Latest / Content, Briefly / Give your content a (different) job with Ronnie Higgins

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Give your content a (different) job with Ronnie Higgins · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
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• 1:28
  Ronnie Higgins thinks B2B content needs to do more than just educate and inform your audience.
• 1:33
  He's here to talk with us about his latest piece for the Collective Content blog, The Art of Content, titled Seeking B2B Content with Range. Ronnie, thank you so much for having this conversation with me.
• 1:45
  I am so obsessed with the way that you think about content.
• 1:49
  I think we need to be having these kinds of conversations a lot more in the content marketing world, so I'm just so glad that you are on the Superpath Podcast with us. I'm gonna turn it back to you.
• 2:00
  First, congrats on Art of Content. When you first- Thank you... approached me with the idea late last year, 2025, I was like, "This is gonna be awesome."
• 2:09
  It's something that I wanted to do, tried maybe half-heartedly to do, and I was like, "If there's anybody who's gonna execute this well, it's gonna be you."
• 2:18
  And so far, the response to, like, everybody, all the contributing posts, has been just phenomenal. And so congrats on that. Thank you. It's been so awesome.
• 2:29
  Thanks for inviting me to be part of it, because that was the first piece that I had written about work or, like, content marketing business in over a year, 'cause I kinda felt like the juice wasn't worth the squeeze- Mm...
• 2:44
  anymore, and I needed some time to just focus on, you know, practicing everything that I preach. Yeah, totally. So it was nice to kinda...
• 2:55
  It was cathartic to be able to, like, share things, and just the response that we've gotten so far has been more than I could've asked for. It's so awesome to see.
• 3:06
  I love seeing your ideas out in the wild, so let's jump into it. We'll start with the rapid fire questions about you. Are you in-house, agency, freelance? Currently in-house. I'm an IC after seven-ish years of- Nice...
• 3:20
  leading teams, mainly 'cause I wanted to get, you know, more intimate with the work, get my hands dirty. And so I'm at a company called Fresh Paint.
• 3:29
  We're a CDP for healthcare marketers, allowing them to do what all the other marketers do without breaking all of the different privacy laws and regulations. Nice. And what's your favorite part of the job?
• 3:43
  Right now I'm working on Fresh Paint's first podcast, and, you know, maybe we'll get into it later, but I have put a lot of work into what seems like your status quo of talking heads, talking shop podcasts.
• 3:57
  And my favorite part of the job is not when the metrics come in and the podcast gets, you know, you know, told, like, oh, someone who just had a... You know, became a customer mentioned the podcast. Mm. It's actually
• 4:11
  the, like, even more nuanced qualitative data. Recently had a guest who is really amazing marketer who, like, has done, like, Super Bowl commercials.
• 4:22
  And he responded to an email from our host and CEO, Ray Mina, saying, you know, "This is probably the first podcast I'm ever in my career going to be sharing with my, you know- Wow... personal network.
• 4:36
  Like, had a really great time, loved everything that we talked about. And I think that's because, like, that's what really shows, like, the hard work that we put into our content. That's awesome.
• 4:48
  What would you be doing if you weren't in content? So an academic who's constantly learning and passing on his knowledge is where I would be if I weren't doing this job. Awesome.
• 5:01
  Well, I'm excited for you to pass on some knowledge for us today. So let's seg into talking about your piece. Can we open by just... Can you describe, like, the thesis of the piece that you wrote in a sentence or two?
• 5:14
  Yeah.
• 5:15
  So like it says on the tin, you know, Seeking B2B Content with Range is that in my career, 17-ish years of doing content, the one thing that's happened, like, one of the worst things that's happened to content is it being seen as a means to an end.
• 5:33
  It just needs to be information. And I think a lot of this had to do with SEO. Okay. You know, SEO had, like, oh, there are different types of keyword, informational, navigational, commercial, transactional.
• 5:45
  And it was like, you know, that, those are true. Mm-hmm. But we're humans. [chuckles] Yeah. When we're trying to find something, I mean, have you ever been lost somewhere? What is the feeling of being lost? Mm.
• 5:57
  And so I know this is not in one sentence, but B2B con-Seeking content with range or seeking b two b content with range is about it's a calling, a call to action for b two b content marketers to think about their content in the most human of terms, which are- Mm...
• 6:16
  all of the needs that we have. We don't do anything without motivation, and that goes for content and consuming it. Yeah.
