the outline for you.
Speaker 3: Mhmm.
Speaker 2: So I treat I treat an AI rough draft as like essentially a form of an outline as a form of research. Because the most important thing that that tells me like, if I’m just asking the AI just to write it, like, I’m not even giving it source material. So that’s just, yeah, write me a blog post about, you know, AI and assessments. And, like, it’s gonna give me something that is gonna represent the average of everything that is already on the Internet about AI and assessments. I’m really and that’s fine.
It’s not gonna have a voice to it. It’s not gonna have an opinion. It’s not gonna have Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So but I actually use that as a base Sure. To then let me know where where is my floor? Because I consider mediocre at my floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if that is the default and that is what I know what everybody else is gonna write and publish, like, what can I do that’s different? If what can I do that breaks free, that do what my friend, Viola, calls weird content? Like, how can we get more weird content that is hard to reproduce? Right? That is hard to that you’re not using it.
But use it to write that draft and then do something else. Right? Like, it’s the base, but now go argue with it. Like, go kinda jazz it up. And then the sort of third final kind of level where things
get really interesting for me is that I do a lot of interviews with subject matter experts that maybe the interview happens once and the purpose of it was to write one blog post about one topic. But once I’ve developed a relationship, so like for you, I’ve interviewed you and I think Claire and my team, like, how many dozens of hours? We have hours, one hours of conversations with you. AI lets me take all of those conversations and analyze them and identify the key themes and give me ideas for things that I might not have noticed
Speaker 1: Okay. So tell me tell me how’s yeah. And so I was just you read my mind. I was gonna say one of the things that we hadn’t talked about is when you said, oh, it takes everything that’s already on the Internet and summarizes what it’s been trained on, well, we can feed it stuff. We can give it new information and then use its relational capabilities to ingest that and, like you said, find information.
So one of the things I’m working on doing is I’m doing a series of interviews for for multiple purposes of output, including kind of a research report, and I’m AI transcribing all those interviews with a pretty set structure. Right? So so my goal is, and I haven’t even started looking at how I’m gonna do this. To feed it twenty interview scripts and say, what are the themes that are coming out of this? I I don’t expect that I can just stuff it in there and get the answer that I want. Right away. I think it’s gonna take a lot of prompt engineering and work to get that, but I’m gonna start with the easiest thing. I’m just gonna stuff all these transcripts in here and I’m gonna ask it to tell me what the themes are. I’m curious beyond our belief what’ll happen, but how how specifically don’t give away any, you know, trade secrets or anything, but how do you give it a bunch of different disparate pieces of information and ask it to come up with themes? Is it as easy as stuff in it in there?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Kind of. In fact, so one one of the other interesting things that I I did some work this year where I worked with Ken and Carter, who’s a digital transformation agency, and they’ve got some of, I think, some of the most interesting experts, you know, in AI and the forefront of using this in in, I think, some really interesting ways that we’ll shape how we think about employee experience and customer experience. But one of the things that I learned in my work with them this year was they were talking about how you know, thinking about if you’ve worked with data, Like, you and I both been doing things with data now for decades. Right? There’s been a lot of how many hours of our life have we spent? And you just described this trying to get data into a form that the computer can do something with.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Lots.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that kind of has blown my mind and kind of stuck with me is when one of the Kennen Cartagai said, actually, AI prefers that you not do that. Like, it wants unstructured data.
Speaker 1: Well, it’s And if you guys
Speaker 2: could not do that. Right. It’s like, could you please, like so that first step of that, right, of just, like, give me business data in its raw form and let me even take the first pass of making sense of that. And as I’ve been applying that into my work and thinking about that and resisting, I’m having to untrain myself like, I’m having to, like, undo the mindset. Oh, let me go clean this
up, and it’s like, oh, no.
The computer cleans it up. You know, what
Speaker 1: I’m doing right now? It’s I
Speaker 2: don’t know. It’s really cool, but I use writer. So writer is my preferred tool, and it does allow you to say use add, use the source. Use this source and you can plug them in and it is a walled garden. The reason I like it is because it’s not people don’t think about with, you know, chat, GPT and these other models.
