Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the first session of 10 speed sessions, a new podcast that we've developed.
We have had the Content that Grows podcast for several years, did almost 70 episodes, and really just felt like it kind of hit the end of its natural life.
And some of the things, you know, from our experience in doing that, things we found is like doing very short form episodes and trying to do evergreen content, like topics we've found, as you know, like, things have changed so much that, like, having a deep library of content doesn't necessarily mean that it stays relevant even if we try to do the evergreen content. And so that's been challenging. And, you know, there's a lot of companies that do like the ABM style approach to, oh, we're just going to invite guests that are target companies we want to work with. We never really got in with that.
So our guests were always just trying to be like people we thought would be adding value for anyone who's done that knows that's a lot of work. It's a lot to coordinate and challenging. And so what we've really found is like, anytime Kevin and I get together, we have great conversations. We talk about what's going on in our business, we talk about what's going on with clients and felt like this is a much better format, is just like, sit down, have a longer conversation, bit more authentic. Very much, yes. And it's Kevin's back in Chicago now, so we're excited to be in person, in studio in Chicago, be able to sit down and have some of these longer conversations. And so really the goal is talk about things that are, you know, we're not trying to break news and talk about something that just happened yesterday, but talk about what we know is actually going on right now for marketers in the world of B2B marketing and just in general, kind of how things are evolving to stay on top of it. And then the bonus side of that is with this and kind of following along, you get some of the perspective of our view across dozens of clients and being able to see patterns and some of those things there too. So that's really the goal with the show. But, yeah, we'll be doing that moving forward.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited to see what we can actually take from those client conversations to inform these and pair it up with everything that's going on. I think it'll be helpful for not only our clients, but, yeah, just anybody who's interested in the topics that are relevant to the things that we do.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So the main thing we're going to the main topic today is we're going to talk about like aeo, you know, Answer Engine Optimization.
But we do have an agenda with quite a few other things and you know, being in Chicago and kind of founded here, wanted to also just kind of talk a bit today about Chicago tech scene specifically.
So I won't go go over like the entire agenda, but got quite a bit to cover. So excited to do that.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Don't bury the lead on AEO Geo ll Mo. That's all the same thing.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Yes.
Well, yeah, why don't you go ahead and just kick that off and we'll start.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the hot new thing. Well hot, not hot new because AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization.
I mean if you even Google it or I guess in a meta way, just search it on a, on an LLM or something, a chatbot, it'll, it's been around for a while. There's a ton of information and news around that for handful years now.
It's resurfaced recently I think is maybe the one leading the like the acronym WAR when it comes to that. But aeo, Generative Engine Optimization, Large Language Model Optimization, anything that basically talks about how you get surfaced in you know, the chat GPTs, their perplexities and all that stuff of the world.
Yeah, I mean it's, it's super hot topic and, and I mean there's a lot of things we can discuss around it, but that's just generally the like top level.
Where do you want to start?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I'll, I'll say like you know, I did pull some stats prior to this and it's interesting seeing the volume so obviously like the, the usage of all of those platforms, perplexity and, and whatnot is growing rapidly and eating into a lot of that search volume. But it is still like as of very recently the report I read said that it was like Google still has 14x the volume essentially. So it's not, you know, one thing I saw kind of summarizing it was like saying it's not just like a science project anymore. Like the market share owned by these is material. But it is still a huge difference there.
But I think the bigger marker is that it is increased engagement. So session times and the depth in which people are going. So one session in perplexity or chatgpt can be the equivalent of, you know, multiple search sessions and typically is like, you know, the way you're conversing and going back and forth. So yeah, so I think that's, that's interesting but you know, from the perspective. So I just, we just, our most recent newsletter just came out and I talked about this with, with AEO and I think the biggest thing is like we, we didn't have this until recently. So like everyone sort of converged on this thought at the same time around like there's a lot of this that is just still SEO.
Because it is. Yeah. Like even just, you know what of two years ago, I think like maybe you could do the plugin to do search on ChatGPT. But like everything was saying like, oh, this model is only updated through 2021. And so it was, you know, it was like, sure, you can go find informational queries or historical facts or those types of things, but it wasn't super relevant. And so really just in the last, you know, year and a half, two years where like search became a much bigger part of it, that's when we've been able to start to dissect and figure out how like how is it actually surfacing that.
And so I think that's why this is all bubbling up and becoming the talking point right now is because of that from a timeline perspective.
But I think, I know you have some details on it like the PR aspect and brand becoming bigger, bigger part of it I think is super interesting and something that we're definitely seeing.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's also important to contextualize it within the conversations we have all the time around it, which is very isolated to specific types of conversations and queries that people are having with them, which is always something around a variation of the high intent queries that we've become accustomed to defining as lower down the funnel where someone's maybe interacting. If traditionally it was in search, it would be like what is the best X software for this?
That longer question or, or query is being input into ChatGPT or perplexity in a variety of different ways that are like way more dynamic I think than they've ever been.
And that's where the brand play comes into it. Because if you start to like think about all the other ways that people are talking to a chatbot and then surf, a brand gets surfaced. It could be so dynamic. So I think though ultimately it is a, a brand play and how, how you're being, how you're perceived across the Internet and, and where you're being cited as a like authority or a, I guess with the, there's positive sentiment around your brand and product.
But that's, I think one of the bigger things is, is that we're Trying to talk with a lot of clients and also just like the way you read about online is just. Yeah, yeah. Brand is a big influencer there.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you think about the.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: You.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Know, one of the aspects is like unlinked brand mentions being more material. What do you. So I was thinking about that as it like you know, our name is 10 speed. Like do you think that that's going to start to shift kind of like when people used to do like exact match domains. Do you think anyone who's founding a company right now starts to become like maybe going back to like the intentional misspellings and extra vowels and like some of those things that maybe like.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Have, have some of that ability to get the unlinked brand mention stuff.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah. It's going to inform a bunch of different like probably misguided tactics that like it's almost like we're going backwards to some extent.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: When it's just like you were, if you were ever trying to get your product, your product's visibility raised and you know, people know about you like you do better PR or you would, you know, create great content and that all happens naturally. It's not, I've been using it lately, the whole like if you build it they will come type thing. But like that is kind of true to some extent when it comes to like do the things that are authentic to your brand and, and then those things will play out. Obviously PR and brand plays are, are bigger and a little bit more strategic and proactive versus just like hoping you get mentioned. But still like the end of the day if you're controlling how your brand is spelled or this and that, like it's gonna, I don't know, snowball into something weird.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So the going back to you were talking about like you, you mentioned example of like best software for X or that kind of thing.
