 Hello everybody, I'd like to welcome you to our second episode of the now named let's discuss with Parsons TKO So exciting to finally have a name in the case you don't recognize me because I have now shaved my beard of many years I am Tony Cappecini the co-founder and CEO of Parsons TKO and today I am joined with two colleagues who I'll let them introduce themselves Hi, I'm Adam Good. I'm an engagement director with Parsons TKO And I was inspired by Tony to almost shave my beard But then I thought the law of the conservation of beards must take hold and so I'm still fully bearded But maybe next time I'll I'll join the prestigious ranks of the unbearded And I'm Rick Richards. I'm a digital business analyst here with TKO I attempted to trim my beard and it just grew right back out kind of like in that Santa Claus movie Tim Allen I do remember that classic movie. I do feel like Tim Allen quite often in that movie All right, so today's topic is the value of content And you know These let's discuss just sessions with Parsons TKO here We would like to say these are informed but informal discussions So we think about the topic ahead of time and then we get on here It's sort of just riff on that topic for a while. I think from our first one since this is only the second one But we learned in the first one We've been waiting too long possibly to have these because these conversations are running long But they're really rich and so, you know, we do cut these in the smaller clips Afterwards and put those out and we'll also keep the whole long Duration here too. So everyone can see all of it if they want eventually we'll start making Transcripts with these as well for everybody But for now, I think, you know, we had these great conversations internally for about three years And we are remote companies so we were doing this on zoom all the time and then it dawned on us that maybe we should actually start Recording these and put an amount to the world. So here we are So the value of content, you know, I think about the word content in the marketing communication space And all I could think of is Jan Brady, right where it's like content content content It's everything is content, but I don't feel like there's ever Like a one throughput for all of it and I don't know if everyone all sees it the same way or if they should What does it really mean is content still queen is production. What's really important What I think we want to get into what do we even mean we say is their value to the content, you know For my for my own sake, I've worked for a long time in the think tank policy space And everyone I worked with would say that they were the one-stop shop on But then I don't know any of them that actually curate content From sources, right? So they're the one-stop shop on all the content they produce on the topic that they're talking about But can you really be a one-stop content shop if you're not if you're not curating other content So, you know, I think that's what I'd be interested in exploring today too. It's 20, you know, it's 2019 The internet's been around for a long time. We've all seen those reports that come out every year that like More data has been produced in the last 25 seconds that ever existed in the universe of time So with that with that aside, there's a lot of content out there, right? And so so what really matters and And how was that connected and juxtaposed and then last week we talked about machine learning You know, so what are the implications of that? But you know out of this this really started in a conversation. I just haven't you just About the value of content. Oh, and we have lost rick. We'll see if he comes back I will say to everyone running a remote company. This is this happens Rick just got rick just got overwhelmed by all the data that had been produced in 25 seconds that just Shut shut them down. Well, that's what happens to the internet, right? It all sits there and it's like see people when people say there's not enough bandwidth That's what they really mean not not somebody's capacity to get a report done on time Literal, but I will uh, I will turn this over to Adam for sake. So yeah our content value what? What? Yeah, I think you know, I think we're we're definitely at a at a point where the content must provide value to your audience And I think that's a core thing that is really easy to overlook in the rush to Keep producing the same type of publications or content that an organization knows how to produce and this kind of their bread and butter And you know since we're in the think tank or not profit space a lot of times that's Reports or issue briefs or publications or strategy memos, right? There's kind of this rush. We got to keep churning this out We got to get this content out there But you know, we are in a world where you know, it's very unlikely that any particular organization is going to be a one-stop shop Because people you know are finding content through through google they are finding content through social media And they're really sort of patterned to find the content that is useful to them And there it's an increasingly noisy world of content You know there we talk about content is king or content is queen And I think if someone is just looking for content on the internet They at least I get the appearance that like content is a kleptocracy Where it's just tons of people producing tons of content and they're trying to steal the attention from you Right. So if you do a search on on youtube or on google You know the top one or two pages are going to be people that are just churning out lots of content to get your attention And you know often that is with a mind to provide value to audiences But often it's with the with the dollar with the bottom line in mind How can we get as many views as we can? How can we get as many link backs as we can? You know, and you see that you go to an article and you it's a slideshow that's broken out into 10 different pages Because they're counting page views, right? So, you know, if for an average user just exploring the world of content There's a lot out there that is not valuable So it is even more important for organizations to really think through Who am I producing this content for what do I want them to do with it? Because it is less about consumption. Hey, let's get a publication out. Hope someone reads it. Hope someone shares it We hope we get 5000 page views or a million points or you know, whatever the vanity metric is And more about did this provide value to