How Can AI Boost Your Content?

Ben (00:01.913)

Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Victoria. Victoria, welcome to the show.

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Victoria (00:08.462)

Thanks, I'm excited to be here.

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Ben (00:10.585)

Same here, I'm excited for the discussion. It's a really timely subject. It's a great opportunity for us to dive into something fun. But before we go there, Victoria, let us get to know you. What do you do? Tell us about how you got into marketing, what you love about content. Let us get to know you a little bit.

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Victoria (00:28.91)

Sure. So Victoria here, I lead growth at a company called Wonder. Maybe related to our conversation today, growth in our context is in some ways relates to marketing and includes demand gen and the like, also includes product marketing, also includes research and sort of like thinking through revenue strategy, how we take what we know about our market and our users, inform product strategies. So we're a lean scrappy team and the lines are sometimes gray, but it's fun.

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help the company grow remit. My background is in a combination of marketing and data. And so that first manifested in brand strategy consulting, but in working with multiple clients and getting to work with smaller companies and really seeing the need and also the value of data and research in everything from business strategy to brand strategy to marketing and otherwise, I sort of pulled that thread through various roles over the years first at

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big companies most recently at Refine Labs before joining this team here at Wonder. But it's, yeah, it's been kind of a weavy approach to traditional marketing, but I love the interdisciplinary element of it as my current job description kind of speaks to, but also all the background along the way does.

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Ben (01:45.241)

I love it. I love it. And everyone has such a cool pathway in marketing. So I always love to ask and learn about that. It's a fun thing to do. So today we're going to talk about AI and really its effect on content marketing and marketers in general, and really what the balance should be, where, how can we get the most out of AI? How can we keep the human element to everything? Where did, where do we strike a balance? So Victoria, just off the very get go.

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Where do you fit on the spectrum of all in AI, all human? Where do you kind of fit in this whole scheme and what are your thoughts in general?

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Victoria (02:24.398)

Yeah, not a cop -out answer, but I would say squarely in the middle because a number of different reasons. I'm not totally bullish and convinced on the let the robots loose end of the spectrum. At the same time, I've seen the value when you're smart about it, when you're strategic about it to see where AI can accelerate work, can help with getting the ball rolling or the ideas started. But I think there's a world where.

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Ben (02:28.185)

Okay.

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Victoria (02:51.63)

either end of that spectrum, you're missing something and it's a one plus one equals three situation. If you can combine both strategically, sometimes to delegate tasks, sometimes to totally automate things and sometimes to just augment your own work. So you're really like working side by side with this type of technology. But yeah, I'm going to say squarely in the middle.

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Ben (03:13.433)

I think that's a good answer. That's the politically correct answer. So I like it. So when you talk about augmenting and one plus one equals three, what are some like real life examples of how you utilize AI to really get that compounding effect yet keep the human element and everything you're doing, especially when it comes to content.

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Victoria (03:35.342)

Yeah, maybe I'll start with the big step back, which is, you know, when I think about my goals with content, my role as a marketer, as a contributor to our team, there are certain workflows and responsibilities and tasks that I'm tackling. And so I know that it's breathing on my end, so hopefully it's not glitchy. Okay, cool.

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Ben (03:57.151)

you're good. It happens occasionally. The recording will be fine and we have a great editor. So if it happens, it happens and we can go with the flow, but. Now you're totally good now in like it's fun to see what like what freeze frame your face is on, but the recording always comes out normal.

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Victoria (04:01.838)

Yeah.

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Okay, I'm like making faces, but I'm just gonna keep talking through it.

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Victoria (04:15.662)

Okay, cool. So when we think about this framework of how I'm spending my time and what I'm doing and tackling and responsible for executing, there is pieces that I'm doing constantly that are automatable, repeatable. That's the translation to the AI application. But it's just generally those things where you're thinking to yourself, there has to be a better way, or I wish I didn't have to spend so much time on this. And then there's the other end of the spectrum of things that you're kind of like, I wish I had more time to spend on this.

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but in general, when we think about this in terms of what we offer as a product in the research capacity, you take those workflows and you say like, here's X percentage or X steps that there has to be a tool that can help me. Okay. And then there's another set that are uniquely me. Like there, I'm never either comfortable outsourcing this, or there's no way that a robot or a bot or that, you know, most automated and most intelligent.

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you know, model can actually replace the value I'm bringing as a human. And you kind of take that approach to figuring out what type of solutions you might then leverage for sometimes it's starting with ideas, sometimes it's analyzing data or performance of certain posts or, you know, certain sequence or a campaign to understand what worked and what didn't. But for us, it's been, you know, with that in mind, when we think through,

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the content that we're publishing, the channels we're active on, and then even the messaging and what we're talking about and how and where it works, maybe almost in the backwards order. Messaging is something that like there is a uniquely human element to understanding what's resonating, what comments people are providing on posts or emails that they're responding to and what about it resonated and asking questions and knowing the questions to ask that get out of them.

