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What is The Future of Content Marketing? · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] This episode of Content Briefly is supported by our friends at Demand Genius.
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• 1:09
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• 1:18
  I'm back with Eric today, and we are discussing the future of content marketing. And our goal here isn't to, you know, share hot takes.
• 1:26
  It's to analyze where we are right now and try to think about the future on a timescale of, you know, maybe two to three years.
• 1:33
  I feel like beyond that, it's just, like, my brain cannot comprehend what will happen between now and then at the current pace, which is probably slow compared to what the pace will be like a few years from now.
• 1:43
  So we're not gonna get too far ahead of ourselves. We're just thinking through, okay, w- how did we get here, and what are we gonna do differently over the next couple of years?
• 1:51
  Are we gonna continue to publish long-form content? Are we gonna have blogs? Should we rely exclusively on other channels we don't own, like social and organic search and LLMs?
• 2:02
  Should we try to maintain that direct relationship with readers, as so many companies have, through email newsletter?
• 2:08
  So we're talking, like, the kinda nuts and bolts of, like, what content might look like over the next couple of years. We touched on so many different things.
• 2:14
  I mean, this could've been a three-hour conversation that is obviously condensed.
• 2:18
  I think that over the next couple of episodes, Eric and I will likely pull on a few of the threads that we came across in this week's episode. Would really love two things.
• 2:27
  One, if you have feedback or ideas of stuff you wanna hear talked about, please let us know. These episodes that Eric and I are doing are pretty new still, and so we really wanna know what you think.
• 2:35
  The second is, if you do like them, and you like our interviews, and you enjoy this podcast in general, we would really appreciate a rating or review in the Apple Podcast app.
• 2:43
  The, really specifically the Apple Podcast app, and specifically a five-star rating, if you don't mind, [chuckles] assuming that you actually feel that way.
• 2:50
  It really does help us get discovered, which is something we talk quite a bit about in this episode of, you know, how do people find you, and that is one of the ways.
• 2:57
  So, you know, your rating r- and review goes a long way towards helping us reach more people. So anyways, I will get out of the way now. As always, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do too.
• 3:08
  Hey, everybody. Jimmy here from Superpath, here today with Eric. We have a really light topic to discuss today, which is what is the future of content marketing? So Eric, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw that- Easy...
• 3:19
  over to you. If you could just take that and run with it, and I'll come back in, like, 15 minutes. Yeah, I'll just vamp for 25 minutes.
• 3:25
  No, and I'm coming from my parents' basement this week, which maybe if the future of content marketing is nothing, I'll just have to live here. Yeah, just stay there. [laughs] So I'll just stay here.
• 3:35
  Yeah, I'll sell all my things and just live in this basement. Yeah, excited to talk.
• 3:39
  I generally hate making predictions because I'm normally wrong, and I like to be right in hindsight, so this is slightly uncomfortable, but I'm looking forward to the chat. Yeah.
• 3:48
  I think maybe a good place to start is that I think, can we all agree that the past is not the future? Like, let's just start there. Like, the way we've done it is not the way that we will do it.
• 3:56
  And so our goal today is not to, you know, share hot takes.
• 4:00
  It's more to, like, kinda analyze, like, where are we right now, what's working, what's not working, and then talk a little bit about, I don't know, the next two to three years.
• 4:08
  Like, this is going to change probably faster than any of us can honestly predict, and it's possible that five to 10 years from now, the way that we interact with computers is so drastically different that all of this may be a moot point.
• 4:19
  So I think maybe a shorter time horizon is helpful.
• 4:22
  And I think maybe the best place to start is this question of, this is something I've been, like, really chewing on a lot lately, is, like, what should we actually create, and how should we get it to people?
• 4:31
  It's like, to me, it's, like, the most... Maybe it's the second most basic question in content marketing. The first being, "Hey, we have a product. How should we sell it?" You know? That's the first.
• 4:40
  And if you assume that content is part of that, then it's like, well, what do we create, and how do we get it to people?
• 4:44
  And to me, that's where everything is just, like, totally in flux right now, where the answer to that question a few years ago was you create SEO content and distribute it through search.