• 6:25
  I love, I love how you put that, of thinking about it in the most human way possible, which is about thinking about our needs and what actually motivates us to do things.
• 6:36
  I thought it was so interesting that you opened your piece talking about BuzzFeed, which you rightly call out is kind of a random, feels, like, unrelated to b two b at all.
• 6:48
  But they have kind of come up, or they had come up with this cultural cartography map.
• 6:54
  Can you talk a bit, just in case, like, for people who haven't read the piece or aren't familiar with this idea, what is this kind of cultural cartography idea? What role does it play for b two b?
• 7:05
  How does it fit in with those human needs that you're mentioning? Yeah. So I'm gonna tell a little bit on a personal story of how I learned about it.
• 7:14
  So I was lucky enough to have met Matt Honan, who at the time, this is twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, was the San Francisco bureau chief of BuzzFeed, and I had messaged him.
• 7:29
  At the time for me, I was overseeing the... just about to oversee the global content operation for Eventbrite and help it scale globally.
• 7:40
  And I had reached out to Matt to say, "Can I buy you lunch to just ask you questions about BuzzFeed?" And, you know, at the time, BuzzFeed was still doing great.
• 7:50
  I think we can go into why they aren't, but I just wanted to understand, like, what were they doing. I was trying to look at... for ideas outside of b two b content marketing that I could adopt. Mm-hmm.
• 8:02
  And had lunch with them, learned a lot about how they use, like, machine learning to determine, the same way, like, Netflix determines, like, a thumbnail for a movie, like, they were doing for intros and titles and stuff like that, and that's when I then learned about all of the data science.
• 8:20
  So the data science team then had analyzed tens of thousands of comments related to different articles because they wanted to understand virality.
• 8:31
  And what they ended up doing was, because they were also were people who worked with product works, had realized that they could apply product job to-be-dones to content to understand not just like what people share, but why they share it.
• 8:48
  Mm-hmm. And so the BuzzFeed cultural cartography, for those listening, if you Google it, it surprisingly hasn't been, like, covered a lot.
• 8:56
  You would think this thing would be, like, out there as often as, like, Pixar storytelling rules and- Yeah. I feel like everyone's trying to understand how to go viral. Yeah.
• 9:05
  And so it's this, like, scatter s- plot of different jobs that they identified that essentially fall into a few different groups, like humor, make me laugh, identity, this is me, connection, this is us, or this makes me feel closer to my people, utility, like, this was, like, helpful, and then emotion, like, this made me feel something.
• 9:28
  Mm. This made me cry. And so it's, like, a little scatter plot, and it's based on all this, like, data science modeling that they had done in, like, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
• 9:40
  It actually goes along with something that I didn't talk about in that piece called Pound, which is they actually did distribution cartography, which is, like, understanding, like, you know, back in the days when you would see, like, oh, we got, like, twenty shares on Facebook, ten on Twitter.
• 10:00
  They actually could map out, like, how the likes from one ended up from another and see how things spread.
• 10:10
  And so this was in tandem with that to be able to help people at BuzzFeed think differently about how they were approaching content.
• 10:18
  So instead of thinking of the utility of it, of like, oh, let's do, for all intents and purposes, a brownie recipe- Mm...
• 10:24
  they would think, okay, you know, let's actually do an article on, you know, desserts to make for a friends get-together or something like that, and then it's like, okay, brownie recipe, 'cause they realized, like, that was why people seek out content, why people consume it.
• 10:43
  That's why people share it. It's like what was the job to be done? And that goes back to, like, how products think of- Yeah... I'm going on here, but yeah. That's essentially what the BuzzFeed cultural cartography is.
• 10:57
  Yeah.
• 10:57
  It's super interesting, and I think this idea that you're pulling out in your piece too about, like, hiring content to do a job or thinking about content as a product, it kind of goes back to this idea of what BuzzFeed was trying to do, which is go a step beyond what the topic of the content is into why are people looking for this content.
• 11:22
  Yeah. And I feel like we talk about that with SEO, and like you alluded to earlier with like, oh, is this informational? Is it transactional? But I feel like this is really taking it a step deeper.
• 11:34
  I don't know if it's the human emotion piece or if there's some other aspect to it, but it just feels like a much richer way to think about that. So there's two ways to think about the why. Mm-hmm.
