Speaker 1: 0:00

Christophe Trapp is a globally known content marketer who helps companies move their marketing content from happening to performing. He authored a series of marketing strategy books, including Is Marketing a Good Career, and is currently content director at growth marketing agency GrowthGetter. Let's see how Christophe could impact the way you look at your marketing. Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. Let's see how Kristoff could impact the way you look at your marketing. Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show, hey.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Kristoff, welcome to the show. Nice to see you again. Thanks for having me. Let's create some buzz.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Yeah, man, that's right, right there. I know I would fist pump you, but it's the wrong show. We'll have to get to that to the other show there. But I wanted to bring you on this season of the Buzzworthy Marketing Show to discuss the mindset of content marketing. Everybody knows and if you don't know, you should know. And now you know Christophe is a content marketing genius, been doing it for a long time. There he goes, flushing there he goes Blushing. The bald head is blushing oh my goodness, oh, there you go yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Well, we have the matching bald heads. There you go. So it's funny because I do content marketing as part of some of the services that we provide at buzzworthy marketing, but it's. It's interesting always to get the perspective from other people. Like I can sit here and tell everybody about my mindset when it comes to content marketing. I really wanted to get it from somebody who is a thought leader and very specialized in the, the field, in the, in the skillset of that. When you, when you're doing content marketing for your clients, what is the biggest mindset block that you seem to run into when you're getting warmed up with, say, a new initiative, new campaign?

Speaker 2: 1:58

Oh, the biggest. I mean, it kind of depends on when, I think it depends on when in the quarter you're asking me that question, but I think the biggest. You know where I'm going with this one. But the biggest block, honestly, is when people don't realize the timeframe that content marketing takes and I am not here to sit here and say, hey, it's going to take you forever and blah, blah, blah. And it's not going to take you forever. There can be some really quick wins.

Speaker 2: 2:25

There can be, as Jim Mancusi at GrowGrader says, there's like the low hanging fruit and then there's the fruit you pick up from the floor and in my case with the new hip, there's the fruit I pick up from an elevated surface right, so even easier than the low hanging fruit. But my point is it's going to take a little bit and if you're two days from the end of the quarter, content marketing is not going to save that quarter for you. It might save a few quarters down the road, but it's not going to save the current quarter when you have two days left and the sales team not to pick on anybody or somebody else didn't do their job for the last three months or whatever. There's plenty of other reasons. It doesn't have to be that necessarily, but you have to keep going after and you have to keep producing. That doesn't mean you should just throw stuff at the wall, but at the end of the day, especially SEO evolves all the time. Ai is throwing such a wrench into SEO.

Speaker 2: 3:23

I've tested some things with different articles that are ranking number one, and now AI just summarizes them. Why do you have to click? I don't know, but people still click. So right now it's not a huge issue. But you want to think about how do you evolve, how do you keep going, how do you keep moving? And the other thing is, when you do content marketing well in an authentic way, most of these algorithm changes that people chase won't even affect you, because Google wants authentic content. Google wants first person content. I or we is the plural for a company. They want unique stories. They want helpful content.

Speaker 2: 4:05

So as long as you create that, some algorithm is not going to throw your site down the drain. For the most part it goes up and down. It's kind of the stock market right. Today I'm broke, tomorrow I'm a millionaire, so it's kind of the same thing. But that's, I think, biggest block that you, it's not the today. Fix it today, right Um strategy. I'm not even sure there is a fix it today strategy, to be honest.

Speaker 1: 4:30

But um, it's definitely well, I think the closest you're going to get to is paid. You know cause you can get some paid campaigns. It'll you know once if, depending on which kind you're getting, you know if it's placement, you're you placement you have the right offer and the right audience at the right time, you could see stuff that day. I've seen PPC take off in a couple of weeks. So we can save a quarter if you have the money to throw at it. The thing is that speed equals money and I want to go back to what you first said. It's like is content marketing going to save your quarter? No, it's a long, it's a long game, for sure. But I also want to point out to the listeners that content good content takes time to create, then great. And then that great content that you, that you take time to create, then still takes time to envelop.

