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2025 content predictions (and thank YOU) · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  Hey, folks. Jimmy here, and it's just me today. I don't think I've ever done a solo episode, but this will be quick. I basically just wanted to say thank you for listening to this podcast, for supporting Superpath.
• 0:11
  2024 has been, in so many ways, challenging, disruptive, chaotic year, and content marketers have really come together in Superpath. There's been so much support exchanged, given, received.
• 0:25
  I mean, it's such an amazing thing to watch people come together for each other. That's my absolute favorite thing about this community. And for folks who listen to this podcast, there's been ton of great wisdom shared.
• 0:36
  We've really tried to get the best guests we can to come and talk about what's going on in content marketing today.
• 0:42
  And if you've listened to the forty-eight or forty-nine episodes that we published this year, hopefully you gleaned some insights that had a positive impact on you personally in your own career and some of the work you do, whether you're freelancing or at an agency or working at a SaaS company or, or whatever.
• 0:59
  We're gonna be doing a lot more of that next year.
• 1:01
  So in this podcast, I'm just gonna quickly detail a couple things that we're working on for 2025, and then I just have a couple quick thoughts for our content more generally in 2025.
• 1:11
  So for next year, we've recently relaunched Superpath Pro. That will continue to be our primary focus going into 2025. Just quick shout out to Eric Doty, who runs all the community stuff now.
• 1:23
  I initially hired Eric to help cover some of the work that I do on my paternity leave, which I took in January 2024 when my son was born, and it was just so nice handing things off to someone who's...
• 1:36
  Eric's been in the community forever. He understands the business. He just jumped right in.
• 1:40
  It made that time off for me actually somewhat relaxing because I wasn't stressed about what was going on at work because I knew Eric had it.
• 1:48
  You know, then coming out of my paternity leave and getting back to work, I was trying to figure out, like, how do I continue to have Eric as involved as he was while I was out.
• 1:57
  And so he and I had a lot of discussions about what that might look like.
• 2:00
  We landed on him running the community and really owning Superpath Pro and that experience, and then as part of that, relaunching it based on member feedback, and so that'll happen in October. He's awesome.
• 2:10
  I'm just truly so grateful for him. And so you'll be hearing a lot from Eric going into 2025. The new and improved Superpath Pro has been awesome. We've gotten a ton of good feedback.
• 2:19
  We have more changes coming, all based on what we're hearing from folks, what they want. In particular, the monthly Superpath socials have just been awesome. See, I'm recording this in early December.
• 2:30
  The third one is tomorrow, and I've already met a bunch of people that, like, I've seen in the community, but, like, didn't really know.
• 2:35
  And, you know, Eric puts together prompts for the discussions and the breakout rooms. So it's like you jump in, there's nothing awkward about it.
• 2:42
  You meet new people, you have meaningful discussions, and then you can connect with those people afterwards, and, like, that's fantastic. So we wanna bring more of that.
• 2:49
  Another thing we're gonna do early 2025 is we are going to unarchive our local channels.
• 2:55
  So we actually used to have probably, like, twelve or fifteen local channels in the Slack group, and the idea was, like, if there's a bunch of people in Vancouver or Tampa, Florida, or wherever, that they could kind of coordinate, work together to get meetups on the calendar, happy hour, co-working, whatever.
• 3:11
  And we kinda got away from that. I actually ended up archiving the channels because it was getting to be a little bit too much to manage.
• 3:17
  We have a plan for all of that, though, and we're bringing back the local channels.
• 3:20
  We really wanna help facilitate local meetups, and I think it's possible, don't-- I, not, haven't nailed down details on this just yet, that Eric and I may do a quick tour of the US to hit a couple cities and organize meetups and hang out with Superpath folks in real life.
• 3:35
  So we'll have a lot more about that. We'll obviously be keeping everyone updated on what's going on with Superpath Pro and some of the other things we'll be rolling out there.
• 3:43
  But just in general, you know, the theme of the relaunch and again going into 2025 is we want it to be the absolute best money you ever spend in content marketing.
• 3:51
  It should be so incredibly valuable that it's just a no-brainer, and that's what we're aiming for. And if it's not that, let me know. We'll give you a refund, no questions asked.
• 3:59
  Like, seriously, I want it to be just a fantastic experience for anybody that signs up. So anyway, stay tuned, newsletter, Slack, et cetera, for all that.
• 4:08
  Okay, just quickly, let's talk about content in 2025, and this is not, like, hot take predictions.
