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Who Needs a Content Strategy!? · Content, Briefly

0:00
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0:57
Today, Eric, Chloe, and I are talking about strategy versus execution.
1:01
The three of us were having a conversation in Slack the other day about just sort of this observation that feels like we're in kind of a strategy light era of marketing, as so many people are experimenting, and there are a lot of opportunities out there right now that have only just emerged, and the window on them may close.
1:18
You know, but then at the same time, like, how do you balance that against a strategy built on all the things about marketing that don't change, positioning, messaging, brand, et cetera.
1:28
And I do feel there's a tension there right now, and then the kind of where content fits in that is a whole nother existential question.
1:33
And so, you know, as has become, I guess, kind of a theme on this podcast, the three of us kinda work through this in real time feels very cathartic to talk it out with people that are as smart as Eric and Chloe.
1:45
And actually, one thing that we did, uh, we bring up on the podcast is we would love to hear from people. Like, how are you thinking about strategy versus execution right now?
1:52
We have an email address, podcast@superpath.co. You know, if there's anything that you would like to add to this conversation, please do let us know.
1:59
Shoot us an email and just tell us how you're handling strategy right now. Are you kinda putting it on the back burner to run a bunch of experiments?
2:04
Are you kind of bucketing all the little tactics inside of, like, more strategic pillars?
2:09
Like, we would love to know how various teams are going about this, and if we get some good ones, we'll do a follow-up episode on it. So, podcast@superpath.co if you wanna do that. Quick plug for Superpath Pro.
2:21
Again, I go through this in the episode, but, like, the best thing that I think we can offer right now is a place to commiserate with other content marketers. It is kind of a crazy time.
2:29
I do feel that there's a lot of cool new opportunities emerging as well, so it's helpful to just kinda, like, you know, if you wanna be a fly on the wall and kind of observe all the various things happening, that is awesome in itself.
2:40
It's also an opportunity to vent a bit, to ask questions, and crowdsource some opinions from a lot of really smart people.
2:46
You know, and then as you do figure things out, it feels amazing to contribute that back to the group, right?
2:51
Like, as other people are sort of coming across some of the same problems that you have worked through or are currently working through to offer your two cents in there as well.
2:58
So you can try it for 30 days totally free. You get a bunch of other stuff as well, including some very structured opportunities to meet other folks, AI show and tells, courses, content, et cetera.
3:08
Superpath.co for all that. Okay, I'll get out of the way now. Enjoy this conversation with Chloe Thompson and Eric Doty.
3:14
Hey, everybody, Jimmy from Superpath, back today with Eric and Chloe for another deep dive, deep-ish dive on a topic that's been bubbling around our minds. Today is strategy. Do you need it?
3:26
[chuckles] Is strategy worth anything anymore? Sorry, that's so- that's an exaggeration, but I feel like there's something there that we're going to unpack. That's the clickbait title for the episode. Yeah. Yeah.
3:36
[chuckles] Not the actual conversation whatsoever. Exactly. Well, we'll see. We'll find out.
3:41
I would love to just go around briefly and just chat quickly about, like, how is your life, in your own work and what you are observing in companies you work with, people you talk to, et cetera, how has this evolved?
3:50
And I can go first if you want. So, like, strategy, like, especially back in my animal days, like, strategy was basically everything. And we did-- That was h- what helped us land customers.
4:00
That was, like, this massively important part of the work that we did for all of the SaaS companies that we worked with, and then you kinda get into the execution, and it's not really rocket science if you have a good strategy.
4:08
And I feel that something important has changed here. Obviously, it's AI. That's, like, the big kinda wrench in the tire or wrench in the wheel or whatever that saying is. You know what I mean?
4:19
Like, we don't really know sort of the collective we. I feel like there's not quite enough confidence to, like, put a huge amount of energy and time into a strategy and then give it enough time to see, like, did it work?
4:30
How are we measuring it? Let's iterate it. It's kinda more like let's just do a bunch of stuff and see what sticks right now.
4:35
That, and that's the vibe I see in talking to other content marketers, and I'm working on a consulting project with a SaaS company right now. Like, that's definitely what's happening there. There's just so much change.
