Serving Your Audience Through Content with Chelsea Castle

In this episode, we’re exploring the crucial role content plays in truly serving your audience, asking questions like: What makes a piece of content truly valuable? What are the pros and cons of utilizing AI in content creation? And how can business leaders, sellers, and marketers stay current on the latest content creations trends?  

Joining Dani to answer those questions and more is the awesome Chelsea Castle from Lavender. 

Chelsea shares a ton of great insights, like: 

• How can you create content that passes the “eyebrow test?” 
• Why AI is an assistant and not a replacement for all of your content creation needs 
• And, finally, how every piece of content you create should come from a place of genuinely wanting to be as helpful as possible to your audience 

Links:

Chelsea Castle:
linkedin.com/in/chelseacastle/

Dani Buckley:
linkedin.com/in/daniobuckley/

LeadG2:
leadg2.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/

TIMESTAMPS:
(01:52) Chelsea's background and experience
(04:22) Your content needs to be helpful
(06:29) Measuring success
(09:11) How to determine what's working and what's not working
(11:41) AI's role in content creation
(16:38) What are some signs that you should pivot your content strategy?
(19:01) What is one piece of advice you would give for those implementing a content strategy?  

Transcript

Dani Buckley: (00:15)
Welcome to Sell Smarter Sell Faster, a podcast dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, we discuss proven sales enablement strategies and real life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries. I'm your host, Dani Buckley, vice president and general Manager at LeadG2, a sales performance agency.

Dani Buckley: (00:41)
In this episode, we're exploring the crucial role content plays in truly serving your audience. Asking questions like what makes a piece of content truly valuable? What are the pros and cons of utilizing AI and content creation? And how can business leaders, sellers and marketers stay current on the latest content creation trends? Joining me to answer those questions and more is the awesome Chelsea Castle from Lavender. Chelsea shares a ton of great insights, like, how can you create content that passes the eyebrow test, why AI is an assistant and not a replacement for all of your content creation needs? And finally, how every piece of content you create should come from a place of genuinely wanting to be as helpful as possible to your audience. Welcome, Chelsea. I am really excited to dive into this topic today with you. Thanks for being here. How are you today?

Chelsea Castle: (01:33)
Hi, Dani. Thanks so much for having me. I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Dani Buckley: (01:36)
Good. I'm great. Um, I, this is one of my favorite things to do is talk to people about things that I am excited to learn, new stuff. So, um, that's what we're gonna do and content is definitely one of my favorite topics, and so I'm excited to talk to you about your expertise and just to kind of give everyone some familiarity. Tell us a little bit about your background and experience, kind of, you know, um, what makes you, you know, an expert on content.

Chelsea Castle: (01:58)
Yeah, for sure. So, like a lot of marketers, I did not study marketing in school. My background's actually in journalism, so I went to school for journalism. I worked in newspapers and magazines for a while. Uh, and then I worked in the agency world, which is also very different. Um, kind of cut my teeth on marketing there and worked on both the marketing side and the client facing side where I helped actually like, create websites for clients. So that's where I was like, okay, I like really like this tech stuff. Um, and then I worked at a few different tech companies. So I worked at a email servicing company, and then I worked at, uh, Chili Piper, which a lot of our listeners might be familiar with. And now I'm at Lavender. And throughout the course of my career, content and writing has obviously been at the core of it. So, um, for me, my very diverse background and kind of learning both like journalism from like a writing standpoint and what that, how that applies to marketing and websites in UX and ui and just like the whole breadth of marketing and content experience is really at the core and just like having a really diverse skillset set. So I'm excited to kinda apply that to marketing today.

Dani Buckley: (03:02)
I love that. Yeah, a lot of our content strategists have journalism backgrounds, even some of our consultants have, um, and even I do, one of my degrees is, is related to journalism. So it, it definitely makes it very valuable. . Um, great. So let's get into the topic of content and, and really, um, from like a kind of talking through like with marketing and sales. Um, so in your opinion, what makes a piece of content truly valuable to an audience? I know that's a pretty broad question, but, but yeah, tell us about that. And if you can even define content in this context, maybe to start us off that might be helpful for everybody. What are we talking about here?

