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Is Content Theater a Good Strategy? · 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?
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  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.
• 0:57
  Today, Eric, Chloe, and I are talking about the idea of content theater.
• 1:01
  This is something that Eric brought up in Slack, and basically the idea that you could employ a content strategy that makes your company appear larger than it actually is, and sort of how you might go about that, and also why you might go about that.
• 1:13
  I will warn you ahead of time, I had some internet issues, so we'll do our best to clean all that up. And I will also add a little addendum on the end with some quick thoughts of, do people actually read content?
• 1:23
  And should you create content with the intention of people actually reading it? So stay tuned for that at the end to kind of fill in a gap of the conversation.
• 1:31
  Just also quickly wanna plug some of the stuff going on in Superpath Pro. Alex has been doing all kinds of cool stuff.
• 1:37
  One of the coolest and most interesting things he's done is created member-led interest groups called Spaces. There's four of them happening right now. They are happening for a quarter at a time. So this is all Q1 2026.
• 1:49
  In Q2, there will be new spaces with new concepts.
• 1:52
  I think this is really cool because the member-led nature of them means they have a totally different flavor than what you might find in the other channels, and they're very specific as well.
• 2:01
  So would really encourage people to go check that out. They'll be happening on a rotating basis too, so there's gonna be a lot of new things, uh, that you'll see in Slack.
• 2:08
  Alex posted on LinkedIn recently that three of the highest activity days have happened in the month of January, which I think is fantastic, and that is primarily due to the launch of these new spaces.
• 2:19
  So go check out Superpath Pro. Obviously, get a thirty-day free trial, kick the tires, see if it's for you. Superpath.co. Cool. I'll get out of the way now.
• 2:27
  Enjoy this conversation with Chloe, Eric, and I on content theater. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Content Briefly. Happy to be reunited with Chloe and Eric for another ep.
• 2:37
  We were just chatting before recording about how, like, we... each of us have, like, a bunch of things we have to do today, and so we're, like, coming up with a topic, recording the topic, gonna ship the podcast.
• 2:47
  But it's kinda like day in the life of a marketer, right? Like, there's lots to do.
• 2:51
  One of the things I like about doing a podcast is it, it kind of forces you to, like, step out of that for a second, like, kinda think a little bit bigger.
• 2:58
  You know, that thirty-thousand-foot view of, like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? And Eric, in our Slack earlier, brought up a great idea.
• 3:03
  So I'm going to now toss it over to you, Eric, to put this idea out there, and there's actually, I think, quite a bit to discuss about it. Okay.
• 3:11
  So I'm not sure if this is an extremely cold take or an extremely hot take, but I think it is a take and therefore worth discussing.
• 3:19
  So I was thinking the other day about this idea of content theater, meaning content for the sake of content to appear more legitimate as a brand, and I'll give you an example at Dock.
• 3:32
  So when we were starting out at Dock, and I was a content lead early on, I came in with this philosophy of, like, as few channels as possible, really high quality.
• 3:42
  Like, let's make sure our SEO blog thing is awesome, and let's make sure we're awesome at LinkedIn or something like that.
• 3:49
  And our founder, Alex, convinced me very quickly to say, "Actually, like, I wanna go as wide as quickly as possible just because it makes us look more legitimate as a brand."
• 4:00
  And I know that's kind of counter to prevailing advice, especially if you wanna achieve quality with a very small team on lots of channels.
• 4:08
  But the advantage that gave us is, like, when we were just starting out very tiny, like sub one million revenue, if you went and looked at our website while you were in, like, the sales process looking at Dock versus one of our competitors, and you poked around on their websites, at Dock you would've seen a blog with, like, hundreds of posts pretty quickly.
• 4:29
  You would've seen a podcast. You would've seen a newsletter. You would've seen a template gallery. Like, just lots of stuff going on just by clicking through the navigation of the website.
• 4:38
  You didn't even have to dig into any of it. If you went to our competitors, you wouldn't have seen that.
• 4:43
  And so that gives, like, I don't wanna say the illusion because there's some legitimacy there, but let's say the impression, I should say, of this is a more legitimate company just because they have this, like, large presence of content.
