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Animalz: CEO Ty Magnin on the state of content · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
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• 0:06
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• 0:37
  [air whooshing] We are seeing a lot of folks that aren't quite sure what [chuckles] to do with content next year come to us for some strategy and some help, and really respond to a diversified content program.
• 0:53
  So not just doing the search-focused stuff, really focusing on thought leadership, differentiation, doing data reports like Superpaths, social stuff, founder-led content on LinkedIn, email newsletters.
• 1:05
  Some of this stuff isn't very new, but I think that the mix that they're thinking about it in terms of an investment is changing.
• 1:11
  I wonder if content marketers are sort of realizing that they have more options available to them than maybe they're currently utilizing.
• 1:17
  [gentle music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 1:23
  Today, really excited to have my friend Ty Magnin, who's the brand spanking new CEO of Animalz, on to talk about macro trends in the content marketing industry.
• 1:32
  Interestingly, Ty was a Animalz customer three different times and brings a pretty different perspective to the role of leading the company, having been on the other side of it for probably seven or eight years maybe.
• 1:45
  He spent the first few months in his new role basically getting to know all the customers and working with new potential customers, so he has a lot of very fresh material to pull from.
• 1:55
  So he has some interesting things, I think, to say about what he's seeing in content marketing right now, what teams are thinking about as they move into 2024. Really interesting conversation.
• 2:04
  I certainly enjoyed it, and I hope you do too. Also, just a quick reminder to check out the new and improved Superpath Slack group. It's now 20 bucks a month. You can also get an annual discount.
• 2:15
  Your employer should probably cover it for you since it definitely counts as professional development. And I think what you'll find there is gonna be really exciting.
• 2:21
  There's some really interesting high-level strategy discussions, in-depth conversations on things like people management and career development. Honestly, it's awesome. I'm enjoying being in there more than ever.
• 2:31
  I think you will too. If you wanna check it out, just go to superpath.co/community and sign up there. [gentle music] Hey, everybody, Jimmy from Superpath here.
• 2:43
  Happy to have my buddy Ty Magnin, brand spanking new CEO of Animalz, to chat content stuff.
• 2:48
  I think today we'll probably focus on some macro trends, which is a little different from the normal structure of these episodes, which is kinda like nuts and bolts of content team operation. We'll get into all that.
• 2:59
  Ty, welcome. Glad to have you here. Could you just kinda maybe start with an intro of yourself and tell us a little bit about your career in marketing and content? Yeah, sure. Thrilled to be here.
• 3:08
  You gave me a lot I can talk about. Ty. I'm from the East Coast, living in North County San Diego now. Shout out Encinitas. Oh, I have roots back in film and poetry, so I studied film and poetry in, in my college days.
• 3:20
  Figured out that neither of those things were gonna pay immediate bills for me that I needed.
• 3:24
  I had a kid when I was in high school, so I wanted to make some money out the gate, but found that these tech startups were kinda cool and had a good culture around them.
• 3:33
  So took a really low-paying customer service job at a tech company in New York City back in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and kind of figured out how to do the marketing stuff there.
• 3:42
  You know, I had no idea what I was doing, right? So I was, like, flailing about, trying to figure it out and do marketing.
• 3:47
  But we hired a VP of marketing, he actually showed me the ropes, and from there, jumped to a company called Appcues where I was on the founding team and the first marketer in. Had a lot of fun at Appcues.
• 3:57
  Built a great brand, strong go-to-market model based on... A lot of it was inbound organic content kinda thing.
• 4:03
  Did that four years, then went to UiPath, joined their Series B, rode that through an IPO, and led their web and content marketing programs.
• 4:10
  And then have kinda dabbled about in different businesses since, until Walter and I, and you in some sense, connected about where Animalz is at and what was needed over there and was super interested in kinda helping bring Animalz back to its feet and help other content marketers kind of succeed with content the way that Animalz helped me succeed with it back in the day.
