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Are Employees Your Next Distribution Channel? · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Hey, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Today, Eric and I have our friend Chloe Thompson join us.
• 0:13
  Not really an interview, she's just a friend of Superpath, and we wanted to bring her on to get some new voices on the show.
• 0:18
  We plan on doing more of this kinda thing in the future, so definitely let us know what you think. We definitely had fun, though, and thank you, Chloe, for making time to do it.
• 0:24
  Today, we're talking about something that I feel like comes up a lot in various forms, and so the, kind of the gist of it is, okay, content distribution is getting a lot more difficult.
• 0:32
  More companies are relying on individuals to create and distribute content. So what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of founders and CEOs do thought leadership on LinkedIn or they write kinda essay-style blog posts.
• 0:45
  There are other versions of this where companies are actually investing in individuals and elevating their voices, potentially even above the brand's voice.
• 0:53
  So it kinda feels like a side project, but it's actually funded by the business.
• 0:57
  Then there's this whole idea of, you know, internal subject matter experts who either have side projects or kinda develop enough chops and visibility that it creates a tension between them and the company.
• 1:08
  Like, should they stay at their job or do they have more potential, you know, to earn more by going out and doing the creator role?
• 1:14
  And these are in some ways distinct things, but there is an overlap here because I think a lot of companies are trying to sort through, how do we do this?
• 1:22
  For example, LinkedIn is never going to give our brand post visibility. It's gotta be people. Then who are the people? Should they be employees? Should we rent audiences from creators?
• 1:32
  Should we try to build up our own creators?
• 1:34
  Like, there's a whole thing going on here right now, and so, you know, this is one of those episodes that's, like, not really about AI, but it's still very much in the current moment.
• 1:42
  This is a problem a lot of companies are having. And so we try to give a bunch of examples, and I will be linking to all of these people in the show notes.
• 1:49
  So as we talk about them, you can quickly go check out their stuff on LinkedIn as well. Okay. Quick plug for Superpath Pro. We have lots going on. One thing I will let you know about is the September LinkedIn Challenge.
• 2:00
  So you'll get this episode probably Monday, August 25th, and a week later we'll be starting our September LinkedIn Challenge where we'll be starting a thread every day encouraging people who wanna participate to post on LinkedIn every day, share their posts.
• 2:13
  We'll help each other kinda liking and commenting. We'll be feeding people ideas of things to write about, and then we'll be reporting on what we're finding, too.
• 2:20
  Uh, what we found when we did this back in June was that people who were posting very regularly were getting way more impressions, and actually many people reported that they were, in the freelance space I should say, were getting new business out of it as well.
• 2:32
  So we're gonna be doing that again. You know, among the many other benefits of being a pro member, that's a pretty fun one. You can learn all about the membership at superpath.co. I'll get out of the way now.
• 2:42
  As always, I really enjoyed this episode, and I hope you do, too. Hey, everybody. Jimmy from Superpath here today with another episode of Content Briefly. Got Eric here, as we so often do, and we have a new guest.
• 2:52
  Actually, no, not guest, friend. Friend/cohost, Chloe Thompson. Chloe and I, we used to work together back in 1975 when we first got into content marketing, like a million years ago. Feel older than this.
• 3:04
  [laughs] Uh, no. We should talk... Actually, well, it was though, right? It was, like, print magazines. [laughs] You know? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 3:10
  Yeah, reintroduce yourself, Chloe, and then we should just talk briefly about the type of work we were doing, you know, really I guess that was, like, 13-ish years ago. Oh my God, you're aging me.
• 3:19
  Super excited to be here. Thanks, Jimmy. So hi, I'm Chloe Thompson. I started out in editorial at a content marketing agency, shout out to J School grad, and moved over to marketing about a decade ago.
• 3:31
  Since then, I've been on the B2B SaaS side of things leading content strategy at numerous organizations, including Reward Gateway, which became a tech unicorn during my tenure.
• 3:40
  So right now I'm doing some freelance work, but I'm very actively looking for my next role, so my DMs are open for you hiring managers. Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on.
• 3:48
  Our idea is to bring on more friends, more as, like, cohosts to talk shop with us, you know, get new voices, new perspectives. Before we do that, 'cause we do have a good topic for today.
