Interview-Focused Content Marketing

Benjamin Ard (00:00)
Here's a sneak peek from today's episode.

Jaime Lee (00:02)
If you're not interested in what they're talking about, it's gonna be really difficult. But once you are very curious about their world and how it impacts, maybe if you're doing a case study. One of the things I think that we've really changed about our case studies and our customer stories approach is not having necessarily boiler.

plate questions. think that's very common with case studies. But really understanding what the customer's day to day is like, what challenges they've experienced in the last three months or so. And then once they start talking about stuff like that, then there's so many opportunities to go

Ben (01:05)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Jamie. Jamie, welcome to the show.

Jaime Lee (01:11)
Thank you, happy to be here.

Ben (01:12)
Yeah, Jamie, I'm excited for this subject is something I'm really passionate about as well, so I'm excited to learn from you. But before we dive in, let's get to know you a little bit. Catch us up on your background and then we love to hear what do you love about content and marketing?

Jaime Lee (01:27)
Yeah, I am a content marketer at heart and by trade. Currently, I'm a senior director of brand at NoFraud, a company that helps e-commerce businesses keep their shops safe and prevent fraud so that they can optimize their business and really maximize their revenue. My background is over the last 15 years.

I started on a content journey before content marketing was content marketing. And since then I've worked at enterprise companies doing communications and content and events. But everything I think feeds into content and that has kind of led me to where I am today.

I love storytelling. I think I had my very first works published when I was nine years old. I've just always been a writer and I've gotten feedback as a child all the way through to high school and college. And I didn't even realize that it was a thing that I could do in an office or in an organization where, you know, people have a traditional nine to five. I thought writing is something that

is for the creative people and they're separate from the business people. But learning about the world of content marketing got me really excited and being able to talk to founders and different people in other organizations to build that into content that we're using for our own brand, I feel like is really exciting. I like to think of myself as kind of a journalist, which was another field that I kind of dabbled in.

as a high school student writing for my town's online publication. So yeah, I think of myself a content marketer as a journalist for the company that I'm working for, bringing stories internally, externally.

Ben (03:19)
love that. So that is the perfect segue into what we're going to talk about today with the journalism side of things. It is this concept of an interview led content strategy. So when we say that, what kind of interviews are we talking about here? Are we, you know, the traditional journalists that go out and find an eyewitness kind of a interview? Is it internal subject matter experts or customers? What kind of interviews are we talking about here?

Jaime Lee (03:47)
I feel like there's just like such a really big web. And I think that I'm to be honest, kind of early on my journey on this. I've kind of gone down this rabbit hole because of everything that's happening with AI and how SEO is oversaturated. We went through the SEO wave with content and everyone was fighting to compete for the top. feel like organic content.

is where it's at right now. And that's kind of why interview based or interview led has popped up as something that's really important. Now I've obviously done customer stories or case studies, and that has always traditionally been interview style. But I've also found that in doing those interviews, that there's so many other, paths that you can go down and that you can use to extract more content from.

So like you'll have someone specifically talking about their use case with the whatever product that you're selling, but they might bring up other areas that are interesting and topics. that's that listening is what I find really valuable to be able to create additional content to kind of feed the content engine. But aside from customer stories, internally, your organization has a ton of subject matter experts, people who are working on the product are working on.

specific features for a reason. And there's a why behind that. Maybe stumbled across some data or they're finding something audience needs. And so that that could be a story and interviewing them is really helpful. also customer facing then like prospect facing. So the sales team, the customer success teams our company, we have fraud analysts who also work with merchants.

There's so many stories in people's everyday lives that are fascinating, not only fascinating, but actually really good content that you can use to feed your beast, as I like to call it, the content engine.

Ben (05:39)
I love that. So a bunch of questions come to mind. So let's focus on this one, you know, specifically, and then I'm sure hopefully we can get to some of the others. When it comes to these interviews, how do you like to conduct those interviews? How do you like to find the right people to interview? How do you actually, you know, almost incentivize or convince them to take the time and actually spend the effort? How do you document those? How do you turn it into content? How do you repurpose it?

Let's talk like tactical logistical. How are you getting value out of those interviews and actually making them happen?