• 4:30
  So as of August this year, 2023, I've taken the reins and am really excited about the things that we're doing in-house. That's awesome.
• 4:40
  We've worked together, I guess, in a couple capacities over the years, and I think our paths first crossed actually a little bit before I was at Animalz.
• 4:47
  I think I might've been even still doing Vero content, and you were at Appcues, and I feel like we connected, that would've been, like, twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen maybe. It was a long time ago. Yeah.
• 4:57
  But even going back that far, I don't think I really ever pegged you as a content marketer per se.
• 5:02
  You know, like, content was kinda always within your purview, but you always had, first, just, like, a broader sense of marketing. Like, what are we doing and why we're doing it.
• 5:10
  Like, you didn't get too into the weeds of kinda the craft of content. I mean that as, as a compliment. Like, I think a lot of content marketers get way too in the weeds.
• 5:19
  They sort of, like, lose sight of, like, what are we doing and why are we doing this. And I kinda wonder about that, especially as someone who does have a background in film and poetry. Mm-hmm. Heavy writing world.
• 5:29
  Did it always just click for you that, like, this content is important for the business because we're trying to achieve something as opposed to, "I like doing this.
• 5:37
  I wonder if a business would pay me to do it," which is how a lot of other content marketers like myself found this world? Yeah. It's a great question.
• 5:44
  At Appcues, we took a bet that content marketing was going to be big for us based on who we were targeting, the kind of subject matter that we were talking about, what was popular and being consumed at the time.
• 5:57
  And so my first focus was to scale or do more content marketing. So at the time we had, like-A user onboarding academy.
• 6:05
  That was our first content asset, and bringing me on board was sort of this opportunity to double down on content, right? So I started the blog and started putting out a regular cadence of that.
• 6:16
  But it was more of a means to drive leads for me than it was this deep passion for content, although I do think my background let me flex in that direction.
• 6:27
  And so, yeah, I sort of scaled it up to a point where I thought, "All right, I can now focus on the next channel, the next motion, how to basically expand on this a different way and bring in someone who's even better than me at this."
• 6:40
  So, like, the first thing we did was we doubled down by hiring Animals, and Animals helped us go from one blog post a week to two, right? Like, really simply.
• 6:49
  And then I ended up hiring in Margaret Kelsey, who is, I think, now a known content-ish person in the space. Mm-hmm. And she was basically the person who I knew would be better at doing the content marketing than I was.
• 7:00
  I had opinions still, but it let me then focus on a higher set of initiatives and opportunities for Appcues. So, yeah, I think I've always had a gut about what content can work, what I like, what I don't like.
• 7:13
  I haven't gotten as nerdy until more recently about the craft of it. And man, I'm learning every day.
• 7:19
  I try to read, like, at least one Animals blog post a night before I go to sleep, often ones that were authored by you, Jimmy- [laughs]... to sharpen my craft around content and, yeah, try to carry the torch forward.
• 7:32
  Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. You know, back in those days when you were at Appcues and I was at Animals, you wrote a blog post for the Appcues blog. I think it was about the HEART framework. Does that ring a bell? Yeah.
• 7:43
  Yeah, and it did really well. Killed it. Yeah, yeah. We were very frustrated by that. [laughs] We, we actually had, like, an internal contest to see, like, who could take down the HEART framework post.
• 7:52
  Like, who could beat it, you know? And we couldn't. Like, I don't think we ever actually did. [laughs] That's hilarious. Uh, I don't think I knew that.
• 7:59
  That post, I really slogged to get that post to be really, really good, to get it to where it was.
• 8:07
  Basically, in my research and in writing a lot of content for Appcues, I, I stumbled across this idea, right, where Google had this certain way of measuring their user engagement, which was something that the Appcues audience cared a lot about.
• 8:19
  And I just wrote this post over and over and over and over, and I kept saying, "If I can't read it from top to bottom without stopping, you know, to edit something, then it's not done."