• 11:47
  One of the ways is that, you know, everybody talks about, like, especially today, oh, content has to have a POV. Well, information is, like, a commodity, especially today, and so what's your point of view on it? Mm-hmm.
• 12:02
  Well, to understand your point of view, you need to read the room.
• 12:05
  You need to know, like, oh, this is, you know-How people think about it, and 'cause people aren't just wanting to know even a what is blank, you know, cloud computing or whatever- Yeah... I don't know,
• 12:18
  has an emotional and social need behind it. Mm. It's when someone is searching for something online, or they see something pop up in a newsletter in their inbox, they have a need.
• 12:33
  They have something that goes beyond just the information.
• 12:36
  They are frustrated because they've been trying to solve a problem for so long, or they've tried 10, 15, 20 different things and nothing's worked out the way they want.
• 12:48
  And so when you think about the jobs to be done, it's like, yes, they want to do X so they can do Z. Mm-hmm. But there's like, if you think about the human behind there, they wanna be seen, felt, heard.
• 13:03
  It's almost like, you know, being a therapist. Like, what is it that they want and need? And making sure that you meet them in that moment.
• 13:11
  'Cause you never know if, like, that first intro, instead of it being like, "Most content marketers don't do this, but they should be doing this other thing." I have bad examples, I'm sorry. [laughs] It's okay.
• 13:25
  But, but you know what I'm saying? Like, when you start off with that, that's not helpful. You wanna be able to say, like, "All right, you know, you've tried a bunch of things. You're here. Let's get down to business."
• 13:37
  Or you wanna make sure that where they're at, they're with you. The other way to think about it is I have the...
• 13:45
  We're gonna talk later about how I apply it, but I try to treat the reader or listener or whatever, the audience, as a protagonist. Okay.
• 13:53
  Everybody in this field knows storytelling, knows what a protagonist is, the main character. And what is every-- what defines a main character in a story? They want something. And what is it that they want?
• 14:06
  [laughs] Yeah. And if you know what they want, it's-- you realize, like, it's not just information. It's, it's information for a reason. What are they gonna do with that information? What is that information gonna do?
• 14:18
  'Cause like I talked earlier about the social reasons. It might be like, I wanna look smart in front of my team. Mm-hmm. My boss told me to figure out AI, and I don't know shit about it.
• 14:29
  [laughs] So I wanna be able to go back and look like an expert. There's a social reason. They need a promotion.
• 14:36
  I should've told you about this ahead of time, but Bain & Company, the people that did and came out with- Oh, yeah... the NPS score, they have in both B2C and B2B, a pyramid of value props. Okay.
• 14:50
  That the values that a B2B product or service can have. And, like, you know, the bottom of that pyramid is the thing-- are the things that most m- marketing, you know, product marketers would, like, tackle.
• 15:02
  Ease of use, this and that. But when you go further up the pyramid, you get to these jobs to be done. You have someone who... You know, 'cause no one's gonna get-- it's that whole no one gets fired for buying IBM quote.
• 15:14
  [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Right. Like, that, whether it's true or not anymore, is about the fact that there's anxiety of choosing a B2B- Right... service or product.
• 15:26
  No one wants to be the person that vouched for a product that ended up costing 20 times more, blew the budget, and didn't do anything. Right.
• 15:34
  And I think, like, what I think you're getting at, or what I hear you getting at, is this idea that we
• 15:42
  have kind of overemphasized this need for information while underemphasizing, like, all of the human emotions that underlie that need. Um- Yes... which is just so interesting.
• 15:56
  And I think your idea of thinking about the reader or your audience as a protagonist is a really interesting way to shift that. Because another piece of having a protagonist is, like, there's a transformation, right?
• 16:10
  Like- Mm-hmm... you can't have a book where your main character, nothing happens to them, you know? Like, there's no Lord of the Rings where the hobbits just hang out in the Shire and have- Mm-hmm...
• 16:20
  a little picnic, [laughs] right? Lord of the Rings, they have to go to Mordor, and, like, get through the fire, and hold onto the ring, and find the trea- you know?
• 16:29
  Like, there's all of these pieces of things they have to go through that complete this transformation. And- 100%...
• 16:37
  I feel like what I'm hearing you say is, like, we actually need to be doing this in our B2B content as well. Yeah. And I don't mean overdoing it.
• 16:46
  I don't mean, like, not shipping anything 'cause you haven't figured this out, or you think you overthink it. That's a good clarification.