Jaime Lee (06:10)
Okay, so I'm unlock some secrets, because I am currently a one woman show and...

Interviews, feel like can happen and I don't even like to call them interviews. I like to call them conversations and we're recording many conversations anyway. And so I don't really go at a lot of things like an interview, except unless it's like formalized with a customer or an external thought leader who I am like, there's more of a regimented approach to that.

Internally, I like to kind of pop into people's office spaces and then just use that and record. I'll have a bunch of questions for them. And that usually just kind of, it's a natural flow and a natural conversation. So I would say that recording everything is just something that needs to become a best practice and normal. And from that...

this is kind of related to rallying the troops internally to get them to talk to you is that when, that is the best practice and that's normal, once they see the content live and you start the promotion and, giving them all the kudos and they're the rest of the team starts to see that that kind of has a snowball effect and builds momentum. but tactically, like once you do the recording, I love to use, like a transcription service or.

chat CPT to kind of like get the bullet points or get an outline going. And then that makes it so much easier to turn that content around. one other thing I would say is that with these conversations that are recorded, it's really, really important to not just focus on creating that one asset, but looking at really listening and looking at the different paths that you could go down and you can,

Maybe there's a topic that makes you think of someone else that you had a conversation with. You can reach out to the other person, get their thoughts on it. You can continue to go down this rabbit hole and start to connect these conversations together for a more robust story.

Ben (08:08)
I love that. That's super cool. So you mentioned AI a little bit creating an outline. Just how much do you let AI do the content writing and how much is it involved in the whole process? Obviously it's helping create the transcript, is amazing. You know, remembering even a few years back, people would have to hand type and do all that kind of stuff to kind of get the material. How are you using those tools to really kind of expedite?

what you're doing after you've done the interview.

Jaime Lee (08:38)
feel like it really depends on what it is, but this is going to be hot, hot take. I use it for like 80 to 90%. And what I found, like this was not the case a year ago. AI is learning so well. if it over the last year, I've really fed it a lot fed it like what our brand guidelines are and voice and tone.

things that we really prioritize in our storytelling, giving it examples of here's how it should sound, and it's kind of really taking over a ton of the writing itself.

Ben (09:10)
I love that. So I actually have a very similar standpoint. I think as soon as we are comfortable, maybe not just comfortable, AI gives subpar results if we don't feed it original sources and our unique point of view. Because then it's just taking, you know, regurgitated information from across the internet that was probably already written by AI in the first place and regurgitating that opinion. But when you go to an actual expert,

interview them, get the facts and say, hey, this is our unique point of view. I want you to write a piece of content that focuses on these benefits. Use quotes, really reference this material. This is the source of the content. Then AI really is almost like our keyboard rather than, you know, something that's generating its own opinions and thoughts. So I'm, very similar in that regard where I won't use it unless I give it.

inauthentic source, something that is human driven, human thought, human perspective. Is that kind of the similar circumstance for you?

Jaime Lee (10:10)
You said it much better. Exactly. That's exactly it. And I think I'm a little just a little bit scared because even just a year ago, know, everyone was kind of hating on it and saying, this this article is totally written by AI. But the more you play around with it and like you said, the more you feed it and teach it, the better it becomes. It's it's really crazy how far it has come even in just like the last year.

Ben (10:37)
Yeah, I love that. So you mentioned, you know, you get these opportunities to create more content from interviews than just one piece of content and not to just stop there. You're getting ideas about additional pieces. How are you also repurposing those interviews to be multiple kinds of content and get more bang for your buck? Are you having like a core piece of content and then smaller snippets that lead back to that?

Are they their own individual pieces? What does that content strategy kind of look like in this interview heavy strategy situation?

Jaime Lee (11:08)
I try to get as much as I can out of an interview. So video, I try not to do anything that's too long. I feel like we live in a snippet video snippets is the approach and a piece of content might have a few video snippets or it might have one and everything's focused around that one point. So it really depends on the

topics that are discussed in an interview. And it's really, it's interview led to influence topics is how I see it.

Ben (11:41)
I love it. love it. When you're actually on the interview, how are you finding good insights? I feel like it takes some effort and that's a skill marketers need to develop. Otherwise we ask really boilerplate questions. What does the industry care about? What are you thinking about? How do you get kind of past some of those layers of the onion to get to some real good insights that you feel like actually drive valuable content for your audience?

