Latest / Content, Briefly / Think Like a Broadcaster with Ronnie Higgins

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Think Like a Broadcaster with Ronnie Higgins · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [gentle music] Think like a broadcaster means studying the audience's life, uh, developing repeatable formats for the different moments in their buyer journey,
• 0:15
  and programming those formats to, into like a habit that creates commercial value. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Venngage. You spent three weeks on that report.
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  And this month only, 30% off any Venngage plan with the code SUPERPATH30 at venngage.com. That's SUPERPATH30 at venngage.com. Hope you enjoy the episode. Alex here. I really enjoyed this conversation today.
• 1:39
  It's just me and Ronnie Higgins, longtime Superpath Pro member, talking about an article he wrote last week that really stuck with me.
• 1:47
  The idea is that content marketers should think more like broadcasters, and I thought a lot of the points were really compelling. So I pulled Ronnie on to chat about it, and we had a great time.
• 2:01
  Hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did. I'd love for you to just define for me real quick, and for the audience as well, content as a product. Yeah.
• 2:11
  Uh, it's funny how many people have, like, just looked at me like I was crazy for saying this for the last, shit, ten plus years. "No, the product's the product."
• 2:22
  And I, I, I'm like, "Yes, and" [chuckles] not "Yes, but..." Um, and so yes, the content as a product is a, it, it's just thinking, yes, it's meant to sell the product in content marketing, but it's still a product.
• 2:38
  Uh, content, uh, the, the content product has a user. It has a job. It has a promise. It has a cadence. It has a feedback loop.
• 2:50
  Um, and then m- the thing I, I, I-- like, if you can't name those things, you just have an asset. It's just a document. Um, it's not a product. And I think the best example of this is to think about a newsletter, right?
• 3:03
  Like a newsletter is not a product simply because it arrives in the inbox every week. Uh, it becomes a product when you know who it serves,
• 3:14
  what the reoccurring job it performs, um, the promise that it makes each week, um, the thing that makes people wanna open it, why people would miss it, which is another way of thinking about that, and then what feedback changes the next edition.
• 3:30
  You see this in so many other places, and I think when you think about that, when you think about, like,
• 3:37
  that bridge to, like, thinking like a broadcaster and what is thinking about content as a product is that a show is a product. The schedule is the portfolio of products. The season is the roadmap.
• 3:52
  The ratings and the retention and the, are the, like, feedback loop.
• 3:57
  So you wrote about comparing what content marketers do to your past experience, uh, as, uh, in the broadcasting industry, um, and how content marketers usually don't think as broadcasters think when it comes to creating content and understanding what their audience want.
• 4:18
  Before we dive into that, tell us about your experience, uh, working in broadcasting. So I've worked on various, in various roles in broadcasting.
• 4:28
  The first was working for the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, where I worked on everything from the commercials that a little sort of production team within, um, produced, but also worked for the TV studio, working on, like, news programming, working on special event programming.
• 4:49
  And it was a, I wanna say like a year or two there while I was finishing up film school, and I was taking what I was seeing there and what I was learning through film schools, 'cause my film school wasn't like a lot of film schools, you're gonna focus on screenwriting, you're gonna focus on directing, you're gonna focus on art direction.
• 5:09
  Like, you're gonna get very, very niche. Mine was all film business production- Mm-hmm... and that included television and, um, other forms of media related to it.
• 5:22
  And so I was seeing the things that I was learning there about broadcasting, like in textbooks, come to life at the CBS affiliate.
• 5:31
  Then I grew up, graduated, and then worked on some movies, but then I started working on television shows. Uh, you can go to my IMDb page, but I worked on pilots for some shows.
• 5:42
  I worked on episodes of Entourage, and it was talking to producers, 'cause I'm-- that whole time I was a production assistant in all of these various capacities was me being a sponge so that one day I could be an executive producer.
• 5:58
  Whether it was for film or in television, I wanted to be the guy who brought together everybody to design what needed to be done. And what I quickly learned from both of those, um-
• 6:10
  Those, uh, experiences of, like, working at the local station, but then working for Comedy Central, CBS, HBO, uh, all, all of these other different programs, was that the product of the content was, yes, it's a piece of art the way, like, a film is or anything like that.
• 6:30
  But unlike a film that's out there meant to be, like, an artistic vision, someone wanted to put it together, there's a business commercial side to it. But television, what I learned in all of that experience was that
• 6:44
  it's a, it's a means to sell something. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, I learned about the reason for soap operas is something I wrote in the piece, of it being the epitome of what it means to think like a broadcaster.