• 3:56
  So Chloe and I worked together at an agency called TMG Custom Media based in DC. So we actually worked in an office together, which just, it seems so long ago. What's that?
• 4:07
  But, yeah, I know, like- We were able to actually look at each other in person. It's wild. Yeah, crazy. Like, took the Metro. Did you take the Metro to work? Like... Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I lived in Crystal City, so...
• 4:16
  Yeah, yeah. I commuted from... I was right outside the city. Yeah.
• 4:19
  Just seems like so long, and then we were working, not everybody on the team was working on print magazines, but the agency had been around for probably 30 years when we were there.
• 4:26
  And that was why I joined, because, this is really gonna age me, I saw an ad in Craigslist for an editorial intern that was basically distilled into work on a bunch of different magazines.
• 4:40
  And I was like, "Hey, I could be a magazine editor. That sounds fun." And that was why. I didn't even know what content marketing was. [laughs] That's so interesting.
• 4:49
  You know, I actually, I ended up there also from a Craigslist ad.
• 4:52
  And I was leaving a job at a company that did SEO for lawyers, and I was looking for something new, and I actually got a job to do marketing for an accounting firm, and I wasn't that excited about it.
• 5:03
  Then I saw this ad, I got the interview, I got the job, and then I had to call the accounting folks and tell them I wasn't gonna do it.
• 5:09
  But it was, like, such a positive turn because what ended up happening is at that time at TMG, there was just, like, this collection of amazing people. Mm-hmm.
• 5:17
  Like, people, uh, I probably think of, like, seven or eight people that, like, I still keep up with today. They're really, really sharp content minds, and this was, like, kinda early for the digital world.
• 5:28
  I mean, in this context, right? There's a lot of, like, associations and professional trade groups and things like that who were trying to go online.
• 5:35
  So it was really cool to have that experience and work with people who were, like, very, very seasoned editors who- Yeah...
• 5:41
  to them, content marketing was sort of a new concept, but to us it was really cool to learn from people who had been doing this, like, telling great stories and caring a lot about the craft for a long time.
• 5:51
  Yeah, I agree.
• 5:52
  I always say, like, I grew up on stories and not SEO, and I think, like, I credit that to my time at TMG because that was just how I was like, "Oh, okay, this whole concept of content marketing, I can just work for an organization that does something that I believe in, that I'm passionate about, and then I can design the content that gets created by them.
• 6:12
  Like, that's cool." And that's how-Basic it was to me at that point in time, and then obviously it's evolved so much since then. But yeah, I feel like we were extremely lucky to kind of grow up there. Totally.
• 6:26
  It was good times, really good times. Except when the red- Shout out to John Jane and Richard. Thanks. Yeah, totally. They were als- you have the husband and wife couple. Yeah.
• 6:32
  [laughs] Like, ran the company for 30 years, had the Christmas party at their house. Like, it was really a cool place to work.
• 6:36
  Except when the red line was single tracking, then it would take, like, two hours to get home. I don't miss that. [laughs] Yeah. That was- That happened a lot... awesome. So.
• 6:44
  [laughs] Well, so there was something we were gonna chat through today, which was actually a bit of a follow-up from the last episode where Eric and I were talking about content roles of the future, and Stuart Hillhouse, I was gonna say from Mutiny, but he works at Storyarm now.
• 6:57
  I dropped a comment on my LinkedIn about a role that he kinda like loosely called, like, the personality role. Like, who will be the face of companies?
• 7:04
  And I feel like there's, like, so many things under the umbrella of personalities that are worth discussing a little bit. So there's the one version where the founder or CEO is the face of the company, and that's great.
• 7:16
  Then there's the other world where the founder or CEO doesn't wanna be the face, or they wanna bring in more people, and then what?
• 7:23
  And I think at the root of this conversation is probably the tension between elevating people within the organization, and sort of who gets the credit for it. You know what I mean?
• 7:31
  Like, do the individuals end up, you know, sort of earning a reputation on their own that would ultimately probably attract them out of the company? Or does the company benefit more because they elevate more voices?
