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2026 Content Predictions · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] Hey, everybody, and thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. This is our last one for 2025, and today, Eric, Chloe, and I are discussing some predictions for 2026.
• 0:16
  We also polled the community and got a lot of really great input, so we cover some of that. We go through some of our own predictions, and then we also review our predictions from 2025. So I feel like this is...
• 0:27
  Yeah, it's like the perfect time of year to kinda take a step back, assess how the year went, think a little bit, you know, from kind of a 30,000-foot view perspective of what next year is gonna be like, how you will manifest it into a great year.
• 0:39
  And so that's kinda the focus of this episode. I will not tease it anymore. We'll get into that. But before we go, I just wanna say thank you so much. 2025 was an awesome year for this podcast, for Superpath.
• 0:48
  A lot of change, obviously, uh, with the sale. Alex has been doing such an awesome job so far. It's just really cool to see some of the things he's working on.
• 0:56
  Personalized one-on-ones is one I'll call out as such a needed improvement. So we do monthly one-on-ones, which are now personalized based on various things each month, so role, geography, seniority, things like that.
• 1:09
  If you're not already a member, would encourage you to go check it out, superpath.co. There's a 30-day free trial. I don't think you'll regret it.
• 1:16
  I am enjoying it as a member now, and that's been awesome, and it's extremely helpful, which makes me feel great [chuckles] about all the things we've done in that community over the years. So I'll get out of the way.
• 1:26
  Please enjoy this episode with myself, Eric, and Chloe. Wish you all the best, and Happy New Year. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the final episode of Content Briefly for 2025.
• 1:36
  We've got some predictions that we'll chat through for 2026, but maybe first, guys, do a quick 2025 recap.
• 1:42
  Actually, you guys weren't here when I did a solo episode this time last year, where I talked through some quick 2025 predictions. So maybe first we just run through those, and then we dive into 2026 stuff.
• 1:53
  What do you think? Sounds beautiful. Works for me. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, so my 2025 predictions were back to basics. I feel like that is very vague, and I feel like it also mostly happened.
• 2:07
  You know, it's like- Good call, Jimmy. Yeah. [chuckles] Actually, my 2026 prediction is back to basics also. I feel like so many companies were like, "Okay, it's so chaotic. There's so much going on. It's so confusing.
• 2:17
  Let's just do stuff that we know works," and that, that seems to have been true. Another was more platform-native content, which I feel like everybody kinda went nuts on.
• 2:24
  We all accepted that it's impossible to drive traffic back to our site, so we've just accepted it, and, you know, we look for impressions and comments and points and whatever other things we get from social platforms.
• 2:35
  Another was that in-house folks would take more ownership of how content is produced and that the craft would become more important. I think this is true, but maybe not in the way that I thought.
• 2:42
  It's not the craft of writing, but more like the craft of content creation- Mm-hmm... which now is comprised of writing amongst other things, uh, like good AI workflows, human oversight.
• 2:54
  There's a whole production workflow, which I think is super important for companies to understand exactly how they're doing it and what gets them good results.
• 3:01
  But the word craft is a little gray there because more traditionally associated with actual writing. And then I sense that the email's gonna work really, really well.
• 3:10
  It's harder to find, like, examples of companies just crushing it with email. I suspect that some absolutely crushed it, and some probably overlooked it in favor of new and shiny things like LinkedIn.
• 3:23
  And then, uh, yeah, which leads me to the last thing I talked about, which was the LinkedIn slump, which maybe was more what I was hoping would happen than actually happened. But I also feel that...
• 3:31
  I'm very curious what you guys think about this. I feel like LinkedIn has two sides to it.
• 3:34
  One is kinda like the end user experience of, like, the poster, content consumer perspective, which is, in my personal opinion, atrocious. It's horrible.
• 3:45
  And then there's the other part of it, which is do people actually discover products and services and then purchase them? And they do. I mean, anecdotally, they do.
• 3:53
  Like, I was talking to some of our sales folks at Reforge just last week, and they were like, "Can you guys get some more LinkedIn content going? Because when the founder posts on LinkedIn, we get more leads.
• 4:01
  Like, it's really obvious to us." And I was like, "Dang, that's crazy because the more I use LinkedIn, the more I hate it." [chuckles] But then, like, it actually drives business.
• 4:10
  And so anyways, any thoughts on that one in particular or any of the others from last year? I definitely get a lot of ideas from LinkedIn, for sure. Yeah.
• 4:17
  And I was just gonna say, I mean, plugging Superpath here, but, like, the community feel that you can get on LinkedIn has been extremely helpful just in understanding what other people within your industry and your craft, if we're using your word, are up to.
• 4:35
  So I actually have found LinkedIn extremely helpful. There's also been a ton of noise.
• 4:39
  I've had to work really hard on how to, like, filter my feed and who I'm following and why and what purpose do I actually want LinkedIn to serve. I think from... I echo completely what Jimmy said in terms of the...
• 4:53
  Like, every time at Dock we stop posting on LinkedIn on behalf of Alex, our founder, y-you can feel a lull.
• 4:59
  And every time we start posting again, it's just really obvious that it's how people pay attention to us and find us.