• 4:54
  And now, while that does still work to some degree, there's a lot up in the air right now, right? Some people are saying, like, "Forget the CMS, forget the blog. Don't do it. Don't do search. Like, just focus on..."
• 5:04
  I don't know. So maybe that's where we kick off. What do you think? Yeah. And, like, I don't have a good answer for you. But I think, uh, to me, I was thinking about your question in terms of, you know, are you...
• 5:14
  In terms of different spectrums.
• 5:16
  So should we go, if you think of, like, an entertainment to education spectrum, like, does the death of SEO mean you have to get more entertainment, or, like, will educational content still exist?
• 5:29
  I think there's also thinking of the funnel.
• 5:31
  Like, will top-of-funnel content still exist, or will it just be more focused on really, like, product tutorials that can somehow, like, feed into AI, and then AI will have all the answers because they watched my video and they know what my product can do, and then when someone searches for best whatever software, it can suggest some things.
• 5:50
  So I don't have an answer in terms of, like, exact tactics, but those are kind of maybe the frameworks I'm thinking of, like, how will the future impact those kind of dimensions. Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:59
  Okay, here's a question for you. Let's say Doc is day one.
• 6:03
  Like, not only is it your first day at the company, it's the company's first day, so you, like, register the domain.You're like, "Okay, we have to figure out a way to reach people."
• 6:11
  In that scenario, do you bother starting a blog? Yeah, great question. So three years ago, when we did start the blog, most people were already saying, "No, don't do SEO.
• 6:21
  Focus more on LinkedIn, focus more on partnerships or something." And we still did the SEO route, and it has paid off. So maybe today I'm gonna say no. I could be completely wrong.
• 6:33
  Maybe SEO will still be a viable channel. It's normally, like, what are your competitors not doing, right? Yeah.
• 6:39
  But let's say in a world where SEO is gone in three years, which is a real possibility, or what SEO looks like today, I do think I would not start with blog.
• 6:48
  I would actually start first with podcast, which is kind of the second thing we did.
• 6:53
  Because to me, let's say AI gobbles up blog posts and advice type things with no person behind them, getting faces in front of cameras and getting, you know, smart people to talk to you and your brand and being able to attach yourself to people who are, like, probably own an audience somewhere already, th-that's kind of the quickest leverage to get your-- to inject yourself into the conversation or insert yourself in the conversation.
• 7:19
  And then I also think the podcast is just great fodder for everything else, right? Yeah.
• 7:23
  Like, we, we can talk together, you and I right now, and then we have something to put in our newsletter, we have something to put on LinkedIn, we have something to kinda, like, distribute everywhere.
• 7:32
  But it also helps you flesh out your ideas, and it helps you, like, think about these types of problems or what your audience care about.
• 7:38
  And so I think that's probably, like, podcast plus newsletter is probably, like, the 2025 version of the blog, I'd say. I don't know how you feel about that. Yeah. No, I like that a lot.
• 7:50
  I mean, there's a reason that Superpath has a podcast and, like, we hardly publish anything on the blog.
• 7:56
  And probably the biggest reason for me, and I think probably similar in this hypothetical scenario for Doc, is that creating content, at least historically, has been very time consuming. Mm-hmm.
• 8:05
  Like, if we're gonna create really good content, it realistically takes me an entire day to put something together.
• 8:10
  You and I can record this podcast in 30 minutes and, like, that's basically it, and then it's gonna end up in all the things we already do anyways, which I like.
• 8:17
  And those are the distribution channels that we've kinda settled on as, like, the best ways to reach people. That's sort of a, a related but somewhat separate discussion as well.
• 8:25
  But you're right that the kind of the live nature of it, the back and forth, like, you can create pretty rich stuff without the, the kinda tedious nature of content creation. And then that's it.
• 8:35
  Like, that's go- The tedious nature of content creation is sorta gone now, but depending on what you're creating, you know. So yeah, it's like, it's fast. You can reach people quickly.
• 8:43
  Although podcasts are limited, I would say, by distribution, because there isn't- Mm-hmm... like a sort of a quote unquote "governing body", for lack of a better term, that, like, rules who finds podcasts.
