Almost Timely News: ποΈ My AI-Enabled Content Marketing Process (2024-07-21) :: View in Browser
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What's On My Mind: My AI-Enabled Content Marketing Process
Itβs been a little while since Iβve last looked at my overall content marketing process, but over on LinkedIn, Peter and a couple of other folks were asking about it.
My Content Marketing Strategy
First, the overall strategy is one I picked up from Jay Baer years ago. Jay said, βHaving the recipe doesnβt make you a chef,β which is an amazing way to encapsulate how I think about creating and sharing content.
Strategically, I think of my content as a cooking show, more or less. I create content and show off recipes around AI, data science, and analytics with the understanding that itβs not the whole picture, nor is it the process in full. Just as a cooking show doesnβt last for 6 hours while a roast is in the oven, nor does my content show the boring, long-wait parts of the process.
And like a cooking show, the strategic intent is to entertain, educate, and inspire, with the understanding that a significant portion of the audience has absolutely no interest in cooking the dish themselves, but would gladly show up at a restaurant to have it cooked for them.
In general, there are three kinds of ways your content helps others, just as there are three broad categories of consuming food:
Done for you
Done with you
Done by you
Done for you is the restaurant. You show up, you pay a premium to have someone else make the dish for you, but you have almost no effort on your part other than eating and paying the bill. When you hire Trust Insights, a good amount of the time clients are looking for us to do the cooking. They want to eat at our restaurant. I enjoy that kind of work immensely.
Done with you is the meal kit. You order from a delivery service, and they provide a meal kit that lets you do some of the cooking, but the majority of the boring stuff is already done, like all the slicing and chopping. You still pay a premium, but itβs not necessarily as high a premium as going out to eat. When you hire me to lead a workshop or as a keynote speaker, thatβs more or less what youβre buying.
Done by you is you doing the cooking. You get the recipe, you buy the groceries, you cook the dish in your kitchen. You pay for the raw materials in money, and then you pay in time and effort to make the dish, as well as pay in terms of skill development. Anyone whoβs watched Nailed It! knows that skills are a substantial differentiator. When you buy my books, subscribe to this newsletter, or read my content around the Internet, youβre accepting the responsibility of doing the cooking. Itβs the lowest cost in financial terms.
And thatβs a key point to the entire spectrum. The overall cost is more or less the same - itβs a question of how much of the cost is money versus time, effort, and skill. No matter what approach you prefer, you pay in some fashion.
My Content Marketing Process
So thatβs the strategy. Now, what about the recipe, the implementation? I have a flow for my personal content that goes roughly like this:
Seed
Post
Video
Audio
Article
Newsletter
Letβs step through each of these pieces. First, the seed - the idea that gives rise to content. Where do I get ideas? Ideas come from a few different places. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and Threads, reading through what people have to say. Often, Iβll comment on posts that interest me, and those comments can become full posts of their own. I talked about this recently. Other times, Iβll see something that annoys me so much, I need to write a contrarian piece without denigrating the original author.
Another source of seeds is from webinars and events. Iβve given dozens of these talks over the years, and collected the questions from the Q&A portion. Now, you might think that Iβd run out of questions after a while, and if I stuck with the original questions that would be true. But I take the questions, feed them to generative AI and ask the language model to infer what additional questions the audience might ask based on the questions theyβve already asked, and an audience profile. Youβll never, ever run out of questions that way.
I was at a CMO virtual event recently and was asked about 40 questions. Because it was a private event, I knew the audience by name, so I took their LinkedIn profiles, put them all into a language model, and said, "Okay, here are the questions they already asked, give me 20 new questions based on the questions they asked." I got a great list of questions.
And then I extended this with Gemini. I prompted, "Okay, now write 20 questions that one of these folks would ask privately, a trusted advisor, a confidantβnot in public, not in a forum, not in a place where they would feel embarrassed asking questions." Like, "Gosh, I wonder if I can get it to do this." You can imagine where that line of thinking is going. But the questions it came up with were fantastic.
These were questions like, "What if our AI-powered campaign goes rogue and we can't control it? If everyone starts using AI to game the system, won't marketing just become a noise war nobody can win? What happens to human connection, to authenticity and marketing, if everything's driven by algorithms? Is it wrong to use AI to create hyper-personalized ads that play on people's insecurities? It's super effective, but is it wrong?"