• 7:42
  It does... I feel like we need a name for this idea. Maybe we'll land on one by the end of this episode. But I feel like you see this type of thing all over the place. So maybe Eric, can we start with you? At Dock,
• 7:52
  how do you all handle this? Like, Alex, the founder and CEO, is, like, pretty out there. Like, you see him on LinkedIn all the time. You know what I mean?
• 7:59
  Like, he might not be writing thought leadership blog posts, but like, he's very visible. How deliberate is that? Do you guys talk about that as a strategy? Are there other people doing it?
• 8:07
  Yeah, so I mean, at Dock, I think we have kind of the bread and butter founder, thought leader, face of the company strategy, where I'm lucky in that he was a marketer, so he was a- Mm...
• 8:18
  VP of marketing at Lattice, first marketing hire there, so he can kind of do this on his own without me.
• 8:24
  But then he's a founder with very little time, and so I think that's kind of a very standard situation, where you have the skilled founder who knows what to say, but they're being pulled in a million directions.
• 8:35
  So my job is basically to keep him on track. [laughs] So it's like, "Hey, Alex, you haven't posted in a while," or, "Alex, would it be helpful for you if I wrote some posts up?"
• 8:46
  So we actually do kind of a mix of he'll have an- a couple hours on a plane and just write a whole bunch of LinkedIn posts and thoughts, or he'll do a webinar somewhere else, and I'll sort of take that webinar and write things in his voice and take things he actually said and spoonfeed him posts where I'm, like, ghostwriting for him, but they're actual things he said.
• 9:08
  So we're doing kind of the mix of when he has capacity, he does his own content, and then when he doesn't, he's pulled into product things, 'cause I actually think it's a better use of his time than doing marketing, then I'm writing the posts.
• 9:20
  And I think he's actually kind of our main... His LinkedIn is our main distribution channel other than SEO- Oh, interesting... for our content. Because, I mean, reach on a brand page is almost nothing on LinkedIn. Yeah.
• 9:32
  Versus if you're posting as a person who has, like, an established network of sort of trusted people already in the startup world and in the space we're working in, then it gives us, like, a much better distribution channel to go through him and go through his face.
• 9:46
  And pulling back the hood on that, Eric, because I've noticed your promoted post in my feed. Yes, I do those too.
• 9:52
  So you're also attaching money to it as well, and like, really investing in it, which I think is really interesting.
• 9:58
  I don't know how many people are actually attaching dollar spend to it, or rather than expecting it to just happen organically. So, like, I'm curious how you made that decision to put dollars behind it.
• 10:09
  Yeah, I mean, for the same reason that going through a founder, like, brings some legitimacy and authenticity, it felt like with a limited ad budget, why not put money behind organic posts that already have real engagement, real comments, real, like, real customers commenting on them, going, "Wow, I love the ox with it," right?
• 10:26
  Like, we kind of wait for things to pop off a little bit and go, "Ooh, people seem to engage with that. Let's put $100 behind that post," or, "Let's put $1,000 behind that post." Yeah.
• 10:35
  And we have LinkedIn posts now that are a year old that we still just boost [laughs] and get a comment every once in a while on them and go, "Oh, I guess Alex must have boosted that one."
• 10:44
  And it's worked really well, sort of the organic plus paid play. Well, I am so glad you brought that up, because I see Alex's posts in my LinkedIn also. [laughs] And- Excellent. Yeah. It's working, Eric.
• 10:55
  [laughs] Well, I find it interesting, because okay, so you put the time and effort into making the post, right? And like, Eric, you're a full-time employee there. You're fairly senior as well.
• 11:04
  Like, it's not like Alex is paying someone f- you know, 50 bucks to write these.
• 11:09
  Like, there's a lot of care and thought going into it, and then you throw it out on LinkedIn, and just, like, depending on which way the wind's blowing, it gets picked up or it doesn't.
• 11:18
  And you don't really know, you know? Like, it- a good post doesn't guarantee that it gets seen by people.
• 11:24
  So that's interesting that you're putting money behind it to essentially guarantee or sort of take the early signal and run with it. Totally. But Alex does that himself.
• 11:32
  Yeah, it's a mix of he does the boosting himself- Okay... just 'cause he's a marketer and can do it, and he's got the- Yeah... credit card attached to the account. He probably likes it.