• 4:57
  We didn't expect people to dig into really deeply any of those channels, but just the fact that they existed, we were hoping, would just sort of make us look smart and interesting and more legitimate as a company.
• 5:09
  And so obviously, when you're a very large company with lots of resources, like, that should be your strategy. You should have, like, a big horizontal reach with your content.
• 5:18
  But I think that's counter the advice that most people get for a startup. And so I think it worked well for us.
• 5:26
  It legitimized us, or, like, people were talking about Dock's content strategy, like, before the business was successful, [chuckles] or at least I was talking about it and people were nodding their heads along with me.
• 5:35
  So I think it worked in that sense, but it does... It is hard to pull off, and it does kinda go against prevailing advice. So I'm curious what you two, how you would react to that as a strategy. I like it.
• 5:48
  I like it a lot. [laughs] I think, to me, it begs this, this related question, which is how much content do people read anyways? Honestly, like, how much B2B...
• 5:56
  Like, if I think of just myself, you know, sample size of one, but, like, I don't read hardly any B2B content. How would I even find it?
• 6:02
  I mean, honestly, it's very difficult to actually get to B2B content on a websiteI'm thinking of, like, the longer form type of content from the old days where you would like go to a website to read something that you were intrigued by.
• 6:16
  Like, that just hardly happens at all.
• 6:18
  And so because so much of the impression that customers and potential customers have of a business comes from probably algorithms, I think you're totally right that you can fake that, quote-unquote, "fake that" to a large degree.
• 6:31
  You know, like, just as a small example, we rebranded Help a B2B Writer to Mention Match recently.
• 6:37
  I made a website in like 20 minutes on Lovable, and I could have taken that a few steps further by saying like, "Write 100 blog posts on these couple of topics," you know, recorded three podcast episodes.
• 6:50
  We have some, like, tutorial style... Like, we could have made it all look... I mean, it already looked amazing relative to the amount of time that I put into it.
• 6:58
  But you could have, like, taken that a few steps further, s- sort of like you're suggesting. If we were gonna like put some more kinda like juice behind a bigger launch, which wasn't really part of our plan. But- Yeah...
• 7:08
  I think it, one, is a good strategy because it kinda like recognizes that, to a degree, why creating content is valuable in the first place, which is only partially to educate people, and two, to relay, like, whatever kind of like,
• 7:20
  yeah, whatever kind of message or brand that you wanna kinda relay to people. And I just feel like at the moment, creating content is becoming so fast and easy anyways. Like, why not try it?
• 7:33
  Like, maybe this is not a long-term thing, but maybe it's like a short-term arbitrage type of situation. Okay, sorry. You get my perspective. Chloe, I'm gonna guess that you have a different feeling. I do. Tell us.
• 7:43
  I understand it for certain situations.
• 7:46
  I think that one thing I've looked at, like for example, I was at a company, obviously, that got acquired and went through a couple different sales, and one of the things that we looked at when we were going through that process was just across the whole brand and marketing, how do we make ourselves look more legitimate and look bigger?
• 8:04
  I do think that's a legitimate piece of the argument.
• 8:07
  I will never advocate for putting out shitty or thin content, as you know, and I don't think that's what you're saying, but it's a little bit what you're saying, so I'm gonna be like, "Mm, I don't know."
• 8:17
  But anyway, but one of the things that we did was, for example, if you're a small company putting out like press releases, even if you're not putting them on the wire or you're not putting like the muscle and marketing effort behind them, it's things like that, things like strategically thinking about, like, what logos you wanna look at, what customer stories you want.
• 8:37
  You can look at your content through that kind of lens to say like, "How can we make ourselves look bigger and, you know, more legitimate?" I do think that's one approach.
• 8:47
  That does work, and that was something that our head of solutions marketing brought up to me and I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." And it's not...
• 8:55
  You can put a press release on a website, you know, and that just makes you look better to investors, to customers, et cetera. It kind of gives that legitimacy without having to put a ton of extra effort into it.
• 9:06
  So I do think that's one piece of it.
