Content strategy and marketing are even more important in this age of AI technology. At the recent Digital Summit Los Angeles conference, I was pleased to be able to chat with Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, the marketing research company founded by Rand Fishkin and Casey Henry.
Amanda gave two outstanding presentations as part of the Masterclass sessions at Digital Summit and I was very interested to get her thoughts on creating valuable content with the advent of AI.
Web Hosting Cat:
What are the keys to creating valuable content for your audience these days?
Amanda Natividad:
The first thing to know is that value is actually objective, right? We’re often told that value is subjective, but it’s not true. Value is objective. Value is utility. It’s getting use out of something. And value can either be informational or entertainment, and what’s subjective is what makes it informational or what makes thing entertaining. That’s where the real challenge lies.
WHC:
What are the keys to creating standalone content that your audience can really be inspired by?
AN:
The key to creating standalone content, or what I like to call zero click Content, which is creating native to platform content, where clicking is optional, it’s not required for further understanding. And so the best way to do that is don’t be greedy, right? Don’t think that you need to just send people to a blog. What you should do is maybe summarize that entire blog post. Maybe it’s give a key insight from that longer form video. It’s giving that stand alone value where anybody scrolling by can clearly understand what it is you’re saying. They get some value out of it, and maybe, hopefully, over time, they want to follow you to learn more.
WHC:
What are some of the mistakes you see people making when they’re trying to utilize social media to prolong that content?
AN:
The biggest mistake I see people make is asking for a retweet or a re-share. Now that’s a problem, because think about the last time somebody asked you to retweet or re share their content. I’m sure you wanted to help them. I’m sure you had every intention of wanting to be helpful. But it doesn’t feel good, right? Doesn’t feel good to get that transactional ask. Or maybe you’re somebody who’s very discerning about the things that you want to re share, and maybe you felt like that content while you wanted to support your friend isn’t something you would normally re-share on your feed. So what social media managers, and I’m saying this in that general sense, people who run social media accounts, what social media managers should do is ask for or optimize for amplification. Amplification could be a re-share, but it could also be a comment or a like, and it’s really just ensuring that people engage with their content. So one way to do it is to really just ensure that what you’re posting is something that people actually want to like or they want to comment on and ideally you wouldn’t have to ask.
WHC:
What do you see in the future for content creation in this age of AI,
AN:
In the age of AI, it’s more important than ever to really present your original self, your original research, your lived experiences, the things that AI can’t do because AI is not a person, you are. So this is the best opportunity for you to leverage your own uniqueness.
For more information on SpartToro, visit sparktoro.com.
