Can Blogs Succeed Where Templated Marketing Fails?

Scott: Hello and thanks for joining me today. This is your human content brief, a report on what's happening in the world of content strategy from a human perspective. In today's briefing, we'll see another example of our tendency as marketers to copy one another and what it looks like to our audience. You'll hear the shocking story about a company that created 7,000 pieces of a certain type of content, but only got a few people to even look at it.

We'll talk about what that tells us about content, strategy, and audience. And finally, orbit Media is releasing their 2025 blogger survey, and Andy Cina will join us to share what you'll learn about blogging trends, including how much people are using AI and what is actually working. So let's get to page one, Kristen Million.

A fractional CMO B2B marketing expert and a top voice on LinkedIn shared a nice little commentary about LinkedIn content a few days ago, and this aligns with something that I feel like I've been wondering about a lot lately when it comes to LinkedIn, although I would say this could really apply to any platform depending on your experience.

But let's take a look at this. She said What happened to us? We don't have an algorithm problem. We have a critical thinking problem. And then she shares these four quotes. Buy this course for exact instructions. Use a guru's template. Just swap out a few words. Copy and paste this called Outreach Script.

Let AI write your comments and answers. She goes on to say, somewhere along the way, original thought, became optional thinking is now seen as too much effort, too much risk, too slow. So copy and paste, culture wins. I don't come to LinkedIn for more of the same what I want to see in my feed. Real personal stories, team wins.

We're celebrating insights from industry experts, posts that make me stop and think. LinkedIn used to be smart people saying smart things. Now everyone has something to say using a purchased or AI generated template. If you're tired of the template takeover, let's push back together. Who's with me? The stamp framework for humanizing content covers a lot of this.

I mean, think about that if you have some familiarity with my framework. We're covering a lot of ground here and a very simple concept. Really, self-awareness is involved here. Two-way communication is involved here. Adaptability is definitely being covered here. If we're talking about AI comments and answers, meaningful language comes into play.

Then obviously the thing that I think is really needed is predictive intelligence, which is being lost because there's no self-awareness into what we're doing. To Krista's point, what we are doing is we're just trying to put out stuff as fast as we possibly can, and instead of trying to think through everything, including how we can be different from everybody else, and what is it going to mean to our audience, we're just copying what we see other people do, and then she's right.

Next thing you know, everything looks the same. I'm noticing a lot more people are calling this out, seeing the same stuff all the time, and we already know we could apply this to email dms, probably other content on social platforms. But I think that top question is really important what happened? But I honestly think we could have been asking that question long before AI wasn't that long ago.

I saw someone point out how, when it comes to thought leadership posts on LinkedIn. If they're seeing the same format with the hooks written a certain way, the spacing done the same way, bullet pointing, done the same way, and there's such a focus on pulling that off that we don't hit some of these other things that Krista's talking about, the most important thing being posts that make you stop and think.

I look at some of these posts and I go, this isn't so much about the insight. This isn't so much about providing something that might make somebody go, Hey, you know, he or she is right. It's just, I need to make something in this format. What thing could I throw together here and call it good? I'll just take this piece of advice and I'll shove it into that format.

And then there's these other tactics that involve, you know, copy and paste this and that'll do it. Or you know, something that's going to make you sign up for something in order to get this other thing. The problem is as it relates to self-awareness, what this is, is we're not taking enough time to stop and think.

If you're posting on LinkedIn regularly, wouldn't you say that you probably have seen some of these things? The answer's probably yes, but then you have the marketers like Krista, who are remembering their consumer experience and letting it drive what she's gonna do on LinkedIn. 'cause she's like, holy crap, I'm not gonna do that because.

I already know how much it annoys me as a consumer, and I can only imagine what it does to my audience. But then there's the other path you can go where you see that happen over and over and over again, and that path of less critical thinking goes, oh, well if everybody else is doing it, then we need to do it too.

It clearly works because everybody's doing it. So we're gonna try the same tactic, and it becomes more about how that helps us and less about what it might mean if anything. To the people we're supposedly trying to reach. She says at the end of her post, if you're tired of the template takeover, let's push back together.