The thing that I think is interesting is you're right, the query does change a lot. And for example, now that might be what is the best software for a 25 person company who runs on HubSpot and gusto. And we need to make sure we have bidirectional sync for this and that it integrates with this and that it does this which is an extremely different type of query.
And then obviously the LLM can process that, but it does bring to mind like review sites, you know, becoming a really critical piece of like the data that they're being trained on which, you know, G2 and, and trust radius and those like they tend to have reviews that do talk about that you know, like this is really great. Here's the strong points, here's the weak points, any of that. But also people that do talk about more advanced use cases or integration or those types of things, like you know, maybe talk a little bit about what our team's been doing on that front and like understanding the impact of reviews on.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Oh yeah, I mean review content can inform. It all goes back to the content that you create. So it just, we, we advise and, and build strategies around or at least make recommendations because you know, sometimes the in house team is obviously best suited to create more technical documentation or you.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Know.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Help support center content. Like that type of stuff. Yeah, help center.
I think the review sites can help inform that content a lot.
And then it can also inform just ultimately like what you need to create to combat some of the negativity. Right. Like if people are criticizing X feature or this, it doesn't do that. Like that can be addressed through a piece of content. Right. That you can produce and that can be fed back into ultimately what the model gets trained on and then over time that's going to end up becoming something that hopefully creates a positive sentiment. But I think it's like it's, it's no different than what I think any company should be doing when it comes to like looking at reviews as a source of getting feedback to improve the things that they're doing as a business.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: But just layered on top of the marketing team and the content team. Right. Like they're just the ones looking at that. And that's one aspect of it. Right?
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Because at the end of the day if, if you do address those through content and the product doesn't satisfy that then that's a bigger issue which, which.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: I think leads me to probably my favorite part of all this. And I, you know, mentioned this as well in, in that newsletter, which check it out. Newsletter 10 speed IO it's on substack and like it is all just leading in a really positive direction which is like you just have to be good at marketing and you have to be good at product and you have to run your business well. Like it, it is leading towards or it is leading away from these people who can just build some sort of hacky growth loop and you know, try to bury bad reviews or whatever. And like you know, many, many companies that like they have great marketing but the product is just okay, the business is run poorly. Like all that stuff like that, that is part of what we are seeing is like hey, this hasn't like your content's good or there's some small changes we can make. We can create a help center article. But like you have very negative reviews on your mobile app. You have terrible whatever. Like it can even just be like glass door stuff or whatever. Like right there, there's no hiding from, from being bad at this stuff. And it's like, right. I think it is very exciting and very positive. Like let the people who are actually doing well across the board succeed and in, you know, not favoring those who can figure out how to, to hack the system. And so totally I think that's leading to really good conversations with, with clients too. Like the just around brand and product and all that stuff. Like it's, it's a really, really, yeah. Solid thing.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: I think it's actually, it's, it's exciting. If you think about all the, you know, brand and PR teams and people we've worked with, I finally I think are like really getting their due because you know, like it is going to have a really impactful, it's going to be impactful to that visibility and those things that are becoming more and more important.
But I think it just levels the playing field that it's not just like, you know, it wasn't. Now it's not just SEO, it's these other things.
It's everything. It's, it just enforces that it's got, it's got to be a holistic like effort across all marketing functions and then the product and the business and it can't just be this one thing. SEO especially for so long had been this thing where it's like that's the silver bullet. Like as long as we just like hammer, hammer out a ton of content and get it indexed and really strategic and build great content, like that's, that's good. But if it doesn't lead back to something great, then it's going to be end up being a challenge in the long run.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: And it's.
I in no way going to claim that I ever saw this, all of this coming. But like I will say for a long time on our old podcast we talked about organic search is just one distribution channel.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: You know, so 2015, 10 years ago, we had a ton of people that could succeed and just basically have paid search and organic search and crushed it with that. And we were seeing that divergence, you know, and even for ourselves, but also for a lot of clients. Like the difference between just focusing on organic search versus that being paired with social media efforts and a podcast and strong newsletter and building authority around Like CEO or leading figures in the company.
And that's why we've really driven towards organic growth in the last couple years.
And so I think that there's a lot there that does set up well now for at least where this is at now. Who knows how it continues to evolve. But so many of those signals matter, you know, around authority that can be deciphered in more ways than just backlinks, you know, or domain rating like it was in the past. Like there's totally, there's a lot of that like, like we mentioned before, unlinked brand mentions.
You're right. PR people are finally getting their, their due and, and all of that. And, and I think product marketers too, I think that's a huge, huge area around like product marketing is going to be big and differentiation and, and all that.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: So on that. The one other thing that I had noted out in, in thinking through this was like just how some of the articles I've been reading but also just what we've been seeing when it comes to what comes up when you know, we get asked the question we do some, we've been doing a lot of research when someone asks us like you know, why aren't we showing up here or why are we showing up here when we. It's the, it's the same ideas like why aren't we ranking number one in the you know, know is the different content types. Which is also something that you know, should be thought about in general but meaning like not just blog posts, you know, it should be like you know, resourceful guides or more technical documentation like I said, like on a support center but then also core pages and pricing pages and all those things. So that's where product marketing is going to come back into play where like you can't just slap together like a little website with like very vague generic content.
You need to have like strong product marketing. And you know probably this day and age is going to be end up ironically being helped innated probably by some AI informing that copywriting. But if you have a strong product marker like anybody using these tools, they're going to get something great out of it and then it's going to turn into a, a great holistic, you know, down funnel play for, for a product. But that'll ultimately be seen because the point a pin on it most times we when we're looking at and researching some of those lower funnel high intent queries within a LLM or ChatGPT most often it's a product a like a product page like a Core. A core marketing page. It's not a listicle. Like you don't go like, hey, best X and then it lists like correct. It's always just like there or a homepage. Right. So anything that's coming back into play where it's not just the educational content, doesn't de. Emphasize the importance of that content that all plays together and you gotta be strategic about it. But that'll be. That's interesting to see that becoming even a bigger thing now. Which just means people gotta.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Put forth more effort.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And I want to talk too about like the first party data side of this because I do think that's something we've pushed for a lot with clients and research reports and anything we can do just in general, take AI out of it completely.
