Latest / Content, Briefly / The Changing Content Skillset
Transcript
- 0:00[upbeat music] Hey everyone, and thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
- 0:11This is episode number 101, and as I teased in the last episode, we are gonna start mixing up these episodes with a different format.
- 0:19So we are gonna continue with the normal interviews we do roughly twice a month, and then roughly twice a month it'll be episodes like this one where Eric Doty and I, Eric runs a community for anyone who, who doesn't already know him, where we're picking one topic and exploring it i- in more depth.
- 0:34So it's not an interview, it's much more of a conversation. Today, we're gonna be talking about the changing content skill set.
- 0:39Really, like, what does it mean to be a content marketer now versus five years ago or 10 years ago? And because Eric is the content lead at a SAS company called Doc, like, he's doing this every day.
- 0:49His skill set is changing naturally as he progresses in his career and becomes more senior, and also as AI opens up new opportunities for him to gain efficiencies, do different types of work.
- 1:01It opens the door for new channels. So we discuss all of that. These episodes I expect will be a lot of fun. They'll probably also be a little bit shorter. We're gonna try to be, like, you know, 20 minutes or so.
- 1:09And if you have feedback, please do send it to us, podcast@superpath.co. If there's a topic you want us to chat through, please let us know that also.
- 1:16And then in this episode, I talked about our Vibe Coding Hackathon, and I wanted to give some more specific info about that. It's happening on Thursday, May 22nd at noon Eastern Time. It's a two-hour block.
- 1:28We're gonna give people some ideas for projects they could actually build, and then we're gonna give people time and space to do it.
- 1:34And the whole idea here is that it's just, like, hard to find two hours in your day to work on this type of stuff.
- 1:39Like, that is the type of time you need to actually, like, learn how to use these tools, produce something that you could actually share with people.
- 1:46And so I don't think this will be the last time, but the first one, May 22nd, it is for pro members only, so if you wanna check it out, superpath.co. We have a 30-day free trial.
- 1:56You know, this is the type of thing that I feel like is, like, really at the cutting edge of content marketing right now, so invite you to try it out. Okay, I'll get out of the way now.
- 2:03As always, I really enjoyed this conversation with Eric Doty, and I hope you do too. This episode of Content Briefly is supported by our friends at Demand Genius.
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- 3:10You can use the links in the show notes to learn more and book a demo, and all Superpath members will get 20% off their first year.
- 3:16Eric, every time you come on the podcast, I get lots of good feedback on it, so we're giving the people what they want, which is more Eric.
- 3:24So like I teased on a recent episode, probably the last episode, I guess, episode number 100, we're gonna change up the format a little bit. You know, it's always been a, a Q&A interview style show.
- 3:35We've had amazing guests, and we will continue to do that because it's awesome to meet new people and learn about what they do.
- 3:41You know, and, and this new format gives us a chance to go deeper on topics that we just wanna talk about, you know? Like, we talk about content all the time, and this is a format that I think will be helpful for people.
- 3:52Just, like, we'll brainstorm some topics ahead of time. We'll go deep. This is stuff people from the community will give back to the community.
- 3:57Anyways, long intro, but the thing I'm hoping to talk about today, Eric, is the changing content skill set. You know, we've talked about this quite a bit, and I feel like AI has thrown such a wrench in all this.
- 4:10I don't even know what the right place to start is. Maybe this is a place to start. You're a practitioner of content marketing. What does it mean to be a content marketer now?
- 4:18Like, how much has your life changed in the last, let's say, two years? Yeah, let's just start with, like, the existential crisis, right? Yeah.
- 4:25[laughs] I mean, and I'll, I will say, I will say thanks for having me on the show.
- 4:28I, I think, uh, before I get into answering your question, I'll say too that what I'm excited to be on the show for is that I also get to ask you questions, and we get to hear more of your thoughts and more of your happy children screaming in the background, which I love, by the way.
- 4:41[laughs] It's just still delightful. But yeah, like, I- I'm hoping this can be a dialogue and not just you having to talk to other...