Chelsea Castle: (03:34)
Yeah, I think that's really important. I'm glad you mentioned that because content today of course, can refer to so many different content types can refer to social media posts and written content, et cetera. Um, for this question and for the most of this conversation, I'll be referring to what I think is the more traditional use of the word, which is like written content, right? So articles, but also like any form of written content you might see on a website. Um, when it comes to, I guess I'll say I love any question where I can answer it with, it depends , and I think this is one of those, right? For me, and when I think about viable content, it depends on the audience and it depends on the brand. Um, I think what a marketer might find valuable and a piece of content is going to be different than maybe what a software engineer finds valuable and a piece of content.

Chelsea Castle: (04:20)
I think at the crux of it though, it needs to be helpful. The reader needs to walk away from consuming your piece of content. Um, which honestly, like, it could be, this could be applied to like any form of content, however you define it, but I traditionally just think of written content. Yeah. Um, they have to walk away saying like, okay, I learned something new, or this made me think differently. Or now I have a tool or a template that I can go and take and apply to my, like, actual job today in my day-to-day. And it's helpful. Uh, I think a lot of content today can either be fluffy or duplicative or very, like, there's a sea of sameness for sure in B2B right now, or it can be boring, doesn't offer anything new. I also look like the eyebrow test. Where does a piece of content make you like, raise your eyebrow in either like a curious way or I kind of disagree with that kind of way, or I learned something new, or it it should just kind of evoke something, but really it should just be helpful and be something that's not just like fluffy.

Dani Buckley: (05:18)
Yeah, I, I appreciate that because I, I agree so much, especially when people are trying to write seo, um, you know, nice optimized content. They're thinking that that's the first thing they're thinking of. They're comp, they're completely forgetting oftentimes, like, is this actually a value to, to the end user? And, um, and that could really hurt your efforts. Like, yeah, maybe you drove traffic there, but then what, what do they think about you and this piece of content and your brand, um, if it's really fluff and not of any value.

Chelsea Castle: (05:46)
Yeah. And like so often I think we forget no matter what your role is, especially like as if you're a salesperson, a marketer, et cetera, that there's a human on the other end of it, right? That's something I say all the time is like, there's a human on the other end of this email or this article. Like, why are you asking for their time? And what are you actually trying to do? Like if you're trying to provide value with your content, just remember that there's a human on the other end and what would you wanna see, like when you're creating it as well.

Dani Buckley: (06:12)
Yeah. Love that. So let's talk about measuring the success of content, right? Um, how do you recommend people measure the success? Let's, let's, let's focus on blogs actually in articles, right? Okay. I think that's a good place to start. Like how do we measure success for that and how do you make database decisions?

Chelsea Castle: (06:28)
Yeah. So when it comes to measuring success, I like to group things in two buckets, so qualitative and quantitative. And for qualitative, I care a lot about like the comments that we receive on the posts where we're sharing the content, like where we're sharing the blog. You know, you're wanting to focus on blogs or I might create a Twitter thread about to promote the blog and I care about how people are responding to it, engaging with it. I think that qualitative feedback is definitely underrated. So that's like a big one that I put a lot of focus on. I think it's really important to see what people are saying about it in communities, what you're hearing from customer success and your sales team who should be using your content and using those blogs. Yeah. And all of that feedback is really important, um, for quantitative, especially for blogs, right?

Chelsea Castle: (07:13)
So there's the passive or vanity metrics, and then there's the more active or like bottom line metrics. So I care obviously about like referral traffic and page views and time on page and session se session duration and bounce rate, although like that's wit with like a bit of grain salt, especially with DA four these days. Um, and then I'm also looking like distribution channels and like that referral traffic rate. I think that's something that isn't, um, looked at enough. Um, yeah, let's see what else? And then there's a contract distribution, which is where things get a little muddy. So what is it actually doing for pipeline and revenue? And it's tricky, but there definitely are ways to kind of get at how content is influencing pipeline and close fund revenue. Um, we've definitely found some ways to do that in the past. And I say influence because content is most often not going to be first touch or last touch. It's kind of like a whole journey experience. And, um, it's really nice that I've always pretty much always had, well, mostly always had a ceo uh, and marketing team understands that and, uh, is kind of merging toward the right metrics. So, um, that qualitative and quantitative bucket breakdown is really helpful in my experience.