• 9:09
  I think that if you are surfacing content, like the repurposed, you know, the flywheel that we're all talking about, if you're doing that and trying to produce that at scale, it should still come from a place of quality.
• 9:22
  So I guess I wouldn't disagree with that either, right? Like, I think what I disagree with is the idea of just spinning up random acts of content to fill a template.
• 9:35
  Like, "Oh, we need at least 10 blogs on this, and we need three podcast episodes on this." Like, then you're just doing, you know, everyone calls it, like, the check- checkbox marketing or whatever.
• 9:46
  That I don't agree with. So I think I am, like, 60/40 on this. Yeah. I think you're nailing the nuance of this strategy, and I'll give you a few other examples.
• 9:57
  So there's, like, at Dock we use a webinar platform called SQL, and because of that I'm subscribed to their email updates and they're always pitching, "Here's the latest webinar.
• 10:09
  Here's the playbook that emerged from the webinar." And I don't actually attend any of the webinars and I don't read any of the playbooks, but I look at it and go, "That seems, that seems right. That seems smart."
• 10:20
  And I get one of these once every week, once every two weeks, and I have very good brand perception of SQL despite not having attended one of these web...
• 10:27
  Like, I don't know how they run a webinar, but I'm like, "They're the webinar people. I get it." And it's the, like, frequency.
• 10:33
  So the second argument I'm making here, I guess, is these, like, always on touch points that people might sometimes argue against too of, like, I mean, common marketing sense is yes, like, get in front of your audience as much as possible, have as many impressions as possible.
• 10:47
  But I think there's another argument that exists where people say, like, "Don't just send a, a weekly email because it's on the calendar." Mm-hmm. Right?
• 10:55
  Like, don't just fill the calendar for the sake of filling the calendar, and I do think there's legitimacy to that too.
• 11:01
  So I think I'm ending up in the world where I normally end up and, like, I'm arguing for, like, a little bit more quantity than some people might argue for.
• 11:09
  Like, it's okay if things are, like, MVP and just going out there and, you know, here's our webinar, here's our webinar, here's our webinar.
• 11:15
  Like, I think that's okay someti- like, I think that's fallen out of favor in maybe, like, LinkedIn commentary, but I feel myself being impacted by that kind of marketing.
• 11:23
  I mean, I think you, in that case, like you just- Yeah... see who you're marketing to and how they're engaging, right?
• 11:28
  Like, the same content thread is not gonna be right for everything, and I think I referenced this before, but it's like this is the challenge with even people that are listening to this podcast.
• 11:39
  We're stuck in this marketing bubble on LinkedIn and within our networks and everything that it's like take a step back and think about maybe that makes marketers' eyes light up, but does it actually make a difference for your audience?
• 11:54
  And, and I think that if you don't try and marry that approach with what content you're creating, how it's actually being engaged with, and what's actually moving the needle, like, in your business specifically, then I don't understand, like, why you might be, like, winning awards for the-Quantity of content that you're putting out.
• 12:13
  Not saying that you're, you're-- like, that's the direction you're going, but that's where my mind goes, right?
• 12:18
  Is it's like we're just doing marketing for the, as you said, content theater, the theatrical notion of it that like, "Oh, we're doing all of these things." Well, are you doing the right things?
• 12:28
  I still think you have to put that lens on. I was just quickly gonna say, like, when you first raised this idea, I was like, "Oh, he's talking about surround sound marketing."
• 12:37
  But there's sort of two different things happening here that I'm sort of, like, teasing out in real time. Surround sound is like just make it appear that you are everywhere. Mm-hmm.
• 12:43
  Kinda what you're talking about is make it appear that you're larger than you are, and those are two different things. I think it probably depends what type of company you are and who you're selling to as well.
• 12:52
  Like, if you're a small SaaS trying to sell to big SaaS, it would make sense that you wanna appear larger than you are.
• 12:58
  And it's, like, a very specific situation where actually, like, if you're a 12-person software company and you're trying to sell, like, enterprise deals, like, you almost have to appear larger than you are versus surround sound, which is a different thing, and there are probably various ways that any company might apply that.
