ArticleIssue #138 | The New Content Playbook
I hope you’re all enjoying a wonderful, relaxing fall Sunday morning with friends, family or some well-deserved peace & quiet. I spent the last few days in Boston, speaking at the legal technology conference ClioCon (shout out to the organizers – this was one of the most impressively-run and organized events I’ve been to this year). Most impressively, they cracked the code on getting people to stay for the full event by renting out Time Out Boston (a solid 1,000+ people stayed, so well done) for an “After Party” event. Simple and clever. Well done.
Over the last few months, I’ve spent a substantial amount of time thinking about the future of content marketing, given the increasing pervasiveness of AI. Graphite.io recently published an interesting bit of research on the degree to which content on the internet is AI created:
Long story short: for the first time, there is more AI-generated content on the internet than human-created content. That’s staggering: in just ~3 years (ChatGPT launched in November 2022), AI has created more content than humans have managed to produce (and digitize) in 10,000 years.
AI has reduced the cost to create middle-of-the-bell-curve content to near-zero in less than an Olympics cycle; if Sam Altman (and friends) are to be believed, the ability to create increasingly interesting, sophisticated and innovative content will only increase going forward. It isn’t difficult to imagine a world where AI content is not only ubiquitous, but is superior to what most humans are capable of creating. The proponents of the dead internet theory may yet be right.
My grandfather always used to say the sum of your vices is a constant throughout your life – the only thing that changes is the distribution. I don’t know if he was right (I’d like to think he was wrong about something) – but I do have my own, marketing-centric variant of that principle: the total value of content doesn’t change – all that shifts is the underlying distribution. If the value of creating the content is approaching zero (since AI can do it as well as, if not better than, most people), then the value of asking the right questions is skyrocketing.
That last part encapsulates my view on content: the value isn’t in creating it per se; the value is in the ability to figure out what to create, how to curate it and where to distribute it. Put another way, taste, editing and curation will soon be the most valuable skills around.
Objectively, that’s not a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s exciting.
I’m quite bullish on the ability of AI + smart people to produce intensely-well-researched, wildly-well-written, remarkably-relevant content. I’ve done it. I’ve seen others do it. AI, when used properly, is a force multiplier the likes of which we have never seen before.
Unfortunately – and after reviewing hundreds (if not thousands) of articles created by brands over the last year, that’s rarely what actually happens when they “produce more content.” Instead, it goes something like this: give a junior marketing person a content marketing tool + an AI subscription, then have them mass-produce relatively short, solidly mediocre articles on a wide range of new (can’t ever repeat, less someone think we’re duplicating), all in the vain hope of ranking for more terms that could bring in business. End result? AI slop.
The second, related, challenge of content marketing today is novelty: every marketer secretly lives in fear of being seen producing the same content over and over again. Most of us remember most of what we’ve written before, and (whether consciously or subconsciously) try to avoid repeating it.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve struggled with this over the years. I used to create a brand-new, from-scratch deck for every conference presentation I did. I still actively avoid re-using older content. Hell, I even avoid posting about topics that my audience had engaged with at a high level, out of a to-this-day unsubstantiated fear of the “Sam’s just talking about X again” commentary. It took years before I embraced the idea that we need a full-lifecycle content strategy, not just an endless stream of content production.
That realization started with a relatively simple diagram I made for a conference about 7 years ago, but never really shared:
What I love about this diagram is that it forces you to think about the two things that actually matter: how interesting + relevant something is to your audience, and how much potential impact a given topic/article can have on your business (defined as traffic volume * conversion rate * expected value of a conversion) if that content is distributed in a systematic + comprehensive manner to your audience.
I would challenge you all to try it for yourself: go pull your most recent 20 articles (or blogs, or press releases, or whatever) and place each one on the grid. Better yet: have AI do it for you (yes, you can do that).
Make a list of every piece of content that falls into the lower-left quadrant (low impact, not interesting). Head over to Google Search Console (GSC), download the last 12 months of search data by URL and pull the performance of each of those pieces. I’m willing to make a substantial wager the vast majority are below average. That’s the bad news.
The good news: you have the power to change that.
Head back over to your AI of choice.
Give it the list of your bottom-quartile content, plus relevant information on your brand/business, primary target audience and desired outcomes (more leads, more sales, etc.). Task it to do the following for each article:
- Assess whether the topic is relevant and interesting to the target audience. If it is not, then suggest how to modify the topic to be interesting + relevant.
- Extract the primary keywords + search themes the article appears to be trying to rank for, then conduct SERP/thematic research on each one, with a particular focus on understanding what content is currently ranking, the commonalities among the high-ranking articles, and the areas for opportunity + differentiation.
