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Close: Chelsea Castle on Meeting Your Readers Where They Are · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today, really excited to have Chelsea Cassel on.
• 0:11
  She's the head of content and brand at Close, which is a CRM primarily for smaller businesses. They do forty million dollars a year, so pretty legit. Uh, the company is 12 years old.
• 0:21
  Chelsea's been there roughly a year, and in this conversation, we talk about kind of what she's doing with 12 years of content, there's a, a lot to work with there, and how she's balancing that with, uh, all the new stuff that she wants to work on.
• 0:33
  Uh, specifically, we talked about a LinkedIn sprint that she's working on with the founder, and, uh, I thought it was really interesting.
• 0:39
  Very, like, serious approach to LinkedIn content and a pretty significant investment as well. And so she talks through the process. Obviously, there's an AI component. Anyways, there's a lot of really good stuff there.
• 0:49
  Results TBD 'cause it's relatively new, but what she describes, I think, is something that a lot of folks could learn from, at the very least be inspired by. And then Q2, her sprint will be kind of back to the site.
• 1:00
  She's building a new marketing newsletter. So she's kinda like balancing out, building kind of a new portfolio, I would say, of Close's content strategy. Anyways, lots to like here.
• 1:09
  Before we get into the episode, just a quick reminder that Superpath Pro now has a free 30-day trial. So come in, kick the tires. During that month, you'll get access to everything that our paying members get.
• 1:19
  So that's 11 Slack channels that are exclusive to Pro members. Used to be 10, but we've recently added an AI channel, which has been really the coolest and most interesting channel lately.
• 1:29
  You'll get access to our monthly Superpath socials, which are group calls with breakout sessions, monthly one-on-one calls where we pair you up with a peer for a chat, and then our weekly co-working sessions where we gather on a call to tackle some deep work and hold each other accountable to it.
• 1:44
  So you can learn all about how to get on the free trial, superpath.co. Hopefully see you there. Enjoy this conversation with Chelsea Cassel.
• 1:51
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• 2:48
  Jimmy from Superpath here today with another episode of Content Briefly. Very happy to have Chelsea Cassel on today. We haven't met, so we're meeting for the first time here. We have tons of things to talk about.
• 2:59
  I have many questions for you. But maybe first, Chelsea, will you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are and some of the work you've been up to over the past couple years. Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:06
  Thanks for having me, Jimmy. A long time listener, first time caller. [chuckles] First time. Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited to be here. Let's see. What about me? So I'm the head of content and brand at Close.
• 3:15
  We're a CRM for small scaling businesses. In the past, you know, I actually started in journalism, so I studied journalism, worked in newspapers and magazines, pivoted into the agency world.
• 3:27
  I worked at a branding agency, both on the marketing side and the client-facing side. And then I got into tech, and I fled content teams, usually as a founding content leader at Chili Piper, Lavender.
• 3:39
  I was at Emma/Campaign Monitor, also for any email nerds out there. And now I'm at Close for about... I've been here about 10 months now. Okay, cool. So it's like bread and butter B2B SaaS. Yep. Very cool.
• 3:50
  What-- Tell us about the brand component of your role. Like, what does that encompass? Yeah.
• 3:54
  My role, I mean, I think any time content and brand is in one role, it feels like you're doing obviously, like, multiple jobs at once.
• 4:00
  I started at Close, or w- I guess one of the reasons why my role is what it is, is Close is kind of in this era of rebuilding its marketing and brand program. We're a 12-year-old company, so it's been around for a while.
• 4:13
  Oh, it's 12 years old. Wow. Yeah. So 12 years old. Like, when I first heard about it, like when I was, you know, the marketing leader reached out to me outbound, and I was like, "I've never heard of this company."
• 4:21
  But then you look it up, and it's like we're there, we're bootstrapped, no VC funding, 40 million ARR, been around for 12 years. We do really well serving our corner of the market, yet I hadn't heard of them.
• 4:31
  So that's kinda why I'm here is to kinda like change that, really expand and broaden our brand awareness and make sure that every small business, we call them small scaling businesses, knows who we are.
• 4:42
  And a lot of the ways that I'm doing that and building the brand is through content. Very cool.
• 4:46
  So I was a Close customer for probably two years at Superpath, and it's interesting because as I was-- Like, I'm not like a real salesperson, but, like, it's part of my job, and so I-- there's like a lot for me to learn, including tools.