• 11:39
  Yeah, yeah, he's one of those CEOs who loves doing that, like, just being like, "Oh, I ran 5K of ads this weekend." You go, "Oh, cool. Nice." [laughs] "Hopefully that works out and I get the credit." So. [laughs] Right.
• 11:51
  I wonder, I feel like if you could peel back the layers of LinkedIn, how many people actually write their own stuff versus have it ghostwritten for them, you know? I bet it's... I don't know.
• 12:00
  I bet it's more than 50% of the stuff you see is ghostwritten. Almost every content lead role I've seen posted in the last year mentions something about founder ghostwriting or, like, that realm of thing.
• 12:12
  You guys have a, the PayPal job description, right, that's, like, literally just-Content for the CEO. And I think- Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah.
• 12:23
  It's a position that was paying, you know, upper 200K or something like that.
• 12:28
  I mean, I'm sure it's down now, but I think it's really interesting that people are kind of turning the tide and investing in founder-led and CEO-created content.
• 12:38
  Jimmy, I know you wanted to touch on this, but, like, I think it's difficult to put all your eggs in one basket, but I do think that's the easiest and the most challenging thing to do because I feel like founders and CEOs have a lot of opinions, so that can be kind of challenging sometimes to shape it to where you need to be.
• 12:54
  So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting because, like, clearly there's value in elevating many voices, but then, like, how do you actually do it? Like, it kind of...
• 13:02
  I feel like it's a relatively easy case for the founder to make for themselves. It's like, "Go write for me and we'll boost it."
• 13:08
  You know, it's harder because it, like, whatever benefit their own personal brand gets flows almost directly to the company versus as you elevate other individuals, that's where that tension arises.
• 13:21
  And I follow May Habib on LinkedIn. She's a good follow. She's the CEO of Writer, and she's been sharing this substack, which caught my attention, from their director of product management.
• 13:30
  His name is Matan Paul Schetrit, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and his substack is really good.
• 13:36
  And he's, like, a very high-level employee at an extremely well-funded AI company, and it got me thinking, "Ah, somehow I feel like this is not a side project." Mm.
• 13:45
  This is funded by the company and is a very deliberate attempt to elevate this individual because they obviously are, like, very senior, tons of subject matter expertise, probably, like, a nice overlap with the audience they're trying to reach.
• 13:55
  Like, PMs tend to be, like, kind of right in the middle of AI adoption, I would imagine, for a lot of the companies that Writer wants to reach. You can't, like it's too... I don't...
• 14:05
  From the outside, you can't, like, untangle all of that. Like, I don't really know. But then it has me wondering, like, well, what happens to the substack subscribers?
• 14:12
  Like, is someone on the sales team mining that and enriching the data and d- kind of doing the whole sales thing? Is it protected? Maybe they're just trying this out.
• 14:22
  Sorry, I'm just rambling now because these are all the thoughts I have when I see this. Like, maybe they're just testing it out and, like, they don't know yet, you know.
• 14:28
  Or maybe the- No, I definitely think a through line for that makes a lot of sense. Like, how are you actually nurturing and enriching the data and reaching those people?
• 14:34
  But I would also say that when you get past the founder or CEO for sort of elevating the subject matter expertise, it makes me think of what...
• 14:44
  and I have no idea, I don't know the strategy behind Writer, but it makes me think of, like, what could the business future goals be?
• 14:52
  Like, if you're trying to be seen as, you know, you're gonna be launching this incredible product and you wanna be seen as ahead of the curve and, like, innovative, you wanna put your product leaders on that pedestal and give them that voice because it's like, "Hey, look, we have world-class talent working for us."
• 15:08
  And so it sort of creates more of a trusted audience in different ways than just, like, what your core persona might be.
• 15:15
  So I think part of it is thinking about, like, what do you actually want your company to be known for besides the thing that you are offering to the market?
• 15:24
  So almost thinking about, like, the personal attributes of your company, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
• 15:29
  And I'll, I'll throw in there because you said you don't know s- what Writer is or the strategy behind Writer. Like, they're basically AI for enterprise.
• 15:36
  And so- Well, I don't know the business strategy behind Writer- Yeah, the business- But I've seen... I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:40
  But so, like, I think what you said is directly on the nose there of, like, there's this trust and skepticism they have to overcome of, like, letting AI into, like, all areas of the business. Mm-hmm.