These are the questions that a CMO might ask, maybe privately or maybe not out loud at all. With this technique, you never run out of questions this way. As long as you've got existing questions to get a sense of what's on their minds, and you've got your audience profile, you have an infinite amount of targeted, focused, intelligent questions that are very likely the questions people have in their minds.
And of course, the third source of seeds is just whateverβs bouncing around in my head at any given time. I use voice notes, the reminders app on my phone and Apple Watch, and pretty much any other memory capture mechanism I can so that when I think of something, I can write it down. Often, as I did with last weekβs newsletter, itβs just a half-baked mishmash of words, but occasionally it gels together. (at the moment the last two items on my ideas list are βiPhone Peltier cooler caseβ and βwhat is responsible AI anywayβ)
Once I have a seed, I write a post for LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my first destination to post these idea seeds because of the length limits. I want to see if the idea has any legs at all, and so Iβll draft posts for LinkedIn. I also get the benefit of seeing how well people engage with an idea, whether it deserves to be made into something bigger or just left out there as is.
For those ideas that get traction and feedback (which I mentally define as any comments that arenβt AI spam and at least 1,000 impressions in the platform), I then bundle those up on Sunday afternoons and shoot them as videos, ideally a total of five. I typically record natively on my Mac or if I need to show something, in Streamyard. I do these in bulk, sitting down for the 25-45 minutes it takes to generate the videos as one big block.
I then take that block and put it into Adobe Premiere, do color adjustment and audio engineering on the block as a whole, then cut it up into pieces. After that, each piece gets rendered as video, then converted to MP3 audio. The audio I then feed to whisper.cpp, the local transcription model I use. That becomes rough transcripts I stick into Google Gemini to clean up and also make YouTube captions and tags. After that, each video gets posted to YouTube and I put up an accompanying blog post, plus the MP3s as a podcast.
If Iβm feeling motivated and caffeinated, that process takes about 90 minutes on a Sunday afternoon/early evening. I schedule the posts and thatβs that. When a local, unlimited version of software like Opus Clips comes out that uses local AI models, Iβll probably start making shorts and Reels from the videos but right now Iβm not inclined to invest the time or money to do that.
After all that, if thereβs a seed that really stuck out and has outperformed, Iβll make that into a newsletter topic. If not, Iβll just write the newsletter normally, which is usually on a Saturday afternoon or evening. For whatever reason, I prefer to write my newsletter on my iPad and then do all the work to produce it at my desk, but I enjoy the iPad writing experience a lot.
We do a more advanced version of this process for the Trust Insights podcast and livestream that involves much more stuff like those Reels and social media sharing, but I donβt feel like investing the time in it for my personal stuff, nor do I feel like paying someone to do it. As AI evolves, Iβm sure Iβll be able to have a model and some Python code do that for me eventually, but not now.
Thatβs the implementation of my content marketing strategy. Whatβs notable about it is idea reuse. I follow the reverse of my friend Todd Defrenβs content atomization strategy; back in 2008, Todd said the ideal strategy was to produce a piece of huge pillar content and divide it up into as many pieces as possible to distribute it everywhere. Thatβs a sound strategy that still works today, but my strategy goes in reverse. Like the T-1000 Terminator, I have lots of little bits of content all over the place that flow together and aggregate, getting larger and more complex, from Threads replies and LinkedIn comments ultimately into long form pieces.
My upcoming book, The Intelligence Revolution, will be the culmination of that process as Iβm using generative AI to glue together two years worth of LinkedIn posts, blog posts, YouTube videos, and newsletters. Itβs not plagiarism if youβre only stealing from yourself! (well, technically it is still plagiarism but there are no legal consequences)
This process is also a guideline. Itβs not rigid; I can change it at any time. Since (for my personal stuff) I have only a team of 1 human (me) plus AI, I can make alterations whenever I want. Sometimes an idea will skip the line. Other times I want to publish an idea on an owned property first so that I can lay claim to it as soon as possible (youβll see this next week in the Trust Insights newsletter). But in general, this is the recipe I try to stick to, mainly so I donβt have to make distinct content for every possible channel.