- 4:47listen to other people all the time, and you get to throw some of your own thoughts out there. So that's what I'm excited for. Yeah.
- 4:52To answer your existential crisis question, I think for me in particular, it's really evolved. Content marketing has really evolved from being sort of like a
- 5:02one-trick writer, SEO, maybe two-trick pony of, like, writer with some business skill set attached to it, and it's turned more into, like, how do I get the company's message to market in a whole bunch of different formats?
- 5:20So I'm seeing my role more as, like, business messenger to the world, and for me, it's not always just writing now, right? Like, I'm having to think about video. I'm having to think about, uh, sales enablement.
- 5:36I'm just finding... And that's also part of a product. I mean, every piece of advice I give is because I'm part of a one-person team at a startup, so that's the world I'm in.
- 5:44It might be different if you're a freelance writer or something else. But I'm just finding I'm having to be more, like, whole business-minded and focus more on kind of like the whole media landscape.
- 5:55Whereas before, if I called myself a content writer or content marketer, I was... 95% of it was writing blog posts. So- Yeah... I don't know if that resonatesNo, totally.
- 6:06I mean, it makes me think that, like, how much does AI actually give you the breathing room to think about the business versus the craft? You know what I mean?
- 6:16Like, because a couple years ago, like, you know, there's two things happening here. One is your career advances and the skills change.
- 6:21The, the skills you need to do the job well change, and there's AI, and it's, like, hard to, like, tease those two things apart probably.
- 6:27But, you know, to be a content marketer a few years ago, you had to master the craft, and I think that probably actually made it more difficult to focus on the business, and now that's changed a little bit.
- 6:37I'm imagining you can think more about the business because you don't have to think so much about the craft. Yeah. And there's a bonus to that, and there's a danger. There's kind of two sides.
- 6:45There's some problems for myself that I feel like I've solved. Like, I have-- as a skill set, I have writing solved.
- 6:52Like, I know I can do it, and therefore, when I'm turning to AI for a writing task, it's not that I'm skirting learning the craft.
- 7:01It's that I already know how to do it, and now I can just do it faster this way, and I can give it some inputs, and I can get the output quickly and go, "Yeah, okay, that's more or less what I would have done.
- 7:10Let's move on to something else." Where there's danger for me is in a new area where I haven't learned the craft yet.
- 7:16So, for example, the other day I was writing outbound email campaigns for the first time, and I took, like, a few guides on how to write outbound and, like, copy and pasted those into ChatGPT and said, "Learn this."
- 7:28And then I said, you know, "Okay, here's my goals. Make me a campaign that does it." And it, it spit something out, and I just plunked that into my first draft and sent it to my boss. And he went, "No.
- 7:39This isn't what we need." And then I realized that I was using AI to shortcut. I was using it to get around actually learning the skill set I needed to do my job, and that's where there's the danger, right?
- 7:49So I think for me, it's been an amazing accelerant at the stuff I already do well, but it poses kind of a threat to me, as, you know... And you see about kids using AI to write school essays.
- 8:02Like, that's the same vibe I kind of was getting with myself of I was kind of using it to shortcut learning a skill.
- 8:07And so I see it as very opportunistic to, like, scale myself up for the things I already know I do well. But in some ways, it can be a distractor in those other areas, if that makes sense. Yeah.
- 8:18That's-- [chuckles] You know, one of my good running buddies is a high school English teacher, and we try to run every Tuesday, and we've had this ongoing conversation about AI because it's become, like, high school kids, like,
- 8:31you know, they want to use it to write their essays. And he's been, like, trying to reinforce the idea to the kids, like, "But you have to know how to think." You know what I mean?
- 8:38You have to be able to, like, articulate an argument. Like, there are ways that AI is gonna help you do that, and he's sort of pushing back on their desire to just, "Well, AI can do it while I do something else."
- 8:47You know? It's kind of like what you're describing is, like, you already know what you're doing. Now it can help you do it faster.
