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[upbeat music] We're back with another episode of Content Briefly, and this is my first ever introduction for Content Briefly, so I'm probably gonna, like, overhype this, 'cause that's what I tend to do.
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But this conversation really sparked from a LinkedIn post that I saw from Ty Magnin, who's the CEO at Animalz, who obviously Jimmy has a pretty strong connection with, so, you know, we all follow him on LinkedIn.
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But essentially his post was all about what I chalk up to as shiny new objects. So specifically this post was around Reddit, and I'll just read a little bit of it. "Reddit isn't as important for AEO as everyone thinks.
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We need to adjust our perceptions and strategies based on the latest data." And then he goes on to say, "A year ago, Reddit was everywhere in AI search results.
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Conventional wisdom became you need a Reddit strategy for AEO." And I think everyone kind of tried to follow suit with that in a lot of different ways at their companies. And then September twenty twenty-five,
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which is not that long ago, right? Reddit citations in GPT dropped eighty percent almost overnight. So this just got me kind of thinking about shiny objects.
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You know, Reddit became this hot topic for, like, a six, eight-month span. New consultancies popped up. New businesses popped up.
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All of a sudden, your CMO or, you know, your head of content, you were just asked to be like, "Okay, what are we doing about Reddit? What are we doing about this?"
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And when I brought it up to Jimmy and Eric, Eric had quite the list of other shiny new objects, and it just got me thinking of this perpetual battle that we're in with content marketers, and marketers in general, about when do you actually chase the shiny new object?
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So Eric, I loved your list. It made me laugh. What did this make you think of? Thanks, Chloe. I feel like we should acknowledge too that Jimmy's here for us today, which is exciting. He's silently in the background.
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I could see his family causing him distress while he's trying to think about shiny objects. That's funny.
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No, as, actually speaking of shiny objects, as you were intro-ing, Chloe, my daughter came in and she drew a picture of me, which she was just showing me. So I was- Aw... a little distracted, but I'm back.
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I'm plugged in now. Beautiful. So Chloe, you threw it over to me about shiny objects.
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Yeah, and immediately when you brought up this topic, and I think we should throw the caveat, like, right up front is that we're not saying that content marketers should ignore Reddit specifically.
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This was just an example of something that's, like, taken our attention, and the value, like, we can discuss later on the podcast.
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But, like, there are lots of examples in the past that I immediately thought of over the past 10 years where there was, like, really obvious things that everyone ran to that we shouldn't have.
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So I think, like, I, back maybe 10 years ago when I started working in SEO, suddenly, like, voice search became a thing, like, on Siri and Google, whatever their assistant was called at the time, and everyone was like, "Oh, no, we have to figure out voice search," and, like, "How do we optimize our content for voice search?"
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And like, that overnight everyone was trying to change that theory. We've had, like, you know, when Snapchat came out, it was like, what's your Snapchat strategy gonna be?
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And then that's happened as well, like Instagram, TikTok, all these other things.
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And so, you know, some of them, like Instagram I think has become a viable channel now, but, like, I don't know if Snapchat ever became a B2B marketing channel. I don't think so.
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I'll just go through some other examples while I'm here. I think, like, the last two years how many Twitter replacements have come up. I think in Superpath we're like, "Oh my God, Mastodon came out.
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Everyone share your Mastodon account." That never really went anywhere. But Blue Sky, right? Yeah, Blue Sky came out. Clubhouse was a thing before that everyone said, "What's your Clubhouse...?"
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I don't even remember what that was actually. It was, like, an audio platform. I thought it was, like, virtual events or something. No? We don't even remember what it is. That's so funny because- Yeah. [laughs]...
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yeah, in, like, the COVID then directly into AI era, that was, like, 15 years ago. Yeah. [laughs] Exactly. Okay, what was the rest? I don't know.
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Even, like, chatbots, like figuring out what kind of chatbot you were gonna build, like, that was a thing for a while. Anyway, and then there's even, like, marketing strategy things.
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Like, I think if you listen to episodes of this podcast a couple years ago, it was like, "What's your repurposing engine?" And even that was maybe...
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Like, everything gets a little bit overhyped, but there's elements to that strategy that were viable and we've all taken today. So I think today we just wanted to talk through what are the...
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Like, how do you avoid chasing shiny objects and pursuing viable opportunities?
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So, like, you know, you could be entrenched and say, "I'm always just gonna follow best practices and the evergreen things that work for marketing," but there are winners, there are opportunistic winners that emerge sometimes.
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So curious, Jimmy, like, what you think about this whole world. I think thatLately, like last year-ish, it's just constantly difficult to know, like, what's a real opportunity and what's a shiny object.
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You know, like, in some ways, AI is, like, the shiniest object in history. [laughs] You know, like, that's where my mind goes, is like the amount of time I've spent, like, being like, "Oh, I'm gonna try how to...
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Like, learn how to use Claude Code or something," then it's like it goes absolutely nowhere.
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It feels similar to this in the sense that, like, I constantly feel like there's a new thing to try out and learn about, and, like, maybe there's promise in it, and then only a very small amount of time it actually works.
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I feel like, to me, the ready for AEO conversation is, like, it's so narrow. Like, I completely agree with Ty.
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Like, if the data says it's not, you know, that the citations have dropped 80%, then, like, yeah, don't go too nuts spending all your time there.
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At the same time, though, like, user-generated content, hugely influential, and so, like, there's probably, like, a slightly broader UGC strategy that a lot of businesses could probably dabble in without making a giant commitment to it either.
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Like, I remember back in the Animal's day, speaking of Ty, like, probably 2016 maybe, we were like, "Oh, maybe we should, like, jump on Quora threads." Mm-hmm. You know, like- That was a big thing... mention. Yeah.
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Like, if somebody's saying, like, "Which CRM should I use?" Like, "Oh, let's jump in and, like, mention our CRM customer." You know?
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And then, like, there was a trend like pre-AI where people were searching for things like, you know, "Is Doc a good SaaS tool, comma, Reddit?" [laughs] Because they, like, don't want marketing.