• 15:51
  And if it's, like, we have these really forward-thinking product people who have thought these things through, like, it builds... it breaks down a lot of those, like, sales barriers or objections.
• 16:01
  And so I, yeah, I totally think it helps build the brand as, like, a trusted authority in the space for sure.
• 16:07
  As a small tangent, I find it very interesting when AI companies do things like this, like, clearly editorial human written content. Like, Anthropic recently posted... There, I think there was two roles.
• 16:19
  There was, like, a director of editorial and there was another high-level content role to do, you know, human written content.
• 16:26
  I mean, these roles also pay, like, an insane amount of money and probably just got an unbelievable number of applicants, which is interesting though.
• 16:31
  Like, Writer isn't only running the playbook that they probably are selling to the customers. Like, they're developing, like, a, you know, like, a more diverse marketing portfolio also. Mm.
• 16:41
  My guess would be a lot of agencies are struggling with that as well because it's different doing something on almost that one-to-one basis with your audience versus, like, how you're actually gonna scale and deliver that to clients.
• 16:55
  So- Yeah... it's a little bit of practice what we preach, but it's al- also a little bit of, I don't know, we could probably do this more specialized thing for you, but we need to figure out how to do it at scale.
• 17:05
  I don't run an agency obviously, so but that would be my guess is that's definitely a struggle. Yeah.
• 17:11
  You know, this actually reminds me a bit of my time at Animals, where the founder, Walter, didn't really wanna be the face of the company. And so for a time, I was in a marketing sense, right? Like, I wrote the blog.
• 17:23
  I kind of ended up with more visibility than other people on the team. And- Mm-hmm... at times I would get on sales calls and people would be like, "Oh, you're the CEO." And I'm like, "No, no, no, I'm not the CEO."
• 17:31
  [laughs] Like, we're not trying to mislead anybody. It's just, like, my face was out there much more so than him. But this is sort of where the tension comes in.
• 17:38
  After doing that for, like, two years, I started feeling like, "I wonder if I should go out on my own." You know what I mean?
• 17:44
  Like, I wonder if there's greater opportunity for me to go out on my own rather than to do this within the context of a company. And, like, the grass isn't always greener, right?
• 17:53
  Like, it was not as, definitely not as easy as I thought to go and do that. But, like, you see this happening now, like Devon Reed comes to mind. A lot. Yeah.
• 18:01
  Like, you know, people, b- like, the idea of, like, a B2B influencer is a thing that sort of branches off from this idea of, like-Thought leadership, subject matter expertise, you know, whatever.
• 18:13
  We're gonna come up with a name for these. [laughs] Like, Devin Reed comes to mind as, like, someone who ran content at, I think, Gong and then Chorus- Mm-hmm...
• 18:20
  which are, you know, sales- And Clari, I think was Gong as well Clari, yeah. He did his big thing. Yeah... Clari. Maybe it was Clari and then Chorus. Yeah.
• 18:25
  But then went out on his own, probably for the same reasons, like had a lot of subject matter expertise and started feeling like, "Hmm, I don't know. I'm pretty visible. Maybe I could do this better on my own."
• 18:33
  You never really kn- it seems like it's going great, but you, like, never really know.
• 18:36
  But I have to imagine that, like, anyone who gets the, a taste of that visibility from the company platform has to start thinking a little bit like, "Could I go out and be a creator, and then build my own audience, and then sell it back to these companies?"
• 18:50
  Yeah, and that's one of the benefits of and why a lot of companies choose the founder model, 'cause the founder's not going anywhere. [laughs] No one can do that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:58
  Chloe, will you talk a little bit about Jess Cook?
• 19:00
  We were chatting about her in our Slack preparing for this, but I feel like she's a really good example of, like, someone who brings a strong personal brand to her in-house roles- I'm a total, total Jess Cook fan girl.
• 19:11
  I, I reached out to her, and we personally connected, so I can say she's as cool in, quote, unquote, "real life" over a Google Meet as she is on LinkedIn.
• 19:19
  But I started following her just because she was very real, very relatable. She didn't feel overly polished. She just felt very human, and I loved that. And so I really resonated with her.