Dani Buckley: (08:23)
Yeah, I love that. And, and just to like break it down even further for folks, I love that you mentioned attribution reporting because, you know, I I to like oversimplify it for people listening, you know, what we're talking about is like, let's say you close the deal, you closed a new client, a new customer, and how valuable would it be to be able to see if there was content, there was marketing mm-hmm.  and all kinds of distribution, right? That actually contributed to this sale, right? So it's like, of course the salesperson did what they needed to do from, you know, from this point on, but like, how did, did this, did this prospect before they even talked to to sales, did they maybe read a couple of articles? What articles impacted them? Did they maybe download something? Were they on certain pages of your website? Those types of things are gonna help you, right? Like make better data-based decisions on what content is, um, playing a role in actually closing new business.

Chelsea Castle: (09:10)
Yeah, 100%. All those things are signals and I think especially the qualitative feedback, I don't think I dug deeper there, they're all signals, right? Until like, what's working, what's not working. And especially when a lot of those comments qualitatively are coming from actual prospects, you know, you might get people who are engaging with it who aren't necessarily your I C P, but if those people are really engaging with it and letting you know, even if it's just a few people, that's such a valuable signal that you're doing something right and it's resonating with your core audience. Um, you have all this data, like the qualitative, the quantitative, however you wanna break it down. You take that again, you take and measure that against your business KPIs and your goals. Um, it's a decision making puzzle. And I think data is a big piece of that puzzle, but it's not the only piece.

Chelsea Castle: (09:51)
Yeah. So when I think about making decisions and smart decision making, especially in like 2023 with just like the state of the world and state of technology right now, data's a big piece of it, but you also have to take into consideration like business goals and values and beliefs and also your expertise and the experience that you and other people on the team bring to the table. I think a lot of times we get caught up in making data driven decisions, but it's just piece of it, right? So it's, it's, it should be like omni-directional and not the one indicator of a decision. There should always be other considerations because data's not ever going to tell you the whole story.

Dani Buckley: (10:28)
Yes, yes. I love that. And, and like, so for instance, people might say, okay, well let's, we're gonna repromote this popular blog post that gets all this traffic, but it's like, if you really aren't paying attention, you might realize like, this traffic is a lot, but it's not actually like qualified traffic or it's not the best. Yes. You know, maybe it's a topic brought in a lot of traffic, but it's not actually generating leads or whatever it might be. So there's all kinds of like, yeah, we'll get stuck on these numbers and you're like, wait a minute, , let's, let's put on our human, uh, hat too. So yeah, well, talking about humans versus robots, which is kind where

Dani Buckley: (10:59)
We cannot talk about content and not talk about AI right now. Of course. Um, so with more and more, you know, sophisticated tools, you know, every minute something new is, um, I'm getting a new email, new tool, uh, you know, chat. G P T obviously kind of launched us all into this space and now it's just like, it's, it's, there's no turning back, um, which is exciting and there's pros and cons of course. So I'm curious, like, just right now as of, um, not sure exactly when this episode will air, but let's say around April, 2023 , what, uh, what are do you see as like the pros and cons of using AI in content creation? And are there any specific ways that you recommend people be using it right now within like, the foreseeable future or don't use it, put it. Yeah. What are your, what are your thoughts

Chelsea Castle: (11:43)
? Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts, especially working for an AI company and I'll say, oh, I'm not an AI expert. I'm still learning as most of us are. But it's a really exciting time and I think if anyone has been paying attention to, especially this week when we're recording, uh, G P T four was just announced by open ai and it's a really exciting thing that's happening right now in terms of how open AI is really dedicated to harnessing this technology and machine learning for humanity. Um, still kind of like wrapping my head around what that means, but when our day to day life, when we're thinking about our work and content specifically, there are definitely pros and cons. I think it's, um, it's an assistant or it's a tool or it's a shortcut. It's, it's not gonna be a replacement, it's not gonna be perfect.

Chelsea Castle: (12:24)
Um, one of my favorite use cases for is thinking of it as like a research assistant. So a lot of people are going to chat G p t, plugging in things and asking for plugging in prompts and asking for the machine to generate exact copy to use for an email or exact copy to use for X. And I think that's like a misuse of the tool, honestly, because it's going to generate something that's that's long that, you know, if, if you plug that into our tool lavender, it's going to tell you it's gonna score pretty low and it's not gonna get a good reply rate. And it sounds like a robot, it doesn't sound like a human, but when you think about it more from, it can really synthesize content. So you can plug in a whole bunch of links, ask it like to, to articles or to videos even this is like an amazing use case.