• 8:27
  And so I kind of took the luxury of spending weeks on a post that I wouldn't normally do 'cause I felt like there was something here. I was just very kind of obsessed with it at the moment.
• 8:37
  And yeah, lo and behold, when it came time to publish, it just kind of went a little semi-viral, I guess. Yeah.
• 8:42
  I think Hacker News, it got featured by Hacker News, and that was a big boon, and then once you're there, you get kind of syndicated into other things. So yeah, I've had a few content wins of myself in my day. Yeah.
• 8:53
  That's great. You know, we actually had Ramli John on this podcast over the summer, and, uh, it sounds like the Appcues blog is in really good hands.
• 8:59
  And actually, the theme of that particular episode was developing an already mature content program.
• 9:05
  You know, like, you're handed a blog that, like, when he took over, the blog was probably eight years old, maybe even a little bit older than that, and, like, how do you handle that? So anyways, the blog lives on.
• 9:15
  Your legacy there lives on. Yeah, it's in great hands. Yeah. We should talk Animals stuff, and also just, like, macro stuff.
• 9:20
  Like, one thing that's really interesting about talking with agency folks is they just have more to work with, right?
• 9:26
  Like, you just see more, you talk to lots of different SaaS companies, you get a good understanding of the patterns, right?
• 9:31
  Like, if you're on calls with your customers or sales calls or whatever probably many times throughout the week, you just get a better sense of what's going on right now than folks who don't talk to probably, I'm guessing, like, dozens of different SaaS companies every month or so.
• 9:46
  The last time we had an agency on this podcast it was minutia, and the timing of it was such that it was just sort of a tough time. You know?
• 9:53
  Like, the theme of that podcast was the content recession, and we talked all about what's going on. This is like May, June 2023, and a lot has changed since then as we record this on Halloween 2023.
• 10:04
  This is a really broad question, but could you just give us an update? Like, like what [chuckles] is going on out there? Are the people you're talking to generally feeling optimistic?
• 10:12
  Have their problems evolved a little bit over the last six months, or is it kind of like the same set of problems, but the intensity has died down? Hmm.
• 10:20
  First, I just wanna give a shout-out to Superpath because I think you're right. There is an advantage to being in an agency.
• 10:26
  You get to see the inside of many companies, and there's also an advantage to just being good at networking. Mm.
• 10:32
  And I think Superpath has actually given people the place to go network and learn from other content marketers, maybe even a way that gives them better perspective or at least a different kind of perspective than you might have at the agency when you're kinda doing sales and, and working with customers.
• 10:47
  So yeah, for those of you that aren't in the community actively, like, what an opportunity, and for those that are, pat yourselves on the back. That's great. So what am I seeing?
• 10:57
  Well, it's been an interesting 18 months in content.
• 11:00
  I think we could say from the middle of 2022 until probably when you did the podcast with minutia in, mm, June, May, whatever you said it was, there was a real recession, I think, in marketing spend, especially around content.
• 11:15
  I think the recession around spend is obvious. Like, macro tech companies are just more conservative about their runway and their burn rates, and therefore what they're spending to grow.
• 11:26
  And then I think content marketers, and really anyone on the brand side of the house, hasn't done themselves a favor by being good at measuring content ROI, and this is a generalization.
• 11:38
  There are plenty of people out there that do a good job of this, which makes it a lot easier for a CMO or even a CEO to cut that budget, right? The other factor, of course, is AI, right?
• 11:49
  Like every CEO has said, "Hey, ChatGPT, write me a blog post on X," and the result they see is, like, pretty astounding.
• 11:56
  Like, you remember the first time you asked ChatGPT to, you know, write you a poem or a song and you're like, "Oh my God, this is amazing," 'cause it was like 10 times better than anything else we've seen of that sort.And so that aha moment, I think, really propelled people to not question the quality or think about is it really gonna move the needle, and instead make some decisions based on it at times, right?
• 12:22
  Like such as cutting marketing budgets and marketing teams.