a specific type of person? That we want to provide a specific type of value for so that we can build a relationship over time As rick likes to say I'll kind of steal his thunder a little bit and kick it over to him But you know content is really about facilitating conversations at scale If you think particularly in the thinking space a lot of a lot of the work that ends up ultimately being important is done on a one-to-one basis, right? It's it's a it's a researcher that's meeting with a with a decision maker Or or an executive and those are the kinds of kinds of kinds of kinds of kinds of conversations say that three times fast that organizations want to have and content, you know digital content and a lot of the tools around it such as email allow you to have those conversations at scale But you really have to think through Who am I talking to? What are they going to actually provide? What are they going to find value in so the rate before it turns to rick So there I took a bunch of notes where you're talking there and I don't know if this can influence you too rick But The first I'd say is a philadelphia eagles fan. I mean I understand hope springs eternal We actually did win one finally, but you know for many many years hope would spring eternal And that's hope is not a plan right of action. So I like re said that I mean and then I thought as you were talking their attention, you know, I There's the great book by tim wu the about the attention merchants and that is a big Reason where we came up with a philosophy here at Parsons TKO of engagement architecture Where if it's been an attention economy, how are you competing in that if everybody's trying to do that, right? and that then tied into another statement you made too, which was Content experience like is there value in that where I don't want because I know you're trying to get more page views This disjointed slide deck experience like just give me the information man Um, but yeah, so like and then content discovery and what channels you're being forced to do that And so, you know for us when we thought about that and it's just makes you think about a rick for some of the work You do and the data strategy realm too just Engagement it seems to be what matters, right? If I think it was an attention economy and it's getting people burnout And now it's what does content do to create engagement and get somebody coming back? I think that word burnout is is the key that That I would like everyone to Content content burnout is real content is here It's been here for a couple years and it just it's just getting worse I mean if you even just paying attention to the news cycle and seeing what's happening with facebook and twitter And we're at the point. We don't even necessarily believe content anymore when it comes in front of us and that's the position when when an organization is is putting something together and You know as that him said is Thinking about who exactly you know has a persona in mind or has a couple people in mind that they're writing to that They're creating that content for curating that content for and then pushing that out there Think of where those people have have have been In the course of their day when are they seeing your content is the first thing they see in the morning? Because that's gonna the tone there is going to be a little bit different And as as we were talking about this just now I just started thinking about speed dating And you know there's a there's a different Different tone you take if you're like the first person versus the the hundredth person So think about your audience the people you're writing to This may be the hundredth piece of content or the thousandth piece of content that they've come across in a day Especially so if they're if they're searching for it if they're doing organic search or on an ad They may have already looked at a bunch of junk There's you know not to get too into the weeds. There's plenty of content out there that's just Handed over to To two other teams. There's just kind of generate junk content with the right keywords in it You can put that you know There are businesses and there are there's software where you can take some of those keywords and it'll spin up an article That sort of kind of makes sense, but isn't actually really useful And so if you're the person you're writing for has just gone through and seen dozens of those Then you need to really make a case for yours They're already in a state of burnout when they're encountering your content. Yeah, it can be Hard hard to sell hard to prove the value of your content at that point And and to piggyback on that and to kind of connect this to to tony's question about the content experience A lot of what organizations need to do is create positive affinity at every touch point that someone has right? So to rick's point if you're looking at 100 pieces of content, you know in a given day And 80 percent of them are worthless either because the the value just isn't there or because the experience is bad You're gonna quickly either forget who produced that content or you know Block them mentally in your mind when you when you scroll through that results page You say oh this this article is by that organization. I know that's junk I'm never going to click on a link from them again, right? So what you want to make sure that you're doing is Getting your name your brand associated with quality content so that when someone does go to organic search to You know to look for something if they see your name come up They're going to immediately have a positive association with you because you've provided value in the past One of the um ways of doing that is thinking through like in your video strategy in particular Like what types of thumbnails are you putting in your videos? Are they showing the best part of your brand? Are they showing a person that's kind of looking at you and smiling and saying like hey, you know We've got this so that people can start to build that relationship You know, there's a reason why if you do, you know pretty much any type of Video search on on youtube a lot of the thumbnails have people smiling right because or looking directly at you Because content is about building a relationship over time and you know having looked through and and read You know dozens of junk articles about seo for instance I know that there are a few names that I trust and I will click on their content before I click on someone else's content That's not being a one-stop shop. That's