You’re just putting your stuff in this model and training somebody else’s model and Yeah. I I I work in highly sensitive industries. And I’m not just gonna put their stuff, like, yeah, chat GP team. So I use writer. I’m a huge fan of writer.
It’s SOC two compliant. It’s HIPAA compliant. Like, it’s really powerful and very flexible and Yeah. So you’re vaccinated. So Yeah.
No. It’s a good one. It’s a good one. So that’s that’s where I do it. That’s where I use it. So the other thing I wanted to kind of even pick up on other uses of it, you know, when we write in my right messaging. Right? So another similar kind of use of it is, like, we’ve got we in the past, we would sit down and, like, we would try to write, like, product copy and page copy. We’d say, okay. Well, what do we want what do we want to say about this?
And as opposed to what is our we talk about when you get in the customer’s language. Like, customer’s language, we would go all this time reading reviews and, you know, manually going through this. And you can now use AI to do that. So go take your bad customer reviews. You’re gonna look at good ones or bad ones.
The bad ones are always better. And use that as the input and say right me copying. Write me a blog post, you know, or whatever to convince this person that we’re the best or something. Like, take your competitors’ app reviews.
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Now you can start to see at scale what people actually care about Mhmm. In their words. That’s an interesting So use it to, like, get information from these things would have all taken, like, I just spent a week reading these reviews. A week, like a whole workweek, I would sit and read, literally read bad reviews of software tools. And there’s a lot of bad reviews of HR tech tools.
Speaker 3: Of everything of everything really.
Speaker 2: People get very passionate about this. So but imagine now now I can sit down and do it about an hour what used to take me forty hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It’s those things exist. That that kind of stuff is is happening. Right? And it’s only gonna get easier as the the work you have to do to prompt engineer.
That’s what I’m that’s what I’m blogging about. But it this episode may probably air ass after. I write the the the fee law comes out, but it’s you know, my title is prompt engineering. It’s dead long live. Prompt engineering because it’s just all about how these things are gonna prompt engineer themselves, you know.
And that’s actually one thing. I’ll I’ll let me ask you this. This is something I’m curious about.
One of the things I think I really enjoy and I’m good at is coming up with catchy titles. Right? I love coming up with catchy titles. Every time I go to chat GTP and say, here’s what I’m doing. Come up with a catchy title for me. They’re always pretty lame just to be honest. Even when I say snazzier, more pizzas, more intriguing, they they don’t ever kinda resonate. But but I get ten or twelve of them and I start I start finding within that substance things I can use to make my own. Mhmm.
Speaker 3: So I
Speaker 1: think that’s the pattern that we’re talking about here. Right? It’s just reason this thing to help get you where you’re going. So So let’s think about it. And I think that any professional person, right?
So your your goal is to is to get notice more for whatever reason because you wanna get hired by people, you just enjoy sharing information. What am I doing in this day and age to to to differentiate myself. I mean, you talked about putting your own stamp on things, but it’s not even just the content that you create, but like where you’re putting it and how. I think one of the one of the best things I’ve read in a while is I’m you know, working hard to continually increase my game is the you had a really great little blog or summary about how to use LinkedIn effectively for content marketing. Right?
And LinkedIn’s the only social I really used for anything professional. It was a really, really good piece. I sent it to some other people, I still look it over and make sure I’m meeting those things. So what are your top ideas for how to how to effectively leverage linked in in a way that can get you where you’re going and utilizing AI within that. Fine.
Speaker 2: I’m gonna talk about AI. Because AI is knowing the it’s in the air we’re breathing now. So I can I can chat about that?
Speaker 1: AI, air, actually, is three letters. AI, and arm.
Speaker 3: So you’re very you’re very clear. It makes sense. Okay.
Speaker 1: Air is it the yes. Okay.