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Like, they want to find what people are actually saying. So I feel like there's always versions of this, kind of the over-indexing on, like, UGC's influence on AEO feels like kind of a shiny object.
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UGC in general feels like legitimate opportunity.
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I think that's a really good distinction, and I think it's not necessarily over in-indexing on, like, one specific tactic, but thinking about how it fits into just the broader picture of what you're trying to do, and that's where it's, like, people that are, you know, experts in specific tactics can be a really, really powerful thing within your overall toolkit.
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But it might not necessarily be the place for, like, something in-house. You know?
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It might be something that you want to experiment with or you want to, you know, try to do, like, a one-month or, like, six-month experiment and see how you do.
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And, like, Eric, you said, for example, like, Reddit is really important for Doc.
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Like, I think it depends on where it fits into what you're actually trying to achieve and what you're noticing out there and how you think you can move the needle, rather than just saying, "I'm gonna make sure that we're, again, just, like, chasing this because we have to, because everyone says that we have to."
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Yeah. There's riskier and less risky ways of chasing new things, right?
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Alex and I talked about this on the podcast a few weeks ago, that if it's different for me to go and say, "I'm gonna hire a Reddit consultant to come help us for a couple thousand dollars, give us a workflow we can do.
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Like, they've sort of figured out a playbook. We can follow that with a couple hours a week, no big deal. We'll test it and see if it works, and if it does, we can scale that up. If it doesn't, no big deal."
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That's different than if you're like, "We're gonna put our whole marketing ship in a new direction, and we're gonna set... We're gonna stop writing new articles, and the only thing we're gonna do is comment on Reddit."
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Like, that's a whole different thing, and so there's, like, less risky ways of experimenting with these new strategies versus not. I think that's a good point.
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Like, if I had the budget to just hire someone like Krista Doyle, then problem solved v-versus the internal team trying to develop this new expertise- Absolutely...
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which we're, like, unsure is gonna be valuable one to two years from now. Like, just having someone who knows what they're doing just do it is totally worth it.
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If you're a large enough team that you can accommodate that, versus if you're a smaller team, like, I don't know.
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My guess is the way this comes up in most companies is, like, the CEO, like, finds a Reddit thread where someone says something bad about- Mm-hmm...
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the product or, like, says a bunch of really nice things about a competitor, or there's a comparison thread where they're, you're not mentioned, and then there's, like, a quick sprint to do something about it, and then it probably goes...
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That topic probably goes dormant for a while, is my guess. At least for startups who, like, definitely don't have time to have, like, a dedicated person for this type of thing.
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Yeah, or your CEO went to a dinner with a bunch of other CEOs, and someone said, "Reddit's working great for us," and then suddenly you get a Slack message the next day.
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Not saying this has happened to me, but it definitely has happened to me in the last three months. [laughs] Which Alex did this to you? [laughs] Yeah. Every, every single one. Yeah.
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Uh, for our listeners out there, m- I report to two CEOs named Alex at Doc and Superpath, so my life is very confusing. Luckily, Chloe was asking if my wife is also named Alex, which she's not, thank God. Not yet.
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So actually, just wrote this question down while you were talking, Jimmy.
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Like, what do you do just generally as a content marketer, I mean, for you too, Chloe, when your boss comes to you and says, "Hey, here's this new shiny object. Like, we should change something about what we're doing."
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Like, w- what is your kind of, like, motion in that scenario? I feel like the correct answer is you use your documented strategy that everyone has signed off on as your way to say no.
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I think in reality, if my boss came to me and said, "Hey, look into this," I'm gonna look into it. You know what I mean?
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Like, I'm not going to flip my life upside down to do it, but I would go do an analysis and bring back my two cents to try to provide some more information and say like, "Okay, if we wanted to do this, kinda here's what I recommend, and here's how much time it would take and, you know, rough cost," that type of thing.
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"So if you want me to dump the thing we already agreed on, this is what we're looking at." You know, versus just s- just saying no or just saying, "I-"Okay, anything you say, boss. Yeah.
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I mean, I think I would approach it the same way. I mean, yay, documented strategy, you know, that's like my, my favorite thing in the world.
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But I also think that just adamantly saying no without doing any due diligence is never really the right way to go.
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So if I know something about it, I'll say, "Here's what my opinion is, and if you want me to look further into it, I will." If I don't know something about it, I'll say, "That sounds really interesting.
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Let me get back to you with a potential like test plan."
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And this is, it- I mention her all the time, but like Jess Cook is like really big on just like doing these small test experiments, and that's where I think these types of conversations can be really helpful.
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'Cause it's like, okay, fine, like who can argue with data? And if it's working, great, then we should expand more and we should put more money, resource, et cetera, behind it.
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And if it's not, then we need to decide do we start, stop, or continue, right? And I think that that's the case with any sort of new idea that comes to it. But at the same time, like it depends on what it is.
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If it's something that can be a super quick win and it'll take like half an hour, sure. Be like, "All right, yeah, fine. Let's try it." So. Totally. Yeah, you guys are spot on.
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The other thing I would add is a way this has come up for me too is that we've noticed a competitor is doing something, and that raises the flag of should we also be doing this?
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And in addition to the planning you guys have already talked about, the other thing I'll do is then just sort of like sit and monitor the competitor's strategy.
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Like I noticed competitors were doing Reddit kind of spamming, and I was like, "Okay, if this is working, they will keep doing it.
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And if it's not working, then they'll probably stop 'cause it's probably costing them a lot of money." And I noticed that they all stop like three months in. And so, like it was a good signal for me that...
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So you shouldn't always like chase competitors. I mean, the same has happened in the past with like talking about shiny objects.
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There, we had competitors that were like going really heavy on influencers and like paid posts and, you know, sponsored LinkedIn posts, and they stopped that, you know, after a year of doing that.
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And we were all convinced they must be working so well because that was like the dominant marketing strategy we saw them doing, and then, you know, now they're not doing it anymore. So how- Yeah...
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great could it have been working? And it would've been easy for us to like chase that because a competitor was doing it and it looked good from the outside.