I know as a consumer you've seen things you can definitely tell are a template, and sometimes it's not because you've necessarily seen the template. You've just seen a ton of people following that pattern, and marketers have been doing this for a really long time. A little extra self-awareness can break this pattern.

If we're going to be serious about content, we have to start taking more time to provide people with something they feel like they haven't seen. Because AI is worsening this on their side. They're already looking for things wondering, did AI write this or did a person write this? And if it looks like a template, they're probably gonna think AI wrote the template.

One of the many ways that we're going to be able to differentiate our role in the content process is looking less. Like ai, even though AI can help us do a lot of things and look a lot less templated. So when Krista says Who's with me, I definitely am and I hope you are too.

Next page. Speaking of habits that limit marketing success, Lindsay Tjepkema, who is very passionate about human-centric business strategy, had Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios on her.

Actually, you can podcast. He shared this CMO story with the audience.

Ian: We are only constrained by shackles we put on ourselves. Mm-hmm. Our audiences deserve better stuff. Unequivocally. They deserve better stuff. They are not getting good enough stuff. I, I saw a stat the other day that said there's a CMO, they'd made 7,000 white papers last year.

Next year, just in one year. 63 of them got over 10 views. So like this is the state of B2B marketing, right? We're trotting out the same stuff over and over and over again and nobody wants that stuff. And you could say like they

Scott: wants some naked either.

Ian: Yeah. No, that's what I, yeah, that's what I mean.

Nobody wants to make it. Nobody wants to create that. I don't want to create that. Whereas when I sit on a call with a bunch of marketers and we're making something that's fiction, people are freaking excited. It's like palpable creating characters that have an arc, that have stories that, that connect this stuff into the human side of the world.

Not just your work, but like what happens after you get home from work? What happens at the conference? What happens when you know you, you make an enemy at work or a friend enemy, or all these things like there's a million things that we could be talking about. I know that marketers want to be more creative.

Yes, but also audiences demand us to be more creative. Yes. And otherwise they won't consume.

Scott: Okay, so there's a few things to clarify here in case you didn't hear exactly what Ian said. He said the stats showed that A CMO had created 7,000 white papers and 63 had 10 views. So much to unpack there. So many things this reminds me of, and honestly, as someone who used to work in roles like copywriter, content manager, content strategist, content specialist, before going out on my own, I can definitely relate to the whole not wanting to do a white paper.

And a big part of that wasn't just because it felt like. Tedious work because it's not tedious. If you can get personally invested in the value and what it's gonna offer the other side. But so often late in the game, later in that part of my career, it was clear that these things were being created because internally the company had decided, well, we need to make content.

Let's do white papers. Why? Because they've seen other companies do white papers. And this goes back to a lot of other things that we talk about here. There's not a single moment that makes somebody think, well, how long have white papers been around? And is it possible nobody wants to read 'em? In fact, does anybody download them anymore?

Or maybe a better question, when was the last time we downloaded or got excited about downloading a white paper? By the way, could we change the name? I mean the, the name alone doesn't scream. Great resource. When was the last time somebody told you, Hey, I downloaded this great white paper that you should look at?

You know what this reminds me of too, is we're gonna have Andy Crestodina join us, and I remember one of the things that Andy told people several weeks ago. Was to stop putting things on your website to download in general, like PDF resources. He said all this stuff should be HDML. He said PDFs are the rust of the internet and if he's onto something there and odds are he is, doesn't mean you have to agree with him.

Doesn't mean you never try anything, but I think white paper probably has to fall in that category, doesn't it? That also is out of alignment with what people on the other side are demanding, which is prove you're actually providing something to help me and connect with me. If you're putting out 7,000 to me, you're still thinking that quantity is going to win the day over quality.

It's no different from companies I still talk to and have seen in the last couple years. That have said we gotta put 50 blogs out a week and we're gonna talk to Andy about blogs and Andy will be one of the first people to tell you it is not about quantity and it hasn't been for some time. And when you consider how AI is, you know, changing the search game, it most certainly isn't about that anymore.