Speaker 2: So we talked about LinkedIn as a channel specific typically. I mean, it is the most important channel, I think, for professional marketing. And I think it’s still underused. I think those of us who are really active on it. Like, think everybody else’s, but it’s actually still something that a very tiny fraction of people have very, very
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Promote a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if you want to think focus on the human interaction piece of it. Right? So I would say, I don’t always post every day on LinkedIn. I almost always comment on somebody else’s stuff, and I comment on it in a meaningful way. What what are my things is, like, I do not want
to contribute to what Lee Price who I I worked with for many years.
She used to call it sludge, and she said this before AI. And I I wonder if she must really not love it now because sludge is this undifferentiated mess of content that is out in the world. And I would say, I would rather go silent. Then make more sludge. Like, no sludge.
Speaker 1: Yes. No sludge.
Speaker 2: And AI just and if you use it wrong, allows people to make more sludge fast or Speaker 1: It’s a slide. Nobody wants me.
Speaker 2: Nobody has for her.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes. A slide together. So I would say the secret is one, pick yours. So know what your idea is. So one, spend a little time reflecting, you know, exploring.
You think about what is the thing you wanna be known for, Another thing you can even do is ask your friends, like, what do you some people kind of handle so many focus groups. You can also go if you wanna use AI to do it, go analyze your emails. See what you care the most about. Right? But find the thing.
Right? Go find the thing. What’s the thing? Right? I mean, I would say, you know, I know for you, like, you’ve been writing about fairness in assessments?
Like and that’s a broad thing that you’ve been writing about for decades. Right? How do you do this in a way that is defensible fair and you know, explicit other words, you, iOS, Sykes, like, to use.
Speaker 1: That’s a cold bias for
Speaker 3: you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It’s like it’s supposed to is this actually work? Like, you know, it isn’t it? You’ve been writing about that a long time, and I would just say AI came in this new thing in there, but, like, that’s a threat I would draw for you, like, going back in the beginning of your career before I even met you. I associated those things with you, which tells me that your thought leadership work.
So Yep. Then pick that thing. Then pick your channels Right? Or pick your channel. If it’s just you, pick one channel.
And that might be so now we’re on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn can mean a lot of things right now. It could mean I’m gonna post every day with text, it means I can make a video. I can do LinkedIn has a podcast functionality in it now.
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Like, can you live? Live. I’m gonna live stream. It’s almost done. I cannot wait. I’m gonna have you on as a guest. You’re gonna be an awesome guest. Yeah. And I’m putting all tech together.
And I taught myself, well, Joel helped me a little to use e cam, and it’s gonna be awesome. Anyway, so yes.
Speaker 2: So there’s already things so good. Pick the one that fits you the best. So I usually try to, like, some people are really it’s easy for them to write. You know? If I I know that if I you to sit down and write me five hundred words about something you click.
No problem. I have other folks that I work with who are brilliant, but that the idea of writing is terror that’s like, oh my god. That sounds like it’s gonna take me all day. And I’m like, well, why don’t we just record a quick video?
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: And then they get going. So find the thing that you love and that you are looking forward to doing that takes advantage of your strengths.
Speaker 3: Mhmm.
Speaker 2: And then develop a schedule that is reasonable for you. It is better for you to consistency.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Is the secret. Right? I don’t need you to post ten times a day. I don’t need you to make a bunch of custom videos, you know. But you don’t have to do all the things like start, small, I’ve got an idea, here’s my one channel, here’s my one format, and here’s my frequency.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And
Speaker 2: that frequency could be a couple times a week.
Speaker 1: I’ve been doing it. I’ve been doing it. I’ve been doing it at one post a day pretty much. The hardest thing to do by the way in being a human is to be consistent. I’ve said that for a long time.
And especially me, people that are, you know, running fast and wired hot all the time. It’s hard to do that. So I’ve built myself an editorial calendar in Trello. I follow it. I’m disciplined. It’s great. I’ve tried different types of post. I post, you know, I won engagement. I posted a couple polls. Hey, what do you think?
