The Narwhal Pod | Episode 2: Is Content Still King?

Michael Epps Utley (00:01.711)

All right. Hey everybody. Welcome to the next episode. This is episode two of the Narwhal Pod. New podcast from GoEpps where we're talking about all things digital marketing. We're really the performance marketing company. And so we enjoy talking to people about what we do. And today, I'm so excited. We've got Ethan Keely on the podcast. Hey, Ethan. Yeah. So glad you're here. So for anybody who doesn't know, Ethan is a member of GoEpps.

Ethan (00:23.467)

Hey Michael, thanks for having me.

Michael Epps Utley (00:31.063)

He's a part of the digital marketing agency behind the Narwhal pod. We are based in Nashville, but Ethan lives up in New York and we've got staff kind of all over the eastern half of the US really and Canada. And so yeah, Ethan, you head up our content program, which is really an underselling or an understatement of what you do. You're really responsible for voice and strategy and thinking about how we get dialed in to our customer's voice and what we're doing.

but also thinking about content marketing overall. So Ethan, what do you want us to know about you? Who are you? How do you fit into the puzzle here? And what are kind of your area of interests in digital marketing?

Ethan (01:11.318)

Well, I will say it's been kind of an interesting trajectory to get to GoEpps for me. I was freelance writing for GoEpps clients as far as, I think since 2018 actually, which kind of got my foot in the door with you guys and some of your clients at the time. And that kind of blossomed into getting this full-time gig with you guys as a content manager since October of last year. So I've been here a little over a half a year now. And...

Michael Epps Utley (01:39.579)

Wow.

Ethan (01:40.818)

Yeah, and you know, it's been great. We've been growing, we've been having lots of new clients come in from all sorts of different industries, walks of life, and we're helping them on my side with content strategy, content marketing, everything from blog posts to thinking about white papers and eBooks, how it folds into video, all those sorts of things. So yeah, it's been great so far.

Michael Epps Utley (02:07.599)

Yeah, that's great. And that's a good intro to kind of content overall. So let's dig in. We're gonna get into some of these questions we kind of got ready and I'm so excited to cover some of this with you. But yeah, content seems to be sort of the lifeblood of digital marketing to a great degree. It's every, you know, I think 20 years ago when the internet was kind of new, the statement was everyone's a publisher now. And to me, it sort of went back to like the old days of like serial radio where you had like the Borax soap

hour. And so for me, this has always been part of sort of the nature of marketing and the nature of content acquisition is having a story to tell. You know, how do we attract people to the campfire to listen to stories? How do we be the person who they're sort of associating with something of value? And I think we're in the early days with content marketing, maybe it was a little bit all over the map and, you know, Borac soap wasn't really connected necessarily to the products, but now we're publishing and doing things that are highly relevant.

and as deep and intimate and close as we can get. So let me throw a question out to you, Ethan. You're the strategic lead for content at GoApps and oversee a lot of strategy, planning and production. What types of content do you see rising to the top over the next couple of years? And I wanna add a little caveat to this. You and I have spent a lot of time over the last few months thinking about and talking about AI. And so, we know Google's reacting to AI and that's happening, but like, where's kind of like we're here in June of 23.

In June of 2023, what's on the horizon? What do we think are the most important forms of content and kind of what's going on with content strategy for us?

Ethan (03:43.818)

Yeah. And I do want to dig into AI, um, because that, that is a huge topic, a huge thing happening right now, not only in content, but art music, really anything creative and even outside of that. So I do want to get to that, but I will say before even getting into AI, I think video is still is kind of King and it kind of has been for a little while. And I think it's only going to keep going that way. I think these days there's kind of no excuse to not use video. We all have like a really nice, or most of us have a really nice camera in our pockets.

at all times. If it's a construction company and they're on site, you can get a really good video of what they do. Whatever you do. I mean, you can just, you can pull it out, take a video. That's what people want to see. People want to know not only what you do, but who you are. They want to know like in real time, like, okay, on a typical day, what is this company doing? Because you can, you know, written content is great and it's very important and it's even the basis for a lot of visual media, I think.