• 5:05
  And, uh, we have, like, a self-attribution report somewhere in Dock that says, "How did you hear about us?" And it's mostly search and LinkedIn are the two big, like, biggest answers all the time.
• 5:17
  And I think what's hard about LinkedIn is that it's hard to figure out, like, what the success looks like and feels like. And people... Like, I never look at impressions on any social platform.
• 5:27
  I just don't think it's that useful. And I saw lots of this year people saying, "My impressions are way down," or, "I'm not getting the reach I used to."
• 5:33
  And I think 'cause I don't pay attention to that, I didn't feel it. Like, w-we're just noticing, like, are, are people still mentioning LinkedIn to us? Yes. Great.
• 5:40
  But I feel like if you, like, overthought it a little too much, you could have a more negative experience. I just think of it as, like, go in there, dump your thoughts, say smart things.
• 5:50
  People will probably care more than you notice, and then move on. Like, [chuckles] I don't know. That's how I think of LinkedIn personally. Yeah.
• 5:57
  I think that my kinda personal problem with LinkedIn is that I just so badly want it to be 2018 Twitter, and it's just not that.
• 6:04
  Yeah.So it's not that, like my frustration with it is more that it's very like performative. It's like every post seems like it's perfectly optimized for the algorithm.
• 6:13
  And it's not that there isn't good stuff, because there definitely is. And like to Chloe's point, like I absolutely use it to keep up with people, see what's going on. It's like I'm on there every day.
• 6:21
  I just want it to be something different. It's just not, just not gonna be that. I used to use Twitter more as like my news feed. Yeah.
• 6:28
  And I would say LinkedIn in terms of your industry-related news feed, and I would say I understand your point, 'cause I think maybe I am trying to curate my own LinkedIn in that way, but it doesn't serve the same purpose.
• 6:43
  Yeah. You have to sort of read through the perfectly beautiful posts to get what you actually want. And I do find a lot of that, though, can be within the comment threads, just jumping straight there. Right. Yeah.
• 6:55
  That's interesting. I do feel like my prediction for LinkedIn slump, I'm gonna throw it into 2026 also. I just feel like any time a marketing channel gets super saturated, like it's just doomed to decline at some point.
• 7:05
  And I guess TBD, m-maybe I'm totally wrong in that there's like a very legitimate-- like th-this is how people in B2B communicate with each other.
• 7:14
  So like if the feed sucks, like maybe that's not really the point because this is still really the only good way to keep up with people.
• 7:21
  So, uh, I do think at some point it becomes oversaturated, but maybe it's further away from that than I, than like I can see from my vantage point.
• 7:29
  It might also be dependent on the industry as well, because like we can talk about B2B buying as a whole, or we can talk about B2B buying when your persona are sales and marketing people versus, you know, more of the technical players or you're in like a niche industry.
• 7:47
  I think that it's gonna be a different story for each of those pieces. And I do think sales and marketing related personas are probably gonna get hit in this slump faster because it is getting saturated. Yeah.
• 8:01
  Okay, cool. That's a quick recap. Eric, you had put out a call to the community to see what people thought for 2026, like what are their predictions for what's gonna happen.
• 8:09
  So we have those to chat through, and then I think we each have some thoughts. So I guess, Eric, I think you've probably thought the most about this since you've read through the-- everybody's comments.
• 8:17
  Where do you think is the best place to start? Maybe I'll recap some community predictions. We can have some reactions to that, and then we can also do our own predictions. How does that sound?
• 8:25
  So I think i-in-- on theme of your LinkedIn prediction last year being what you hoped would happen, I feel like there's a lot of what people will hope will happen this year is like the general theme I'm feeling from people's predictions, maybe versus what's likely to happen.
• 8:42
  And I also think that the way I put out my call for predictions was like, give me some spicy, not super obvious takes. So I think people are probably doing some optimistic predicting here.
• 8:53
  But so a really common theme that came out is that people think there will be some sort of consumer backlash, like even in the B2B sense, to AI-generated content, and that there will be some like organic food style marketing of we're not using AI in our content.
• 9:13
  We don't use any AI, we just produce things all human-made, things like that. So I think that was one prediction. I don't know if you want to react to that, Jimmy. Hmm. I disagree.
• 9:22
  I respectfully disagree because I kind of like that idea.
• 9:26
  Like I think that would be really cool, and I think that like somebody could come up with a cool campaign around that and probably get some wins on the board as a result of it. But I don't think it would be widespread.
• 9:35
  And mostly just because I just don't think you're gonna know the difference. You know, like the way that I write now is completely different. So I use Claude or use Lex. It's so AI assisted.
• 9:46
  I think it's just completely different experience to do it than it used to be, but I don't think it's worse. I think it's probably better actually. So I don't know.
• 9:55
  I actually-- I'm pretty bullish on the idea that like AI assisted writing is awesome. Like I love doing it. I think the content is good, and it takes me less time.
• 10:02
  So it's hard, it's just hard for me to imagine a company being like, "Let's put our marketing dollars behind something slow and inefficient."
• 10:09
  Like I said, maybe there's an outlier in there who could do it, but I don't think it'll become widespread. Mm-hmm.
• 10:15
  Do think-- I, I agree that I don't think it's gonna become widespread, but I do think the interesting thing for me is just thinking back like, right, I just got out of the job hunt in the most fun market ever, and like some of the job descriptions that I was most attracted to were the ones that were like, "We're human first.