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And you also have to think of the bubble that you're in too when you're like that- Mm-hmm... ingrained in your competitor's stuff as well.
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Like, you know, you're more likely to see their things because you're in that space, generally speaking.
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You know, this is, th- speaking of like being in the space, this is making me think like how much does this matter for B2B companies versus B2C?
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Like if you're a consumer product, I think reviews, uh, I don't know that they're like the life or death of the business. I don't think it's quite that dramatic, but like the reviews matter so much. Mm-hmm.
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You know, especially for like a moderately to highly priced consumer product. Like say you wanna buy a camera or something.
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There's a bunch of different types, it's kind of expensive, people are gonna do a ton of research, and if there's people out there like that have bad things to say, it probably significantly influences your sales.
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Versus like let's say someone made a Reddit thread about, you know, how much they dislike Doc's product. Like is that gonna affect your sales at all? You know what I [chuckles] mean?
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Like particularly like the higher end sale where maybe there's like it is a sales led process and the customer's like really, you know, like they're prioritizing whatever, certain integrations and workflows and stuff, where like does that review even...
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You know what I mean? There's a- Mm-hmm... the world that we live in, I think this probably matters a little bit, maybe a medium bit less than kind of a, a whole nother world of consumer products.
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It is scary though to think about just how quickly things get picked up on and like the virat- virality, vir- it's Friday at 5:00- [laughs]... of it all.
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Like that, you say it's not important, but the second it becomes important is the second that it becomes like a PR crisis, right? Yeah. And like that's really, really hard to predict.
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So I don't know if I have like an answer for you on that. But I would say like if it's trending in the wrong direction, then it's hugely important for you to kind of try to figure out how to mitigate that.
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That's a great point actually, 'cause I could imagine like one bad UGC piece of content that's out in the world somewhere that's kinda like, eh, it's a blip, it's not like a huge deal.
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And then I could also imagine it slowly turning into a reputation if it's a pattern. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
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And then like that thing becomes, whatever the negative sentiment is could become like attached to the brand in a way that'd be really difficult to undo later. Yeah.
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What's interesting for me in our case in Reddit and things I've looked into is it's almost like the category, the product category sentiment matters more than the actual tools.
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So for example, like there'll be genuine threads that come up on Reddit of like does a digital sales room actually work, and like salespeople debating whether it's just like a useless tool that's imposed on you by your boss or if it actually helps, and, you know, legitimate discussion happens there.
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And I feel like those are more like authentic sort of like sentiment swaying discussions than this tool versus that tool.
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Like once, like to your point, Jimmy, like once people start shopping for the category that Doc is in, they're going to find the top four tools and they're gonna look at them all and they're gonna try them all.
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Like that always happens. Yeah, yeah. So, so like it's a weird thing to be in as a marketer. I'm going on a tangent here, but like as long as someone discovers one of our competitors, they'll discover us too.
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So we've never been like that concerned when we're like, "Seems like we're falling behind," because- That's a nice little positive spin on that... come up in the sales process.
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So that's a we- when you're in like a sales heavy category, that will happen for the most part.
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But, but what I do notice is like, yeah, with Reddit conversations about like, "Should you buy this category of tool at all?"
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I feel like that would like maybe stop getting into a sales process 'cause they're like, "Ah, do we really even need this thing?" And so th- that's a whole other AEO thing as well.
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Like should you use a digital sales room or those kinds of like top of funnel questions. Yeah, that's interesting.
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You know, that reminded me to bring up one other point related to Ty's post, which is I am curiousWhy LLMs took Reddit so seriously for a while, and then so much less seriously after a while.
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And I wonder if it's because people went so hard, basically spamming it. I think so. I think so. I was shopping the other day online for, uh...
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I get, like, a bajillion ads for this little thing called a brick that, like, turns your smartphone into a dumb phone. And so I was searching, like, "Is this thing good?" Like, what do people think about it.
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And I found all these Reddit threads, and then the Reddit threads start out being like, "Is it good?" And then a bunch of people say, "Yes, it's amazing."
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And then below the conversation is, like, it's just other people saying, "These are spam accounts. These are all affiliate links. These are not genuine."
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Then I was like, "I don't even know what to think about this anymore." Like, is this Reddit thread, like, complete BS?
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Because all of them devolve into an argument about, like, are these paid posts versus not [chuckles] which I found to be really disorienting. I think that's the danger with Redditors. Like, I'm not a big...
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I have never been a big person on Reddit in general, but my friends that go, they go to Reddit for everything. Yeah. Like, they go to Reddit for parenting tips. They go to Reddit for dating advice.
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They go to it for product recommendations. They go to it for, like, household cleaning items. Like, li- literally everything. They live in Reddit.
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They soak up the drama and the knowledge at the same time, and from my understanding, it is kind of like a savage place where people- [laughs] Yeah... people are like, "The Redditors are the truest and the realest."
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So I think the second that, yeah, I kinda think the second that marketing tried to put their toe in it, they were like, "You get outta here." [laughs] Yeah.
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Yeah, and the second that it actually worked against the sort of core values of Reddit to start showing up in SEO results so much because, like, the whole idea of Reddit, it's completely democratic.
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Things get up voted or down voted. Every comment is up voted and down voted. There isn't...
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Like, there is an algorithm, but humans are supposed to have more control over the algorithm, and then suddenly you have, like, a specific Reddit post with, like, three likes, three up votes on it, showing up as the number one search result for some super key- Mm...
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product keyword, and then it's bringing in all these marketers, like, you know, like, what is it, remora on a shark? Like, all sort of, like, trying to suckle [chuckles] at the, like, the, this post. Like, it's terrible.
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Sorry for the horribly graphic... [laughs] No, it's a lot. Chloe is, like, sinking out of her chair. We should, yeah, we should do a video of that. [laughs] Yeah, of Chloe's face. Well, that was a lot.
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[laughs] Someone's gonna turn that into some sort of meme. I saw in the marketing subreddit they made some comment about how 80% of posts and comments now are, are spam, and so, like, the moderators- Oh, wow...
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are just, like, working overtime. And I tried to create an account sort of like a Eric from Doc account and just, like, reply helpfully to something.