• 19:30
  And so I've followed her career for the past couple years, and then she's obviously moved on to Vector as head of marketing. And I love what she is doing in terms of marketing to marketers.
• 19:43
  And Eric, what you said is kind of ringing true here, too, because I think the CEO also has a marketing background.
• 19:49
  So that can definitely be a little bit easier, but she talked recently about how she essentially captures the CEO voice to try to, like, automate this process.
• 20:01
  And I think, I don't know, we didn't come up with, you know, a game if you say the word AI or the phrase AI, but whatever. Right. I'm gonna throw it in here anyway.
• 20:09
  But she did talk about that, and I do think it's a really smart way to use AI to kind of feed it all of the co-founder or the founder content and then be like, "Great, okay. I drafted this from a marketing perspective.
• 20:22
  How do we now inject that tone of voice back into it?" And what I like about it is that it takes that real content.
• 20:28
  It takes either what's been published, what's been approved, or it takes their actual voice, and I feel like that's one of the smartest ways you can use AI is just to give it a bunch of information, a bunch of content, you know, the voice, and then be like, "Okay, how do we actually adapt what we've gotten?"
• 20:45
  I would imagine it cuts down on the approval time a ton, because AI is learning and you're learning.
• 20:51
  People have very specific things that they like and that they don't like when it comes to, like, word choice or sentence syntax.
• 20:59
  Even if they don't come from a marketing background, when I've ghostwritten for people, they don't like things like, you know, don't start a sentence with "And".
• 21:07
  I'm a big fan of fragments and, you know, those sorts of things. So I would imagine it kinda helps you fast track that coaching, which is cool. I feel like Jess hits a really cool sweet spot, too.
• 21:17
  Like, if you build a personal brand in the marketing world, and then, like, that sets you up very nicely, I think, to take on marketing leadership roles at companies who sell things to marketers. Yep.
• 21:26
  Because you bring... When they hire you, they're hiring you for your marketing skills, and whether they, a company says it explicitly or not, they definitely want access to your, your personal- To your network...
• 21:35
  following as well. Yeah, totally. Yep. So there's like a- Absolutely...
• 21:38
  it's almost like everyone should be doing this, and then you're ben- like, there's a benefit somewhere in there, whether it's to help you get the job, to help you go out on your own, to help you use the skills to support other people at the company or whatever.
• 21:47
  Can I put some names on things? Because we're talk- naming these things, and before the call, I actually made a list. Oh. And we've talked about three of the four of them. Nice. And so here we go.
• 21:57
  So one of them was, we, we discussed there's the founder thought leader. Easy. There's the kind of operational thought leader, which is like the writer situation we talked about, Matan Paul Chetvert.
• 22:09
  Hopefully I said that right, too. Where it's someone who's just, like, in the weeds of their job, writing about the work they do, and they might not even be mentioning the product. They're just- Yeah...
• 22:18
  talking about how they do their work. I think Jess falls into the practitioner/evangelist category, where her main
• 22:29
  sort of function as a creator is to, like, evangelize the product, but she also has the benefit of sort of marketing to marketers, being the practitioner and audience.
• 22:40
  But, like, I think the number one skill set there is, like, the creator skill set, and then it's kind of like a bonus.
• 22:46
  And then I think there's this fourth category that we haven't quite discussed yet, which is, like, pure creator product evangelist, where the person is just a marketer, and they just, like, become the face of the company and get...
• 22:59
  They're really good at, like, picking up the industry quickly. So normally not marketing to marketers. Like, maybe it's to salespeople or something else. Like, I can think of Chelsea Cassell. She's really cool.
• 23:09
  She was at Close. Oh, I actually She was at Lavender. Yeah. She was at Lavender, and now she's at Close, so she's been talking about sales.
• 23:15
  [laughs] And I'm sorry to just, like, throw people's names out here, but this, I guess, is what we're doing.
• 23:19
  And she's not a salesperson, but she's just become really good at, like, creating content for sales and being in, and, like, operating in that space.
• 23:25
  And, like, I'm trying to do that at Dock as well, but I'm not making myself the face of Dock.
• 23:31
  And so I think there's that, like, sort of pure product evangelist creator type thing, which is kind of touching on what you're getting at too, Jimmy, of, like, there's value of just bringing an audience with you to a brand, and you're sort of coming with that pre-built brand equity that the company can just, like, benefit from the second you walk in the door.