being like a trusted source So I this is making me think of now two ways to think about value You know rick, I think in your example when you're talking there, there's The hard dollar costs for a market based incentive, right? And so if I do get the clicks if I do just keep putting junk out there I can then go back and say to my superiors. They look at these metrics I've got this many potential impressions and this many potential things and Out of that huge number something magical might come out the other end that could turn into a sale So it's it's it's very old school. It's not nuanced, but we've we've created market incentives to push that forward which is It's probably a dis incentive at the end of the day to finding good quality content And then adam was glad you brought brand up because I think when you To move this into a mission driven sector, you know, I We deal with this all the time and trying to Convince prospects or clients to come and do certain types of work with us Which is I always think man if they were if it was much more market driven, right? And there was just the bottom line This conversation would be very different and it's and it's it's not on purpose because that's the way the mission driven sector works Right, but brand really becomes a value asset And so, you know, I like what you're talking about there when I worked at the Puget Artable Trust That was one thing that really got honed into me, right? It's what Brand is value attribution and the content gets that halo value attribution from it And that's not necessarily dollars and cents But it is the kind of thing that you come with a trust factor as a mission driven organization that other groups might not like Sigma sigma sigma versus, you know, share our strength when it comes to kids That need to get food. You have this instant brand recognition. So How does that relate in your mind to? value of content value of positioning and then I think what I would say is and then the risk of Your brand when it's out there, right? Like if it's just market value You gave me $5,000 and I lost it all I didn't get anything back. Okay, that sucks. My boss isn't going to like that I go out there as as a top name mission driven organization and then I sink my content and then the reputation at the same time I think that value impact is It's a lot harder to deal with. I don't know if you guys have thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, I think they Your content is only as valuable as what it is as how well it aims it does what it aims to do Right. So a lot of organizations are like, hey, we've always created, you know, publications. We've always created reports. That's what we do We publish them. We send them to some, you know, members of the press and some contacts and You know, we hope that that creates a ripple effect, right? Content value ultimately comes down to what is your content trying to do for you? And so I would say that in most cases organizations a need to figure that out and really, you know, measure their content and improve it against those types of of metrics and goals and the other thing is think of content as a vehicle for For continuing that engagement and that relationship with your audiences So I would say that if you're kind of looking for places of value in the organization The most the most valuable piece of your organization or the most valuable asset that you have is is likely your list Your database your crm or your email list the people that know you well enough to have given you information And have set a signal like keep communicating to me in some way. I'm interested in continuing this relationship Making sure you're serving those people keeping those people and furthering them down an engagement path So when you think about where is the value in content? The value in most cases is did it convince people and not convince in like a shady sense But like was it compelling enough to provide value so that people say, okay I'm going to give you my email because I want more of this or I want to hear more about what you have to say And you know, that's where I think the rubber really hits the road with with content, right? You have to know what you're trying to do In order to improve the content and measure the value and in most cases what you should be trying to do is grow your list And that gets you know to a big point about to all of this really like like branding and and an email and You know content may be king. It's what everyone is kind of paying attention to but I think Next is queen and it's probably more important And is is unfortunately the thing that people pay the least attention to when they're thinking of strategy because context May it goes back to what we're saying if if you're if your article is being viewed Or your content is being viewed in a list of a bunch of junk content It may not stand out as much But if your content is being viewed on your email list and someone signed up Specifically to receive that content the context is very different and they're going to look at that with different eyes and and notice different things about it and pay a deeper level of attention to it And I think that like that not only helps with building the brand and you know You can control your context, right? When when someone's on your email list, you can control How your organization is seen and you can control the level of Of trust there people might be a little bit more forgiving of of something there at the same time It's also really easy to Have four different teams put together really amazing content and send it all out within five minutes of each other if Which erodes trust right which erodes trust but but that's the context right like each team might say This is the most valuable piece of content. We've ever produced and we can't write to get it out But if we're not going to coordinate and we're not going to target The audience and just blast it out there to the entire list then the context is We're just we're just making stuff and you can read it if you feel like Yeah, I mean I wonder so I love to get into the context bit here and then also it sounds like you know The idea of content is don't just be there but be there with a purpose Right like give me something don't just be there because you're there Um, but you know, I think what you're talking about there Rick too and adam is to think about this the how do Federated teams with that are under a brand umbrella but work pseudo independently on their area of expertise How do they