My friend Joe Pulizzi attended my Uprising retreat and was so moved by the experience that he wrote a beautiful lesson about it in his newsletter for content creators, The Tilt.

Joe and I are aligned on most marketing ideas, and his conclusion at the end of the post was profound and eloquent: “You don’t start with the room.”

He was reinforcing the idea that nobody just starts with a premium event, a smash YouTube channel, or a must-read newsletter. You have to earn that “room.” Or, in the case of my retreat, literally a room.

He wrote this so elegantly that, with his permission, I’ve quoted some of his highlights here. I think you’ll love his wisdom:

Last week I spent three days at Mark Schaefer’s The Uprising marketing retreat in Tennessee. It was small, around 40 people, and that was the point.

The room was filled with smart marketers, entrepreneurs, authors, consultants, and creators. But what stood out was not just the intelligence in the room. It was how quickly people became useful to one another. Helpful. Honest. Shockingly vulnerable.

That does not happen by accident. It happens when the right people are brought together around the right idea, with enough trust already in the room for something meaningful to happen.

Over three days of conversations, presentations, sidebars, meals, and big questions about where all this is going, one idea kept coming back to me.

In the next 12 to 18 months, small, trusted communities will matter more than ever.

Not because community is trendy. And not because AI is going to destroy everything tomorrow.

Because uncertainty is rising.

Search is changing. Discovery is changing. Content is exploding. Trust is harder to earn and easier to lose. People are overwhelmed, distracted, and suspicious. At the same time, they are desperate to find other people who understand what they are dealing with. That is where community becomes incredibly powerful.

But there’s a problem.

Everyone now wants to “build a community.”

That sounds wonderful. It is also mostly wrong.

Community Is Not the First Step

You do not build a community first. You build the reason a community should exist. That’s the part most people want to skip.

They launch the group. They open the Slack channel. They create the Discord server. They announce the membership. They schedule the webinar. They build the event page.

And then they wonder why nobody shows up.

The mistake is simple. They built the campfire before anyone had a reason to sit down in front of it.

A community is not a Facebook group. It is not a LinkedIn group. It is not a membership site. It is not a monthly Zoom call. It is not an event. Those are containers.

The community is the trust inside the container.

It is the shared language, shared struggle, shared progress, and repeated interaction. It is the feeling that says, “These are my people.” It is the sense that if you disappeared, someone would notice.

Mark Did Not Start With a Room

This is what made The Uprising such a good reminder.

Mark did not just rent a space, invite some people, and magically create a community. He had already done the work.

For years, Mark has published, spoken, written books, shared ideas, challenged assumptions, and built trust around a clear point of view. People came to The Uprising because they already had a reason to believe the room would matter.

The event was not the beginning of the community. It was an expression of the community. It’s where the community happened to be at that particular moment.

This is what so many people miss. They see the outcome and copy the container. They see the event, but not the years of trust. They see the membership, but not the audience.

Back to me.

Joe and I preach from the same hymnbook when it comes to community and its importance in the AI Age.

So how do you get there?

There is a process. It is not quick. It is not easy. But it works. This is the process I teach in my personal branding master class:

1. Where do you fit in your industry or marketplace?

Figure out your unique angle. What problem do you solve, and how do you uniquely solve it?

How do you finish this sentence: “Only I …”

That might seem intimidating but I’ve never had a class participant where we haven;t been able to figure that out. There’s still a big world of opportunity out there.

2. Find Your Space

Now you have the story to tell the world?

Joe was also very specific on this advice: Pick One Main Platform

“This is where people get overwhelmed,” Joe wrote. “They think they need a podcast, newsletter, YouTube channel, LinkedIn strategy, Instagram Reels, TikTok presence, webinar series, book project, and community all at the same time. Do not do that. Pick one main platform. One.”

To stand out, you have to be great. And you can’t be great in 12 places.

3. Stick to a Consistent Schedule

If you take my class, you will hear one word more than any other — “consistency.”

Consistency is more important than genius.

Once you begin, give yourself 18 months at least to see if it’s working. You can build your “room,” but you have to keep showing up. This also has powerful SEO and AI visibility advantages, of course.

You’ve implied to your audience that you’re going to help them solve a problem.

“The promise does not need to be clever, ” Joe said, “It needs to be clear.”

Over time, you become part of your audience’s weekly routine. Your goal is to become a habit.

4. Build Your Audience

Joe advised, “Audience building is not just publishing. It is relationship building. This is the part that gets missed because it is not scalable at first.”

He offered specific advice:

Make a list of 20 people who matter to the future of the audience you want to serve. They could be peers, customers, readers, event organizers, authors, podcast hosts, niche experts, future collaborators, or people already gathering the audience you care about.

Then help them. Share their work. Comment with substance. Interview them. Send the useful email. Introduce them to someone. Buy their book. Attend their event. Meet them in person when you can.

The future may be AI-powered, but trust is still built person by person.

5. Audience Precedes Community

Most creators miss the biggest opportunity. Once they build an audience, they stop there. But the most value, the most fun, the most connection comes through a community.

A community differs from an audience in three ways:

1. There is communion. People know each other and become friends.
2. There is a shared purpose.
3. There is a shared direction (which might change over time as the community pulls you forward).

This is the room. This will matter the most in the AI Era.

How do you know you’re ready? Do you have a few super fans? It doesn’t have to be a big group. Maybe 5-10 people who just want to know more. They comment on your posts. They ask questions. They’re excited about your ideas.

If you want to know a whole lot more about community-building, please take a look at the book Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.

Build the Reason First

I’ll let Joe Pulizzi take us home on this post. Here are some of his concluding comments:

I keep thinking about that room at The Uprising.

The trust. The conversations. The openness. The willingness to help. The feeling that the people there were not just attending another event, but participating in something that mattered to them.

That is rare. I believe more of us are going to need that.

The people who have real trust with a specific audience will have an advantage. The people who have direct relationships will have an advantage. The people who are known for something will have an advantage.

Start with the person you want to serve. Start with the problem they are embarrassed to admit. Start with the one platform you can commit to. Start with the 20 people you can help. Start with a promise you can keep every week.

Do that long enough, and the community has a chance to appear.

Build the reason first. The campfire comes later.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post Content creators don’t start with “the room” appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

More than a decade ago, I predicted that the surge in digital content would trigger a content arms race. I called this Content Shock. To stand out amid this tsunami of posts, podcasts, and Reels, it would require higher levels of investment in creative resources or promotions, and likely both. I forecast that as content niches became saturated, it would be impossible for many businesses to compete.

While this sounds like common sense, at the time, this was probably the most controversial marketing blog post ever written. The idea sent a chill down the spines of content marketing service providers, and I became a target of derision.

Of course I was right. Today, Content Shock isn’t a theory. It’s a daily reality made worse by this relentless barrage of AI content.

Is there a strategy to overcome Content Shock today?

Yes, but we are about to take an unexpected turn.

I want to be very direct about your future and your content, whether you are creating for a company, a customer, or a personal brand.

There have been many posts about AI taking over our marketing jobs. I won’t sugarcoat things. I think that is probably true. Follow the money. Companies have to make an ROI from AI investments, and the unfortunate first place they’ll look is headcount.

The hopeful marketers out there opine that truly “authentic” content will save our jobs. That is not enough. Bots can be pretty convincing.

I believe there is a permanent place for human content, but success requires a radical new mindset. Let’s get into it.

Reaching toward Springsteen

I recently listened to AI-generated songs that mimicked Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. In fact, the sound was indistinguishable.

But would  I ever pay money to see a computer in concert? No. I want to see the man. The Boss.

Why? Isn’t music just music?

The difference is, Bruce means something to me because he’s an artist. He communicates in a very raw, intimate way, interpreting our human experience.

I’ve loved Brice since I was a kid, and I will always love him, no matter what happens with AI. Likewise, there will be poets, painters, and even podcasters I will always love, even if AI overwhelms us with fantastic content tailored to us (which is already happening).