• 6:58
  'Cause when I'm thinking about a broadcaster, I'm not thinking about the people who are on set producing the piece. I'm thinking about the pe- the suits, the people who are- Mm-hmm...
• 7:08
  like, "This is the program that we're gonna go with. This is the one that we're gonna put a lot of marketing behind, and it's gonna go in the 7:00 PM slot on, you know, TGI Fridays," or whatever it was back in the day.
• 7:20
  Like, that was the stuff that I was learning from people, um, while working on set, 'cause those people would go to sets, and I'd chat 'em up.
• 7:28
  Um, and it was this idea that, like, the soap is just the clearest analogy, even though it's from the '30s, 1930s, 'cause, Jesus, we're about to be in the 2030s. But it's a, like, hundred-year-old idea that we,
• 7:43
  advertisers and product- uh, the, the broadcasters saw that they needed to sell soap. Well, who buys soap? Women. Women are-- have the po- buying power, even in the '30s, in patriarchy, uh, America.
• 7:56
  Still patriarchy, but anyways. Uh, [chuckles] and they were like, they were at home. Well, they're-- what are they doing? Listening to the radio.
• 8:04
  Well, instead of having music on or something like that, or the news, why don't we put a freaking drama [chuckles] that'll get, keep their attention so they could passively listen while they're doing housework, and while it's on, we'll sell them soap.
• 8:16
  In your piece, you talk about, there's kind of four specific points that you make around, like, how broadcasters think about content that's different than how most content marketers think about content.
• 8:27
  Could you talk about just, like, some of those, like, specific examples of different- Mm-hmm... shows and segments that serve very different purposes from each other? Yeah.
• 8:37
  Uh, so one way to think about it is, so first off, who's watching when? Right now, I would say, maybe not right now.
• 8:46
  There's a lot of people who are thinking about it a little differently, but they're still in this mindset of, like, keywords, topics. Mm-hmm. Um, they-- like, a keyword tells you what people are searching for.
• 8:57
  A topic tells you, like, what's happening. Programming is a mindset that helps you think of w-what do the, the, what does the person wanna receive now, in this moment, or at this point in their buyer journey?
• 9:14
  Um, and so the question isn't only, like, what do they care about. It's like, what are they doing? How much attention do they have? Think, um, with that one, think about podcasts, right?
• 9:25
  The default B2B SaaS podcast is an hour long. Does everybody- Yeah... like, does everyone have all those hours to consume all of those? I think-- Th- okay.
• 9:35
  This is- Like- This is great, 'cause, like, I have this, [chuckles] I have this question a lot.
• 9:39
  Uh, my, my one question is with-- So the way I consume podcasts, like, I mainly listen to, like, history podcasts and sports podcasts, and random, like, general interest podcasts. I listen to very--
• 9:53
  Like, I don't listen to business podcasts that much, and that's mainly because I don't listen to podcasts in front of my computer.
• 10:00
  And, like, if I'm on a run or I'm doing dishes or laundry, that's when I'm listening to my podcasts.
• 10:04
  And if there's, like, a thing full of good ideas that I wanna, like, jot down, like, [chuckles] those are really bad places to do it. Yeah.
• 10:11
  So I actually, I even, like-- And, and in the midst of those, there's some that I wanna listen to more actively, and some that are pass.
• 10:17
  There's some podcasts that are, like, mainly going to bed podcasts for me that I'm just, like, zoning out on. Yeah. Right? Like, um, but, um, yeah.
• 10:24
  That, that actually, that actually ties into, like, the other part I was gonna say is, like, after, like, how much attention do they have, think about what mood are they in. Yeah.
• 10:31
  What, what are, you know, what kind of participation can you reasonably ask for them? Um, it's kinda like back to the whole soap opera thing. It was like, what are they doing in this moment? What are they watching then?
• 10:47
  What kind of decisions are they facing? How can you maybe not directly talk about it? So, like, uh, back to, like, the amount of attention and mood, uh, the news desk example, right, for fast recurring updates.
• 11:01
  Uh, it would've launched, and I was halfway through developing the process and everything for doing this with Fresh Paint, but we were gonna do a weekly news show. Mm-hmm.
• 11:11
  Um, I won't go into the details of how I was building it, but you can imagine it was a reoccurring, once a week, five to twenty minutes long, that was like, "Here's your news update.
• 11:23
  Here's all of the top things that you need to know in a very structured format to tell you what's changed, what you need to be aware of."
• 11:32
  And we used, like, the show notes and everything else as the jumping-off point to then go elsewhere. So that's the idea of, like, a news desk for fast recurring updates.
• 11:43
  Uh, it thinks about, okay, someone's, like, got five minutes in their day. How can I make sure, like, this fits somewhere in there? It's not gonna take- Yeah...