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[laughs] And it was like, "You've been blocked because you don't have enough comment karma to post yet." Like, you have to go g- like, go earn your stripes somewhere else, and so, but it- Yeah.
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Yeah, so it clearly all marketers have all been gaming the system here, which has then reduced, like, the viability of the channel. But think about it this way, though. Remember when commenting on blogs was a thing?
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Yeah.
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[laughs] And we were like, "Oh, this is a really great, like, sense of engagement, and we're building a community here, and people are engaging with our blog post," and then the second it went away was when people came in and were like, "Hi, I'm here to try to sell my services.
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Click on this link. It's super helpful." Right? It's like anything gets ruined when you try to kind of game the system and create more of a spam environment. Mm-hmm.
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Which is actually, like, an interesting callback to our original discussion of, like, shiny object syndrome and marketing is that, like, when marketers do flood to something, it's probably gonna ruin that channel's effectiveness.
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[laughs] So it's like- We're the problem. Sorry. [laughs] Yeah, you have to be, like, ahead of the curve but then hope that the curve kinda doesn't follow you sometimes 'cause then everyone will be... I don't know.
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I mean, I think, like, that the bottom line, though, is, like, you try, right- Mm-hmm...
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to be as authentic as possible, and if you have the authentic brand and you have, like, the authentic product, then hopefully you're doing some sort of good in the world.
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But if you're just trying to game the system to get likes and up votes and all that, like, I do think people just see through that. What do you guys think about this? I have...
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I'm just thinking through, like, what I think are, like, two reasonable ground rules for shiny object syndrome marketers, which are- Mm-hmm... that's, like, a tale as old as time,
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one being that the strategy you already have is probably good enough as long as you give it enough time to mature. Mm-hmm.
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Like, that's, like, a kind of in general, like, like, a fair assessment of, like, most marketing strategies are good. Yeah. You just have to be patient.
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And the second being that onsite is almost always more important than offsite. So if you get that Slack message from your boss after a night out with other CEOs and they say, "Oh, should we be doing Reddit?"
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It's a very different question than, "Oh, should we," you know, whatever, I don't know, "build out a new section on our site dedicated to this or that?"
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And I feel like you could treat those onsite versus offsite conversations very differently.
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I feel like the onsite is almost, almost always a lot less shiny and probably more effective and evergreen than the offsite- Yeah... diversion. Absolutely.
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I, I agree, and yeah, or, like, the channels that you own, right? Like, email, your email newsletter or your company website for sure. Yeah, that's probably a better way to put it, owned versus not owned. Yeah.
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I have a- another thought going back to AI too.
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It's something, like, I don't know how to name this third pillar, but it's something about, like, the foundational documents and messaging and content is going to be more valuable than, like, building specifically for the tool.
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So for example, like, Claude keeps changing so much, and, like, I've built... Or, or, uh, ChatGPT and Claude, I've built skills, projects, whatever.
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Like, every two months, the technology moves forward, and some of the things I've built become completely outdated and have become a huge waste of time because the technology just moved faster than I can.
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But-The things that were really valuable were, like, creating a product messaging document that I can feed into AI, like creating docs writing guidelines that can go. So it's like the...
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all these foundations that were kind of evergreen before AI came around.
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Like, it's still, like, foundations first, and those-- If you have those things well thought out and documented, then, like, no matter how much the tools change,
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you can still sort of like feed in your first party source material, if that makes sense. That's one hundred percent how I feel. Yeah. It's been way more valuable to me than, like, creating a new AI workflow every day.
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I mean, yeah, I'm in that camp. [chuckles] This is the least we've talked about AI in many episodes. And Jimmy's even on the episode. This is weird. Yeah. He's only, he's only said vibe coding once.
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[laughs] Actually, speaking of vibe coding, we should plug, just real quick. We should plug this month's challenge, which is to build a new personal website, and I have been vibe coding mine, and it's so much fun.
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I'm having a great time. So if you're not in Superpath, you should join and come join our challenge to build a new personal website and come... We can talk about AI all day long, if you didn't get enough of it today.
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We still got the mention in there. Yeah. I love it. In all seriousness, though, I find that hanging out in Superpath is such a good way to gut check what is shiny versus what is legitimate right now.
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Like, just being in amongst a bunch of peers who are all smart and, like, going through these exact same things in their own jobs every single day is very grounding. So that... Another call to action.
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Like, if you find yourself sort of constantly in flux of, like, is this important? Is this just, like, a two-day distraction?
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Like, come hang out with your peers, and particularly for folks-- I mean, again, this is not new, but I'm sure it's amplified because of AI, where, like, if you're in a situation where you are sort of constantly at the whim of a manager who, like, sends you off in various directions, and I know this happens because it comes up in threads from time to time.
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I've, I've certainly been there. You can also... One, it'll make you feel like you're not going crazy, and two, like, the community can sort of, like, help you work through that situation also. You know, like,
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managing up and prioritizing and being good at communicating your own strategy and, like, kind of marketing, like, the plan that you think you should pursue.
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Like, these are all, like, core career skills, and it's, like, the type of stuff that's happening in Superpath all the time.
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So in addition to talking AI and all that, there's some, like, really, really, like, fundamental evergreen stuff that's happening in there every single day, and there's a thirty-day free trial. So superpath.co.
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Come check it out. Anything else, guys? Come join us. Yeah. Come join us. We don't have candy, but you know. Yeah. We have nothing shiny, nothing shiny inside Superpath. Everything is dull. Everything's dull.
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We have bright sweatshirts. That's true. If you win one of the challenges, we'll send you a hoodie. Yeah. Otherwise, dull. Yeah. Dull. We should change them. Yeah. We should make them gray. Great CTA.
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No, you should have the green that I made you have. [laughs] That's one of one. You're-- That's the only one that exists, Chloe, because you're special. Yep. Pressure for more bright, shiny colors. [chuckles] Cool.
