Latest / Content, Briefly / Workweek: Ben Bradbury on repurposing content for maximum impact (rerun)

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Workweek: Ben Bradbury on repurposing content for maximum impact (rerun) · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  With virtual events, I think they exist on a kind of continuum, and it really depends on the audience that you are catering to.
• 0:08
  The continuum is a mix of either how informative you want the event to be and how engaging you're expecting the community to be. [upbeat music] Hey there, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 0:20
  So I do have another rerun for you this week, and in full transparency, I had a scheduling snafu, uh, that meant I didn't have an episode ready.
• 0:26
  I have got eight scheduled over the next two weeks, so I've got lots of new stuff coming. But today we're gonna rerun Ben Bradbury's episode. Ben is part of the Workweek team.
• 0:36
  If you read Tracy Wallace's Contentment newsletter, that's part of the Workweek network. Part of Ben's job is helping Workweek run this kind of talent-first approach to content.
• 0:45
  Basically find really smart subject matter experts, and then give them the tools, coaching to write and produce really good audio content as well. I felt this was particularly relevant.
• 0:54
  It definitely is, it's evergreen, but I just feel like at the moment this is really important just given all the kind of chaos in content marketing right now.
• 1:01
  Like focusing on subject matter experts and helping them get their voice out there is, is really important, and Ben explains exactly how they do that at Workweek, which is a company that is built exclusively around doing just that.
• 1:11
  So there's a lot of good stuff in here. As a reminder, new stuff coming next week. Definitely check out this episode with Ben Bradbury, lot of good stuff.
• 1:17
  As always, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too. This episode of Content Briefly is brought to you by our friends at Verblio.
• 1:26
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• 1:43
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• 1:48
  You provide a voice memo or Google Doc with an idea you want to write about, then answer a few follow-up questions from the Verblio team.
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• 2:28
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• 2:40
  Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here. Another episode of Content Briefly for you. Really excited for this one, chatting with Ben Bradbury, head of audio, video, and production at Workweek.
• 2:49
  So gonna have like a different flavor to this episode than some of our others. We'll get into all that. Ben, thank you so much for being here.
• 2:55
  Do you mind just introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about what you do and a little bit about your background? Jimmy, thanks so much for having me on the show.
• 3:01
  Been a fan of Superpath for, uh, a couple years, and so really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, a bit about me. I've been in the podcast space for five years.
• 3:08
  I started my own show, Subject Matter, back in November twenty eighteen, which was really a way to explore different perspectives. We would...
• 3:16
  Me and my co-host at the time would share two conflicting points of view and then have the audience kinda make up their answers.
• 3:22
  That led down a rabbit hole of understanding scripted narrative podcasts, the impact of different cadences of episodes on the feed for, uh, momentum and how that impacts distribution, and really what it takes to build out a kind of podcast infrastructure at scale.
• 3:36
  And so I productized that into a content marketing agency back in twenty twenty.
• 3:41
  And, uh, over lockdown and, uh, the tail end of twenty twenty-one, that was acquired by a media company called Workweek just starting out the gates, and they are a all B2B media company with a focus on creators at the center.
• 3:54
  What Workweek's trying to do is really upend the traditional media model where talent is pretty egregiously arbitraged, and they do all the work and are not kind of compensated for that.
• 4:04
  With Workweek, we always want our creators to be the highest paid people at the company. And so for us, having twenty-plus creators, we see that as twenty-plus distinct media companies.
• 4:14
  And then the fuel that makes that possible is this layer of operational talent underneath the creators, which allows them to build out these media businesses.
• 4:22
  And so for me, I am managing one part of that flywheel, which is all about audio and video content.
• 4:29
  And so the kind of four main bits to that, if you think about it like a square, the first side is podcasts, building out the podcast network strategy, coordinating content production there.
• 4:39
  The next side is virtual events, so very similar skill to podcasts, but, uh, in a live arena where you can interact with your community.
• 4:47
  Then YouTube, which is tied into podcasts and virtual events for sure, but also, uh, building out original YouTube channels and programming.
• 4:55
  And then finally, providing production services to Workweek's other business units, as it makes sense to have our own kind of in-house production, um, team for unit economics.
• 5:05
  And so I'll be helping everyone from education with their courses to live events with their graphics to really help produce that kind of content efficiently. That was an amazing... That was such a helpful overview.
• 5:15
  I have so many follow-up questions. Very interesting that your business was acquired and that's how you, you became part of Workweek, because one of the things I wanted to ask you is, of the creators on the platform,
• 5:25
  you know, does Workweek, is Workweek launching different newsletters and podcasts, uh, from scratch with some of these creators, or is it more like an acquisition model?
• 5:35
  Like, content marketers will be quite familiar with Tracy Wallace's newsletter, Contentment. Yes. That's very popular. It gets shared in our Slack group, uh, every week when it's published.
• 5:45
  Um, you know, is that something that started... I actually don't know the story. Was it startedAt Workweek, or was this something Tracy was doing that then kind of joined the network later on? Yeah, sure.
• 5:54
  So Tracy's a great example of a operator who has this deep domain expertise.
• 5:59
  She's built this up from her time at Klaviyo, her time before that, and she really understands the nuts and bolts of content marketing pretty deeply and seeing it as the strategic go-to-market function for new product launches.
• 6:11
  And so the bottleneck for her was always the bandwidth. Someone like Tracy has the ability to write a newsletter. She has the ability to stand on stage and magnetize people.
• 6:21
  She also has the ability to create a course of her content. But, um, the bottleneck is always time and resources.
• 6:29
  And so that's where Workweek comes in, is we're really able to scale the creator's domain expertise into these other product lines.
• 6:36
  And so that was the value prop of working with her, is Tracy has all these-- has had all these kind of strong opinions bubbling in her head, but she doesn't know how to, as a creative, engage in the creative process to turn that into a structured newsletter, and then there's acquiring subscribers, then there's promoting it, that whole shebang.
• 6:53
  And Workweek has a machine to, to help with that, ranging from newsletter coaches to distribution, people scaffolding in our email service provider, all these kind of nuts and bolts that you wouldn't really think about until you are in the grind of actually producing one of these newsletters once a week or up to three times a week.
• 7:10
  And so Tracy was a pretty early-stage creator for us, where we co-created the newsletter with us.
• 7:17
  We will also work with more mature creators, where we can take some of that operational lift off of them and, and really help operationalize some of their business as well.
• 7:26
  So good example in the direct-to-consumer niche, still in that marketing umbrella w- alongside Tracy, is, uh, Nick Sharma.