• 13:12
  Yeah. Yes. That is the exact scenario that we were in, are in at Dock. We're a smaller company selling to companies bigger than us.
• 13:19
  We're actually trying to sell to companies who are bigger than they are in the most cases. So I think there's an investor angle to this too.
• 13:28
  Chloe, you sort of touched on that as well in terms of going through an acquisition that you want to appear not necessarily just bigger than you are, but, like, that you've thought three steps ahead to where you are as a company- Yeah, that's a good way to put it...
• 13:41
  to that.
• 13:42
  Like, we are a 10-person company, but, you know, we're strategic enough that we can become a 100-person, 1,000-person company, and therefore, like, if you're gonna enter into a one-year contract with us, three-year contract, whatever it is, that you have to have faith that, like, our roadmap is going in the right direction, you know, that w- our product philosophy aligns with what you're buying into, and content is a really good way to just show that legitimacy and forward thinking and then at the same time, like, sort of pull off a bit of a magic trick on, like, we can achieve something higher quality than we should be able to based on the size that we are.
• 14:19
  So I think, Jimmy, that's exactly what I was getting at when I was thinking of the concept of content theater. Can I ask each of you a question about this?
• 14:26
  Do you create content for your respective companies assuming that people are going to read it? Yes. [chuckles] Is my answer supposed to be no? [chuckles] Well, my honest take is I'm not really sure.
• 14:39
  I mean, I, I think that there is actually a content strategy that kind of accommodates what I believe is probably a fact, which is that most people aren't going to read it, and it may still have the influence that you want it to have.
• 14:51
  Eric, what do you think? Like, when you're creating dock content, are you assuming someone's on the blog reading it? Yeah. So I have two thoughts on this.
• 14:57
  One is that I'll often create content for, like, different levels of reading depth. I think I, I've talked about this in the path with respect to case studies, a really good example.
• 15:07
  Some people will only read the headline. Some people will only read the bullet points at the top.
• 15:14
  Some people will want to read the whole thing, and they'll wanna see, like, that moment that they're like, "Yes, this is the problem I'm having. This person articulated perfectly.
• 15:22
  I'm in their exact situation, therefore, this is me. I see myself reflected in this." But I try to create for all those levels of engagement if I can. So that's maybe one example of where I'm trying to achieve a lot.
• 15:35
  I think there's another scenario, Jimmy, that you're talking about of, like, creating assuming no one's gonna read it is some SEO stuff, for example, of like,
• 15:45
  y- you know, if someone lands on this blog and reads it, it's, like, a really good signal to us... Or not reads it, sorry.
• 15:51
  Lands on this blog, is a visitor on our website, we might just wanna re-target those people with ads, and that's fine.
• 15:57
  Like, if they do nothing, they don't convert, they don't take any other action, they've just sort of signaled that they're in the right world, that's enough of a win for us.
• 16:05
  Because at Dock, we're in a space where it's, like, a very narrow ICP of, like, sales enablement manager where, you know, if you've looked it up on LinkedIn, there's probably only 10,000 people with the job title or something like that.
• 16:16
  So anytime someone hand raises and says, "This is my world," then that's beneficial for us. So I'm trying to think of another... Jimmy, can you think of another scenario where
• 16:26
  you don't care if someone reads it, but it can achieve something? Well, probably if you're writing for LLMs, right? Like, that's what I'm thinking.
• 16:32
  Like, you've got, like, those footer pages, and you've got those things that you just wanna be surfaced and you just want indexed in some capacity, but it doesn't necessarily, quote-unquote, "matter" if someone reads it.
• 16:44
  Like, that's where I guess I kind of understand it, but I don't know. I always like to envision that there's a human at the end of any content that we create, or else it's just gonna be shitty content. Yeah.
• 16:55
  So I, I think LLMs is the perfect example.
• 16:58
  I mean, I'll-- What I was talking about before too, and, like, let's say my, the Dock podcast is, like, we're recording an hour episode, and at Dock for us, like, it's mostly just gonna be fodder for LinkedIn.