• 12:25
  When I think right now we're feeling more confident to push back on those executives to say, "This AI is good for X, Y, and Z, but it's really, it's not replacing content marketers."
• 12:37
  And so I think, one, there are a lot of really interesting series A businesses that are coming up and starting to spend money. We talk to a lot of those in Animalz.
• 12:47
  I think, two, some people's budgets are coming back, and Jimmy, you just said in the latest Superpath survey that you had a data point that validated that. What was it exactly?
• 12:55
  Yeah, so we ran this state of content report. I was just trying to like look for data to back up a lot of the stuff I'm hearing, 'cause I'm hearing a lot, you know. We're like, "Okay, let's put some numbers behind this."
• 13:04
  One thing that was surprising is that we had about sixty-eight percent of people say that their content budget has either stayed the same or increased in the last twelve months.
• 13:14
  Forty-one percent of those had an increased budget over the last twelve months. Hmm. I thought that was pretty interesting. There is some nuance to that question too, which probably deserved a, a follow-up question.
• 13:24
  So many people responded saying that they wanted more information on that, and I didn't have it, so a lesson learned for next time that we need to be more specific about like when we say content budget, like what exactly are we talking about?
• 13:37
  And then in addition to that, if a company cuts head count and then adds freelance budget, has the budget increased? Hmm. You know what I mean?
• 13:42
  Like, that's sort of a, a shade of this question that we don't have good data on.
• 13:45
  But I think in general actually, I would agree with you, budgets are starting to open back up, and the sentiment that we collected from this is really positive and optimistic. It's great.
• 13:54
  Yeah, I think a lot of budgets maybe that were cut in the last eighteen or twelve months have maybe come back a little bit too for next year, which is promising.
• 14:03
  I know Animalz, you know, since I started in August, we've seen a few net positive revenue months, which is not always the case in the last eighteen, as you can imagine. So we're seeing positive signs of that.
• 14:13
  The other thing that we're seeing, and I think you also had a data point in your report about SEO and how people are investing in SEO next year versus this year, at least how they've planned to, which actually what we're seeing anecdotally runs opposite to what your report said.
• 14:29
  Oh, interesting. So remind me what your report said. We asked people is SEO becoming more important, less important to your strategy, or staying the same?
• 14:37
  Seventy-five percent of people said it's staying the same or increasing in importance.
• 14:41
  Yeah, so we still see people that are interested in SEO, but folks seem to have more doubts about how much of their marketing mix or their traffic mix is gonna come through search in the coming years.
• 14:51
  We're seeing a lot of folks that aren't quite sure what to do with content next year come to us for some strategy and some help, and really respond to a diversified content program.
• 15:03
  So not just doing the search focused stuff, really focusing on thought leadership, differentiation, doing data reports, like Superpaths of their own with their own data, social stuff, founder led content on LinkedIn we're starting to do more of, email newsletters.
• 15:19
  Some of this stuff isn't very new, but I think that the mix that they're thinking about it in terms of an investment is changing. Which makes sense to me, right?
• 15:27
  Like, those things are a little more defensible than kinda the copycat SEO content that Google Search experiences are starting to gobble up. For sure.
• 15:36
  I wonder if content marketers are sort of realizing that they have more options available to them than maybe they're currently utilizing. Just as an example, we recently had a woman named Mel Yap on this podcast.
• 15:46
  She runs content for a SAS company called Mountain, and she described to me a very well-rounded content program. They have got podcasts, webinars, robust social program, some SEO, some thought leadership.
• 15:59
  They do reports, basically everything you just mentioned. And my reaction to that was, "Wow, that's really impressive." You know?
• 16:06
  Because how many other folks have I talked to, not just on the podcast, but just like in general, and they're frustrated that their organic traffic isn't increasing or maybe it's starting to dip, and it's like, that's just such a small data point in the larger story of content marketing.