• 10:34
  We're not AI first." And I know Jimmy would feel the exact opposite in that.
• 10:39
  But so I do think there is something to be said with companies that are gonna need to remind consumers that we are more of a human-centric kind of organization.
• 10:51
  I don't necessarily know if that has to stand on its own with being like anti-AI. Like I think it can be an indicator and an exciting piece. I don't necessarily know if it's gonna be your like key differentiator anymore.
• 11:06
  Because I do agree with you that even in my own workflows, which, I mean, I think if we spoke six months ago, I was like, "Ah, I don't know what I'm doing."
• 11:13
  Like AI is becoming more a part of my day-to-day that to untangle it just doesn't make sense anymore. It's basically, yeah, it's basically impossible to do.
• 11:24
  I sort of feel like if, if you really wanna stand out, like if the idea is differentiate your content and differentiate your brand by taking a different stance, my gut is that's not the way to go.
• 11:35
  Maybe you do longer form content, or you say, "We're not gonna optimize it for SEO or AO," or you know, "We're not gonna, you know, make it platform native."
• 11:45
  Where like if you want this art, you have to come to our website and consume it, and you'll have a better experience. But I don't know.
• 11:50
  There's something-- I think there's a way to attract people to the content that actually makes it feel different, and I don't think skipping the AI part does that. Yeah. Exactly. Eric, what do you think?
• 12:01
  I agree with you, and I think that leads to the next group of predictions. So this was super common. Maybe five or six people said things like this.
• 12:08
  It was that we willAs like a rejection of AI or maybe like oversaturation due to AI happens, people will resort to more retro-inspired channels, is the way someone put it.
• 12:22
  So Lindsay said maybe like more s-small self-hosted blogs in like Tumblr style, like zines are predicted to become more popular. Like Rachel and Ernie both have started zines, mentioned zines.
• 12:38
  There was mention of more in-person experiences and events, other print marketing. Like, so there's lots of people who are predicting that those kinds of things are going to pop up.
• 12:49
  My take on that is I think we're gonna see those kinds of things as experiments. I could see companies wanting to do more of that.
• 12:56
  Even just like at Dock, we decided to put some of our budget that was previously going into like virtual sponsorships and webinars into in-person events again, just so we can get into a room and talk to people, and people physically see us in the world.
• 13:11
  It just will feel different, I think, than virtually. So I do think there's a lot of legitimacy to that prediction. I think people will try it. I have no idea how well it will work or like how well that will scale.
• 13:21
  It kind of reminds me of when everyone was like, "Now we should have creators in B2B, and, you know, humor should be the new thing, and memes will take over everything."
• 13:30
  And I think people tried that for like a year or two, and I think most companies have stopped it. Like they, you see B2B memes here and there, but it didn't like take over in the way we thought they might.
• 13:42
  So I think it will be a fun experiment, like you said, Jimmy, in that some companies will do it. Some people will pull it off well.
• 13:48
  I don't know if that will happen en masse, and like how many physical zines can I get to my house? Probably like two before I'm like, "This is too many zines."
• 13:56
  First of all, I love the fact that you're just calling them zines and not magazines. Z- that's the cool-- That's what people call them.
• 14:04
  That's the cool, I don't know if it's Gen X or, or millennials, but z- that was like you got your little like punk rock zines coming to your house. I don't know.
• 14:12
  I just-- Jimmy, like this is bringing me back, though, obviously. I know. This was our world, yeah.
• 14:17
  Jimmy and I [chuckles] first crossed paths was literally at an agency that created magazines, zines, whatever, and I feel like I would love that. Like I love-- I'm a print nerd.
• 14:31
  I still have my print editions of WebMD and like the real estate magazine that I worked on and all of this sort of stuff. But
• 14:41
  I think if companies are gonna invest in that, first of all, I think it's actually gonna be a larger investment than an experimental phase, as much as I would love to think that they're gonna do that.
• 14:51
  And I also think that in that sense, if they decide to do that, it'll become more of like a VIP curated experience, where you are at the upper echelon of our customers and you get this, I don't know, I don't wanna say yearbook, but like, I don't know, this exclusive VIP package.
• 15:09
  And I could see that being something that becomes more of a keepsake and more of like a quarterly or biannual kind of tradition.
• 15:18
  I think that this is like a fat head, long tail thing, where the fat head is everybody does case studies, webinars, SEO/AEO, and maybe some gated content. Like everybody does that.
• 15:31
  And then there's a long tail of other kind of niche content tactics that people sort of cherry-pick from. And it's the zines, it's-- Well, I think in person maybe is moving closer to fat head.
• 15:41
  That, that is becoming more and more popular it seems, which is great, I think. And again, I just think it's like a, hey, you try it.
• 15:48
  Like Eric said, it's more about like kind of getting a little splash of attention out of it than it is like a long-term strategy. But in general, I like it.
• 15:56
  Like, I feel like marketing teams should be experimenting with, you know, stuff that not everybody is doing, even if it is not sustainable.
• 16:03
  And you don't really have to intend for it to go on forever and ever just to, you know, be willing to give it a shot. For sure.