• 7:33
  Nick is the CEO and founder of Sharma Brands and wanted to do a podcast with one of his best friends, Moiz Ali, the founder of Native Deodorant, that was acquired for, crazy story, acquired for, uh, by Procter & Gamble in two and a half years after founding for about a hundred mil.
• 7:48
  [chuckles] And so Moiz just has this, like, very, yeah, insane, like, kind of rocket ship trajectory and very unfiltered takes on direct to consumer.
• 7:56
  And so for us, they already have the, uh, the kind of means and credibility underneath them. What Workweek is doing is allowing that to bring that to a bigger room.
• 8:07
  And so that's where I come in, helping them figure out the format of their show, the production on the back end, creating video clips, sponsor integration, and that's the podcast Limited Supply, which has become a household name in the e-commerce and direct-to-consumer space.
• 8:19
  So to answer your question, it ranges depending on the stage the creator is at, but we're always trying to create partnerships that are as beneficial for the creator, depending on the stage they're in in their journey.
• 8:30
  That's really interesting. So your, your pitch to someone like Tracy is essentially, "You could do this yourself. You could use Substack, or you could use whatever ESP and start building up a newsletter.
• 8:41
  We're gonna help you supercharge it. We're gonna help you. We're gonna-- We already have an existing infrastructure." I assume there's probably ad salespeople to help.
• 8:48
  Um, I wonder, too, if there's an element of, like, how many Substack newsletters have started and died off after two or three months. You know, there's, like, an initial high from doing it, and then it- Yep...
• 8:58
  just fades away over time when, you know, it gets hard.
• 9:01
  Like, you have to continue doing it, whereas, like, this represents kind of a, a more formalized approach, which I imagine helps people get over that hump, kinda like the endurance hump.
• 9:10
  Uh, because I would imagine the longer you stay committed to it, the more you learn about the audience, the better the content can be, the more subscribers you get, et cetera. Yeah, totally.
• 9:18
  And I think for people listening who work with talent or are talent themselves, it also comes down to the conviction in the kind of company that you're trying to build.
• 9:27
  Like, we're not just talking about, "Hey, how many subscribers do we think we can hit in this next month?"
• 9:31
  And of course, unique open rate and churn is important in having an engaged list that you can monetize through other product SKUs.
• 9:37
  But what's ultimately really important is that we have a media company that they can get excited about.
• 9:41
  Like, on my wall back there is Walt Disney's Disney map from the '50s, which was kind of the first time a media company had been visualized where Disney had this engine that he could then f- which was animation, which he could then franchise out into a theme park, into music licensing, into merchandise.
• 9:59
  And similar to us is, like, newsletters are the center of that flywheel, where when we have these engaged audiences that are hard to reach with high purchasing power, we can develop other products off the back of it.
• 10:09
  And so the question to the creator is then, what do you want to build? Some creators wanna come in, and they wanna take the biggest stages.
• 10:16
  And Nicole Caspersen, for example, just got back from the Women's World Banking Conference in Mumbai, India, where they flew her out to speak on fintech because she's become one of the leading voices in the fintech space.
• 10:27
  Versus Heba Yusuf, our chief people officer, she had zero subscribers to her newsletter, hadn't created a single send nearly exactly a year ago.
• 10:35
  Cue today, she's o- at over 100,000 subscribers, over a 50% unique open rate, and is the largest HR newsletter in the country because of her unfiltered takes, which now have a podium and a place to be shared.
• 10:47
  But those creators, they have, like, very distinct visions, and I've spoken to both of them about where they want to go, and it would be silly to try and bucket them under the same thing.
• 10:55
  And so I think a big piece of it as an operator is just having the empathy and being able to listen to the creator's goal.
• 11:00
  Ultimately, good creators have a very concrete vision over the brands they want to build, and then being able to use my, what I would call medium expertise with audio and video, medium as in the format of content that's being created, paired with their domain expertise to create a roadmap and a vision for their media company, which they can really get excited about for the long term.
• 11:21
  Is it easier to s- to launch a newsletter or a podcast these days? Ooh, what a great question. I think they play...
• 11:30
  It-- Well, first of all, it depends on your area of expertise, and it also depends what you're trying to build into your stack.
• 11:36
  So newsletter to me is more of a capture mechanism, and podcasts are more of a retention mechanism in B2B, so that this is my, like, area, area of expertise.
• 11:46
  Obviously, Workweek is 100% B2B, but for us, likeGreat media companies are data companies today.
• 11:52
  And so the newsletter for us represents a chance for us to understand our audience straight out the gate and understand things like industry, like function, um, like location very early on in their journey within the Workweek ecosystem.
• 12:05
  Podcast data, for those of you who don't know that are listening, is very tricky to understand accurately, and the solutions that we do have in place through p- hosting platforms like Spotify's Megaphone, audience intelligence layers like Nielsen and Experian, you're still triangulating off of a device, uh, off of device IP these demographics and psychographics which aren't entirely accurate and don't give you that kind of level of qualitative sophistication that you can get with a newsletter.
• 12:32
  Uh, that said, if I have Jimmy Daly in my ear for forty-five minutes on a Monday morning, I feel like I know you. That's what we call a parasocial relationship.
• 12:43
  It's, uh, the same dynamic that's in place in reality TV shows. It's one way.
• 12:47
  You get invested on the people in screen on your ear without them knowing you, and that's the value of the podcast, is it's really retention at scale as you feel like this friend on demand.
• 12:57
  The newsletter doesn't have that emotional feeling tone or texture in the voice, but the text does have the advantage of being able to, uh, give the reader their own voice to process and the data capture off the back end.
• 13:09
  So I think it really depends on where your core competency is. I believe that creators will kind of lean one way. Me, for example, I'm much better with voice than text.
• 13:21
  We have a ton of creators that are much better with text than voice. And then we have a good handful that are just masters at both because they're built like that.
• 13:29
  And so leaning into what you're personally best as, as a creator, I think is the first place that I would start. That's fantastic. The next thing I wanted to ask you is, does Workweek have a studio arm of the business?
• 13:40
  Because I imagine as you build so much expertise in the mediums, right, and, like, HR, content marketing, fintech, like there's a ton of SaaS companies that operate in this space.
• 13:50
  Is there a service arm to help businesses launch newsletters and podcasts in similar spaces? Yeah, absolutely. Branded content is a big piece of what we do.
• 13:58
  And so there's really kinda two things that, two value props really with that. One is our operational expertise.
• 14:04
  So for example, we just launched a new podcast in the fintech space targeting a di- a diverse Latin American population and create, kind of elevating the voices of that demographic.