The way that can just say you do one survey, create one research report. The number of ways that you can fuel different types of marketing across different channels. You can start to insert your own first party stats into blog posts you already have. It can go so many directions and give so much life to your company. But now in addition to that, that is certainly becoming a bigger thing in terms of being sighted in AI and having that, you know, I think the LLMs surfacing, that is important, but then again just kind of comes back to credibility and whatnot. So I think that's another really big area that is going to matter for all of this.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, still brings it back to the fundamentals of good SEO to some extent. But first party data informs potentially getting cited, which ultimately is backlink building, which is also then domain authority building and all the things that have historically been positive signals that haven't really changed. So like, it shouldn't mean that you should change it or change your motion. It just means you should again, get more intent, be more intentional and like intentional thoughtful. But also just like I'll put forth a lot more effort into creating something great with first party data that attracts natural attention, but then also enables the PR and brand to bring it back to that to be able to pitch really good stuff.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: And then I'm not as well versed right now on like where's where social. It plays into all of this because I know that there are signals that people debate when it comes to like, you know, whether LinkedIn and all that. But either way that's an engine that just feeds more visibility, that can feed more natural citations and stuff on. On websites and all that.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot to it and it's really Just fascinating too. Like as far as we've come on data science and everything in like, I mean that's probably been in the mainstream for what, seven or eight years now. Like we still see so many companies that just don't even have like the right, like data infrastructure, right. To even be able to pull like they have so much data flowing through their platform or product or service or whatever and they just can't even pull that data.
So I think there's even some of that that's like if this is really going to become a far more material thing that I think some of that even just starts at the ground level of how like.
Yeah, that everything's structured so that you can actually easily pull all that data.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: And that's gonna, that's gonna be the most important way to get that owned data. I think like if you were for like being like not prescriptive but like giving like advice on it, but you know, you can get data too if that's not the case. The reality is, is that a lot of businesses, especially startups that might not get that set up the right way, which they should, but like, you know, things go a specific way and then maybe put someone else in place to clean that up and whatever. But the whole point is, is that like you can end up having first party data, quote unquote by you know, doing surveys and things like that and collecting data around what you're doing and then packaging it in a way that's, you know, interesting. Like it's kind of no similar than working with like, like a Gartner or someone who you would be working with to put together something where they own the data and then you're just crafting a narrative around it, but it's well thought out, researched, etc. And that's still important.
But now I think people can do that stuff without having to necessarily pay to play for the big ones.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
So I think the biggest thing that we got to make sure we talk about is probably, probably should have started with this.
Like the thing that's probably affecting people the most and causing the most stress right now is how to manage up, how to manage expectations.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: How the heck to find, you know, the horizon and get equilibrium and know how to make decisions on their data because everything's very much up in the air. So I think that that's definitely something we got to.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yeah. About I, Yeah. And I think there's a few ways to do it.
It's a really, it is a big challenge. I'm not going to like ignore that, you know, when historically no one, historically no company, especially in like the, the Google age has ever really been like I'm totally cool with no with my traffic not going up into the right exponentially all the time. Right. Like that's the whole point of this. Right. We're investing in this. We got to see that. And you know, but like nine, you know, not nine times out of 10 but like most common we'll see commonly that like most of the time that's not even the right traffic that was already happening.
So I think if we can continue to refine the way we not only educate and manage up, but look for the signals within the actual data down funnel that show that that's not as important, which we do see sometimes you got to work to. This goes back to even having a good marketing foundation for your data. Right. Attribution is understood and all that. But then you can start to I think point to the right things. There are plenty of examples out there like industry colleagues of ours that talk about even working with clients and things like that or working with companies where they're like no, we're you know, putting together stories based off of like strong MQL growth or this and that and traffic isn't like skyrocketing. So that, that, that the ability to have that conversation is there. It's just I think you have to find the data. If you don't have the lower funnel conversion data then that's a whole other thing. But that's, that's probably the best way to even approach it. But yeah, I think we're in a new world of like resetting expectations on what traffic looks like. Especially as these LLMs and AI overviews in Google and all that eat into click through rates.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah, I, I absolutely think if, if you're really feeling like everything's up in the air, I think the number one thing I would say is make sure you have like the lower funnel conversion stuff in a good place like that. That is ultimately the most important part.
So if you don't have that, stop trying to figure out right, how much traffic did we have and what do we have? Like get. That has to, I mean that should always be the focus anyway. Like if you're coming into a company and you don't have conversion, like you should be trying to get that set up. But that is going to be the biggest thing because you're right, like we are going to see that. We've seen that for clients where we've pruned you Know, dozens, if not hundreds of pages or you know, posts or whatever that were relevant and they lost some traffic from those and it had zero impact on that. And then ultimately had some positive impacts on other parts. Like there are scenarios and I understand, you know, if I were, you know, a board member or something, seeing that like that story does work, like we are getting less traffic, but we don't, but we're not losing conversions. But at some point there is a, like you can't, like you can't, you can only squeeze so much, you know. So like at some point that's fine. But like where, like helping figure out where is that, where is that threshold that once we cross this we probably will start losing some of those. And so I think again the main thing is you have to understand the conversion lower funnel maybe that if you're much more sales led, like qualified opportunities or whatever it might be, however you're handling that, some of those down funnel metrics to just have a really good pulse on that because yeah, the, the traffic aspect of it is going to be wild. We have seen, you know, for some clients where like the net aggregate is flat or even up a little bit when you do factor in the traffic they're getting from LLMs, like so seeing that in combination then you can kind of see like, oh, okay, it's just some of this has shifted or it's even like increased in some ways. But generally I think that's going to be the answer for a while is not getting too worked up because it's literally happening across the board for every website, for every company and you have to focus on the things that you know are material and matter for your business and go from there.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Totally. And I think that that's the most extreme thing you can do probably to make sure and safeguard against that. And if you're already experiencing like a lot of traffic loss because of LLMs and AIOS and all that, it's because of that. I mean it was already pretty discussed online but like HubSpot lost all their massive amount of traffic, whatever six months ago. Right. Because because of this. Right. And you know the, I'm not the person who pointed it out. There's plenty of people who did. But like the conversation evolved into, if you looked at what they lost, it was all this like top of funnel traffic that was like content that they've created which built their program that doesn't matter really to their business and doesn't matter to the audience.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: So I think like if you are starting now to create content for your website.