Does get nothing. I get nothing out of those. LinkedIn loves it. If you get a certificate, you change your job or whatever, those kind of things, through the roof.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that is? Hold on. Hold on. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: That’s what LinkedIn’s job is, is to help people get jobs. Right? So the more that you’re celebrating that is gonna push that up top. That’s what I think.
Speaker 2: I think it’s actually even more deeply human than that. People want to know what’s happening to other people.
Speaker 3: Oh. I
Speaker 2: so many, many years ago. Many years ago, when I was at god, I was at, like, a south by southwest, and this is early days of social media. Like, I’m talking, like, right couple years after we got Twitter, you know, And I I walk with the speaker and he said, there’s really one reason. The number one reason why people go to social media is to see what other people are saying about them.
Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
Speaker 2: Number one. Number two, to see what other people are saying about people they hate.
Speaker 1: Not to see what they’re not to see what somebody’s the design in somebody’s latte looked like yesterday or what they’re, you know, what they’re
Speaker 2: Only if you ate a lamb.
Speaker 1: I don’t know. That’s food posting. Food posting. Food posting and drives me crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But but I mean, but that’s a whole but so there’s also, like, do you hate to follow anybody?
Speaker 1: No. I can’t really tell me who they are. No. I don’t hate don’t hate. I’m not
Speaker 2: because there’s like this dopamine. You definitely people get like there’s a the dopamine surge you get from like because you’re like, well, wait, why are you in this feed? Like, because there’s people follow. There’s supposed to be very polarizing. If you wanna see, like, some people who are really great on, you know, on social, like LinkedIn, like madeleine Butler.
Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
Speaker 2: Is a really good example of someone who but she’s all very polarizing and it’s funny because there’s also people on there all the time, like, going in there and, like, you’re wrong and you’re saying this or whatever and just like, Wow. Girl, you you have haters. Right? So so that actually does motivate him.
Speaker 1: Controversy gets engagement. Contribution from impeachment. Look at Donald Trump for whatever Let’s keep our let’s keep our political leanings neutral here and not that just that’s a person who puts himself out there all the time saying all kind of stuff because people talk about it, you know. So Okay.
Speaker 2: Well, I’ll give you I’m gonna say even there’s a version of that that is still professional I would say Yeah. Which is like partly my definition of thought leadership is it it has someone else, some other smart person in your industry has to be able to argue with you about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right. Someone that you were like, you have to put forth an idea that you’re willing I I also believe even, you know, strong ideas loosely held.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, like, take
Speaker 1: so it’s called a take. Right? It’s called a take.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Have a take. Have a take. Be ready to defend it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And,
Speaker 2: like, I mean, it’s also be ready to change your mind. I mean, I’d say the willingness and ability to change your mind has become one of my favorite traits in other people that I admire. Come in If it can’t argue it, if nobody could argue it back, that is not thought leadership. And I’ll give you some examples of things that are not thought or thought leadership in our business. When someone comes to me and says, I want to be an expert on the future of work. Okay. Well, first of all, that was like it or know, let’s I wanna talk about the war on talent. And I’m like, okay. So that was McKinsey’s thought leadership thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you don’t wanna use any cliches. Make your own cliches.
Speaker 2: That’s what I But they made it. Like, like, they made it. So the the thing is, like, that was interesting but it’s like the way we keep going with that. You know, then we got into the whole everybody wanting to talk about the great resignation. Guess what? The great resignation isn’t thought leadership anymore. It’s only thought leadership for that for that one guy that said it, you know. Like, this isn’t like how this works anymore. You know? Yeah.
You have to find something even if it’s just a little people are scared to rock the boat, and I’m not saying come out swing in. I’m not saying act like Donald Trump, but, like, there are things that so AI, here’s another one example of, like, I I just say these things are just so bloodless. Like, I don’t wanna hear it. Human in the loop. Okay?