4:44
It just feels too soon to commit to anything beyond, you know, maybe two weeks, three weeks, uh, like very, very short time horizon. Is that what you all are seeing as well? No. [chuckles] Good. Okay, let's go.
4:59
Tell us more.
4:59
I think, I mean, obviously I'm in between gigs right now, but I think the conversations and things that I'm still seeing is that there, and maybe it's just because I feel incredibly passionately about this, but I think that there still needs to be a movement against random acts of content, or else we're just gonna be continuing along this pathway of just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
5:27
And, like, isn't that the whole point of trying to have a plan and trying to have a calendar, and then, you know, a strategy is as much of what you are not going to do in addition to what you are going to do.
5:40
And I still think that there's a lot of merit in terms of maybe there are some foundational things that you should still be iterating and keeping forefront in your strategy.
5:53
And then it's kind of the other experimentation piece of it. But that in and of itself is still a plan.Right? Like Yeah, and I'll, I'll add in my perspective here, 'cause I, I think it's building off what Chloe's saying.
6:08
And so I think I'll also summarize what Jimmy is feeling, and then-- So I think what's happened is before [chuckles] Jimmy, I'm just gonna tell you what you're feeling, all right? From now on.
6:18
You whisper in my ear, and I'll just say it clearly so that everyone else can understand.
6:23
I think the balance used to be more strategy heavy, and then there was like a longer timeline, partially because execution took a long time, partially because the world changed less quickly,
6:35
the platforms we were posting on changed less quickly. Like it used to take Google two or three years to have a major algorithm update or something like that, right?
6:43
Versus now, every single month it just like-- or every day, it's just changing constantly. So I think the goalposts are moved every single day. So I think it's not helpful to have a strategy.
6:54
I think there are some things that are evergreen, like you should understand what your content pillars are, like what does your brand stand for, and what's the messaging you're gonna s- have consistently.
7:04
But the actual tactical part of the day-to-day of carrying out a strategy is changing so quickly.
7:11
Like I've been at Doc for just about three years now, and, you know, the SEO playbook that worked when I joined is different now.
7:18
And it's not that SEO doesn't work anymore, it's that what's working one month is then suddenly not working the next month.
7:24
And I just have to be this constant experimentation person who's just looking for little opportunities that either other people haven't caught on to or that, you know, that are just temporarily working now.
7:37
Or another really good example is like updating content seems to be really important now.
7:41
And like I don't know if anyone ever sit down and like build out a strategy and then say, "And then three months later, we will update all of our blogs again."
7:48
Like that's never been in my strategy before, but now you have to.
7:52
So I think maybe just the balance has changed between i- i- if you looked at like the pie chart of time spent on these things, I think I've personally shifted a lot more of my time to like this like experimentation version of execution, if that makes sense.
8:09
That does make sense. And I think you're 100% right to call out that the evergreen components of marketing are unchanged. Positioning, messaging, brand, et cetera, are unchanged in their importance.
8:20
And then to your point, the tactics are evolving all the time. And I think that to drill down and as specifically as possible to the part of strategy that's just like I'm not comfortable with yet is,
8:31
you know, when I would spin up a content strategy in 2019, it always included metrics that we were trying to hit, and then ways to measure them.
8:40
And I feel like that is a, at least the way I'm feeling right now, it's a bit of a black hole.
8:45
Like the numbers that we used to rely on are maybe less important, almost certainly less important from a content perspective, like page views and sessions and time on page.
8:55
Like all that stuff is decreasing in importance, and so I feel like I'm still figuring out like what is the right number to look at, and then like is that number reliable enough that we should still care about it
9:06
two months from now? Like I don't really know. And like also, uh, what I think what I'm getting at most specifically is AEO. Like there's this whole new channel.
9:16
What I've seen looking at this client's analytics is actually there's quite a bit of people coming in from LLMs, like way more than I thought. So I'm like, "Wow, okay, that's--
9:26
We should probably do something about this." But how do we measure it? Like Google Analytics does a terrible job measuring it. You know, so do we need new tooling?
9:33
Okay, like let's get some new tooling and let's try to under- You can look at it a little bit in dialing in on more of like the referral traffic in GA4, which is a little bit messy.