• 14:16
  We have the operational expertise to deliver that podcast. Our account management team is world-class with client experts. We know how to do the production on the back end, cadence, cover art, you name it, we got it.
• 14:25
  But then the other piece of this and why I really enjoy producing these, these projects, Jimmy, is that we actually get to let the creator steer it.
• 14:34
  So for example, we have a creator in the healthcare niche called Blake Madden.
• 14:37
  When I think about people who can synthesize insights on the infrastructure of the hospital industry for hospital executives, Blake is probably top five in the game.
• 14:49
  And it's because he had a newsletter called The Healthy Muse where he pulled in forty plus sources of healthcare news every single week, aggregated it like a machine, and now has those proprietary data insights that people like Mark Cuban end up engaging and retweeting his stuff on, on socials.
• 15:03
  We had a company that came to Blake and said, "Hey, we want to do a virtual event with you." And Blake came in and said, "Hey, let's actually make this custom." They were in the security space.
• 15:12
  And so Blake and them together created this narrative which explains why security is important, why HIPAA compliance is changing within regulations in the, in their industry. These regulations are changing right now.
• 15:24
  In fact, a bill was passed, like as of recording this, two weeks ago, which is kind of flipping the model on its head. So the content is timely for the people in the audience.
• 15:32
  But what's most exciting about that is that the client gets to lean on Blake's domain expertise, and Blake gets to lean on the client's narrative and create something that's really organic feeling.
• 15:41
  It doesn't feel like an advert at all. And so that's what's cool to me, is that the creator gets to drive the discussion. And then when I'm in those conversations, I'm really, again, just listening and synthesizing.
• 15:52
  "Okay, Blake, it sounds like you want to do this. The client's values are this. How about we package it like this? What about this for the segment? What about this for the title? What about this for the abstract?"
• 16:01
  And then everything has to be cleared by the creator before we send it to the client, 'cause it's ultimately the creator's project.
• 16:07
  And that, I think, creates like a pretty unique, um, value prop in the, in the content space. I love that.
• 16:13
  You know, something I've been thinking about recently is that, um, as someone who runs a community, I get hit up by SaaS brands every now and then who say, you know, "We run a community," or, "We would like to create one.
• 16:23
  You know, what are some tips that you might have for us?" And I can offer a bunch of tips. I, I think the biggest challenge is that the only deal I have is members.
• 16:33
  Y-you know, I don't, I don't have, um, I don't have to answer to anyone else.
• 16:37
  And, and I'm a little hesitant to offer advice knowing that a SaaS company running a community will sort of operate within a set of constraints that are completely different than mine.
• 16:47
  I imagine the same is true for newsletters and podcasts, right? Like when the content is the product, you can focus exclusively on making it great, getting the person's voice out there,
• 16:57
  optimizing it for the readers, et cetera. Whereas like within the bounds of a, you know, larger B2B SaaS content strategy, it gets a little muddy. You know?
• 17:07
  Like of the content strategies that I see, and I'm fortunate to look at many, so many are still, uh, SEO first and then everything else. Like there's a little touch of thought leadership. There's some sales enablement.
• 17:20
  Maybe they run a podcast, but it's probably... It's like someone internally running it almost like a side project. You know what I mean?
• 17:27
  It's difficult to optimize it for the, for the listener or the reader, depending on the type of medium, you know, in a way that like, like Workweek doesn't have those constraints.
• 17:36
  So you can-I would imagine do such a better job presenting something to the reader or listener that they really love. Yeah, I would like to think so. I mean, there's a couple of to that.
• 17:46
  So one, just to touch on, um, like we build community with our creators, and those look very different, again, depending on the audience.
• 17:54
  Heba Yusuf with I Hate It Here, our HR brand, her community is called Safe Space because a lot of HR industry professionals want a place to open up about their industry that isn't necessarily super public and, uh, is anonymized and, and safe behind closed doors.
• 18:10
  That looks very different to Blake's community, Boardroom, for hospital executives who are really there for the networking, and so long as they can meet once a month with other high-powered operators, that is value in and of itself.
• 18:21
  And so the communities that we design, uh, and Alethia, our community manager, is excellent at this, um, are really designed with, with those kind of nuances in mind.
• 18:31
  Going back to your question, though, on constraints, it is really interesting kind of approaching it from the other way around.
• 18:37
  So for us, um, we have always seen media as this wedge, which is very quick to monetize but not necessarily as sustainable. Media companies trade for between four to eight X EBITDA on the, on the...
• 18:50
  SaaS companies, Snowflake, when it had the biggest tech IPO ever, to use an extreme example, traded at about four X revenue, and that is because of the no marginal cost of reproduction, the lack of linear hiring.
• 19:01
  And so what we've always wanted to do is build these audiences and then use them to launch SaaS products and services. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Our first one was dropped a couple of months ago.
• 19:12
  It's called Krokit, K-R-O-K-I-T dot com, after Ray Kroc. Ray Kroc was the founder of McDonald's, and he was the original, uh, franchise GOAT.
• 19:21
  And we have a franchise creator called The Wolf of Franchises who we have helped incubate from day one. He's now the most followed franchise creator on Twitter.
• 19:29
  And, uh, we have a podcast, Franchise Empires, which has had people like Greg Flynn on it, the lo- the, uh, wealthiest multi-unit franchise owner in the world.
• 19:37
  And so The Wolf has built up this kind of critical mass of people who trust him in the franchise space.
• 19:41
  And so what we did is helped him take that data, take that intelligence, and build a democratized marketplace around franchises, which is this incredibly opaque industry, kind of a boys' club where you have to know who to call in order to get the information that you want.
• 19:54
  And actually, we just said, "Hey, we'll put a monthly subscription behind it, and you can have the intelligence like everyone else."
• 19:59
  And, uh, Krokit has been really well-received, and that's its own separate SaaS company, uh, spun out of the Workweek ecosystem.
• 20:06
  And so that's what I actually think is, like, the really exciting part is we kind of flipped it on its head.
• 20:11
  We started with the media, built the data, built the distribution, and then used that proprietary insight to identify opportunities for software. That is so cool.
• 20:20
  I didn't-- I had no idea there was a SaaS component to this. That is so interesting.
• 20:24
  Um, and what a beautiful model because you, by building the audience first, you, I would imagine, get really deep understanding of what the product should do and features it must include, and then you have people to sell it to from day one.
• 20:37
  Exactly. Yeah, the intent is, is built in. Something we think about a lot is the difference between attention and intention. And so it's easy and mechanical to capture attention.