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an insight. And that's something that, again, when we go to the bucket of like, I don't think that an AI is ever going to be so capable, but also invested in getting to that layer of insight. When you think about channels for us, it's come more so into play when it comes to either analysis of what we're getting out of a channel or getting the ball rolling for what we're doing and executing on a channel. So one example would be as we're pulling a bunch of

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Ben (06:18.553)

Yeah.

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Victoria (06:37.742)

data from something like Calendly and the forms that we are collecting, a couple of profiling or qualifying pieces of information for people booking calls, I can sit there and analyze the data, but I can also either leverage a tool or something even simple as an LLM to summarize the open ends or pull out the key themes. And I'm not spending either the 15 minutes or the hour, but it all adds up. And then similarly, when I'm thinking through emails, for example, email sends or

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LinkedIn posts, just getting the ball rolling is kind of where we talk a lot about ideation or different language to use. Just like help me get the reps in and get my brain warmed up and then I'll take it to the finish. And then yeah, beyond that, the content piece feeds right into what I just described there as well. So are there topics or help me think about a cool, interesting spin on this? I have yet to, I think copy paste an exact sentence generated by an LLM or any of the tools we've tried out and.

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loved it so much that we've run with it. In fact, we've pulled certain tools that we've trialed that are supposed to be great for personalization and making something feel really human. And it's clearly not. But that's kind of the deep dive. Hopefully something in there is helpful to someone out there.

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Ben (07:54.905)

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think everyone's really looking for these opportunities. They see the power, but often we kind of feel the pressure. Let's just copy and paste directly out of AI. Let's get the blog posts up and running and the social media posts and over -personalize, even though it's not personalized at all and things like that. And so I think it's helpful to really understand how people think through this and operate on that front.

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where they're taking advantage, where they kind of draw the line and say, okay, we're not willing to go this far with AI, things like that. So when you utilize AI, is it mostly tactical and you keep the strategy on your side or have you ever used AI from like a strategical decision standpoint, or is it often to just get the wheels turning? You know, I often put a delineation and say,

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AI is great for implementing tactics, but people have to implement the strategies. Do you have that same line or have you found opportunities for AI to aid you on the strategy side of things?

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Victoria (09:00.59)

I would generally agree with the distinction, but I'll advocate for the third bucket in between the very specific tactic and the, I'll call it like the strategic direction or the, I keep saying getting the ball rolling, but it's the ideation or the getting started on the strategy there. And actually to maybe speak to some of the language we use, the first mile is where AI will shine, whether that's it's a quick, easy task.

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or quickly scan the information that's available on this topic, or what are the best practices, or how should I talk about this new topic in a LinkedIn post. The last mile is where humans have to be involved, and that's as much to put the finesse in the copy or add the brand voice into the email or actually connect the roundup of best practices for XYZ to the reality of our business.

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That's where when we talk about relevance and interest and curiosity and application, the humans are just not going to ever be replaceable. And if they are, that's a world that I don't know if we'll all want to live in anyway. So, you know, then even if we think about that in terms of our product and where we've found that for, again, research, there's an element of like rounding up and mining everything that's out there. There's horsepower that comes with AI that's very helpful, but

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What I ever trust without like actually just sense checking let alone adding my own flavor to it What an AI is spitting out whether it's the most robust roundup of trends or again best practices or whatever It'll save me a lot of time and the efficiency play and the tactical piece is Absolutely where the value is when it comes to what do I do with this? Sort of so what and then now what that comes so much from the human context and experience and

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just the critical thinking that again, we'll see if we ever get to a day where the AI can actually mirror.

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Ben (11:02.381)

Yeah, and yeah, I just I don't think we'll ever get to that point to be completely honest until I can have personal experiences and things like that. There are so many people and I've talked to writers personally that genuinely are afraid of losing their positions to AI. They don't understand, you know, really what's going to happen. There's this really uncertain future with all of it.

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What is your advice to like future proof yourself in an AI world? If you're concerned about AI potentially like taking over your position or doing something like that, how can people really prepare themselves and actually put themselves in a position where maybe they have a new advantage with AI?

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Victoria (11:48.526)

It's a very fair concern. I think what we're already seeing with some of these companies who use AI to like turn out thousands and thousands of articles is it hacks a version of the system. It does not hack the actual value extraction of the system. Like people are not like, I love this new genre of content. I'm just going to eat it up and buy all the things now. So there's an element of like time will play out in like.