9:43
But I do think there is a need to understand where people are coming from, and like you do wanna put a greater emphasis on improving that LLM traffic overall. But I still think that the fundamentals have changed.
10:00
I think this is because like this is one of our probably differentiators, I think, between like the three of us, is that like I've always looked at things like traffic, page views, and that.
10:12
Like I've always looked at that more from a trends perspective than being so fixated on here's how we move this particular blog or this particular piece like up into the queue, right?
10:25
Like, so for me, it's like maybe things haven't changed as much because I always put like those types of things in a bucket where I was like, it's good for us to track them and it's good for us to understand them, but should that actually drive our entire strategic content plan?
10:43
No. I look at that more as like indicators of like what our content should be, right? So I think that's maybe what I'm trying to articulate. Haven't figured it out yet, though. I think I mostly agree with that.
10:58
The hesitation, though, there's personal context for me, like I've been working primarily on Superpath for five years, now I have this consulting client.
11:06
So like I'm doing some of the things that I hear other people talking about for the first time in a while, so s- some of it is just me being like, "Oh, that's what everybody means when they say that."
11:14
I think there's a healthy amount of skepticism in marketing strategy right now. Mm-hmm. Like I think it's just like a really good time to assess like is the stuff we do, is it working? [chuckles] You know what I mean?
11:25
Like let's just be really honest with ourselves, you know? And like for a lot of companies, I think even their go-to-market motions are changing, which is then triggering a need for a new look at strategies.
11:35
Like for example, like there's quite a few companies out there right now who are going through, they're adding features like AI features, and then they're tinkering with pricing and trial length and freemium models that they probably haven't messed with in a while because they're trying to understand like
11:53
do the unit economics of this product work anymore, you know? Like can we offer a free, kind of like a free forever type plan? Like is the trial good enough?
12:01
So all of these things then there's this ripple effect that sort of force you to rethink strategy.
12:06
Again, this is all, I'm kinda like-My head is swimming in this because it all feels like it's happening for the first time, at least for me, and obviously it's not for everybody.
12:15
Yeah, I mean, I think that each of these conversations, you know, comes up with a little mini existential crisis that- Yes, always... all of our, all, all of our listeners are probably feeling.
12:25
But I think, I don't know, it's... Literally a Beatles song just ran through my head, but it's like I just think of, like, times of crisis and times of change, like, you still wanna stick...
12:36
Like, what are the things that we actually know that are grounded in reality that we actually can react to, right? Like, there's the controllables, and then there's the uncontrollables.
12:46
And to me, there's this world of, you know, AEO that is still really unknown. We don't really know for sure what works and what doesn't. We have inputs, but it hasn't been long enough that anyone that calls themself...
13:00
And I've had a lot of conversations like this where if someone is calling themselves, like, an AEO expert or something like this, it's like, I think that means you're just absorbing a lot of knowledge and information.
13:12
But, like, I do agree that we have to be in this iterative period for that particular part of your strategy. But, like, is that supposed to be your entire strategy? That's where I differ, right?
13:24
And that's where I think, like, content in particular just has a larger role to play, where it's like we don't have to be so reactive to this one piece right now, but it does need to be a part of your overall plan.
13:37
Mm-hmm. And I do think there is more reactivity in the strategy, though now n- kinda necessarily, or at least the timescale of the strategy has to be shorter.
13:48
Like, yeah, a few years ago, we always talked about, like, annual content plans. Uh, I don't know anyone who does annual content planning. Like, can you imagine saying, "Okay, a year...
13:57
This is what we'll do for the next year"? Or at least maybe, like, you have an annual budget where you're saying, "Okay, this is the money I'll need, and this is the strategy, this is how many team members."
14:06
And I feel like budgeting probably still happens annually, whether it should or shouldn't. But the timescale for me of, like, content planning has just shrunken so much to, like, a quarterly basis. Almost every...
14:18
Not to say everything gets thrown in the garbage, but, like... A- and going to another point you said about you kind of have to... I think now is a good time to, like, stick with your guns on what has worked previously.
14:30
It just might be accelerated a little bit with... Like, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, to use a crude expression.