• 20:49
  If you give me a budget of a hundred K and I have the right performance marketer in place, I can build up an email list pretty quickly, or I can drive downloads to a podcast.
• 20:56
  But the question is, are they gonna keep listening? Are they gonna keep reading? And that's where intention comes in. And that's something that we've learned as a business is you can't shortcut intention.
• 21:05
  It does just take time for an audience to become familiar with a brand, but you can accelerate it.
• 21:10
  And that's always been the thesis with Workweek is that the operational mechanics that we have behind our creators can take a process where for someone to become perceived as the industry expert we know they're capable of, that might have taken five years, let's say for example, but with Workweek, maybe it takes two or maybe it takes 18 months.
• 21:27
  And that's what we're starting to see with The Wolf is that that investment and then spinning out into Krokit is paying off. That is, that is so interesting. You know, I wanted to...
• 21:35
  You had mentioned different types of content that you work on, podcast, events, and YouTube. I'd love to go into a little bit more detail on each of those three things. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.
• 21:46
  So when I think about the, these products, they exist on a, a graph or in a hierarchy, if you will. And actually, before we get into a virtual event, we just start with a virtual meetup.
• 21:57
  This is one of the kind of foundational activities I think that it takes to be a creator these days is engaging with y- your community.
• 22:03
  And increasingly in a remote world, that means hopping on a Zoom, hopping on Hop In, whatever your, uh, pick your whatever platform you wanna choose, and carving out 30 to 60 minutes once or twice a week, sorry, once or twice a month, to engage with those members.
• 22:18
  I think Superpods does a great job of this, where you can, like, get those real connections and introductions. I met Eric Doty through the community a while back, who I know you've had on the show.
• 22:28
  Um, and that's like a real person that I can associate and get value from the community with.
• 22:33
  And so similarly with creators, we, once we have traction with the, the list, with newsletter, we'll then spin that out into a, into a meetup.
• 22:42
  Then once we have en- good engagement with the meetup, then we'll start operationalizing that attention and build out a virtual event.
• 22:48
  And that's where we'll have creators with more structured programming, whether that's an fireside chat, whether that's an interview, and actually get the audience to have some, uh, some content they're, they're sharing.
• 22:57
  And also a great way to improve their reputation by bringing big guests onto the virtual event from their, from their industry, 'cause that's one of the o- other advantages Workweek has with our model is with 20-plus creators, we are leveraging 20-plus insanely networked individuals in their niches across marketing, media, franchises, venture capital, um, and more.
• 23:18
  And so that's the virtual events. And then what I think about as, as, as a kind of, uh, creative graduation is it's important to be compounding the skill overlaps that you've built.
• 23:28
  So for example, you, Jimmy, you have deep expertise in building these SEO-driven content campaigns with a high volume of word count.
• 23:35
  Like, you know text like the back of your hand.That is a different skill set to voice fundamentally. I've always believed that.
• 23:42
  Like, the track that it takes to become world-class and take Davos or the TED stage is different to the track it takes to, uh, write a New York Times bestseller as a, as a skill.
• 23:53
  Within my department, I'm always trying to compound the skill of voice and the skill of being on video and performing.
• 23:59
  And a virtual event much like this we're recording in Riverside is a great way of just, like, warming that muscle up. And so, uh, the podcast is a natural extension of that.
• 24:08
  And when they hit the milestones that, uh, that we set, we say, "Okay, cool. I think you're ready for an audio-video podcast."
• 24:15
  One of my beliefs is that you should start video with podcasts today, and we can get into that if you want to.
• 24:19
  But, um, our shows are video first, and so the virtual events are a nice way to, to train up the creators on that.
• 24:26
  And then the kind of final tier, which is our, um, which is like the, the final product in the ecosystem, is original YouTube content.
• 24:34
  So I say original because every podcast gets its own YouTube channel with videos to repurpose the shows and the long-form content on there already. But the, uh, original YouTube channel is that kind of next step.
• 24:46
  So, like, with The Wolf, we... The franchise creator I mentioned earlier, we've created a business, um, a... Sorry, on the business of Subway.
• 24:53
  I think it's called The Evil History of Subway, and if you go on The Wolf's YouTube channel, you'll see this 15-minute, like, feature video where we talk through the twisted history of Subway.
• 25:02
  Also, for your listeners, Jimmy, Subway has an absolutely bonkers history, which I had no idea about. That company has gone through all kinds of turbulence.
• 25:10
  So if you fancy blocking an hour over a lunch break, would definitely recommend it.
• 25:13
  Um, and so The Wolf can just help us find these, like, wacky stories that we turn into, uh, YouTube content, and that for us is kind of the, uh, the end of that, um, that model.
• 25:24
  And so then making sure that the final piece is each of the products plays to the creator's unique strengths.
• 25:29
  If a creator comes to us and says, "Hey, I'm super passionate about a podcast," we have this with one of our sales creators. They're like, "Yo, I have a podcast. I want to keep this going.
• 25:37
  Like, it's a big reason why I signed up." I'm obviously gonna prioritize that and not make them go through all these other hoops and just, like, get them going.
• 25:43
  So it's about having structured frameworks and making sure I know how the products work together, but creator experience is subjective, and being able to listen to those signals is an important piece of the puzzle, too.
• 25:54
  That's so interesting. Do you ever charge for content directly, or is everything that Workweek creates free and ad-supported? No, we will, we will charge directly.
• 26:03
  It's a mix of direct and indirect monetization, so directly monetizing being asking the audience to purchase a piece of content or a ticket to a live event or to a conference.
• 26:12
  Like, we have our big, uh, marketing conference coming up on October 18th in Austin at the Moody Center, Marketing Land.
• 26:18
  That's the first time we're putting 500 marketers in a room and have a ton of structured programming in Austin's hottest venue across four different, uh, four different lands: brand land, e-com land, revenue land, and creator land.
• 26:30
  It's like if Disneyland did mar- did a marketing conference. Awful.
• 26:33
  And, uh, yeah, we will, we'll absolutely charge for attendance there versus having a newsletter or a podcast that is free to consume, but we will charge for the attention and the, uh, brand awareness that will come with that.
• 26:46
  And we have different packages, different sponsorship agreements, that whole stuff, but that is, uh, that's indirect monetization. Got it.
• 26:52
  That makes me curious what you're seeing in the event space right now, particularly with virtual events. I feel like, I feel like growing virtual events for a lot of people,
• 27:00
  you know, is like, uh, because it seemed like everyone who ran in-person events just stuck them on Zoom, you know? And then- Yeah...