Every single HR tech and markings are AI, they’re all saying, well, you know, it’s not really about AI versus even. It’s like the human in the loop. And it’s like, okay. That that’s cool. But like, it’d be so much more interesting if somebody came out and said, actually, AI is gonna take all of your job.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that’s here’s why. Well, that’s click save.
Speaker 2: Something. You
Speaker 1: gotta put click save on there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But but maybe but, like, Take the it’s debate club. Okay? Like, think about what what I mean, you don’t wanna say things that aren’t true, but, like, god say something. Right?
Say something other that like, I’m always listening as a journalist who’s been in the space. You’ve gone for a long time. I’m always listening for something, you know, say, oh, that’s interesting. I’m listening for interesting. And the great resignation was interesting when it was noted when
Anthony Klotz said that.
And just remember Anthony Klotz said that as an aside, in an interview with Bloomberg. Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 2: And that phrase became this catch phrase, but he’d been studying that like, that phenomenon and watching that, like, employment patterns for decades, like, for three years. So the more you say, the more you’re likely to say something like great resignation. Like, that’s a product that that since it does, like, quality is good, it helps you get better and you have more chances. But Just make sure you’re actually saying something. Like, what’s something that we would disagree about?
Speaker 1: You and I?
Speaker 2: Kind of thing. Yeah. I’m trying to think.
Speaker 1: Well, I think
Speaker 2: it’s for the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It is for my
Speaker 1: draw season. I had a so one of the things I’m constantly trying to do, and you might tell me the wrong thing to do, but I I feel like I’m a very niche guy. Right? I’m I’m town assessment. But a lot of what I think it talked about.
I think it’s got a lot broader, but I’ve had a lot of trouble getting to that broader audience. Maybe not non I O psychologists, etcetera. I was thinking to myself Well, what if I changed the name of this podcast from Science for Higher to Science for HR? So I was immediately opened up a more broad thing. But does that really matter?
Are people not listening to my podcast because it’s hiring and they’re not into hiring. I I don’t know. I’m trying to elevate my message beyond just hiring necessarily and more about being a human in the workplace. But it’s you know, a label is just a label. Right?
Speaker 3: I mean, I might have to change my own
Speaker 2: model. Matter. No. Labels matter a lot because they shape concept. That’s the Speaker 1: basics. Of science for HR instead of science for hire?
Speaker 2: I think you should go further. I think you’re not going far enough. Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I think that you should call it something else. Like, like, let’s let’s just zoom out further. Right? Just swapping out one one word. What did we really do?
I don’t think that I don’t think there’s any HR people that were not listening because they thought Right. Suggest for hiring people. Right. It’s more like, what do you actually Then we have to do a little cocreatable workshop here. But, like, what is the real value?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Watch
Speaker 2: me. Watch me. Okay. No. What did they I was like, you and I probably if anybody could do it, you and I could do it.
Right? We could rebrand the whole podcast in five minutes. But what is the real idea? Like, I often also tell people when you’re in business and you’re thinking about thought leadership and you’re thinking about ideas that you’re exploring, what is the thing that people have to believe? Like, what is the idea that they have to believe in order for to for your what your selling, right, for your solution to even make sense.
And even in your case, what is the thing that actually drives everything that you’ve made? Like, in a note, with this podcast, like, what is this angle? I don’t think it’s science. Science. You’re actually not talking about science at all anymore.
I think he used to. I think that used to be part of it. I would drop that word. I’d zoom all the way out.
Speaker 1: Oh, I would feel very safe about that work.
Speaker 2: I know. But I know. Right? But it’s not really about science that that makes me think you’re gonna come here and make me do my homework and make me go through. That’s not what you’re doing.
Like, you’re exploring, like, the edges of this world of, like, these overlapping pieces of, like, technology and human beings and work and regulation. It’s like I would look at something that better reflected. Mhmm. The topics. This would actually be a good thing for AI to do. Like, just take in the transcripts.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Take the transcripts of your five favorite episodes. Mhmm. And use that as the source and say give me ten or twenty, give me twenty titles. Of a podcast Mhmm. Based on the content of this, what would you call this?