coordinate themselves so they don't fire hose, you know, the audience once they get there or You know, is there something in building a data culture that that can create an internal trust because what we see is there's just the communications teams tend to be smaller the marketing teams tend to be smaller within uh, the mission driven sector and then they just get all of this coming at them, right and so to try to The swage or speed things up sometimes they turn the keys over and they'll say great every program can launch whenever they want And then it's so rare that I remember the institute of peace. We did the sales force implementation And everybody had their own lists And they're like, well my list is my list like okay, I get it But we got to get it in here And then we I ran this extra report on top for 80 overlap because when I had started there I was like I'm gonna sign up for every single newsletter and I would get four or five Between the hours of 9 a.m. And 11 a.m. I mean it wasn't like it was spread over the day it was just constant and it was Badgering and annoying and it was how did I get better and then so I don't know if you guys have ideas for anyone It might be listening like how do you make this better so that you don't everyone all boats can rise You don't turn off any audience and that there is some trust that you're still going to get the message out And it's still a hot idea even if it doesn't happen right this second Yeah, the easiest way is probably that like to to actually bottleneck it again To your point Tony of not giving it out to everybody and democratizing the the email sending process but To have a director of some kind that's got a vision And is thinking about the overall context, right? I mean it's sort of like If everyone's responsible for writing one chapter in a book There's going to be somebody who's got to put it in the right order so it makes sense Yeah, and to that point about Putting it in the right order so that it makes sense. I mean, I think one one thing that organizations should have is a content operations plan And you there's a lot of talk about content marketing and content strategy But I really like to think about it in terms of of content operations because that gets right to the heart of How do we actually make sure that we are doing the work internally that we need to do to make sure that we are Furthering relationships with our contacts Um, and I said that rather than Sending out content because again sending out content is just a vehicle Right. It is just a tool to continue to deepen relationships with audiences So, you know, we talked about content. We talked about context, but I think contact Contacts not three two one contact. Um, I mean that would be cool. Um, but um the individual context that you have Right, that is the most valuable asset that your organization has and so thinking from an edit From a perspective of okay. Here's who we have in our system. Here's what we want them to do Here are all the areas of overlap. Here's the type of messages that we need to provide to them Here's the the types of content. We know that they appreciate and value Based on, you know, hopefully some analytics Um, you know, there's there can be some kind of qualitative anecdotal evidence of like Oh, you know, we know this group because we worked really closely with them in the past and they're you know They really like these webinars every time we publish a new report Oh, great. Now everyone can learn from that and say are there other Segments of our audiences that could value that type of content So coming at it from a structured place of operations that is tied back to that ultimate value of the content To either get new contacts or further engagement with previous contacts or current contacts Um, I think is one a kind of two conceptual ways to to think about it There's a there's a lot that could go into that, you know, programmatically or or tactically But I think that's a fundamental shift that organizations need to make and and That's not to mention all the the technological approaches that can Sort of augment what what you're describing there In terms of, you know, getting all your are all your systems on board with your strategy too because you don't want A variety of systems that aren't talking to each other that are also not Uh, you know, uh, there's a director there. They have a strategy in mind and the software is doing something else and is not paying attention to Doesn't know the strategy if that makes sense So there's there is a very real technological impact there Be evaluated as that fundamental shift happens So I think, you know driving driving into that the technology the content operations, you know, production value I I am fascinated and I like to talk about Being effective versus being efficient And I I think that plays into this, you know, I worked at the center for global development many moons ago And there are a lot of economists there And so we got into great discussions over How could you value a piece of content and you know, is it the large paper that They wrote that maybe gets 10 downloads or is it the blog post that suddenly gets Shared across the planet and you know, 300,000 people see that maybe they go to the The larger piece or not, but there was something there to warm them up to entertain them and get them in So it's you know And is there a difference between effect and efficiency? And is that a way to look at content value internally at a mission-driven organization? Like what's the right piece that I should be putting More of my time towards should I be turning out more blog posts or should I be writing more long form papers? Yeah, there's there's a lot of different ways to address that last question. So I think and again, it comes down to you know What work do you need the content to do and is it doing it? And do you do you have a way of measuring if it is doing it? Well And and a lot of that is going to be balancing Different levels of effort against different outcomes, right? So if your outcome is ultimately the influence policy then you can say, hey Should we spend x amount of time creating this long form report? Knowing that it's going to get in the hands of 10 people that will actually may be able to make a difference on policy How much time do we spend on that versus blog posts that are going to be read by? maybe Maybe some of those same audiences, but maybe a wider audience. Maybe media audiences That don't necessarily have as much impact on the ultimate