So this is the key idea. If you are competent, you’re a commodity. You’re ignorable. Your content must approach the level of Bruce, or at least what would be considered star-quality in your industry. Your content must approach the emotional level of art.

I’ve never heard a content marketing strategy explained this way before, but it is a new day, and this demands new rules.

If you’re chunking out blog posts and podcasts because you’re afraid not to, your time is up. Even “human” storytelling can be effectively mimicked by bots. But there is one place we will always own — our human vulnerability.

The advantage in vulnerability

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog post about accomplishing a great lifetime achievement and then feeling completely empty … even depressed.

I told the people in my RISE community that I was afraid to write a blog post about this — wouldn’t I come across as a jerk? Here is a dude who is so successful he’s depressed. Sheesh.

But I have this internal signal. Whenever I am afraid of something, I do it. That’s how I grow.

So I wrote the post and received a massive outpouring of positive comments. Why? I’m convinced it was the unexpected vulnerability. In other words, I was providing an interpretation of my human experience. That is art.

I had a human point of view. AI does not have a point of view. If you prompt three AI platforms to create a movie script, you will get three of the same movies based on successful formulas from the past. If you put this same prompt in the hands of three directors, you’ll get three entirely different movies based on their human experience.

As we move forward with our “human content,” vulnerability is usually the missing factor. We can’t just slap a stock photo of people in an office on our content and call it “human.” Where is the human experience? Where is the point of view?

The only way we’ll be different from the bots is by digging deep and having the courage to share our human experience. That small difference elevates content beyond the bots.

Turning vulnerability into business benefits

Roxana Hurducas is an acclaimed B2B branding expert and co-founder of Drivion. She recently told me an extraordinary story of how sharing her life experience on a Facebook page laid the foundation for her business success:

“Ten years ago, building a personal brand wasn’t on my radar. Yet, looking back, I realize I was laying its foundation brick by brick, without even knowing it.

“At the time, I worked as a marketing and PR manager for a courier company. It was my name and face, not a faceless corporate logo, that responded to client issues and concerns on Facebook. I answered from my personal account, treating every message with empathy and honesty. People really loved that human touch, though sometimes, I’ll admit, it was overwhelming.

“Later, after a very public life event—a brain surgery I openly shared about—I stepped into a new level of vulnerability with my audience. Sharing my life reality, not just my business wins, built even more trust and a genuine connection.

“As my personal life evolved, I realized I wanted to separate my family’s stories from my professional updates. I started a new account, “The Untraditional Family,” where I was radically honest about topics like raising my kids, navigating divorce, and even my third marriage. At first, I thought these stories would interest a different audience, but something surprising happened.

“Whether they first ‘met’ me through business or family stories, my audiences began to merge. People who knew me as the marketing manager followed my personal account. And those who followed my family journey became interested in my professional activities. The reason? Vulnerability, authenticity, and honesty. By sharing both the challenges and the joys of my human experience — the parts of life most people hide — I became not just a brand or a professional, but a fully relatable person.

“Now, when I meet people at events, they already know me. They trust me, not only as a communications professional, but as a woman, a mother, a partner, and a human being who owns her story. That trust, hard-earned and real, extends to every business relationship I have.

“If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: people need stories, especially stories they can relate to. And allowing your audience to see the real, unfiltered you — beyond your résumé — can become your strongest professional asset.”

How is Roxana’s storytelling different from that of any great artist? Like our favorite artists, painters, and poets, she is bravely connecting to an audience through her interpretation of life and its meaning.

And AI can’t touch that.

Art from anybody

I recognize that Roxana’s level of personal sharing is unique and may be uncomfortable for many people. But just showing any humanity at all can give you an edge in a boring, buttoned-up field.

I recently had a coaching call with a well-known gastrointestinal surgeon. He was building a new business and recognized an opportunity to create content on his website.

“I don’t have a human story, he said. “I’m a scientist. I talk about facts. I talk about fiber in your diet. How is this anything that approaches art?”

My suggested content:

“I was sitting at my kitchen table with the sun streaming through the window on a beautiful day. My wife came to the table with a plate of hot, homemade cinnamon bread. Yes, this was a wonderful treat. But it was also a gift of life. My wife knows how important fiber is in our diet, and she makes a special point of preparing meals high in fiber. She plans our meal around fiber. You might be wondering exactly how much fiber you need, so let’s talk about that today …”

“OK,” the physician said, “I get it!”

My point is, whether you are in B2B, B2C, or a doctor writing about fiber, everyone has a human story for human readers.

The creator versus the Content Artist

Some of the following ideas were inspired by the work of Scott Belsky.

Here’s a comparison of the content creator who AI will replace versus the Content Artist who will persist.

The Creators of today …

Creators trade quality for speed. They’re only trying to get a good-enough video cut, or they’re flooding the zone with TikTok posts to meet a schedule and hit an engagement goal.

Creators must conform to algorithms, which makes their content ephemeral.

The entry barriers to being a Creator are low. Prompt-driven, generative AI tools lower the floor so that anyone can be a Creator of some kind.

For Creators, the content is the means, not an end.

The Content Artists … 

Content Artists are never willing to trade beauty for speed. Sure, artists do quick sketches and explorations, but these exercises serve to explore the full range of possibilities.

They require creative control, and giving it up to a prompt-based generative tool is like a sculptor working without their hands.

Only Content Artists craft the meaning-infused stories that thrill and break us. While their work may not be fast or optimized for clicks, their stories teach us about ourselves and advance our understanding of the world.

Content Artists make units of culture.

That’s why we will always love the artists. And that’s what it takes for an audience to love you, too.

People conflate what enables creators with what might replace artists. People see the “AI slop” capabilities of new generative models and then declare the “end of fine art” and “RIP Hollywood,” as if the founding of McDonald’s would kill our desire for fine cuisine.

You still matter. But you must become an artist.

Overcoming Content Shock in an AI World

Here’s the great enigma of this reality.

Content Artists need time, freedom, and space. They need patience and reward for the risks they take. They need control of their workflow and pace.

This list of needs would be laughed out of most boardrooms eager to harvest human capital from AI investments.

So this is an opportunity, isn’t it? Great marketing is about non-conformity, not conformity. If everyone is zigging toward AI slop, maybe the most audacious move is zagging away from it.

Content Shock is nothing new. Let’s be honest. Does it really matter if we have a hundred competitors or a million of them? We’re not going to win by creating more AI slop that just adds to the problem.

As content creators use AI to flood the zone and grab our attention as cheaply and efficiently as possible, consumers will still crave more crafted, deeply human stories. As creating content becomes easier, the bar for what makes an extraordinary and unforgettable story will rise to the level of art.

Will you rise with it?

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post How to overcome Content Shock in a world of AI slop appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

For more than 15 years, I’ve studied and written about “rising above the noise” — how a business or individual can be seen, heard, and discovered amid the overwhelming wall of content competition.

Since I wrote about Content Shock more than 10 years ago, the total number of hours each day that consumers spend watching, listening to, reading, and interacting with content has barely grown. At the same time, technological innovations in production and distribution, the rise of user-generated content, and the proliferation of premium content have created a dizzying array of new choices.

This is Content Shock on steroids. There are 50 times more amateur uploaders than professionals on Spotify, 25,000 times more hours of content produced last year on YouTube than on all traditional television networks and video streaming services, and AI has flood the zone and is now the dominant source of web content.

So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered a new McKinsey Research report that offers an important new clue about how content actually cuts through effectively.

The breakthrough idea in this report is that most businesses focus on the time spent on content and the size of their audience. This overlooks a more important issue: the quality of time spent.

Not all consumer attention is created equal. Consumption and monetization vary widely across the content marketing spectrum, and the quality of the attention is the reason for that variability.

Let’s dive into this today and learn about how to measure and optimize the quality of attention on your content.

The drivers of attention value

Backed by an in-depth survey of 7,000 consumers worldwide, McKinsey developed an “attention equation” that reveals the full drivers of attention value. Attention doesn’t simply equal the amount of time spent; it equals the amount of valuable time spent, driven by focus and intent. 