• 8:54
  Like, that kinda doesn't exist. So you still end up having to rely on something else to get the stuff to people. Absolutely.
• 9:01
  And I do wanna come back to the distribution point, but as you were talking, I was thinking about the friction of creating content and how content creation friction is, will be gone, right?
• 9:11
  Like, writing, writing will be instantaneous. Maybe even producing video will be instantaneous.
• 9:16
  So I think what will win in terms of content is, like, where does that friction still exist, and who can sort of, like, run towards that friction and master it. Mm-hmm.
• 9:25
  So I'm thinking, for example, like, making a case study. Even though I can make the video and write the thing, i-it's hard to get the legal approval. It's hard to get the customer to agree to it.
• 9:35
  It's hard to identify who makes a great case study. It's hard to get sales to raise their hand and say, "This is what I need to make more sales."
• 9:42
  Like, there's still gonna be all those kind of hidden friction points outside of creation that the company...
• 9:49
  Before, it was just like, who can amass the biggest-- who has the budget to amass the biggest team of writers and just plow through as much content as possible, and you'll win.
• 9:56
  Or who can make the nicest video with, you know, VC budget. But now let's say all those variables are gone. It's like, where does the friction exist, or where will the friction exist, and, like, who can run towards that?
• 10:08
  I think that's where I'm thinking of, like, what will good standout content look like. It's something in that sphere. Yeah. You know...
• 10:16
  Okay, one thing that I think sort of gets lost in this discussion, not just at this very moment between you and I, but, like, more broadly, is what do people actually wanna read or watch or listen to or consume?
• 10:27
  Like, there's so much talk about, like, essentially zero cost content, and we scale it and blah, blah, blah, but, like, why, why would anyone wanna read that or consume that?
• 10:35
  And I feel like to me, that's this giant glaring opportunity for companies who still believe that content is a viable channel for them. And, like, I believe it is- Mm-hmm...
• 10:45
  because, like, and the way I think about it mostly is, okay, you need to reach people. That's a giant problem. Okay, if not content, then what? Like, you don't have that many options of how you're gonna reach people.
• 10:54
  And so, like, if you decide on content, then there's 100 sort of variations of that, and that's where you, like, really have to understand your audience and where they live and what the mediums are like and all that good stuff.
• 11:05
  But I think it creates this, yeah, this kinda giant opportunity for different, weird, niche, experimental content that's just so different than what everybody else is doing, that people love it, and it kinda solves your distribution problem in a sense.
• 11:20
  Because, like, let's say you're gonna create SEO content. Your content, in a way, it almost has to be bad. It almost has to, because it has to follow the rules. If it doesn't follow the rules, it won't rank.
• 11:31
  And so you're constantly making sacrifices about quality so that you can optimize. Like, that's always been true. And I feel like now more than ever, we have to choose one. You know, we have to choose- Yeah...
• 11:42
  whether we will, like, create the AI food so that LLMs will mention us. Please, please, please mention us. Or it's like, just stick to the good stuff and figure out a way around search or LLMs or whatever other way.
• 11:55
  Like, there are still so many ways to reach people that are not these giant algorithms that make decisions that we have very little control over. Yeah. And there's those two branches, right?
• 12:04
  There's the LLM food that you just bury deep and don't show anyone. You have nice website architecture, but no one actually browses through your website.
• 12:13
  And then you have sort of the public-facing exciting things that people will share in their LinkedIn DMs with their peers, right? Yeah.
• 12:19
  And I think the way I'm thinking about it too is there's always going to be these two streams of people wanna grow their careers, and therefore are looking for-Sort of, evergreen's the wrong word, but business career growth type content.
• 12:34
  And so, you know, I think a lot of companies have shifted a little bit more towards that. Like, we can call it thought leadership.
• 12:40
  But really, like, I'm a content marketer, I wanna grow my career, so I listen to content briefly, and then hopefully someday they join our community and pay for a subscription. Like, that's one stream.
• 12:50
  And then you have the immediate need sort of search of, uh, I really wanna find a content community, and then you... Today you Google, tomorrow you'll ChatGPT it, and, you know, you'll still be able...