• 16:20
  So kinda getting back to your point, like there's this menu of options, and I feel like for a lot of SAS companies going into next year, it's gonna be about probably one, differentiation.
• 16:28
  What is your unique value proposition? And then of those 10 or 12 different things you could be doing, which ones make the most sense for your company brand, business model, et cetera? Yeah.
• 16:38
  It's probably a better time to experiment with different channels and start diversifying your content programs off of search, or in addition to search I might say, rather than doubling down on the one thing.
• 16:51
  That's how I'm feeling about next year at least. It's like, hey, you should probably try and add that other thing this year. See how it goes, you know?
• 16:57
  Um, maybe try a few other things, and that way in the second half of next year and into 2025 you can double down on something to build more pipeline. Yeah, totally.
• 17:05
  You know, it's interesting, I think that the menu of options requires in some cases a very different skill set to accomplish the work, and I think just a very general observation, a lot of content marketers have probably over-indexed on one thing, which is writing.
• 17:19
  Yeah. So Superpath created a podcast in 2020 that was a total flop. Actually, you were on it. Was I? Yeah, we talked about... It was more career focused, you know, and we actually had great guests.
• 17:28
  We had a number of really smart people with great stories come on, but I expected that my content marketing background would translate into a successful podcast easily, and it didn't. It was actually really hard.
• 17:41
  So we ended up shutting it down. I still wanted to get a podcast up and running. We hired an agency to help us with the strategy, with the name, with the concept, with the distribution.
• 17:51
  Like, I kinda came to the realization that I didn't yet have the skills to do it, and I do think that a lot of SAS companies are gonna have that realization as well when they start thinking, "We need to expand beyond SEO," or, "We need to diversify our content," kind of whatever angle they come at it from, and then realize like they don't have the people in place to do it.
• 18:11
  Yeah.
• 18:11
  I hope it puts agencies like Animalz in a great position heading into next year where like you can offer that support, not just from the strategy perspective, but from the operational and executional side of it too.
• 18:21
  Yeah. Listen, what's asked of marketers is so broad.
• 18:24
  Like, if you look at all that's in marketing, you know, you have design and you have video and you have writing and you have strategy and you have analytics and demand generation.Such a broad set of skills are required in order to have an efficient or an effective broad-based marketing engine.
• 18:42
  So I think we need to sort of, as content marketers, cut ourselves a little slack, understand where we are an expert and where we might need a little support.
• 18:50
  And I do think, yeah, there's so many ways to get that support, right, through the community of Superpath, through another friend in the network, through a hire, through an agency, whatever.
• 18:59
  So yeah, spend that budget, right? Yeah. [laughs] You know, earlier this year, the thing that everybody was saying was, "We're being asked to do more with less." Are you still hearing that?
• 19:07
  'Cause I find that I'm actually not hearing that. I mean, I hear it sometimes, but not, like, every single person I talk to anymore. Yeah, it's less of the refrain.
• 19:15
  I think it's still probably there, it's just we've already shifted to doing more with less maybe, and so it's kind of the status quo now. So I don't think it's, it's being talked about as much these days.
• 19:25
  Yeah, that makes sense. I wanted to ask you about data, metrics.
• 19:29
  I think one challenge of content marketing attribution, no matter how you slice it, is that you're gonna miss something, and I think people want a really specific number to guide the work they do each day.
• 19:38
  But, like, even in performance marketing, it's not that cut and dry. Like, just as a very small example, I've been getting ads from this company Huckberry for months. They sell men's clothing.
• 19:50
  I'd never clicked an ad, and then one day I needed a new pair of pants, and I went on Huckberry and I bought them. I Googled it. So, like, the ad got no credit.
• 19:58
  Even in that sense, like, marketing is just always gonna be a little messy.
• 20:00
  And interestingly, I was just listening to a podcast the other day with, it was an interview with Ezra Klein, who founded Vox Media and now runs a podcast for The New York Times.