And even if you have legacy content, I think it's either you make sure that whatever you're building is like incredibly relevant, it's also going to save because it's going to safeguard against too like your sales team. Right. Like if you know that this answers or maps to something that like your audience and your user is, is like in tune to or it solves a problem for. And then you get a lead and you're probably going to prevent like a, like sales leader coming being like, why did we create this piece of content which is going to happen no matter what.
And then, and then also over, over time, when your traffic does start to decay, if you're focused on those things that like truly matter, then you're going to be able to like actually speak to like, this is how we fix it. Because these are important. We need to update this content or, or whatever. But, but I think that that's going to be really important. And then like the days of building all of this type of funnel traffic, content isn't going to matter anymore. Maybe it's important to build like a really good long form comprehensive piece on like the thing that few five things that are important to your business. Right. That's still going to be valuable to some extent. But even then it's still going to probably need to be like super, super like narrow in how you're talking about it to some extent. But either way, those days I think are gone of building authority off of like, hey, let's just cover everything around the sun around these things.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And building skyscrapers that. Yeah, skyscrapers all Brian Dean's skyscraper being torn down right now.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I think HubSpot was a good example. And to me what comes to mind is probably again, in a very healthy way, if you think about it from a TAM perspective, maybe your topical content, TAM is just smaller.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: So we used to talk about this at Sprout where it'd be like, okay, here's this bullseye or the center is like stuff that is directly tied to our product.
And then one ring out is like, here's all the things we want to create content around. And then you get into tertiary, you're starting to get into some more fringe things that indirectly relate or are just applicable to your icp, but not necessarily right to your product.
And HubSpot just started so early that they were like their 9th or 10th, 12th ring where like, you know, they, they were many, many years past. Even like, you know, creating signature email signature tools and Stuff like. Like even that's, I guess, still somewhat related, but, like. Yeah, yeah, they just. They did it for so long that they pushed so far out that, like. Yes. I think everyone looked at that and said, I'm not surprised that you, as a software company doing, you know, email and CRM and all this stuff like that, that content just lost traffic.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: That totally makes sense. So to maybe from a TAM perspective, they just. As companies go on, like, they do maybe reach a point where there's diminishing returns or that just. It doesn't rank or doesn't perform in any way, so. Yep, agreed.
Yeah. Anything else you want to touch on from the AEO perspective?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: I think that's it. There's some, like, probably more technical stuff we can get into on a. Later.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it'll be evolving and.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think those are. I think those are the big. The big ones on that one.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right, so next on the agenda, I. I wanted to talk a bit like the.
So we went to Saster in the fall, which was cool.
Very different from when I went, like, in 2016 or something like that.
We went to Inbound a couple years ago, and so it just. We've kind of looked at. Been to some conferences, looked at some of these things, and I think what's really interesting is, like, the. The big ones have gotten huge. So, like, Dreamforce, I think, is probably the biggest. I went to the Marketo conference a long time ago, too. That was also a really big one.
But, like, Dreamforce, Saster, Inbound.
And what kind of brought those to mind a little bit was, like.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: When.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: We went to Inbound, it conflicted with Saster. The dates conflicted.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: And then they moved it this year, which was really weird. Like, we were just there in the fall, and they did not even say anything.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: About it being in May, you know, the following May. Like, I just thought that was really weird and jarring.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
They didn't say any. They haven't announced why they moved it up or anything. Huh.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: I don't. I couldn't find anything on that.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: No.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Yeah, but like, SAS Doc is. I think it's third or fourth year. So that just happened this week as well.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Austin, right?
[00:36:00] Speaker A: In Austin. Yeah.
But that's now, like, dividing some of the SAS crowd.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Across two different. So they're literally two conferences with, like, that. Their names both start with S A S A, A S T.
Yeah. Like, they're very, very similar.
That were over the same dates this year.
And then there's also Like Dave Gerhardt's Drive conference, which I saw is now application required.
And the.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Yeah, he made a big splash I think with that first one.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
But a much smaller conference. Yeah, yeah. And then same with Pep's Spring. Yep.
Which is from his company Winter.
Similar.
We had looked at that for.
For Ryan to maybe go to.
That was a little bit like not entirely, but sort of application only. And so.
And then like, like Digital Summit application to attend.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Digital Summit series, Digital Marcon are like big, multi city, more tactical.
So I think it's really interesting time to like obviously everyone had to figure everything out again post Covid.
Like it's an interesting time for like, for marketers, you know, and if I try to put myself in the shoes of like, like if I were 25 again and like trying to soak up as much information as possible and meet people and network, like the, the big ones are just so big.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
Almost not even like focused even on marketing just for like Inbound, isn't they? I mean they wrap everything in like a lens of kind of marketing. But yeah, marketing sales.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: But yeah, well, yeah. And like the platform specific ones.
I also went to Inbound, I think in like 2015 when I was a sprout and I was like, it's cool but like we don't use HubSpot. So like, yeah, half the sessions or more.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Weren't like just so specific on how to do it with that tool.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: But that's very different today. I feel like they made a big swing back. There's more, even more normalized HubSpot usage than there was then. I think it was like a lot more. It was split, I feel like.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So it's really interesting in terms of like, you know, for a marketer at a company, like where do you think you basically get to ask your boss like once or maybe maybe once every two years or something.
And then obviously there's like very specific SEO conferences and some of those too. But just talking a bit more generally around marketing and the tech world and stuff like that.
It's interesting and it's also just like even just thinking about some of our clients sponsor like have booths at events and those types of things.
Where, where to do that. Like, I don't know, it just, it just feels like it's kind of, to me, it just feels like it's all kind of in this weird limbo of like. Yeah, what, what does make sense? Like there's the curated small application only, but that only allows no middle ground. So many People.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: And then I think like SAS Doc is probably like the best example of medium sized.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Um, but Obviously for anyone B2B marketing that isn't in SaaS, then like that's not really relevant. Um, and then that kind of leaves you with the other digital summit and some of those which are still quite a bit bigger.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Yep. And more tactical to some extent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's an interesting like evolution. It's good to see that there's more in person stuff obviously after everything Covid wise shut things down. So it's good to see that there's one growing interest and demand and not only like big conferences, but these small ones. I mean we've talked to a lot of clients who are attending a lot of events. Like those are becoming big lead drivers for many again, which is good.
So like.
Yeah, I don't know. It's. It's tough if you're. If you're an. You're like an IC or an individual contributor. I think it makes sense to be able to try and go to some of these. But I don't know how you choose.