But visual content, humans gravitate towards visual content and we retain it better than written content. And I think again, it's where we're at with technology is we can really explore what we do in such a high quality, quick and easy way. And we can repurpose that content in so many ways. We can put it on YouTube, we can take clips of it and make a podcast or put it on TikTok or Instagram reels.

Once you have a really good piece of video content, it's kind of the possibilities are endless.

Michael Epps Utley (05:17.807)

Yeah, you touched on something really good there. It's not just about showing like the work product. Like we talk a lot about how video is great for before and after type of messaging, but it's also like letting people know who you are. What are some types of ways with video that companies can show some personality and build out who they are and their presence of sort of what they bring to the table through their brand?

Ethan (05:42.506)

Yeah, I think even something like this, like a podcast, having conversations, talking about what's going on not only in the industry or with the company itself, but in people's lives, that personal connection, people yearn for that. It's like, obviously when we're looking for a company to solve our problems, we want our problems solved for sure, but we also wanna make sure that the people solving our problems are real people with their own problems too. And we're all kind of looking for that connection. We don't want some...

bland kind of cookie cutter, you know, response. We want something real. And I think those sorts of videos can bring that to the table.

Michael Epps Utley (06:20.347)

That's great. Yeah, I think that's sort of the soundbite for the day right there is it's not cookie cutter. It's video hits that visual center of the brain and it's so powerful, so much more powerful than other kinds of messaging. Yeah, it's almost like content copy for show, video for dough or something. It's like you have to have both. Like we have to speak to search engines and people.

Ethan (06:48.766)

Yes. And search engines are getting, you know, so much better, so much more sophisticated at recognizing video content, especially if you've got good metadata in there. It all kind of folds together, the written side, the visual side. Yeah.

Michael Epps Utley (06:48.995)

at the same time with a lot of what we do.

Michael Epps Utley (07:03.331)

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, they really dovetail and work together because we're often dropping into a YouTube account, optimizing a set of videos that have been underperforming, putting them on a trajectory for growth, really through using the settings, the content, the text, what keywords we're putting in, optimizing the listings, getting them out, embedded on website pages so they're getting more plays as opposed to just being isolated in a YouTube channel. But yeah, kind of the both end.

That's great. And that kind of takes us to our next question. So, let's talk about money and content. So, why should companies invest in content marketing? How do we think about or kind of recommend the ROI of content as a strategy?

Ethan (07:47.466)

I mean, I think the first thing is, you know, if you're not doing it, you're missing out. I mean, all of your competitors are using content marketing. It's kind of the thing to be doing. If you're not doing it, you're not reaching people, you're missing out on a huge section of your potential audience. And it's frankly where people are. People are on their smartphones, they're on their computers, they're searching for goods and services. If you're not there, if you don't show up for them, you're missing out. So that's kind of the biggest thing.

But I would also say, you know, there is a very extensive long-term return on investment with content marketing. We talked about this already a little bit, but when you have a really rich, really good piece of content, there's so much you can do with it. You know, even if it's a 1000 word blog post, the amounts of ways that you can repurpose that, whether it becomes a script for a series of videos, if it becomes really good sales content.

you know, for your sales team to use to kind of explain something to a customer. So, um, investing in content is such a good investment in yourself and your brand, because everything kind of comes out of that.

Michael Epps Utley (08:57.787)

great. So yeah, you're really kind of touching on two different aspects there of content. One is there's a compounded interest effect with content. So when we're advertising, we're selling advertising or sorry, we're buying advertising and we're placing ads and those it's kind of working as long as it's turned on. But with content, it's accruing value over time because you're building every layer of bricks and that wall is building up, right?

Ethan (09:23.646)

Exactly, exactly. And it's still, it's about your messaging. So every piece of content you produce is just another, like you say, it's another brick and that foundation of what's the message we're sending. And then again, getting to all the ways that you can use that piece of content.