• 16:09
  Okay, and then there, there were tons, and I'm sorry to everyone that I didn't get through them all 'cause we wanna get to our own too. But I think there was also like a bucket of AEO things.
• 16:20
  Like, people will spam Reddit too much, Reddit will lose credibility, all kinds of like black hat-ish things will happen, and I think that's already happening. So I don't see that as like a crazy bold prediction.
• 16:32
  I think maybe, like maybe Reddit will crack down on all the AI posts that are happening or like posts for the purpose of AI. Like we could see that kind of thing happen. Otherwise,
• 16:43
  yeah, that's just kind of like a big chunk of predictions as well, which I think is fair, and I don't think we have to react too much to those. I think we should get to our own now. Okay, let's get to, let's start.
• 16:53
  I think w-we all kind of had thoughts on SEO and AEO. So like Jimmy, like right before we talked, you said like there was predictions that like SEO will be dead.
• 17:03
  I think it's very clear that SEO is not dead, and so what are your feelings on that going into twenty twenty-six?
• 17:08
  Yeah, I feel like that wasn't even on my radar this time last year, and then it, the whole like, you know, everybody's SEO chart is crashing thing happened.
• 17:17
  There was like some upset over it, and then it kind of like passed us by, like all within the course of the 12 months between this time last year and now.
• 17:26
  And I think we have Ryan Law to blame for that, 'cause I think he was the one who initially posted the HubSpot [chuckles] organic traffic chart on LinkedIn that went like super viral.
• 17:36
  And like- Top twenty twenty-five content marketing hits, Ryan Law for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:42
  [chuckles] I just think it's turned out to just be like not as crazy because it basically affected everyone in more or less the same way.
• 17:48
  You know, like certainly some sites got hit harder, like sites that just rely more heavily on it got hit harder. But like, you know, the playing field was affected somewhat evenly, therefore it's not like a giant deal.
• 18:00
  It's not like if you had a CRM, your CRM competitors kept their traffic while you didn't. That's not what happened. So I feel like it just kind of ended up being like, eh, oh well, [chuckles] you know, I'll move on.
• 18:11
  And then at the same time, like AEO is starting to replace that, and like that to me that's gonna be an important trend in twenty twenty-six is not that AEO like explodes, but more like-Okay, the playbook around it gets solidified a bit, like companies start making more serious investments.
• 18:26
  On the other side of that, like more people are using AI to search for stuff, and I mean, from my perspective, I think it's a good-- Like, I use AI search constantly. I think it's way better than just normal Google.
• 18:36
  So like if it helps us on the marketing side, like better understand the customer, you know, have like more...
• 18:44
  Even though the chatbot is the one having the conversation, it's like there's a thread happening, and like being part of that thread to me is like far more interesting than trying to be there at the exact second they search for something.
• 18:55
  Like there's more time, there's more opportunity to like kind of build trust and authority and all that stuff versus search, which is so fleeting. So I think that's gonna be a big thing.
• 19:04
  And then like, yeah, like some people said like, okay, AEO is a thing, therefore, we're gonna have consultants and agencies and SaaS tools. Like this is a whole world of stuff that is developing, and
• 19:15
  I think we'll be, yeah, we'll be quite a bit further along a year from now, but I don't think it's gonna be like our lives have changed because of it.
• 19:21
  I think there were a lot of people that declared themselves experts on this year when they weren't ready to declare themselves experts on it. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:27
  There's like, if you go on Amazon and look for this, there's like books already written about this. Yeah. And I think next year- It's crazy...
• 19:32
  people will actually be speaking more in practical terms rather than trying to make these wide-sweeping statements. I also think it'll be really interesting just to see how Google continues to react.
• 19:46
  Like I thought about this before in terms of the, you know, black hat, white hat cycle of SEO, and it's like at first all these things came out where it was like, okay, keyword stuffing and white text and all these spammy, really crappy tactics.
• 20:01
  The exact same thing happened with AEO this year, and then we saw the penalties start to happen for that.
• 20:06
  So I think it is-- I think you're right, like, I think it's gonna kinda level out in the next year where we're actually gonna develop more of these best practice playbooks that people can start to follow.
• 20:17
  And I think AEO and SEO, my God, can we just combine the acronyms already? Someone figure it out please. I know, I know. It's getting confusing to say. [chuckles] Just a very quick follow-up on that, Chloe.
• 20:27
  I feel like Google AI overviews, now that they've kind of morphed into AI mode where you get the snippet and you can dive deeper and actually chat with it, I think is really good.
• 20:36
  And I actually found myself using Perplexity way more because Google didn't have that, and now that it does, I find myself using Google maybe not as much as I probably once did, but I think they've created a real-- Like, I think they've solved this, like a really easy for the user.
• 20:50
  I'm sure it's complicated on their end, but like it's a very nice user experience, and I feel like there's still plenty of opportunity. Even when you go into AI mode, there's still tons of links in there.
• 20:58
  Like there is still opportunity to get, like actually get people on your website, which is nice. Like the biggest platform out there is still allowing that.
• 21:06
  I think that was a side thing that happened that a lot of us haven't talked about in 2025 is that Google kind of made the most ground in the AI race this year compared to ChatGPT or OpenAI, Claude, et cetera.