• 4:59
  Like, I don't really even really fully understand the landscape of tools for sales folks. And as I got into research about what CRMs to use, CRMs are, like, insanely expensive. I didn't really realize that. Yeah.
• 5:09
  And so then Close comes in, and it's like you could start for 20, 30 bucks a month. I mean, it scales up obviously, but like very, very approachable. Am I your target customer?
• 5:17
  You know, or is it like who is the target customer, I guess, is a better way to ask that. I assume it's not the, like, thousand-person series B- Totally... SaaS company. Totally.
• 5:27
  Yeah, you're definitely our target customer. We organize our ICP into three buckets: B2B SaaS, coaches or consultants, and digital marketing agencies. Okay.
• 5:35
  Of course, those are just the core three that we're really focusing on in terms of where we have the most profitability and opportunity.
• 5:41
  Any folks, like, who are solopreneurs, you know, creators, like they would also fall under that bucket, where if you look at like the G2 quadrant, we're up in the right-hand corner with the big dogs, right? We're in...
• 5:52
  But that's because we serve our people really well. Right.
• 5:55
  Because we're bootstrapped, because we are not beholden to a board, we're able to focus on the smaller customers, usually like less than around 50 seats or less, usually smaller than that, like teams of like one to 10, one to 20, founders and owners of like mom and pop shops, Main Street businesses, but also small B2B SaaS companies and some of the other verticals that I mentioned.Got it.
• 6:16
  Okay, that makes sense. You know, the CRM world strikes me as highly competitive, right? Like there's- Oh, yeah...
• 6:21
  a lot of CRMs, and then, uh, to some degree, you probably also compete with the Notions and Airtables of the world, where people kind of DIY, although maybe that's like a more techy version than like the mom and pop shop or, you know, the-- maybe, I, I don't know.
• 6:35
  I'm assuming too much probably. But- Mm... like, could you talk a little bit about competing in that world where there are big players and there's a lot of options for your potential customers? For sure.
• 6:45
  I mean, it's the most crowded category, right? The CRM category, if you look at all of them in G2 or wherever, it is the most crowded category. There are hundreds and hundreds of options, and that's part of the problem.
• 6:55
  So there's the competition, but then there's also that analysis paralysis that buyers face when they're like, "Oh wow, there's so many options, so I'm just gonna go for the one that I know."
• 7:04
  Everyone knows Salesforce, everyone knows HubSpot, but that doesn't mean that they're a fit for everyone. I was at a small SaaS company of one to five sellers.
• 7:13
  The whole team was less than 20 people at the time, and we had no business using or paying for Salesforce. It was clunky, it was complex, it was expensive. Right.
• 7:22
  Nobody could get a seat because it was like, they were like, "Oh, well seats are expensive." [chuckles] And we just had no business using it, but they thought that you should use the incumbent.
• 7:29
  And nothing against those tools, they are fabulous. They are what they are for a reason, but they're not a fit for everyone.
• 7:35
  It's like the Goldilocks metaphor where it's like, well, I don't need the big bowl, like I just need the small bowl. You need what's best for you.
• 7:42
  So we try to take that position of like we're a good fit for certain types of people and we serve them really well, and we're very clear in who we're not.
• 7:49
  So it's really fun to tell that story and build that brand awareness through that, with that message, right, through content. I've also never worked at a company with so much competition.
• 8:00
  Like I-- except for my first company, like I mentioned, email marketing, obviously very crowded. But Chili Piper, back in the day when I started, back in my day, those ear- I was in very early days.
• 8:09
  I was a part of the founding marketing team at Chili Piper, and we had no competition at the time. That's changed since then. There are definitely other companies doing similar products now.
• 8:19
  And even at La- I was at Lavender, and at the time there wasn't really any competition, so that's a little new for me as well. Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting.
• 8:27
  I mean, when-- back in my agency days, like we worked with a couple companies in the highly competitive spaces, and basically what we would say to them is, "You have two options.
• 8:34
  You can either do it better or you can do it differently. Those are your options." You know? Like, is that too simplified for the way that you think about content at Close?
• 8:44
  And if you're able to, like can you give us a little overview of what does the program look like? Like, is it mostly education? Is it mostly top of funnel? Is there a sales component? Is it all self-serve?