There are people who haven't taken that moment to engage critical thinking again and say, Hey, does this mean we might need to change something? Or better yet, how many white papers are people in our audience really gonna download in 2025? It reminds me of how people are still blasting things out on LinkedIn.

Maybe it's cut and paste on dms, or maybe it's an email to 20,000 people. I know that's kind of probably an exaggerated. Number, but I'm just saying a long list of people and they've already come to terms with the fact that the open or click through rate's gonna be low, but that doesn't make 'em change anything.

For some reason. There's no thought to saying maybe we need to figure out a way to start focusing on the people who do open and are interested and learn how to engage those people and not try to blast out to so many others because for whatever reason, that just feels safer. Now, one of the other things I like about Ian and his business is he's focused on creative podcasting.

You heard him say fiction a moment ago because that's a part of how he's creating content to help his clients. Caspian Studios from my understanding, is a podcast as a service company for B2B brands. And at first they were producing premium branded podcasts, nonfiction interview, narrative style. Then they expanded to create fiction podcasts, which if you're familiar with fiction podcast, and I have written, produced, and edited a fiction podcast before.

I mean, that's a fully produced audio story. So you've got characters, different voices, music, sound effects. So we're talking in Ian's case, murder mysteries, thrillers, workplace dramas, and it's still getting a point across. There's still a lesson there. There's still an element to the business in the story, but it's a story.

It's a way to break out of the sameness of B2B content, especially business podcasting, and show how storytelling can engage audiences in a totally different way. I actually did this for a healthcare company a few years ago. They wanted a podcast that was gonna share helpful health information.

Basically, how to take care of yourself, your mind, and your body, you know, not. Do bad things to your back and do other things to keep yourself physically fit. Without sounding like a boring health advice podcast, I created this podcast that had bumpers and it sounded like a little radio show, and there were these audio skits and a lot of 'em were inspired by other pop culture references, and they had character voices, music sound effects, and they all had lessons in them.

I tell you what, I'll play a clip from one of the skits just to give you, uh, an idea of how this sounded. And this is one of the more simple skits that I created. It just involved music, sound effects and narration. So when I was a kid, I used to look at this magazine called Highlights. It was a kid's magazine, and there was always this one page with these two characters on it called Goofus and Gallant.

It was just a comparison of doing something the right way or the wrong way. Gallant did it the right way, goof Fist did it the wrong way, and that provided some inspiration to create a skit called Smarty and Hardy and I presented it where you would almost visualize one of those old black and white reel tore.

Films they used to show in schools where the narrator was always talking you through, you know, what Jimmy's doing and all this sort of thing. And it was a good way to use Smarty and Hardy in the same vein because Smarty would be doing smart things, simple things 'cause it, it, it was simple information to take care of himself, like his back.

And then there was Hardy who was always hard on his body or hard on his back in a way that was kind of reckless or irresponsible or he just didn't stop and think. Anyway, here's a little clip of how that sounded. Today's episode is called Workout or Wipe Out. Smarty and Hardy are making their first trip to the gym.

While that's something that can be good for them both, let's see how they choose to start their workouts. Smarty knows his body isn't used to weight lifting or workout routines, so he's consulting with the training staff on how to get started. As a result, he learns the proper way to stretch and lift weights.

In a way that won't cause injury, especially to his back and neck when stretching. Smarty uses proper techniques and doesn't overstretch any muscles. As he works in his first round of lifting, he keeps the weight low and limits his reps. Over time, his body will get used to the workout and he'll be able to increase the weight as he strengthens his muscles.

Unfortunately, Hardy wants to impress the girls in the gym and decides to go right for the big weights without even giving himself a stretch or a warmup routine. He immediately picks up heavy weights and starts lifting them over and over. Hook. Hook. Sure he is able to lift some heavy ones, but his body will be dangerously stiff and sore the next day.

Those problems will be added to a stiff neck and back after he attempted to do his first round of squats, his stance was wrong and the weight was way too heavy.

The girls were not impressed. And you know, I wasn't trying to be genius or hilarious. It was just supposed to be fun, and they were thrilled with the result. So Ian is taking that next level here. He's putting all that work, all that extra work into creating something uniquely different in the podcast space for these brands and turning it into these fictional stories.