goal of the organization This is not to catch you up But I mean it's making me think too, you know the two different approaches there I feel like we talk to a lot of groups that assume they're doing b to c Outreach and communications, right? Like the blog post is important because a million people see it But you're making a strong point. I mean this is I think more times than not It's b to b type of business that actually needs to happen And it's more of b to b type of communications where hey, we actually do know the 10 policy makers That can do this and they will absorb the paper But I have to also get it to their legislative assistant And then maybe pressure within the districts where they're at by having this go into an op-ed or something locally So I don't know. I don't know that jars anything for you, but it jarred something for me there on the b to b versus b to c Yeah, I that that really gels for me And I think that the main thing there is that you have to be able to measure that like I think I think it's right Because b to b has a certain model of providing expert expertise and expert resources for people to do a very particular kind of work in outreach Right, and that's what a lot of the think tanks and organizations in the mission driven space are looking to do And You can't do that effectively if you don't have a plan and a structure in place to capture Whether or not it's working, right? So if if you're creating a great report that you are you you personally as a program lead in an organization Email directly to your your contact who's a high level policymaker that has to be tracked Right that relationship that touch point the outcome of that that needs to be tracked in the system because otherwise you're just like yeah, we We emailed a bunch of reports to people we knew and that's that's awesome But you know particularly for those there are ways to track high touch high value engagement Touchpoints and one of the issues is that often what happens is that that type of high touch Engagement is siloed from communications and marketing in development Because it's a high touch is about cultivating the high value donors And so that tends to be tracked a little better than high touch engagement with policy makers Particularly as it relates to content And that's why you know when we talk about engagement architecture You can't think of those in silos, right? You have to think what is my model for defining what a contact is for my organization And tracking their engagement over time Because then you can feed in those types of questions like hey, how how effective was that report? Oh, boom I want to be able to pull a list of all policy makers that we have contact with all meet me All high value media targets When they got their email did they did they read that report? You have to be able to find those numbers to be able to actually You know improve and understand how you're doing. Yeah, and it's such a tragedy too when those things get siloed because um, you know to the to the earlier point about Do I write the long form or do I do? Five short blog posts. Uh, why not both? Right, uh, there's no reason that you take one form post if you're doing one of those a month, let's say Um, and one of them gets a lot of traction with your with your key audience Now, you know, okay the people I want to reach are reading this and they're really excited about it so that means that there's Other people that just aren't aware of the value of this Long form content That's a series of blog a blog post or that's a series of emails Where you can kind of tease information that's in those reports. You know that this audience Is interested in These topics from this paper You can unpack that uh, and then contact the you know, let's say that only 10 percent of of a given audience Has is aware of it and loves it Um, but there's no reason that the other 90 percent wouldn't love it. They might just not know about it um, so there's a definite value or a There's a way to unlock value by repurposing That content as its own marketing for itself And and so much of this gets into you know content is not only a way to deliver value to your audience It's also a way to learn what value your audience Once and is expecting Which then becomes an enormous value for your organization because your next campaign gets even more targeted and Your next donation campaign gets even more Material for look at how important our organization is we did we delivered these these huge findings to You know the right people at the right time and now That's made it that's made an impact on On the hill or something like that So I mean I'd go back to it's interesting. It sounds like How do we repackage content? You know, there's I think internal value in that there's only so much time in the day Everybody wants to always write the new original piece But you know, we talk a lot about relevancy and vibrancy and trying to balance those And sometimes the most relevant piece to something that just happened in the media is something you wrote 10 years ago And the way that most organizations have structured their Either web infrastructure. It's probably impossible to find that So how do you how do you harness that backup and pull it in and you know, I don't know if you it's You know, we talked in the earlier part of this conversation too Just about the attention landscape trying to always be there. So something's there But maybe there's value in it's still your content. It still has the purpose when it shows up But maybe it doesn't always have to be something that someone had to write that day Like how do we repackage then how do we curate to also pay and put our content our content in context Juxtaposed with the other pieces. I think about the Folger Shakespeare library We've worked with and the power of curating their collections, right? It's There's this one thing they have This manuscript but when they put it in the context of these other pieces that groups might not think to consider It takes on a whole new type of value And a whole new type of meeting. Um, and so how how how do we think about that in terms of content value Yeah, I think in terms of like recency, it's it's somewhat knowing your audience I mean a lot of this comes back to knowing your audience and knowing what performs well But I would say if you're looking at your audience and looking at your subject matter You could you should get a sense of how often should I be producing content for my audiences that are interested in the subject