Yeah, I mean that's what helped me early on in my career was going to like I would say because I went to link love and search Love from that was distilled and like partnered with Moz. I believe I forget but in Sear. I don't know. There's a few early leaders in that space and they were smaller. That was in Boston in a smaller little. I think it was on Harvard's campus. But it was. It was great. It was tactical but future focused and.
But the space was so much smaller and there was not many to choose from at that time. I think at the digital summits were around at that time and these were like the kind of. I think that at that time was kind of like the. The drives or the winters of the time.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Yeah, they were much smaller.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: So if anything I'd probably say that those are. Those are probably ones to.
To seek out if you can get to go to them.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: Which ones?
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Like the smaller ones. The Dave Gerharts and all that. But I don't know. I feel like it's a bigger question. I'd question like the, the inbounds. If you're like an individual contributor, someone who's like I want to go to this. Unless you are actively in HubSpot that might provide the additional value.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I think there's obviously it like very logical applications for all of them.
But it.
Yeah, it's really interesting and We've, you know, talked about very, very lightly off and on. Like, if we did a small conference ourselves, you know, in Chicago, like, what would that look like? And some of those details. And I think that that's the biggest thing is like you, you know, from, from that perspective is you have to do something that's. That's worth people coming to, especially knowing that they.
They are likely having to choose one, you know. Yeah, one thing. And so obviously the speakers you can get is big, but like, format really matters. Venue really matters. Like, I mean, the other thing, like the thing we found at the Saster was like the sessions were sort of chaotically timed.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Oh yeah, you're running all over where.
[00:43:10] Speaker A: You'Re like, oh, wait, so I can go to this. But halfway through I have to leave to go to this other one.
Which makes sense. It's so big. Like you have multiple stages, but even just syncing some of that up a little more like being in high school or something and having passing periods, which again, they probably can't do that. Like, you can't so many. You're like tens of thousands. Like, you can't necessarily have everyone moving at once, but totally.
So this is why I don't plan conferences, because it sounds like there's just a lot that is stressful logistical. But yeah, you know, from thinking about where we want to attend, where we want our team to be able to attend, where we have a presence, just a lot of that. It. It definitely feels interesting and up in the air in terms of what. What there could be.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, I think it would be great if there were more. Maybe that's a good. Maybe it's a good segue too, but into another topic. But the having them locally curated would be interesting. It's just tough because so many people are dispersed. So I don't know how you do it. So, like, it is a bigger investment for people to have to travel.
But like, you know, back in the 2018, 2019, like Chicago would do tons of locally, like, you know, curated events and things like that that featured brands and all that. So.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't. It's. It. I'm sure the dust will settle and things will normalize a little bit, but tough to see where you'd want to bet on going.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, I think it'll be something to.
To watch and just be interesting. And I, I do want to just also say, like, obviously from a exhibitor sponsor standpoint and knowing that, you know, we do have a number of Clients where like organic search and conferences are like there are two.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Two main drivers of pipeline.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: And I think it'll grow. It'll continue to grow for events too.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So like obviously this is talking about the marketing world. So in that case it would really only apply to like a Martech company. So like if your audience is whatever, like accountants or whatever, like you're. You're going to accounting conferences exhibiting there, like that's, that's very different.
And so that I won't even pretend to speak to all the different industries and conferences there, but it might be.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: An accounting software specific conference. Yeah.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: It just feels weird. It feels like it's such a big industry.
It feels weird to me that even just for myself to not feel like, oh, this is the one I go to every year and this is the one that like the people that I want to see are at and like, you know, I mean like it's like, like Dreamforce is sort of that for like Pete. Like everyone in the Salesforce ecosystem.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Like yeah, for sure.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: This is the one. We go to this. And I just didn't get that feeling from. From Saster.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: No. It was all big, broad spectrum.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, so maybe it's a little bit of where we're at and like being an agency versus SAS company, I'll totally, totally give that caveat credibility and whatnot. But like.
Yeah. That's kind of how I would distill it is like I don't really know if I were to pick one for myself. I don't even know which one I should invest the time.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: To. To go to.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: So yeah, we'll shift gears real quick. You mentioned Chicago locally. Local stuff.
It's really weird. So I got, I got a chance to go to a local event recently. I think you did as well. So that was fun just to kind of go connect and see some people and stuff. But did really kind of highlight the last two things that I've done have been like not like the greatest sentiment on like Chicago Tech. Yeah.
You know, through conversations it just felt like there's a lot there. So I mean I was looking at like, you know, tech stars in Chicago is. Is different now. Like they've. They kind of like spin up these partnership funds. So like with JP Morgan and with Northwestern Medicine. So like the Northwestern one, they're specifically looking for like healthcare startups.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Cool idea, but just very different. Like you're not going to get, you know, a Groupon or a Sprout Social or something out of. Right out of that, you know, big, big local news with 1871 Incubator closing its physical doors.
So still exists as an organization.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: And.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Can, you know, incubate. Incubate and connect and community and all that stuff.
But I think just didn't get the momentum back post Covid in terms of people being there. And I remember being in that space multiple times same I saw you speak.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: At that space once.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Super cool.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Or you were on a panel?
[00:48:35] Speaker A: I was on panel, yep.
Yeah. And when I started consulting, did some like advisory stuff, kind of did like rapid fire with a bunch of early stage founders and chatting through that stuff. And so I like I just remember I came to Chicago in 2011 to join Sprout, went to the 600 West Chicago building.
Groupon was there like light bank companies and like the energy I think was just so powerful and like critical to that.
And it was just like one exciting thing after another.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: Like well, there's like an identity to it. I feel like that is lost now.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And well, I mean and being remote probably doesn't help to some extent but like yeah, I don't know, it's just like the ethos is just not there in some cases. And I don't want to discredit anyone who is working hard to foster that because I can't say that I've done my part to contribute to it even though we are starting to do more there.
But yeah, I just think it felt like there was a ton of momentum, you know in the. The teens like those you know, 2011 to. Yeah, to Covid or you know, up until Covid that I mean all all kinds of just like hey, a bunch of you know, early stage companies getting together for ping pong tournaments and whatever. Like just sort of self planned things as well in the ecosystem and meeting people, supporting people like a lot of that stuff. So I miss that the energy and I, I think the biggest thing has just been like how do we like figuring out how do we get some.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: Of that tap into it. Yeah, you know I was looking there are.
I think the disbursement of employees changed the makeup of that a little bit. But I think it's possible for it to happen again. It looks like Austin and we know that that's why probably SASDOC is there to some extent. But like the number of employee like they're like apparently the number one like big tech employee percentage change in headcount since beginning of the pandemic.