• 11:51
  up too much time, but it has, like-- it's jam-packed with value. Yeah.
• 11:55
  Um, talk show, kinda like what we're doing here, uh, reoccurring, uh, host with rotating guest, um, but a little bit more than this whole, uh, with the status quo is, which is, like, book a guest, hit record, and pray something happens.
• 12:12
  Yeah. Yeah. Then for, let's say, what was the other one I said? Um, the something serialized, like- Yeah... for that one, serialized can be--
• 12:26
  I was gonna do this with the future episodes of, um, of, uh, Marketing Rounds, the Fresh Paint podcast. Mm-hmm. But this is something you could do with a podcast if you're not just randomly recording.
• 12:38
  So if you record, um, let's say, a whole season in one batch- Yeah... and you know what all the episodes are gonna be, you can then decide, okay, I'm gonna play them in this order.
• 12:48
  And you can tell a story, right, and over time through different people, and you can make it a little bit more interesting than these, like, siloed episodes.
• 12:59
  And you can, um, at the end of every episode, we're gonna have Ray Mina say, "So you just heard from Alex, uh, who saw that. Uh, make sure to tune in next week- Yeah... when we talk to X about Z." Yeah.
• 13:13
  You can even play- Um, so that's like-... a clip of, like, the upcoming thing, like you do on a TV show, like, "Up next." Exactly. Like, [chuckles] you know, like that kind of thing. Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah.
• 13:20
  Um- Yeah, and so the like, the, the point isn't to, like, create variety for the sake of it.
• 13:25
  Uh, it's the idea that different formats accommodate different audience needs, uh, attention levels, and then at their different moments in their buyer journey.
• 13:36
  Which isn't, I'll make sure to say this upfront for people who don't make it to the end of the episode, where I'll emphasize it even more, is in B2B,
• 13:45
  95% of the audience-- of your market is not in-- They're not buying anything anytime soon. Only 5%.
• 13:54
  But when someone enters that 5%, they have what's called a day one list, which has about three to four, maybe five people or brands already on it. They buy nine out of 10 times from that list.
• 14:09
  And so how do you get on that list? You market to the people who aren't in market, and the way to do that is to think about how do you, like, earn their trust? How do you earn that mind share over time?
• 14:23
  And sometimes that's not a how to, how to or a listicle or a- Yeah... it's definitely not a, like, this produ-- ar-- you know, competitive article like us versus the other guys. Yeah.
• 14:38
  Uh, this resonates, [chuckles] this resonates so much with me, and I think the way you described it right there is like, I've almost used those exact words of like, "Hey, you gotta show up so that you're on that list when they are ready to make a decision."
• 14:52
  And it was fun. So, um, when I started-- So I co-founded an HR tech company, um, back in 2019, and, um, you know, we were just getting off the ground.
• 15:04
  We were like a, a pre-seed company that nobody-- we didn't have, we weren't well-networked in this space. Um, we were just trying to, like, break in and, and make a little noise.
• 15:14
  And, um, of course, I was our sales and marketing person, both, like, I had both hats. So it was fun 'cause I could see, like, the whole, the whole cycle all the way through.
• 15:23
  I was having a lot of interesting conversations with prospects who were, like, navigating how to do people operations in, um, the world of COVID, which is very different.
• 15:34
  And I was like, okay, what if I started writing up some of the patterns of things I'm hearing? It's like fresh information. You know, they don't get this bird's eye view that I'm getting right now.
• 15:42
  That's a unique angle I've got into this. I did the, like, kind of dedicated, like, five minutes or less read.
• 15:47
  We sent it out on a Thursday, and I would get that thing from people that was like, "Hey, our team of three, like, will, like, at our coffee break on Friday morning, talk about the newsletter that you just sent."
• 15:58
  And, like, the commitment to being like, the, like, as I look back at the keys of success, like, uh, my writing was, like, not amazing.
• 16:05
  [chuckles] It was not a great newsletter, but it was, like, a timely product, and I think the dedication to, like, keeping it really, really tight and getting to the point and finding the relevant topic areas, um, like, built a, like, nice little audience there.
• 16:20
  And it was so fun to see people who had no business, like, when our product was in the early stage, like, bringing us on, that, you know, a year and a half down the road when they wanted onboarding software, they came to us immediately because we'd built that trust out 'cause we had this little product that they enjoyed that served this one purpose in that time period.
• 16:42
  And, like, that's where it really clicked for me, and that's, like, kind of where this whole concept, um, like, really established for me, was like, okay, if you could just find your one product and serve that well, do it over and over and over, and build that trust and consistency, that trust will translate, and you will get put on that list, and then you'll get an opportunity to deliver the product, right?