Michael Epps Utley (09:40.387)

Yeah, that's great. I like the way you're saying that, all the ways you can use it, because maybe one layer of bricks in the wall for us is our publishing, all the different ways we use that new piece that's been built. So we talked about this on the episode one of this new podcast series, the Narwhal Pod, with Gina. We talked about video and how a lot of our thinking about video is not doing more with the production value of the video, but doing more with the publishing value of the video.

And so, yeah, you're sort of expanding my thinking about that to include good pieces of copy. And so, yeah, there are lots of ways it can get used. You can turn a good article into either, you know, supporting, you know, building up part of a white paper. It could be converted into an infographic and designed. It could be, you could pull a snippet out with an image as a social media post. You could turn, you know, we've had campaigns where we took our most valuable blog posts that got the most traffic and said, all right, we're making videos on these.

52 items. And so here we go. Let's start making video. And so yeah, it's kind of like there are a lot of different ways that content is invested in. If it's done in a smart way, it has really great return on investment.

Ethan (10:52.638)

Yeah, I think that's where the strategy comes in, right? If you really map out what are the things that we wanna talk about, what are our customers' pain points, what are the questions that they're asking, sort of the they ask you answer approach. If you can map out those things and then strategize, okay, what type of content do we wanna be producing? Can we produce one really good piece of content and then break that up and figure out how to publish it from there in different ways?

Michael Epps Utley (11:16.519)

That's great. That's great. All right. So that takes us to our next one. AI. Let's talk about artificial intelligence, which is not even, I think, the right phrase for what we're talking about. But we can hear what you think about that. What has it changed in the world of using content to market a brand? How is AI impacting? And you and I have talked about this a lot, but just, you know, for the podcast, like, what are we thinking about this right now?

Ethan (11:42.706)

Yeah, AI is interesting. I mean, it's one of those things where, and this is the case with a lot of new technology, but AI kind of is in its own lane, I think, where there's a lot of extreme perspectives on both sides. Some people think it's the end of the world, it's the end of human creation, the creative pursuit, that sort of thing. And then other people think it's the best thing that's ever happened, and it's gonna solve all of our marketing problems, it's gonna solve all of our, you name it, problems.

And I think the truth is somewhere in between. I'm not so extreme on either side. I do have a little bit of a bias as someone with a writing background. When, you know, chat GPT really came to prominence earlier this year, I was a bit nervous, even a little frustrated because I thought, you know, this thing is gonna come for what I do. It's gonna come for all writers. We're not gonna have jobs or creative outlets anymore because this thing's gonna do better than us. And I don't think we're even remotely near that yet.

It could get to that point. I think where AI for writing and for content marketing is right now is it's a really, really good tool for coming up with ideas, coming up with outlines for expanding your own thought process, almost as like a little helper on your shoulder. But I don't think, and I'm glad it's not the case, that it's completely taking over what a really good writer can do for your brand.

Michael Epps Utley (13:05.379)

Yeah, for us, a lot of the material we're producing is all custom produced. And so in our experience as an agency, this isn't like an existential threat because AI really hasn't been able to get us into that level of voice yet. And I understand there's a big jump between chat GPT-3 and 4, but still when something feels like it's from AI, it feels like it's from AI.

Ethan (13:33.162)

Yes, it does. It does. And sometimes it's hard for me to gauge, because I'm coming at this from a writer's perspective, someone who has a background in this in the digital marketing space and everything. So I kind of have the eyes for, oh, this was written by a human being. This was written by AI. And maybe not everybody has that sort of lens when they're looking at something. But I do think there is some sort of innate sense that people get when they look at.

you know, two different pieces of content, one written by AI, one written by human, they can kind of tell the difference. And we're at a point now, the technology is so new, and it's evolving so fast, where companies have to think about what's coming down the pike in terms of legislation, what's coming down the pike in terms of how the technology is evolving and all those things. You can't, don't put all your eggs in this basket, I would say, because it could be a thing where Google six months from now has some new policy, where they don't accept any

or they can really register and don't accept any AI written content or something. And if you're in a position where you've gotten rid of all your writing staff or your freelancers or something, because you've, you want to cut corners and save money with just AI, well, now you're in a position where I got to get all these writers back. And so I would say take the slow, be cautious, use it as a tool, but don't put all your eggs in the basket.