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Ben (12:08.377)

Hehehehe

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Victoria (12:14.19)

The answer will sort of like reveal itself on that one, which isn't comforting to anyone who's panicking now, but just worth saying. Again, when we think about how do you future proof yourself, your organization, your team, it is in this element of, you know, we frame the category as tech enabled services or, you know, AI powered expertise. You have to use it as a tool the same way. If you're going to sit there handwriting everything or typewriting everything.

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People on computers are going to replace you and outpace and outperform you, but the computer itself is not going to add value that you sitting at the computer is going to be capable of adding. And so there's, again, the elements that are eventually going to be automatable at your job. We're probably never the deciding factors of your self -worth, self -satisfaction on the job anyways. There is a challenge of investing the time in that.

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you know, learning the tool or figuring out which tool to use. I mentioned earlier, I'm halfway in the middle mark and that partially is I haven't invested a ton of time in figuring out for every single workflow and like all of, you know, some people have gone really ham with this. There's an element of like tools are going to have to settle out. Some of them are not going to exist in a month. So I'm not going to invest my time and or money into ramping. But I think as we

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I've just come to appreciate that the combination of the two is where the future is headed. It becomes less about how is this going to this AI or this technology going to take my job? And it's more, I'm actually competing against humans who know how to use this technology really well. So how do I become better than the next guy in being able to use it for whatever I'm trying to accomplish?

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Ben (14:01.401)

I love that. I love that. So when you're looking at it and you are honestly saying, okay, cool. One plus one equals three. I'm going to utilize AI. I'm going to augment myself. And I really love your analogy with a computer, right? Like I think it's a really good description. The computer didn't take really, I mean, it did take jobs for people that were maybe just transcribing things.

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But it opened up a whole new era of people that could learn how to utilize those tools and kind of usher it into the next age. Looking down the road, like, right, you said that the robots aren't just going to take over and all that kind of stuff. Where do you envision like some of the biggest wins are going to happen in the next three to five years for people that are really learning about AI and taking advantage of it and allowing it to create this multiplier effect in their efficiency and hopefully their quality of work as well.

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Victoria (14:57.774)

Yeah, it's been interesting to follow the research on this where there's the buckets of, it actually kind of maps to what I described before. There are jobs that will be, or when I say jobs, this is less about a profession and more about tasks or jobs to be done that are entirely automatable and we humans frankly shouldn't be wasting our time on them. There's the bucket of things that are exclusively human and that we will always need to come in and take it to the finish or to.

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execute and maybe even that's not even come in. It's like beyond the thing. And then there's this bucket of, you know, where the one plus one equals three happens. You know, thinking again, there's reference any number of different articles or HPRs or whatever that have due diligence this space. I think when it comes to marketing, specifically the like analytics, the numbers, the performance trends, the projections.

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Ben (15:31.961)

Mm -hmm.

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Victoria (15:54.062)

will probably fall in that middle bucket where, yes, you can automate and accelerate a lot of it because of the horsepower of these tools and their speed. But what do you do with that information and the decisions you make off of it, stay innately human and are just subject to so many other factors that it's hard to ask an AI to anticipate because at a certain point, if you're having to tell it, here's the 700 things to take into account with this, you might as well just use your own brain and take it to the finish.

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Ben (16:19.545)

Yep.

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Victoria (16:22.894)

when it comes to the storytelling and resonating and empathizing and connecting with humans, I see that so falling as we talked about that strategy. The human connection isn't going to come from a purely AI statement or sentence or whatever. It might be inspired by thoughts that the AI helped you create at scale. But those are kind of, I would stand by those general buckets. And when we think about our

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roles, we kind of know there's things that we shouldn't be spending so much time on, or there has to be a better way. And in general, the proxy of here's what I wish I could be spending more to my time doing to help further our business or our resonance or, you know, our strategy are probably the things that we're trying to free up time in order to like contribute to strategically versus the pieces that we're actually going to automate away.

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Ben (17:15.129)

I love it. I love it. Well, that has been super helpful. It is getting me thinking about AI just a little bit differently now. And I love that. So thank you, Victoria, for sharing that. If anyone wants to connect with you and reach out and further the conversation, how can they connect with you online?

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Victoria (17:32.75)

Yeah, we're on, I'm on LinkedIn, we're on LinkedIn. I haven't gotten back into X in recent months, but I'm always active on LinkedIn and happy to engage there.

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Ben (17:43.226)

Awesome, love it. Well, Victoria, again, thanks for your thoughts again, and I appreciate it. Again, we keep these episodes short and sweet and to the point to help people learn in a quick amount of time. And thank you so much for the insights today.

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Victoria (17:55.918)

Yeah, thanks for the conversation. I will see you in the human. I'm sure in plenty of years around to come, but I'm excited to see where we all head here with this new toolbox.

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Ben (18:00.249)

Hehehehehe

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Ben (18:06.649)

Love it, love it, thanks again.

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