Using a new equation, McKinsey measured the value of consumer attention across 20 media channels. Not all content types are created alike. The value of an hour of consumption ranged from:

$33 per hour for live sports,

$17 per hour for live concerts

$7.18 for movies

$0.37 for books

$0.25 for social media posts

$0.12 per hour for digital music

$0.05 for podcasts

This is common sense. If you’re attending a live sports event or a concert,  you’ve paid a lot of money for that “content.” You’re committed!

But looking at the “lower tier” of content we usually produce — social media posts and podcasts — there’s a massive difference McKinsey describes as an “attention quotient.”

The attention quotient consists of two primary components: 1) consumers’ level of focus, or how actively they’re engaged with the content, and 2) the job to be done, or why they are consuming the content. Taken together, these components have significant predictive power on monetization.

Let’s look at these two factors — level of focus and the job to be done — more carefully to see how this might work in practice in our own companies.

Level of focus

McKinsey’s research revealed several insights about where and how consumer focus differs across media:

• In-person experiences elicit the highest level of focus.
• Books (digital and physical) engage audiences to a comparable degree with live experiences
• Console and PC gaming is the only digital medium that gets close to live levels of focus
• Community events create a high level of focus, even in digital, where group activities elicit higher focus than more solitary activities.
• Younger consumers aren’t less attentive; they just pay attention to different media. Gen Z consumers and baby boomers report the same average level of focus, but it’s split across different media: Gen Z consumers are highly focused when playing video games, while boomers prefer reading.
• Overall, the more focused consumers are, the more likely they are to spend. Across consumers, a 10 percent increase in average focus paid across media is associated with a 17 percent increase in consumer spending. Consumers in the top quartile of focus spend twice as much as those in the bottom quartile.

The job to be done

The second factor builds on a famous framework created by Clayton Christensen. When a person consumes your content, what are they “hiring it” for? What is the job to be done?

The primary “job to be done” of media consumption falls into one of five categories (from most to least valuable):

1. To enjoy something that I love. In-person experiences—including live concerts and music festivals, theme parks, sporting events, and movie theaters—dominate this category. Physical books and (to a far lesser extent) audiobooks are also consumed primarily for love.
2. For education and information. This is the primary job to be done for newspapers, magazines, and podcasts.
3. For social connection. This is the primary job of social media sites (Facebook more so than others). Social video (including Instagram reels and TikTok but not YouTube), live events, and video games overindex on this role.
4. For light entertainment and relaxation. This is the primary job of cable television, video streaming, social video, and mobile and console gaming.
5. For background ambience. This is the primary role of radio, digital music, podcasts, and cable television.

Adding these two factors to our content analysis begins to shed light on why not all marketing-related content is created equal:

Implications for demographics

The research also allowed McKinsey to tease out three distinct customer groups based on their high level of economic value:

Content lovers

Entertainment omnivores represent 13 percent of all consumers. Curious and passionate, they spend 2.4 times more money on content and consume 1.7 times more content than the average consumer. They’re the superfans, casting their consumption nets wide to see the movie franchise, watch the spin-off show, ride the themed roller coaster, and buy the items advertised at every step.

Interactivity enthusiasts

The immersion seekers (16 percent). Competitive and lively, they love video games, sports, online betting, and comedy. They prefer endorsements to advertisements, overindex in user-generated content, and spend a reasonable amount of time on online message boards such as Reddit. Although eager consumers, they find the modern media landscape confusing, difficult to navigate, and overly expensive.

Community trendsetters

The culture creators (10 percent). Extroverted tastemakers, they seek out large communal events such as concerts, movies, and theme parks. They’re active on social media and drive online culture and fandom, often with outsize spending on their hobbies and interests. They enjoy advertisements more than any other segment, and when they’re not setting the cultural conversation, they’re shopping.

The report clusters the remaining 60 percent of consumers in groups with lower attention value, and thus lower economic value.

Implications for marketers

The competition for consumer attention has long been measured by audience size and time spent. This view misses the whole story (a point I made in my 2017 book, The Content Code).

It also reinforces the basic idea behind Content Shock: you’re probably going to have to pay more for the content types that cut through the noise.

The attention equation helps clarify what the winners in that competition have suspected: Quality and relevance, not just quantity, of attention go a long way in determining success. In a media environment defined by abundance, fragmentation, and distraction, marketers must ask themselves:

• Is my content designed for high focus or low focus?

• What job am I really being hired for?

• How can I elevate the focus or shift the job?

Think about this practical example: Google wanted to shine a light on the Nobel Prize-winning work of its genius AI leader, Demis Hassabis.

Most companies might put out a press release or a blog post — very low attention value. But Google produced a full-length documentary called The Thinking Game. It already has 14 million views on YouTube alone.

According to the McKinsey formula, this film is already worth more than $100 million in attention. Let’s say it took $5 million to make the film. This would break most content marketing budgets, but within the McKinsey model, that is a bargain. And that return on attention that will only grow as the movie is viewed over time.

Implications for strategy

This research tells us something I’ve been circling around for years: the brands that win aren’t the ones who shout the loudest, but the ones who create moments that matter. Attention is no longer a game of volume. It’s not about hacking the algorithm or flooding the zone. It’s about earning focus and aligning with the deeper job your audience needs you to do in their lives.

That’s the frontier now. Not more content … but higher-quality attention.

The companies that embrace this shift will stop measuring the wrong things. They’ll stop obsessing about impressions and start designing for immersion. They’ll stop producing noise and view content as nourishment. And in a world overwhelmed by Content Shock, that will be the ultimate competitive advantage.

I also want to connect the dots between the Attention Equation and a post I wrote about ethically-sourced marketing. If we turn our focus to higher-value content, it could reduce the social media “litter” that drives up energy costs and funds online hate and bullying.

Make something worth hiring. Make something worth focusing on. Make something worthy of the precious, finite human attention that has become the most valuable currency in the world.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Nano Banana

The post Research points to the “Attention Equation” behind measurable content success appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I have been so very blessed to be an author that people trust. Against all odds, people actually buy my books, even years after they are published. They have been translated into 15 languages, used as college textbooks, and are found in more than 700 libraries worldwide.

Except one.

Today, I submit to you one of my biggest disappointments and professional enigmas: The book that bombed. My invisible book. And oh yes, it might have been my best book ever.

My best work?

If you search for the “best marketing books” on Amazon, here are the top five, and the book ratings:

• All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin = 4.5
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout = 4.5
• The One-Page Marketing Plan by Dib = 4.7
• Hook Point by Kane = 4.4
• Building a Story Brand by Miller = 4.6

The average reader rating of any business book on Amazon is 4.2, according to ChatGPT.

And then there is my 2021 book Cumulative Advantage, with a score of 4.7. It stands up to the best in terms of quality, or at least reader appreciation.

Many readers consider Cumulative Advantage to be my best book. And yet it is my lowest-selling book, by far. In the world of business books, you can call a book a bestseller if it reaches 10,000 in sales. My bestselling book, Marketing Rebellion, sold 14,000 copies in its first month. 

And yet Cumulatove Advantage has sold only 1,700 books since its release in 2021. This was the very next book I wrote after the mega-hit Marketing Rebellion. What the heck happened?

I have a theory.

The story of the invisible book

I only write a book when it solves a meaningful problem. A trend I noticed in many of my consulting calls was that people often seem to get stuck mid-career. They might experience some success and plateau in their businesses, professional lives, and personal brands.

How do you build momentum for a life, a career, an idea? What is the strategy to reach new levels of success when the growth curve flattens out?

I came across a concept called cumulative advantage. While this concept is well-researched and documented in the field of social psychology, the theory about how momentum works in the world has never been applied to the practical reality of business.

