Hey good folks, happy Thursday, and happy Q3!!

Do you know what your team is focusing on this quarter? It’s a great time of year to look back at the first half, see what worked, what didn’t, take stock. And then, work on amplifying success for the back half of the year.

I like to build out quarterly plans on a page. These map back to the annual content strategy, and give a high-level overview of the primary content workstreams. This doesn’t mean other stuff won’t come up, but this document is where we go to see what drops if another priority surfaces, and highlights all the ways we are making global progress toward our larger company goals.

All right, let’s get into it. 

Content teams can’t do everything, even with our trusty buddy AI. You have to pick. You have to make bets.

For us, our bets are:

• Video content: Specifically for thought leadership. This means more interviews with customers and experts, and cut downs for social, longer variants for YouTube, and on-site hosting capabilities.

• Thought leadership content: Including what format it is in, where it lives, how it is distributed, etc. There’s so much more to this than simply: “What do we say?”

• Performance content: Continued scale of our SEO & AEO content, and more tests to see what is working, what isn’t, and how we can update our skills to produce more of what’s effective, more quickly, more often.

• Influencer content: This isn’t just social media influencer content. This is partners who are influencers, and academics and psychologists, etc. How can we find people who have decent followings and also clear expertise and a point-of-view we don’t have access to. How can we become that access point for our customers and prospects?

Overall, one main thesis I’m landing on is that it used to be a skill to be able to collect knowledge––to know who to ask, where to find it, etc. AI can do that now. The new skill is discernment, taste, and synthesis.

Those are the skills (and I’m not talking Claude skills!) that we are doubling down on.

What about you?

A NOTE ON THIS ADVICE

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.

THINGS KEEPING ME CONTENT

• What I’m buying: New neon bathing suits for the girls before we head to the beach in a couple of weeks!

• What I’m reading: I’m on a Maggie Smith binge right now.

• What I’m eating: Truly had the most wonderful glass of wine at Justine’s last night: a Famille Mosse Pet-Nat.

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