matter And that's where again in the mission-driven space. It's probably going to be somewhat different than in like a b2c place in the b2c space We have one of our one of our clients does a lot of groundbreaking work on what's going on in in ukraine and particularly around disinformation And disinformation around the world there are people they're passionate about that content They really care about it. They really want to to understand what's happening In in their countries and and apply those lessons And so a lot of it is showing up showing up regularly and saying hey, you're interested in this We're doing the work so that we can bring you the you know The latest and greatest thinking about this that you're actually not probably going to get elsewhere And so they need to be showing up regularly to continue to build those relationships and and deliver that expected value And I think that the idea of expected value gets gets back to what rick was saying was that the more that you publish If again, you have an apparatus in place to analyze how it's working The more insight you get into what your client or what what your customer what your audience expects from you And you know, maybe they maybe you're saying oh, wow when we do Two paragraph blog posts every day We actually get a lot of traffic from that and we get a lot of shares on that because people go Okay, even though i'm an expert on you know, disinformation tactics There's this one piece that would that highlighted one thing that's really important And I actually can share that with with my friends that aren't as in-depth into the subject matter as I am So that that gets to the idea I think of of of recency of how often you publish what? The not only tells you, you know, what's important to your audience It tells you when it's important for them to receive it We can we kind of keep touching on this concept of sequencing And and the order of things and the strategy of you know, when things get sent But that's you know adam, I think that's where you're You're kind of you're kind of right there, right? I think we need to drop the word funnel even though I don't It's like the word no one wants to touch because then it becomes its own its own call, but um um Yeah, right like that's That's what this all comes back to is uh If you if you send something at the wrong time in the wrong You know the information itself might be incredibly valuable, but if it's in the wrong format at the wrong time or Coming at the same time as a as a as you and you're at during your annual Um, it it might get lost or it might get taken the wrong way or or just not seen for the valuable piece of content that it is um, and that matters So much, uh, and that's where also the tracking really comes in Uh, two point adam is that you know, a lot of organizations will test you know What happens if we send this at 10 a.m. Instead of 2 p.m. What happens if we send this at 8 p.m Uh on a holiday what what does that do? Um, and there are many ways to to test that and just see What affect those? We non Or seemingly trivial aspects of the content delivery method are actually really crucial and unlocking the value of that particular piece of content Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think the Without without data to show How the content is doing Discussions of its value are just hand waving right it's it's hocus-pocus unless you actually have data to say hey We know this is doing what we set it out to do And without that data you can't improve Right, you can't really improve without something that That helps you know what you're doing well what you could or and suggest what you could be doing better You know one of the things I'd love to talk about is the amazon amazon's homepage Right, so you know a thought experiment is think about the last time that amazon redesigned their homepage Right, you can't because for the past 10 plus years. They've been redesigning it via optimization Every minute of every day for tons of different users. So if you get 10 people in a room have them all pull up amazon Just go right to the homepage. They're all going to see a slightly different version of the homepage Because amazon is going okay. We're thinking about unrolling this type of content Let's put it up here on the top right because we know based on data points x y and z that that might work And they're running tests to see if that actually does work And so they're constantly improving again based on on data and the more you have that data the more you can make More intelligent guesses about what you should do and then assess those guesses and see if you should roll them out further But but yeah, I mean it all comes down to You know We talk a lot about like a culture of data Right or a culture of analytics That you know if you're serious about getting better with your content, you don't look at the content you look at the data Well, I'd say Yes to all this but it also begs that there has to be some kind of process behind all of this like and a purpose Why are you doing what you're doing? And now with what's that strategy and then what's the tactics we're trying to take on And then apply the data against that to answer the questions that we need based off what we're doing and how to improve Like if I think of amazon You know it was a bookseller, right? We had all the books in the world and then they started adding in different products They still wanted you to buy books when you went there. So then they always have that like and here's the books You've been looking at and then oh, but we sell food now Oh, but there's this home thing now, you know, so it's It's interesting because I think about that too in the mission-driven space. I think about just standard any space You know the the homepage rotator like make sure we show everything from every program just once But yeah, maybe that's not why everybody was coming because they didn't want they wanted your opinion on a thing That day that they trusted your brand for and then there's all the other pieces that you can start turning them on to I feel like that's you know people talk about the algorithms for related content on websites Um, you know all my audience will get watered down. I remember there's certain groups I've had this with and you know pew is interesting because it's such a wide variety and it was like Trying to convince people that if someone cared about tax policy, they still might care about saving sharks It's okay if that's at the bottom and they know that we have