• 16:55
  Like, you know, there's the whole, I don't see it often thankfully, but there's this, like, so every now and then on LinkedIn, like, I don't hire artists, I hire blah, blah, blah. Like, no one wants to, like...
• 17:08
  Like, they try to, like, say, like, in B2B, they're, it's, it's business, right? Mm-hmm. And it's like, yes. Yeah, I've definitely seen that. So yes and no, but there's still that side of it is, has value.
• 17:22
  And I just wanna make sure that I put a stake in the ground that says, like, I don't mean to throw away the information. It's still all rooted in how do you, how do you influence customer behavior? Mm-hmm.
• 17:35
  Um, how do you make them feel something? 'Cause this isn't a piece in BuzzFeed. This isn't, you know, which princess are you po- you know? [laughs] Quiz. What piece of cake are you? Yeah.
• 17:45
  This is, like, something that's supposed to actually influence people's decision-making when it comes to buying products.
• 17:53
  But there's value in thinking about what is not just the informational needs that get them to choose your product, but what are the emotional, social, temporal, spatial, if, if even, if there's, like, a place you need to be.
• 18:09
  Like, what are all those different needs?Maybe I'll just, like, play devil's advocate for a minute though and say, like, does it really matter if we... You know?
• 18:18
  Like, most brands are already ignoring these emotional states and doing just fine. So, like, doesn't it seem like the most important job in B2B is to inform and educate?
• 18:30
  And then, like, the flip side of that is, like, do buyers really want to be, like, entertained or comforted or, like, their anxiety lessened by the brands that they're buying from? Like, is that really the role or...?
• 18:44
  It's definitely the primary role, but it also depends on where the buyer is. So this is... So Field and Bennett, these two guys did marketing research back in 2019. Okay. This combined with, like, a lot...
• 19:01
  It was, like, like, what's the word? Empirical-type research. Not just like, "Oh, we interviewed 200 people." Mm-hmm. And that... It's them and...
• 19:13
  'Cause this is, like, same time that I discovered the cultural cartography. So, like, 2019, it was them, and then it was... Oh, why am I blanking on it?
• 19:21
  The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute came up with the 95/5 rule for B- B2B, which is for any given, on average, any given B2B customer buyer, 95% of them are not in market. They are not ready to buy.
• 19:38
  They're never going to buy. Mm-hmm. Only 5% of them are.
• 19:42
  But when someone from the 95%, when they do become part of that 5%, they already have a list of, a day one list, which is on average, like, three brand names already chosen. And so this goes back to...
• 19:57
  So that's the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute research. Back to Le- uh, Field & Bennett, what they had discovered was that emotional campaigns are...
• 20:08
  I'm gonna make sure I don't botch this, but it's 17, seven times more effective driving long-term profitable growth compared to rational campaigns. Mm-hmm. So they were studying ads, the, the creative of ads.
• 20:24
  So, like, take this so it, like, you have to transfer this to content. Sure, sure. But it goes back to the idea that it depends on where they are. Okay.
• 20:32
  If someone is product aware, they understand the product, they now need to go rationalize it to their CFO, yes, you don't wanna be fricking cutesy. [laughs] You don't wanna beat around the bush.
• 20:45
  You wanna get down to brass tacks. How much is this gonna cost? Give me, give me a s- cheat sheet of stats of... This is where, like, case studies come into play. Yeah, the hard, cold numbers. Yeah.
• 20:57
  But earlier in that 95%, how do people remember you? Mm-hmm. How do people put you on that list so when the boss says, "Hey, figure out AI," you already have, like, three things on your list? Mm-hmm.
• 21:11
  Is because they built some emotional connection to you, and that emotional connection can be inspirational, can be...
• 21:22
  It's, it's just about building memory, and to build memory, you need to tap into something that's more than just purely informational. Earlier you asked too about, like, do people wanna be entertained? Mm-hmm.
• 21:34
  This is gonna become even more important because there's another research from Reuters, I think, that very recent, like, maybe a few weeks ago, so before I even published or after I published that piece, that talked about how younger people, like 18 to 24 today- Okay...
• 21:52
  are, what's their relationship to news and media? And what they found was that younger audience want their news to come in a entertainment sort of container. Okay. That's why they like watching, you know, News Talk.
• 22:07
  They just, like, watch SNL's recaps for their news. Yeah. And, you know, then they pick up on the smaller signals, but they're not tuning into their local news the way, like, maybe even we did at some point- Mm-hmm...