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Well, thanks, guys. That was a good one. We will see you next time, and hopefully, in the meantime, we'll see you in Slack. Bye, everyone. [outro music]
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[upbeat music] We're back with another episode of Content Briefly, and this is my first ever introduction for Content Briefly, so I'm probably gonna, like, overhype this, 'cause that's what I tend to do.
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But this conversation really sparked from a LinkedIn post that I saw from Ty Magnin, who's the CEO at Animalz, who obviously Jimmy has a pretty strong connection with, so, you know, we all follow him on LinkedIn.
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But essentially his post was all about what I chalk up to as shiny new objects. So specifically this post was around Reddit, and I'll just read a little bit of it. "Reddit isn't as important for AEO as everyone thinks.
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We need to adjust our perceptions and strategies based on the latest data." And then he goes on to say, "A year ago, Reddit was everywhere in AI search results.
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Conventional wisdom became you need a Reddit strategy for AEO." And I think everyone kind of tried to follow suit with that in a lot of different ways at their companies. And then September twenty twenty-five,
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which is not that long ago, right? Reddit citations in GPT dropped eighty percent almost overnight. So this just got me kind of thinking about shiny objects.
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You know, Reddit became this hot topic for, like, a six, eight-month span. New consultancies popped up. New businesses popped up.
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All of a sudden, your CMO or, you know, your head of content, you were just asked to be like, "Okay, what are we doing about Reddit? What are we doing about this?"
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And when I brought it up to Jimmy and Eric, Eric had quite the list of other shiny new objects, and it just got me thinking of this perpetual battle that we're in with content marketers, and marketers in general, about when do you actually chase the shiny new object?
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So Eric, I loved your list. It made me laugh. What did this make you think of? Thanks, Chloe. I feel like we should acknowledge too that Jimmy's here for us today, which is exciting. He's silently in the background.
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I could see his family causing him distress while he's trying to think about shiny objects. That's funny.
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No, as, actually speaking of shiny objects, as you were intro-ing, Chloe, my daughter came in and she drew a picture of me, which she was just showing me. So I was- Aw... a little distracted, but I'm back.
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I'm plugged in now. Beautiful. So Chloe, you threw it over to me about shiny objects.
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Yeah, and immediately when you brought up this topic, and I think we should throw the caveat, like, right up front is that we're not saying that content marketers should ignore Reddit specifically.
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This was just an example of something that's, like, taken our attention, and the value, like, we can discuss later on the podcast.
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But, like, there are lots of examples in the past that I immediately thought of over the past 10 years where there was, like, really obvious things that everyone ran to that we shouldn't have.
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So I think, like, I, back maybe 10 years ago when I started working in SEO, suddenly, like, voice search became a thing, like, on Siri and Google, whatever their assistant was called at the time, and everyone was like, "Oh, no, we have to figure out voice search," and, like, "How do we optimize our content for voice search?"
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And like, that overnight everyone was trying to change that theory. We've had, like, you know, when Snapchat came out, it was like, what's your Snapchat strategy gonna be?
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And then that's happened as well, like Instagram, TikTok, all these other things.
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And so, you know, some of them, like Instagram I think has become a viable channel now, but, like, I don't know if Snapchat ever became a B2B marketing channel. I don't think so.
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I'll just go through some other examples while I'm here. I think, like, the last two years how many Twitter replacements have come up. I think in Superpath we're like, "Oh my God, Mastodon came out.
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Everyone share your Mastodon account." That never really went anywhere. But Blue Sky, right? Yeah, Blue Sky came out. Clubhouse was a thing before that everyone said, "What's your Clubhouse...?"
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I don't even remember what that was actually. It was, like, an audio platform. I thought it was, like, virtual events or something. No? We don't even remember what it is. That's so funny because- Yeah. [laughs]...
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yeah, in, like, the COVID then directly into AI era, that was, like, 15 years ago. Yeah. [laughs] Exactly. Okay, what was the rest? I don't know.
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Even, like, chatbots, like figuring out what kind of chatbot you were gonna build, like, that was a thing for a while. Anyway, and then there's even, like, marketing strategy things.
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Like, I think if you listen to episodes of this podcast a couple years ago, it was like, "What's your repurposing engine?" And even that was maybe...
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Like, everything gets a little bit overhyped, but there's elements to that strategy that were viable and we've all taken today. So I think today we just wanted to talk through what are the...
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Like, how do you avoid chasing shiny objects and pursuing viable opportunities?
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So, like, you know, you could be entrenched and say, "I'm always just gonna follow best practices and the evergreen things that work for marketing," but there are winners, there are opportunistic winners that emerge sometimes.
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So curious, Jimmy, like, what you think about this whole world. I think thatLately, like last year-ish, it's just constantly difficult to know, like, what's a real opportunity and what's a shiny object.
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You know, like, in some ways, AI is, like, the shiniest object in history. [laughs] You know, like, that's where my mind goes, is like the amount of time I've spent, like, being like, "Oh, I'm gonna try how to...
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Like, learn how to use Claude Code or something," then it's like it goes absolutely nowhere.
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It feels similar to this in the sense that, like, I constantly feel like there's a new thing to try out and learn about, and, like, maybe there's promise in it, and then only a very small amount of time it actually works.
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I feel like, to me, the ready for AEO conversation is, like, it's so narrow. Like, I completely agree with Ty.
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Like, if the data says it's not, you know, that the citations have dropped 80%, then, like, yeah, don't go too nuts spending all your time there.
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At the same time, though, like, user-generated content, hugely influential, and so, like, there's probably, like, a slightly broader UGC strategy that a lot of businesses could probably dabble in without making a giant commitment to it either.
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Like, I remember back in the Animal's day, speaking of Ty, like, probably 2016 maybe, we were like, "Oh, maybe we should, like, jump on Quora threads." Mm-hmm. You know, like- That was a big thing... mention. Yeah.
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Like, if somebody's saying, like, "Which CRM should I use?" Like, "Oh, let's jump in and, like, mention our CRM customer." You know?
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And then, like, there was a trend like pre-AI where people were searching for things like, you know, "Is Doc a good SaaS tool, comma, Reddit?" [laughs] Because they, like, don't want marketing.