• 13:02
  There'll be that kind of discoverability to optimize for.
• 13:05
  But I think, like, this idea that, like, people won't want to consume content anymore if there's infinite content, I don't think is accurate, like you were getting at before.
• 13:14
  Be- yeah, like, there's always gonna be people that wanna grow their career. How do they do that? We're consuming videos, we're consuming courses maybe.
• 13:22
  You know, like, the format might look different, but, you know, that need is always gonna be there. Yeah, totally. Well, what do you think about the idea of an owned audience?
• 13:31
  I feel like that's kinda tied up in this whole conversation, too, of like for a long time the...
• 13:36
  Really, the motivation to create SEO content was because you could get people on your own website, and so you felt- Mm-hmm... some sort of ownership over that, and you have way more control over it.
• 13:46
  And then you have this opportunity to try to get them on a newsletter. To me, the newsletter is, like, what that means...
• 13:51
  I mean, I don't like the term own in this context, but, like, you have direct control over the subscribers on your newsletter in a way that you really don't when there's a big, giant social media platform between you and the person on the other side.
• 14:05
  So then the other question's like if you, you know, you're starting from scratch today, or, you know, most people aren't doing that. Most people are not starting from scratch.
• 14:11
  Like, how much emphasis do you put on kind of maintaining the control over your own audience versus just, you know, like, doing your best to reach people on these giant platforms
• 14:22
  knowing that y- you really don't have that much control, you cannot contact them at will, the algorithm could, you know, show your stuff or hide your stuff at its own whims.
• 14:32
  Like, does that matter to you, I guess, as someone leading content at a SaaS company? Yeah, I think it does. Like, so for our company, we have the email list generated by people signing up for our product, which is nice.
• 14:43
  Like, we are product-led growth in that sense, so we do sort of have that cheat code of people have a reason to give us their email.
• 14:50
  So at a large enough scale that we can build an email list regardless of what I do with content to get them. Obviously, they have to find us, but, you know, so that's generating emails.
• 14:59
  But then over the course of being at Doc, like, maybe my regret three years, four years into the company is not having placed more of an emphasis on, like, email capture and owned audience.
• 15:09
  I think when we started it, it sounded old school, right? Like, "Oh, don't gate that asset. No one wants to give their email to read your PDF." But [laughs] I think honestly, those things
• 15:18
  work if the value is enough on the other side. And so now we've started to do more things like we are launching more of a true newsletter.
• 15:26
  And on our blog, when you get there, it does have the pop-up sign up for our newsletter. And, you know, those things I think I would've written off a few years ago are coming back in a way.
• 15:36
  And the way I think about it is like, where can people subscribe to us that is just a linear feed that they control their own... Like, they control everything that's in that feed.
• 15:45
  And right now, the two places I can think of are email and their podcast feed, right?
• 15:51
  Like, those aren't algorithmically ba- Email is starting to have more filters in that way or more AI capabilities, but for the most part, like, those are the only two things I...
• 16:00
  Maybe I'm missing something, and you can correct me, but those are the only two things that are not algorithm based.
• 16:05
  So even if they followed us on social media or whatever, they're, they're never gonna see posts from Doc. And so to me, I'm like, what are all those channels that are linear?
• 16:13
  If new things come up, like, new channels come up, I'm gonna think, "How much control do I have over that?" To allow the audience to, like, set their own subscriptions, right, or, and what they actually see. So- Yeah.
• 16:25
  Yeah, so, like, it definitely matters, and I wanna be in those feeds. I don't know, what are your thoughts on the owned audience thing? Maybe in the context of Superpath too, 'cause it's a different business model.
• 16:34
  Like, maybe a community is a really good example of an owned audience, right? Where someone signs up for our Slack and then sort of lives in there, and now we have that communication channel.
• 16:44
  I don't know if there's any other- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for Superpath, I mean, the business was never meant to be a unicorn, so, like, the scale- Mm-hmm... isn't that important.
• 16:54
  And so, like, within those constraints, I want direct communication with the audience. Like, I'll take a smaller email list over a 10X LinkedIn reach anytime. Mm-hmm. You know?