Chelsea Castle: (13:06)
Yeah. And you can ask it to read and analyze and understand these videos and summarize it for you. And then that research you can go take and use it to write your article and it's going to save you so much time. Right. So it's a shortcut. Love that. Um, sometime, yeah, sometimes it's definitely not factually accurate. I say like trust but verify. It's actually something that our, uh, c e o will William ballon says a lot. Um, cause that's how he uses it and it's kind of inspired me to use it in that same way. Um, but I think when you think about it again, like it's, it's just not going to be a replacement. It's meant to be a tool to help us and not just replace writing your article or writing your sales email or whatever that might be. It's really powerful when used correctly.

Dani Buckley: (13:46)
Yeah. I love that. I'm gonna say it again, trust but verify. Mm-hmm.  so good. Yeah. That's really great. Um, I feel like that that reflects our approach at LEGI two and the Center for Sales Strategy. Same thing with ai. We're like, yeah, let's, let's go all in, let's lean into this technology. Like let, let's trust it. But like, let's also be smart and let's ve I love that. I'm, I'm totally gonna share that with my team and use that one.

Chelsea Castle: (14:08)
Yeah. I'll credit to Will for that. That's not me. Yeah.

Dani Buckley: (14:11)
Great.

Chelsea Castle: (14:12)
Yeah. Um,

Dani Buckley: (14:13)
Yeah. And so is there, let's, one question, uh, that comes up a lot is, you know, folks that have like a good content strategy for their brand and, and their, their, their stay in the course. They put all this work into like researching their target persona and figuring out how they're, you know, they have their content calendar and all this stuff. And then it's like, okay, is it working? Is it not? Is it working good enough? A lot of these questions come up and, and what it leads to is the question often of like, do we need to adjust? Should we blow up our content strategy, do something different? You know, there's a new trend, there's new best practices, there's new, um, data and information we have and, and so we often hear like, no, we're we just, just wanna keep doing what we plan for the year? Or is it like, when should someone really evaluate, uh, you know, and maybe change the complete direction or, or partial directions? So I'm just curious your thoughts on that kind of thing.

Chelsea Castle: (15:01)
Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I think this is interesting, especially because of my experience. I've never, I'm really curious like what your experience is in uh, yeah. Especially the, for the listeners to think about this. I've never worked anywhere in marketing where we've stayed the course for the entire year. Like that's never happened. Agreed. . Um, something has always come up, or the cmmo or the CEO is always saying, we need to do this, or we're making this strategy pivot. Uh, especially in the last few years, right? So we've pivoted a lot with Covid at companies I worked at, we've committed a lot cuz of the, uh, social injustice in the world or just a lot of like, so many different reasons just like in society and, and even right now, right? So we've had, um, I think risk aversion with buyers is a, is a really big thing over the last year, but especially right now.

Chelsea Castle: (15:45)
And there's just so many considerations as society, this kind of gets at the human element, right? I didn't really think about this until right now, but as humans, our lives are impacted by so many factors that change every aspect of our lives. And when we show up to work and we're buying, we're selling, we're marketing all of those things. Like we show up as our ourselves. So everything that's happening in the world impacts how we buy and how we sell and how we market. So you have to be agile and you have to pivot. Um, and again, like some of those pivots to your content strategy are dictated internally and not by external, uh, influences. But, um, I guess to get at your question, I mean, you have to be agile and just able to move, um, and able to pivot if you're asking like when you, like, are, I guess I'm curious, are you asking when you know you should Yeah. Or how to handle it when you need to?

Dani Buckley: (16:32)
Uh, that's a good question. What am I asking? You know, maybe both. I like . I, I think, um, yeah, let's start with the, the first one. Like yeah. When, what are maybe some signs someone can look for that they need to like maybe pivot?