Speaker 1: 5:22

You know, get traction through SEO or whatever other tools you're using for visibility, and I think there's so many times when we're we're working with clients that, um, you know they're new and they just think, oh, it just, it just creates it Right. Oh, ai will do it for you. In my voice, you can figure it out Right, and it's like yeah, that's like using a microwave to cook a filet mignon, right, like you want to take your time with it. Let it air out, get to room temperature, then season it and rub it in salt and then put it in the good butter and the rosemary and flip it, you know, and take your time, you know getting it just right, and then you got to let it rest. Then you get to eat it, right, not throw it in the microwave and then put some ketchup on it, right? That's just the way it goes. And so I think that when people think of the quick fixes definitely not thinking of content marketing, but I also think the quick creative could be a downfall in mindset as well.

Speaker 2: 6:19

I mean I don't know. I mean I can see me going to myself going to a restaurant best microwave for you and me know. I mean I can see me going myself going to a restaurant best microwave filet mignon, I mean like sounds pretty good to me.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Such a contrarian over here? Well, remind me not to take you to a really good steak restaurant.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Oh no, take me any day. Take me any day. I'll be on a flight to DCA in five minutes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:44

So, when we're talking about so, when we're looking at the ecosystem of content marketing, I think that there was a client of mine that, talking about algorithms and AI, he, we were working on some other strategies and then he ran into this guy who's doing AI, seo, and his strategy was to pick a thousand keywords he's a financial advisor, by the way and so this guy tells him well, I've got AI, can spit out a thousand blogs for you in a matter of two weeks I'll be able to have those all online and you're going to rank for them all.

Speaker 1: 7:20

And I'm like, yeah, so what I'll do is I'm going to go ahead and track all the traffic you're getting and your conversion rates and we'll even keep an eye on those keywords for you and watch how fast they go. I never heard back from them because they never ranked. Because shortly after that, like you were kind of alluding to Google's like, no, if it's not useful, it's not going to rank. And you were talking about using the fundamentals of who you are is not going to be affected by algorithms, because that authentic, no, like trust factors and all that good stuff is what's going to keep you in the forefront if you've made that, uh, that, that ranking yeah, you know I I think I don't know if that's the right word alluding to when I go like thumbs down.

Speaker 2: 8:05

You know that's not alluding. That's a pretty strong statement, professional statement, for that matter. But you know what the problem is when you do like tools like AI, writer, jasper, those kind of tools, and I get it like they all maybe have their place in the ecosystem, but what they do is you just go, hey, write me an article on how to be buzzworthy or the rule of 26 or whatever Do you know what I mean? And then they just go write it and where do they get the content? Like from who knows where, somewhere, but not from their brains, because they don't have any brains. So, at the end of the day, it's really the 2024 version of you telling an intern to write an article based on what's already out there and that has never completely worked right.

Speaker 2: 8:50

It might work for like a couple days and then it tanks. But you have to have that unique story in there. You have to like, if I'm going to talk about I mean just think about our conversation today right, like I'm giving you real examples, like we're not diving, like you don't say, okay, which people that you know have that exact issue? Like we're not going to do that, but the stories are real, our interaction is real. Like you have to have that in your content, like end of story. And I think the more AI is out there and I use AI daily I've probably used AI a couple hours today, I don't even know how much, but I use it every day for different things, but never to write stuff from scratch. And then people wonder why doesn't it rank right? It doesn't rank because it's the same garbage everybody else has already put out there, or same crap, which is an industry acronym stands for content really annoying to people. So don't do that.

Speaker 1: 9:51

I have to say that's the first time I've heard that one. I'm going to use it again and I agree a hundred a wholeheartedly. You know people who they delegate to AI and you know there's this term that one of my friends in the AI world talks about human optimized AI, right, talks about human optimized AI, right. So I love AI to get away from the blank white screen. As a copywriter, the worst thing for me is to have a great idea and have to write about it with a blank screen in front of me. That blank screen is a blank screen of death for me. And so, and like what you were talking about, like using it to research can really get the juices started, right, and it shortcuts so much.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Can you remember the days when we had to go go to Google and be like man? I just said this and I know that there's a reference for it, but now I got to go find the reference. You can literally ask AI hey, give me three valid references to this statement, and it'll go out there and give you where that website is and who said it and all the other stuff for you like that. And he gives you three options so that you're like, oh, this one's kind of a, this one's a, an affiliate marketing page. We don't want. We don't want that as our, our reference. This one's actually from a university. All right, we'll use that one Boom, and then you're popping it in there and it keeps that flow, just keeps going.