14:36
But people are s- For example, if everyone's announcing SEO is dead, like, I don't think companies who are already having success with SEO should just throw it in the garbage and say, "I'm only doing AEO now." Right.
14:46
Because that's still just, like, a fraction of however people are finding us.
14:51
But I do think, like, people should have more of, like, an experimentation budget in terms of time and money and focus, that, like, you do have to be a little more, like, quick to experiment, and just the sort of exterior conditions being imposed on us, and just, like, the speed at which things become saturated now.
15:11
Like, the infinite creation machine that we all have in our pockets. Like, if something can be working for one month and then stop working the next month.
15:18
Like, even I remember when, like, Descript came out for podcasts, it was like, wow, we can all edit podcasts and make these video clips.
15:25
And for, like, one year, that was amazing, and now suddenly every podcast in the world has it, and now that's... Like, you, you just have to find these, like, little moments of leverage. And so there's...
15:37
I mean, there's a balance between things that work long term, but also just, like, little quick wins of exploiting an algorithm or a new tool where you can stay, like, just a nose ahead of everybody.
15:48
And so I think that's kinda, like, the interesting world we're living in now. I think that's fair. I think that's a fair assessment in terms of trying to find the quick wins.
15:56
But I think, like, my whole thing is just not getting so distracted by the reactivity that you're not still putting in place things that, like, you know are working.
16:07
Um, and I think that's where I have seen people, I don't know, maybe just get too excited, get too gung-ho, and I'm just sort of like, "Wait a second, if you put all your eggs in that basket..."
16:17
Jesus, we're using a lot of cliches on this, [laughs] on this podcast, like, you know? But it's true. It won't work. [laughs] Get scared.
16:26
Yeah, I think there's something particularly jarring about this for content marketers, maybe more so than people who work in other disciplines of marketing, where, like, the content world that I grew up in was it is inherently a long-term strategy.
16:40
Like, it takes a long time to create content, and then it takes a long time for it to pay off, and there's this sort of cumulative effect over time.
16:47
And I think one thing that people are probably feeling, I certainly am, is, "Wow, am I gonna spend like two or three days writing a blog post? Like, is that the best use of my time if I know that there...
16:58
or if I suspect that there are other growth opportunities out there?" And I feel like that has, at least for me, created this feeling of, like, should...
17:06
Uh, like, one is, uh, like I said, like, is this the best use of my time today? Two, like, should I be learning other, like, growth skills? Like, I always sort of thought of, like, content as our long-term thing.
17:15
Growth or demand gen or some other part of marketing is thinking about, like, running experiments to try to unlock, you know, new customers, revenue, et cetera. Uh, I never really worried about that.
17:26
Now I find myself sort of clicking back, you know, from my doc to other things, be like, "Should I do... What about this?" Or should... It is, like, very distracting for me.
17:35
Did you go back and listen to our podcast on productivity? I, I actually did listen to it [laughs] because- [laughs] No, I seriously did.
17:42
I listened to it in the car while I was driving just as, like, a reminder to myself of, like, okay- [laughs]... I'm not the only one [laughs] who feels like they're going insane. Yeah, the time pressures feel ridiculous.
17:52
I was DM'ing with someone the other day and...
17:54
about the productivity episode, and they said, like, they spent maybe a week working on a report for a client or something like that, and they felt like, "Wow, that took a really long time."
18:04
And, like, like a week, spending a week doing something used to not be... that much, like that's incredible. Like if you could create 52 reports a year, that's wild, and no one would ever expect that.
18:16
But this time pressure we feel on ourselves, like tactically, I think also applies strategically.
18:22
And yeah, like if it used, you know, you used to have an SEO client and you'd say, "Well, in maybe in six months the needle will start to move." Mm-hmm.
18:28
And that now I think the immediacy and speed of the tools that are in front of us, whether it's real or not, like it feels like things should be happening quicker and moving quicker.
18:39
And so I think going back to the strategy discussion, it, it feels like your strategy has to pay off really quickly, even in like a month or two, whereas like Jimmy said, it, you know, he used to say this is kinda like a brand-building thing, or even if you're looking at SEO, this is a long time horizon.
18:56
You know, we hope this compounds over years, and five years from now we'll benefit from the investment we've put in.