Michael Epps Utley (14:49.447)

That's great. I've been doing digital marketing for 25 years and one of the sort of scorched earth situations marketers found themselves in was following something called the Panda update. There was sort of an over-dependence on a few pieces of content being spun and replicated using, you know, basically, you know, re-editing software approaches and publishing those extra versions out.

to lots of different websites, content farms, or not farms, content, I don't know, parking lots, to gain the inbound links. And Google just in one update said, oh yeah, that's silly. Yeah, that doesn't, you know, marketers pushing the same pile of garbage out to a hundred different websites doesn't tell us anything about anybody out there organically linking to something that they wanna share. And so that Panda update was like a major reset and everyone was like, wow.

Google isn't just going to do whatever, they're not a static thing. They're going to change and they're dynamic. And so right now with AI content, I'm seeing just how the question around citations is a real challenge. And so AI with citations would be a game changer, but it kind of takes us down the road of, well, you know, do you get to use my content for free to build your language-based model? I don't know. So yeah, I think there's a real gap in the armor.

there for people who see this as a silver bullet. So yeah, what do you kind of fall back to on that for like not getting disoriented? Is it just think about the return investment measure? Like how do people know how far to lean into this right now?

Ethan (16:31.518)

That's a good question. I don't know if there is a way to know. What I will say from my perspective is, like I said before, AI can be a very useful tool. It's hard to say where it's going to go. But again, for idea generation, for things like that, if you're trying to map out what are some good topics to write about next month or something.

And if you know how to put in a prompt properly, the results you get from AI really depend on the quality of your prompting too. If you put in a really good prompt, you can get some really good, helpful information to get you started thinking about things, but it's not going to be the thing that takes over and writes the content for you, at least not anytime soon.

Michael Epps Utley (17:18.555)

Yeah, I think that's super helpful for everybody to kind of understand and get an insider's perspective on. All right. So let's talk about something with some sort of tactical stuff here. Blogs can seem like an outdated tactic. Why are companies still investing in them and do you suggest it?

Ethan (17:37.206)

Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to what we were talking about with the overall content strategy and the idea of repurposing content and your publishing strategy. And this is something that we have run into with clients where not everyone understands the value of a blog. It can seem outdated. You know, who's reading blogs anymore? Blog seems like such an early internet kind of thing. Like you think about someone blogging about the...

top five recipes, whatever. It doesn't seem like the most sophisticated or a modern thing to be doing, but it's still very useful for SEO. I mean, blogs are still sort of your doorway into getting recognized for really high value keywords. And then on top of that, when you fold that into the larger content marketing strategy, they're a really good basis for kind of establishing your brand voice.

And coming up with really good ideas for videos, like we were talking about. Um, and for sales material and things like that. So I think don't, don't underestimate the power of blogs. I think they're very valuable still.

Michael Epps Utley (18:43.791)

Yeah, I've been thinking about sort of changing up the way that we use the word blog, maybe getting rid of it. We've been using the word resources more often when it's a top nav. And so I think some of this is semantics. I think you're right. I think there's a little bit of like an outdated sort of association with just blogs because where they came from. But it's also sort of not bad to have a spot on the website that everyone kind of knows like, yeah, this is a dumping ground for content and it's good stuff.

Hey, what kind of things are we thinking about? What ideas are we handling? What ideas are we discussing inside over here at this company that you're interested in or discovering for the first time? So I think it's also, blog is kind of like, I know it's, you know, like sometimes you just gotta have the word exit on the exit sign. You know, it's like, yeah, we've gotta know where the exit is. So it's almost just so functional that it's okay. But does it rub your eyeballs the wrong way when you see the word blog or is it like, okay?

Ethan (19:41.258)

From my perspective, it's OK. And again, I might be coming at it from a certain biased lens. But I will say, it is also nice to see things like company news or company insights or the latest insights from insert company name. There are lots of different ways to approach it. And it can still be in a very similar format as your traditional blog format, but sort of rebranded in a way that maybe suits your brand's voice a little bit better.