• 17:05
  Well, actually, like, literally last week I spent two days writing a content upgrade to get more newsletter subscribers.
• 17:11
  So, like, now I've changed all the copy on the website, there's a new pop-up, and it's all geared towards trying to get more newsletter subscribers. Like, that's what I want. Mm-hmm.
• 17:18
  And, uh, does that make sense for every business? I don't know. I mean, I think, yeah, you want an email list. Like, is it your main thing? Maybe, maybe not.
• 17:23
  Yeah, but I would take that, I would take that any day over being, like, a LinkedIn, you know, super influencer or whatever [laughs]. You know? Like- Yeah. I mean, part of that is, like, my own bias.
• 17:34
  Like, I'm so sick of LinkedIn. Like, I'm truly burnt out from it. I do not like it.
• 17:38
  And I just feel like it has just become a feed of algorithm-optimized dreck, and I, like, can't imagine that people are gonna continue wanting to go there.
• 17:48
  And then it's just a matter of, like, the next thing will start to emerge, and everyone will jump on that instead. Mm-hmm. That's my guess. Sorry, I'm getting a little bit away from the root of your question [laughs].
• 17:57
  Yeah. But I feel like this broader question of, like, what is the future of content marketing, there's just so many components to it.
• 18:02
  I find it a little difficult to think about it in a single lane, because my mind starts branching out into all these kind of related topics which are gonna influence it. So- Mm-hmm...
• 18:10
  a- anyway, I apologize for my rambling. But I do think we talked about distribution before, because the owned audience is obviously more beneficial than an algorithm-based audience.
• 18:21
  But getting people into that funnel is the challenge, right? Or onto- Yeah... that subscription list. You can find them in the first place. How do you... Yeah. Yeah. How do you distribute to those people?
• 18:30
  And so before that was SEO was a major channel. That's maybe...Going away or less than it was before. So then what we're really talking about is it's a distribution challenge, like how do you get in front of audiences?
• 18:42
  And so there's some like little interesting tools that pop up. Like one thing we're looking at Doc for our newsletter is, yeah, okay, we want people on the newsletter, but how do we get that in front of people?
• 18:51
  We were experimenting with a tool like Beehiiv or Substack where, like for Beehiiv, you can like pay to be mentioned in other people's newsletters. Right.
• 18:59
  So like there's already these people who subscribe to newsletters, they're more primed to want to read this kind of thing.
• 19:05
  And so you're just putting some budget behind it to get that distribution, and you can sort of kickstart that. Like- Yeah... we haven't launched that, so who knows if that works or not.
• 19:13
  But that's the kind of thing of like is paid just going to be a natural thing that you have to do to get people into your own channel?
• 19:20
  And when you do have like the email sign up at the end of it, like you have an ad and it sends someone to an email sign up, like does that make putting budget behind something more worth it than...
• 19:31
  You know, I'd probably never pay to advertise a blog post. But if there's some sort of email capture, then yeah, then you're just talking about traditional sort of advertising, right?
• 19:39
  And so I just wonder if that's the world that we move maybe back into as a way of thinking about it, that I'm paying to advertise and then I have some offer for you that's interesting at the end, and then I get your email and then I do things with that email.
• 19:52
  Yeah. Yeah, that's... Well, June 1st 2020 was the day I started... That was the day I started working on Superpath full time. Mm-hmm. So that's, I think we'll publish this on June 2nd 2025. It was five years ago.
• 20:03
  And the first thing I did was I went on Twitter, this is when Twitter still let you post links, and I said, "I, I left my job and I'm gonna start this company.
• 20:09
  If you wanna stay in the loop, here's a link to sign up and I'll send you the newsletter." And 350 people signed up, and that was it. Like, that's how it started. And if
• 20:19
  I couldn't do that today because no social platforms let you share links, then I would pay for it. Yeah. I would gladly pay to get those emails to get things rolling.
• 20:27
  You know, and if you could get, if you could build a list of 500 or 1,000 people, like, I don't know, I think you're off to the races at that point. Yeah. And so that's the easy answer of like pay for distribution.
