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The Only Marketing Plan That’s Guaranteed to Work · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [ on-hold music] This episode of Content Briefly is brought to you by our friends at Ahrefs. Do you want to make your business discoverable in search, AI, and beyond? See what people want. Fix what holds you back.
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• 0:42
  And Site Explorer, which shows you pages and keywords bringing you the most organic traffic and who links to your website.
• 0:48
  Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools with the link in the show notes to improve your website's SEO performance and grow your traffic from search. Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 0:58
  I hardly ever do solo episodes and in all transparency, had a little scheduling snafu, and so I don't have a new episode this week. So I thought I would do something a little bit different.
• 1:07
  January third, twenty twenty-five, I published a blog post on the Superpath blog called The Only Twenty Twenty-Five Marketing Plan That's Guaranteed To Work.
• 1:15
  And I kinda laid out what I thought content teams should be thinking about for the year.
• 1:19
  And now that we're, gosh, about three-quarters of the way in, and in some cases, probably already starting to think about twenty twenty-six, certainly Q4, but in some cases probably twenty twenty-six as well, I wanted to just revisit this.
• 1:32
  So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna read this post. It's gonna take, you know, less than ten minutes.
• 1:37
  But I hope there's some stuff that will give you some, you know, something to chew on, maybe a little bit of inspiration, possibly a reality check.
• 1:44
  But just in general, I felt that there were some things in here which are as relevant today as they were when I published this in January, and I believe will probably still be as relevant heading into twenty twenty-six.
• 1:55
  So here you go. How do you distribute B2B content these days? Every channel that you can connect with potential customers on is just loaded with risk.
• 2:02
  Each one's zero-click content and wants to own the relationship between you and your readers. They want all the eyeballs on their web properties where they can monetize.
• 2:11
  They want you to put all kinds of time and energy into cultivating a presence that you can't migrate anywhere else.
• 2:17
  And while this has been the case for a long time, it feels more pressing here in the early days of twenty twenty-five because of AI overviews.
• 2:23
  For years, social networks have been de-emphasizing links, but Google has mostly brokered relationships between companies and readers, and that's been a wonderful thing for us content folks.
• 2:31
  This isn't another SEO is really dead this time, and I mean it type of post, but rather it's a quick reflection on the confluence of AI overviews, the demise of Twitter, the rise of LinkedIn, which has become the destination for B2B folks to hang out.
• 2:44
  So if everyone wants the eyeballs for themselves, what are your options for distributing content right now? The looming LinkedIn slump.
• 2:51
  Every B2B marketer I know is spending more time on LinkedIn these days, which is exactly what prompted me to write this post. LinkedIn has emerged as the place for marketers to hang out.
• 2:59
  They wanna see what's going on in the industry, network, grow their presence, et cetera. And that's all mostly great with the caveat that I'm not sure anyone really enjoys it.
• 3:08
  And when it comes to distributing content, there are some huge problems on LinkedIn. One is that LinkedIn wants you on LinkedIn.
• 3:14
  There's no links, or they're at least greatly de-emphasized, and that incentivizes algorithm bait and prevents users from finding any content that isn't available on the platform.
• 3:23
  LinkedIn caters to people who cater to it. The folks who understand how to get engagement get tons of it, and I believe this dumbs down the feed. LinkedIn's incentives are only loosely aligned with yours incentives.
• 3:33
  They want engagement, you want readers and customers. There's an indirect path at best for you to get what you really want out of it. And lastly, it's doomed to decay.
• 3:41
  All channels decay, and it's very difficult to migrate your presence on one of them to another. This is part of the game, and we always need to be learning new channels while accepting that each is temporary.
• 3:50
  It doesn't mean you shouldn't play the game, it just means you need to be aware of it. LinkedIn has provided a really valuable place for discourse, and that can't be overlooked. But that's also the point.
• 3:58
  It's great for distributing ideas, but it's terrible for distributing content. Therein lies a very important difference.
• 4:05
  LinkedIn, like all social networks, was cool with links until it grew enough that it didn't need links to spur engagement anymore, and then it closed the doors.
• 4:12
  LinkedIn requires massive amounts of user-generated content to thrive, and I suspect that marketers aren't going to provide that forever. So LinkedIn has now become a place strictly for idea distribution.
• 4:23
  If you're a B2B content marketer thinking about how to get your content out there, or a CMO thinking about how your channels keep getting harder to win on, are you sold on the idea of idea distribution?
• 4:31
  How much effort are you really gonna put into impressions and comments? And are we really going to keep telling ourselves a story about building trust over the long term?