that type of work too Like that that that single journey that you think of for the the tax audience Right, it's it's not it's not as individualized as you think Because if they are there and they liked it the chances are they'll like the next thing So I like that idea about amazon and optimizing, but it really It begs that there has to be some kind of strategy laid out to rick's point the funnel Like we are making this content because of this type of audience We want to reach because of this action and outcome we want to see in the world And you know, we talked a bit b2b, but there's b2c groups who work with two right There's the advocacy organizations and the groups that do want the single individual donors, but it's still the same thing Right, it is it is still that funneled approach think about the content test it optimize it Produce it and get it out there. So now that's something we're hot on here and it's it's again It's like the unsexy thing that's super hard to sell but governance process standardization It doesn't sound fun, but it's so empowering When it is in place it is amazing, but an organization can do when everybody gets in and says I know all the rules today. I know how to produce these things I know how to get it out And you know what we're actually going to look and optimize based on the numbers Because it's standardized we're able to do that and we could see where the dips and the peaks are And is it because it was summer time and people are on vacation or was it because what we did was just not they wanted Yeah, all of those are the excellent points, right? Because ultimately what it comes down to you You have to have a target Right like for for your organization overall, but also for your content You have to have a target And then when you have the target clear you have to have your tools, right? You have your your your air your your bow, right? Your type of bow that you want to use you have the types of arrows you you want to use And then you have the apparatus around that. Here's how often we produce arrows. Here's the specifications for the arrows You have, you know trainers who are like, here's how you shoot the arrow at the target You have analysts that are looking at how many times did the arrow hit the target? Um, right you have that whole apparatus around it, but it all comes down to the target Because if you don't have that you might as well have like, you know You know a poster of Baywatch that everyone's throwing pieces of baloney at right and going Oh that type of baloney really hits the picture of Baywatch in a nice way Um, uh, you know, this this is what I call the baloney Baywatch content model What? No, I have not heard about baloney and Baywatch. You've got what's Being being purely facetious saying if you don't have a clear target, um, uh, then you you might It's very difficult to understand the the effectiveness of what you're doing, right? So if you have a target and a bow and arrow you can say, okay Here's how we can improve that process to make sure we're hitting the target if you don't have that target clearly defined Um, then every other piece of that kind of uh, is harder to uh, is harder to implement Right and it sounds super complicated. But then you know on on the other end of that is uh What tony was talking about Imagine being able to come into the office and there's a list of questions And it just says, you know 90 of your audience would like this question answered at this point on the website So can you know at that point on the website? They're in the blog so can you write a blog post of the of X number of words that answers that question And then 50 of your audience would like this question answered when they're reading their emails Between email two and three. So can we write a new email? two and a half The that answers that question and we know that people tend to read about half of their email. So make it short um I don't know that seems like the gold standard to me if you just had had You know exactly what you need to write who you're writing it for what the tone is what the length is um, and that's that's what the uh Having that strategy and tracking everything correctly can tell you really Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting. It's like the whole organization needs to get on board to understand You know, I hate the phrase just throw it up on the website Just what it's not wallpaper, man Like or you could make it into wallpaper and then you'd have this pretty wall that everybody walks by You know, maybe they look at an ad on it, but that's that's not what it's about, right? This really is organizational strategy for For depth for increased audience, which is increased revenue or increased outcomes or increased impact in the world This isn't this shouldn't be an afterthought Um, I like the you know, it's a sig sigler all the sales training stuff But he's got the quote something like you can't hit a target. You can't see And you can't see the target if you don't have one, you know, and I think about when it comes to the mission-driven space the big worry is To create targets from a strategy means you are limiting some aspects, right? You're not looking in every direction. You are going to look and you're going to look in this direction Which means there are some things you won't take on at that point in time And I think for groups that feels limiting or just uncomfortable There's discomfort in what if I missed this opportunity because something came in And what I like to think about and I try to tell people is you'll still see that opportunity But then you'll have a notion of if I take this on what else comes off the boat Not just let me throw another thing on and let me hope that somebody's going to work 65 hours next week and saturday and sunday to maybe be able to do this thing And we won't do any of it. Well, it would be far better to say let's take this on this year Create this path be able to measure it be able to optimize it And say whether we want or not and then you know, everybody wants to be agile But agile is a process, right? And it is based off of a known backlog of things that will go in for a known outcome It's not just like hey, I showed up to work Tuesday and 9 a.m And I want to like I want to make popsicles man parts of tko is going to just make paletas That's what that's what we're doing today. Like it's not that's not agile, right? Like yeah, I could introduce that idea And then maybe we think about whether a paleta shop is the right thing for us