And if anything, these creative formats, which already is a huge win for any business because it's not gonna be the generic business format type. You probably have heard over and over and over again and why? Because it fits exactly what we've been talking about today. The marketer's tendency to see and hear what other people do and go, oh, that's the way it's done.

We'll do it that way too. So, repeating the same old stuff the same way over and over again without any thought as to whether people care about that type of content anymore. What your audience is experiencing and has been experiencing over the last several years when it comes to content. That's why taking that extra moment to be self-aware as to why you're doing it, being able to have a culture that can adapt to something new and thinking a little more about the audience goes a long way.

Okay, page three. Well, if you know Andy Cina or you've seen him speak at conferences or visited his website over@orbitmedia.com, you are more than aware of the valuable and helpful insights he's been providing marketers and businesses over the years. And if your content strategy includes blogging or you've been thinking about blogging, there has been tremendous value in the annual blogger survey.

In which marketers and businesses explain what's working and not working when it comes to blogging today, and this year's survey will be especially interesting considering what we keep hearing about SEO and search changes, zero click marketing, and of course ai. So let's connect to Chicago. And talk to Andy and learn about some of the key takeaways from the 2025 blogger survey.

Hi Andy, thanks for joining us today.

Andy: Glad to be here. Scott, it's been a little while.

Scott: It has, and I'm, I'm so glad we're getting to talk about your latest blogger survey, which I've been keeping up with for the last few years, but I know you've been doing it a lot longer than that. Um, and it's always been interesting to see what changes and what people are saying is working and not working, and how other factors in content marketing play a role in all of this.

And I think with that in mind, since um, we are hearing about so much change and everybody's got an opinion on what it means, I was wondering if we could just start from maybe just a, a simple place. Where I ask you when we consider a lot of the things we're hearing about traffic and Zero Click and a lot of the things we're gonna talk about today related to ai, I mean, would you say in 2025 that blogging is still worth doing and that it's, it's definitely a content strategy that brands can at least look into as long as they look at studies like yours and kind of know what has to be there and what doesn't work anymore?

Andy: Oh, for sure. Uh, the study has shown every year from the beginning, uh, this is 12 years we've done it. Content marketing is a very resilient strategy. 80% of the respondents are showing performance from their content marketing. Uh, this year, 21% show strong results. So it's working. Uh, I think it's importance maybe increasing because content marketing is one of the ways in which you can inform the AI and add to AI's training data, an opportunity to address head on the things that AI doesn't know yet about you.

Uh. Struggling though, if your only strategy for attracting visitors to your content was to demise them for search and try to get visitors to click, Google has been reducing click-through rates to organic listings for a very long time. Uh, I could show in side by side screenshots 'cause I've been collecting screenshots of Google search results pages for many years, and you can just see how much visual noise they put in there.

AI is only the latest in that long march toward Google keeping its visitors. So, uh. More challenging for the SEO content marketers. Uh, far less challenging for people who use other channels and these days, I think knowing that AI trains on each of our brands using our website than our content, uh, there are yet new reasons to, uh, to continue to press forward with our content programs.

Scott: Yeah, especially when I think about how search and how AI search is changing. And then of course, like I said, all the things that we hear about regarding Zero Click, and I feel like Zero Click too is very much like AI where it, you've got people who are saying, oh, it's all zero click, which means you can't be getting clicks to anything anymore.

And it's very much similar to, you know, the AI debate sometimes. But I, I know that you haven't nearly been that extreme when it came to zero Click. And I wonder how that plays a role into this too, because. Maybe there's still opportunities. I know that you put out a, a newsletter on LinkedIn, obviously that's tied to the blog mm-hmm.

That people are gonna have to click on to read, and I'm sure that that provides not only value to people who click on it, and there's always value there, but I mean, just to your business too, I would think that there are still plenty of people there. One to click on that and go to your blog and read it there.