• 22:20
  or definitely our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did in terms of TV and radio or even the newspaper. They want to... They... And this is all about how they keep in touch.
• 22:31
  So if you think about back to that 95% of the people who aren't ready to buy, you need to find ways to keep the brand relevant and top of mind.
• 22:41
  This going back to, like, not screwing around, you still need to choose the, like, topics and the emotions and the social needs that are relevant to your product so that people know what it is you do and not just, like, "Oh, I know of them."
• 22:57
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Totally.
• 22:59
  Yeah, I mean, there's a number of brands, I won't name them, but I, like, see their marketing all the time, or I see them put out some interesting thing, and I might think, like, "Oh, that's a cool brand," but I don't know anything about what they do or what their product is aside from, you know, they made that one cool thing that I thought was kinda interesting.
• 23:18
  Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right to say it obviously has to be tied together.
• 23:24
  At the same time, I do think it's interesting the way you're kind of dividing this 5% that's ready to buy versus the 95% that's not ready to buy.
• 23:34
  Information might be, like, a lot lower on their list of needs, whereas when I hear people talk about, like, tofu content for people who aren't yet ready to buy, it's almost always that means, like, informational content.
• 23:51
  You know? That's, like, the high funnel SEO articles, let's answer a question that people Google. Exactly.
• 23:59
  A good example of this, like, even further up the funnel, right, is even in the most driest professional, like, what, like, idea of content that's not trying to be some retelling of Lord of the Rings- Sure...
• 24:14
  at a handful of places, what I've done is-Gather practitioners to talk shop.
• 24:20
  So typical B2B podcast tries to do this, but they focus too much on getting a name or a guest and not so much about what the value of the material will be.
• 24:32
  But at Dovetail, when I advised them, I had realized, like, if they wanted to crack the top of the funnel, they couldn't do SEO, they couldn't do what is, and all of the, like, low-hanging fruit back in...
• 24:44
  it was, like, 2020. Okay.
• 24:46
  So the midst of the pandemic, and it was because they're a research platform, a repository, and what I realized is that the people that would be using their product, the, like, people that were gonna get them to be the early adopters, 'cause they were a s- a series A going at the time, just getting their s- from C to series A, they needed to get their early adopters, and then they needed the people who were gonna help them cross the chasm.
• 25:10
  And if... You can go Google that later, so I don't have to explain what- [laughs]... crossing the chasm is, but it's the whole, like, getting that first stage of growth.
• 25:20
  And I told them, "What you need to do is you need to get practitioners to tell their war stories, explain, go into, get nerd out, and that's your top of the funnel." Mm-hmm.
• 25:30
  And it worked for them because what they did is they ended up building this entire publication that was like a journal, essentially, a scientific journal for academic and product researchers. That's awesome.
• 25:44
  So to show you, it's like, it's still a business, you know, thing. Just- Yeah. Yep. It just- It fulfilled the need. Right. It, it helped them express, you know, I had them dig in.
• 25:55
  Like, it's not just we did this, then that, then that. It's like, no, where's the tension? Where did they get... try something and it freaking- Mm-hmm... fail? How did they get the buy-in?
• 26:04
  Like, what were all the social problems they had to overcome to do what they needed to do? And, like, what would you say was the psychological need that was being fulfilled by that content for the audience?
• 26:16
  Was it like, "Oh, this is us. I feel connected"? Or was it like, "Other people are experiencing this, so thus I feel less anxious now"? Or how would you kind of describe that in those terms?
• 26:28
  Empower me, like, provide, like, the tools, the knowledge. Like, what... There's no, like... Especially during the pandemic, the reason that that idea worked was nobody was gathering in person. Yeah. Right.
• 26:42
  Um, and if you think about those in person, like, when those people would go to conferences, there's the content that's on stage, but a lot of those events, people would say, is the getting together and asking, you know, having coffee or a drink or whatever, lunch.
• 26:56
  Yeah. And what are you doing? That was like energizing me, inspire me.
• 27:01
  So, like, how do you, like, make sure that, like, you know, by, through this content, like some researcher who's not doing something will learn about something- Mm-hmm...
• 27:11
  and be like, "Oh my God," like, "I could be using that to solve this problem that I have," which then surprises them. Like, they're very connected, you can see.
• 27:22
  I also like how that example points out there's, like, a cultural, economic, temporal element to this. Like, that worked really well in part because of the time- Mm-hmm...