• 17:02
  Yeah, and I think that segues nicely into the other point I made about scheduling around media habits- Yeah... and breaking out of the campaign mindset. Mm-hmm.
• 17:13
  Uh, the idea there, so, like, right now as we're recording this in, uh, August. Jesus, it's already August.
• 17:22
  August, August 26-- 2026, I'm starting to see in LinkedIn and elsewhere people, uh, rallying against the idea of the editorial calendar. I, I think there is value in an editorial calendar.
• 17:33
  It helps teams stay in sync, uh, but I think they're over-engineered and over, uh, relied on.
• 17:40
  But the idea is that, uh, here in scheduling around media habits is that an editorial calendar organizes, like, the production.
• 17:50
  A programming schedule organizes the a-audience experience of how are they gonna experience all of the different assets that you're producing- Yeah... and publishing. Uh, campaigns, they're, they're ephemeral.
• 18:04
  Um, if you focus on just a campaign, like, you're not gonna build that trust o- with that 95% over years.
• 18:12
  Like, if you're, you're saying one thing one quarter and then another one another quarter, like, you're, you're not building the memory, uh, that you need, uh, to be able to, like- Be top of mind when someone builds their day one list.
• 18:27
  Uh, so like with, with programming strategy, it basically says like, when is an audience gonna be receptive?
• 18:36
  Uh, what should, uh, be included in say, you know, a, a report in order to gain traction, to be able to like reach people at the time that they need?
• 18:47
  So like in healthcare, um, one of the verticals for, um, Fresh Paint was insurers, so people who market insurance.
• 18:57
  And if we were to set up, uh, put out a report right now, like, or I'm not there anymore, but if Fresh Paint were to put out a report on how to win people, um, during enrollment, it's way too late. Mm-hmm.
• 19:14
  They're already in the middle of enrollment. So you have to think about- Right... oh, if we publish this in February, maybe March,
• 19:23
  it has enough time to be not just relevant, but to get, um, the press co- uh, coverage it needs to reach people, to get shared, to get linked back to, all of the stuff so that when they're putting together all of their strategies and plans in the springtime, they're ready.
• 19:43
  So they're winning now- Mm-hmm... in the fall and not trying to figure out what's broken. Um- Yeah.
• 19:51
  Anyway, so that's like the whole point behind that, but I did-- I don't know if you wanna go into like the, what I meant by dayparting and stuff, but- Yeah. I do think it'd be helpful.
• 20:01
  I, I thought, um, these were some interesting terms that broadcasters- Yeah... use. Yeah. So what they mean.
• 20:09
  So dayparting means matching the format and ask, um, matching the format and the ask of like, what is the con- like, why watch, listen, read, uh, to the audience's like availability, whether it's energy, time.
• 20:27
  Uh, so like a Monday morning, for example, may support a useful briefing, going back to that news desk. Yeah. Uh, I'd probably go for Tuesday just in case, uh, of holidays and stuff like that. But, um,
• 20:42
  it's thinking about that. But it may be, you know, the wrong time for say, a demanding community challenge. Mm-hmm. Of like, "Hey, everybody, so like tell us like, you know, how you would solve this problem."
• 20:55
  Well, they're in the middle of solving problems on Monday. They're trying to- Right... figure out the rest of their week. Right. Uh, sweeps is from broadcasting.
• 21:03
  It's, um, sweeps week is when a lot of things premiere and they, you know. Uh, but the, the business reason behind sweeps is that it deliberately concentrates attention,
• 21:15
  um, instead of pretending every week should carry the same, like equal weight. So it's the idea behind premieres, special events, challenges, reveals, finales. Um, it gives people like moments worth anticipating. Yeah.
• 21:31
  So thinking about, um, this idea of like concentrating attention in certain parts to, um, accelerate and maintain it throughout a life cycle of a, a season, um- Mm-hmm... or a series.
• 21:47
  Syndication, um, which is the other one, is just taking something that's proven and expanding, building upon it. That's all that means. Uh, it's the idea that you don't just dump the same clip everywhere.
• 22:00
  Although in today's world of algorithms and just infinite content, sometimes you gotta take that thing and repeatedly show it. But it also means adapting a property to a new channel, a new context, audience, moment.
• 22:13
  So like Superpath has these really awesome, this really awesome event series that you just started with Rachel, uh, called Change My Mind, right? Mm-hmm. Like it's taken off.
• 22:25
  Everybody is loving this like friendly debate, discussion around hot topics that are top of mind of everyone, and trying to like, not build consensus, but figure it all out together.