• 4:14
  It's just kinda things I'm seeing based on talking to a lot of people on the podcast, in the Slack community, our own customers and sales calls, et cetera. This is kinda what I see for next year.
• 4:24
  I think 2025 is back to basics. I think that's the theme of the year for most content teams, right? I think so many folks have been forced to rethink what a good content strategy looks like, and that's great, actually.
• 4:36
  That's a great thing, right? Like, if you did a lot of SEO for the last few years and now you're not so sure about that, it's an amazing opportunity to rethink what content looks like for you, for your business.
• 4:47
  And I think that there's some things... You know, there's a couple companies out there, more than a couple. There's plenty of companies out there who are already differentiating.
• 4:54
  Matt Hodges and the conversation we had about the work they're doing at Equals is one that stands out to me in that they really understand what they're good at, what they like to do in terms of the type of content they publish, and they have a very clear understanding of how it supports their business.
• 5:08
  Like, it's pretty simple, really. Like, in that case, it's essay-style, first-person content based on that person's experience doing their own work, right?
• 5:17
  And, like, they're trying to reach startup founders and early-stage startup folks. So it can be a little broad. There's other versions of that, right? Like, every company's gonna land on something a little different.
• 5:27
  Maybe for your company, it's an editorial-style newsletter or a curated newsletter. For some, it's gonna be video and audio. For some, it's gonna be more like old school blogging.
• 5:35
  For some, it's gonna be, you know, LinkedIn thought leadership. Like, whatever it is, it needs to be original.
• 5:41
  It needs to draw a clear line from the input to the output, which in every case for every content strategy should be helping to grow that business.
• 5:52
  And I think you have to really think hard about how are you gonna distribute it. Is it SEO? You know what I mean? What are your expectations for distribution also?
• 5:59
  Like, I think our, all of our expectations around distribution probably need to changeBecause all the social platforms have de-emphasized links.
• 6:07
  It's actually pretty difficult to get any meaningful traffic from any social platform. It's getting harder to get traffic from search engines also. So like, where does that leave us?
• 6:17
  Well, it leaves us with email, which is, I think, as important, maybe more important than it's ever been, assuming you're treating it as a channel of its own, not just writing blog posts and sending out links.
• 6:31
  It leaves us with word of mouth, it leaves us with referrals, and it's like really, we're like going back to some fundamentals, because if the platforms that give us traffic take that traffic away, we have to own that relationship with the readers directly.
• 6:45
  Related to that, I think we all have to start becoming more and more comfortable with platform-native content.
• 6:49
  Meaning, if you publish on LinkedIn, whatever you get from it is going to probably happen primarily on LinkedIn. Same with X or, you know, wherever else you might be sharing content on somebody else's platform, right?
• 7:01
  Like, it's sort of old-fashioned at this point to expect to use social channels to drive people back to a website. Like, it can happen.
• 7:09
  It, but it probably happens slowly and over time, not every time you post something new. So that probably means developing more expertise on the platforms themselves.
• 7:19
  Like, if LinkedIn's your go-to, then you really have to understand exactly what type of content works on LinkedIn. You have to understand the measurement.
• 7:26
  You have to understand how you're gonna report on those and make the case for it, et cetera, et cetera. One other thing I think we all need to be especially mindful of in 2025 is
• 7:37
  how content is produced and how involved we are in the production of it. And what I mean by that is, you know, in the SERP days, the SEO days, right, where that was most companies' bread and butter,
• 7:49
  it became very easy to outsource writing. And for a lot of companies, it worked well enough that they didn't really have to get so in the weeds of how the stuff is produced.
• 7:59
  Like, if you have a good process for creating briefs and editing, like, that was probably enough. I think we're gonna see a shift there.
• 8:05
  I think that the in-house folks are gonna end up taking more ownership of how content is produced, right? For a few reasons. Like, one is everybody actually should be using AI to accelerate processes at the very least.
• 8:17
  Even better if you're using it as kind of a sparring partner as you write or as your writers are producing, use it for editing, whatever. There's so many good things you could be doing there.
• 8:26
  But also because if the content will be truly differentiated, we're getting back to the craft of it, right?
• 8:31
  Whether it's the craft of writing or the craft of storytelling through writing or other mediums like video and audio. Like, that's really, really important going into 2025.
• 8:40
  And so, like, really getting into the weeds of exactly how the stuff is produced. It doesn't mean you can't use freelancers. It just means you have to probably tighten up those processes.
• 8:48
  And I think that teams will win when the in-house folks have really strong opinions about production.