Chelsea Castle: (16:44)
Yeah. So I think when is like trends, right? So monitoring the conversations that, that are happening with your sales team. So I'm just thinking like a marketer. Yeah. Maybe you're hearing a lot of things coming up, a lot of objections that keep popping up, that you're not addressing your content and you need to know, okay, I need to pause this one now I have this entire month of content plan for, um, you know, on my calendar. But there's a lot of things that are coming up for my sales team that they're saying and, and seeing in the market and we need to respond to that. Um, I think that's a really important thing. You really need to be in lockstep with your sales team cuz they're the ears on the ground knowing what needs to what, what their, what the needs are Yeah. Of your audience.

Chelsea Castle: (17:22)
Um, and then I think it's like what's working, what's not working? Kind of getting to what we were saying earlier, if you're putting out all this work and you're not seeing a lot in response and like qualitative responses, you're not seeing a lot of like engagement. You're not getting any signals that the work you're doing is resonating. And then maybe it's getting like decent page views, but are page views going up? Like content is a long-term game. So when you're looking at your metrics holistically, there should be upward movement for sure. You might have some like dips of course, like especially like seasonally, but there should always be upward movement. So if that's not happening or maybe it's happening with page views, but maybe sessions and um, like session duration and time on page is low, those are signals that you might wanna pivot and just do things, do things differently.

Chelsea Castle: (18:04)
Yeah, I think also B2B is changing so much that I think it's okay to not always stay your course as long as you have intention in buying on your strategy. So I've definitely been in scenarios where strategy changes like so much month to month and there's whiplash and then you're never gonna know what works if you change too much. So people like, you might also be in a scenario where you're getting pushback to change from leadership, but you're like, well wait a second. Like, we don't know what works yet cuz we haven't done it long enough. You haven't given, I think that's, yeah, I think that's important too.

Dani Buckley: (18:36)
No, I love that. I'm glad you you mentioned that because it, it is a fine balance, right? It's like sticking to the strategy that you are committed to, but also knowing when to make tweaks and, uh, pivot, but give yourself a chance. So I love that. Yeah. Um, so I always like to ask a question like this, um, you know, for those that are maybe, uh, just maybe sitting down and, and really focusing on their content strategy for the year or they're thinking about pivoting or they're trying to figure out how to incorporate some new trends and, um, what is like one piece of advice you really want, uh, like business leaders or content strategists, marketers to kind of walk away with today that you think will help them?

Chelsea Castle: (19:10)
Yeah, I love this question. So I kind of have two things. Okay. I say con conviction and serve your, serving your audience. Um, those are like the two biggest content principles for me personally. And I think for serving your audience, I think I would encourage people to think about what that means for you. It might mean something different as a content marketer and also for your business. Yeah. Everything that you do should be about your, your audience and your users and your customers. And I think when you do that and you do that authentically and you're just, everything you're doing and creating is serving them and being helpful to them, there's an element of reciprocity and just giving and not expecting anything return and just being helpful through content. I've always seen that just kind of come back in spade. Um, and then I think around conviction, the brands that are really winning today have strong conviction in what they will and won't do.

Chelsea Castle: (20:00)
Yeah. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I joined Lavender is it's been like a co-founder, content led business and them as well as a lot of other brands today, like, I'll call out Spark Toro as an example. They have a really strong conviction in how they do things and how they don't wanna do things. And I think you're starting to see that in more and more brands today, especially in our space. And I think that is like definitely one thing that I would, I guess offer up as a piece of advice to keep in mind with your strategy of sticking with that conviction and using that as like your North Star. And that'll be definitely a big competitive advantage today.

Dani Buckley: (20:33)
I love that. Awesome. Thank you. Uh, this has been so great, Chelsea. It's so nice to connect with you and I appreciate you, um, yeah. Like sharing your insights and your expertise with us. Thanks for coming today.

Chelsea Castle: (20:44)
Yeah, thanks so much, Dani. This was great. Thank you so much

Dani Buckley: (20:46)
For having me. Yeah. And I know, um, be sure to connect with Chelsea if you'd like. We've got her contact information in the show notes. Um, and I'm, I'm sure you'd love to hear from people, right? If we have follow up questions Yeah. In all that fun stuff. Um, and we just look forward to seeing you all in the next episode of Sell Smarter Self Faster. And until then, happy selling. Thanks for joining us on Sell Smarter, sell Faster. If you like what you hear, click that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Be sure to visit our website, sell smarter sell faster.com where you can find even more helpful sales enablement and inbound marketing content.