Speaker 1: Interesting. I might give that a try. I very well might. I I think the other So the other question I have for you in this short moment, you may not have a have a direct answer for me. This is one thing I noticed today.
So I started posting links to this. Yeah. I started posting on YouTube. I I created a YouTube channel. You guys helped me out.
I post each podcast. I post the short. I’ve been doing that for about eight weeks now. I never really look at my stats, but I was in there post today, and I’m like, oh, four views, six views, eight views. I’m like, well, you know, it makes me a little depressed of putting out good content I get pretty good engagement probably on the audio side, but I got some pretty good then my best episode had a hundred a hundred views.
What should I expect? I mean, with am I why am I putting it on YouTube if three people are are watching it? You could see my dog in the background and my other really cute dog, my little tiny cute dog over there. Like, you couldn’t see that if you’re just listening to the trans you know, to the audio file. I don’t know.
I don’t know.
Speaker 2: Okay. So I can’t give you an answer about this because YouTube, I’m kind of obsessed with YouTube right now. I mean, my younger child also, at one point, she changed her nickname and told me that, like, her name was now Jules. And I was like, what? She goes, yeah, just Jules.
It’s my YouTuber name.
Speaker 1: Oh, nice. And I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, because kids that age apparently, they think that’s a real job. But I think there’s the people that she follows, and I look at that, and I even think about there’s actually a lot of opportunity for b to b content around YouTube. YouTube is the world’s second largest surgeon. Out of Google, like in terms
Speaker 3: of Zoom.
Speaker 2: But what people often misunderstand about YouTube is that the best content on YouTube, like, think about what you look for when you go there and, like, what engages you, how to content performs really well on YouTube, like, there’s also things where you can again use the data. Like, you can use that to, like, TubeBuddy and find out what keywords people are searching for that there isn’t already great content.
Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
Speaker 2: But it also has to be long. Like, so this is one of the biggest myths in my line of work that I encounter and that I have to overcome resistance is people assume that shorter is better. They go, oh, people have no attention spans anymore. And now they have to make it short. It can’t be long.
And it’s like, no. On YouTube, the videos have to be long. Like, thirty short videos don’t mean anything. Like, five to seven is the floor. Right?
The the big things that do the best are, like, an hour long, and nobody really everyone wants to believe that, but that is how people watch YouTube.
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Now what you have to be you have to be interesting. The problem isn’t what you’re long. It’s that you’re Boring.
Speaker 1: Well, you
Speaker 3: know, I’m not boring, or long, really?
Speaker 2: Not you. No. No. No. Not you.
But I’m just saying, like, that’s and and here’s the thing. Short won’t make up for boring. Right? Like, I’m not gonna watch that either. So focus on being interesting.
Focus on, like, saying something interesting. Focus on doing something interesting.
Speaker 1: But how do people know that I’m doing and saying things interesting if they’re not tuning in? You know, you’re saying because it’s a search engine.
Speaker 2: So but there’s two ways that people find things on YouTube. One is they go in. They’re searching for terms and they find what you’ve done. Right? And that is a way that people can find it.
That’s actually a really important thing for b to b stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I guess they’re typing. And that search result will actually come up at top of the search results above the tech searches. So go. That’s pro tip. That’s so greenfield. If anybody’s trying to capture, if it’s good for employer brand, it’s good for there’s just all kinds of opportunities there. But the other way and actually, the main way people find things on YouTube is through the suggestion engine. And this is what we we talk about, you know, people getting radicalized, coming back to politics for a second, how people get radicalized. There’s a radicalization pipeline that academic, like researchers have actually identified where it’s like you watch certain types of videos, and then the algorithm suggests that you watch other things. People just just let the videos
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. My kid does it all. You get suggested.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right? So that’s how people are watching these videos. So you have to think about what videos are you gonna get suggested after? Right?