• 20:36
  But I guess I don't know what the world looks like outside of that other than, you know, you also have to have the audience that you don't own. Yeah, that's true. I'm kind of... Yeah.
• 20:44
  [laughs] Like it's, you just have to live in this uncomfortable world of no clicks on content, no clicks from SEO, no clicks from your social posts, and you just have to try to occupy some amount of mind share.
• 20:55
  And that's really- Yeah...
• 20:56
  uncomfortable because like you and I grew up in a world where you have your SEO report, you have your graph, you have the line going up, and until we have some advancements in AI technology, we're not gonna have the mind share graph that says, "You know what?
• 21:08
  30% of CEOs know we exist in our field-" Right... just because of our po-" Like, that's not going to exist, but that's something we're gonna have to be more comfortable with.
• 21:17
  I think that there's, uh, kind of an underlying thing here, which is that brands, both companies and individuals, develop durability over time.
• 21:28
  And what I mean by that is like the reason that I could go on Twitter and post a link and 350 people would sign up for this newsletter was because I had been working that channel for almost 10 years.
• 21:38
  And so if there's truly nothing and you're actually starting from scratch, this is a really different conversation. So it's like there always...
• 21:45
  I guess it's kind of making me rethink exactly what I'm saying, which is like you actually do have to play some of these games to have enough visibility to get the thing you want when you want it.
• 21:53
  Otherwise, you just pay for everything, I guess. Yeah. Exactly. And that's kind of you build the audience over time, and then you commercialize that audience eventually, right? [laughs] I think that's how it works.
• 22:02
  That's on... Like my personal LinkedIn strat...
• 22:04
  Like if I'm thinking of a freelancer listening to this, when I was starting to post on LinkedIn as just Eric and not Doc or whoever I was working for, I had no strategy whatsoever other than do things I think people would find interesting.
• 22:18
  And that might become more of a model that businesses have to adapt to, right? Like just I was saying, "Here's what I'm working on today. It's, you know, here's an Airtable workflow. Here's a blog I edited."
• 22:30
  Just sort of random acts of content, honestly. Yeah. And then I was able to... You could tell what people were interested in, people are engaging with it.
• 22:38
  It was very personal and, you know, I think it sounds ridiculous to say have...
• 22:43
  I'm not saying don't have a plan, but I'm saying just like kind of having fun and experimenting and throwing things out there, it created an audience for me very quickly.
• 22:51
  And then I was able to leapfrog into things like being on this podcast with you, managing the Superpath community. Like I just by throwing
• 22:59
  interesting, relevant things to me into the world, that's sort of where I ended up. And so for a freelancer, I think that's easier to do, and there's lots of freelancers now. But for in terms of like- Yeah...
• 23:09
  B2B content, I wonder what the equivalent of that is, right? Yeah. I think that there's so many things. I think that if you're a company and you have a good story to tell, like you'll figure out- Yeah...
• 23:18
  how to tell it, and you'll probably tell it- Yeah... all over the place. And like you're gonna figure it out, you know? And I feel like it, the, it's harder though if you don't have a story to tell.
• 23:25
  You know, at that point- Yeah... I was like, I was actually just thinking about the episode from a few weeks ago with Kevin Lee and Shannon Diep from Bonfire.
• 23:32
  They're branding strategists and like that's their bread and butter is like helping companies understand like what is our story and how do we tell it.
• 23:37
  It's not how do we write LinkedIn posts that reach the most people, it's like how do we develop something worth saying. And I feel like a lot of companies are gonna end up having that need- Mm-hmm...
• 23:46
  to figure out like what is our story. Can I share the country music analogy? Absolutely. All right. This might be too far-fetched. Jimmy just wanted to talk about country music, and so I'm letting him. [laughs] Yeah.
• 23:57
  Okay. I do feel like there's something going on here.
• 23:59
  So like I'm not like a hardcore country music fan, but I listen to it, and there's something that's happened over the last, I don't know, I don't know how many years, a decade, maybe more than that, where country music has, in my personal opinion, it's deteriorated.
