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Transcript

5/4/26 #ContentChat: Building Content Foundations That Scale · #ContentChat

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon and welcome to Content Chat.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Eric Heald, and we are kicking off a 12-week series today where we're doing something a little bit different than our usual format.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually going to be doing an audio and video version of Content Foundations, my book, about putting everything you need to have in place in order to scaling your be able to scale your content with AI and humans without losing your brand voice.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, consider this to be the audiobook version of Content Foundations, minus somebody reading through all of the very useful, but probably a little bit hard to follow along listening to examples, prompts, templates, etc., that you can find in the paperback edition of the book.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: So today we are kicking off talking about why you're gonna want to be tuning in each week to hear me share the book with you.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think right now we can all agree that there is a universal challenge that's been holding content creators back.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that we don't have enough ideas, it's not that we have so much extra time on our hands that we just, you know, need to fill.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And spoiler alert, it's not AI.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Really, the big challenge that I'm seeing when I'm having one-on-one conversations or spending time working with clients, I'm seeing that the real problem is that there isn't a strong content foundation in place.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is people are creating content, they're doing a lot of activity, they're sending out emails, maybe they have a blog, they're doing webinars, they're going to events, they're doing so many things, they're creating so much content, but they don't have a documented content strategy in place, or if they do, they don't have any of the supporting processes, templates, or structures that it takes to actually bring that content strategy to life and make sure that you everything you do is aligning to it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's think about it this way.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you were going to be building a new house, if you you wouldn't just hire a construction crew, hand them over a back of the napkin sketch of how you wanted the house to look from the front and say, Go for it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I need you to create a house.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know what to do.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you wouldn't do that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: You would hire an architect to work with you to create really detailed blueprints that talked about how you wanted to bring your house to life.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You would specify the layout, the flow from room to room, all of the different finishes that you wanted to have.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: You'd have you'd explain the issues that your family is having currently, wherever you're living, and what you would like in your ideal best case scenario for your new house to allow you to do differently than what you're doing now, right?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: But to do that, you absolutely have to put in the time to define what it is that you're looking for and then to document it in a way that other people can take that documentation and take action on it.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta say, these days, people are spending more time at the counter at their favorite coffee house ordering their drinks than they are spending putting together the right kind of information for their content creators.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot tell you how frequently in my career I was in situations where I was asked to write something using the brand voice and tone, or to ghostwrite for a leader and told to just, you know, just make sure it sounds on brand.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know what to do.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or worse yet, here are a couple of things that we ghost wrote for that person, and I'm sure you can pick up their voice from it.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can't, and you absolutely cannot have the expectation that you're going to be able to scale content creation past that one content leader who's carrying around all of these rules and all these preferences and all of the process in their head.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see how it's a problem that too many organizations today are trying to scale their content operations by introducing AI.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, what they're doing is they're just creating more chaos and a bigger mess that a human has to go into and fix.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, we're looking at either there's no strategy, no content strategy in place, or it's not documented.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Brand voice has not been defined, and it's definitely not been documented.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there isn't clear processing, any kind of clear process.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up with everyone having to do a lot of guessing.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does this sound like us?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is this how we normally say this thing?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Am I allowed to publish this or do I need to go get permission?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need to get a review from somebody in product?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or what about the CMO?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Did the CMO say that they wanted to review this?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, that's not any kind of um scalable process.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a manageable or workable process for any of us.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yet it is 100% where I see so many content teams are stuck.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Random acts of content happen when you're in those situations because you're relying upon that one person to be that keeper of all of that institutional knowledge and to never go on vacation, to never have to leave work early, to always be there to answer everyone's questions, which is really inefficient and it doesn't make any of your content creators happy either.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I feel really firmly that content governance is what stands between your content strategy and those random acts of content.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It really is that tool that helps bring your content strategy to life in a way that anyone in your organization can apply.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I get it, you know, governance is a scary word.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we didn't call this book content governance.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I called it content foundations because it feels so much more approachable.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that governance sounds like it's gonna involve a huge committee and legal and compliance and all of that, but let's just let's just put that on pause.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want you to think of governance as being red tape or as being the brand police.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually something that has the potential to become your operational superpower.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It moves you from just getting content out the door and having to say yes to everything that comes in to being able to really deliver business value, to be able to say, hey, this isn't quite right, this isn't quite on brand, or this isn't, you know, jiving with what we um, this isn't align with what we decided we're doing.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you have all of the governance in place, then you have the ability to push back when something isn't perfectly aligned instead of just becoming order takers with a never-ending inflow of requests.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, from my perspective, what you gain from content governance and what we're talking about over the next uh 11 episodes is you're going to be gaining clarity.