• 22:37
  Like, as that grows and matures and people start loving it, and maybe you have to limit capacity, right? 'Cause you can't have everybody show up- Right...
• 22:45
  or else they'll just, it, the, the value of it diminishes, so then how do you extend it? How do you take it and bring it other places? Yeah. But yeah, that's the gist of it.
• 22:53
  I mean, one of the, one of those challenges that I see with that in particular, now just fully jumping into the Superpath stuff, um, is like I'm thinking about all these events.
• 23:01
  So we've like, you know, structured these kind of recurring events that happen each month. Uh, Change My Mind's one of them.
• 23:07
  The reality is like we also have like a very global audience, and like if you're in-house, the chance that the event happens on top of a time you have a meeting is very high.
• 23:16
  Like there's, there's a lot of people that can't make them. And so thinking about how do we take this event that was like built for an event context and then build some kind of asset.
• 23:25
  I mean, for Change My Mind particularly, we had a really interesting discussion just a few weeks ago after the last one.
• 23:31
  Like, how do we take this concept and share it so that somebody can like pull, glean the insights from it that missed it, and not just be like, "Here's, [chuckles] here's the transcript"?
• 23:41
  You know, that serves a very different purpose than-- a- and you're gonna feel a different energy than like if you went in per- in person to the event, or not in person- Yeah...
• 23:49
  but like if you were live at the event versus reading it afterwards. But I don't know. I didn't wanna just like have the asset because, hey, we should have an asset.
• 23:57
  Like I think about that a lot with the repurposing, 'cause like obviously repurposing is hot right now, but I mean, I, I think about that with the like what are we actually trying to do here with, you know, podcast clips and like, you know, uh, doing those things.
• 24:10
  And, and obviously there is, to your point, like some social media benefits of just like getting exposure out there and, and those kinds of things. But like, I don't know.
• 24:19
  Even my favorite podcasts, like when they're just doing clips, it's like, it's like a reminder that they exist, but I'm like- Mm-hmm... not getting value Out of the clips usually Yeah.
• 24:28
  Yeah, yeah I might be the exception to that, but I'm always, like- No, uh-... curious.
• 24:32
  Like, are we doing it just because we should be doing it, or are we, like, do they serve, like, e- every one of these sort of particular purposes?
• 24:40
  Brendan, uh, offered, coined it the ch- I think he coined it, but he's definitely the one who amplified it, uh, of checkbox marketing. Mm-hmm. People see clips. Oh, we need clips. Yeah.
• 24:51
  Um, the thing there is, I'll go back to marketing rounds. When I...
• 24:56
  When, when we were doing marketing rounds at Fresh Paint, Fresh Paint was going from this, like, brand that was very strongly associated with, uh, marketing compliance and healthcare. Mm-hmm.
• 25:07
  We were poised and about to launch concurrently with the show a suite of tools that were very focused on marketing performance- Yeah...
• 25:15
  helping marketers use their data, analyze their data, connect all the data, and, like, be better marketers. And so
• 25:25
  when I thought about the clips for it, I was like, "You know, I, I don't care if anybody never watches an episode. These clips are for the people who will never watch an episode." Right.
• 25:36
  And what I want is to make sure that they associate Fresh Paint with marketing performance. So when I- Yeah...
• 25:42
  looked through s- transcripts and looked through, looked for clips, I wasn't looking for the thing that encapsulated the episode.
• 25:49
  I looked for the thing that actually said, "Hey, this is a show about marketing performance, and oh, it's by Fresh Paint." Hmm. "Okay." [chuckles] And what was cool is, like, I would go to our, uh, in-person events.
• 26:00
  People would be like, "Oh, what do you do at Fresh Paint?" "I'm essentially the executive producer behind Marketing Rounds." "Oh, I've watched that."
• 26:06
  And I can't tell you how many of those conversations, it was very apparent to me very quickly, this person only watched the clips, but they said- Yeah... they listened to the podcast. Yeah. So there's that.
• 26:17
  Um, and yes, we started to measure, like, how Fresh Paint was being associated with those terms, too, and that helped.
• 26:24
  Back to, um, atomizing the, uh, Changed My Mind, like, I was part of some of the conversation and I said, um, one of the ways to think about it is,
• 26:34
  uh, when you extract the value, the, like, yes, the status quo and what the cargo called checkboxing is, like, embed the episode, put four to five bullet points that are takeaways, and then put a unedited script that no one is ever gonna read.
• 26:49
  What I did instead was I was like, all right, the written version of the blog- of the podcast episode is for the people who will never actually listen to the- Yeah... episode.