• 8:54
  Yeah, for sure. So I guess I'll first kind of attack the first part of your question, where the majority of people who come to us are either coming from no CRM or spreadsheets. Okay.
• 9:04
  So some people are kind of playing around with, like you mentioned earlier, like ClickUp or Notion or something like that.
• 9:09
  We have a lot of founders and owners or coaches who aren't quite even at that level, like m- most of our people are coming from spreadsheets or not having anything, and they're growing to a point where like they're losing leads, leads are slipping through the cracks, that sort of thing.
• 9:22
  That definitely plays a, a big part in our content program and our messages that we take to market.
• 9:27
  In terms of how we're mobilizing it, I'm trying to think of where to start with our content program without giving too much history, but- Yeah... context is important, right? So I started April of last year.
• 9:36
  Our marketing leader started a few months before me, and we're kind of in this new era of marketing where before Erin, my boss, started a little over a year ago now, she-- like the program was heavily focused on SEO.
• 9:49
  So all of the content program at Close over the last few years has been heavy, heavy SEO, AI content, AI tools, very heavy on like the volume game.
• 9:57
  And not that that was bad or the wrong approach, but like a lot of people probably listening to this right now, and I think what's been happening over the last six to 12 months, we're l- realizing and starting to see the data impacts of putting all of our eggs in the SEO basket.
• 10:12
  You know, I think everyone out there is like, yes, like we're all hearing this, we're all seeing it. Like organic traffic I think is kind of dropping or at least like fluctuating drastically everywhere.
• 10:20
  And not that we ignore SEO, but we're seeing the ramifications of only doing that, of that being the only input. So that's kind of what was happening, and brand awareness, we just did not have a lot of brand awareness.
• 10:32
  So last year the Close team spent a lot of time rebuilding. I like to use the metaphor, like it's easier to build a new house than renovate a house.
• 10:40
  You know, when I was starting at Chili Piper and Lavender, I was building from the ground up. Right. So much easier to just have fresh slate- Yeah... you know, clean ground.
• 10:47
  And now I have this house of like a hoarded house [chuckles] where like every room is like, it's like, wow, what it feels like, 'cause we have so much content.
• 10:54
  I'm like, I don't even know what to do with all this content. Like, typically you would come in and do an audit, right? And I'm like, I literally imagine walking into a, a hoarder house from like the TLC show.
• 11:02
  I'm like, okay- [chuckles]... what do I do with all of this? So we've spent a lot of time doing that, right? Of like what can we learn from how all of this performed? What, you know, data.
• 11:11
  Like 500 inspirational sales quotes like drives most of our traffic. What do I do with that? You know, nothing. Right.
• 11:16
  So that's all just to say we've been rebuilding, trying to see what we wanna clean up, what we get-- wanna get rid of. We're working on a new website, a new brand refresh, that sort of thing. Nice.
• 11:26
  From a content program perspective, right now the content and brand team is just me, and I have one content marketer. We have a fairly decent roster of contractors.
• 11:37
  We have a video agency, we have a design and dev agency, lots of freelance writers, so we have some external support.
• 11:44
  Otherwise, it's just me and Desiree on my team kind of doing everything right now, and we have plans to hire this year.
• 11:49
  I can kind of pause there before I keep going, and I can kind of tell you the breakdown of our execution. Yeah, that's great. That's really helpful. One quick thing.
• 11:57
  Is there a sales component or do you prefer self-serve? Oh, yeah. So we're mostly PLG, mostly inbound. Okay. That's what I assumed.
• 12:03
  One thing that I've been asking a lot of folks lately in the Slack group and increasingly on the podcast is, if not SEO, then what? You know, 'cause I feel like a lot of companies are facing this right now.
• 12:12
  It's like, not that y- you're not throwing away SEO, but like let's assume just like to throw out a number. Say you lose 25% of your organic traffic because of AI overviews and whatever else is going on.
• 12:22
  That doesn't mean SEO isn't worthwhile. It very much is, but then-You know, what are the other channels you end up relying on? Yeah.
• 12:29
  I think if that's happening, right, like to your example, if you're losing that much traffic, then the question is like, okay, well how much of the traffic that we were receiving or that we've been counting as a success is high quality traffic or high intent traffic, right?