- 8:52And now there's, like, this new wave of, like, younger people that will come into this profession and many others, and maybe will they not know how to do it? You know what I mean? Will they rely on the AI too heavily?
- 9:02I don't know. Maybe that's getting off track. Yeah.
- 9:04And then, but then I think of an area like video editing or something, where I'm never gonna be a great video editor, but now I can use a tool that can spin up a decently edited video and get things to be eighty percent good enough.
- 9:17And, you know, if my goal is to be a video editor, then I wouldn't want to rely on AI. But because it's not- Yeah... then, [chuckles] like, then I can do-- take the shortcuts.
- 9:25And so I think that's kind of the question we're all gonna have to ask ourselves is: where do you want to learn the craft?
- 9:31And, you know, what skills are still gonna be your bread and butter that you can either do on your own or do with the help of AI?
- 9:38And what are you willing to just outsource and not, and not think about and sort of never learn? So I think that's maybe going back to the question of, like, what does it mean to be a content marketer?
- 9:47I think for you, it's like what skills are gonna be-- what crafts am I still going to retain and learn, and what things I have to be in my toolbox of skills I have, but I'm never gonna have the time to fully learn that craft.
- 10:01Like that- Yeah. That's kind of a question I'm asking myself all the time. Yeah. You know, I remember, like, twenty seventeen, I'm at QuickBooks, and
- 10:10I got them set up on Airtable for the content calendar, and I created a couple, like, very, very simple automations to, like, put the Google Doc URL in a field in the Airtable base.
- 10:19And I remember showing it to my manager, and she was like, "Whoa, that is crazy that you can do that." And I was like, "I have this edge because, like, I know how to do this."
- 10:29And I feel like that has just completely evaporated.
- 10:32You know, like, it is just the baseline now that your content ops skills-- I feel like that phrase is changing a lot, but, like, kind of what I think of loosely as content ops is, like, the baseline is so much higher now.
- 10:46Like, do you see that? Like, you have to be good at these things- Yeah... right? Yeah, I, I think so, and it's like a project management and op skill set is just built in to every content role now.
- 10:55It's funny, I mean, if you listen back to me talking on the show, maybe my first or second time, I think I was maybe a standout as a content marketing lead who thought a lot about Airtable and automation and these, exactly like you just said, and now I think it's table stakes.
- 11:12And I think I used to get all these questions like, "How do I get started with automation? Oh, it's so amazing you were on this." And no one asks me anymore, maybe because- [chuckles]... like, maybe it's not unique.
- 11:21And yeah, and I think that, yeah, now we're getting into the question of AI agents, these sort of next level applications of these things, but I think it's so important to have those skills.
- 11:33Like, you need to have those skills as a baseline so that then you can enter into this AI world with the right sort of stack of, "Okay, I already know how to connect one tool to another. What's that gonna unlock for me?"
- 11:45Right? I already know how to be decent with, like, writing spreadsheet formulas or things like that, right?
- 11:51Like, those are-- it's, uh, going back to that school thing before, like, yeah, you might always have a calculator on hand, but it's helpful to know calculus so that you, you know, so that you understand
- 12:03sort of the higher level things you can ask of, you know, of these systems. So that's where I'm thinking these days. In a hypothetical worldThere's-- AI has never happened. Yeah.
- 12:12Are you still a one-person marketing team at Dock, or would you all have had to grow the team?
- 12:17I mean, I was a one-person marketing team at Dock for two years before AI came in, and I would say still that I haven't fully lever-- Like, I've maybe gotten, like, 20 to 50% efficiency gains.
- 12:30If I'm being really- That still seems like a lot... if I'm being really generous with myself. I think that's probably overstating it.
- 12:35But I think in our case, I-I would say growing the team has more to do with the business right now, like the, and how we're growing the business.
- 12:44We made kind of a business decision to keep the marketing team smaller for now and grow the sales team, because we ended up being more of a sales-led business.
- 12:51So that doesn't really answer your question, but I think we have the model of me in-house and working with freelancers and agencies for the most part.
- 12:59So we most likely would've stayed a one, two, three-person team by this point. We're able to get much more done as a one-person team.