• 20:08
  He was saying that Apple Podcasts' lack of deep analytics he thinks has been a wonderful thing for the podcast industry. It's allowed it to flourish, actually. Like, people can still be weird.
• 20:20
  Podcasts have not become overly optimized based on these specific data points in the way that content marketing has. I think it's kind of a beautiful thing.
• 20:27
  Like, as much as we do actually really have to measure how much money goes in, how much roughly comes out, at least, like, over-measuring it removes all the weirdness and the character and the lightheartedness or just kind of in general the interesting parts.
• 20:40
  So, like, I sorta like if you can figure out a way to put a little less pressure on the traffic, the pages per session, the time on...
• 20:48
  Like, that stuff really, I think, leads you down a path that removes all the good stuff from the creative part of content marketing. I like that hypothesis.
• 20:56
  However, I would argue that if Apple Podcasts did have better measurement, the podcasts that were quirky, weird, unique would actually be doing quite well for their brands. We just don't know it. Interesting.
• 21:10
  Yeah, I think that people respond to uniqueness, right, and authenticity, and we don't see enough of it in our marketing for different reasons, not just because it's measured.
• 21:20
  I think it takes a little bit more, it takes a culture, it takes a little more effort to sort of be fun and, and authentic, and maybe businesses just aren't sort of constructed to cultivate that, where they see it as a risk.
• 21:32
  And so people play it safe, and then all voices sort of sound dry and professional and generic, you know? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting perspective. I had not thought about it that way.
• 21:41
  I sort of think of content marketing over the last couple of years as everyone's converged on the same thing. Mm. It's like a couple people figured out what worked, and then everybody else went and did it.
• 21:49
  But to your point, they didn't make those investments in the brand or the culture, and, like, oftentimes that really is what makes the stuff interesting to read in the first place. Yeah.
• 21:58
  And an investment in the brand and the culture, I think really if you're thinking about it as, "How do I make an investment in the brand and the culture?" Like, you probably have the wrong head for it, right?
• 22:07
  Like- [laughs] Right.
• 22:09
  It's the people that are having fun and are just genuinely authentic and are gonna bring that, rain or shine, those are the people that don't even think about how to invest in the brand and the culture.
• 22:18
  They bring it, right, and it shows up and shines through. Yeah, that's totally true.
• 22:22
  Ben Thompson, who runs Stratechery, has an article about culture, and he describes company culture as early behavior that was positively reinforced.
• 22:31
  Like, at Airbnb, design was very important early on, and now design has become part of the culture 10 years later, but it was because it happened early, it helped them stand out.
• 22:40
  And I would cite a company like Buffer as an overly used example as, like, a really successful content marketing program, but it's kinda the same thing.
• 22:47
  It's like the founders wrote blog posts, they worked, and they went further and further down that road. I mean, they, like, took it to an extreme in some ways. But content is now part of the culture of that business.
• 22:57
  And to pull that apart a little bit, it's like for them it's transparency and education and sharing knowledge. That's what content marketing means to that company.
• 23:06
  So you're right, like, you can't make that stuff up later. Like, if it doesn't come from the top down, it probably doesn't come from anywhere. Yeah, I like that. Although, I wanna plant some hope, right?
• 23:15
  Like, I actually think I've seen it come from other places. Culture can come from anywhere, right? Someone can start it and be an early member of that team and have it then spread.
• 23:24
  I think it's just the folks that aren't willing to conform, who, like, care a little bit less about what other people think, who have an attitude towards work as something that should be joyful and, and playful and fun day to day, those are the folks that I think can bring it.
• 23:40
  And I think what you're talking about makes sense, too, right? I, I just don't wanna discourage anyone who, like, is joining a company to think they can't have an impact on it. I've seen it happen. For sure.
• 23:49
  That's a great point. How do you think about this for teams? Okay, like, so you're going into 2024. Maybe your company falls into the bucket of cut and dry. There's not a lot of personality in the marketing.