• 12:42
  Yeah. Like, that's kind of the internal battles we're fighting right now of like, okay, if traffic is decreasing, then how do we think about like the quality of that traffic? You know, where was it going?
• 12:51
  And kind of dissecting that. Answering your question though is kind of what I have been doing implicitly every day for the last 10 months of like, what do we write about if we're not writing about or from keywords?
• 13:02
  It's also a question I've had a lot over the last year when I talk to other marketing leaders and content leaders, and I think many were not, and probably are still not sure how to answer that.
• 13:13
  [laughs] Like, it makes sense, right, of SEO is our guiding light for what we create and the topics we write about because it's easy.
• 13:20
  Something I talk a lot about is like, we as humans are wired for efficiency, so we like to create shortcuts, and to me, SEO has been a shortcut where it's easy because then we can know exactly what we wanna write about and why, and then we have the measurability aspect of it, right?
• 13:35
  And that makes all of that easy. I don't even mean easy in like a negative way, like I don't mean that with like a negative connotation, it's like that's what m- it's, it's easy.
• 13:42
  It's like it's easier to just do that and rely on that. So that's how I think about it a lot. There's a playbook to follow. Yeah. Right? Like, a lot of companies did it well.
• 13:52
  You could kind of borrow that playbook, change the template a little bit- Mm-hmm... for your industry and go, and like, that seems to not... I, I won't say it's not true at all, but- Totally... it's different for sure.
• 14:03
  Like, what is... Like, has Close historically or maybe now been looking more closely at email, paid, community, social, et cetera? Totally.
• 14:14
  Yeah, and I can kind of get into that, but I also kind of wanna circle back to where the answer to that question, right, of like, okay, if we don't write about that, then what do we write about?
• 14:24
  And the answer to me is always like, well, we write about like what our customers need. Like, what do they need? What are they asking for? What are the problems that they're facing?
• 14:32
  And what is the intersection between that and the problems that we solve? And that's the what, right, of like, what are the questions? What are the pains? How does that relate to the product?
• 14:40
  And then the how is like how can we write about those things in a way that only we are uniquely positioned to do so?
• 14:47
  How do we empathize with those problems and pains for these very specific people in a way that's better than anyone else? And that's harder to answer, right?
• 14:56
  Like, you have to talk to them, you have to understand, you have to do audience research.
• 15:00
  But that, I think, is where you look at a lot of companies who are succeeding and are evolving, and the content that really resonates and helps people, even if it, you know, doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting like lots of impressions on the LinkedIn post about that topic, that that's not how you measure success there.
• 15:16
  That's just top of mind because that's where we're doing like a LinkedIn sprint right now, which we can talk about later. But like that's the core input, right, of like what do your customers want, what do they need?
• 15:25
  The other input, though, that is maybe like the foundation from, that you build on, build on there is like the strategic narrative, right? Like, what is your actual strategic narrative as a company? What...
• 15:37
  And that like answers and encompasses differentiation, the problem you're solving, all of the problem marketing stuff I just mentioned, and your content point of view.
• 15:46
  So that should inspire a lot of the how, and then your customers also inspire the, the what. Right. You know, one, a quick follow-up on that. I saw on the site that you all do office hours. Mm-hmm.
• 15:57
  Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So that's our sales and success team, so anyone can sign up for office hours, and you essentially join and actually get to talk to somebody live.
• 16:06
  We used to do these where it was like a prerecorded demo kind of, and then we would have live Q&A at the end. But now it's an opportunity to actually like hop on with somebody from our team, get questions answered.
• 16:17
  Again, because we have a lot of folks coming to us who you don't necessarily need us to get onboarded, which is kind of nice, like you'd want to be able to sign up for a CRM. You can migrate your data in with the tool.
• 16:28
  We also offer free migration as well, and then you can literally, like you should just be able to get up and running in the CRM, start selling and closing today.
• 16:37
  That's the product promise, and then of course, like you always need support, like we all need help and support, and we offer real human support, and one of the ways through which we do that is through office hours, where you can kind of sign up for a time and talk to us, and we're there to help.
• 16:48
  That's really cool. I find that very interesting. I've noticed some SaaS companies doing things like this recently, things like this meaning like what I perceive as like very community-oriented marketing.