Michael Epps Utley (20:07.927)

Yeah, I kind of like industry news, you know, being the center, because the pain point is, you know, maybe, well, I need I need somebody who's going to do x, y, z. And I just need to know if these people are conversant with this subject matter on the same level that I am. You know, there could be an engineer looking at a website saying, yeah, we got to get some resources to do more, you know, DevSecOps or more cybersecurity or, you know, there are a number of different things. And so they're kind of, you know, it's a little bit of a sniff test.

They're sort of checking out the brand and looking around and probably checking out the blog, checking out social media profiles, checking out the reviews. And so it's kind of part of a mix. But for us, Ethan, I know, you know, on the metrics that I see, we see it as a massive influx of traffic discovering brands for the first time, new traffic coming in, landing on a blog page first, ending up on services pages. And so, yeah, is that tactic still kind of working the way that it should for not just search engines, but actual people and eyeballs?

Ethan (21:03.978)

I think it is. On our end, we've looked at some of the data for, what are the top performing blogs over the past year or several years or something? And you see just so many people, like you said, entering that way. So many people finding a blog because it's answering their question. Again, it's the they ask you answer approach. You're writing content that really speaks to a specific question that your company can solve and you're doing it in a personable way that's easy to read that again,

matches your brand voice and messaging and all that stuff. So I think on that end and then again on the SEO end, it's super valuable, yeah.

Michael Epps Utley (21:40.335)

Yeah, and that's what works, answering specific questions people have where they really do need answers and then making all that available to search engines with all the transparency and best practices possible.

Ethan (21:51.478)

Yeah, that's how people will find you. Yep.

Michael Epps Utley (21:53.959)

That's great. Good. So if you could suggest a single form of content marketing for a company to implement, what would you tell them to start with?

Ethan (22:04.586)

So I think video, going back to video again, I think literally taking videos of virtually everything that you do. You know, always have it in your pocket. Always have your phone ready. If you wanna invest in some higher end equipment at some point, you can do that. But really just start documenting those things in a visual format, in a way that people can easily see and digest. Doesn't have to be long form. It can be, it can even be purpose made for a YouTube short or for a TikTok or something.

Michael Epps Utley (22:13.84)

Mmm.

Ethan (22:33.882)

It could be a 20 second pass through the office of like, here we are and we're doing our thing, whatever it is, just document everything.

Michael Epps Utley (22:44.263)

That's great. Yeah. And Company Cam, I think, is one of the platforms for getting essentially job site before and after pics. Are there any other tools that come to mind? I mean, iPhones are a really good way to kind of capture stuff. I think one of our mantras has been turn it sideways, turn it sideways, you know, get landscape modes so we have options for YouTube. But yeah, what other kind of tools, ideas, little as you're going types of things do you think about for video and for content marketing?

Ethan (23:05.855)

Yeah.

Ethan (23:14.23)

I think what you just said about when you're using your phone, because that's primarily, at least at first, what you're going to be using to capture video, think about the format that you're going to be publishing it on. So there are a lot of things now where vertical video is totally viable. It's TikTok, Instagram Reel, something like that. Yeah, but in the broader picture, you're totally right, turn it sideways. And that way you can use it for a broad. You can still clip things to make them fit into the vertical.

Michael Epps Utley (23:31.151)

Yeah. Instead, yeah.

Ethan (23:43.442)

you know, material, but, but always make sure that whatever you're doing is kind of, um, for the, the broader purpose of where is this going to end up? Whose eyes are going to be on it.

Michael Epps Utley (23:53.999)

Yeah, and kind of an add-on question for this. A lot of folks seem to want to work out with us what a good social media strategy should be. What types of video are best for social media content where you're just trying to put out the flavor of the brand? What's like a good kind of laundry list of formats and types of video or types of content?