- Based on (1) and (2), develop a comprehensive action plan that, if implemented, would move the article from the sad zone to the happy place.
The important point: don’t have the AI implement the changes for you – that (almost always) goes poorly. Taste is a competitive advantage, and AI doesn’t have it. The AI has gotten you 80% of the way there; your job is to do the final – and most important – 20%.
Your goal from this exercise should be to move as many pieces of content as possible into the upper-right box (high impact * high relevance/interest). Those that can’t be moved should either be ruthlessly eliminated or substantially re-worked until they’re no longer in the sad/bad zone. Once you’ve completed this for the sad/bad zone, move on to the other three.
Finally, once you’ve completed all of this, have AI review all of your articles again – but this time, have it identify and prioritize the gaps in your current content. These are topics you don’t cover, but should and the niche pieces of content that have the potential to bring outsized value. Share that list with your internal teams/stakeholders (sales, ops, product, customer success, whatever), have them review it / add to it / eliminate from it, then get to work creating.
I’ll be the first to say that what I’ve outlined above is a radical departure from how most teams approach content. And that’s precisely why it works: if you want the results no-one else gets, you must be willing to do things everyone else will not.
The Myth of More Content
Several years ago, I wrote about the Lie of the Better Ad – the idea that there’s always a better ad that you can make, if you just try (and test) hard enough. There’s a similar principle that holds true for content: there are a finite number of topics + articles that reside in the upper-right box. While different target audiences and different business units can expand the pool, the limit still exists – it just looks a bit different. Likewise, broader macro changes (like new platforms, or new trends/technologies/techniques) can alter the pool of content that resides in the upper-right – but again, the limit still exists – the only thing that’s changed is the underlying distribution.
Once your content approaches the limit, the relative value of each additional piece of content will fall precipitously. At that point, you’re either writing content with high impact potential that just isn’t interesting, or you’re creating content that is super interesting, but isn’t going to move the needle for your business. Neither one is an optimal use of resources.
The Best Problem You Could Ever Have
This is further complicated by most content marketer’s greatest fear: everyone assumes that the internet remembers everything we say, and therefore refuses to repeat it.
The best refutation to this came from my dear friend & colleague Aaron Orendorff, who gave the following two sage pieces of content wisdom:
“If you have something worthwhile and interesting, repeat it until the thought of hearing/writing it one more time makes you want to scream. When you get to that point, remember that maybe 10% of your audience has actually heard it once.”
“The best problem you can have as a marketer is the internet remembering everything you say.”
Translated: when you find a topic that resides in the upper-right of that matrix, double down on it. Obsessively improve it. Distribute it until the very thought of sharing it again makes you physically ill.
If there’s one thing you take away from this issue, it should be that: when you find a winner, push it. Don’t sit back, say, “Neat!” then go about creating the next thing on your list.
Content follows a power law: 10% of the content published on the internet generates 90%+ of the positive outcomes. Your goal should be create as many exceptional (10%) pieces as humanly possible.
Creating Your Content Engine
Let’s all be honest for a minute: the primary blocker to implementing the above approach is structural and incentive-based: content producers (either in-house or agency) are given production targets (write X articles per month of at least y words or create the following 12 pieces of unique content in Q1); not business impact targets.
In our quest to create more new content, we’ve neutered our ability to optimize our existing content and/or double down on great content. That has led me to the inevitable realization that we (as marketers, investors, business/thought leaders) need to shift our mindset on content marketing. We must move from a “content production” to “content engine” philosophy.
1. Assess What You Have:
The first step in any shift is conducting a thorough inventory + assessment of each piece of content you already have. The number of brands I speak with that are painfully unaware of what content they already have is breathtaking – most of them don’t remember they have an article on X or a video about Y. The good news is that now is a great time to conduct a content audit. Create a spreadsheet of each piece of content you have, the topic, the angle, the target audience, the relative impact and where it falls on that 2×2 matrix above. AI is fantastic for this (see above) – just be sure to pull in data from GA4, along with some data from a SEO tool like SEMRush, Moz, AHRefs, etc.). You’ll likely find that your content has a Pareto distribution: 20% of the content drives 80% of the impact.
2. Identify The Gaps:
Armed with that knowledge from the audit/assessment, find the gaps around your top-20% of content – you don’t care about the gaps in the bottom-80%. The probability of those gaps being in the upper-right quadrant of our content matrix is relatively low. Next, review your competitor’s top-performing content (again, back to those third-party tools). The articles/videos/graphics/whatever with the highest number of expected pageviews, backlinks and the highest relevant KW rankings are the winners. Finally: prioritize the gaps + overlaps.