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, adaptation. You know, there's, there's disruption. Uh. Despite the declining click through risk from Google search, our, our content is 10 times more visible than it was three years ago. Uh, I think it's equal Click is easy to it. It's such a memorable little term. It reminds me of like zero inbox or inbox zero, like one of the, it's just a word, you know, that kind of like sticks in your mind.

But it's absurd because there are still tons of phrases that have visit website intent. Visit website intent doesn't roll out the tongue, but that's my way of thinking about how some key phrases people search for because they're trying to get to a website, they're making a big decision. They're in high consideration mode, they're doing serious research.

So it's obviously not true that there, that there's no clicks coming from search. Well look at your traffic. Go look at your real-time traffic. You probably have visitors on your website right now. So, uh, no, that is a huge overstatement. The, the more accurate way to say it isn't as punchy, but click organic, click-through rates or information intent.

Keywords to content marketing have crashed, and there are many phrases for which there's no reason to click because Google provides the answer directly in search results. Right.

Scott: That's true. I think about some of the things that have been consistently interesting to watch as the, um, surveys come out over the last few years when it comes to just some of those fundamentals.

I know we're gonna talk about AI here in a second, but back when you could put all your eggs or a lot of eggs into the SEO basket for things like blogs, and then it became more about, you know, all right, what are some of the things that are gonna differentiate you? And then we started getting into depth and collaboration and.

What all that was gonna take. And I've seen a lot of like minor variations when it came to things like length, but I feel like elements like collaboration and visuals and things like that were continuously popular or effective. There was just some nuance. Are you still seeing those type of things being like critical things?

Blogs are gonna have to have along with all these other elements we have to consider?

Andy: Yeah. At the end of the survey, we sort of summarize the strategies or elements of content programs that correlate with strong results. Sadly, these are often the least popular strategies. Mm-hmm. It's really strange. The things that work the best are the things that the fewest people are doing.

Maybe that's why they work. It's like Blue Ocean. They're like, it's easy to compete with most content marketers because most content is not good. The specific things that correlate with strong performing content programs, long form content. Collaborating with influencers published consistently, more frequently.

Highly visual. They have four plus images per article. These are the marketers that are checking analytics. We're open to using budgets and paid performance to drive traffic. We're spending much more time on each piece than other marketers, six plus hours than a typical article. They write for many websites, not just their own.

They do still and yet do keyword research. Uh. And they're embracing the idea of publishing similar to this piece or new original research, creating new data. Those are ex And I could probably fit that into one sentence if I tried. Yeah, ask him. It's okay. That's what works. Yeah. And I think people kind of know it.

Um, but the da, but now we have data that

Scott: shows it. We were talking just a second ago, especially now that we're about to get into AI and what you use AI for in the, uh, either the creation or development process. If you've got a brand new business. Or a business that's been thinking about blogging for the last two or three years, but they haven't done it.

And they're sitting there thinking, gosh, you know, as Andy's saying, there's all these things we gotta consider, there's all this stuff we're competing with, and we'd be writing our first blog tomorrow. I mean, do you think that some of the things that, um, people can learn from all this really great research you provide that a a business could still say, we are gonna start blogging today and build something out of that, versus some of these folks that have been doing it for a while and they're just adjusting.

Their strategy based on what they learn

Andy: 100%. Uh, if I were launching a new business and starting a content marketing strategy today, uh, I would begin with the bottom of the funnel. In fact, I would blog directly for my sales funnel. I would ask myself what questions are be on that being asked most often during the sales process.

Now, I would create content that answers those questions. That's called zero Waste Marketing. Don't care if it ranks, don't care if anyone, uh, you know, opens the email. 'cause I'm writing for my prospects, that is the highest value content because it directly connects to revenue and there's no reason not to do that.

You know, you can use it under email nurture sequences when you send proposals, uh, and send it to people fo uh, you know, as follow-ups after phone calls or meetings. So there are so many ways to use content, some of which are totally unrelated to search, social and email, uh, that the content will have value and drive performance.

Even if there was no internet, even if there was no Google or no ai. Yeah. Why wouldn't you do that? You should do that. Everyone should do that.

Scott: That's true. Yeah. And when, when we think about ai. I think that fits right in. And I remember not that long ago when you were working on one of these and AI was just beginning to kind of work its way into the process so we could learn how people were using it.