19:02
And it feels like, yeah, there's all these like immediate channels now, like you could grow a newsletter overnight. And so I feel like it's hard to...
19:10
That's why it's so tempting strategically to always be looking at the next tactic.
19:15
I feel too that there is a little bit of blue ocean or green space or y- like with AEO specifically right now, where like the tactics, they work right now, as you mentioned, Eric, like they won't work down the road.
19:24
And I think that we will increasingly talk about AEO the same way that we do SEO now, where like there are ranking factors that we're all paying closer attention to.
19:33
Like there w- best practices will emerge, and that- Yes. Yeah...
19:36
feels really boring, at least from my perspective, 'cause I feel like now it's like, oh, but you could like sort of outsmart people or like get to something faster and actually get something meaningful out of it.
19:46
Like I haven't felt that in my career in a really long time. So there's part of me that's like the temptation to just like try to get some of these quick wins
19:55
also feels legitimate because I don't think those windows will be open for all that long.
20:00
It's interesting the use of your terminology in terms of outsmarting people, and I think that that's where I just go back to like should we be trying to outsmart people, or is it, you know, can we double down on the actual providing meaningful pieces, relevance, and all that and like, I don't know, can it all just happen at once?
20:22
That'd be great. [laughs] Hmm. Probably. But I think like, you know, in 2006 somebody was like, "Oh, if we like stuff these pages with keywords, it's gonna rank." Yes. Yeah.
20:32
Why would I spend all this time writing a blog post that takes me three days when I could just do that? [laughs] You know?
20:37
Like, and so we look back on that now, I'm like, that's silly, but like somebody probably got real customers doing that also. And you know what I mean?
20:44
In the phase where it was like before it was sort of looked down on [laughs] you know, or deemed like gray hat or black hat to do stuff like that.
20:51
Yeah, and what was interesting is SEO didn't used to be the realm of content marketing, right? It started as these hacky little things.
20:59
Put 100 backlinks between a network of websites in the side navigation of your website.
21:03
You know, just like 1,000 links down the side, or make text white, or it wasn't a content thing, it was just keyword stuffing on a page, and you did a bunch of technical things.
21:12
And content marketing and SEO were not overlapping Venn diagrams.
21:15
And then as Google improved its algorithm and over a period of 20 years, it became like, oh, really good, high-quality content is kind of the number one variable that you should pay attention to.
21:28
And that moved SEO and content marketing to like this very overlapping Venn diagram with like a little bit of technical SEO st- stuff in the wings for like, I mean, if you're e-commerce or whatever, but let's say B2B SEO.
21:39
And so I think we're i- in that original space right now with AEO that makes it a little scary and frustrating for content marketers.
21:48
Like, you know, getting more third-party brand mentions is like the realm of AEO, like just making sure that everyone's top software lists, like you're on it, and that's not really the work of a content marketer to like do the outreach to that company, find the person who writes that blog.
22:06
Like, that's just kind of, I don't know, that's not content marketing, right? That's something else.
22:11
And so we had this world where SEO and content converged, and then we have this new world where maybe they're not as converged.
22:19
And I think over time we will get there again, that somehow AI is returning results of higher quality things. I hope that's where we land, if it's not just like completely cutting out the middleman altogether. But...
22:32
I think what's interesting about that, Eric, though, is you saying that, you know, someone's job to reach out to the person who's in charge of all these, you know, r- big review sites and being like, "How do we get listed?
22:43
How do we do that? How do we do that?" It reminds me exactly of someone's job, who it is in order to do like a backlink strategy, which is reaching out to people, being like, "Hey, can we be included? Can we do this?"
22:54
So then my question, is there a new role emerging in that? And does that belong in content? Does that belong in product?
23:03
Is that more about like your overall brand narrative, about like how you're showing up, because you're showing up in a content-forward technical perspective on like the SEO, AEO front, but then you're showing up from more of a brand story perspective.
23:17
And so like I think I was talking about this a little bit, or I have been talking about this on LinkedIn and in some of my conversations, like there's this split between like more the like the operational, technical piece of it, and then there's like the brand narrative and the story.