• 4:39
  That customers will eventually find us if we make a positive impression and give them value in the form of LinkedIn knowledge bombs? And when does LinkedIn fatigue set in? Then what's next?
• 4:47
  There will always be value in a social network where you can interact with peers, but it does deserve your attention.
• 4:52
  There will always be value in a social network where you can interact with your peers, but does it deserve your attention as something beyond that? My firm take is no.
• 5:00
  Asking where should we distribute our content is the wrong question right now. If you don't know the answer before the content is created, then you're drifting off into no man's land.
• 5:08
  It assumes far too much, especially in a time when it's really, really hard to distribute content anywhere at all. So what does work?
• 5:14
  While it's possible there's a new channel or tactic that emerges in the near future, I think the safest and most exciting opportunity is getting back to basics.
• 5:22
  Here's what a few recent and very smart and experienced guests on this very podcast have said. Here's a clip from Tracy Wallace, Director of Content Strategy at Klaviyo.
• 5:30
  "Something that makes me feel grounded right now is that the basics are working extremely well. Webinars, calendars, templates, tools, anything offering practical help is performing strongly.
• 5:39
  Benchmarks especially are doing well. Content that provides practical advice and help to audiences is converting as well as ever, if not better. I was discussing this internally recently.
• 5:48
  While really innovative content is interesting, I can only find other content marketers talking about cutting-edge research and predictions, but they aren't my target audience."
• 5:56
  And here's Lane Scott Jones, Director of Content at Zapier. She says, "Recently, Zapier organized a pickleball meetup for customers. It was niche and unconventional, but it really connected with attendees.
• 6:05
  The events team has been hosting similar events nationwide, like beach volleyball meetups, giving people chances to connect offline. We see strong positive social media engagement afterwards.
• 6:14
  We're working to quantify the customer love metric and long-term value building these relationships."While it's currently grassroots and scrappy, we plan to make this core to our twenty twenty-five marketing.
• 6:24
  As automated programs become easier to scale, we believe we'll differentiate through these intimate human connections. And one more. Here's Casey Hickey, senior director of brand and content at Attentive.
• 6:33
  Brand differentiation goes beyond our core strengths of unique insights, expertise, and data. It's about emotional connection, how we make people feel, memorable campaigns, and customer interactions.
• 6:43
  You can't win on features alone in tech, as innovations happen rapidly and competitors quickly catch up. Brand is the key lever that must work alongside technological innovation.
• 6:53
  Without strong brand identity, you're merely competing on features.
• 6:56
  What I'm hearing from all the best content marketers I know is that they're leaning into fundamentals, proven and unsexy tactics like webinars, events to spark human connection, brand building to differentiate.
• 7:06
  None of these folks mention channels. That stings a little because if you're thinking about channels, it may mean you need to backtrack.
• 7:11
  Twenty twenty-five has the potential, and now that we're three-quarters of the way through, I think it has in many ways been a good year for content marketers.
• 7:17
  And the reason that back to basics feels both safe and exciting is that it puts the emphasis back on the customer. AI will change your workflows. Channels will rise and fall.
• 7:26
  Your CML will want answers you might not have. But back to basics allows you to focus on the one thing, customers, that lets everything else fade into the background. Cool.
• 7:35
  Thank you so much for listening to this slightly unconventional and shorter episode of Content Briefly.
• 7:40
  Like I said, I think that this wasn't really meant to be a kinda like a hot take prediction post, but I think it's played out more or less as I expected it would, and I don't see this changing in the near future.
• 7:51
  Without a new place to distribute content, there's almost no reason to build a content strategy around trying to get people back to your website to read, you know?
• 8:01
  Even an email newsletter, which I think is still probably the best option for most companies, is starting to get more difficult because people are just so used to getting information from feeds, from podcasts, from YouTube, from all these other places that I think perhaps traditionally weren't necessarily places for B2B content to be created and optimized for, but also because there's just a lot of noise out there.
• 8:24
  So back to basics feels like, like I said, it feels comfortable, it feels safe, but it also feels like the closest thing to a guarantee that you're gonna get from a content strategy now and probably for the next year or two while we figure out what this new landscape is gonna look like.
• 8:40
  Cool. Thanks so much for checking this out. Like I said, if you're interested in engaging with a bunch of really smart content folks, including some of the people mentioned in this article, check out Superpath Pro.
• 8:49
  It's free for thirty days. You get our Slack group. You get our monthly one-on-ones, monthly group calls, our library of courses and content. It's fantastic.
• 8:57
  If it's not the best money you ever spend on professional development, we will give you your money back, no questions asked. Hope to see you there. Take care. [upbeat music]