- 13:06So I would say the AI maybe gave us more time to keep the team small, which unlocks all these other efficiencies, just being one person versus having to collaborate among a team.
- 13:17But I wouldn't say necessarily that it changed our plans too much. Okay. That's cool. That actually makes me feel better. Y-You're familiar with the idea of, like, a T-shaped marketer? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
- 13:28I feel like kinda what you're describing to me is that the horizontal part of the T, it just, like, keeps getting bigger. Yeah. You know?
- 13:36And, like, the vertical part, it's not that it's less important, it's just, like, the expectation is that, like, you know, it's the horizontal part that's becoming more useful. Yeah, for sure.
- 13:46Yeah, I mean, video is the perfect example for me. Like, before I joined Dock, m-maybe 90% of the content work I had done was written, like, blogs, website, SEO, that kind of thing.
- 13:58Now I'm doing-- I produce a podcast, which I hadn't ever done before. We-- Yeah, lots of, like, video case studies which I've edited. We've started doing, like, influencer programs, partner programs, affiliates.
- 14:11Like, all these skills that n-normally fall to other marketing departments, being a one-person team, I have to do. But then I'm seeing, like, the content skill set is in all of them.
- 14:20And so, yeah, I think not only is the sort of, like, marketing skill widening, but the business skill set and, like, knowing what-- how to collaborate with sales, knowing how to collaborate with customer success.
- 14:32Those skills have also been introduced because it's so-- Like, as you get more multidisciplinary in what you're building, you also get more multidisciplinary in who you're building with, right?
- 14:43And so I'm having-- You're expanding. [chuckles] It's like the T is going that way and this way. Like, it's now an eight. Right. [chuckles] It's more of, like, a pyramid or something than a T.
- 14:50[chuckles] So yeah, it's, like, multidimensional. That, that's kind of how it-it's felt to things changing for me. Yeah. That's really cool.
- 14:59I do wonder, I, I sense that there's, like, an emerging type of marketer that's like a super marketer, for lack of a better term.
- 15:06It's like kind of a generalist, but really good with AI and, like, you know, it's sort of, like, good enough at each channel or each type of marketing that they can be, like, pretty darn good, you know?
- 15:19And I'm just, like, contrasting that with, like, the world that I-- the world. Like, the version of this that I came up in, which was just, like, writing. You master the craft of writing. That's the thing, you know?
- 15:28Totally. And I'll add too that, uh, it's not just AI that's changing things, right? Like, I think the video-- Like, video is so ubiquitous in our lives now that we forget that it wasn't maybe- Yeah...
- 15:40five years ago- Right... and wasn't really expected of content. I mean, even social media before that. Like, when I was-- When I first started in content marketing, businesses didn't do social media.
- 15:50Like, that, that was a newer concept. And so I think that rate of, that rate of change is changing, so we're used to all these things being thrown at us. So we got social, we got video on top of social media.
- 16:01That wasn't a thing when social started. So I think, like, there's other things other than AI that have been thrown into the world and sphere of content marketing and BP. And so I think- Yeah... that matters too.
- 16:12It's not just AI. Yeah.
- 16:14You know, [chuckles] on the last podcast, Kevin Lee w- was talking about brand stuff, and he was saying that, like, one of the best marketing decisions that a B2B company can make is to act more like a B2C company. Yeah.
- 16:25Which I thought was really interesting, but I feel like that kinda speaks to exactly what you're saying, which is, like, meeting people where they are right now and not kinda being stuck in, like, "Well, we create white papers because that's what B2B marketers do," and more like, "No, we create, like, vertical video for these platforms because that's where people are."
- 16:41Yeah, exactly. And so that was just not on my radar at all five years ago, and now it is. Yeah.
- 16:46And so I think, yeah, if we're being honest about, like, how the skill set is changing, then there's gonna be people who come into content marketing as, like, video native, and writing isn't, like, the...
- 16:56And they learn to write after. Which I think any of us who's been in content marketing five plus years, we came in as writers, probably from another field, and we ended up as content marketers because we're good writers.