• 27:33
  that you did it, and the needs that people had during that particular time were different or heightened or intensified by the pandemic.
• 27:42
  And so, you know, there's also this element of taking into account these external factors too,
• 27:49
  and thinking about, like, what are people dealing with in their work, but also what external to work factors are impacting that too. So as we wrap up, I do wanna make it kind of practical.
• 28:01
  So, like, one question that I saw people asking you a lot on LinkedIn or after they had read this article was like, how do we figure this out?
• 28:10
  Like you said in your article, people aren't waiting to be filled up with information by your content. Like, they're showing up with a specific psychological state. How do we figure out what that state is?
• 28:22
  What's your process for thinking through that? Mm-hmm. The process for thinking through that, give me a second. So you can do this by intuition if you know the audience well enough. Mm.
• 28:32
  Like, if you are a, a freelancer who's being asked to write for a small business and you've never ever, ever been around anybody t- that has ever tried to build and run and scale a small business, you're not going to be able to do this in- intuitively.
• 28:49
  So the backup to that then is to do the research. Mm-hmm. Back to the Dovetail example, I interviewed like a dozen people or more before I figured out that that was what, you know, the needs.
• 29:02
  So it's like you gotta have the research and the good research protocol or interview guide that, like, helps you dig into why they need something, why...
• 29:13
  Instead of asking them how they feel, you have to, like, ask the right question of like, "Okay, well, if you don't get this done, then what happens?" And then you get, like, them saying how the shit's gonna hit the fan.
• 29:23
  They'll- Mm-hmm... get fired, all those things, and then you can infer the emotions from there.
• 29:27
  If you are stuck on a team that you don't have the ability to talk to those customers, you are lucky enough to be in a age where you can use AI to do that. Okay. You just have to... It's not a simple prompt.
• 29:43
  It's like you really need something. In fact, I would say you already have an article on art of content from Joe that does something like this. Yeah. So make sure to link that in the show notes. Definitely will.
• 29:56
  But it's essentially taking... Your next step then is like, okay, I need to write a piece about X, Y, Z, or one topic. Instead of it being like, what is it?
• 30:06
  It's like, okay, someone who's coming to this piece, first, where is their product awareness?
• 30:11
  I use product awareness stages instead of funnel, 'cause top of funnel, bottom of funnel doesn't tell you anything about the mindset of the customer. And so someone who is product aware knows about your product.
• 30:23
  Someone who's solution awareKnows that there are solutions to their problem. People who are problem aware are understand they have a problem, but don't know what to do about it yet. Mm-hmm.
• 30:33
  And so you gotta think about where they are on that spectrum to then understand, okay, am I starting off with like 101 information, or am I already in the weeds of like starting to talk about solutions, and then talk about my solution as being the best?
• 30:48
  And each of those have a different job to be done. So someone who's at the problem aware stage, you need to let them feel like you understand their problem. What is their problem? How is their problem affecting them?
• 31:01
  What's at stake? What's the drama, the tension there? Kinda quote Tommy Walker- Mm-hmm... who talks a lot about this stuff. Totally. But yeah, like, you need to think about that.
• 31:10
  And then when it comes into that state, you figure out, okay, it's back to the whole thinking about them as a protagonist.
• 31:17
  Like imagining them literally on their phone in front of a screen, wherever, reading this, and what's it gonna take for them to feel this sense of, this like physical sense of relief that they've finally found the piece that's going to like, help them.
• 31:33
  And I say that making sure you don't freaking overthink this. [laughs] Because it's not, we're not curing cancer here, right? Like, we're not trying to sell best sellers. You've got...
• 31:43
  It's about how many like hits at bat you have. And so you just need to like think through, okay, where are they? Like a protagonist, what is their motivation? What is their need? What is it they want?
• 31:57
  And then figure out that end state, where are they gonna be, and making sure that you sort of like in the middle, take them on that journey and figure- Mm-hmm... out what it needs to be. Yeah, I love that.
• 32:10
  Not only is it like a much more human way to do content, it also is a much more effective way to do content because you're not trying to compete about being the encyclopedia or the HubSpot or the whatever of your industry topics.
• 32:28
  Instead, you're actually thinking about your audience, meeting them where they are, and helping them go on a journey that they're trying to go on. Mm-hmm.