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Like, they want to find what people are actually saying. So I feel like there's always versions of this, kind of the over-indexing on, like, UGC's influence on AEO feels like kind of a shiny object.
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UGC in general feels like legitimate opportunity.
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I think that's a really good distinction, and I think it's not necessarily over in-indexing on, like, one specific tactic, but thinking about how it fits into just the broader picture of what you're trying to do, and that's where it's, like, people that are, you know, experts in specific tactics can be a really, really powerful thing within your overall toolkit.
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But it might not necessarily be the place for, like, something in-house. You know?
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It might be something that you want to experiment with or you want to, you know, try to do, like, a one-month or, like, six-month experiment and see how you do.
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And, like, Eric, you said, for example, like, Reddit is really important for Doc.
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Like, I think it depends on where it fits into what you're actually trying to achieve and what you're noticing out there and how you think you can move the needle, rather than just saying, "I'm gonna make sure that we're, again, just, like, chasing this because we have to, because everyone says that we have to."
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Yeah. There's riskier and less risky ways of chasing new things, right?
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Alex and I talked about this on the podcast a few weeks ago, that if it's different for me to go and say, "I'm gonna hire a Reddit consultant to come help us for a couple thousand dollars, give us a workflow we can do.
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Like, they've sort of figured out a playbook. We can follow that with a couple hours a week, no big deal. We'll test it and see if it works, and if it does, we can scale that up. If it doesn't, no big deal."
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That's different than if you're like, "We're gonna put our whole marketing ship in a new direction, and we're gonna set... We're gonna stop writing new articles, and the only thing we're gonna do is comment on Reddit."
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Like, that's a whole different thing, and so there's, like, less risky ways of experimenting with these new strategies versus not. I think that's a good point.
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Like, if I had the budget to just hire someone like Krista Doyle, then problem solved v-versus the internal team trying to develop this new expertise- Absolutely...
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which we're, like, unsure is gonna be valuable one to two years from now. Like, just having someone who knows what they're doing just do it is totally worth it.
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If you're a large enough team that you can accommodate that, versus if you're a smaller team, like, I don't know.
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My guess is the way this comes up in most companies is, like, the CEO, like, finds a Reddit thread where someone says something bad about- Mm-hmm...
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the product or, like, says a bunch of really nice things about a competitor, or there's a comparison thread where they're, you're not mentioned, and then there's, like, a quick sprint to do something about it, and then it probably goes...
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That topic probably goes dormant for a while, is my guess. At least for startups who, like, definitely don't have time to have, like, a dedicated person for this type of thing.
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Yeah, or your CEO went to a dinner with a bunch of other CEOs, and someone said, "Reddit's working great for us," and then suddenly you get a Slack message the next day.
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Not saying this has happened to me, but it definitely has happened to me in the last three months. [laughs] Which Alex did this to you? [laughs] Yeah. Every, every single one. Yeah.
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Uh, for our listeners out there, m- I report to two CEOs named Alex at Doc and Superpath, so my life is very confusing. Luckily, Chloe was asking if my wife is also named Alex, which she's not, thank God. Not yet.
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So actually, just wrote this question down while you were talking, Jimmy.
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Like, what do you do just generally as a content marketer, I mean, for you too, Chloe, when your boss comes to you and says, "Hey, here's this new shiny object. Like, we should change something about what we're doing."
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Like, w- what is your kind of, like, motion in that scenario? I feel like the correct answer is you use your documented strategy that everyone has signed off on as your way to say no.
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I think in reality, if my boss came to me and said, "Hey, look into this," I'm gonna look into it. You know what I mean?
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Like, I'm not going to flip my life upside down to do it, but I would go do an analysis and bring back my two cents to try to provide some more information and say like, "Okay, if we wanted to do this, kinda here's what I recommend, and here's how much time it would take and, you know, rough cost," that type of thing.
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"So if you want me to dump the thing we already agreed on, this is what we're looking at." You know, versus just s- just saying no or just saying, "I-"Okay, anything you say, boss. Yeah.
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I mean, I think I would approach it the same way. I mean, yay, documented strategy, you know, that's like my, my favorite thing in the world.
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But I also think that just adamantly saying no without doing any due diligence is never really the right way to go.
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So if I know something about it, I'll say, "Here's what my opinion is, and if you want me to look further into it, I will." If I don't know something about it, I'll say, "That sounds really interesting.
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Let me get back to you with a potential like test plan."
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And this is, it- I mention her all the time, but like Jess Cook is like really big on just like doing these small test experiments, and that's where I think these types of conversations can be really helpful.
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'Cause it's like, okay, fine, like who can argue with data? And if it's working, great, then we should expand more and we should put more money, resource, et cetera, behind it.
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And if it's not, then we need to decide do we start, stop, or continue, right? And I think that that's the case with any sort of new idea that comes to it. But at the same time, like it depends on what it is.
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If it's something that can be a super quick win and it'll take like half an hour, sure. Be like, "All right, yeah, fine. Let's try it." So. Totally. Yeah, you guys are spot on.
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The other thing I would add is a way this has come up for me too is that we've noticed a competitor is doing something, and that raises the flag of should we also be doing this?
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And in addition to the planning you guys have already talked about, the other thing I'll do is then just sort of like sit and monitor the competitor's strategy.
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Like I noticed competitors were doing Reddit kind of spamming, and I was like, "Okay, if this is working, they will keep doing it.
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And if it's not working, then they'll probably stop 'cause it's probably costing them a lot of money." And I noticed that they all stop like three months in. And so, like it was a good signal for me that...
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So you shouldn't always like chase competitors. I mean, the same has happened in the past with like talking about shiny objects.
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There, we had competitors that were like going really heavy on influencers and like paid posts and, you know, sponsored LinkedIn posts, and they stopped that, you know, after a year of doing that.
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And we were all convinced they must be working so well because that was like the dominant marketing strategy we saw them doing, and then, you know, now they're not doing it anymore. So how- Yeah...
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great could it have been working? And it would've been easy for us to like chase that because a competitor was doing it and it looked good from the outside.