• 23:59
  Been primarily relying on SEO. Maybe that's showing signs of weakness or it's time to diversify. Then what? Where do you get started trying to liven things up?
• 24:08
  As we sort of head into this unknown era of search, maybe I'm being too dramatic, but that's sort of what I see is like, okay, if SEO isn't what it has always been, now what do we do?
• 24:18
  Well, I think it starts from the person that recognizes that opportunity, and then it kinda has to come from them, like authentically, right?
• 24:27
  It's either like a, "I really don't know where to begin, but I see this person that's doing it well.
• 24:32
  I'm gonna spend time observing them," or maybe there are some ideas for things they wanna try or do that they can sort of put themselves out there and see how it goes.
• 24:41
  Or you can maybe outsource pieces of it, or it's a hire you have to make, right? Your next hire needs to bring some element of that to the table.I think that there are different ways to approach it.
• 24:51
  I'm not sure that there's one uniform prescription. That would be too easy. Yeah. Yeah. I do hope that we see some job descriptions in the near future that look different than the ones we've seen over the past year.
• 25:02
  'Cause a lot of the ones we've seen over the past year are like, "We have a playbook. Come run it." You don't see a lot of job descriptions that say, "Come spice it up.
• 25:09
  We're ready to try some stuff, and we need some senior creative person to come and figure it out. We don't know the answer, so, like, we need you to come figure it out." There's just not a lot of that out there. Mm.
• 25:18
  But I think it's possible. And I personally feel pretty optimistic that content's heading in a... just kinda like a more interesting direction than it has been over the past few years. I think so.
• 25:26
  I also would take argument with anyone putting out a job description that says, "We have a playbook. Come run it." Like- [laughs]... A, they think they're better than you already, right?
• 25:36
  They have the playbook, they just need a warm body. And B, like, they're not willing to have anyone who's better at that thing come in and show them how to take it to the next level. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:45
  Like, for me, that is a, that is an immature leader. Not even a leader. That's an immature manager, and I would steer clear of any job description that said that. That's probably good advice.
• 25:54
  [laughs] And how about Animalz? Like, what's next for Animalz? What kind of things are you thinking about over the next 12-ish months? Thanks for asking. We've got two big initiatives.
• 26:04
  The first is, yeah, continuing to diversify the kind of content that we produce. We will still do SEO-focused content, right?
• 26:10
  But I think we got stuck a little bit too deep in the rut of that over the last couple years, and I'm really excited, and the team is too, about rebuilding our processes and our culture to deliver a more diverse set consistently.
• 26:23
  And, like, listen, we've done some semblance of this over the years, but now it's time for us to really master some of these other content types and processes.
• 26:32
  The other big piece kind of within this is getting better at measuring content ROI or at least measuring content performance. We, I think, strayed a little bit away from alignment with our customers.
• 26:45
  We got focused on our own internal processes and stopped delivering growth outcomes for our businesses and, like, living and breathing about their success.
• 26:53
  And so for us, the first step towards getting back to that is measuring alongside of our customers how these assets perform. Those are the big two. We're dabbling with some AI, too. I don't know.
• 27:05
  We'll see if we can get some more efficiencies out of that. If we can, we'll pass that on to our customers, but we're still trying to figure out how to operationalize all of that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 27:13
  Well, yeah, one interesting thing related to AI from that report we did recently was all the tiny little ways people are using AI, very few big ways.
• 27:21
  You know, it's like, going back to what you said earlier on, it's like the CMO in March who asked ChatGPT to write a blog post, and it does it, and was like, "Oh my God."
• 27:30
  And now it's like, "Well, it could speed up this other thing we do by 20%, so we should do that instead of having it just generate..." It's r- it's pretty interesting how that's played out, I think.
• 27:39
  So I'll be curious what you all do there. Probably the most important question I'm gonna ask you this whole episode, the Animalz blog, very near and dear to my heart. What's gonna happen with the blog?