23:32
And I love the description that you just had of like the Venn diagram coming together, and I think that's a really smart way to look at it. Like where is this next Venn diagram gonna be?
23:43
I find this to be very interesting because content, again, like unlike other marketing disciplines, is I think probably more subject to the prevailing winds, where like those prevailing winds sort of blew content,
23:55
you know, much closer to SEO. Now this seems to be kinda, kinda blowing it back the other way. But content over time has been... You know, the term content is sort of squishy.
24:02
For like some people, so you hear people say things all the time like, "Oh, but all marketing is content." Something that's like never really resonated with me.
24:09
You know, like from my perspective-Content ought to stand primarily on its own and should be, like, quite opinionated and quite differentiated. Like, it really should operate as its own thing.
24:18
And then, like, you know, in the cases where it can support other parts of the company, yeah, that's great. But, like, with... It can't just constantly be in service of other growth initiatives.
24:27
It really deserves kind of its own space, its own, you know, creativity, its own expertise, et cetera.
24:36
And I feel like that, uh, it's not that it's in question right now, but I actually think that what's happened over the last, whatever, year or two years, I don't know, I've lost track of time on AI now, it feels like it's sort of blown up the SEO thing in a way that actually I think could be quite good for content marketers and content marketing in the long term.
24:55
Like, it's sort of giving us space again to kind of think about, like, oh, if the point of this is to get people's attention, and SEO maybe isn't the best way to do that, like, wow, now we get to be creative again and, like, think about interesting ways to create content that people might care about.
25:10
I do agree with that, but I don't necessarily agree with...
25:12
I mean, I don't think content should be a support function, but maybe that means that part of, you know, your overall strategy should be defining, like, what content actually means within your organization.
25:25
Because I think that there's a lot of... And I think, I can't remember the conversations I've had now, but, like, the crossover between, like, sales enablement and content marketing, for example.
25:36
Like, I think that's something that comes up.
25:38
And one could argue, you know, one-pagers, case studies, et cetera, does that fall within the content team and content marketing, or is that sales enablement, or are they one in the same?
25:48
And I think that content, I think we talked about this before, like, content does have to drive revenue. And in order to drive revenue, you do have to drive sales.
25:59
And in order to drive sales, then essentially you are becoming a support function in some way.
26:05
Not to say that you should be, you know, taking orders and only blindly following what the rest of the teams want you to do, and I think that's where content needs to have their why and their purpose and their strategic voice.
26:18
But I think it's a little bit limiting to think that content can do everything on its own without inputs or reliance from the rest of the business.
26:31
And maybe that's just a different definition of, like, again, what content means within each operation and each business. I do think that's a really interesting...
26:38
Yeah, 'cause like, as Jimmy was talking, as Chloe was talking, I could see these different, like, mind bubbles of, like, what content marketing is.
26:44
And I think, yeah, I think the world I live in is more similar to what Chloe just mentioned, just because I'm the only marketer, so I have to do all the things, and I guess everything becomes content because I'm the content person.
26:56
But I also agree with Jimmy that, like, not everything is content. Like, I don't see our help center as content. I don't see our sales deck as content.
27:05
Like, it's like small C content, not big C content, you know what I mean?
27:08
And so I think that the strategy, like, that side of things moves less quickly than, like, the capital C content we're talking about in terms of, like, thought leadership blogs or LinkedIn or whatever, right?
27:22
I think, you know, you have to support your sales team that, if that's the role of content. But I do think the trend of, I think s- content or marketing teams in general are shrinking.
27:33
The in-house teams are shrinking from just anecdotally, that's what I've understood.
27:37
So you used to have a world where you'd have, like, a product marketing team and you'd have a sales enablement team within the sales organization who might even just make their own content and not even ever talk to marketing.
27:47
And so y- there used to be, or maybe this still exists at very large companies, but I think, like, the typical listener of the show is probably not living in that world.
27:57
And so I think the shrinking of content teams is also, like, ironically, like, broadening the scope of what content is responsible for.
28:05
That's a really good point, but I think that that's where AI potentially can step in and help with some of that, like accelerating the product messaging and the positioning.
28:16
Like, if you don't have your dedicated product marketing team, it's like, how can you kind of sub in those pieces?