Like, the way you think about how people like Jordan Peter and, like, in those videos, why do or or attempt Ferris, they have such big audiences, and then there’s topics that people have that are similar, and they get suggested. Do you have that Joe Rogen? Like, and then they start going down this pipeline, you know. I’m like, this is what you get. Or if you watch crafting videos, I mean, my whole feed is all because of jewels.
It’s like, Mariah Elizabeth, It’s like, okay. You like where I Elizabeth said, this is what we’re suggesting to you next. It is that it’s that predictive interest engine. So I would say if you wanna build the audience, think about who else your audience is watching. Yeah. And how can you bridge from that?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think about it more. It’s just an extension of the podcast though. For me, it’s just like I do the podcast. I’m doing it in video.
And maybe that’s the wrong way. To think about it. Yeah. The other thing is when I start doing this live stream, that thing’s gonna rock. It’s gonna, I think, get a lot more excitement going, oh, no.
That’s true. Right? Because it’s gonna be pretty No.
Speaker 2: It is true. Live live is better. I think that on demand, I think that the experience in the pandemic, what everything all these on demand webinars and all those things. It’s just really boring and people got burned
Speaker 3: out on them.
Speaker 2: As someone who loves live theater, Like, I want your live podcast for the same reason. I mean, I I go pay to go watch you go to the Seger. You know, you can watch the show. It’s like,
Speaker 3: I mean,
Speaker 2: it’s gonna be fabulous. And you know how much the level of skill that it takes to do that over and over and over again at that excellent level. Yeah. I know. It’s really and have you seen wicked?
Like, I guess, did check to see it before we passed? Okay. Well, I think if if you, like, think about musicals. Right? And you think about all the things that could go wrong, And, yeah, if you think about this stuff, like, there’s an element of anxiety.
Think about, again, again, you are the psychologist here. You have to create anxiety. You have to create, like, inspire emotion. Yeah. You have to, like, give get people to feel away about it. And, like, live automatically has more feeling because we might back to what do we do, we go into see not only what people are saying about us, but, like, what people we hate or do anything. You might Yeah. What if they fall down? What if they say the f word in the middle of the thing? Like, I mean, there’s always that something crazy minor.
Speaker 1: I mean, I’m like, I unfortunately, tend to catastrophize sometimes, and I project that onto a situation and go, what if, yeah, what if the ceiling just fell in or something like that? Well, I think I’m gonna record on I’m gonna record on and livestream to to LinkedIn and YouTube. I think it’s, you know, it’s pretty fun. I’m really enjoying the content, creation stuff, and there are so many different tools that’s become a lot easier for somebody to do it themselves. But damn, it’s hard to get noticed, you know.
And I think one of the things that, again, just going back to the YouTube, I I remember. So there was one week because I have an ed calendar that I create for myself and Trello, and I I have different types of content and I move through them, you know, on a regular basis. And so when I really first came out of doing this. I had a week where none of my stuff got any views. And I’m like, what the heck?
That’s when you actually sent me that that guide. And I had been doing things like posting more than one time a day. I mean, there’s a lot of things I was violating, right, on that thing. And I I stopped doing that, and I kinda started following what you’re doing. And I’ve gotten, you know, really good engagement, you know, at least views and and and reactions, comments, comments are the hardest to get, you know.
And I often look at other people who are really well known and, you know, at least in our little circles that I’m seeing a lot of traffic and look at how many comments do they have? How many, you know, reactions do they have? And I’m comparing myself to that being like, okay. Well, you know, here’s here’s what my goals are. I I might be heading in the complete wrong direction with that, but so as we as we play out here, and this may differ for each person, but what what should we be looking for?
I’m I’m investing all this energy into LinkedIn. I enjoy it. I’m putting a lot of content out there in joy it. Kind of results are realistic. Like, I’m not just being honest, I’m not getting fifteen phone calls a day if people wanting to hire me for stuff, even though I would be awesome at it. So hire me. But, I mean, what what am I looking for? Is it self satisfaction? Is it I
Speaker 2: mean, so what? I think that writing and content creation is in that inherently valuable. Think that it is how we hone our thoughts. And it forces us. It gives us discipline. It forces us to think things all the way through. So in that sense, it already has value. I would say distribution is actually is an approach. Actually, about eighty percent of the game though when it
comes to really having business impact and everybody kind of, like, forgets about that part. And that part costs money.