• 27:07
  for, on the attendee side, it's like, well, now we're all sort of stuck at home on Zoom all day anyways. Like, I don't know how much- Yeah... excitement I can drum up for an event.
• 27:17
  N-now a lot of that is in the past, and so I would imagine there's kind of a new, a new landscape here where events have evolved. When I think of virtual events, I mostly think of webinars, and I feel like webinar...
• 27:27
  The, the term webinar comes with a lot of connotations m-you know, many of them probably- Yeah... somewhat negative, if I'm being honest. Like, it's a sales pitch for a product in many cases.
• 27:37
  But because Workweek is focused on content as the product, I'm curious, like, what kind of events do your creators run, and are there any, like, learnings that SaaS companies might take away from those events as they're thinking about running their own?
• 27:51
  So great question. With virtual events, I think they exist on a kind of continuum, and it really depends on the audience that you are catering to.
• 28:00
  The continuum is a mix of either how informative you want the event to be and how engaging you're expecting the community to be.
• 28:07
  So to give you two examples from Workweek's ecosystem, within the healthcare community, we know that they are mainly coming to the events to learn.
• 28:15
  There's a lot of tactical, technical knowledge that is shared either for, uh, physicians, primary care providers, hospital executives. Different audiences have different value propositions.
• 28:25
  But the point is, quite consistently we see that they are more preferring this kind of webinar style where they can sit back, consume the information passively, and learn.
• 28:35
  That's very different to o-our HR virtual events where Heba with I Hate It Here will jump in. She'll get the community amped.
• 28:44
  She naturally has these hot takes which people resonate with because she's sharing the kind of, um, slightly controversial issues that people are afraid to say, and her community rally behind that.
• 28:56
  And so the virtual event chat in Zoom is just a joy to see. People are popping off, and you get all these kind of, uh, all this engagement, all this response that comes from her events.
• 29:06
  And so when we have these hundreds of people in the chat, we are structuring the programming to be different for them. We will use polls to engage them. We will have more time for Q&A.
• 29:15
  We will have time for the community eng- to engage separately as well. But that's very different programming depending on the informative aspect.
• 29:24
  So that's the first thing which I would, uh, I would encourage to, to think about. The second is having a clear value proposition and being able to market to that.
• 29:33
  The way I think about designing virtual events is similar to how I think about designing podcasts, which is using segments.
• 29:39
  So if you've seen an episode of Saturday Night Live, you will know that they bump between skits, then they will have a musician on, then they'll have an interview, then they'll have a comic who'll go back to a skit.
• 29:50
  Those discrete parts of the show are called the segments, and the segments are building blocks of programming.
• 29:56
  And much in the same way that it plays for linear TV, it also plays for radio, and it plays for podcasts and virtual events as well.
• 30:03
  And so how I think about it is what are the segments of this show that are gonna hit best?
• 30:09
  Uh, I think Q&A is a no-brainer for many of these virtual events, as that's why people will come in and want to engage and learn off from the creator's domain expertise.
• 30:18
  But the other piece is if you're tape, taking a topic, what are the three subparts withinThat topic that the creator can lean on to create a very structured discussion.
• 30:31
  And so I like to-- the things I like with the segments for a B2B audience are setting context, making sure people understand why we are having the event today, what are the regulations or news or technological advances that have got us to this point, then doing a deep dive into the subject matter and really questioning what is the insight that we can share here with either this creator or the guest or the combination of the two that no one can get anywhere else.
• 30:57
  Those proprietary insights are what I think get people coming back. And then the final piece is a practical playbook.
• 31:03
  If you are gonna share this with your, uh, with your boss, with reports, how are you gonna get people to enact that change and work through the kind of organizational structure as well?
• 31:15
  Um, and that will again, will depend on the niche, but I think anchoring on kind of context, deep dive and behavior change is a, is a good way to structure those.
• 31:23
  That is such an interesting approach to this because I, I-- maybe too much of my own thought on content is from the perspective of a SaaS company, writing a blog post, publishing a podcast, running a virtual event, and I think that what you just described, my first reaction to it is that sounds intimidating to run an event with that much, kind of with that much forethought, right?
• 31:49
  Built so exclusively for the person on the other end. Um, m-maybe that's just a personal bias too, that I feel intimidated by something like that. Mm.
• 31:58
  But I imagine that's a, a very important part of Workweek's infrastructure that it allows creators to come in with the subject matter expertise, marry it with your infrastructure to make the magic happen.
• 32:10
  Because I would imagine for folks working without that infrastructure to build it, to, you know, figure out what the programming is, figure out what the technology is to make it happen, like there's, there's some overhead there, you know, if you have great subject matter expertise that you would love to share.
• 32:23
  Sure. Yeah.
• 32:24
  And I mean, to, to address the intimidation piece of it, a lot of the production can be mechanized and like that's my whole thing with content production is trying to find these efficiencies powered by astute time management that let you inc- uh, increasingly get your unit economics better and better.
• 32:43
  And so we produce like thirty of these virtual events in a quarter, and it's a pretty tight ship now that goes between sponsors to account management, to marketing, to creators, to our creator success team who help manage the creator's logistics.
• 32:58
  And I think the things that I would kind of say there is, A, it doesn't need to be that complicated.
• 33:04
  Workweek is a complicated business model, and so naturally there is, um, there's a lot of stakeholders involved in that process.
• 33:11
  But for like the Superpath community, Jimmy, maybe you have like a content manager who can come up with the ideas. I think you can template out the structure, which creates a co- a consistent value proposition.
• 33:24
  I think you can template out part of the abstract, part of the title, the format, the branding, and the promotion.
• 33:30
  I think figuring out where your channels are, whether you're gonna include that in your, in your newsletters, in Slack, on socials, you can standardize how you promote these events as well.
• 33:39
  And so I think to, to sum that up, just to address intimidation, the biggest lift in creating that kind of structure with the event is always gonna be the first one. Yeah.
• 33:48
  But once you've got the first one, you have a blueprint, you have what I call a process map that you can then implement into your project management tool of choice or software of choice that then becomes repeatable and, and sustainable.
• 34:01
  Yeah. That's great. That's great. You know, one thing you mentioned, uh, a few minutes ago was, um, how different mediums require different skill sets.
• 34:10
  I have learned this the hard way, so [chuckles] I have, you know, a, a, a long history of creating written content. Um, a few years ago w-we created the first Superpath podcast, and frankly, it was not very good.
• 34:24
  I anticipated that the-- my writing skills would translate much more easily into podcasting, and they didn't. And the show lacked a, it lacked a tight concept. The show wasn't very good.