Seattle was big. I didn't know that that was it. So like Chicago's up there. They're in like the top five or ten still. But like, it's definitely, I think, gone in a different direction. But yeah, I feel like, I don't know, it'll probably just take time for that to happen again. But I do feel like that there was that kind of like anything that was associated with the, the Bay Area, which it seems like that's kind of coming back around. I. The. I had very much. I had a note in here too, about the tech conferences too. Like, Inbound is in San Francisco.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know that either until like a week ago this year.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: It's going to be.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's moving. It's the first time it's ever not been in Boston. And I, like, tried to look. I. I was like, maybe the Con Convention center or something or wherever they have it is like being remodeled. I. I didn't find anything. Was like, there had to be like a logical reason because it was a big thing. But like, also maybe it was just like, maybe a lot of people aren't coming there to go to. It says it'll return in 2026.
Who knows? There's probably something out online that said it. I looked at their, their announcement and everything.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: But if they're returning, then that feels maybe it's temporary or maybe they're testing.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: It out and being like, this goes gangbusters.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Did Boston love flying? Like, fly into Boston, go through that. The. Oh yeah tunnel.
It's like, it's so easy. It's so fast.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:29] Speaker A: For being the, the size of city, it is.
Oops. Just.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: What was I gonna say?
I.
Yeah, I mean, and not to like, fully get into it, but. But I think that the one thing working against Chicago is when you don't have a strong tech hub and like a reason for people to be here similar to like a lot of people started to leave the Bay Area. There wasn't like a pulling force.
I mean, if I'm like an early stage founder, I am not.
And I have a choice between being like, paying Illinois taxes and. And cost of living and everything versus somewhere else.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:23] Speaker A: Because I'm a remote company in any way.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: And there's no like, hub that's pulling me and like, attracting me to. To stay, then I think that that definitely makes it challenging. So, like. Yeah, to some extent it's not terribly surprising for Austin to be.
Austin got popular for many different reasons.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: But yeah, I think there's a lot there and that's. I Know, there's so many people in the city that have done a lot to foster relationships and work development between the mayor's office and governor and all that kind of stuff. But just kind of does highlight to some extent that there are a lot of things that have to work in tandem to, to really drive that. But I mean like, it's not just that like I feel like 10, 15 years ago the like New York startup scene was way, way more vibrant. Like I don't hear a lot coming out of New York anymore.
There were a lot of really big incubators there. There were a lot of prominent investors that are, are certainly still there. But like, yeah, I just think the whole space fragmented a little bit and Chicago's still trying to find, find its way. So I, I fully trust that the folks running 1871 explored this in depth far more than I have and have tried a lot to, to make it work. So I'm not, not discounting any of that. But it's something near dear to my heart, I think. Felt like there was a lot of momentum for a long time and there's a lot of really, really great things about Chicago that make it a fantastic place to be able to continue to invest and thrive and build companies.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: I think it's coming back around and I think it will. And you know, everyone's still trying to find their footing when it comes to hybrid and an in person remote or in person work versus remote.
But that's a big part of it and I think there's some people who've done it well and still maintain it. I was looking at this and I mean I know we call it out all the time but like on the articles I pulled up around like top tech companies still and like Sprouts still up there, Sprout Social still on there is like top three and they still have an office here and they still do lots of events that around in person.
And then I mean the other ones which are funnier, like the huge companies, it's like Google and it's like every other big, big, big company like Salesforce and all that. So. Yeah, but there's some other ones too. I mean like I didn't, I'm not super familiar with all of the companies that came up on it but there was up and coming ish I think because some of them like were up, you know Upwork Upwork has an office here but lever Paylocity ServiceNow is here. That's a big one. Y.
Jelly Vision's still on there. Like Jelly Vision's OG so yeah, there's like still stuff.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: Pacity too.
[00:56:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Paylocity is on there too.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Career Builder was big.
Yeah. But there's always been that like it's always been a little fragmented too. Like Red Box was really big. Like Braintree came out of Chicago.
[00:56:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: Brian Johnson guy.
Yeah. So I mean there's, there's a lot that I think.
I don't know. It's like, I don't think there's.
I don't know, I don't know what it take. I don't know. It's like we just haven't had a, an absolute superstar success company as you know, successful as Sprout and.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: Groupon and ServiceNow and some of those companies are like maybe it's just not like just the absolute grand slam.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:57:21] Speaker A: Type of outcome or something and that, you know, we don't need to get into all that but obviously like equity structures and the amount of people who do well and then stay in the area after they do well and start to found their own companies and yeah. Invest and write angel checks and all that stuff.
Like I think that takes a few times through that loop to really be able to like gain that momentum and I don't think that's, that's something that we've been able to, to accomplish in Chicago in particular.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: But yeah.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Shifting gears quite hard back into what we do a little more specifically we wanted to talk about the growing importance of design. So in some ways this felt like a sub bullet of the AEO conversation. It certainly does tie to it, but a lot of factors through our discussion felt like it was meaningful to be its own talking point.
Like we've really focused on organic growth in the last couple years as sort of a positioning and just kind of where we're focused. And obviously having the word organic in it probably does still get heavily conflated with just being SEO. And yes.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: I wanted to say 100% but it's probably not that but it's like nine times out of 10 and.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: That'S fine because that's still been the core of what we've done but like really all things non paid. And so thinking about how SEO and now AEO and PR and social and email and podcasts and all this works together for a company.
So again just kind of everything non paid.
So we recently brought on like full time design lead at at 10 speed which was a desire for a while and something that we've seen as really maybe force multiplier would be a way to put it like there's a lot of great stuff we do and we can do more for clients, but just generally see the through line in everything. I just talked about that design does become, you know, a bigger and bigger piece to that and. Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, as companies are whatever, thinking about the structure of their marketing teams and where they're investing and even just how they're kind of approaching the next phase of what marketing is and channels are focusing on and yeah. Talking about design, I think it's interesting.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: Because it's, it is a sub bullet of the AEO stuff but it's like less directly an answer to like how can you make sure that you get surfaced in those things and not to bring it all back to that. It's just more like, you know, right now everyone's so fixated on LLM optimization and all that that like I think this actually does kind of get lost in the mix. Even though it's so. It's still so important because it fuels all the other things that we already kind of talked about which is, you know, first party data, visualizations and you know, making sure that you're distributing content properly. Right. And if you earn effectively and if you are, you're putting your best foot forward, you should probably have some, some visualization or, or design or graphic or something. Right. LinkedIn, carousels and all that type of stuff.