• 17:00
  Rather than calling it a demo, [laughs] you know, it's like an opportunity to bring your own questions, to talk to people.
• 17:06
  It's like it provides that real-life human connection that I think in some ways that SEO kind of alleviated the need for. You know what I mean?
• 17:14
  It's like we can get so many people on the website if we do this well that, like, you know, 2% will sign up for a trial and then we're gonna be fine. Totally. You know what I mean?
• 17:21
  I feel like there's this silver lining to all the stuff going on right now where it's kind of like pushing people back towards these more fundamental ways of connecting, you know? Absolutely.
• 17:29
  It's like jump on a call and talk, [laughs] which sounds so simple, but it's so powerful. Yeah, that's how you build trust.
• 17:33
  So it's like even if there are only five people there, you're building strong trust with those five people, and then it's like, like the pay it forward chart, where it's like, well, if that person tells this person and that person tells five people, you know, it's a domino effect where I would rather focus on building trust that is strong and authentic with fewer people rather than taking a clickbaity approach and get more people, but then you might lose trust, like there's risk of losing trust in that workflow, right?
• 18:01
  Right. How about the LinkedIn sprint? I'd be curious to know about that. Yeah.
• 18:05
  So I'm smiling 'cause I'm like we're kind of in the throes of this, and this is actually one of the reasons why I rescheduled our last time because we had just started this.
• 18:13
  I was like, "Oh, well, I really wanna at least have a little bit of time to talk about it so that it's interesting." We're really in the thick of it. One thing we're doing as a company in Q1 is focusing.
• 18:23
  So this was, this sounds really simple, but like from a leadership perspective, it's a really strong and powerful leadership move, I think, from our co-founders to say, "We really need to focus in.
• 18:33
  You know, we didn't have the best year last year. Let's focus in as a company." Each department is really honing in in specific areas. As a marketing team, each-Function has its own focus.
• 18:43
  For content and brand, we are doing a LinkedIn sprint where for all of Q1, we are only creating content for, or I shouldn't say only, 80% of our time is creating content for and on LinkedIn.
• 18:54
  So we still have the blog up and running.
• 18:57
  20% of my time is kind of focused on like the blog and ancillary proj- projects like we're doing and some stuff with organic Reddit right now, and then 80% of my time and our focus is on LinkedIn. Okay.
• 19:08
  That's very interesting. To the degree that you are able to share, what does it look like? I mean, is it content coming directly from Close?
• 19:14
  Do you have like folks on the team that you're helping get content for that they are posting? Is there an influencer component to it also? Yeah, there are a lot of arms to it.
• 19:22
  So I'll first kind of set the scene of Steli Efti is our CEO and co-founder, and way back when, like five to 10 years ago, he was doing founder brand content before that was ever a term that was coined.
• 19:33
  I remember his stuff. Yeah. Like really good stuff. Yeah. Like provocative. Yes, very provocative. [laughs] Yeah.
• 19:38
  He would be like jumping up and down on a stage cussing, but he was giving the people what they needed, which was sales motivation. And again, this was like- Right... five to 10 years ago.
• 19:45
  This was a while ago where it was just kind of what the environment and sales space needed at the time. We actually started as a sales as a service company, so that's part of the reason too.
• 19:54
  Yeah, he was coaching sellers, coaching salespeople, and then he was creating all of the sales content.
• 19:59
  Got really burnt out, stepped back to focus on the business, and as part of our brand building we're of course bringing him back into the fold, but handling it differently so he doesn't get burnt out again.
• 20:07
  He's more founder-focused now, like a lot of his content is going to be more founder-focused.
• 20:12
  We did a series last year called the Blueprint Series where he was sharing some stories of getting from, like scaling the company from zero to 30 million. So that's been a lot of the focus there.
• 20:21
  He just won't be the only face of Close now. Like now it's me and other people on the team. Got it.
• 20:25
  So I share that to say that our LinkedIn sprint this quarter is me, Desiree, on my team, who I mentioned, and Steli in this hive mind.
• 20:33
  So we meet twice a week, uh, all three of us, which is a lot of time for the CEO, right?
• 20:37
  So we're spending a lot of time with him in Slack where we're just kind of like sparring every day, thinking through like what reactionary content is out there, like trends, topics.
• 20:48
  Are we-- Do we have an opinion about... We kind of have like our core POV, but we're also refining that.