• 23:52
  Yeah. That's cool. That, that's awesome. Thank you for doing that. You're welcome. Yeah, I, I wish, I can't think of an example now- This is someone who actually makes content every day, Jimmy, and- [laughs]...
• 24:01
  that's why I can just do this. Yeah. I was trying to, like, draw a little, like, there's gonna be a chart with some l- like, a matrix. You know? And you know what? Let's talk about this more, because I'm on a roll here.
• 24:13
  'Cause what [laughs] the axis I was trying to think of is, likeAuthenticity versus, I couldn't figure out the other axis.
• 24:22
  But it's basically like the operational person who's just like, "I'm writing this blog because I love telling you about the development work I'm doing." Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That is like authenticity gold, right?
• 24:33
  And then the peer creator type is like on the far, the other end of that spectrum.
• 24:38
  But then maybe the second axis is, like, marketing talent or skill, and then there's some benefit and skill to, like, being really good at marketing or not.
• 24:46
  And so I think the challenge is, like, helping those operational people or a founder just sit down and do the marketing work, right? I think there's a different job to be done for the marketing team there.
• 24:58
  Curious what your action is at, Chloe. Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely agree with that. I think in previous companies I have...
• 25:05
  So I've been in, you know, HR tech for, like, nine years or so, and one thing I did was we talked a lot about just expanding our subject matter expert bench, because we found that we had, like, one person who was the spokesperson for everything, and that person was getting stretched really thin, not only by demand gen marketing activities, but also kind of this emerging thought leadership stuff that we were trying to start.
• 25:33
  And so I do think that it's on, and I've seen this blur between, like, content and comms in terms of, like, who owns this piece of thought leadership and, you know, elevation and evangelism, if we wanna go down the alliteration route, within organizations.
• 25:51
  And I do think it's like you need to find the person that's super passionate about what they do, and then you need to find the person who isn't afraid to talk about what they do, which are not necessarily always the same person.
• 26:04
  And if you have one and you don't have the other, then that's where marketing can come in as the partner to be like, "Hey, we've got your back." Like, I always used to say, "My job is to not interrupt your job.
• 26:18
  Like, you keep on doing the amazing things that you're doing, I just wanna figure out, like, how do we write about it, how do we tell your story, how do we, like, elevate your voice?"
• 26:28
  And I feel like once I kinda had that conversation, it would just set people at ease, being like, "Oh, okay, I don't have to go do all of this myself." It's like, "No, no, no, just continue being brilliant."
• 26:38
  [laughs] Like, we've got the rest, you know? So I think it's interesting. I also think that a lot of
• 26:44
  content leaders, marketing leaders, whatever, are more naturally becoming a bit of a face of the company because we are so obviously, like, ingrained in the day-to-day.
• 26:55
  But for example, I would never say like, "Oh, I'm an HR expert," or, "I'm HR practitioner," 'cause I'm not.
• 27:02
  I've talked to dozens, like, hundreds of HR people over the years, but I think that you need to make a distinction in terms of, like, here's where my lane is, and then here's what I'm still learning, and that's where I think you can bring in, like, other expertise to be like, "Hey,
• 27:18
  we're on this journey together. Like, I'm not pretending to be the expert in everything." And you know, I was trying to think of some examples of people who do work like this, not in the sales and marketing world.
• 27:26
  Because I feel like the less technical the subject matter, the easier... I mean, it's still difficult- Mm-hmm... but it's just, like, the easier it is to, like, become an expert in the field.
• 27:34
  And there's a woman who comes across my LinkedIn now and then who I was just looking up. Her name is Cassidy Williams. I'll link to her stuff in the show notes. She's the Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub. Yeah.
• 27:46
  And I feel like GitHub's an example of a company where, like, what, no GitHub customer cares what the CEO says.
• 27:52
  Like, they can do all the thought leadership they want, and my guess is the end user, the developer, doesn't care. But they do need someone who's very legit.
• 28:00
  Like, this, Cassidy was a software developer, then a CTO, and now she does it. So, like, she has the chops. And so, like she posts a ton. It's really interesting to see the type of stuff that she posts.