• 27:00
  And so I figured out a format that was like, all right, if you didn't listen to this episode and you went to tell someone, "Hey, you should listen to this episode," and I gave you three bullets, what were those three bullets?
• 27:12
  And then I expand upon those bullets versus- Mm-hmm... them being, like, literally three bullets. And I ended up, for every episode, there was, like, a thousand-word blog post associated with it that- Yeah...
• 27:24
  had all the stuff embedded, but, and it had that intro that set it up and said, "You could either watch the episode or skip below to get the strategic breakdown." And then we- Mm-hmm...
• 27:34
  always link that, too, back into the show notes so that if you just wanted to read the thing, you could read it. Yeah. Um, but that's how I thought about atomizing those things, and that's how I would think about
• 27:46
  atomizing something like that type of a program where it's like, cool, you had this event. You had the AI show and tell, right? Mm-hmm.
• 27:54
  What-- Like, you had to help people understand, like, what was in the room that wasn't said that needs to be said.
• 28:02
  So one of the things I had said about, um, the Change My Mind is it needs to include the context that's not said. Like, someone asked the question,
• 28:12
  cool, but everybody in the room at that moment knew that it was also stuff that was being discussed on LinkedIn. You need to write that in there- Yeah... so that they see it, so that it has an evergreen effect to it.
• 28:26
  A big question [chuckles] I have for you here, and I think the thing that your article has sparked the most for me.
• 28:32
  So when I took over Superpath about nine months ago now, very quickly, I was like, "I want some kind of cadence that is like, on Monday mornings, I do this.
• 28:42
  On, you know, the first of the month, we launch one-on-ones on this."
• 28:46
  Like, because I needed that rhythm, and we also needed to be able to, like, work with, um, various contractors and, and people that were producing content for us.
• 28:55
  So the focus was like, create a content calendar that back to your content calendar point was serving our own needs of, like, organization better.
• 29:04
  And then honestly, optimizing a lot of this around, I'm a solo full-time person here. There's nobody else that's full-time.
• 29:12
  I have only so much bandwidth, and, like, there's a lot of things to do, and it really, really helps to keep me organized if I know, hey, what we're coming into is, like, the beginning of the month, and that means that, like, th- this week is gonna look like this.
• 29:25
  But what I'm realizing, and I have to give myself grace a little bit with this because it's like, also, I have to kind of get in here and understand how the community operates and everything, but not all days of the week are made equal.
• 29:35
  There's real seasonality here where, um, you know, I had set some things up that are quarterly and monthly, but, um, we have...
• 29:43
  What I'm realizing is, like, a doldrums, which is, like, not surprising, in July and August, where there's kind of a dip in, in activity and, and what people wanna commit to during that time period because it's the summer.
• 29:54
  And so maybe that quarter looks a little bit different than other quarters. Um, I'm finding out that Mondays are, like...
• 30:01
  Like, people are focused on their core work during Mondays, and we are kind of periphery to what they're doing, and so we really ramp up.
• 30:10
  I mean, Fridays are actually pretty good for us, but, like, it starts to ramp up Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is our strength.
• 30:15
  And then it's like, how does that feed into, like, I do the pro emails on Monday, and I'm like, actually, not a lot of peop- like, we get a lot of people open, but, like, don't take action.
• 30:24
  People take a lot more action on Thursdays and Fridays because they've got, like, more bandwidth to, like, take some time to do these sorts of things.
• 30:30
  Um, and then I'm also seeing January is, like, a big commitment Um, which we ramped up to do once a month, um, and have a new challenge always going on.
• 30:41
  Um, definitely January, and I think, I have a hypothesis that September, which Eric has called the January of the fall, um, is also gonna be a good time for, like, kind of recommitting going into the next, like, season of, like, you know, everybody knows you've got the time periods that are, uh- Mm-hmm...
• 31:00
  winter and spring, post holidays, and then you've got the, like, September to early November block that's like, that's when, like, stuff happens, right? Like, that's peak time. Yeah.
• 31:10
  And so I'm, I'm trying to rethink some of the things that we're doing, both on a weekly cadence, um, like when should we be hosting events? When should we be sending emails?
• 31:20
  I'm thinking a lot about the different kind of like, okay, how many emails are you getting from us? When are we a- making our asks of the community? And then how do we incorporate seasonality into this and,
• 31:31
  um, you know, build something that is...
• 31:34
  I, I love the idea, and I, I've thought about this before, before your piece too, is like what would it look like to have, like, a season, like on this season of Superpath, like, here's what we're doing, right? Yeah.
• 31:45
  Uh, and, and I kind of started to picture parts of that, but I really locked it into a quarterly basis previously. I'm like, this quarter.