First: The gaps that are present for both you + your competitors. If there are topics that are exceedingly relevant, but no-one has any content related to them, that’s a golden opportunity for you to take a first-mover advantage.
Second: Any topics where you have a high-performing piece of content + your competition does not.
Third: Any topics where your competition has a high-performing piece of content, but you do not have any content (or you have a poorly-performing piece of content).
I’m well aware that #2 above seems odd, but it is exactly aligned with the “double down” philosophy I’ve come to love: if you have an advantage, press it.
Finally – this isn’t a one-time–thing; you should be iterating on your research all the time (just like you should be doing with your keyword/SERP/channel research). We do this with Paid Search research all the time, using this process (which can be easily adapted for other audiences/channels):
3. Update
Before you create more, use the approach above to improve each piece of suboptimal content – you’ll likely find that merely doing this will fill quite a few of the gaps above (bonus!).
4. Create
You don’t need me to tell you how to create content; you may need a reminder that your goal shouldn’t just be to create any old piece of content. Create something remarkable.
As a reminder: quantity of content produced does not drive quality of content produced. I’ve coined this the “X Content Plan”:
I also want to emphasize that “create” doesn’t necessarily involve “make from whole-cloth” – if you have 3-4 existing pieces on a topic, consider packing (combining multiple pieces together into something net-new, them redirecting all of the old links to the new one); if you have one massive piece of content that is too broad, consider cracking (breaking apart a single large article into multiple, smaller ones, then adding additional depth/content/context so it can be a stand-alone piece).
5. Diversify
The typical process after creating a great piece of content (and a mistake I still make!) is to rush to publish. One commonality among exceptional, world-class creators is that they diversify before they publish.
What do I mean by that? Imagine you have an incredible, well-researched, wildly comprehensive “pillar” article that’s 4,500 words. Ordinarily, you’d publish the article, maybe create a social post or a quick infographic for it, post those, then move on.
Not so fast.
That same article can become:
- 2 10-minute YouTube videos
- 1 Podcast Episode / Interview
- 2-3 5-minute explainer videos
- 5-7 Twitter (X) Threads
- 3-4 emails
- 3-5 LinkedIn Posts
- 1-2 Infographics
- 1-2 lead magnets
- 5 YouTube Shorts / IG Reels / TikToks
- 10+ Quora Answers
- 5 Reddit Posts
- 3 Landing Pages
- 10+ Search Ads
- 1 Case Study / White Paper
All with little-to-no additional research or writing required. All you have to do is repurpose/remix the piece of content you’ve already created to work for each of those mediums. You don’t need a fancy studio or exceptional equipment to do any of this; a cell phone, a $10 mic from Amazon, and a $30 ring light/camera holder will do nicely. You can even have your trusty AI of choice assist – Gemini (for instance) is remarkably good at creating social (Reddit, LinkedIn, X) posts, as well as generating scripts for YouTube.
The beauty of this is that it is a high-leverage, low-effort activity that exponentially increases your surface area for success. What was once a single “bite at the upper-right-quadrant” is now 20+ shots, spread over multiple weeks or months.
Mathematically, that increases the probability that the article will be read, shared, commented on, linked to or referenced – all of which help you gain visibility among your target audience, in SERPs and (critically) with AI systems.
I’m not going to lie to you – this takes work.
But remember: there are a finite number of topics/pieces of content that reside in the upper-right quadrant. The game isn’t creating more, it’s creating and distributing better.
6. Distribute
Once you’ve created everything, the real work begins (just what you want to hear ~1,500 words into an article). Distribution isn’t a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing process. The temptation to post-and-forget is real; resist it.
Pre-seed your content to influential people in your network (and if you’re not sure who they are, use SparkToro to find out). Amplify your content using your owned channels (like email) and advocate audiences (those referral partners, uber-loyal customers, etc.). Don’t just post it once on your social channels and move on; engage in conversations around the topic, and continue to share links to your content as it is relevant. As people comment/engage, reciprocate.
Additionally: consider supporting your content with paid media, whether that’s paid search around commonly-asked questions included in your article, paid social on core channels, even digital OOH or video.
If you spend 1 month creating a piece of content, you should spend 12+ months distributing it. When a relevant conversation arises 2 months after you published your article, share it again. If a new YouTube video drops on a popular channel that’s related to your article, join the conversation.
Done well, that single piece of content can produce an impact for months or years; as you stack more pieces by turning on this engine each month, the impact of your efforts here compounds.
ProTip #1: if you really want to take this to the next level, use Sparktoro to identify where your target audience is most likely to get their information, then actively distribute the article in those places – either via direct outreach (yes, guest posting still works), via ads (yes, you can and should promote your exceptional content with paid media) or simply with ongoing organic posts (plural – don’t just post about an article once).