- 17:08But now we're gonna have a generation of, like, kids k- who grew up, like, video native. Yeah.
- 17:14And they're going to come in to B2B marketing video first, and writing will be the skill set that either they learn later or AI helps supplement.
- 17:25But there's just gonna be, I think, a bit of a reversal of what's sort of, like, the native content. Yeah. You know, I was thinking the other day- And we're gonna be dinosaurs. We already are. I know. [laughs] I know.
- 17:36Makes me feel so old. I was thinking the other day, like, what if I got a job one day? Like, what would I even do? And I don't know, because, like, taking the entrepreneurial route has, like, flattened my skill set.
- 17:48Like, I'm such a generalist and not even contained within marketing. It's like I-- maybe I could be an accountant. [chuckles] I don't know. Like- Yeah. Yeah... I think about that type of stuff a lot.
- 17:57I think it'll be interesting to see, like, how all of this changes, 'cause I do feel like there's-- You know, we'll look back in a few years, and all this will have matured, and it will all feel so clear.
- 18:06And at the moment, I just feel like everyone's skill set is expanding like crazy, and, like, how is this all gonna become organized at some point?Yeah, for sure.
- 18:14I think, yeah, I guess, I mean, things happen in cycles, and it's kind of a rollercoaster ride, and I feel like we're just at this super high velocity right now and maybe things will even out. [laughs] Like, I hope.
- 18:27Yeah. Yeah. I feel like if nothing else, it will become clearer over time. I will say this has all gotten more fun. Do you feel that also? Like, there was the scary existential part. Yeah. There definitely...
- 18:37Maybe because I've had to become more multifaceted for the past few years, it was less existential and scary because writing isn't the only thing I'm doing. Yeah.
- 18:45But definitely I do have days where I wake up where it's like, is, like, everything just gonna be answered by ChatGPT? Like, will websites exist in five years? Yeah.
- 18:55Like, I get those scary questions sometimes, but I feel like the, you know, we've been sitting with AI for two, three years now, and it's not that nothing has changed, but I feel like the scariness has gone away at least.
- 19:07Yeah. And, like, I can predict at le- I can see the path and where things are going versus just being completely in the dark is maybe how I feel. Yeah. Yeah.
- 19:16You know, we did this Denver happy hour last week, and my wife came. My wife's a physical therapist. AI's, like, not part of her day-to-day job. Not yet anyways. [laughs] But she hears me talking about it constantly.
- 19:27So, like, the first, like, 30 minutes, you know, we're all having a drink and talking about AI, and then it, like, faded, and we talked about normal stuff. Yeah.
- 19:36You know, it's like everyone's kind of, "Oh, okay, you're sort of in the same boat as me," like, kind of excited, maybe a little bit worried, kind of making sure that, like, we've each got our bases covered.
- 19:45We're not, like, missing something cool that's happening. Yeah. And then it was like, "Oh," like, you know, "Where'd you grow up?"
- 19:49You kind of, like, transitioned into, like, totally normal conversation and then afterwards my wife was like, "Wow, AI has, like, flipped your world upside down, hasn't it?" I was like- Yeah... "Yes. Yes, it has."
- 19:59[laughs] Yeah. It's like a Maslow's hierarchy thing, where it's like you have to get that base layer of, like, basic human needs and fear and all that, like, out of the way. And for us right now, that's...
- 20:09It's like, "Okay, what-what's happening with AI? Like, has it come to get me yet? No. Okay. All right." [laughs] "Let's do our jobs." Okay. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] It was crazy.
- 20:16You know, speaking of AI, we should plug the Vibe Coding Hackathon- Yes... which we're gonna do at the end of May. I'll put the link in the show notes to that.
- 20:25But, like, you know, speaking of, like, you know, the chaos of AI, but also, like, the kinda need to stay on top of it.
- 20:31Like, o-one thing we're really trying to do with that, the workshop we did and now this hackathon is just, like, create space for people because within the context of your day-to-day job, like, it's just hard to, like, s- cut that time out to do stuff.