• 20:54
  Part of the process over the last year, because we're a 12-year-old company, we're kind of like, okay, we kind of have to think through like who are we in 2025? We know who we are as a company.
• 21:03
  Our values are very strong. All of those things hold true. We have this new brand strategy, but we're kind of refocusing our content vision.
• 21:11
  So us two spending all of this time with the CEO in Slack every day and meeting twice a week, we're just constantly coming up with ideas in terms of like what does Steli think? What are our thoughts on certain things?
• 21:22
  We're taking old content and repurposing it, and one way that looks like is we're taking some of Steli's old videos and doing like len- then versus now content where he recommended something like 10 years ago and we're like, "Okay, how does that hold up now?"
• 21:35
  So that's like one consistent format that we're exercising.
• 21:39
  It's a lot of Loom videos and voice notes from him, and then we're creating content from that, but then also giving him inspiration and it's a lot of back and forth.
• 21:48
  That sounds kind of messy, but it's all systematized in Asana, and then I have like a spreadsheet as well where I'm organizing like, okay, what are we ideating on the Close company page versus my page versus Steli's page?
• 22:01
  And everything is kind of aligned where we might have one topic and I'm writing about it differently on the company page, differently for Steli, and then I'm writing it in my own way for my own audience on my page as well.
• 22:13
  So it's like a multi-pronged approach of thinking about, yeah, the content that we wanna put out that aligns with our strategy, and then slicing and dicing it and repurposing and distributing it in a myriad of different ways.
• 22:25
  Dang. Okay, that's cool. All right. I have two main takeaways from this. Yeah. [laughs] One... Two that I really like. W- one is that very deliberate and very serious.
• 22:33
  Like this is not like let's write blog posts and then try to repurpose them for LinkedIn. This is like a- Yeah... a true social first way to do it. And the second is that it sounds like fun.
• 22:44
  Like I'm just thinking back to like so much of the content that I've done over the years is like it's, it's not this much fun. There's like not quite this much creativity or teamwork that goes into it.
• 22:52
  It is a lot of fun. You know? And I feel like social does give you like the, kind of the freedom to do that. So more so sometimes than the blog, which has for so long been like the heart of a company's content.
• 23:04
  So I think it's really interesting that like 80% of your time is going into this. It's very serious, but it sounds like there's like a cool like creative element to it as well.
• 23:10
  There is a lot of creativity to it as well, where we're creating obviously like more nutrition rich text-based content. Like that tends to, to perform the best on Steli's page.
• 23:20
  On the company page, users have a certain expectation based on their intent of scrolling on that platform, where some of our more like sales advice content does okay, but the stuff that does the best is when we're expressing our personality in a certain way, even if it is, you know, tangentially related to like sales advice or our product or our culture.
• 23:41
  But it's usually the stuff that we're expressing our personality that does the best on the company page.
• 23:45
  But it's been a lot of fun to, yeah, kind of put my social hat on, which I kind of started, like when the agency I mentioned, I kind of started in social media and now I'm kind of like circling back in a funny way.
• 23:57
  Yeah, yeah. But I think the content marketer role is evolving a lot. I used to think social media marketing as a discipline and content marketing as a discipline were two very different disciplines, right?
• 24:07
  And I think that's still true, but the Venn diagram is overlapping a lot lately. Yes. And it's so, it's challenging me to rethink how I think about content, which I've enjoyed.
• 24:17
  And we're still doing stuff on the blog too, so our blog content is deriving from all of the content inputs I mentioned earlier.
• 24:24
  We're writing it almost more like a LinkedIn post, where we're getting to the point right away as soon as we can, trying to like write a hook, write an intro with the first line, pack a punch instantly, just like you would with a LinkedIn post, and focusing like less on length and honestly like trying to make them shorter if possible.Or shorter than like the stereotypical [chuckles] blog post.
• 24:44
  And just trying to make those as actionable and helpful and just human and enjoyable to read as well. We're still optimizing everything for SEO, but it's definitely like an a- like a later thought.
• 24:56
  And then we are turning some of that content into LinkedIn posts, but when the content in the blog post is already starting from a stronger platform, stronger place, it's a lot easier to turn that into a LinkedIn post versus like something that's very formulaic in the traditional like, well, what is this, and what is this?