• 24:10
  It's just become very formulaic. And so like if you turn on the radio and, you know, you rotate the dial till you get to the country music station, like what you're gonna hear is, in my opinion,
• 24:20
  loosely analogous to what you see in a SERP if you search for like a very top-of-funnel query.
• 24:28
  Like if you search for what is content marketing and you find a bunch of SEO dreck, that is roughly equivalent to what you get on a country music radio station.
• 24:37
  Like top 40 country has become so formulaic that it actually does-Kinda feel like ChatGPT wrote it. But in the meantime, there's...
• 24:47
  I mean, you can't even call it a subgenre because it's so massive, but there's tons of really great country artists who don't get airtime, who find distribution through Spotify or YouTube or, you know, Bandcamp or k- wherever else they're able to reach people, who are incredible musicians.
• 25:02
  And probably the main differentiator between those folks and the ones who end up on Top 40 Country is that the artists make art, you know? And the Top 40 folks, they follow the rules.
• 25:13
  They understand the algorithm, and they exploit it to get broad listenership, and most of that stuff can't be... It can't be art because it's too weird. It's too different, right?
• 25:23
  So it doesn't, like, fit what that huge, broad range of people wants, right? That's kinda more like a lowest common denominator approach. Mm-hmm.
• 25:31
  Anyways, I just think that there's, like, this whole world that's gonna develop where, like, a bunch of companies are gonna chase the Top 40 hit, and they're gonna follow all the rules that OpenAI or Anthropic or Google lay out for us as marketers.
• 25:43
  I feel like that's one of the big issues in marketing right now is we're all like, "Well, where's the rules? We'll follow them, but we don't know what they are yet."
• 25:49
  And I feel like we need to forget that and follow the other route, the indie route, you know? We're gonna create stuff. We're gonna understand our story. We're gonna tell it.
• 25:58
  We're gonna find readers in whatever way ends up making the most sense for us. Don't know what that is yet. Maybe you do. I don't know.
• 26:03
  But it's like the point is tell the story, make it weird, make it interesting, and, like, you're gonna find people, and people will find you if you do that. So is that too much of a... I mean, yeah.
• 26:14
  [laughs] Listen, I hope I didn't hurt people's ears with my round of applause. I have goosebumps. I have goosebumps, Dave.
• 26:20
  [laughs] My hope for content marketing is that that's what happens, is, like, let the people who wanna chase the hits, just let 'em go. It's fine.
• 26:26
  They're gonna end up spending so much money and wasting so much time in the end. And, like, if you, like, just get back down to basics, like, we need to reach people. How are we gonna do it?
• 26:34
  Let's do something AI can't do. Let's create stuff that people actually do want. Like, you'll figure out the details from there. Yeah. Incredible.
• 26:41
  And I do think that goes back to what I was saying about content that feels more like play or, you know, experimental or- Yeah... I think there's gonna be...
• 26:50
  Yeah, I think there's gonna be some big winners who try to do big swings, and it's almost a blessing. I don't want it to sound negative that, like, SEO is going away.
• 26:59
  I think it's a blessing that there's almost this blank slate.
• 27:02
  You know, like you said, there will be new rules, but we don't know those rules yet, and if we don't know what game we're playing, we don't know the rules to that game, and some people are gonna come on top with some very creative approaches.
• 27:13
  It's more exciting to me than scary. I know, like, it's... Uncertainty is scary, but I think it's exciting uncertainty. For sure. For sure.
• 27:20
  The one thing I do expect that will happen is, like, someone's gonna come along, and they're gonna be the HubSpot of this era. Mm-hmm.
• 27:26
  Where it's like they will invent the inbound marketing of the next 10 years, and a bunch of people are gonna be like, "Oh, that's it."
• 27:34
  And, like, just, like, the warning I will share now is that's probably not it, you know? Yeah.
• 27:39
  It's like that's one company figuring out a thing that works well for them, and I think we're all gonna be really careful not to all follow the same playbook, as so many of us have.
• 27:47
  Raising my hand, like, 100%, I, I did this, you know, doing the same thing that we all have just finished doing.