• 34:37
  Basically relied on the guest to make it good or not, you know what I mean? Uh, and that variability meant that we had some good episodes, some that were not as interesting, and ultimately I walked away from it.
• 34:47
  So then this is the-- this is our second podcast, and I-- because I learned so much the first one, I tried to address many of those things, but I frankly was surprised at how much more difficult it was to create a podcast as someone with a background in writing.
• 35:02
  And so this is sort of a long way to getting around to a question, which is that what do you find a good podcast? You know, is it the, is it the charisma of the host?
• 35:12
  Is it, you know, sort of how unfiltered they're willing to be? Are there things you optimize for, like length or, you know, a catchy episode title or artwork? Like, and that-- I know there's a lot there.
• 35:25
  It's kind of a broad question, but I'm sort of curious if there's like a couple things, a couple takeaways from some of the more successful podcasts that you work on. Totally. And we-- let's definitely get into that.
• 35:35
  Before we do, I am super curious, just while it's hot, to, uh, to ask you what were the main challenges you came up with when you were launching that podcast for the, for the first time?
• 35:45
  And what were the areas where you assumed there would be more of a natural skill jump that there wasn't that then created friction? Yeah.
• 35:53
  I think the biggest thing was that, um, all the episodes when I listened back to them felt like a first draft that needed to be edited into a second draft, which then needed to go to a copy edit before it was published.
• 36:07
  Like, so like if I'm writing a piece, the first draft is like, it's kinda all there, uh, but it's not organized enough. You know, the interesting stuff might be towards the end rather than beginning.
• 36:18
  You know, there's plenty of stuff that could be cut.
• 36:21
  Um, the podcast episode sort of reflected that first draft, where it's like you could listen to it and you would find things in there that were interesting, but it, it took too long.
• 36:30
  You can't people's time for twenty minutes while you get to the interesting part.I had someone helping me edit it, but they were cleaning it up.
• 36:37
  You know, there was no production, and I really frankly had no idea how to do that. You know? Mm-hmm.
• 36:43
  I could sort of imagine like chopping up an episode and keeping the good stuff and arranging it in a different way, but that felt like a ton of work. And
• 36:51
  so it just-- I feel like one of the-- it never got off the ground was that, uh, it just wasn't very good. A good listen, you know? Um, uh, that and there was just so much variability.
• 37:04
  Like, I had never created content in a written format that relied on interview-interviewees to kind of carry the load, right? Like, it's- Mm-hmm. It's, it's their narrative.
• 37:16
  It's, you know, sort of relying so much on them to give the listener something interesting. I'd never done that with written content. I'd always controlled that myself and- Mm-hmm...
• 37:27
  you know, used interviews or data or whatever other kind of external sources to s-support an argument that I wanted to own, you know, rather than just be like, "I have this great guest.
• 37:38
  I hope they say something interesting." Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's useful. Also, it reminds of the structure being such an important piece of the equation rather than just leaning on the guest to shine.
• 37:51
  Actually saying, "Hey, these are the ways where I'd like you to shine." And for people listening, Jimmy did a phenomenal job of prepping for this.
• 37:57
  I actually sent your sheet to my team and just said, "This is an excellent example of like pre-guest prep." Uh, yeah, I thought you, you did a good job of like expectation setting and doing that whole thing.
• 38:08
  Okay, so to come to your question, like what makes a good podcast? First thing, first disclaimer, if I was a, if I was a creator lawyer, is to say there's no silver bullet for podcast growth.
• 38:19
  It is completely different, and it depends on the combination or the intersection of your unique strengths and a format that plays to that strengths.
• 38:28
  So the first thing I look for is what is the strengths of the creator that I have? So let's take you, Jimmy. Let's go through this as an example with content briefly.
• 38:35
  So if I'm now thinking about show format for, for Jimmy and what makes a great podcast, I need to understand what Jimmy's strengths are.
• 38:41
  My understanding is that from his time at Animals and his previous experience, he, he knows how to create text SEO-first content strategies for SaaS companies that convert.
• 38:52
  And so I would then think, okay, well, within that kind of, uh, content marketing, what are some of the elements that could then translate into the show, into the segments?
• 39:02
  The first thing is the name is Content Briefly, so maybe my opener is to ask the guest, "If you were a content brief, what would your summary say about yourself?"
• 39:12
  And then we get people like actually in the frame of mind of thinking like a content marketer.
• 39:18
  And then if I wanna go deeper, maybe my two next segments, one is focusing on the short term, so the distribution of the content. You get tactical.
• 39:28
  How are you-- what are the levers you pull within your content marketing to drive results?
• 39:32
  And then given the focus on SEO, maybe the next segment is turning to the long term and looking at what are some of the longer term seeds you plant, either in terms of organizational structure, quarterly planning, forecasting that you allows your campaign to be a succ- a sustainable success.
• 39:48
  And then maybe the last segment is, uh, value props.
• 39:52
  Just like a SaaS product on their pricing page will have features, you could have a lightning round, which are the different areas of value that, uh, you believe you cr- you capture in content marketing.
• 40:02
  Like what is a contrarian take you have within content marketing as a one-liner?
• 40:06
  Then we can go deeper into that, and that informs the, like if your brain was product strategy, like SaaS product, these would be the beliefs that inform it.
• 40:14
  And so that's obviously just like a quick example, but that's an example of where your unique strength would potentially lend itself to a format.
• 40:22
  And so that's what I'm trying to do with the podcast is figure out, does my creator have some proprietary expertise that people can't get anywhere else?
• 40:29
  Is there a data set we have access to that is gonna fuel the narrative? Do they have charisma oozing out their ears that I just need to get on the microphone?
• 40:36
  Do they have a high-powered network that needs to be the center of this focus? Um, do they have contrarian takes which they're not afraid to share?
• 40:43
  It's different for every creator, but that's what I'm trying to do, is create formats that mold around those insights. That's so great. That's so interesting.
• 40:52
  I feel like one of the things I've been trying to do with this podcast is, and actually this episode is kind of an interesting departure from that, is
• 41:00
  have a f- a tighter structure where I ask everyone basically the same questions, knowing that the answers will be a, a little bit different, which kind of like over time builds up this library of content, so that if someone says, you know, "Oh, I'm a one-person marketing team," there is an episode for that, you know.
• 41:14
  And we run through the same set of questions for that person as we do for the person who runs a massive enterprise content strategy, just so people can easily kinda compare and contrast as they're thinking about, you know, their day-to-day jobs, career, or whatever.