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And you also have to think of the bubble that you're in too when you're like that- Mm-hmm... ingrained in your competitor's stuff as well.
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Like, you know, you're more likely to see their things because you're in that space, generally speaking.
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You know, this is, th- speaking of like being in the space, this is making me think like how much does this matter for B2B companies versus B2C?
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Like if you're a consumer product, I think reviews, uh, I don't know that they're like the life or death of the business. I don't think it's quite that dramatic, but like the reviews matter so much. Mm-hmm.
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You know, especially for like a moderately to highly priced consumer product. Like say you wanna buy a camera or something.
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There's a bunch of different types, it's kind of expensive, people are gonna do a ton of research, and if there's people out there like that have bad things to say, it probably significantly influences your sales.
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Versus like let's say someone made a Reddit thread about, you know, how much they dislike Doc's product. Like is that gonna affect your sales at all? You know what I [chuckles] mean?
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Like particularly like the higher end sale where maybe there's like it is a sales led process and the customer's like really, you know, like they're prioritizing whatever, certain integrations and workflows and stuff, where like does that review even...
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You know what I mean? There's a- Mm-hmm... the world that we live in, I think this probably matters a little bit, maybe a medium bit less than kind of a, a whole nother world of consumer products.
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It is scary though to think about just how quickly things get picked up on and like the virat- virality, vir- it's Friday at 5:00- [laughs]... of it all.
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Like that, you say it's not important, but the second it becomes important is the second that it becomes like a PR crisis, right? Yeah. And like that's really, really hard to predict.
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So I don't know if I have like an answer for you on that. But I would say like if it's trending in the wrong direction, then it's hugely important for you to kind of try to figure out how to mitigate that.
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That's a great point actually, 'cause I could imagine like one bad UGC piece of content that's out in the world somewhere that's kinda like, eh, it's a blip, it's not like a huge deal.
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And then I could also imagine it slowly turning into a reputation if it's a pattern. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
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And then like that thing becomes, whatever the negative sentiment is could become like attached to the brand in a way that'd be really difficult to undo later. Yeah.
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What's interesting for me in our case in Reddit and things I've looked into is it's almost like the category, the product category sentiment matters more than the actual tools.
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So for example, like there'll be genuine threads that come up on Reddit of like does a digital sales room actually work, and like salespeople debating whether it's just like a useless tool that's imposed on you by your boss or if it actually helps, and, you know, legitimate discussion happens there.
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And I feel like those are more like authentic sort of like sentiment swaying discussions than this tool versus that tool.
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Like once, like to your point, Jimmy, like once people start shopping for the category that Doc is in, they're going to find the top four tools and they're gonna look at them all and they're gonna try them all.
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Like that always happens. Yeah, yeah. So, so like it's a weird thing to be in as a marketer. I'm going on a tangent here, but like as long as someone discovers one of our competitors, they'll discover us too.
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So we've never been like that concerned when we're like, "Seems like we're falling behind," because- That's a nice little positive spin on that... come up in the sales process.
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So that's a we- when you're in like a sales heavy category, that will happen for the most part.
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But, but what I do notice is like, yeah, with Reddit conversations about like, "Should you buy this category of tool at all?"
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I feel like that would like maybe stop getting into a sales process 'cause they're like, "Ah, do we really even need this thing?" And so th- that's a whole other AEO thing as well.
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Like should you use a digital sales room or those kinds of like top of funnel questions. Yeah, that's interesting.
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You know, that reminded me to bring up one other point related to Ty's post, which is I am curiousWhy LLMs took Reddit so seriously for a while, and then so much less seriously after a while.
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And I wonder if it's because people went so hard, basically spamming it. I think so. I think so. I was shopping the other day online for, uh...
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I get, like, a bajillion ads for this little thing called a brick that, like, turns your smartphone into a dumb phone. And so I was searching, like, "Is this thing good?" Like, what do people think about it.
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And I found all these Reddit threads, and then the Reddit threads start out being like, "Is it good?" And then a bunch of people say, "Yes, it's amazing."
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And then below the conversation is, like, it's just other people saying, "These are spam accounts. These are all affiliate links. These are not genuine."
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Then I was like, "I don't even know what to think about this anymore." Like, is this Reddit thread, like, complete BS?
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Because all of them devolve into an argument about, like, are these paid posts versus not [chuckles] which I found to be really disorienting. I think that's the danger with Redditors. Like, I'm not a big...
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I have never been a big person on Reddit in general, but my friends that go, they go to Reddit for everything. Yeah. Like, they go to Reddit for parenting tips. They go to Reddit for dating advice.
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They go to it for product recommendations. They go to it for, like, household cleaning items. Like, li- literally everything. They live in Reddit.
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They soak up the drama and the knowledge at the same time, and from my understanding, it is kind of like a savage place where people- [laughs] Yeah... people are like, "The Redditors are the truest and the realest."
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So I think the second that, yeah, I kinda think the second that marketing tried to put their toe in it, they were like, "You get outta here." [laughs] Yeah.
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Yeah, and the second that it actually worked against the sort of core values of Reddit to start showing up in SEO results so much because, like, the whole idea of Reddit, it's completely democratic.
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Things get up voted or down voted. Every comment is up voted and down voted. There isn't...
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Like, there is an algorithm, but humans are supposed to have more control over the algorithm, and then suddenly you have, like, a specific Reddit post with, like, three likes, three up votes on it, showing up as the number one search result for some super key- Mm...
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product keyword, and then it's bringing in all these marketers, like, you know, like, what is it, remora on a shark? Like, all sort of, like, trying to suckle [chuckles] at the, like, the, this post. Like, it's terrible.
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Sorry for the horribly graphic... [laughs] No, it's a lot. Chloe is, like, sinking out of her chair. We should, yeah, we should do a video of that. [laughs] Yeah, of Chloe's face. Well, that was a lot.
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[laughs] Someone's gonna turn that into some sort of meme. I saw in the marketing subreddit they made some comment about how 80% of posts and comments now are, are spam, and so, like, the moderators- Oh, wow...
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are just, like, working overtime. And I tried to create an account sort of like a Eric from Doc account and just, like, reply helpfully to something.