Making this connection was an elegant and practical idea that could help many people. I concocted a unique and entertaining way to tell the story of momentum. I compared my career to the supremely successful author Tim Ferriss. We had both started as authors at the same time, but he had rocketed to fame. To tell a story of the five steps of cumulative advantage, I traced our paths to answer the question: Why did Ferris know Oprah, and I did not?

It was a fun, fast-paced story packed with insights. I knew this was a great book, and based on the rising success of my previous books, I doubled down on my investment in editing, design, and promotion. For the first time, I hired an outside PR firm and an influencer agency. I created a snazzy “movie trailer:”

I spent a small fortune on the book …

And nothing happened

I published Cumulative Advantage in early 2021, and many early readers declared it my best work. Here are a few reviews … not to puff myself up, but to establish that the quality of the book was not the issue here:

• “This book is so important. Never before has the career path for the entrepreneur, inventor, or other creatives been so clearly defined, laid out, and mapped.”
• “I will state emphatically that HE HAS OUTDONE HIMSELF when he wrote Cumulative Advantage.”
• “This book will have a profound impact on your life and how you view your place in the world. I couldn’t put this book down, because it provided hope in a very difficult time.”
• “Such an extraordinary book! I devoured Cumulative Advantage in a single weekend.”
• “As good as the entire book is, the last chapter alone is worth far more than the price of the book.”

I was an established author. I had written an excellent, helpful, and inspiring book. I spent a ton of money on promotion. And it bombed.

I will never know for sure, but here is my theory of the invisible book …

The issue of timing

I knew this book was launching at a difficult time. We were still in a pandemic. This placed several obstacles in my way:

1. The world was still in a state of panic, and businesses were struggling. Many people were holding on to their money, and buying books was not a priority. ALL book sales in every category were in decline.
2. At the height of the pandemic, other authors like me spent that downtime writing books. Almost every marketing author published books at the same time, so the competition for those scarce book dollars was fierce.
3. All events and conferences had been cancelled. Normally, when I publish a new book, I would embark on a speaking tour. Speaking engagements sell a lot of books.
4. Nonfiction book sales have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. While non-fiction books are growing, overall business book sales have been in decline.

So even though I sensed the timing of the book launch was awful, I went ahead with it. The book was ready. The book was great. And by the way, I had struggled financially during the pandemic, too. I could use the boost!

The challenge of promotion

I had taken a big swing on the promotional budget, and that also bombed:

• The PR pro I hired had come highly recommended, but was so ineffective that she returned my money.
• I experimented with a “micro-influencer” campaign, and that also fell flat. What I learned is that micro-influencers are mostly interested in promoting themselves.
• My other promotional efforts did not take off. The mood of the world was so pandemic-depressed that even a positive book of hope was hard to sell.

I probably could have taken another shot at promoting the book in 2022, but I felt so deflated and shocked by the failure. I had not completely pieced together what went wrong. And I had started working on a new project: Belonging to the Brand.

What’s in a name?

As I dissected my failure to learn from it, I think Cumulative Advantage is probably a terrible name for a book. It’s even hard to say. If I had to do it over again, I would have called the book “Relentless Relevance,” because that offers a more straight-forward idea of what the book is about.

The book had a great subtitle: How to Build Momentum for Your Ideas, Business, and Life Against All Odds. However, most people are unaware of subtitles.

The role of luck

Was my career as an author finished? I put everything I had into that book, but I lost a lot of time and money in the process.

I had another big idea burning inside of me, and I needed to push that idea into the world: The vital role of brand communities in the future of marketing.

I needed to go back to basics. What worked? What went wrong? I never wanted to have a failure like that again.

I conducted a thorough review of book marketing best practices. I even interviewed many authors for best practices that I might have missed. I found something surprising. Almost every successful author said that the most significant boost to their book sales was luck. Ironically, that is also a key idea in the Cumulative Advantage book — dig deep enough and you’ll find that behind every mega-success is some piece of dumb luck.

So bad luck, bad timing, and maybe a bad title had worked against me. I would not be deterred. I keep writing in a bold and brave way, as always.

The impact

Since that book, I’ve written two more, and they’ve both sold well. I love the creative challenge of writing, and I’m gratified when people buy the books and enjoy them.

Still, it stings every time I look at my monthly book sales and see a big fat zero for Cumulative Advantage. It will always hold a special place in my heart, even if it’s not on many bookshelves.

I hope this provides some balance to the Mark Schaefer narrative. Not every project is a success, but you must keep moving forward. That’s an important lesson about momentum.

And if you’d like to learn more about momentum, you can always buy the book. It would make me smile today.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post The sad and mysterious tale of my invisible book appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been working on an AI-fueled MarkBot that I’ll make available to you one day soon. I’ve been testing it and asked it to dig deep into all the content on the internet about me, providing me with interview questions I’ve never been asked before — questions I would love to answer.

The result was fun and inspiring. The bot provided questions that were surprising and wonderfully thought-provoking. So, today, I am answering my own questions. Why not? If these ten questions from my MarkBot amused me, maybe they will entertain and inform you, too.

This is a first for me, maybe a first for anybody. I suppose I am interviewing myself.

Here we go with the AI questions and my answers:

1. If “brand community” were a person, what kind of personality would it have?

It would be like Mr. Rogers.

Fred Rogers was an iconic American TV personality who hosted a long-running children’s TV program. Fred Rogers always led with love. Didn’t judge. Offered new wisdom every day. Didn’t hide from tough topics. And he never pressured you to buy anything.

2. “You write often about belonging as a marketing force. But what role has belonging played in your own life?”

I do not make friends easily. I wish I had more close friends, and I am working on that.

A great benefit of hosting my online marketing community is that day after day, I have significant conversations with people that turn into real friendships.

So although I have had a lack of belonging in my life, I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time getting to experience the connections through an online community.

You can learn more about the RISE community here and I hope you will join us. Maybe we’ll even become friends!

3. “You’ve warned about ‘content shock’ for over a decade. Is it possible that we’ve now entered an era of insight shock where even wisdom is becoming a commodity?”

To level-set new readers, I coined the term “content shock” in 2014 to explain why, in the long run, most content marketing is not economically sustainable. While considered controversial and even inflammatory at the time, this prediction certainly came true as the cost of competing in an oversaturated marketing world sank in.

Now, we’re in a world where content is a commodity. Not just content, but intelligence. Through AI, the economic value of intelligence is approaching zero.

Perhaps we are becoming numb to the magic of AI, but a few years ago, the idea of a computer coming up with these relevant and provocative questions would have been unthinkable.

I could argue that wisdom (knowing the correct answers) is a commodity. But that’s not the same as insight. Insight is a human revelation. It’s connecting the dots in a new way. And that is something AI will never be able to replace.

4. “You speak of ‘seams’ in Cumulative Advantage — brief openings for momentum. Have you ever overlooked a seam in your own career? What did it teach you about timing or regret?”

I have missed many seams … intentionally. Here is an example.

In 2012, I published the first book on influencer marketing, Return On Influence. This book was years ahead of its time. The term “influence marketing” was not even a mainstream concept. I was forecasting a seam: power was shifting in our world from established media channels to creators building passionate audiences.

With this insight, I could have become the “go-to” guy for influence marketing. I could have created an influencer marketing agency and plowed right through that seam.

But I decided not to because I would have been bored out of my mind. I don’t want to work on the same thing every day. I had no desire to build an influencer agency with a staff of employees.

I have carefully selected my seams, and I don’t have any regrets about missing out on any particular opportunity.

5. What do you admire most about your younger self’s marketing mindset? What do you shake your head at?

To put it mildly, I was a very “heart-centered” young man in high school and college. But when I entered the world of business, numbers and financial performance usually took precedence, and I had to learn that hard lesson. Thankfully, I had an understanding and nurturing boss who helped guide me on a more analytical path.

Eventually, I was part of a program to groom me into one of the top leaders of a Fortune 100 company. But once I had children, I felt that the sacrifices required to keep going up the corporate ladder were too great, and I needed to find my heart again.