• 41:27
  One other thing I wanted to touch on was content repurposing. Obviously, this comes up with SaaS companies all the time, and the [chuckles] thing is sort of a-- it's always kinda like the same conversation.
• 41:36
  It goes something like, "We spent all this time writing this guide or creating this series of blog posts. We should do something with it."
• 41:44
  And the, the do something with it part always kinda gets a little muddy and then sort of trails off, because the hard part about text content is that you oftentimes have to rewrite it for the platform where you wanna repurpose it.
• 41:56
  So say you wanna redistribute it on social. You can't just say, "Here's our latest blog post. Click here to read it." You know, you have to pull something interesting from it, present it in a platform-native way,
• 42:09
  you know, that sort of caters to the algorithm of that particular platform. Same with newsletter or wherever else you might share it.
• 42:16
  And frankly, it's kinda difficult to do that, and many content teams are focused on net new. So it's y-you know, if the content calendar says
• 42:26
  one blog post a week, uh, and it's Friday and you're, you know, trying to repurpose stuff, you probably are gonna run out of time before you have to start thinking about the next net new piece.
• 42:36
  Now, I'm curious how you approach that for audio and video, because there's, I would imagine, some slicing and dicing that can happen, where you're not creating new versions of the same content.
• 42:45
  Y- it's actually repurposing in a purer way, like where you literally are taking pieces of it and sharing it rather than kind of, um, you know-... creating divergent content from a core piece.
• 42:57
  Anyways, long question, but sort of curious how you all think about the, the repurposing stuff, and if there's, um, quite a bit of process behind how that happens. Yeah, for sure.
• 43:05
  So a long form podcast, let's say with this example, let's call it 30 minutes long. Asking a new listener to jump into a 30-minute episode the first time that they've met me is a hell of an ask.
• 43:17
  I do not have 30 minutes for creators that I don't know. I ve- I rarely have 30 minutes for creators I, I do know, right?
• 43:24
  And that's be- we are in such a atten- we're in such a, um, economy that is oversaturated with asks for our attention, and so we're just pulled in all these different directions.
• 43:34
  And so you have to have awareness for that when you're starting to build an audience that the content that you create needs to be able to deliver the payoff much sooner.
• 43:44
  And so with our 30-minute episode, I think there's probably between six to eight
• 43:50
  clips within that which will deliver a payoff, uh, much sooner, and that's the kind of soundbite and the, the reason that we've seen such a proliferation of, um, short clips on socials is because they deliver the payoff sooner, and, uh, Gen Z is consuming more video than audio, uh, or more video than text rather.
• 44:12
  And so audio and video are kind of merging into this similar, uh, similar medium, which is why I am general manager of audio/video. It's this... We, we kinda see them as this medium. And so
• 44:25
  within that, making sure that you have these entry points for people to latch onto your brand in the form of these short clips, which are between 30 seconds, maybe 20 seconds on the low end, up to 90 seconds on the, on the high end, but it's more than two minutes that just deliver the, the payoff.
• 44:41
  And so that's the kind of first piece of the repurposing stack, is like taking the long form content and then chopping it down. But you can get creative with it. I think one of the...
• 44:50
  If you look at the Lex Fridmans, the Joe Rogans, um, Chris Williamsons of the world on YouTube, they grew by having these medium term clips as well, and I think those kind of chapter style videos are another important piece of the strategy.
• 45:05
  If I get hooked on content briefly, okay, Jimmy, now give me a SaaS breakdown from a company and how they're doing content marketing strategy. You can't do that in two minutes.
• 45:12
  You need five, you need 10, and that's a segment. So the segment goes on YouTube.
• 45:17
  That's the other thing which is pretty straightforward to repurpose as well, and I think you can, you can look at kind of longer question threads in a podcast as the, uh, the beginning and the end point, the segment, and maybe you have two or three questions within them as well.
• 45:34
  Then the other thing is the podcast can become written content. So the big ideas that you share, that could be turned into a tweet thread. It can be turned into a LinkedIn post. It can be turned into a blog.
• 45:45
  The podcasts themselves can be aggregated into a blog, top 10 podcasts to listen to on X topic. You can also repurpose the podcast into other podcasts.
• 45:54
  We've had, um, we've had a lot of marketers, for example, on Marketing Millennials, and so maybe one day I come in and say, "Hey, let's do a highlights on top SEO insights from past guests."
• 46:04
  And then the team goes in, they surgically find the three to five insights from three to five episodes. We bundle that up into an episode, and then that's an extra hit on the feed.
• 46:13
  And so you can repurpose the audio into other audio, but you can also do it into, into other text.
• 46:19
  And again, depends on the creator for us and the, the way that their teams are set up, 'cause each creator has like a, a pod of operators underneath them. So some creators will have social managers.
• 46:32
  Some creators will have newsletter coaches. Some creators have a podcast coach. Like, it will depend on the... Yeah, it depends on the, on the creator to how the operational team on, on the back end for the repurposing.
• 46:45
  Do you have a sense for, um, how much time is spent at Workweek creating net new content versus repurposing existing content? Because what you just described sounds time-consuming.
• 46:57
  It sounds worthwhile, but, um, the time has to be set aside to do all those things, or it has to be, you know... You have to outsource it to someone who, who can run it for you, I guess. Yeah.
• 47:07
  That's a phenomenal question, and actually one I'm gonna write down 'cause I want to know the answer.
• 47:12
  If I had to guess, and I will definitely, um, follow up with you once I've dug into this a little bit more, um, I would say it's about 70/30 split on new versus repurposing.
• 47:23
  I think for us it's skewed a little bit as well because some of the new content we're producing is creative assets for other business units in Workweek.
• 47:33
  So we might have, for example, Marketing Land, our conference is coming up. They need some graphic assets or they need a video trailer to promote it.
• 47:41
  Our multimedia team will support with that, and then that's gonna skew the, the hours, um, that we have. Um, but what a great question. I actually want to figure out the answer to that. I'm not sure.
• 47:53
  You know, it's interesting because, um, we, we asked this question to many, and, uh, Tracy Wallace, uh, had a very specific answer, and I w- I, I'd have to, I'd have to double-check, but I think she said that her team spends about 40% of their time repurposing or refreshing old content, which for a SaaS company was a lot.
• 48:11
  You know, m-most are spending probably 10 or 15% of content time working on something that's not net new.
• 48:18
  But one of the many reasons that Tracy is so fantastic, and, uh, I'm sure Workweek is very glad to have her on the platform. Absolutely.