• 25:13
  Like, we're completely like even trying to throw out the subhead formula and just write how we would want to be written to. [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah. That's great. The subheads in blog posts drive me insane. Yeah.
• 25:25
  Like, how many blog posts do you read where it's like you actually need the information, and then the first subhead is like, "What is sales?" Yeah. [chuckles] Or like what- Let's take a step, let's take a step back.
• 25:33
  Yeah. It's just like... Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah. Like, obviously we put this into a content grader and it said we had to do that. You used a phrase a minute ago that if I heard you correctly was nutrition rich.
• 25:42
  Mm-hmm. Can you describe what you mean by that? Yeah.
• 25:45
  So back in my magazine days, some of the best advice I was given when I was like I was, uh, charged with creating a new magazine, and like I've never done this before, so my mentor from college- That sounds intimidating.
• 25:55
  Yeah. [chuckles] It was intimidating, but then I, I loved it. It was like one of the best jobs.
• 26:00
  My mentor at the time, she was my professor in college, she said to think about it like a heartbeat, where you want it to ebb and flow, you want some ups and downs, you kind of want like to be here for a little bit, and then you want to spike.
• 26:10
  So I think about everything kind of like that.
• 26:13
  Like, every experience, every piece of content should be like a heartbeat or a journey or another fun, fun metaphor I always like to use is like a shish kabob, whereas like you want like an onion and then you want like the meat and then you want like another like pepper, right?
• 26:25
  Like, it shouldn't just be like funny, funny, funny, funny, funny, and it shouldn't just be like text advice, text advice, text advice.
• 26:32
  Like, you need an ebb and flow, and it needs to feel like a journey, whether you're consuming it on a LinkedIn feed or any other platform, right? It should feel like, yeah, like that.
• 26:43
  So we think through content creation in like a few buckets. Like, you kind of mentioned this earlier, like is everything entertainment? Is everything educational? Edutainment, number one.
• 26:53
  Well, actually, I don't know why I said number one 'cause we're not ranking this. The categories though that we create through is like entertainment, education, and edutainment.
• 27:00
  Before I started, I don't think edutainment was like part of the content mix here. That tends to be the stuff that performs the best on LinkedIn.
• 27:09
  That also tends to be the stuff that like is starting to get your brand awareness out there a little more, helps build your reputation, where you're not just giving boring advice or, not boring, but just like, yeah, just- Kinda cut and dry...
• 27:21
  cut and dry. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. And you also just don't wanna be like posting memes all the time.
• 27:26
  So nutrition rich is one metaphor through which we've talked about creating something that feels meaty, tactical, tangible, like you're really getting some nutrition out of it.
• 27:35
  And then maybe the next post makes you laugh, makes you feel relatable. The relatable stuff, that's why the edutainment stuff w- always works, I think, really well.
• 27:44
  And when you're marrying some of those themes together, so if you can be humorous about something, about your product, about what you do, you're making the thought a lot stickier in people's mind, so they're more likely to remember whatever the advice was or whatever.
• 28:02
  Maybe you're expressing something that is part of your core POV, like your core message as a company. If you're able to get that across in a way that also makes them laugh, they're more likely to remember it. Love that.
• 28:11
  It's really interesting, I was just kind of reflecting on this recently, and I feel like Close is in this exact position, which is that as a company invests in content marketing, they have to meet their readers where they are, and then they also have to be careful not to be overly invested in any one platform.
• 28:27
  Y- you know, it's like you invest too much in SEO and then, like, something changes. You invest too much in whatever, and something cha- 'cause something always changes, right?
• 28:35
  But I feel like a lot of content teams are trying to recalibrate their balance here. Like, maybe they invested quite a bit in SEO or, or whatever they did, right?
• 28:43
  And now it's like, well, LinkedIn's like hot, like it's working, you know?
• 28:46
  So we are going to have to some degree build on this other platform, knowing that there is a future risk of maybe it won't work as well, you know?
• 28:53
  But I feel like what you're describing is basically strengthening the muscle of reaching the people you wanna reach, and that is very adaptable so that if a year from now LinkedIn isn't the thing or SEO's back or whatever the thing is we don't know yet, that this same muscle will help you continue to reach the people you wanna reach, regardless of the platform.