- 20:44So, like, that's what we're... You know, hopefully you can tell your manager, "This is what I've been doing for two hours," and then you can just have that two hours. So it's for Pro members.
- 20:51We have a 30-day free trial, so you can sign up for the trial and check this out.
- 20:53But I think we should do more stuff like this to give people the time and space so that they don't have to jam it into the rest of the work they're already doing. Totally.
- 21:02And that triggered actually an answer to your question about how this content skill set is changing. The last few days I've been
- 21:10building a repository internally at Dock of all of our team's sales calls go into an air table, the full transcript, and then I'm just gonna use that to do research, which I think before maybe as a content marketer I'd listen to, like, honestly, you join the company, you listen to a bunch of sales calls, like, okay, I get it.
- 21:29And then you know you should be more involved in customer conversations and learn from them and you never kinda do.
- 21:35But now I'm able to build this repository, and I haven't quite figured out how to ask good questions of it yet, 'cause ChatGPT's memory is kind of limited and... But
- 21:46that aside, now I have this machine I'm building where I can ask, like, what are customers asking about most often? What are the biggest objections that we might not have answered with our content so far?
- 21:58You know, what are the features that kinda light customers up on these calls? Right.
- 22:01And that's something that I wouldn't have been able to do at all as a content marketer before without AI, unless I was listening to hundreds or thousands of calls. Yeah. I'd need sort of the secondhand story from sales.
- 22:11And they don't have marketing brain, so they wouldn't quite have the answers that I was looking for.
- 22:16So that's, like, this whole, like, research and analysis and that whole area now made possible that can really end up in, like, much more relevant content, and so that's something I'm really excited about.
- 22:28That's really cool. I just appreciate that it's an example that's not, "Here's how we can save some time," but it's like, "Here's how we could actually do our job better." Yeah.
- 22:36It's, I'm doing a lot more customer research that way, and even just reading the transcripts, which is something that's just made more easily available to me with AI.
- 22:44You know, a call has to be transcribed automatically, and that has to move to a sys-- like, all those steps that happen are just made much easier, and I just wouldn't have been doing any of that before. Yeah.
- 22:55You could probably feed that as a knowledge source into a Zapier chatbot. Yeah, that's where I'm at. And then it was like, "Upgrade your plan." I was like, "Okay." Yeah. [laughs] That's where every...
- 23:05working with AI always leads to. You're, like, on the cusp of a breakthrough, and it's like, "Upgrade your plan. Ah, $20 for unlimited knowledge about my customers?" [laughs] No.
- 23:16I expected that AI would decrease our SAS costs, but it has had the exact opposite effect because we're just, yeah, you just, like, constantly run into these, like, credit limits or whatever, and you're like, "But what?
- 23:27Come this far, I gotta keep going." You know what I mean? Yeah. So now I have six subscriptions to various AI tools, plus the AI add-ons to some of the other tools. Yeah. Um, so anyways.
- 23:37Eric, hey, thanks so much for doing this. This will be a recurring thing. We're gonna shoot for twice a month, so we'll mix these in with our regular interviews where we bring in other guests.
- 23:44And if there's topics you think we should cover, email us, podcast@superpath.co, or just drop us a note in Slack. And I will also plug Superpath Pro membership, 30-day free trial.
- 23:54There's so much good stuff happening in there right now. Link always in the show notes for that. And am I missing anything? Should we promote anything else? I think you got it. The newsletter. The newsletter.
- 24:04Oh, the newsletter- Yes... with the world's best newsletter writer. Today's newsletter was just, like, uh, it was just, like, such, like, a powerhouse news. It was so good.
- 24:13Today's April 30th, so if you haven't read it, go read it. Like, there's just so much good stuff in there. I genuinely don't think there's a better content newsletter out there, so I'll plug that for people too.
- 24:22I disagree, but I, I appreciate the compensation. [laughs] All right. Awesome. Thanks, Eric. We will see you next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye. [outro music]