• 8:54
  So you may have to get into the weeds in a way that you haven't been in a while in order to, like, truly understand exactly how this stuff is being created so that you can improve it.
• 9:03
  Wow, I almost said optimize it, but no, that's not what I mean. I mean improve the quality of the work so that people actually care and wanna read it or consume it.
• 9:12
  And so I think that actually may run a little bit counter to a lot of the work that so many folks have been doing over the last couple of years, which was more like strategy-driven.
• 9:19
  And I think that we should all be prepared to get our hands a little bit dirty. And then one last thing I'll just throw in there. I kind of expect a LinkedIn slump to happen sometime in 2025.
• 9:28
  Like, I just find LinkedIn... Like, I get that everybody's using it because it's become, like, in Twitter's absence, it's become kind of the only B2B social network.
• 9:39
  And there's a lot of good stuff that happens on LinkedIn. Like, you do find, like, interesting posts, you find cool conversations, but I would say that's maybe ten to fifteen percent of the time,
• 9:50
  and the rest of it is just so much bloviating, you know? And I sort of expect that people are gonna fatigue from that.
• 9:56
  If nothing else, it will just become so saturated that, like, the algorithm can't even keep up with it, you know, which means your entire feed will just become bloviating, [chuckles] you know, for lack of a better term.
• 10:06
  Just, like, sort of declarations and hot takes and blah, blah, blah.
• 10:10
  And even though, like, the folks creating it are probably extremely well-intentioned and some of it is probably really interesting, it's like this happens with all social media. You know, you...
• 10:19
  To optimize it for the algorithm, you really degrade the product for the reader. Like, those two things, there's an inverse correlation there, right?
• 10:27
  Like, you have to dumb it down so the algorithm will like it more or less, you know? So I don't know. I have such mixed feelings about LinkedIn. Like, frankly, I don't really enjoy spending time there.
• 10:38
  Like, I miss the old Twitter. That's not coming back. And so there's a pitch there for Superpath. Like, "Hey, come have real conversations with real people."
• 10:45
  But I do expect a slump there, and sort of tying that back to distribution, you know, I don't know if LinkedIn is gonna be as good of a distribution channel if we record this podcast December 2025 as it has been today.
• 10:59
  And even today it's not that great because you can hardly drive anybody back to your site.
• 11:02
  So it's like you're relying on impressions or comments or likes, and that's all just, like, so, you know, and it's sort of, like, exciting for a little while, but, like, are you really gonna keep spending a bunch of time and energy, putting that time and energy into trying to get those vanity metrics up if you can't figure out, like, whether or not it's helping the business?
• 11:22
  I don't know. It's pretty loose for me. Like, I don't really know what's gonna happen there, but I...
• 11:26
  my guess is that LinkedIn, the marketing world of LinkedIn will be in probably a slightly worse place next year than it will this year.
• 11:34
  So honestly, if I had to, like, if I could wave my magic wand and tell you without any context on the business that you work for what's gonna work best, I actually think it's gonna be email.
• 11:44
  Having the relationship via email with readers is gonna be the best thing, and that goes, like, totally counter to the whole your blog is not a publication thing, which I wrote now six, six and almost seven years ago, which basically said forget building an audience 'cause you don't need it.
• 12:00
  That's all totally changed now, and I think actually you really do need that relationship with those, with those group of people who really care about the topics you cover and the way that you do it, and hopefully the products that you sell, too.
• 12:11
  So anyways, that's what I think about content for next year. I actually think there's just so much good that can potentially come from the disruption. I think getting back to basics actually is a really wonderful thing.
• 12:21
  It will force a lot of companies to simplify, to focus on what really matters.
• 12:25
  Hopefully also to allow people to, like I said, kind of dig deep into the craft of it, which is, I think, something that I know I and probably many others have kind of gotten away from as we've all tried to optimize everything.
• 12:37
  And I think there's really a lot of potential for really great work to come out of it and hopefully some really satisfying work for the content folks behind it, too. So there you go.
• 12:47
  Seriously, thank you everyone for tuning in to this podcast.
• 12:50
  Uh, it means so much that anybody downloads it and anybody listens to it, and, uh, I'm, I'm very grateful for, you know, twenty-five, thirty minutes you spend listening to this podcast every week.
• 13:00
  As always, if you ever have suggestions for this podcast, for Superpath, you have ideas, feedback, constructive criticism, hate mail, whatever, shoot me an email, jimmy@superpath.co. Happy New Year, everybody.
• 13:11
  See you in 2025. [outro music]