ProTip #2: ensure each piece of content you share has unique UTMs + a standardized measurement framework. Ensure you include both the channel where you’ve posted, as well as the format (video, infographic, text, etc.)
7. Assess
Throughout your distribution, assess the relative impact of both the overall content program AND the individual channels where you’ve distributed it. If you notice that a given channel or format is performing better for a given audience/angle, take that knowledge and use it to inform your future distribution. You’ll likely find that specific sections/points from your content (like certain angles, pain points or challenges), have resonated while others fall flat – use that.
If, even after all of this effort, your content isn’t gaining traction or having an impact, it’s time to get the full benefit (one of my favorite sayings/mindsets). Do a post-mortem on it. Identify what went wrong – was the research off? Did you miss an industry trend or shift? Was the content not what your audience expected or needed? Did the distribution strategy fail the content?
It’s tempting to throw a failed piece into the junkyard + move on; that’s a mistake: failing to find the lessons in a failure is an invitation to fail again.
8. Iterate
Based on the data gathered during your distribution, iterate on your content – whether that’s focusing on a specific angle/offer/audience/problem that resonated with your audience, creating more of a medium that was widely popular and effective (i.e. video) or adding depth to your existing article.
Wherever possible, find the opportunities to double down and squeeze every drop of value out of each article. Make a case study related to the topic of your article. Shoot new videos or explainers. Add new research or a study (you can create a study using Pollfish for <$1,000) to bolster your existing piece.
The name of the game is twofold: (1) maximizing your number of winners through ruthless optimization and (2) doubling down over and over again on those winners to make them go as far as possible. To that end, strategic, well-researched iteration can extend the lifetime of a piece of content by years.
9. Amplify
Treat your iterations the same way you’ve treated your initial content distribution – amplify it. If the iteration focuses on a sub-topic or niche, identify the publications/channels where people who are interested in that niche tend to congregate (again, SparkToro) and distribute it there.
10. Evaluate
Use the same approach from the assessment situation on your iterations – did one of those perform better than the original? Did others fail/flop? If so, why? Leverage AI as much as you can in these evaluations (it tends to be far more impartial + exponentially better at pattern recognition than any of us are). If you have followed all of the steps above, but a given piece of content still isn’t performing / ranking, pull the top-ranking articles directly. Feed each, along with your content, into your AI of choice and task it with identify where your content falls short. Then, follow the approach outlined above to identify what to improve.
11. Repeat
While you’re distributing, use the insights gleaned to inform your creation of new pillar pieces of content. Continue to go back and update your content priorities + gaps based on what your competition is doing – after all, research from 6+ months ago is likely out of date.
I recognize this is a LOT of work – but it’s work worth doing. The content engine framework is the antidote to AI slop + the rise of content mediocrity. And the best part? This same approach also helps with your brand’s visibility in AI Overviews, AI Mode + LLMs (yup, really). We’ve implemented this exact playbook for a brand, and in less than 3 months, they went from being virtually invisible in AI search to getting 24.5% of their inbound leads from it.
One final bonus: the impacts of this approach are not limited to the organic realm. That same piece of content can be turned into a lead magnet or downloadable PDF, multiple emails to your existing customers, upsell collateral for adjacent buyers, and so much more.
Don’t be afraid to double down. Going forward, make moving to the upper-right your north star and the content engine framework your map to get there.
This week’s issue is sponsored by Optmyzr.
Here’s a fun (and ridiculously practical) truth: your customers don’t buy in a vacuum – they buy in response to their environment + situation. One of the biggest contextual variables, for most brands, is weather. A sunny day vs. a rainy one doesn’t just change moods – it changes buying behavior.
Anyone who has been in PPC for a while remembers (often fondly) the days of piping in DarkSky data and using it to set bids. While DarkSky is still donezo (thanks, Apple), there is a new solution: Optmyzr’s Weather Customizer.
Weather Customizer allows you to automatically adjust your campaigns based on real-time weather data. Running HVAC campaigns? Push harder when temperatures spike or plummet (price sensitivity goes to zero when your house temperature is 45* – just ask me how I know).
Selling snow tires, sleds or winter gear? Get more aggressive when the first snowfall shows up on the forecast. Promoting cold brew coffee? Don’t waste spend on rainy 50° morning – instead, pull back and reallocate when it’s sunny and 85°.
Most brands ignore weather as a signal, which is why campaigns often feel tone-deaf. But when you layer weather intelligence into your paid media, the end result is a system that aligns your investment with your audience’s reality.
Bottom line: Weather changes everything. Optmyzr’s Weather Customizer makes sure your campaigns change with it.
Until next week,
Sam