I once had a teacher who told me, “there is no weakness, just over-done strengths,” and I believe that is true. It’s good to be heart-centered, but if that is all you have to offer, you might not make the best business decisions. You must have a keen appreciation of business realities to succeed. Today, I think I am pretty balanced between my heart and my head.

So I love the heart of my younger self, and I’m glad I have revitalized it.

6. “In the book KNOWN, you help others build influence. But what’s the one part of being known that no one prepared you for?”

Many years ago, a young man nervously approached me at a conference and said, “It took all my courage to come up and talk to you.”

That just broke my heart. I think I am an accessible person. I never want to send out an elitist celebrity vibe. I cut my own grass and do my own laundry like most people, for goodness’ sake. I never, ever want people to be nervous or intimidated around me. I was unprepared for that kind of reaction and have always felt weird about it.

7. What’s something your non-marketing friends or family understand about your work better than some marketers do?

Nothing. As far as I know, none of my friends or family members understand what I do (other than my wife). I don’t think they read my blog or books. Probably don’t even know I have a podcast. That’s fine with me. What I do seems irrelevant to personal relationships.

8. What’s a moment of unexpected joy you’ve experienced on stage or with a reader that you’ll never forget?

There are so many. It’s hard to pick just one!

There was one moment, though, that put wind beneath my wings.

If you’ve read my book on personal branding, KNOWN (hey, you’re my Bot… of course, you’ve read KNOWN!), in the first chapter, I tell a story about the beginning of my personal branding journey. I was at the lowest point in my life. My darkest years.

At the end of the book, I could report some of the benefits of that long journey to become known. After a speech in Scotland, a young woman approached me with tears in her eyes. “I just wanted to see you and tell you that I am who I am because of you.”

And then, there were tears in my eyes, too. For the first time, it dawned on me the type of impact I was having on my readers.

9. You’ve seen the rise of social media, influencer marketing, and AI—what’s a trend you once believed in that didn’t pan out?

I’ve had a decent track record when it comes to forecasting what’s coming next, but I had one memorable miss.

I thought voice assistants like Alexa would become the future of e-commerce. And, perhaps they should be. Perhaps, they will be one day — with AI assistance.

But it’s been a bomb so far. I thought Alexa would open up a dominant new marketing channel.

10. If all your books were wiped out tomorrow and you could only save one sentence from everything you’ve written, what would it be?

That’s easy.

“The Most Human Company Wins.”

That nails it for me.

What do you think of this interview? Does it give you ideas of how you can use AI for your own content and marketing ideas?

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post My All-time Best Interviewer Was an AI Bot appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The introduction of AI as our friend / co-worker / companion / enemy has heightened the emotion in our marketing discussions, but perhaps nothing has fanned the outrage more than the idea that AI survives by stealing our content. Protecting our content from AI has become a global obsession.

One company just posed a solution that raised eyebrows. Cloudflare, a technology company that helps websites secure and manage internet traffic, introduced a new permission-based setting that enables customers to automatically block artificial intelligence companies from collecting their digital data.

The company, which handles about 20 percent of all internet traffic, has seen a sharp increase in AI data crawlers on the web. It has proposed setting up “toll roads” where AI companies would pay to access content.

A cry of “YEEESSS!” undoubtedly echoed through the halls of many publishers and authors. Finally, the mighty economics of this revolution are tilting in our favor. But has it?

Before you sign up for this sheath of protection, consider the big picture.  If the crawlers refuse to pay for your content, do you want to be out of the search index? We gave away our content to appease Google. Now we have to do it again to make the AI overlords happy. I, for one, will not adopt the Cloudflare policy.

Two years ago, I published an article that now seems prescient: Protecting Your Content from AI: A Contrarian View. The insight from this post bears repeating in light of these important developments, so here is a re-cap:

The Contrarian View

There has been a flurry of panicked posts about protecting your content from AI. There have been lawsuits, probes, and new software that prevents sites like ChatGPT from accessing your content from being absorbed into large language models. Within 14 days of the availability of code that can prevent AI data scraping, nearly 20% of the top 1,000 websites in the world began using it.

What should you and your business do? Should you keep AI away?

My advice today seems counterintuitive. Maybe when AI comes to suck up your content, you should say, “suck away.” Actually, we need to come up with a better phrase than that. But you know what I mean.

Let’s pause, take a deep breath, and rationally examine the issue of protecting your content from AI in the context of your future business success.

Acknowledging complexity

First, I must acknowledge that this is an insanely complex and evolving issue. The legal, ethical, and economic considerations for large enterprises, newspapers, movie studios, and other media companies are unique.

When it comes to protecting your content from AI, any individual artist, author, or other creator may disagree with me, and I honor their right to make their own decisions.

My post today specifically aims at content creators, entrepreneurs, and businesses trying to rise above the noise and achieve business benefits from their content marketing.

The bottom line is that I believe more business benefits will accrue to you by NOT protecting your content from AI, even if it is copyrighted. To understand why, let’s begin by reviewing an important content marketing philosophy …

Unleash your content

Here is a fundamental truth: The economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero.

Chances are you’re working hard to create amazing content. You post on social media and engage with fans to build your audience. All good. Now, your job is to get that content to move through your audience and beyond, and that means focusing on content transmission (This strategy was the subject of my book The Content Code).

I’ve been against gated content, and the ridiculous notion that you shouldn’t publish on “rented land.” Of course you should. My view is, publish your content everywhere your audience could possibly find it, consume it, and share it! Unleash your content!

The first consideration: If you protect your content from AI — a technology that is becoming the foundation of search and content discovery — and your competitors don’t, will you be better off? Probably not.

An old dilemma

The argument about protecting your content from AI is strangely familiar. This is the same debate we had in the early days of content marketing — “What??? You want me to give away my content and best ideas for free?”

Yes, we all had to do that because if we didn’t provide free and helpful content, the competitor down the street would. Their content would be highlighted by search, discovered, and shared … and we would lose.

Publishing free content was a radical idea. Before the internet, many businesses generated revenue from their proprietary content. Research firms built profitable businesses by selling original reports for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That business model is now nearly obsolete. For better or for worse, information flows freely on the web. Once you publish anything, anywhere, it will probably find its way to the open waters of the web.

Let’s get specific about what’s happening to copyrighted content today, with or without AI. I put tremendous effort into my books, and making money from a business book is no easy task. Every month, I discover some nefarious group selling illegally digitized versions of my books. There are even sites that sell my blog posts as aids in writing student term papers.

For a while, I tried to fight back. But it’s like that arcade game Whac-A-Mole. Every time I try to take a whack, another illegal site pops up somewhere else. If people truly want to access and share your content, there is no recourse, no stopping it.

So, even if you create a wall around your content, it will probably seep into the AI machine anyway. If you use software defense against AI, what would prevent someone from manually cutting and pasting it into an LLM?

Let’s put the issue of attribution aside for a moment. If you’re not freaked out by Google using your content for free, why are you freaked out about AI using it?

My first business from AI

A few months ago, I secured my first consulting contract from ChatGPT.

A new client found me by searching for “top 10 marketing experts.” I tried this myself, and the list would shuffle on each query, but I was usually in the top 10. Friends tried this in Europe, and the same names came up.

Let’s be honest. Am I one of the top 10 marketing experts in the world? No, I’m not. I could easily name 10 people in my circle of immediate friends who are smarter than me!

How did I make that AI-generated list? It’s the same way I show up on “best-of” blog lists and Google search results — I’ve had the tenacity and courage to put my content into the world with fierce consistency for 15 years.

AI is the future of search — it’s called Search Generative Experience (SGE). It’s already incorporated into Google.

My new client found me because I’m present on the web, and now I’m also present on AI. I believe that will serve me well as search evolves.

The cost of invisibility

Beyond revenue, there is an implication for impact and influence.

One of the organizations fighting AI content practices is The New York Times. This news organization is arguably the newspaper of record in the United States and one of the most important news sources in the world. As more students, researchers, and others turn to ChatGPT and other platforms for knowledge and research, is it in the best interest of The New York Times to remain unaccountable?