Jaime Lee (12:09)
So insights at scale are different. And I don't know if you were referencing that, but insights individually is definitely something that can be achieved in a conversation. I feel like it's really about getting to know the person, understanding what their world looks like and showing up curious. So let them talk and listen to what they're saying and then

kind of just go down, like really get interested in what they're talking about.

If you're not interested in what they're talking about, it's gonna be really difficult. But once you are very curious about their world and how it impacts, maybe if you're doing a case study. One of the things I think that we've really changed about our case studies and our customer stories approach is not having necessarily boiler.

plate questions. think that's very common with case studies. But really understanding what the customer's day to day is like, what challenges they've experienced in the last three months or so. And then once they start talking about stuff like that, then there's so many opportunities to go

they'll maybe talk about a problem they had in June and how it affected all of their shipping or

Maybe their marketing campaign, you know, there was something that went wrong there. And that just gives you an opportunity to kind of go deeper and get kind of get emotional with it. I found like a lot when you go deeper and you're curious about their world and what they're working on, there are a lot of really great emotional quotes that can come out of that.

Ben (13:48)
I love that. And it sounds like the interview isn't just factual. What's interesting things of that nature. You're really taking that opportunity to tell someone else's story. And it sounds like that's a really cool format to say, here's our customer story. And, know, per story brand, Donald Miller kind of stuff. Here's our role in the story, but really it's about this customer went through this nightmare, this headache. Here's they got through it. And that's something that's relatable.

That's something people can resonate with. that kind of like the, would you say that's the core of what you're doing with interviews or do they kind of take on a few different formats when you actually publish them?

Jaime Lee (14:24)
I would say that that is definitely the core. Because what we're focused on is original content. Since we're competing with AI, original content is really king. And if there are, if it's data focus, I think that's a different lane and that's research that needs to be done. And that is also highly valuable. And so I feel like in this world of AI and in this world where you can just

look anything up and you'll find an answer. You can look up stats and you can find an answer. It's really important to focus on the authenticity and the originality of the content that you're creating to really stand out and of preserve or elevate your brand outside of all of the noise.

Ben (15:08)
That's interesting. Yeah, so you're almost, I hadn't thought of this before, but actual experience, lived experience is the only unique content in a world with AI. Everything else is repeatable, things like that, but that's the only thing that AI can't replicate is someone's actual lived experience. That's something that's the only thing that's unique to them and not AI will never be able to replicate.

Jaime Lee (15:31)
Exactly. Yes, exactly. And I think like, I like watching content trends, like over the last 15 years of my career, how it's evolved. I feel like we most recently went through an SEO wave. And even, you know, a few years before, I would say it's ended. That might be a hot take.

Everyone was competing for the top rankings. There was still a chance that you could take out top folks. There's a chance today, obviously, but it's just so saturated that everyone's doing it you have to kind of figure out what is worth your time, especially depending on the size of your team. If you have unlimited resources, sure, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. But I do think that

at a macro level that there is a definite shift going on in terms of what content means. And SEO can certainly be a part of that and trying to take out like blog posts or whatever that are ranking is part of that. But just like what we've seen with SEO, we've seen with the introduction of video, we've seen with video getting better, we've seen...

it evolved to more snippets and like shorter attention span type videos. think that original interview style content that you can't find anywhere else and is part of a personal experience is kind of this next wave.

Ben (16:57)
I love that. I love that. I would honestly love to continue this conversation for hours. I think this is so fascinating, but we have run out of time. Jamie, I am guessing there are going to be a lot of people that are fascinated by this subject and would like to connect with you. How do they reach out and connect with you online if they'd like to connect?

Jaime Lee (17:03)
You

I'm on LinkedIn. Can we include my LinkedIn?

Ben (17:16)
I love it, I love it.

Yep, yep, we'll include it in the show notes so everyone listening, just look in the show notes and you'll link directly to Jamie. Jamie, thank you so much for the time and insights today. This was a fascinating conversation. Gave me a lot to think about, I love it, so I appreciate it.

Jaime Lee (17:31)
Thank you, Ben. It was a pleasure.

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