• 48:25
  I'm curious about, uh, the creators and how much knowledge sharing happens between them. You know, Tracy runs content at Klaviyo, so this is not her full-time job.
• 48:35
  Um, I would imagine that's probably the case for many of the creators. Are there weekly meetings or monthly, or is there some other way that, um, kind of experience and learnings are shared?Amongst those creators?
• 48:45
  Yeah, absolutely. So we have a regular, uh, event series called Creator All Hands, where we have experts come on and speak about their domain expertise.
• 48:54
  So we've had people from, like, Jack Raines, the Twitter troll- [laughs]...
• 48:58
  who grew up using humor in his tweet threads and finance, to, uh, David Spinks, who, uh, wrote The Business of Belonging, a book on community, talking about how to build, uh, belonging in the communities we've had.
• 49:10
  But, like, deep subject matter experts who understand some weird niche in media essentially is, uh, is kind of the mandate.
• 49:17
  Trung Phan has come on to talk about Twitter threads before and, uh, yeah, they're, they're really informative. And that's fueled our creator success team.
• 49:26
  So every creator at Workweek gets their own creator manager, and you can think of them like a kind of player coach.
• 49:32
  The creator success team is there to make their life easier and saying, "Hey, here's the deliverables you have coming up for the week. Here's how your audience growth is pacing. Here's how your podcast is doing.
• 49:40
  Here's how your revenue's doing. Here's what we are working on for the quarter." And they get these kind of health updates every single, every single week, but they're there to help with our education.
• 49:50
  So when a creator comes to us and says, "Hey, I want to learn how to do threads better," or, "I want to learn how to do podcasts better"...
• 49:55
  Like, I led a Creator All Hands back at the end of May with a good friend of mine, Michael Greenberg, on, uh, media production and how he thinks about, uh, audio, video, podcast production.
• 50:07
  He's one of the most knowledgeable people I know in the space, and so he was able to just drop some, drop some gems for the cr- well, in a kind of interactive Q&A.
• 50:14
  But creator education is really important to us, and it's important that it's a two-way street as well. Because, yes, we do learn from the creators, but, like, I want to push them to get better.
• 50:24
  I want to come to them and say, "Hey, like, here's what I'm seeing in the industry. Here's something I think we can test. Here's a format I think will work."
• 50:31
  And so it's this combination of listening to them but also providing strategic insights that I think is the bedrock for a healthy creator-operator partnership. That's great. You know, I'm just...
• 50:42
  Listening to you describe what it's like to create content at Workweek is making me a little jealous. I would... I'm assuming that some listeners I guess feel the same way.
• 50:52
  Like, to have a creator coach sort of helping you along rather than have a manager saying, like, "Why didn't you generate more MQLs last month?" [laughs] Would be such a different dynamic.
• 51:01
  I mean, I feel like there's some things to be learned here because B2B content is so much more than SEO, and I think that's where so many of us get hung up, and oftentimes kind of at the behest of management who wants to see numbers and, um, trials and demos and things like that.
• 51:19
  But there's just so much inspiration to be drawn here from, uh, sort of empowering the creators to do their very best work, to focus as tightly as they can on creating a wonderful experience for the reader or listener.
• 51:30
  And so I feel like that's probably my, my main takeaway for the SaaS marketers that are listening. Yeah. And I...
• 51:35
  To, to double-click on that, focusing on content quality, if you do build a talent-first content strategy where you're actually building up personalities within your organization, to actually take the time to check in on those qualitative milestones for that talent.
• 51:51
  So if you take Daniel Murray, Daniel joined us last year with The Marketing Millennials, targeting a kind of broad swathe of marketers. And it's very easy for me to spew numbers. Oh, we have 700K followers on LinkedIn.
• 52:03
  We're doing millions of impressions a month. His podcast is regularly top 20 in the US for marketing.
• 52:07
  Like, these stats sound great, but when I tell you that Daniel is going to Harvard to teach about marketing, followed by HubSpot Inbound to host a live podcast there, those are names that if you're in marketing, you can't dispute and you know.
• 52:21
  And that to me is a signal that his perception in the industry is rising.
• 52:26
  And so, like, being able to have lunch with Nicole last week and hear about her travels to India, her travels to Amsterdam, where she was flown out by Money20/20 Europe to speak in the Women's World Banking Conference.
• 52:36
  Like, that is really changing her life, and her career is forever changed from, from working with us.
• 52:42
  And so you can flesh out all the metrics that you want and create these kind of pretty reports, but realize that the, the personality you're building, if done right, is going to have huge reputational influence, part of which y-you can't measure in such a way and does require you to be more qualitative, and you want to make sure to feature those insights in your, in your reports and in as well 'cause ultimately, that's what moves the needle and is gonna increase your revenue per, per user over the long run.
• 53:09
  That's a great point. That's a great point. Ben, I want to be respectful of your time. Will you tell us a little bit about your podcast and where people can listen to it and what they could expect from it? Yeah.
• 53:18
  I appreciate that, Jimmy. The show is called Subject Matter. It's a podcast for creators and operators who are working in the media space, specifically for people who want to scale creators' time, money, and ideas.
• 53:29
  So I have people who are working behind the scenes like me on the show, uh, who really understand their domains. If you're gonna listen to one episode, listen to, uh, Tom Webster.
• 53:40
  Tom was the director of research at, uh, Edison Research for 15-plus years, recently joined, uh, the indie creator brand Sounds Profitable to lead their reporting and market analysis there.
• 53:52
  Incredibly dialed and just a lovely gent. So yeah, had a great conversation with him. So Subject Matter, you can get it on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen. Great.
• 53:59
  We'll make sure that we link to that for folks who want to check it out, and I imagine many will. Ben, thank you so much. It's just so great to get a different perspective on B2B content, sort of as I mentioned.
• 54:07
  There's just... There's so many different ways about this. So if there's...
• 54:11
  If I could flag one in-house SaaS content marketer listening to this is, um, look for some ways to empower your creators to do their very best work, and also audio and video, right?
• 54:22
  Like, we're all so focused on text and SEO.
• 54:24
  All of that is, by the way, changing or kind of about to change with generative AI and whatever Google ends up doing with SGE, so, you know, um, it's probably a good time to start diversifying into audio and video anyways.
• 54:37
  So, uh, but we'll make sure that we link Ben, to Workweek, to your podcast, to your LinkedIn and Twitter if that's cool, um, so that folks can follow you, kind of learn more from your expertise and, uh, thanks again.
• 54:48
  Can't, can't thank you enough. Really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. I appreciate you, Jimmy. This has been fun. Take care. [outro music]