• 21:21
  I think going into 2025, nobody was talking about Gemini or things like that, and I think it bodes well for the internet
• 21:31
  maybe, or at least those of us who rely on search as to, for people to find our B2B businesses, that Google is doing well there. Like they're not gonna kill search entirel- Like they have no intention to kill search.
• 21:43
  They just want to evolve th- like the right sort of consumer tools to still help people get... Like they still need to get ad revenue, sending people to websites or putting you in their search results, things like that.
• 21:53
  So I think, you know, regardless of how you feel about Google as a company or not, I think like it's probably good for the search world that Google is doing better with the AI tools right now.
• 22:05
  Just like a weird little side development. Okay. Chloe, why don't we get into, I think you had an interesting thought that I share about how
• 22:13
  AI in 2025, this was kind of the year of experimentation, and it feels like 2026 is gonna be more like boots on the ground and execution. Can you talk about that? Yeah.
• 22:26
  I think that I'm already starting to see this in my own workflows, and I mean, even in our podcast journey, you can see this, right?
• 22:34
  Like we've had podcast episodes about how do we experiment with AI, how do we hack things, how much time do we dedicate to this, where does it fit into our workflows?
• 22:42
  And I think that this year was really the playground for AI to try to figure out how do we wanna use it, what makes sense.
• 22:51
  People, again, some people declaring themselves experts, other people just being like, "I don't know. I'm logging into ChatGPT and seeing what happens."
• 22:58
  I think that 2026, particularly for content leadership roles, it's gonna be about setting in place more of those playbooks and trying to figure out how exactly AI fits into the day-to-day, whether that's within your own internal workings as yourself for your internal team or for your freelancers.
• 23:19
  Like I'm already thinking about how do I shift our editorial guidelines and our freelancer briefs to be like, in what way are we accepting AI in workflows? Because at some point you can't micromanage, right?
• 23:33
  You don't know what people are doing, and like Jimmy said earlier, there's a certain point where once you've figured out how to master AI, it's indiscernible, right?
• 23:42
  It's just at the end of the day, if the output is really great writing and really great craft, then who cares how you got to it.
• 23:50
  So I think that for me, it's gonna be trying to figure out that balance of I understand that you're using these tools in your workflow, but here's still the level of expectation that I have in terms of the output, and trying to figure out how to articulate that.
• 24:04
  I think that's gonna be something that's gonna be kinda challenging, and I'm excited to see where that goes. Yeah. I echo that sentiment completely.
• 24:12
  I, I feel like for the last two years personally, or maybe more, whenever ChatGPT came out, I feel like I've been in experimentation mode since then, and I think I've had roughly equal productivity doing some things I used to doNew things I wasn't able to do before, but I feel like now the, in my head, like the pieces have come together and the tools have gotten better.
• 24:35
  Like Claude or ChatGPT can write at a level now that I'm happy with, and so I feel like 2026 is like, l-let's go. Like I now know I have a plan in terms of, okay, here's a great workflow to update articles.
• 24:50
  Here's a great workflow to do research for new software comparison articles. Okay, we're gonna do a podcast, and we have the transcripts, and here's what I can do with those transcripts.
• 24:59
  Like now I have this like beautiful mind thing happening, but I feel confident in exactly how well I can execute each of those things. It's not like, let's try this piece of the workflow and hopefully it works.
• 25:10
  I know I, I have like 90% confidence in what does work and what doesn't now.
• 25:15
  And so I feel like starting January, like my content plan is very much heavily invested in AI, but I have m- a much better sense of how it will all play out, if that makes sense.
• 25:26
  And I feel like that's gonna sort of-- I feel like Jimmy, you're probably in the same boat, that that's kind of the trend in the industry, that we've all kinda like figured out what we can do with it now, and now is a good time to execute.
• 25:36
  Yeah. I spent a lot of time in 2025 spinning my wheels. You know, it's like I called it research and development, but it's really just tinkering to try to figure out like, well, what can I do?
• 25:45
  But quite a bit of that was fruitless. Some of it wasn't, though.
• 25:49
  You know, and so to your point, Eric, yeah, I have a much better sense of like, okay, yeah, where can I apply AI in useful ways and where is it just like I kinda been down that road before, and I, it really didn't lead me anywhere, so I'm just gonna avoid that now and just hopefully sp- like waste a lot less time.
• 26:03
  That was like a hugely frustrating part of 2025, actually, was all the things I thought I was gonna do with AI that I wasn't able to. I mean, I still don't wanna be a vibe coder, so there's that.
• 26:13
  But I will say, like on- Chloe, that's the most fun part. [laughs] I'm all set.
• 26:18
  I vibe coded some sort of landing page on Lovable, and I don't know, I put my dog's face on it, and I was like, "Eh, this is kinda fun," and haven't been back since.
• 26:27
  I will say like on that, though, and I don't know if this is a prediction as much of a, I don't know, requirement, is I want us to get out of the more is more era, and I wrote about this on my LinkedIn today.
• 26:41
  And just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should do something.
• 26:45
  And what I'm hoping is that in 2026 and 2027 and beyond, people just are still asking why we're doing something rather than just doing it because it's easy and it's fast.
• 27:01
  Like I am hoping that 2025 educated a lot of people on w- like why shitty content shouldn't be out there in the world, and hopefully focusing more on quality, and I'm hoping that 2026 will be people doubling down on that.