And then what we've seen over the years is the rising number of people that are using it, which obviously helps 'cause then we can see what's really working. And I know that's definitely been the case. For this particular survey as we're finally seeing more people using it, but what's really helpful is we're also seeing what's working for them or what they're saying is working best, and what are some of those highlights maybe for people who are wondering what's working when they hear so many things AI can be used for.

In the

Andy: 10th year of the survey, we added AI questions. And then asked it again in year 11, and here again in year 12. So I, so I can actually report to you on what the most popular use cases are of AI among content marketers. Uh, last year, the number one use case was generating ideas. Uh, today suggests edits as surge and is one of the, and is tied for the most popular use case.

Two thirds of marketers use AI to generate ideas and to suggest edits. The other use cases are things like writing headlines, writing outlines, writing first drafts, creating visuals, promotional emails, and post social posts. The least common use case for AI is in fact writing complete articles. Only 11% of marketers are using it to write complete articles.

Though that number has doubled, it's still a lot and all, but 5% of us are using AI to some extent. I think all those use cases and correlate them with the, the strong results respondents, people who the self-reporting. My marketing's driving strong results answer. And you find that very interesting correlation.

The marketers that are the detractors of AI that don't use it at all are the least likely to report strong results. The second least likely to report strong results are the ones who use it for everything to write complete articles. So it's a Goldilocks sort of insight. Uh, some people are using it too little or not at all.

Some people are using it too much and she'd stop drinking all the Kool-Aid. People who are the best and, and really none of the uses, strong, strong, you know, huge correlations. It's not like a magic bullet here. We're like, oh, just use AI for this and you're gonna win, right? No, basically, everything else is right there in the, in the trend line with, you know, the 21% strong performance benchmark.

Human beings, even before

Scott: AI, could always use help editing. And we can always do a little bit better in some of our idea generations. So we have that there, but we, we still have to do the important work on our side, especially when we consider, you know, um, all the different ways we have to differentiate ourselves in that content.

Is it safe to say. Especially when you look at the data that you have that you know a strong case you could make for keeping yourself involved is because when you look at how we know there are two extremes of all in or all out, that there's enough people, maybe even your competition that might be using AI to do everything.

The very fact that you're taking that extra time to know exactly where that line is and keep your personal stamp on something is such an opportunity for not only good content, but differentiation, because there will still be plenty of people out there that are gonna overuse something like AI for content.

Andy: Yeah. Well, it's, it's, there's just no question that, that the, the things that correlate most with high performance are things that AI doesn't really can't be. It is only unlimited help. For example, you know, the best 37% of content marketers that do influencer collaboration report strong results. That's a lot.

Like, that's a, that's a strong correlation. Yeah. Okay. Go ask AI to make some friends for you. Reach out to them, get their points of, like, they can't do that. Highly visual content, you know, with multiple charts, diagram, screenshots, you know, uh, AI doesn't really do that very well. You know, it can make. Sort of stock type photos, but you know, what about the actual, you know, the faces of your influencer, collaborators, you know that that's an image.

Writing guest posts, that's a pitching, networking, influencer marketing job, logger relations editors, uh, can't do that for you. Many of these things, like a lot of them, you know, a strong opinion content. Mm-hmm. It doesn't have any opinions. It doesn't care about anything. New original research, creating new data.

Yeah. I can't do that. So. In fact, most of the things that correlate with performance are things for which AI has very limited ability to help. Yeah, I can tell you what the most com triggering compelling topics are that you could take on as a thought leader, but it can't take a stand, right? And it will tell you what research is missing from your industry.

These are the cat, you know, these are the frequent assertions that aren't yet supported, but you can't make the data to fill those gaps. It, it doesn't really, it can't do what we're doing now, which is one of the highest performing, according to the survey, one of the highest performing formats. You know, this collaboration, uh, video, uh, audio.

Uh, so no, it is breathtakingly useful, but totally inadequate for structuring and developing the things that get the best results. Almost by definition, anything that it writes shouldn't be published because it's simply summarization. Mm. It's already been written. Yeah.