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone will know what good looks like and what the expectations are for creating content for your specific audiences on your specific channels and in the format that you are requesting because all of that is something that governance takes care of.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you have that in place, all of your content actually sounds like you.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You have that consistency that you can't possibly have if everybody is starting with a blank page every time they're going to create content.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It also gives you confidence that you know what you're empowered to do, how what your processes look like in place to get something published, to get something live, so you're not second-guessing yourself, which just increases how quickly you can move through your content creation process and get moving towards getting things in the hands of your audience.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: That unlocks scalability, which means you'll have the ability to have more content, more tailored content for those different audiences.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be able to repurpose that content for different channels quickly at the same level of quality that you're looking for.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're having somebody in your team do this, having an external person do it, everybody will understand what you're looking for.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not gonna have to go in and do that heavy edit.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So at the end of the day, you're gonna have that strategic alignment where your content becomes a business asset.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we all want to do, right?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: You want to have your content team and your content marketing strategy, your content operations all be seen as being a driver of business and a builder of real relationships with people.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't do that if everything that you do is ad hoc and hinges all upon one person, you being around to make sure everything is on brand.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I know right now it seems like everyone is saying that AI is going to fix everything, that all it takes is a better prompt, or you just need a different tool, and that moving to whatever that new tool is, using their new prompt system, that that's going to fix all your content problems.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not true.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what prompts you're using, if you haven't taken that time to put strong foundations in place, defining and documenting what your brand stands for and most importantly what your brand doesn't stand for, AI without that guidance, it's always going to give you generic output.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: It can't give you non-generic output if you haven't provided it with your brand details, with your brand operating system.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: AI with governance, that's when you actually have leverage, when you're actually able to scale with the AI instead of just creating more work for yourself.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So at a very basic level, there are four key areas that you need to have just to build that base of content foundations.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else is gonna be gravy on top, but these are the four elements that if you don't have them in place, using AI is gonna create a huge mess for you.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: But once you do have them in place, you can start layering in the other elements of content governance in order to build a really strong foundation that will help everyone in your organization create so much better content.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, first you need to have that documented brand voice with the do's and don'ts, and some examples of what that brand voice really looks like in action across different channels.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have a taxonomy that marketing owns.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is you need to be able to manage the words that you're using that describe how all of your content interacts with each other within all of your systems.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Third, you need to have templates.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know that creative folks bristle when they hear the idea of having to write through a template, but hear me out.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I like not having to remember which of the fields I need to include when I'm writing a piece for a client because I have a really good blog post submission template.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me that I have to, you know, put in the meta title and the meta description.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: It gives me the character limits for my headline, it reminds me that when I'm doing H3s, that they need to be in sentence case, all of that kind of stuff is built into the template, reminding me what I need to do.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So templates, they are one of the most important tools for making sure that you have that consistency over time.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And last but not least, having guidelines in place.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: That means you're gonna have a really good style guide, you're going to have guidelines for language to use and not to use, you're going to have channel documentation that clearly delineates what the purpose is of your different channels.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Having all of that stuff together and building that out into your AI instruction system is going to be really critical for being able to scale and get value out of using AI as part of your content operations team.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just at the end of the day, your AI tool needs as much guidance as the new employee.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be onboarding it and training it like a member of your team if you want it to be able to help your team actually stay on brand and create great content.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know it sounds like there's so many elements, and where do we get started?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what we're going to be doing here in Content Chat over these next 11 episodes.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll be able to catch them live here on LinkedIn, and you'll also be able to download them as audio podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're not looking to get everything in place and then push the button and say, okay, we're implementing governance today.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I want you to not be caught up in trying to get everything perfectly completed and pulled together.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's about taking the time to purposefully create a system that allows you to have that ease for creating content that supports your goals.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so if you're looking to be able to scale your content operations to scale content so that you can have more people across your organization be part of your content creation teams without spending hours and hours of your time going back and forth with multiple drafts and revisions and headaches.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you want AI to actually be able to help create derivative content that is consistent, that meets your needs, that does the job you need it to do, it starts with putting together those content foundations because you can't scale what you haven't defined.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that you will be uh joining me here uh every Monday for the next couple of months so we can talk a little bit more about it.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about anything I've talked about here today, feel free to leave me a question in the comments and I'll make sure to uh share and answer in any resources I can.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, you can get your copy of Content Foundations on ContentFoundationsbook.com.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to chat with you more about Content Foundations.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Bye everyone.