• 27:17
  I don't know if that's true. Yeah. But I would love to see it. Yeah. I think I agree with that.
• 27:22
  I feel like 2025 was the year that AI was sort of forced upon everybody, and I think the rubber will hit the road in 2026 in a pretty important way.
• 27:32
  Like just kinda speaking from experience of what we're working on at Reforge right now is like we're making AI native SaaS tools.
• 27:39
  You know, like there's examples of companies in very similar spaces which had just absolutely insane growth, like zero to $100 million ARR in less than 12 months.
• 27:49
  Like there's a couple of those out there, like that just, that's not, I don't think that's gonna happen next year.
• 27:55
  You know, I think like the tools that Reforge is building are, you know, they're built, they're not single player tinkering type AI tools. Like they're built for teams.
• 28:03
  Like in order to sell them, you have to do all the kinda blocking and tackling that marketing and sales teams have always had to do.
• 28:09
  There has to be a really practical application or otherwise like why would a company adopt a tool and integrate it and onboard every-- Like it's just not gonna happen.
• 28:16
  Whereas like, yeah, a shitload of people just signed up for Lovable 'cause they heard it was cool, you know? And it is cool. I think Lovable is like one of the coolest tools out there.
• 28:23
  But like I, I think from the B2B perspective, like we're gonna get back to not, not, not the same old, but like probably 80% of anybody's marketing could be the exactly the same every single year.
• 28:34
  And then you leave that 20% bucket open for like whatever new thing people are trying or, you know, some experiment you wanna run. Yeah. And that's okay, people. [laughs] Yeah, tot-tot-- That's a great point.
• 28:46
  It's a great point. Like maybe it means you have a great marketing strategy if 80% of it can go into the next year, you know? Totally.
• 28:53
  I'll wrap up the AI thought 'cause I think it might be- Is there something that's not AI that we should- Yeah, I was gonna say like I have a whole bucket of predictions I'll just quickly rattle off.
• 29:01
  That I think like the AI content job titles are not going anywhere. I think they're gonna proliferate in 2026. Everyone's gonna be looking for AI content marketers. We probably agree on that.
• 29:13
  I think that- And then in '27, 2027, AI will drop from their job titles. Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Yeah. So who knows if that's a fad or not, but I think that's gonna happen.
• 29:23
  I think, like Jimmy said, a lot of kinda AI related agencies and companies are gonna pop up, like there's gonna be prompting freelancers, agencies, like who can help you sorta set up your AI workflows as people start to figure this out.
• 29:37
  I think that's gonna become more of a thing. And then I think like the content operations engineering skill set, like we've talked about on previous episodes, like that will be a big deal in 2026.
• 29:49
  Okay, predictions outside of AI. I mean, this is related, but for me, I think j- and all my predictions are because of things that we're gonna do at Dock, and so they're probably very myopic in that way.
• 30:00
  But f-for me, because I think like AI has helped me create so much content at kind of any scale we want to, that like I'm lacking as a content leader of like original insights to put into that AI machine.
• 30:18
  And so at Dock, we want to go back to like how do we get, record more podcasts? How do we make more videos with like people having original thoughts in them?
• 30:27
  And so I think a lot of people are gonna come across this, and not to say that like video is new, but I think video content willProliferate in this world of where it's really easy to do a lot of writing and steal other people's writing More companies having a research arm.
• 30:43
  Yeah. To- Even like things like product videos and tutorials, like those play well still o-on every channel. Like, so for us, like video is an investment that we're gonna make more that we haven't made before.
• 30:53
  So yeah, I don't know if that feels like new or not. Yeah. But I think video will continue to be a good channel. I will hold my hand up and say every year I say the same thing. I'm always like- [chuckles]...
• 31:04
  it's gonna be the year for video. This is the year that we're gonna test and experiment with video, and we're gonna, we're gonna nail this strategy.
• 31:10
  And, uh, yeah, I don't think there are many companies that have cracked it yet. So I'm excited to see what you do.
• 31:18
  I think it's the right thing to focus in on, but I feel like a lot of people will say like, "Yes, this is the year for video."
• 31:26
  [chuckles] Do you think there's like a small minority of companies out there who are just absolutely crushing it with video, and looking around, they're like, "Wait, why is it, why isn't everybody doing this?"
• 31:35
  Like, we sort of carved out this little competitive edge for ourself that people just like haven't sort of coalesced on in the way that it have on some of the other things.
• 31:42
  And like, maybe it's because video-- I think video's a little harder. Yeah. You know? Like, we've been making tutorial videos. Like, I actually have been making them, and it's kind of hard.
• 31:51
  Like, it's kind of hard to make a one-minute or 90-second video to show something in a product, and like have it be nice and sound good and good... I mean, AI makes all that stuff easier.
• 31:59
  Like we just, I just got a Descript subscription, and that tool is wild. It's so good. It's so good. It makes me-- Like, it makes it feel very familiar to me because it's text, and you edit with text and whatever.
• 32:11
  Anyways, side note, but yes, video, yes. Okay, other predictions, you guys? That don't have to do with AI. [chuckles] I think [chuckles] it's not a prediction. It's more of a curiosity for me.
