Happy Wednesday, good folks! I’ve been doing a lot of foundational work lately––and approaching content workflows and systems I’ve used for a lot of my career in a “burn it down and start over” way. OK, that’s dramatic. I’m not burning anything down. But I am looking at the power of AI––and realizing that we shouldn’t just add it to our existing workflows, but build anew with it.
Let’s talk a bit about it. |
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Foundational work is rarely splashy. It’s mapping out workflows, sitting in alignment meetings, updating documentation (again and again), and trying—sometimes in vain—to get five teams to use the same process. It’s not sexy, but it's the kind of work that, if done well, makes everything else possible––especially where scale and speed are concerned. Of course, the real challenge isn’t creating and documenting the foundation. It’s maintaining it, and knowing when to tear it down and start over. And there are a lot of indicators that right now is the time to start from scratch. -
Traditional SEO is quickly changing. Google’s core algorithm got an update on Monday…and it’s still working its way out, in the case you were wondering what is going on with your rankings this week.
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LLMO, GEO, AIO, whatever you want to call it is scaling quickly. And it leverages query fan-out, which should shift your content strategy (or have you doubling down, of course).
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Economic uncertainty, risk averse buyers, and prospects looking for silver bullets are making both internal navigation for resources and nailing the right topic and tone for your audience incredibly challenging (professionally and personally, honestly).
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Product and narrative alignment are more important than ever––esp. as more and more buyers leverage LLMs to conduct product research. In many cases, SEO strategy is brand strategy now.
- Your executives know that AI is changing…everything. And that’s an opportunity for you to step up, educate, and show how you and your team are leading the charge for your organization. Innovation and thought leadership start here.
Now, how people find, consume and create content is changing. But that doesn’t mean all content marketing principles are gone with the wind. Here are four I’m keeping top of mind in the building of new processes to keep me steady. -
The best content marketing teams aren’t just great at storytelling—they’re great at systems. If you’ve ever struggled to get something out the door, or watched a beautifully written piece go unused, you know this already. Creative work needs infrastructure. It needs workflows, decision trees, and clear ownership. Not to restrict creativity—but to protect it. And to make sure that the best work actually gets seen and used.
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Documentation is your leverage. The moment you turn “what’s the process?” into a shared source of truth, you’ve made it easier for everyone to do better work—including future you. But remember, just because you document it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about it. Name your projects and strategies––and reference them often. You should repeat things as many times as it takes for other people to repeat it back to you. If they aren’t, they don’t know what you are doing, and probably can’t find your documentation either.
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Scale without alignment is just chaos. Anyone can publish more content. Fewer can publish content that’s actually aligned to the business—especially across multiple stakeholders, tools, and timelines. That’s where real strategy lives: in the invisible layers that keep everything connected. Content marketers have long complained about too many cooks in the kitchen. AI presents a real opportunity to leverage the expertise of all of those cooks, without having them in the kitchen. Context is everything––and AI outputs are far better when fed the proper context.
- Quality isn’t just about writing—it’s about trust. Where AI is part of the workflow, quality control can’t just be about typos and tone. It’s about accuracy. It’s about message integrity. It’s about saying what your company actually means to say, and making sure that’s true across every touchpoint (including how LLMs position you to their users).
That’s it for me this week. I’ll be doing more deep diving into processes, systems, documentation, and repeating it so much I’m having dreams about it constantly, bringing it up on vacations and at friend dinner night, and feeling renewed by it all. It’s fun to take a discipline you love, problems that have always existed, and see how new tools might help you solve it all in better ways than ever. I hope you’re feeling something similar. |
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You do you!
One content marketer’s best practices aren’t always right for another one, though I do try to distill out the main concepts and core practices I believe everyone can benefit from. That said, you must use good judgment when deciding whether to take advice given from folks on the internet. I am an expert, and this advice comes from my direct experience, but I am not smarter than you, and I have nothing to gain or lose because of what you do. |
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THINGS KEEPING ME CONTENT |
What I’m watching: The new Ultimatum season, of course. I’ve really succumbed to the mind-numbing reality TV shows I used to make fun of. But it’s a nice respite from, well, everything else.
What I’m wearing: One of my daughters ripped my necklace off accidentally, and so while I’m repairing that, I’m wearing an old favorite that used to be my moms. And the earrings I wear most days were given to me by my wife’s grandmother. And just today, my other daughter was running her fingers across my necklace and my earrings and it occurred to me: she might wear these one day. And wow, that really hit hard in all the cool ways. What I’m drinking: One of our neighbors is a VIP member at the brewery down the street from us, and once a quarter, he leaves us an extra beer on our porch from the brewery’s newest batch. It’s ridiculously sweet, and seems to have started simply because he saw us at the brewery often. Again, the little things matter so, so much.
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Thank you so much for reading. Let me know what you think by replying to this email! Very excited to be here with y’all! Tracey |
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