But then ultimately those things then get.
If it's a, an owned or like compelling visual that can be used and repurposed and cited and all that. So like it, it's. It's tremendously important and the quality important is important. And I know that related AI has also probably helped enable a lot of people to create more images, create a lot more imagery nowadays than before, but you still see a ton of content out there that doesn't have any, anything. So it's something that people should be investing in.
[01:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:01:43] Speaker B: And thinking and making it a priority when it comes to the content they create.
[01:01:47] Speaker A: Y.
Yeah. And I think that it's, you know, the AI image generation is an interesting point because I think that currently there's still a good amount that you can tell like oh, that was, that was generated by AI.
[01:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:04] Speaker A: I think that is probably that gap is closing rapidly and, and will certainly shift over time. But I don't think that like I'm not seeing this world where like all of a sudden all design is great and beautiful.
[01:02:23] Speaker B: No.
[01:02:24] Speaker A: Just because AI exists, like taste matters and like just generally having an eye for design and production quality and just a lot of different things that matter.
And so I mean I think like we've, we've certain like believed in, you know, from our time at Sprout, like having great design, like it is a huge helps up level everything you're doing from a marketing and brand perspective. Like, and so I think that that's going to continue to be the case. Like, like you said, driving more engagement or you know, whatever it may be that's going to matter. And like, so I think that the, the big thing there is like I guess kind of figuring out the investment because sure, AI, you could, you know, ask Canva or ChatGPT or anything to like generate this image for you.
But what does that mean to be cohesive and have someone sort of steward the brand and have consistency and, and all that stuff throughout? Because I think the reality is that similar to what I said about like this is all in my opinion positive because it just shifts people to being better companies, like better product and all that stuff that will require for the AEO side of things. I think design is also a component that yeah, can just be a huge differentiator in an area that, that requires investment.
[01:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, it's, it's something that you can use, you can use like again get started with like some design through AI to start to get you going. But no matter what, at some point, like the things you're pointing out when it comes to like quality or taste or just consistency, like there's going to be a person involved in that at some point. So like, I mean, at the end of the day it's kind of like, I don't want to be tone deaf to say that like you can't create great stuff with that. But like it's about just making sure that you're investing in how you invest in that is going to be really critical moving forward. I just think, I think the exciting thing about it is, is just that like if I think about it from me, like my perspective as like a marketer early on, earlier on when I was like really getting started with SEO, like I, if I had AI at that time, I mean I would, I would be using it constantly to make imagery if I didn't have the resources Right. Available to me. Yep, that's I think at least the exciting thing which I still haven't seen out there. Like I've seen like some featured images on like a blog post that you can tell are AI. I see it more in publications now. You can tell it feels like it like, you know, they're, they're caricaturized visualization of like whatever the topic is is totally AI.
But I'm sure it's actually really good that. I'm sure that a designer leveraged AI to do that. It's not like they just like had an intern in the, in the newsroom or something like going like, hey, can you make that?
[01:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:46] Speaker B: So either way it still made the content better and I think that it's still going to be important that we use design and in everything.
So.
[01:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I'm I guess pro AI helping designers. Yeah, just like AI helps marketers and not, you know, the narrative that designers aren't needed because.
Oh no, you know, I think totally.
Yeah. In general, I just, I just wanted to make sure we had time to talk about that because I think that for any B2B marketing company, I think that really becomes a huge differentiating factor as you think about going across multiple channels and it's not just text on the page. Rank, Rank and organic search. They click through and.
[01:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:39] Speaker A: You know.
[01:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And to your point, huge differentiator. I mean specifically in. I think the evolve. Like there's more technical products that are coming out. More AI focused products are coming out. We work with a lot of them. One of them, for example, I won't name them but like they, they handle a lot of it on their own from a design perspective, all of it.
But they do a really great job at it. That's like just something they don't need that help with. But we help with the writing and the creation of the content. But, but they flesh out every piece of content with like supplement or complimentary visualizations and everything. It's really, really great. And it could be charts or it could be, you know, a creative visualization of some concept. Right. Because it's more technical in nature. Diagrams, all that.
I think it's, it absolutely sets them apart from their competition because they've been growing over the past two years and I think in those spaces too, technical spaces, all that, it's going to be even more important.
No one ever wanted it still. No one just wants to read a wall of text. Within the world of like content marketing or like if you're educating someone through something.
I mean it's different if it's a book.
A lot of books don't have.
[01:07:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Pictures.
[01:07:54] Speaker B: Although this is my favorite kind.
[01:07:57] Speaker A: Graphic novels.
[01:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:59] Speaker A: Yes.
Cool. Well, I think the last thing we had on the agenda.
Well, anything anymore on designs?
[01:08:08] Speaker B: No, I think we made that clear.
[01:08:13] Speaker A: So, I mean, I think the last interesting thing we talked about social as being a big part of that, just the kind of what's happening, not say happened, but still happening on LinkedIn. So I mean I, I found a study from Originality AI and they studied thousands of posts and found that fit over 50. Poor. Sorry. They found that 54% of posts over 100 words on LinkedIn were likely generated by AI.
[01:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:50] Speaker A: And then they also found that since 2022, so really kind of when ChatGPT started to get into everyone's hands, the length of LinkedIn posts has grown by one hundred and seven percent.
And as a result those posts receive 45% less engagement.
[01:09:14] Speaker B: So what are we doing here?
[01:09:17] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of terms lately, you know, slop and like some different things, kind of just talking about the noise on the Internet. And it is very interesting because I think that LinkedIn still holds a very powerful, unique place, especially for B2B companies. Yeah.
But I think what really even more I understand the writing side to some extent, especially if you're kind of having a prompt, ideas or you know, help, help, help you write feels different than like just fully cranking out a ton of posts.
[01:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:00] Speaker A: But even more than that is the like the rise in like AI commenting.
[01:10:06] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:06] Speaker A: Where it's just running out because there's no limit on commenting.
You know, I mean, posting either, but like versus like making connection requests and that kind of stuff. Like you can kind of get, you know, limited.
They, they do that.
[01:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:22] Speaker A: So that, that to me feels like when it's not just posting. Like clearly people can tell to some extent or it's just worse or whatever. Like they're just getting less engagement on those posts.