• 32:22
  I'm really curious to see where the world of content plus social content and/or social is gonna go.
• 32:30
  I think that we've seen a resurgence in the focus of social, whereas two years ago, I feel arguably a lot of companies had it as an afterthought.
• 32:40
  And all of a sudden, with the LinkedIn focus and more of that resurgence, I think it's come up more and more in prominence.
• 32:48
  And I think there are organizations that I've been a part of where social has fallen under content's remit, or it's fallen under brand, or it's fallen under demand, or it's been its own thing.
• 33:00
  And I'm curious to see the companies that put the prominence on social that they may or may not... I don't know.
• 33:07
  I'm curious to see if you put your eggs in the basket of social, what does that exactly mean, and how does that differentiate from your overall content marketing strategy? I don't know if I have- Not really a prediction.
• 33:19
  Yeah. I was-- I don't know if I have any pre- like really like non-AI predictions.
• 33:22
  One thing, though, that is still top of mind for me is I think that there are more marketers out there who haven't made the leap yet to what I think I'll call the creator economy that are going to.
• 33:35
  I feel like that trend is still kind of early.
• 33:38
  And I actually saw this post on LinkedIn the other day from Elena Verna, who's head of growth at Lovable, speaking of Lovable, and she said, "If you work in growth and you're not growing your own audience, you're missing the point.
• 33:47
  That is the job now." And I think that's super. I just think there's still something there that I feel like is largely untapped and that more people are gonna be...
• 33:56
  This is-- I'm not talking about like leaving their in-house jobs in droves, but I think that there's quite a few people out there who have more, maybe more power than they're currently capturing, you know, and leveraging for themselves.
• 34:09
  So I think that will be a thing, even if it's not like a headline when we have this conversation next year. Do you think that's true across all industries? Yeah. Yeah. I, yes, I do.
• 34:21
  Maybe some are more saturated than others. I don't really know. Like, I would hate to try to become a fitness influencer or something like that right now. You know what I mean? Like, that space is just insane.
• 34:30
  But like in the B2B space, like I think there's... You can do it. There's still room. And I think that part of the opportunity people have is that it's so difficult.
• 34:39
  For B2B companies, it's so difficult to reach your target customers. It's expensive, it's slow, and it, it's much easier for an individual to do it than a company.
• 34:47
  So if you're the individual that steps in and does it for them, the companies will pay you for access.
• 34:52
  That, and that, that's the part that feels like there's a lot of money to be made there, which I think will incentivize some people to go chase it. So Linktagram, Link- Linktagram. I just- Linktagram. Yeah.
• 35:03
  [chuckles] What I meant to say is LinkedIn will become the new Instagram, is your prediction. Yeah. Which is a little terrifying. Yeah. [chuckles] I think so. I think it's been happening.
• 35:11
  I guess one ob-observation from that is like at Dock, we had a competitor that was doing a lot of campaigns, like influencer campaigns with sales, B2B sales influencers, and when I was like, "Okay, why don't we try some of that for ourselves?"
• 35:23
  Like, "Let's do it." And it was hard to find any more. Like, they kind of had them all, and there weren't that many. So I was like, man, there could be...
• 35:30
  If there were 50 more of these people out there, they could all make money doing it, and they just don't realize. Like, there's a demand for the influence, the B2B influencer on the other side.
• 35:39
  That was gonna be my last sort of bin of predictions was around personal brand building, both from the individual side and demand from companies.
• 35:48
  Like, I actually think it might start to become a job requirement or part of your job description to build a personal brand.
• 35:57
  Like, this sort of employee advocacy thing that people have always tried to done and fail at, to do and fail that, I think there might be a bigger rise of like, hey, part of your job as like customer success or whatever is to like build a content brand on LinkedIn.
• 36:12
  Like, I'm kind of thinking about asking our team to do that, so I think that is an interesting area.
• 36:18
  And then on that note too, I think everyone wants to be a thought leader now and, and like the individual like founder thought leader thing, like we've kind of established that as working better than company brand pages.
• 36:32
  But I think that a lot of founders still haven't figured out how to do that on top of their jobs.
• 36:36
  So I think there's gonna be this sort of sub-service economy that breaks out of like-A lot of ghostwriting for founders, a lot of like thought leadership workshops, and like how to pull ideas out of founders, things like-- Like I think that whole world is gonna-- Like pe- maybe a lot of people who used to do SEO blog writing are gonna shift to helping founders have put their ideas out there.
• 37:00
  So I think- I think we're already seeing that.
• 37:02
  I've seen a lot of like, you know, CEO storyteller, executive thought leader kind of content related jobs, and I think that is also where it's like content marketing is going to get a little bit more redefined.
• 37:16
  I don't know if that's gonna happen 2026 into 2027, but that's where it's like the delineation between thought leadership, content marketing as an engine, like the SEO blogging side of pieces that operate.
• 37:30
  Like there's gonna be all of these different levers within what I've traditionally thought of the entire umbrella of content, and I think that's gonna be really interesting to see how companies invest in different headcounts and different responsibilities for that, versus also what they take in-house versus outsource because they think it's a gamble.
• 37:51
  What they take in-house versus outhouse. Yeah, I like that. I was hoping you were gonna say that quote. [chuckles] That's where I thought you were going. Yeah. [chuckles] It's like, it's almost five o'clock.