• 31:52
  And we never really, like, developed out the storyline or anything there, but I'm curious if you were sitting in my shoes, I just gave you a lot of data on kind of what I'm seeing, how might you
• 32:02
  think about how to incorporate some of these broadcasting ideas into what we're doing that could help serve- Yeah... the community better? You have a handful of rhythms, right? Uh, there's the weekly rhythm. Like- Yeah
• 32:18
  ... what, what is the d- l- the week in a life of a content marketer? And then there's, like, the monthly rhythm in terms of, like, what their, like, schedule's like in terms of meetings.
• 32:31
  The quarterly, I would think a little bit more as, like, annual. Like- Mm-hmm... like what quarters are, are part of the whole year, and like- Yeah...
• 32:40
  what are the mindsets and needs and challenges, uh, and interest around those times. Um, I would think of, like, the newsletter as, like, the, like the news desk, what's happening- Mm-hmm...
• 32:58
  and, like you're kind of like doing it that way. Um, the events, like you're doing it right. You're having a monthly AI show and tell, the monthly, uh, uh, social hour, and the monthly, um, Change My Mind. Is- Yeah...
• 33:15
  it's monthly, right? Yeah. Um- Yeah, and then we have the AMA too. So in theory, it's like each are once a month, and there's basically one kind of event each week. Yeah. That's the, that was the goal there. Yeah.
• 33:25
  And I think that that, that's a really proper way of doing it, 'cause there's also psych- all of this is just psychology, like all of marketing is.
• 33:34
  But it's that if you were to do the same thing every week, it starts to become s- routine. But the- Mm-hmm... things that, that scarcity mindset of it just being once a month, but it comes around once a month- Mm-hmm...
• 33:47
  helps build that habit. Uh, the hard part would be, I would need to, like, look at the data. I think there could be, like, I don't wanna say themes per quarter or per-- 'Cause I don't even wanna lock it into Q1, 2, 3.
• 34:02
  Like- Right... 'cause that's not how things are. Like- Right... uh, the reason I-- When you started talking about September, I was like, yeah, 'cause that's when people start thinking about end of year. Mm-hmm.
• 34:11
  They start thinking about what they need to, like, do. They're doing career development plans. They're starting to think about those plans.
• 34:18
  They're starting to think about what their budget needs to be for the next year, um, because as soon as you get to Thanksgiving, it's that lull, uh- Mm-hmm... in a lot of marketing jobs. Um,
• 34:30
  I think there, I think what I would be thinking about, and this kind of goes back to, I don't wanna say I'm anti-editorial calendar, but I think that the calendar needs to work both ways.
• 34:44
  So we were talking about earlier how, you know, there's a Change My Mind, there's an AMA, a- and then it's like, all right, how long after that is the written version? How long- Yeah... after that is the clip?
• 34:56
  How long after that? The podcast is the one thing that I would tell you right now, maybe you don't have to do 52 weeks of- Yeah... maybe it's better concentrated. When we did- Yeah...
• 35:08
  marketing rounds at Fresh Paint, uh, we did 14 episodes. Season 2, which I actually called Round 2 instead 'cause of rounds- Mm-hmm... uh, was gonna be 12 episodes before I got laid off.
• 35:21
  But yeah, those things, um, it, breaking it up into seasons, you don't lose an audience because you're still building it over time. You still got your backlog there. Right.
• 35:32
  Um, so that when people discover you at episode 20, you still have, they still have 19 episodes to go consume. And if it's an hour-long podcast, there's no way they're gonna consume those. They're not gonna binge it.
• 35:43
  It's not a Netflix show.
• 35:45
  Um, so I'd be thinking about breaking that into cadences and then seeing how different things ladder in, 'cause this is where I get, I go from thinking like a broadcaster to thinking like a media mogul like Walt Disney and the Disney synergy map of, all right, I am back to syndication- Mm-hmm...
• 36:05
  of all right, I, you know, that was a really, really good AMA. Mm-hmm. How does that feed into a podcast episode? Then how does that feed into, say, a webinar that you do?
• 36:20
  Like, there's ways of thinking about that, and this is back to the whole, like, the audience and the, the market's experience of the brand is just, it's a network of different formats and different shows that all have that same thing.
• 36:36
  Like going back to something I probably published three, four years ago of, like, that I'd have to go dig up, where I talked about HBO You know what HBO is, you know? You know- Yeah...
• 36:48
  what type of programming they have no matter what. It doesn't matter if it's a documentary, a drama, a comedy, it has a je ne sais quoi that is HBO. Right. Well,
• 36:59
  what is the je ne sais quoi of Superpath, and how does that ladder up into the brand that you want to build? And h- and all your decision-making ladders up into that. What are the activities you do?