[01:10:33] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:34] Speaker A: But like when you talk about the commenting side of it and all of a sudden you have like AI commenting on posts that were generated by AI and like.
Yeah, what are we doing here? I think is your.
[01:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:47] Speaker A: Succinct.
[01:10:48] Speaker B: I mean, way to put it. Yeah. It seems like it's turning into like, it's basically like email, like email at this point where like email to some extent is just.
It's mostly noise and you know, obviously we use email and to communicate with, with blood in a variety of ways. But yeah, I don't know, I was trying to do some like, digging on where this is all going because LinkedIn, I used to feel like LinkedIn was actually the only platform at one point that had a purpose because it is like, it was like, oh, for professionals and like, you know, it's a good place to get your, your name out there and build your brand and all that. Because, like, at one point, obviously Facebook went one way and you know, there's just the traditional, traditional quote unquote social networks.
They just are just kind of Wild west.
And so I wouldn't say LinkedIn is wild west now. It's all still like this professional, you know, sandbox, I guess, where people can, you know, put, put their best foot forward in building a brand and hopefully maybe I guess recruiters will see it or we can build a company's brand. I mean, we use it. I shouldn't talk. I'm not the best to post on LinkedIn, but it's just, it's, it's. I don't know, I, I feel like it's, the clock is ticking on it. In a another ironic, I guess note, I actually went to ChatGPT and I was like, I used the, the search functionality of it to like, ask it to like, give me like a breakdown of like the sentiment of LinkedIn these days. And it was just like all negative. And it cited a bunch of things and also then gave me a bunch of alternatives because I was like, where's this going? And like, what's the next alternative? And there are starting to be discussions around like that. I think people will eventually move away from LinkedIn. It's just been spammed so much now that if it's AI posts and AI comments at some point people are going to walk away from it. So it's just like, what is the purpose of it?
But I guess to put a point on it is that I think that people are going to start reaching and I think they already are for more like very specialized specific communities.
[01:12:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:12:53] Speaker B: In order to actually do the thing that LinkedIn was supposed to do. And then LinkedIn is just like a.
It's a checkbox.
[01:13:02] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. And yeah, and that's what I was gonna say is I think that it reminds me of.
You remember how like Craigslist existed and then like startups.
[01:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:12] Speaker A: Were built under like every subcategory of Craigslist, basically. Like, you know, LinkedIn had groups.
[01:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:21] Speaker A: Which was supposed to be kind of that sub affinity.
Like. Yeah, you're on LinkedIn but like getting groups that are more targeted.
[01:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:32] Speaker A: And those just slowly dwindled and fell off. And so I agree, I think Slack communities, I mean some of those Slack communities are, Those are still massive. Yeah, those are, they're.
[01:13:46] Speaker B: They seem to be. They still have legs, it seems like.
[01:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Some of and then that's a whole other discussion for another time. On like that they seem like. Some of them seem to get. I don't know what the magic number is, but after they get over this size, then they just get like, yeah, really, really. It's just the same few people posting and, and nothing really happens and whatnot.
[01:14:07] Speaker B: But. Right. Even Reddit, Reddit, like Reddit has this like roller coaster of like what I feel like to have as a reputation where like people love it, hate it sometimes. Everyone's talking about, like that's where I get all my information. It also has this like influence in the things we've talked about today. Apparently like LLMs and stuff like that. Potentially a whole other subject. But like those are, those have communities and brands have communities on there. We were like talking about this a few weeks ago.
But yeah, I just, there's like, I think just more authentic places that you can probably get your.
You can accomplish the thing that you want to accomplish.
That's a bummer.
[01:14:43] Speaker A: No, I'm not.
I don't think it's all is lost. Like, you know, it's a big company.
That's their golden goose. They're gonna, yeah, they're gonna try to figure it out. I will say the last couple times I've gone on LinkedIn just like that main feed has been like, oh, that the very first person was like someone I would want to see their post. And then I scroll and like, oh, them too. Oh, like they seem to almost be like figuring out some, some algorithmic tweaks that are making some of that better, which I think can then like, like there's authentic connection and therefore authentic engagement. And maybe they're figuring out some of that like suppression of.
Of that. I mean, they have to figure that out in one way or another.
[01:15:30] Speaker B: Right.
[01:15:30] Speaker A: I'm sure because yeah, left unchecked, it would certainly just, just ruin it. But yeah, but it's interesting because it's.
I, I have no issue with any executives that have people write for them.
Kind of like up ghost, right? Because at the end of the day, there's collaboration there. It's their ideas, they're informing it.
There's good stuff there. And I think if you use AI in the same way that it's a support tool, I am fully on board with that. That is not the issue.
It's just the people who seem to figure out a hack and get ahead of like, this is the formula, this is the template. AI is going to crank these out for me.
That makes it discouraging. For anyone who is sort of authentically wanting to just speak. And I think David C. Baker is great at talking about just being yourself and just know writing the way you talk and you know all that stuff. And yeah. So I think there's, there's positivity there. It's just a matter of like how do we get the.
Continue to have like authentic things come through and, and be valuable.
[01:16:47] Speaker B: That's, I think that that's the, the take, Mike. At least one of the takeaways for me is like they, it's going back to what was originally the like I guess best parts of content marketing and even organic content. Organic. Organic content marketing and SEO, which provide something resourceful. That's what you should be doing anytime you're writing anyway, especially for your audience. So like, yeah, I think there's a lot of people doing that but then most of the time it's like wrapped in a promotion like follow me to get this thing or that. And it's just like, I get it like everyone needs to build something but I don't know, it's just turning into this never ending like follow me, subscribe, etc and I just at some point like we're just building this thing that people are just going to walk away from. I think it's good for you to. I think the tip I'd give to like brands that we would advise to repurpose their content is like to try to make that as authentic as possible.
[01:17:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:17:42] Speaker B: Because otherwise it's going to be hard to validate or justify investing in. Like you should spend a lot of time building your brand on LinkedIn if everything ends in a promotional CTA.
[01:17:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:17:54] Speaker B: It's going to be tough. That's not to say you should try things and test them out, but I think that that's the key is like probably just try a bunch of different things and not just be full fledged.
Like hey, this is a marketing message. Yep, yep. I agree. Yeah.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: Awesome. This has been a lot of fun.
[01:18:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:10] Speaker A: The end of session one.
Thank you for, for checking it out. Please like and subscribe and visit 10Speed IO for more information about what we do. Thanks.
[01:18:21] Speaker B: Thank you.