And then we slowly be make paletas over time but like Agility is just Hey, we do this in shorter sprints We're not saying the entire year has to be this big plan And then we only march towards that what we say is how do we put this into incremental shifts, right? So let's you know, I like to tell people like to let's look at a quarterly like an okr type of thing And then after that quarter With if you have great data like ricks been talking about we do it's data strategy But it's it's instrumented correctly. You could sit there at the end of the quarter Three months in and be like, oh, wow, we're not getting where we need to be. Why not? What's the data telling me? How do I react? But it doesn't mean you throw everything out the window And it's like you suddenly need a new strategy every three months It's just what tactics are actually working to get us where we need to go and how do we amplify it That's what this is making me think when I think of of content value I don't know if you guys it's we are getting I think close to an hour maybe so Any parting thoughts? I was curious what you would call that that fear of missing out in the nonprofit sector Does that have a catchy acronym? FOMO, uh, I know I Opportunistic funding maybe or for opportunistic positioning Is that there will be times when you're working on a mission and it's not making national news, right? And then there's that one day In march on a thursday morning. We're known expected and it's like, oh my god. It made good morning america today Like everyone's looking at this. How do I take advantage of that? And that's to me if you have the process if you have the plan if you have the governance models You will react extremely quickly because it's not like oh my god Who creates the content who signs off on it? Where should it be placed? How does it work? You'll know all that stuff and you'll be ready. And so I think that happens and I think There's this there's the random meeting, right development or fundraising finally gets that meeting and it turns into hey I need a proposal about x This happens to us at our business. I need a proposal about x in three days We've never really written that type of proposal before but I know we can do it Uh, let's get that done. It doesn't mean you're shifting everything But it's like how do I turn the attention to make that happen? I I'd say I think that's where the fear comes from Is that if I'm so focused on one thing I I might not pay attention and hear the signals around me But I you know, I don't know you I I run a lot, you know and sometimes I do with headphones and sometimes I don't but Even when I'm zoning out like I'm still going to hear a truck if it Haunts at me right like I'm not that out of it even though I'm focused on something else like I think those signals will always be there and I actually feel like they're better received If you have some kind of focus Yeah, and and those are those are known known unknowns, right? And like in the sense that like we don't know when this type of thing will happen But we know that it will happen my favorite rums my favorite rums filled code. Yeah, there's there's some singers But you know, right like you can plan for those right make a playbook like the sudden media appearance playbook Right, what kind of audiences we're gonna get what do we want them to do? What type of content that we have that can serve them just have a checklist, right? You make a playbook for that It's it's it's easy Yeah, I don't I don't know if I have a fun acronym, you know FOMO I guess That's for a topic for the next video perhaps FOMO for nonprofits But if you work to parts tkl we can make sure you don't have to have FOMO We will we'll help you get there Any final thoughts from you rick No, other than just, you know, listen to listen to Your audience listen to your your members if you're a member based organization. Um, they're they're already time It's valuable. What content you have that's valuable and it's worth taking a time taking a moment to sit back and and And listen to what they're saying whether that's through analytics whether that's through email responses There's some way that they're they're letting you know What they like and what they want to see more of rick, could I summarize that as don't listen to your heart? Don't yeah, don't listen to your heart Listen to your audience So yeah, I mean content value you're in membership organizations is another great thing, right? Part of the reason you sign up is for that that content and I think we've said it a few times here But it's the content with purpose The content with context the content that's giving me what I want instead of just trying to get me to click It's not about audience. It's about engagement. It's about quality Um and making sure you push that out first, right and having a content operational model that can That can really push towards that value So whether the mission-driven organization doesn't have the same market factors on it It still does in the end of the day. They still only have so much time They only have and then they have the quality margins And they are trying to get conversions and engagement because that keeps them in business too between fundraising and having an impact Uh, so it seems all equal in the end there. So I have had a great conversation. I've enjoyed this We will uh, like I said, we usually well, this is our second one So usual for us the general operation at this point. We will have the full length video We'll make some cuts and we'll make some smaller versions of this We are experimenting with possibly getting transcripts, but we'll have some some show notes Maybe put some links in underneath the post And if you want to talk to any of us further, you know, please feel free to reach out use the website Put your put your name and email in there and we will certainly follow up But it's been a pleasure talking with you both today. Thank you very much Good. All right. Yep. Absolutely. And if uh, if you're watching this on youtube, uh, hit like hit subscribe If you're interested or enjoyed the this video, let us know in the comments What you'd like to hear us talk about next or if you'd like for us to drill in more into any of these topics Or if you're still just really confused about the Baywatch, uh, bologna metaphor I'd be happy to talk with you more about that. I'm very confused about that. We're all confused. I'm confused I do kind of want a bologna sandwich now Yeah I'll see you guys later. All right. Bye everybody. Bye