If you’re protecting your content from AI, you’re no longer part of the public conversation, at least as it is represented on ChatGPT and other AI platforms. Your view is invisible. What do you risk when you and your business are unaccounted for?

My smart friend Aleksandra Pimenides recently commented in our RISE marketing community:

“AI is an important source of knowledge transmission. Teachers take something and pass it on to their students. Libraries have books for people to read and learn. Likewise, LLMs act as an intermediary of transmission. Do Newton’s descendants get paid every time a student is taught the principle of gravity? Do libraries get fined when people go there to read and learn about subjects for free? To what extent should information and knowledge be monetized? Maybe there’s a distinction to be made between knowledge and information?”

A view of the true risk

I think much of the anxiety on this subject comes from an image of some AI bot cutting and pasting your unique content without attribution. That’s not exactly how it works.

Here is an explanation from Benedict Evans, which appeared in his wonderful newsletter (edited slightly for style):

“LLMs are not databases. They deduce or infer patterns in language by seeing vast quantities of text created by people — we write things that contain logic and structure, and LLMs look at that and infer patterns from it, but they don’t keep it. So ChatGPT might have looked at thousands of stories from The New York Times, but it hasn’t kept them. Moreover, those stories themselves are just a fraction of a fraction of a percent of all the training data. The purpose is not for the LLM to know the content of any given story or any given novel — the purpose is for it to see the patterns in the output of collective human intelligence.

“This is not Napster. OpenAI hasn’t ‘pirated’ your book or your story and it isn’t handing it out for free. In Tim O’Reilly’s great phrase, data isn’t oil; data is sand. It’s only valuable in the aggregate of billions and your novel is just one grain of dust in the Great Pyramid. This isn’t supposed to be an oracle or a database. It’s supposed to be inferring ‘intelligence’ from seeing as much of how people talk (as a proxy for how they think) as possible.

“If this is, at a minimum, a foundational new technology of the next decade, and it relies on all of us collectively acting as mechanical turks to feed it, do we all get paid, or do we collectively withdraw? It seems somehow unsatisfactory to argue that “this is worth a trillion dollars, and relies on using your work, but your own individual work is only 0.0001% so you get nothing.” Is it adequate or even correct to call this ‘fair use?’ Does it matter, in either direction? Do we change our definition of fair use?”

In the United States, copyright rights are limited by the doctrine of “fair use,” under which certain uses of copyrighted material for criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research may be considered fair.

As an example, I took a snippet from Benedict’s copyrighted newsletter, provided proper attribution, and used it today to teach. That’s fair use.

Here’s the problem with AI. Think of your copyrighted content as a lovely cake that you baked. It is your original and distinctive work. But inside AI, your work isn’t a cake. It’s an ingredient put into a blender to make a new cake. What’s fair use in that environment?

I dabble in watercolor painting. Seeking credit in an AI model is similar to the maker of my paints wanting attribution credit for this painting:

Even if I used one unique type of paint patented by a supplier, would I give them credit for the painting? No. I actually sold this painting. Should I give part of the revenue to Arches, the company who supplied the paper? I literally could not have made this without the paper and paint yet it is my original work, period.

Attribution

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.” – Voltaire

I think most of the “protecting your content from AI” conversation would disappear if we were assured we get credit for our work, in the case where credit might be important — like a meaningful, original idea. After all, we’re OK with Google scraping our content if we get credit for it in search results, right?

Let’s go back to the current state of the internet for a reality check.

In 2014, I wrote one of the most famous blog posts in marketing history, “Content Shock.” This is not idle bragging. The numbers back it up. “Content Shock” — a phrase I coined — has appeared in books, speeches, conferences, college classes, and millions of pieces of content. If you Google the term, there are 610 million results, like these:

Writing a bold post like this did its job. It helped establish thought leadership and provided thousands of links to my original article.

However.

I assure you that I have not received 610 million links back to my site! Even if I received a million links, that would mean I have attribution on just .002% of all references to my original idea.

Clearly, people are using and abusing my work without attribution. Does this mean I should block Google from accessing my post? Of course not.

As Tim O’Reilly said, data is sand that is only valuable when aggregated into something bigger. My blog post is a grain of sand in the content economy. If you want to be part of that economy, you must put pride aside.

No matter how protective I might feel about my intellectual property, it’s sand. And even if I am credited, who reads the footnotes?

In any case, I believe the problem of attribution will be resolved. It’s already happening. There are academic AI sites and writing assistants that allow you to search with references. I use an AI-powered tool through BuzzSumo that creates writing briefs with legitimate and relevant references. Very helpful, and it leads me to smart new content I can quote with attribution.

The option to learn original sources for attribution will be a more common option across all platforms eventually.

Conclusion

Comparing how content works on the web today versus content integrated into LLMs and AI search enables us to draw a rational conclusion, allowing AI bots to scrape content from our sites, at least for most businesses. AI will be a major component of search going forward.

This is a complex and evolving issue, but I believe that regulations and best practices will favor creators who allow their content to be used in LLMs over time. The attribution problem will likely be solved on many platforms and regulations will adjust to a new framing of “fair use.”

Having an effective presence within AI models and AI search utilities could result in business benefits that outweigh the risks of misusing your copyrighted content.

I’ll say once again that this is a complex issue but for most businesses, I think it makes sense to be part of the machine.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post Protecting Your Content From AI: Not So Fast! appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I have a confession to make.

I just hosted the 2025 edition of The Uprising, my annual marketing retreat. During this event, I became so intensely focused on the content and the conversations that I forgot to take notes. Happens every year. So, it’s quite a struggle writing a blog post without notes!

This is a great opportunity to ask for an AI assist, and the combination of resources that went into this write-up is impressive.

First, Daniel Nestle and Brian Piper used a recording technology called Plaud to instantly transcribe the live sessions. Brian then took these transcripts and the session slides to build a Custom GPT based on the event. I could then query the AI to help me fill in the blanks and present a representative sample of what happened at this electric event!

First, let’s set the stage …

What is an Uprising?

I don’t like big marketing events. They’re crowded, overwhelming, and generally boring. They are iterative — how to make slight improvements on our Facebook ads or improve our SEO — while the field of marketing is going through a cataclysmic transition right in front of our eyes.

The Uprising solves four problems in marketing events today:

1. It’s limited to 30 people. You have real conversations and make lifetime friends.
2. The focus is the future. What is coming next, and how do we get ready?
3. It’s safe and honest. My proudest moment was when people said, “I want to push back on that.” When do you see THAT happen at a marketing event?
4. It’s co-created. Everyone has an opportunity to participate at their comfort level. So we use the brains in the room! And … it’s a lot of fun! It is a retreat, after all.

Almost everyone who attends will tell you the same thing: It’s difficult to describe. This combination of a wooded lodge, generous people, great food, big brains, and relaxing fun ignites people and takes them to a new level of competence and confidence.

The Uprising has always been about digging beneath the surface, about meaningful connections and bold ideas. But this year, it felt different. More urgent. More human. More audacious. It was the best one ever.

By the way, The Uprising was inspired by my call-to-action in Marketing Rebellion to bring people together. You can’t have a rebellion without an uprising!

Now … what happened this year? Here are the voices, the visions, and the visceral truths that made this gathering unforgettable.

How AI is changing our customers

I kicked things off with a two-part presentation: 1) data on how AI is changing humanity (our customers!), and 2) how humans fit in this new AI-dominant ecosystem. It became a community-driven revelation of what it means to be a marketer in the age of synthetic intelligence.

This was a rallying cry. As AI seeps into every pore of our professional lives, I challenged the group to zoom out—to don’t obsess over AI’s creepy parts. Look at how we must evolve as marketers and serve these changing customers.

Drawing on my research for Belonging to the Brand and the newer Audacious, I painted a stark picture of the near future. We are stepping into a world where content is infinite, synthetic, and indistinguishable. AI won’t just change how we work. It will change who our customers are. Their expectations. Their behaviors. Even their identities, which I covered in this blog post.