• 38:00
  [chuckles] Yeah. That feels good. I feel like we've covered 2026, and now everyone can just take a three hundred and sixty-five day nap and come back for 2027. That's what I've been saying this entire year.
• 38:12
  I'm like, "Can I just nap under my desk and see what happens in 2026?" Like, let's just see. You can have AI do your job for you, and then yes, you can. [laughing] [chuckles] That's exactly what happened.
• 38:24
  That is exactly not what I've been saying all year. [chuckles] Can I plug two things before we go? One is, uh, for the folks who listen who also use Help a B2B Writer, it's been rebranded. It's now Mention Match.
• 38:39
  And part of the thinking here is that backlinks-- Well, sorry, mentions are the new backlinks. I should say it that way, right? And I think this is a really good thing for this whole space, all right?
• 38:50
  Like it just-- Backlinks are just a disaster. You know, it doesn't mean they don't work, they do, but there's so much spam. The, the-- this industry is sort of rife with, you know, gray hat stuff.
• 38:59
  And mentions actually like simplify so much of this. We wanna kinda like more closely align what the service is intended to do with the name. So that's one thing. So mentionmatch.com, go sign up.
• 39:10
  There's nine thousand people who get those emails every day, and there's some really good opportunities out there.
• 39:15
  And so like if you're someone or a part of a company who's thinking about digital PR, you know, wants more citations, mentions, et cetera, it's a really good way to do it.
• 39:23
  And if you send good responses, your likelihood of getting those mentions is very high. So that's number one. Number two, Superpath Pro.
• 39:29
  You know, Alex is making a bunch of cool changes, and it's been super fun for me to kinda like sit back and watch some of those changes come to fruition. It's like stuff that I was like, "Oh yeah, we should do that.
• 39:38
  Yeah, I'll get to it one day." And like he's doing it.
• 39:39
  Like so for example, the one-on-ones, like this month's one-on-ones were personalized, you know, based on industry and roles and things like that, and watching his process for doing it was super cool.
• 39:49
  So there's a lot of other stuff. You can get the newsletter to stay like up to date on what's going on. But, you know, as always, thirty-day free trial, and I would encourage folks to go check it out.
• 39:57
  Eric and Chloe, anything else that we should mention to close out 2025? I'll plug another community thing before we go. So- Yeah, yeah, please. January, everyone's trying to get back on the content treadmill.
• 40:10
  A really healthy treadmill, not like the sad ham- Like the hedonic treadmill? Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah, yeah. I'm really enjoying Eric's little dance right now. Yes. Thank you.
• 40:17
  I'm trying to gesture to our audio audience the point I'm trying to make.
• 40:22
  And so in the Superpath community, we're holding our always popular LinkedIn challenge, where we will all do our best to personally post on LinkedIn every day in January, build our personal brands, help our company brands, whatever your goal is, and then we'll see each other's posts.
• 40:39
  We'll like them, engage with them, and you'll learn a lot from other people what's working for them. So that's kicking off in January.
• 40:46
  And then also Rosie from our community is going to be hosting-- We're hosting a Slack AMA on LinkedIn best practices, both as like an individual. She does LinkedIn as a freelancer.
• 40:59
  And then, but then she also does LinkedIn ghostwriting, like I was talking about, for executives. And so for me, that's something I want to do better at, is LinkedIn ghostwrite on behalf of our founders.
• 41:11
  So I'm looking forward to that Slack AMA. That's on January seventh. I hope this episode comes out before then. And- It, uh, it'll be out next week. Awesome. Or like right after Christmas. Perfect. Excellent.
• 41:20
  So yeah, come join Superpath Pro. You'll get access to our Slack and that AMA, and come ask questions about LinkedIn. Love it. Cool. Well, maybe to close out, Chloe, Eric, thank you both.
• 41:31
  It's been so fun having co-hosts this year. That's been an awesome change, and the numbers reflect that also. Like we've had more listeners, which has been cool.
• 41:39
  Like the more fun we have, I think the more people enjoy it. And thank you to everyone who listens. It's awesome that we do this, and people listen to it.
• 41:46
  I still sometimes when I step back think about just how insanely cool that is. So thank you for listening, and we'll have a bunch of good stuff for you in 2026 too. So hope everybody gets a little break. Rest up.
• 41:56
  Happy New Year. We'll see you in 2026. R and R, please. This has been fun. It's been fun year. Yeah. It has. Yeah, it's been a fun year. Thanks so much for listening.
• 42:04
  I think the community's evolved a lot in lots of good ways. And yeah, I think I'm happy not to just listen to Jimmy all the time and to have another voice, Chloe, on the- Fair enough... on the podcast.
• 42:15
  [both laughing] Fair enough. Awesome. Thank you, guys. What a note to end on. Yep, that's my happy note to end 2025. My prediction is Jimmy would finally be gone in 2025. I know.
• 42:27
  I would fire you, but I don't have that authority anymore. [chuckles] It's okay. We've already talked in this podcast about firing the both of you. Not me yet though, so hang on. I'm still here. [chuckles] So funny.
• 42:38
  All right. Well, cool. Well, thanks everybody. We'll see you next year. Thanks everyone. Happy holidays. [outro music]