Scott: Yeah. And what I'm wondering too is, I mean, I, I realize we're, you know, there's any number of things along with, you know, the power of this survey that really helps, um, contextualize things when we think about that plus some of the other trends we're seeing.

I feel like, you know, anytime something like, like this comes out and this has a lot to do with. Deeply, I wanna say personal. Sometimes people are about the AI debate out there. What about those who say, okay, yeah, Andy's right about this, that AI can't do this or can't do that as well. But then, you know, there's always that well.

It can't do it that well yet, but hopefully it'll get there. I mean, do you, do you see that some of these things, when we talk about the limitations and clearly when you start about building relationships and stuff, I mean, you gotta think that's always gonna be a human thing, but do you feel like there's a lot of those limitations you just saw are really going to be things that will always, in some form or fashion, be a limitation we've gotta be aware of when it comes to content?

Andy: You ask a really interesting question because there are a lot of people who are sort of evangelists and are looking at every single thing and asking can a, I do this, can a I do that? Uh, which is not unreasonable for this moment in time because it's because it's an era of huge innovation. Yeah. But that's never been my perspective.

It's like, can I use an ai, do this for me, or what can I do with ai? I go, here's an ai, what can I do with it? Not taking a tool and saying, how can I use it? Uh, I sometimes do that, but more often I'm saying, here's an audience that's my potential buyer. What's the true story in their life? Where are they spending time?

What are their information needs? How can I connect to them in a way that builds awareness and trust over time? If that's your starting point, instead of, Ooh, there's a tool, what can I do with it? Mm-hmm. Instead, it's, this is my business objective. How can I reach it? Friends with a lot of like hardcore AI evangelists and they send me text messages at all hours.

And like this one, you know, Hey, have you seen this yet? Or, I got a new tool. Or there's just, all of our LinkedIn streams are filled with these either doom and gloom or just irrational exuberance about these tools. It's really a strange time to be alive. Yeah. But, uh, focus on strategy, focus on audiences, focus on outcomes, and you'll find lots of useful ways to use it.

But it's still not writing anything for me. I don't need that help. Uh, except YouTube descriptions. Nobody reads those anyway. That's right up there with maybe like meta descriptions and things like that. Maybe. Yeah. I don't need, I, I'll never write another YouTube description again. I got

Scott: little automation.

It does, I mean, there's so many like experts out there, like Sean Cannel and, and some of these other folks whose businesses are around this. And uh, you can literally ask. AI to search what they say and say, okay, based on this expert's opinion, what do you think this YouTube description should be for this content?

I mean, and I've even gone, uh, a step further with that, where, you know, after you record it, you can pull it into a program like the script or something else and download the transcript and where AI knows everything you talked about. And then say, okay, this, now research this maybe from this expert who seems to know what he's talking about.

Mm-hmm. And give me a good. Set of ideas for title and description based on these two things and yeah, generally what it comes up with is pretty good. You may have to say, ah, try this, or try this angle. Or I've heard people say, you know, go for areas like desire or fear or something like that. That way mm-hmm.

It can theme it a little differently and it, it works wonders. So you've done all the, all of your imprint on the content side, now you're just looking to get it on the platform. That's

Andy: more or less my same workflow. Yeah, looking to get the prompt. Now, one thing that I've done though, and, uh, this, this might sound strange, but I don't, I sort of don't write prompts myself anymore.

I read YouTube descriptions and I have transcripts from YouTube videos. Uh, our mutual goal is to generate a prompt that I can use again and again to generate YouTube descriptions. My first thoughts are that I'm probably gonna give you like an input of like, just the transcription and maybe, uh, you know, I wanted to make sure the output is these things that align with these things.

It has this formatting, this length of place for the timestamps and, uh. A little sign off at the bottom. So instead of writing prompts, I'm telling AI about my outcome and asking it to write the prompt and telling it that my goal is to have a reusable prompt that I can use to get, and again, uh, some of those get promoted sort of up from reusable prompts to actual automations and custom GPTs.