• 28:09
  Like, I don't really understand most of it, but I assume for the people she wants to reach, it's good stuff.
• 28:15
  Like, you know, and appreciate that, like, a company like that, like, has a very dedicated role to it, brought in someone with, like, really, really legitimate experience who, like, clearly has a, like, the marketing mind as well to do it, to do the writing.
• 28:27
  To own that, yeah. 'Cause I would guess it's like... Yeah, yeah. It's, like, not...
• 28:30
  I feel like the deeper into the weeds you get on whatever the subject matter is, the harder or maybe less time you have to actually write about it.
• 28:35
  So if you find someone like that, you gotta, like, take advantage of that opportunity. Well, and I think that's where, like, the marketing team can really tap into it.
• 28:42
  Because if they're off doing these things on their own, chances are they've got frameworks in their head. They've got things that you can turn into, you know, assets like templates and things like that.
• 28:52
  Like, I don't know, you just... That's why I'm a big fan of just getting out of your chair and talking to people. Yeah. I love it. Either virtually or in person, like we used to do, Jimmy. [laughs] I know, I know.
• 29:03
  [laughs] Just tap them on the shoulder. There is, there is- Wild thought. [laughs] Okay, [laughs] now there is one other person I'll mention.
• 29:08
  As I was doing research ahead of this episode, there's a person named Brandon Smithick who led content at Kickstarter, and now has gone out on his own and he sort of, like, does, it's like creator content for creators.
• 29:20
  It's really good. Like, his LinkedIn is really good. So I've been collecting all these tabs. I will link to all of them.
• 29:25
  Brandon is someone, like, if you want to kind of, like, go deeper down this rabbit hole as you think about this for your own career, like, he would be a great person to follow.
• 29:33
  I will say before this episode, I tried to do ChatGPT research on finding examples for me, and I think every example they pulled, I looked the person up on LinkedIn, and they have now started their own thing.
• 29:46
  So it was exactly what- Oh, thankfully- It was like, oh, this person works at this company, and, you know, is the VP of operations, and they're the thought leader, and then I look them up and it's like, no, no, now they sell courses on how to be a creator.
• 29:59
  That's so interesting. But, like, if you're the company hiring, do you just accept that, like, if you want someone who's gonna reach ton of people, you're basically renting their skills for a little while?
• 30:07
  I think so, and part of it is the trade-off of, like, what does that ad space cost? And it- Sure... it's not a typical employer, like ad space versus having this person's...
• 30:18
  The employee ask channel is a whole new thing that I think we haven't figured out, and I'm sure HR teams haven't thought that much about. Not my area of expertise.
• 30:27
  But yeah, I think, like, payment structure is gonna have to change based on where there's bonusing and, like, how do you attribute that? It's- Yeah... it's a mess. I don't know.
• 30:37
  I'm happy I'm not the one to have to figure it out. That's all I'll say. Yeah. [laughs] Me too. We did talk about that a little bit at one of my old companies, not necessarily a commission structure, but more
• 30:47
  making that a part of certain sales teams or other teams, like KPIs, in terms of, like, you must work with, like, marketing to put together a blog post or do this or do that.
• 30:59
  And we, b- because I work for a recognition-based company, I would, like, recognize people that worked with the team to, to become more of the SMEs. So I do think that there are ways that you can,
• 31:12
  but not necessarily compensate, but you can nudge that along, you know, the quid pro quo kind of thing. Yeah. Cool. Well, this is fun.
• 31:19
  I feel like this is the type of topic that we could revisit again in six months and it might be a totally different world, you know?
• 31:25
  I feel like as distribution of content gets more difficult, probably more companies will be thinking about this, new patterns will emerge and there'll be more to talk about. But Eric, thank you as always.
• 31:35
  Chloe, thank you for the first time for coming on. We'll make sure your LinkedIn is in the show notes as well.
• 31:41
  We're gonna have the most links we've ever had in the show notes, and it's all going to be people's LinkedIn profiles. [laughs] They're all just gonna redirect to Chloe's LinkedIn, and it's gonna say, "Hire Chloe." Yes.
• 31:52
  Perfect. Perfect. She's awesome. Please hire her. I love it. Cool. Well, thank you both, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for having me. See you, folks.
• 32:03
  [outro music]