Throughout the event, we discussed eight seismic shifts AI will bring to humanity: cognitive decline, emotional intelligence, a search for truth, moral judgment, human agency, creativity, meaning, and critical thinking.

And yet, there is hope. If we understand what makes us irreplaceable — our ability to form community, to inspire, to provide comfort, safety, and hope — we can thrive.

We live in a world where people may not care if the content is human or AI. My urgent plea was to MAKE THEM CARE. That phrase echoed through every session, becoming the unofficial motto of the event. It’s not about resisting the machines and more about embracing what is going to keep us relevant, including the personal brand, brand communities, and content that transcends this pandemic of dull.

Decoding Authenticity by Generations

Dr. Mara Singer revealed some new, original research on how emotional needs shift by generation. With her six pillars of authenticity—accuracy, connectedness, originality, legitimacy, expertise, and integrity—she deconstructed the most overused word in marketing.

She didn’t just talk about the importance of authenticity; she showed us how different generations construct it. For Gen Z, legitimacy and consistency matter more than you’d expect. For Boomers, expertise and accuracy still rule.

In a time when AI can mimic tone, replicate imagery, and fake just about everything, authenticity becomes your only real differentiator. Mara’s message was clear: authenticity is not a style. It’s a strategy.

One jaw-dropping reality is how children as young as six or seven are becoming TikTok influencers as they swarm Sephora stores to try skin care products. Another counter-intuitive fact is that older people place little value on originality in brands and marketing.

The Joy of Prompt Engineering

The brilliant Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media delivered an exquisitely practical talk. His rapid-fire breakdown of the seven levels of AI proficiency was like a map through the AI jungle. Starting from basic prompt writing to full-on multi-step automations, Andy gave us the tools to turn AI into a creative ally.

One of his themes: “Every prompt is a draft. Iterate. Improve. Reuse.”

He reminded us that AI doesn’t diminish creativity—it redefines it. And with the right mindset, we can all become architects of reusable, scalable, and deeply impactful content systems. Andy’s generosity in sharing his prompt playbook turned his session into an instant classic.

Navigating the Infinite Content Abyss

Brian Piper, with a futurist’s eye and a practitioner’s rigor, pulled back the curtain on what’s coming next in content.

He warned that we’ve moved from a world of content scarcity to Content Shock. And AI is making the goal of visibility even more difficult. In this new landscape, human-made content may soon be just 10% of what exists online.

His advice? Build communities. Focus on content that builds trust and emotional connection. Optimize not just for search engines, but for AI discovery systems, voice platforms, and emerging interfaces.

And most critically, become known. Not viral. Not famous. Known. Because in the chaos of AI, trust will be our last currency.

The AI-influenced customer journey

Dr. Matt Wilkinson brought PhD-level clarity to the AI conversation. Once a skeptic, now a strategic believer, he emphasized that AI is not a savior, but the powerful new influence on the customer’s decision process.

What stood out most was his call to reimagine the customer journey. With 80% of it happening before a human contact, AI is already deciding which brands get seen, which stories get heard.

His warning? Don’t get stuck in the past. The “how-to” blog post era is dying. We need to evolve into trusted guides, thought leaders, and distinctive voices that resonate even when we’re not in the room.

The Invisible Labor of Great Content

Ann Handley’s fireside chat with me was a masterclass in emotional resonance. She reminded us that meaningful work requires emotional fortitude. Every sentence you sweat over, every nuance you consider—it all matters.

She spoke of the importance of creating a body of work that endures. Of using ephemeral platforms to build something lasting. And of showing up with your whole heart, not just your content calendar.

Her insight? The journey is the outcome. And in a world chasing outcomes, that’s a radically beautiful stance. Ann and I talked about Phronesis — the ancient Greek concept of practical wisdom gained through hard work. In a world optimized for speed, maybe our greatest rebellion is thoughtfulness.

Ann gave us a glimpse of her upcoming book and captivated everyone wither her bold and honest answers to questions about her career and writing process.

The Future of Social Media

Kami Huyse took us on a journey from 2005 blogging panels to today’s fractured, frenetic social landscape. Through it all, one truth remains: community is the constant.

Her viral quote summed it up: “The first rule of social media is everything changes. What doesn’t change is the community’s desire to connect.”

Kami reminded us to follow the people, not the platforms. And more importantly, to co-create with them. Whether it’s a tweet, a TikTok, or a town hall, if it doesn’t resonate with your community, it’s noise.

Orchestrating Word-of-Mouth in a Scalable World

Sarah Neely, at her fourth Uprising, delivered a lesson in modern magic: scaling the unscalable. Word-of-mouth may feel spontaneous, but Sarah showed us it can be engineered.

She started with a deeply personal story of hauling plywood at muddy event sites and rose to architect campaigns that helped brands like Red Bull infiltrate Major League Baseball. Her framework? Activities. Goals. Targets. Story.

In that order. If you want people to talk about your brand, you must understand what they do before they buy and then intersect with those behaviors. Her message: Viral isn’t magic. It’s math. It’s emotion. And it’s a story worth sharing.

A Modern View of Metrics

Kyle Akerman led a session on modern marketing metrics. He identified common measurement problems all marketers face, including having too much data, having data in too many places, and focusing on vanity metrics.

Marketers spend very little time on measurement (one hour or week, or sometimes just one hour a month). So the challenge is, how do we make the most of that time?

Kyle said we should create (and document) a simple measurement plan. It should include the questions you want to answer, the data you need to answer the questions, and the actions you will take based on the data.  A good plan also includes the KPIs (with time-based targets), and key user segments (because aggregated data hides the important insights). 

Most companies can effectively measure marketing performance using Google’s “Holy Trinity” of free tools: Google Analytics (where data is stored), Google Tag Manager (the measurement implementation), and Looker Studio (visualization tool). Many marketers also benefit from the free heat mapping and session recordings provided by Microsoft Clarity.

A powerful reframe for measurement – it’s how we “listen” to the conversations happening on our websites.

The Audacious Workshop: Wine, Grit, and Bold Storytelling

The heartbeat of this year’s Uprising was the Audacious Workshop. With a real-world brand (Nicole Hayden’s Indiana Daylily Estates Winery) and a room full of brilliant minds, we put the theories of my book Audacious to the test. With the help of a new Audacious workbook (available here), we twisted her startup brand by having three teams brainstorm ways to disrupt the story, the media, and the storyteller.

From “our wine slept with your beer” to corn mazes ending in wine tastings, this was a ton of fun that resulted in a real marketing framework!

The Human Renaissance

As we wrapped Uprising 2025, one truth emerged above all: we are not just marketers. We are artists, connectors, philosophers, and warriors of relevance in turbulent times.

People described the event as unforgettable, magical, and inspirational. But most of all, I think every person walked away with a new sense that the human connection we all experienced makes all the difference. Even when AI dominates the marketing scene, we can still make them care.

I hope you will join me at the next Uprising event, which will be April 21-24, 2026. Space is extremely limited and registration is open here.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post A Human Renaissance in the Age of AI appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Last week, a friend asked me to review a new research report he compiled as a lead magnet for his business. But I knew his strategy was flawed before I even saw the report. I had to provide an email address to access the research. I didn’t want to become part of his email “lead nurturing” program, so I never downloaded the report. “Gated content” killed his content marketing strategy.

I know that sounds counter-intuitive. Most marketers point to the high cost of making exceptional content … Asking for an email address seems like a small price to pay for this value. But by making it difficult for people to access your content, you’re leaving the true value of your marketing on the table. I’ll explain why.

The current state of gated content

Here are some points to provide a perspective of our marketing world today.