But yeah, I end up with this YouTube description generator where when I give it a transcript, it makes this thing for me very good. And it's very good. It's very good. It, it still needs some editing, but um, I'm happy to share it with anyone. But I didn't write

Scott: that prompt. AI wrote that prompt for me.

Interesting. All right. Was there anything else that, as you look at the data from this particular survey, that really either surprised you or stood out to you that you think people are either gonna wanna know or as something they should definitely take a deep dive in when they get a chance to look at this, that really stood out to you, uh, on this particular survey?

Andy: Yeah, I think the, the way to use the survey is to. Validate or challenge your own content strategy. And it has things like length and frequency, which are interesting to look at, uh, but also look closely at which formats for content are the ones that are most likely to correlate with strong results.

Guides, webinars, original research, interviews, news across all these hundreds of respondents. Some of these formats are much stronger correlations with with performance than others. The end of the summary kind of gives you almost like a content strategy in a nutshell. Mm-hmm. But as you scan through, slow down when you look at the section about formats, because I think not just what to write and uh, how long should it be and how many pictures, but this is an excellent time to reconsider this structure of the content itself.

Should I launch a podcast or webinar or, or some of these influencer formats? Is there a place in my strategy for maybe an, an interview format, you know, or. Should I, uh, should I take on news and trends? You know, it, it actually, it's, it's fun to see the correlation between formats and performance.

Scott: That's one of the reasons why I think it's so good that the survey goes as deep as it does and covers so much territory with so many people sharing their insight on this.

So, um, as always looking forward to checking this out this weekend, and I appreciate you so much for being here to talk about it. I know I'll see it. I know I'll have a link to it in, in the show notes for this episode. And I know people who are subscribed to you or connected to you on LinkedIn will also see it.

Are those primarily the best places to find it and obviously at Orbit Media.

Andy: It's, uh, everything goes live first at orbit media.com/blog. It'll be right there. Uh, but yeah, if you're connected with me on LinkedIn or on the LinkedIn newsletter, of course you'll see it there, but it's, it shouldn't be too hard if, if it's hard to find.

I'm not doing my

Scott: job well, and if I'm not putting it in show notes, I'm not doing my job. So you can bet it'll definitely be there and I'll be sharing it on my, uh, on my LinkedIn as well because I've gotten a lot of value out of this the last few years I've had a chance to dive into this survey and that's why it was so important to be able to talk about the new one on the show today.

So thank you so much, uh, Andy for joining us to talk about it and we look forward to talking with you again soon and definitely look forward to seeing the survey. Thanks, Scott. Always a pleasure. Same here. Well, that was great. I mean, and it really kind of fits into what we were just talking about earlier today.

It fits into the idea of doing more critical thinking before and during the development of content. It ensures that we're not just trying to follow a template and get things out the door, or we're not focused on quantity over quality. Because as you heard Andy say, people are spending a lot more time on one piece of content.

And if we're putting that extra time for critical thinking and critical thinking as we've talked about today. Is not only about value, but it's also making sure that our starting point as a business, why we're creating this content, why we're gonna focus, where we're gonna focus that we've thought that through, and we're making sure that we're not trapping ourselves before we even start creating the content.

And then we're also taking time to consider and understand the value it's going to provide to the audience. And also thinking about, okay, if this is in front of them. Why are they gonna read it? Why are they gonna care and why are they gonna come back and look for more? And then of course there are the elements that these blocks have to have in order for them to perform well.

And thank goodness we have this survey that'll tell us what other people are already saying. Yep, this works. Or, Hmm, this doesn't work so much. And if you've seen previous versions of the survey, I already know you're gonna check it out. But I will have a link to the 2025 blogger survey in the show notes for this episode.

And that is today's human content brief. And along with the blogger survey, I will have links to the other resources and insights found in this briefing on the website, which is your content brief.com. If I can help you or your business, whether you're looking for a way to create humanized content or evolve existing content to be more human, I'm here to help you stand out and make a more meaningful connection with your audience.

You can also find me on LinkedIn or my website, which is Scott Murray online.com, or there's always that email transmission. I'm atScott@scottmurrayonline.com. Thank you so much for joining me today.