Speaker 2: 11:05

So I love that you you mentioned that and the fact that you know crap in, crap out, right, it's true that you're, it's very true and you know it's interesting about. That is. So we, even even the two of us, we say AI, ai, ai. But like it's kind of like saying the Internet, the Internet, the Internet, right, like so what you just described. I use perplexity, ai for that.

Speaker 2: 11:25

So, for example, I just it's like my new Google, and it actually uses Google, except it puts I don't know if it uses Google, but it uses some search engine, excuse me. And basically I say, hey, who invented this or who came up with this or who set this? First you know, or like, or like questions, and then it finds the answers and it cites the sources. But let me give you an example how I think content creators can use AI really quickly to shortcut things. I hardly, I mean every once in a while I do like an outline with AI like, hey, what should I talk about? Not that much, probably, but so let's take this episode. So you can totally take this episode. You can totally take this episode. You can put it into opus clips and just go um, you might want to cut that out right now.

Speaker 1: 12:13

I get phone, okay we're raw here at the buzzword marketing show. Okay, well, I gotta. Yeah, I don't know why?

Speaker 2: 12:21

I don't know why I got a phone call, but why is that phone even ringing? Like what year is this?

Speaker 1: 12:27

Okay, leave it in Fine by me.

Speaker 2: 12:29

Somebody called me. I don't know why. I don't know why it rang. I thought it was here we go.

Speaker 1: 12:34

So anyway, you were saying that you sometimes you use the AI for outlines. Sometimes, and I agree with you that you can start with an outline of those, because sometimes it'll give you some ideas that you didn't think about, but not necessarily that's the structure you're going to use. But then you were going on after that.

Speaker 2: 12:49

So then let's take. So then if I do keyword research, you might use AI and say look at all the other articles that are ranking and say, hey, what did they talk about that I haven't thought about? Right, and those are some ideas. You don't want to use their content, but it gives you some ideas. More. Have an episode like this and we're talking.

Speaker 2: 13:04

What I usually do is I take this video from my episodes on the business storytelling show, put it into opus clips. It hacks it up, you know, for soundbites. I use those on youtube, I use them on linkedin, I use them as tiktoks different formats, super easy to do. But it gives me, it gets me really close to having a clip without me having to watch the whole episode again and go, oh, that's a good clip, let's go back to it. Oh, I went too far, oh, I went too far back. Oh, you know, it's like, oh my God, like let's get there. It's like editing text, but you're editing video, so it's kind of cool.

Speaker 2: 13:38

And then I take episodes and I put them into otter and then I put them into Claude AI and I say, all right, what the heck did Krista and Michael talk about? Like, what are some of the themes and what are some additional articles I can write about. And then it tells me because you and I are talking, I'm not paying attention to like all the structure necessarily, of every topic, every section. I'm just we're having a conversation, so it helps me get those ideas. And then, okay, give me the, give me 10 quotes of what Christoph said about that topic, and then you can use that to create an article or create other things, and I think that's a great way to use AI to move quicker for something that used to take way longer.

Speaker 1: 14:22

Exactly, and so I mean just using it as an aid, you know, an assistant to your process. You are still the process, I think, is the biggest key to take away from what you just said, and that it's your creative juices, it's your lived life, your experiences, your stories that are then backed up with some of the facts that you're going to share to help your audience, if you're in a B2B world, like I am, to help your audience understand the concepts that you're trying to share. Right, and I think that the mindset needs to stay pure, pure because Google's saying it over and over and over, especially with EAT. You know you have to show authority, and authority does not come from synthesizing, cause that's all AI does is synthesize all of the things that it can get its little grubby hands on in a nanosecond and then creating a synthesis of that. Right, it's like that 3d 3d meat.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Now, it might taste like meat, it might even sound, look decent, but it ain't meat, right, and it's the same. It might sound like original content, but it ain't. It's synthesized from what everybody else before you said, and we all know, both you and I know that to stand out, you have to be different, right. More is not better, like I saw people talk about. Well, I just make more content, so I just have AI create a 5,000 word. If 5,000 words doesn't give you any more value than 200 words, then it's worthless, right, and that's where you're coming back, to the crap.

Speaker 2: 16:06

It's true. But the problem, I think, with statements like that and I know Hanley and others they say, um, better quality, not quantity, right, and so a lot of people take that to mean as, oh, we just have to do one blog post a month, but the quality is so much higher. First of all, let's be very clear who actually decides the quality? And to an extent, the decision of quality used to be way easier back in the day because my boss would decide the quality, right, like, and there was nobody else, there was nothing else that could like even say that's correct or not correct. So that's kind of how that used to work. And now you can write stuff and like if the boss doesn't like it, but it performs, why would their opinion trump the data, right? So Exactly, I love that. You said that. Let me put it this way I publish get this a blog post a day, every day, every day.