• 29:11
  Absolutely. That's a great way to articulate it because, to your point, this is a sprint for Q1. We're not going to be doing this all year. That's not sustainable, um, for any of us.
• 29:21
  [chuckles] But also, like we can't only build on LinkedIn, we can't only build on rented land. So yeah, how you said that is, is perfect 'cause we're like strengthening that muscle to then take it elsewhere- Yeah...
• 29:30
  and build more on our own land as well. So we'll continue to build on these rented channels, right, like so the social media channels, LinkedIn, and then, you know, after Q1, we'll be building...
• 29:40
  We'll keep that engine running but then focusing more on our own channels. So starting up a new marketing newsletter. We'll have our new- Oh, cool... site and brand live, things like that. Some other programs as well.
• 29:50
  So we'll keep that going, but you really do need both. It makes me a little... Like, nobody-- We don't wanna make the same mistake that we made with SEO, right?
• 29:59
  We don't wanna put all of our eggs in any one basket, but you have to build on rented channels where your people are and then encourage them to go where y- on the spaces that you do own.
• 30:08
  And then if you can monetize that, that's like the Morning Brew model. So like rented, owned, and then monetized. That's like the harder- Mm. That's the harder step. [chuckles] But that's definitely the goal for us.
• 30:18
  Really cool. I wanna be respectful of your time, but I can't let you go without asking about AI. Oh, yeah. I'm assuming that AI is an important component of the LinkedIn sprint.
• 30:25
  It may be moving too much, but I feel like this is like perfect opportunity for custom GPTs or Claude projects, like feed it brand voice and lots of background info so that you can move really fast on this. Oh, 1,000%.
• 30:36
  I'm sure there's a lot that we could or should be doing that we're not quite there yet 'cause we're just so focused on creation.
• 30:42
  But I did make a Steli GPT, which has been very helpful, where we try to write something first and then feed it into the Steli GPT to then like put it in his voice and tone, which as a writer, like any writers out there, like you can listen to a lot of a person's content, right?
• 30:57
  Like Steli happens to have a lot of videos and, and podcasts that you can watch and learn, and you learn how he talks and how he doesn't talk and words he uses all the time.
• 31:05
  You can internalize that, but-Why would you not just feed all of that into the GPT and use that to help you? So that's been astronomically helpful.
• 31:15
  I am building one for the Close voi- Voice and brand as well, so that other team members can use that so that we're getting all of our voice and tone more on track without me or Desiree looking at everything.
• 31:25
  But the Steli GPT's been the, the biggest help.
• 31:27
  The only other thing that I think is, like, mention worthy that I use is because it's just Desiree and I, anything I create, whether it's like my LinkedIn post or an article or what have you, or a video script, I feed it into ChatGPT and I ask it to analyze it and identify where it can be improved, identify weaknesses and gaps and that sort of thing.
• 31:46
  I don't always agree, like 50% of it is probably like meh, but it always gives me something. It's like another, a third brain, right?
• 31:52
  To just like help me identify, like, where am I maybe missing something, especially 'cause we're trying to move fast. We're trying to like increase our output, increase our velocity.
• 32:01
  Like, focusing on done is better than perfect.
• 32:04
  I can do that in like a second, and then I'm going to be like, oh, I'm at least getting maybe even if I get like one, one nugget of like something I didn't think about, that's been really helpful. Yeah. Super cool.
• 32:14
  AI's so cool. [laughs] I, I'm like at the point at the moment where I'm like, it's just so... Like, I'm having so much fun using it. It is fun. Yeah.
• 32:21
  It's, um, the kinda like the fear of it's mostly subsided and I'm like, this is actually just like cool. Like, I love doing this. Yeah. Cool. I could ask you questions all day, Chelsea.
• 32:28
  I really appreciate your time, and I wanna be respectful of it. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll send people to your LinkedIn and Close's LinkedIn and Stephy's LinkedIn just so they can like get a sense of...
• 32:40
  Sorry, Steli. I said Stephy. Steli, right? Yep. Of his LinkedIn, so everyone can get a sense of what all that looks like. And then anywhere else that we should send folks?
• 32:46
  The Close blog or a personal website for you, or anywhere else? Nope. That's perfect. Find me on LinkedIn. Cool. Everything will be in the show notes. Thanks so much, Chelsea. Thanks so much, Jimmy. [outro music]