• 27:54
  So anyways, I think there is, like, a potentially, like, very, like, exciting future in content, albeit a very different one. For sure, with much fewer, much less country music, I hope. Formulaic country music.
• 28:04
  [laughs] Yeah, we don't want that stuff. I also... We should recommend the MKT1 newsletter, which we didn't even get to talk about in this episode.
• 28:11
  This morning, as we record this, May 28th, Emily Kramer published a really fantastic blog post this morning about, "Is the blog dead?" And it's like, yeah, yeah, okay, we've all... Is SEO dead? Is this thing dead?
• 28:22
  Whatever. It... This is actually great. It's a really good article, and covers some of the same topics. It's related to what we discussed today.
• 28:29
  But I'll put the link in the show notes because I felt that her analysis of it was totally spot on. Oh, it was a great newsletter. Yeah, I read every single one.
• 28:36
  Yeah, I just, like, instantly just, whenever I get it, I just publish it in the reading list channel. So maybe I should just make a- Yeah...
• 28:42
  Zapier automation that just does that for me because they're alway- like, every single one she puts out is really good. So anyways. All right, should we promote some stuff? Let's do it.
• 28:51
  Speaking of LinkedIn, I, I mean, when this comes out, when, you said June 1st, June 2nd? Yeah, June 2nd. I guess we should prepare for these things. I'm gonna be hosting a 30-day LinkedIn challenge through Superpath.
• 29:02
  Why I'm doing it is because I actually do learn a lot, and I meet lots of cool people every time I post a bunch on LinkedIn, and I feel like everyone's knows they probably want to, probably should, and doesn't.
• 29:12
  And I didn't even ask your permission to do this. I'm sorry for making people post on, on LinkedIn. [laughs] The thing that I hate most. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
• 29:19
  I think the reason I don't like LinkedIn is because I consume too much, and I don't create enough. And I feel like the thing you're doing is encouraging people to create, and that is very powerful. Yeah, so that's fun.
• 29:28
  And then I guess we have some other events coming up. Yeah, we've got, yeah, book club ongoing right now. It's not too late to jump in and still read the book in time for the meeting.
• 29:37
  June 5th, we have a webinar with Tom Rudnay from Demand Genius. We're gonna be talking about content attribution. The, the summary of that is how to prove content works so you can keep doing it.
• 29:47
  And Tom sent me the slides already. They're really good. Like, I don't know how we're gonna cover all this stuff in an hour. There's just, like, so much good stuff to talk about.
• 29:54
  And then, as always, 30-day free trial on Superpath Pro. So if you wanna come hang out in Slack, come hang out with us, see if it's a good fit.
• 30:01
  You also get the monthly one-on-ones, the monthly group calls, courses and content, book club, what, co-working sessions twice a week.
• 30:08
  Like, there's a lot in there, so we would love if you come kick the tires and let us know what you think. Yeah, and for our next Superpath Social, we're trying to ban discussion of AI.
• 30:16
  [laughs] I don't, I don't even know what people are gonna talk about, but it normally dominates the conversation, rightfully so, but I... It'll be interesting to see what people talk about when they can't talk about AI.
• 30:25
  Yeah, yeah. It's gonna feel... I don't know. It should be fun. I feel like it'd be a good, like, creative constraint. Like, okay, what, like, what else? There's so much else going on, too, so. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:34
  Thanks, Eric. Appreciate you as always. Thanks, everyone, for listening, and we'll see you next time. See you, folks. All right. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in.
• 30:41
  If you don't mind, we would really appreciate a rating and review in the podcast app that you're currently listening to. Goes a long way towards helping us reach new people.
• 30:49
  And send us feedback, podcast@superpath.co will come directly to Eric and I. So if you have ideas, you know, constructive criticism, et cetera, send it our way.
• 30:57
  As I have mentioned before, Eric and I are shooting to do these episodes every other week, interspersed with the interviews that we normally do. So stay tuned.
• 31:04
  We'll have more discussion between Eric and I, and potentially a third co-host soon, as well as, you know, the content leaders that we'd like to bring in to kinda understand, like, what's happening in their world.
• 31:13
  So thanks very much for listening, and we'll see you next time. [outro music]