Speaker 1: 17:06

Every day.

Speaker 2: 17:07

And guess what. That doesn't mean I'm writing a thousand word article every day. Sometimes I update an old article, sometimes I combine two old articles. I got like 10 years of content. Some of it is total garbage and, like Jeff Goulas, when you listen to him, his first article, his first blog post was something like Jennifer Aniston was wearing what I don't know if it was something or something like that like completely unrelated to what he does today, and you know so a lot of my early stuff is garbage and you can update it, you can delete it, so I count that Then, when I have a podcast episode coming up, I will do a preview post. It doesn't take long at all. It's like it's literally just the same thing as the live stream preview, right Like the promo.

Speaker 1: 17:50

So I count that.

Speaker 2: 17:51

Sometimes I write a completely new article, sometimes I write a short article. Like I just ordered speakers. This Bluetooth speaker seems to be on its last legs, so I had new speakers. I was like, hey, maybe I should do an article on office speakers. I would be shocked if that article is over 500 words, probably not even 400, because I'm going to list all the speakers I've ever used in my office and be like I like this one.

Speaker 2: 18:15

I like that one. Here's the problem with this one. Here's what's great about this one and that's article. So my point is there's all these different things that companies, creators, anybody that has a pulse, can talk about all the time. So don't say what's the right number. I don't know, is it every day? For most people Probably not, but at the end of the day, a couple times a month maybe. If you hit your stride, you know. So I think don't take that comment as once a quarter or even less. It's not going to work.

Speaker 1: 18:52

I think, consistent. You know, I agree with you to a point. I think that consistency over frequency. So you know, I see a lot of people who will listen to something like that and go out. There's absolutely no way I can do one a day. And it's like if it's not your job, you can't right, Because you got your job to do right.

Speaker 1: 19:10

As an entrepreneurs, the people that I work with they're they're hard pressed to get one out one out a year. Right, because they're just not writers right, and so helping them get into. If sometimes you start with one a month and then, once you get into that groove, you're like, okay, I can actually carve out that much time to get that one. Now, let's do one every other week and then get to your one every week and then maybe once a couple times a week. Um, so I think that you know christoph hereoph here is giving really sage advices that you do want some frequency. But I'm going to piggyback on that and say whatever you start with is better than nothing and then strive for as much as you're comfortable with. Do not burn yourself out, because you burn out and you stop that, that consistency is going to kill you.

Speaker 2: 19:55

So I just talked to Elizabeth Ice on the Business Storytelling Show and she runs resultsresourcingnet. Maybe it's com, but basically it's virtual assistance. Not assistance but assistance. I have no idea if I said that correctly, but it's getting help from people who are nowhere near you, right? So that could be a virtual assistant, could be a writer, could be a designer. So the reason I bring that up is because so think about that comment you just said People say I'm not a writer.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Okay, so let's say they're a 49-year-old solopreneur and they say that, what do they mean by that? What they mean by that is they're not a writer. I'm close to that age not quite, but close. They're going to think about the writer that they grew up with. Right, they're not thinking about the writer I'm thinking about today because I do this as a job. But let's say they become a writer how they saw it 20 years ago. That's not going to do anything. That's not good enough.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Writing for the web today is a whole new art form, because you want to use the right words that people actually search for. Then you want to figure out what are the trends that I think, as the expert, might evolve. So when people say to me oh, there's no search traffic. Should we even write about this? I'm like I don't know. Tell me what the story is, and if it's like an emerging thing there's no, nobody's searching for it? Of course not, but should we not cover it? We should totally cover it.

Speaker 2: 21:29

I've had articles take off. When they were first written, nobody even talked about that thing, but it looked like they were going to, so I got that article out. You want to have the right mix. So my point is if you don't think you're a writer, the hill to climb to be a writer for the web is actually extremely steep. So consider hiring somebody. Consider hiring a ghost writer. Consider hiring somebody. Consider hiring a ghostwriter. Consider just talking and recording your stuff, recording your. They know how to write, even when they don't, even when they say they don't. They aren't a writer. And it's becoming more and more complicated, I hate to say it.