Ethan (24:15.242)

Well, what I will say related to the question is, things like YouTube shorts and Instagram reels and TikTok are really taking off because they're really good for the algorithm, right? So if you can just pay attention to what's going on in that space right now, those really short form kind of snippet videos and find a way to sort of cover all your bases on all of those platforms if they're kind of relevant to your industry and the audience you're trying to reach. I think focusing on those short form

kind of like quick explainer videos, I'm thinking. Like here are five really quick ways to educate someone on something. So it's digestible and it pops up in people's feed as they're scrolling through. Yeah, I think really focusing on those short form things right now is huge.

Michael Epps Utley (25:02.811)

Great. So yeah, keyword digestible. Yeah. I think that's a big shift. I think TikTok's kind of changed how we think about a lot of video and has had a big influence. You know, Vine was such a silly kind of idea, but it sort of staked out, you know, the end of the spectrum. It's like, no, seven seconds. If you can't tell a story in seven seconds, you're on the wrong website. It's like, that's so crazy, but it's so fun and silly and weird and just odd.

Ethan (25:05.195)

Yep, exactly.

Ethan (25:15.596)

Yeah.

Ethan (25:28.874)

Yeah, it speaks to our dwindling attention spans a little bit, but it is what it is.

Michael Epps Utley (25:34.463)

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I have teenagers, so I understand that. And one of them was like an influencer for a while. He deleted it all, but it's interesting. But it's kind of opened up my eyes to the B2B value of this stuff, of this B2C world of content, or just C2C or whatever, teenager to teenager marketing.

Yeah, I'm 50, but if you get to my age and you're dismissive of these things, you're not paying attention because you understand that it starts off as a trend. And then a year later, it is definitely in the boardroom. And I think it could be TikTok or it could be something else. I don't know if TikTok is gonna survive the US federal government, but it's really irrelevant because if it's not them, it'll be somebody else. And it's still a question of formats.

being willing to go there, being willing to experiment, being willing to try stuff out. And so, yeah, you've kind of given me some ideas around reels and shorts and things that we should be doing.

Ethan (26:40.582)

And keep on your toes too, because like you're saying, you never know what's coming down the pike. TikTok could be here another year, another 10 years, whatever, but regardless, there's gonna be other things that come in and gain prominence. Instagram has been sticking around for a while, but it's not as big as it was even maybe four or five years ago, they're trying to find new ways to stay relevant, kind of like with Reels being their version of TikTok. But there's always something new coming, so just kind of be alert.

Michael Epps Utley (27:10.699)

That's great. Yeah, that's a good sort of point of wisdom, so to speak, is don't treat any of this stuff as static. It's all dynamic and it's all changing even as the search engine environment is changing. Google's been sort of a hub for everything, but more searches are happening on YouTube and TikTok than ever before. And so keeping an eye on that and thinking of those properties as search engines is a little bit of a shift too. Yeah.

Ethan (27:36.238)

Exactly.

Michael Epps Utley (27:38.247)

Cool. Ethan, this has been awesome. I've super enjoyed talking to you and I don't get enough time with you. This is great, a great way to hang out. So last question of the day, what is your favorite sea creature and why?

Ethan (27:43.69)

I know. This is great.

Ethan (27:52.178)

Oh man, you know what? This is a tough one. I'm going to have to go octopus. Um, I think, and I was doing a little bit of research on this the other day, as a matter of fact, and I guess they have nine brains and three hearts or something. And then obviously eight tentacles. I think if any creature has landed on this earth from outer space, it's probably the octopus.

Michael Epps Utley (28:15.151)

I think there's a good case for that. Good. I'm sticking with the narwhal. So, all right. This has been great. Thanks so much. Really glad to have you on. And we're honored to have you on the team and a part of Go Eps as well, just as a side note. And I'll stay tuned to receive a link to your Spotify, which you owe me. And because Ethan is also a musician, for everyone to know that. And yeah, for our clients, everyone who sees this, I know you've probably seen Ethan on calls, but really glad for him to get share some of his thoughts in this format and I predict this will be in the new GoEpps newsletter that's coming out. And so excited about that and everything that's happening in digital marketing. So Ethan, thanks so much.

Ethan (28:54.434)

Thanks so much, Michael. This is great.

Michael Epps Utley (28:57.143)

Awesome. Glad to have you. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you on the next one.