• 37:13
  Like, if you were to do, like, a, you know, there's the LinkedIn challenge. I think that that could be atomized in some way.
• 37:20
  I think that can be something that shows that-- 'cause you also gotta think about the it's a closed club, right? You gotta pay to get in. Well, what do the outsiders see? How do you know it's valuable, right?
• 37:34
  How do they decide between a Superpath- Mm-hmm... um, subscription and an Exit Five? Right. Well, one of the ways that they can make that decision-making is to be able to see
• 37:45
  the results of some of the things that are not as, like, public. Right. So a, a LinkedIn, the LinkedIn challenge. Cool. Well, here's some LinkedIn challenge. Here's a leaderboard. Here's a thing.
• 37:57
  Uh, here's a signal of what's happening inside that creates a perception of the-- a perceived value of that membership. And from there, all of your content decision-making in your programming
• 38:13
  is, like, based on that one decision, it becomes less complicated. Right.
• 38:19
  And I do wanna say, if you have not met Carolyn Park, who leads, uh, Atlassian's, uh, community, when we worked together at Hopin, RIP to ending Spoon's acquisition, uh, [chuckles] on the news of Airtable being acquired.
• 38:33
  When she showed me-- Like, we worked together, and we-- she showed me what she was planning for the Hopin community. When she showed me what she was doing, it was like, "Here's the thing I'm gonna do every month.
• 38:44
  Here's the thing I'm gonna do every week. Here's the thing I'm gonna do every quarter, and here's how those things then turn into content. And will your team help us with this stuff?"
• 38:54
  And I remember looking at it, and I was like, "This feels like a broadcast schedule." Mm-hmm. It feels like understanding that, you know-- 'Cause also we- broadcasters, it's not just about, like, that TV show.
• 39:06
  It's like, okay, when does the seasonal programming come in? I was visiting my parents recently, and my mom freaking loves watching shit like the Harm- Hallmark Channel. Right.
• 39:15
  And it was July, and of course, they're doing a-- they're playing all their Christmas movies that they have a- and under this banner of Christmas in July.
• 39:24
  So tapping into, like, what is a cultural zeitgeist, a moment, an idea, a thing that you can latch onto, and how do you then program it? 'Cause then there's Christmas programming. There's, like,
• 39:36
  different programming for different times of year. Um- Yeah... there's back to school stuff.
• 39:40
  There's the, the Christmas episode of a freaking show, which, uh, it's thinking about all of those things of, like, when you think of Superpath, it's like, what do you wanna be? How does the programming support it?
• 39:52
  How does it tap into the things that are top of mind at each moment? And how does it all work together? Because you said you're a solo person. You have Eric for help. You have a few others collaborating. But
• 40:06
  it's still a very lean machine, so you have to think about, you can't do-- you're not HBO. You're not CBS. You're not any TV show or TV network.
• 40:15
  So you have to think about what are the, like, source pieces that then feed into the other pieces, and then how do even the source pieces feed into one another?
• 40:23
  'Cause the last thing I'll say is I did the Marketing Rounds podcast, and then when Mark Rogers, uh, at Fresh Paint went on pa- uh, pat leave, I took over helping out with our, um, our quarterly event series, helping with the content there.
• 40:42
  And I was like, "Oh, this is pretty much the exact same thing." So what it allowed me to do is go up to, uh, guests to say, "Look, you have two choices: podcast or event, or both if you want."
• 40:52
  And then what was great was some people were like, "I'm not comfortable going on a podcast, but I'll do an event." Great. Yeah. Do the event. Dude, that was awesome. This should be a podcast. Guess what?
• 41:03
  They became a podcast guest. Yeah. So it was like I didn't have to go find new guests. I didn't have to do new ideas. I could take what was already done for a new audience in a different format. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 41:16
  If there's one takeaway that content marketers should have from this discussion, what is it? Think like a broadcaster means studying the audience's life,
• 41:28
  uh, developing repeatable formats for the different moments in their buyer journey, and programming those formats to-- into, like, a habit that creates commercial value. That is what it means.
• 41:44
  This is not anti-think like a publisher. It is think like a publisher and think like a broadcaster and think like a record executive and whatever. Put it in there.
• 42:00
  Um, an event promoter, 'cause I used to also throw raves, and there's lots of stuff that I embody in my work about that.
• 42:07
  So it's just that map a life, design a format, establish a rhythm, build a habit, measure the return. I like that. I think that's a good place to end it. Thanks, Ronnie. No, thank you, dude.
• 42:22
  [upbeat music]