• 32:39
  And in the process of doing that, you're actually becoming the trusted guide that then they can turn to when they're in that 5% category and they're ready to buy. Yeah, it just makes so much sense to me.
• 32:51
  Well, let's wrap up with a couple rapid fire questions. My first one is, what is the most underused content job in B2B? Mm. Represent me. Mm.
• 33:02
  So represent me means reflect the identity, values, and beliefs that the audience strongly resonates with.
• 33:09
  I think it is the most underused because most people who do content aren't incentivized to know that stuff. Yeah.
• 33:22
  What is the number one most important job of B2B content, if there is one? I mean, I do think maybe the same one. [laughs] The same one. Yeah. 'Cause I think it's the most important because that's what's gonna stick out.
• 33:34
  So I think by being able to represent their identity, values, beliefs, like being able to like truly understand the customer, all of the other ones get unlocked. Like, you can actually challenge assumptions. Mm.
• 33:46
  You can actually generate anticipation and enthusiasm. You can sort of be... You can truly be that trusted companion- Yeah...
• 33:56
  that guides them through their journey and re- helps them feel rest assured that what they're doing is the right, you know, the right path. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. What's the last thing that inspired you in making B2B content?
• 34:10
  I'm trying to think of something besides the art of content, and I'm not... I'm trying to, because like it's, if I come out the bat saying that, it's gonna sound- Like I set you up. I bribed you. Yeah.
• 34:21
  I mean, to be honest, I mean, that's it. Like, it's truly the last thing that made me f- like I quit reading marketing stuff. I mean, you know this 'cause like I never share- [laughs]... stuff that isn't- Yeah...
• 34:34
  marketing with you. I always share stuff about psychology, media studies. Yeah. What about something outside of the marketing world that s- that inspired you in your work?
• 34:45
  Doug Shapiro is a media like analyst, I guess is his title. I'd have to look it up.
• 34:51
  But he has this, the things that he is researching, studying, and writing about are everything that I have been reading and studying about since before I ever even considered myself a marketer. Mm.
• 35:03
  But yeah, he really helps you understand the economics of everything. That's awesome. Last question is, what's one skill content marketers should be working on or building right now? Taste. No, I'm joking. [laughs] No.
• 35:18
  If you wanna read why I'm joking there, there's gonna be a link in the show notes here to that c- discussion between you, me, you, and Brandon. Yeah, it was a good one.
• 35:27
  I think the skill that we need to be working on, I guess, is... I believe everybody has the skills they need, the empathy, the storytelling, the craft. What I think,
• 35:41
  and this is gonna sound on the surface just ridiculous, is like AI is just getting better at it because, The Oatmeal, link this for you so you can link it in the show notes later. Okay. Sounds good.
• 35:53
  But wrote a thing about AI that was like the best thing I've read about, yeah, it's evil if you're just gonna like try and make AI slop, but the best use of AI is the admin stuff, the things that you don't want to do.
• 36:08
  So back to the whole like jobs to be done, research, like I use AI extensively for that stuff of, okay, so I need to do a, you know, take the Fresh Paint podcast, which is something that we put a h- a lot of effort into.
• 36:23
  Our CEO is busy. Mm. He doesn't have time to prepare.
• 36:27
  So I meet with a guest for 15 minutes, I then triangulate all of the stuff that's online about them, and then I develop a interview guide, which has about six to seven core questions with a two to three follow-up questions for each.
• 36:44
  And so that our CEO can jump into an interview, which we have one today, and be ready, who's the guest, what's the story, and then the interview questions.
• 36:55
  I use that, I use AI to do that, not because I can't do it on my own, but because I can do it faster. Mm-hmm. And so I think the skill to learn is to
• 37:06
  learn how to use AI to suss out and do these things, not to do the content and be the outcome or the output, but to help you do all of this stuff without getting dragged down.
• 37:20
  So you understand all of the emotional needs.
• 37:23
  If you have like tons of gong calls and s- you have an AI that's hooked into that, you can ask it, you know, of all the p- you know, frustrations, what, like on an emotional chart, which emotions do you think are showing up in our sales calls the most often?
• 37:37
  Yeah. Yeah. Like, using AI to do all of these things helps you be better at creating content with range. Mm. So good. Ronnie, thank you so much for coming on the show. I loved this conversation.
• 37:53
  I hope that we can keep talking about it, people in content can keep talking about it, and that we can start making content with a little bit more range. A boy can hope.
• 38:05
  [laughs] [outro music]