Right? So this is where I think that focus in your time on the highest ROI activities. Right? So right now, I’ll just tell you, you’re doing more things, like, than I would ever advise any solo person to do. Like, you’ve got a podcast at a YouTube show.
So you spread yourself really, really thin. So imagine if you pulled in and you just pick one of those and you put all of your time and your energy into that and then it also amplified it with some paid spend and got really excellent Because right now, you are a generalist competing with specialists in every one of those channels. Right? You are competing with people who, for audience, break for eyeballs. Imagine what you would do if all you had to do with your life was made the only channel was that YouTube channel.
What would you do differently? You know? And you’d have attention you’d be able to give attention to it and, like, really go in there. So I think it’s easier when you’re solo. Now once we get big companies, you know, we’ve also both worked in little So low, you know, kind of budgets and big company budgets, we can afford to be in more places with a message because we have big budgets.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: And we also have a lot of, like, if you’re yeah. I place twenty bets and I expect half of them to fail and I still win.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right? That’s not the game. Like, you and I don’t get to play that game. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It’s dead. We have to manage our energy and say, I’m gonna show up here, and I’m gonna show up here, I’m gonna be amazing at this, and I’m gonna stand out, and it’s gonna be interesting, it’s gonna be compelling, I’m gonna be provocative And I’m gonna do it consistently.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That makes sense. I asked myself that question all the time, not just other stuff. I’m just we don’t need to go into my psyche or whatever. It is.
But, I mean, honestly, it’s yeah. And it’s not that time consuming to cut an so to this and get it all up there and
Speaker 2: I know
Speaker 1: share it.
Speaker 2: You say that this is this is the danger that you start saying it’s not that big of a deal, not in fear, or whatever. But, like, there’s what I if you find yourself spending a lot of time about once a quarter, sit down and call look, review everything and see what working and get rid of those low, no ROI activities.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Because if I were to have sort of one call to action right now, the content marketers, and the marketing teams in general, it would be before you start talking about using AI to automate and accelerate, like, do all this stuff, first go through and eliminate. Get rid of those low, no ROI things that seem like no big deal, but they also don’t do anything for you. Stop doing them. Don’t automate the thing that you shouldn’t be doing anyway.
Speaker 1: Your contact center.
Speaker 2: Contact center therapy. Yeah. So Cool. Elizabeth, there’s math. Anyway, I’m saying that’s not the last thing I’ll say.
Speaker 1: I could talk for hours. Something that matters. But I gotta I gotta run. You gotta run. Because I got too much stuff to do, then I can pass we do.
See, we could spend more time talking if I actually just simplified my life a little bit. So
Speaker 2: Me too. Well, Me too. I’ll I’ll check it on that on next week. We’ll see how we’re doing that.
Speaker 1: We’ll let everybody know how they can how they can find you because they should if they’re interested in anything related to content and professional real
Speaker 2: Yeah. No. So I you can find me at rep cap dot com. That’s our business website. You can also find me at managing editor dot com, which is our brand magazine and community for content marketers specifically.
And finally, the social network that I am the most active on is, in fact, LinkedIn. And I am a big fan of that platform and all the different kind of content avenues we can have there, but find me. You can definitely find me over there.
Speaker 1: Awesome. As we wind down today’s episode dear listeners, I want to remind you to check out our website rockethire dot com and learn more about our latest line of business, which is auditing and advising on AI based hiring tools and talent assessment tools. Take a look at the site There’s a really awesome FAQs document around New York City local law one forty four that should answer all your questions about that complex and untested piece of legislation. And guess what? There’s gonna be more to come.
So check us out. We’re here to help.
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