• 27:47
  Not, like, right now, but, like, do you have plans for it? I didn't tell you? I don't think so. We're gonna sunset it. [laughs] Get out of here. I wanna buy it from you. [laughs] Well, that we can talk about. No.
• 27:58
  Honestly, the Animal- [laughs]... one, an important asset for the business, and honestly for content marketing. People are talking about it and complimenting it all the time when I first talk to them on sales calls.
• 28:08
  Man, inbound leads is such a gift, and the blog is responsible for most of that, and the brand and the good work that the company has done over the years. But the plan for the Animalz blog is to carry the torch forward.
• 28:19
  I think we also want to consider other kinds of content that we can add to the mix, so we're not all in on just the blog.
• 28:26
  That follows, of course, the same kind of strategies that we are implementing with our latest cohort of customers. So it will live on. It's also, like, kinda open for guest posts too.
• 28:36
  Like, we're interested in taking pitches, so if anyone- Oh, cool... anything they think is really interesting for the audience that we serve, I'm open to hearing that. Send me a LinkedIn message.
• 28:45
  But yeah, you know, the, the hard part is keeping the quality bar as high as you made it yourself. And so we continue to strive to hit that bar and even raise it in some places. Well, cool.
• 28:54
  Well, I appreciate you saying that. I look forward to seeing what you guys do. I feel like the blog turned into this kind of fertile ground for ideas. That was what I liked most about it.
• 29:03
  And then when Ryan Law took it over for me, he continued doing that. He just constantly, like... You could sort of see the thought process and the experiments and the questions kind of all laid out before you.
• 29:17
  You know, there wasn't, like, such a formula about it. It was more just like, "Let's try to solve some of these problems that content marketers are wrestling with in, in new ways."
• 29:25
  So I feel like if it, if it maintains that ethos, which it sounds like it will, then it's gonna continue to be super, super valuable for people. Yeah. I believe so. I think it will. So question for you, Jimmy.
• 29:36
  You're running the New York City Marathon in a week. Yes. You're a runner. Definitely. What parallels do you draw between running and content or running a business? That's a good question.
• 29:46
  I think that endurance pays off, and maybe more specifically, persistence pays off. Like, if you just keep doing it, keep chipping away.
• 29:53
  The idea of a content marketing program compounding over time is basically the exact same thing as a training plan turning into fitness over time. And then there's different versions of running.
• 30:05
  There's running a couple times a week for your sort of general health and wellness, and then there's sort of the version of it that I've taken on. It's just, like, this hard mode that you've opted into.
• 30:14
  No one's forced you to do this, but you have to ask a lot of yourself. You have to grow.
• 30:18
  You have to understand, like, when it's time to recover, when it's time to try harder, when it's time to develop new skills or muscles or whatever, and when it's time to back...
• 30:27
  There's a lot of parallels in there that I'm finding actually, like, are, like, enhancing my desire to continue doing this, even more so than when I think about just from a content perspective.
• 30:36
  So seriously, Ty, thank you for taking the time. I know you have plenty going on. It would be good probably to check in from time to time on this podcast.
• 30:42
  I think people would really appreciate just kinda, like, every now and then hearing, like, "Okay, what's the latest?" You know, "You've talked to 100 new SAS companies since last time we heard from you.
• 30:52
  Could you give us an update?" So if you're open to it, I think it'd be fun to make it a semi-regular thing. Yeah, would love that, and would love to get to know the community a little better, too.
• 30:59
  I think I haven't done my job in participating there. Cool. I'll hold you to that one. Yeah. [laughs] Cool. So we'll send people to the Animalz site, of course. Anywhere for you in particular?
• 31:07
  LinkedIn, Twitter, personal site, or anywhere else? Yeah. I'm trying to flex my LinkedIn a little bit more these days, so, um, there's some more regular updates there for what we're seeing. Okay, cool.
• 31:16
  We'll put a link in the show notes for people. Thanks again, Ty. We'll talk to you soon, man. Thanks, guys. Bye. [outro music]