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[laughs] And it was like, "You've been blocked because you don't have enough comment karma to post yet." Like, you have to go g- like, go earn your stripes somewhere else, and so, but it- Yeah.
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Yeah, so it clearly all marketers have all been gaming the system here, which has then reduced, like, the viability of the channel. But think about it this way, though. Remember when commenting on blogs was a thing?
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Yeah.
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[laughs] And we were like, "Oh, this is a really great, like, sense of engagement, and we're building a community here, and people are engaging with our blog post," and then the second it went away was when people came in and were like, "Hi, I'm here to try to sell my services.
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Click on this link. It's super helpful." Right? It's like anything gets ruined when you try to kind of game the system and create more of a spam environment. Mm-hmm.
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Which is actually, like, an interesting callback to our original discussion of, like, shiny object syndrome and marketing is that, like, when marketers do flood to something, it's probably gonna ruin that channel's effectiveness.
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[laughs] So it's like- We're the problem. Sorry. [laughs] Yeah, you have to be, like, ahead of the curve but then hope that the curve kinda doesn't follow you sometimes 'cause then everyone will be... I don't know.
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I mean, I think, like, that the bottom line, though, is, like, you try, right- Mm-hmm...
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to be as authentic as possible, and if you have the authentic brand and you have, like, the authentic product, then hopefully you're doing some sort of good in the world.
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But if you're just trying to game the system to get likes and up votes and all that, like, I do think people just see through that. What do you guys think about this? I have...
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I'm just thinking through, like, what I think are, like, two reasonable ground rules for shiny object syndrome marketers, which are- Mm-hmm... that's, like, a tale as old as time,
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one being that the strategy you already have is probably good enough as long as you give it enough time to mature. Mm-hmm.
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Like, that's, like, a kind of in general, like, like, a fair assessment of, like, most marketing strategies are good. Yeah. You just have to be patient.
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And the second being that onsite is almost always more important than offsite. So if you get that Slack message from your boss after a night out with other CEOs and they say, "Oh, should we be doing Reddit?"
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It's a very different question than, "Oh, should we," you know, whatever, I don't know, "build out a new section on our site dedicated to this or that?"
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And I feel like you could treat those onsite versus offsite conversations very differently.
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I feel like the onsite is almost, almost always a lot less shiny and probably more effective and evergreen than the offsite- Yeah... diversion. Absolutely.
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I, I agree, and yeah, or, like, the channels that you own, right? Like, email, your email newsletter or your company website for sure. Yeah, that's probably a better way to put it, owned versus not owned. Yeah.
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I have a- another thought going back to AI too.
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It's something, like, I don't know how to name this third pillar, but it's something about, like, the foundational documents and messaging and content is going to be more valuable than, like, building specifically for the tool.
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So for example, like, Claude keeps changing so much, and, like, I've built... Or, or, uh, ChatGPT and Claude, I've built skills, projects, whatever.
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Like, every two months, the technology moves forward, and some of the things I've built become completely outdated and have become a huge waste of time because the technology just moved faster than I can.
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But-The things that were really valuable were, like, creating a product messaging document that I can feed into AI, like creating docs writing guidelines that can go. So it's like the...
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all these foundations that were kind of evergreen before AI came around.
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Like, it's still, like, foundations first, and those-- If you have those things well thought out and documented, then, like, no matter how much the tools change,
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you can still sort of like feed in your first party source material, if that makes sense. That's one hundred percent how I feel. Yeah. It's been way more valuable to me than, like, creating a new AI workflow every day.
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I mean, yeah, I'm in that camp. [chuckles] This is the least we've talked about AI in many episodes. And Jimmy's even on the episode. This is weird. Yeah. He's only, he's only said vibe coding once.
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[laughs] Actually, speaking of vibe coding, we should plug, just real quick. We should plug this month's challenge, which is to build a new personal website, and I have been vibe coding mine, and it's so much fun.
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I'm having a great time. So if you're not in Superpath, you should join and come join our challenge to build a new personal website and come... We can talk about AI all day long, if you didn't get enough of it today.
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We still got the mention in there. Yeah. I love it. In all seriousness, though, I find that hanging out in Superpath is such a good way to gut check what is shiny versus what is legitimate right now.
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Like, just being in amongst a bunch of peers who are all smart and, like, going through these exact same things in their own jobs every single day is very grounding. So that... Another call to action.
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Like, if you find yourself sort of constantly in flux of, like, is this important? Is this just, like, a two-day distraction?
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Like, come hang out with your peers, and particularly for folks-- I mean, again, this is not new, but I'm sure it's amplified because of AI, where, like, if you're in a situation where you are sort of constantly at the whim of a manager who, like, sends you off in various directions, and I know this happens because it comes up in threads from time to time.
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I've, I've certainly been there. You can also... One, it'll make you feel like you're not going crazy, and two, like, the community can sort of, like, help you work through that situation also. You know, like,
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managing up and prioritizing and being good at communicating your own strategy and, like, kind of marketing, like, the plan that you think you should pursue.
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Like, these are all, like, core career skills, and it's, like, the type of stuff that's happening in Superpath all the time.
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So in addition to talking AI and all that, there's some, like, really, really, like, fundamental evergreen stuff that's happening in there every single day, and there's a thirty-day free trial. So superpath.co.
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Come check it out. Anything else, guys? Come join us. Yeah. Come join us. We don't have candy, but you know. Yeah. We have nothing shiny, nothing shiny inside Superpath. Everything is dull. Everything's dull.
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We have bright sweatshirts. That's true. If you win one of the challenges, we'll send you a hoodie. Yeah. Otherwise, dull. Yeah. Dull. We should change them. Yeah. We should make them gray. Great CTA.
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No, you should have the green that I made you have. [laughs] That's one of one. You're-- That's the only one that exists, Chloe, because you're special. Yep. Pressure for more bright, shiny colors. [chuckles] Cool.
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Well, thanks, guys. That was a good one. We will see you next time, and hopefully, in the meantime, we'll see you in Slack. Bye, everyone. [outro music]