28:22
But I think- Actually, the, the other day we had, like, a messaging document we'd written three years ago that was, like, a f- 10-page Google Doc, and I said, "Okay, here's the old one.
28:32
Here's, like, three blog posts I wrote recently that clarify our new positioning, and here's our sales deck that we just made, and now can you change the messaging doc, like, where needed?"
28:43
And it gave me, this was in Claude, and it gave me something that was, like, 95% of the way there, and then it took me two hours to clean it up, whereas we probably spent a month, like, passively making that document the first time.
28:56
So yeah, we're getting into another topic here, but there's definitely, like, AI can accelerate how much I can do as this one-person team.
29:03
And so, I mean, pulling it back to strategy, though, and what Jimmy was talking about and, like, you feel pulled in all these directions because all these things are possible, and then you're like, "Ooh, that only took me, like, one day to, like, redo our whole messaging.
29:16
Like, so should I be writing this blog post? Like, is one blog post the right thing?"
29:20
Like, it's very confusing to balance this, like, strategy and tactics and where your time should go and where your mindset should be focused on.
29:29
I think that gets back to the idea, though, that, like, each piece of content needs to have a reason, like, why you're creating it, and, like, either it's a repurpose plan or a something other than a one-off, right?
29:44
And then all of a sudden, like, yeah, you spent a few hours on this blog post, but that blog post actually fueled, like, 10 different things that you may have planned for three months from now, six months from now, et cetera.
29:55
And I think that's where that, like, through line of strategic content actually is still critically important, even being pulled in a bunch of different directions. You know something I just thought of?
30:07
That we have an email address for the podcast, which is podcast@superpath.co. And did you guys know that? [laughs] I don't know if I've ever- I didn't know that No.
30:15
Well, I've only been here for a month, so I wasn't expecting to know thatWell, what I was gonna say is I think this hits every marketer and every company a little bit differently.
30:23
So, like, if you're experiencing something totally different or you think our ideas are dumb, will you shoot us an email and let us know?
30:29
Like, we would happily read a couple of these on a podcast just to, like, get a, you know, kinda like round out our understanding of, like, how different people are experiencing the kind of strategy verse execution balance right now.
30:44
We should also post it on LinkedIn, and we'll do a follow-up episode 'cause we've done this reverse. And o- other times y- you've asked a big question on LinkedIn- True, yeah...
30:50
with zero context [laughs] and then gotten all kinds of answers, and then it allowed us to have a smart conversation with other people's ideas. So we should do a follow-up to this one. I like that.
31:00
I will make sure all three of our LinkedIn profiles are in the show notes. And, uh, if you wanna- Wow... join us for more existential content marketing conversations, tune in next week [laughs] 'cause there's more.
31:09
[laughs] There's more where that came from. Brought to you by what are we doing with our lives? [laughs] I do feel this is a very good time to plug Superpath Pro.
31:18
You know, there's, like, we can tell all the, the, you know, different things you get as a member. I honestly think the best thing we can offer people right now is a sense of belonging, right? Like, you are not alone.
31:29
Like, a lot of marketers are sort of struggling with some of these existential questions right now. Like, you know, Chloe, you kinda joked that this felt like a therapy session. I- it kinda is. I- you know what I mean?
31:38
Like, there is a need to, like, vent a bit, you know, to, like, crowdsource ideas.
31:43
And also it feels really good to offer other support, you know, as you kinda, like, figure out things, and you can share that experience with others.
31:48
That's happening 24/7 in the Slack group, so that's the main thing I will promote and- Superpath Pro just feels like this big virtual hug that we all need [laughs] at, at this moment. [laughs] A big consensual hug. Yes.
32:04
[laughs] A big consensual- [laughs] That's why I said virtual, you know? Like, [laughs] virtual consensual hugs. I love it. You can obviously learn all about that, superpath.co. Try 30 days free, see what you think.
32:14
You will meet us there. We will say hello to you, welcome you to the group. I think that's all for now.
32:18
Thank you both for, you know, joining again, kind of diving into some of these conversations I think are just, like, vitally important to content marketers right now. And I will see you next time. Thanks. Thanks. Cool.
32:31
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