• 17:10
  Like, we just need a couple clips that emerge. Like, we're gonna talk for an hour, and we just hope, like, something interesting emerges that we can put in front of people.
• 17:17
  So that's another case where, like, the totality of the content maybe won't-- we don't even expect it to be consumed, but if we can pull a few highlights that get people's attention, like, that will give the brand impression we're looking for.
• 17:28
  So I think, yeah, I just think of every medium has its own, like, levels of engagement, and if I try to think of, like, if no one consumed this, will it still have value is another way- I like that litmus test...
• 17:39
  I, I try to think of things too. That's... Yeah.
• 17:41
  Like, at Dock, we made the revenue archives, which was, like, 300 sales assets that I curated from around the internet, and I was like, "Okay, this is an SEO play kind of, but also if no one ever finds it, it's also just a valuable resource for me to have that I can use for other blog posts or whatever."
• 17:58
  Like, it's a useful resource on its own, and therefore, it's worth my time to make. Like, say this play doesn't f- fall apart.
• 18:05
  You know, I, I like that perspective because, I mean, and we had a whole meta podcast on podcasts, right? It's like you don't necessarily have to. You can create an entire content flywheel from a podcast.
• 18:17
  A lot of people think that, and it makes sense for some businesses, not all. But again, it's not necessarily the totality of that content.
• 18:25
  You're not necessarily thinking, "Oh, every time we record a podcast, that means that every single-"viewer, reader is going to listen to this and read the blog and look at our LinkedIn messages and go look at the clips on YouTube, right?
• 18:38
  You're hoping that they will see some snippet of what you created. Like, that's the whole idea of repurposing content.
• 18:46
  So I do think that that's still valuable in terms of you're hoping to surface some ideas for LinkedIn, get some messages out.
• 18:55
  But then my thinking as well on that is do some larger themes come out that you then can look at and say, "Okay, well, are we gonna create, like, a blog sequence from this where we're gonna optimize against this keyword thread," right?
• 19:08
  So that's where I think content needs to compound in a way, and that starts with still thinking about the quality of content that you're actually putting out and the why behind it versus not thinking that there's a human behind it.
• 19:22
  Like, I don't think I'll ever get on board with that. [laughs] Okay. Thanks, Jimmy, for filling in the gaps here, and good conversation, Glory. Bye. Okay. Hey, folks. I apologize for my internet issues.
• 19:33
  I'm recording this after the conversation, and we'll probably just tack this on the end of the podcast.
• 19:38
  One of the things that I was really interested in related to this conversation was should you create content with the intention that someone will actually read it?
• 19:46
  And I know that sounds sort of silly, like, why would you even bother? But there's a few things here.
• 19:49
  One is that content has value far beyond whether or not someone clicks on your link, goes to your blog, and reads the article start to finish.
• 19:57
  The fact that they saw it in a newsletter, saw it in a feed, I mean, tho- that makes a very real impression on that person whether or not they click on it or not.
• 20:05
  Another is that we also live in an era now where it's very difficult to get people to websites, and we're also kind of entering this kind of summarization phase too, where, like, everybody is getting AI summaries of everything.
• 20:17
  And I think that's probably okay for the most part. I mean, there are some things that really should be read in their original format, especially longer form stuff.
• 20:26
  But I think it is safe to assume that you can create as much content as you want and a variety of different types of content. Most of it will not be read start to finish.
• 20:35
  Maybe people end up on your site, but more likely they're reading the LinkedIn kind of derivative post of it that shows up because of the algorithm, and even then they may be skimming or getting a summarized version of it.
• 20:48
  So there is still a very strong case, in my opinion, to create the long form stuff with the intention that someone will read it, understanding that you can still get value from it and maybe even achieve the same influence you were hoping to achieve, even if nobody does.
• 21:00
  It's kind of a weird thing, but I find that accepting that, or at least my belief, is that accepting that as reality sets you up for more success than, you know, painting yourself over the nuance of every word the way that we might have a couple of years ago, because the consumption experience is just so different these days.
• 21:19
  We will see you soon on another episode of Content Briefly. In the meantime, we hope to see you in Slack. [outro music]