So thatβs my workflow for now. As tools and technologies evolve, it will change; the release of Gemini 1.5 earlier this year changed it substantially from what it used to be, and I anticipate future changes will alter it even more. But whatβs important to note is that even though I leverage AI a ton in the process of varying types, the ideas and the outcomes are still human-led.
Not because AI canβt do those parts (it can, quite capably) but because I enjoy it. I enjoy the process of making content, and because this newsletter and my associated properties have always been a bit of a hobby, I see no reason to turn over anything to the machines that I enjoy. I absolutely turn over the parts I donβt enjoy (like transcript cleanup) as quickly as I can, but for something thatβs yours, you should never feel compelled to automate away the fun parts.
Thatβs the behind-the-scenes on my content marketing cooking show. How does it compare to your processes? What, if anything, would you do differently or better if you were in my shoes? What, if anything, would you borrow from my recipe to incorporate into your own content marketing cooking?
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ICYMI: In Case You Missed it
Besides the recently updated Generative AI for Marketers course I'm relentlessly flogging, this week we walked through advanced prompting techniques in generative AI on the livestream.
Mind Readings: Who Wins in a Generative AI Licensed Data War?
Almost Timely News, July 14, 2024: ποΈ Authenticity in the Age of AI
Dynamic Pricing, Expiring Email, The Future of GA4, and Bird by Bird
Skill Up With Classes
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Generative AI for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction
Powering Up Your LinkedIn Profile (For Job Hunters) 2023 Edition
Predictive Analytics and Generative AI for Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality, 2024 Edition
Building the Data-Driven, AI-Powered Customer Journey for Retail and Ecommerce, 2024 Edition
The Marketing Singularity: How Generative AI Means the End of Marketing As We Knew It
Empower Your Marketing With Private Social Media Communities
Paradise by the Analytics Dashboard Light: How to Create Impactful Dashboards and Reports
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Get Back to Work
Folks who post jobs in the free Analytics for Marketers Slack community may have those jobs shared here, too. If you're looking for work, check out these recent open positions, and check out the Slack group for the comprehensive list.
Machine Learning Researcher, Carbon Neutrality at Toyota Research Institute
Senior Data Scientist - Generative Ai, Digital Transformation at Harvard Business School
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How to Stay in Touch
Let's make sure we're connected in the places it suits you best. Here's where you can find different content:
My blog - daily videos, blog posts, and podcast episodes
My YouTube channel - daily videos, conference talks, and all things video
My company, Trust Insights - marketing analytics help
My podcast, Marketing over Coffee - weekly episodes of what's worth noting in marketing
My second podcast, In-Ear Insights - the Trust Insights weekly podcast focused on data and analytics
On Threads - random personal stuff and chaos
On LinkedIn - daily videos and news
On Instagram - personal photos and travels
My free Slack discussion forum, Analytics for Marketers - open conversations about marketing and analytics
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Events I'll Be At
Here are the public events where I'm speaking and attending. Say hi if you're at an event also:
MAICON, Cleveland, September 2024
MarketingProfs B2B Forum, Boston, November 2024
Social Media Marketing World, San Diego, April 2025
There are also private events that aren't open to the public.
If you're an event organizer, let me help your event shine. Visit my speaking page for more details.
Can't be at an event? Stop by my private Slack group instead, Analytics for Marketers.
Required Disclosures
Events with links have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, I receive direct financial compensation for promoting them.
Advertisements in this newsletter have paid to be promoted, and as a result, I receive direct financial compensation for promoting them.
My company, Trust Insights, maintains business partnerships with companies including, but not limited to, IBM, Cisco Systems, Amazon, Talkwalker, MarketingProfs, MarketMuse, Agorapulse, Hubspot, Informa, Demandbase, The Marketing AI Institute, and others. While links shared from partners are not explicit endorsements, nor do they directly financially benefit Trust Insights, a commercial relationship exists for which Trust Insights may receive indirect financial benefit, and thus I may receive indirect financial benefit from them as well.
Thank You
Thanks for subscribing and reading this far. I appreciate it. As always, thank you for your support, your attention, and your kindness.
See you next week,
Christopher S. Penn