• People hate gated content. Even marketers who gate their content know this. Research shows more than 90 percent of the people interested in the content abandon the sign-up process because they don’t trust what happens next to the email address.
• Many marketers justify gated content as a fair value exchange but research shows this is not true. Consumers state they are “resigned” to annoying marketing practices and more than half immediately unsubscribe to a site even after they opt-in.
• Acquiring email addresses in exchange for gated content may not be compliant with privacy laws in Europe and many U.S. states.
• We are clearly in an era of Content Shock where the competition for content views is vicious. One of the visible manifestations of this trend is BuzzSumo research showing how social shares on a topic decline precipitously as a subject becomes saturated. In other words, unless you are among the first to create content on a topic, getting your content to be seen and shared is extremely difficult.

A new content marketing philosophy

In my book The Content Code, I provide an updated view of content marketing strategy.

The philosophy behind the book revolves around the practical idea that the economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero. Therefore, we must develop competency in not just producing content but igniting it so that it is seen and shared by the most people possible. The most economic value of content marketing doesn’t come from the content, it come from the transmission of the content.

Creating great content is no longer the finish line; it is the starting line. The book outlines six possible strategies to remove barriers and give your content the best possible chance to flow and reach the most people possible.

Requiring people to provide an email address to access your content is about the worst thing you can do in this new view of “content success.” In essence, gated content places a stop sign in front of your content flow. It is an anachronistic way of thinking.

The value exchange

The decision to provide a barrier before your content must boil down to this: Are you going to receive more value from a trickle of people providing their email address, or the flood of people seeing and sharing the content freely? Let’s look at a case study to figure this out.

My friend James Carbary provided this example of how the gated content value exchange played out for his own business. He wrote:

“It took five months for us to get 295 people to sign up for the gated opt-in offer on our website. This progress seemed incredibly slow, so I tried something different.

“A couple weeks ago, I published a status update on LinkedIn explaining that I’d developed a list of 67 content topics that work well on that site. If people wanted the ideas, I asked them to leave a comment that said ‘I want it.’ Then I explained that I would turn the ideas into a free PDF if 100 people left a comment.

“In three hours I had over 150 comments. That post has now been viewed more 160,000 times, and 692 people left a comment saying they wanted the content ideas. We turned the ideas into a PDF, and replied to every comment with the link.

“In five days, my content spread to 692 people, compared to to 295 people in five months. We collected ZERO email addresses through the LinkedIn content but I’m beginning to see why un-gated content might be a smarter strategy.”

The case for amplification

James told me that the most tangible benefit of the ungated strategy was a connection with a high-potential customer and a podcast interview with this powerful new connection.

Some implied benefits in this un-gated content example would probably be easy to track down:

• Of the 692 people who asked for the content, how many were entirely new LinkedIn connections for James? He didn’t get an email address, but he did get a signal of interest and arguably these new LinkedIn connections might be more valuable in the long-term than an email address.
• How many of the 692 people responded to a call to action at the end of the report and visited a website, or organically subscribed to receive more content?
• How many shared the free content with more people inside and outside the company? How much additional flow did this receive because it was free?

Even if the percentage of people sharing content is the same whether it is gated or ungated, you will reach many more people with a base of fans numbering 692 versus 295. And that is happening in a matter of days versus months!

Finally, I shared James’s story, and linked to his website. I can’t recall ever linking to gated content that would require my readers to sign-in to something. So the benefit created by this post would have never happened if he hadn’t given his content away for free.

If you subscribe to my philosophy that the company that moves the most content will win, there is no question that un-gated content provides more potential value.

Branding and trust

I was discussing this issue with a colleague and she said “gated content annoys me. Why would a brand want to be annoying? The company is making me distrust them because I have no idea what will happen to that email address.”

A few years ago, I gave up my email address and (shudder) phone number to access a report from a company I loved and trusted. The next day, I was interrupted at a birthday party from a sales rep calling me from this company. My email was placed on lists for newsletters, webinars, and holiday sales.

Even after I “opted out,” of communications, I was still receiving phone calls and spam from this company.

By abusing me in this way, the company ruined its brand. It went from a company I loved to a brand I would never work with again.

A simple thought exercise: If you’re in a hotly-competitive field (like SEO or digital marketing) and one company has gated content and the other gives their best content away for free, which one will have a more positive brand view?

The research supports un-gated content

Roger Dooley is an expert in the field of neuroscience and marketing. In a post, he points out that from a psychological perspective, un-gated content is the undisputed content champ. Roger writes:

Requiring a user to give up his info before viewing good content is a reward strategy – give us your info, and we’ll reward you by letting you see our wonderful content. This is an appealing strategy at first glance – 100% of the people who use the content will have completed the form, and the information should be a powerful motivator for visitors to proceed.

In fact, most users confronted with a form won’t complete it. If they arrived at the site looking for some specific information, they will likely hit the back button and see if they can access it without the aggravation of form completion and without the risk of getting spammed later.

It turns out that a reciprocity strategy works better – give them the info they want, and then ask for their information. The research shows that twice as many visitors gave up their information if they were able to access the information first. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but even though these visitors were under no obligation to complete the form, they converted at double the rate of visitors seeing the “mandatory” form.

The neuromarketing takeaway here is that if you invoke reciprocity, you’ll be working with the way our brains are wired and will be more likely to get your visitors to do what you want them to. (And, as an added bonus, your SEO person will be happy that along with your visitors, Google will be able to see your content, too!)

Gated content and measurement

A compelling argument for gated content is measurement. Providing a tangible demonstration of the value of content marketing is difficult. It’s intoxicating to tell a client or your boss that an eBook (or whatever) resulted in a countable number of sign-ups that might be stretched into a claim of “leads.”

Measuring content marketing can be exceedingly hard. Most can’t do an adequate job. I acknowledge that gating your content may be the politically correct thing to do even if the strategy is flawed based on today’s market realities.

However, I think “social shares” is a more powerful measurement than “number of email addresses.” An email address may translate into … nothing. But a social share represents organic advocacy — better than any ad you could pay for.

An unpopular view

I’ve had many negative reactions to the idea of un-gating content. Here is one of them:

I think if you understand Funnels and the importance email still plays in the sales process then you wouldn’t have written this article. It’s not just about sharing good content — it’s also about turning your audience into customers. How do you do that when you never ask for an email address to move the relationship forward?  It’s all about moving folks through your customer journey. 

I would politely suggest this is an anachronistic view of a world that works in “funnels.” It’s not “your customer journey.” It’s THEIRS.

Most marketing today is not your marketing — it’s the sharing of information that’s going on without you. And if you have a gate, that clogs up the information you want to be shared. Let’s do the math and generously assume that 10% of the people who see your post will call for an appointment. We know that 90% of the people who come across your gate will go away. So for every 100 potential customers, you earn just 10 content views, and one call.

If I un-gate the content, I get 100 views and 10 calls. I am 10x more productive. Also, I have 100 people potentially SHARING my article instead of 10 for you.

By the way, what will you do after getting that email address? Spam your way to glory? That’s why people don’t trust gated content in the first place. You’re part of the problem.

I realize it’s a new way to think, but I can’t imagine a business today working hard to get customers to their site and then letting 90% of them walk away. If you ask people for an email AFTER they see the content, research shows it works better.

In any scenario, the numbers work in my favor, not yours.

A simple rule of thumb

One of the themes in my recent writing is that we have lost our way in marketing. Often, those setting the “standards” we follow aren’t marketers; they are SEO experts, statisticians, and IT professionals. I am not diminishing the worth of these resources, but maybe a statistical evaluation is not always the best guidepost for a marketing decision. Perhaps we need to get our heads out of dashboards and spreadsheets and look at what is happening with our customers in the real world.

Just because something seems favorable because of an A/B test or backlink strategy, it doesn’t mean we should do it … especially if people hate it.

So I’ll end this post with a simple piece of advice. People hate gated content. Don’t do things people hate.

Instead, dig deep to discover what your customers love. Now, go do that thing better than anybody else.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney.

The post Why Gated Content Kills Your Marketing Success appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

One of my favorite strategic brainiacs is Mathew Sweezey, and we used our latest podcast episode to explore the ideas we’re most excited about for the New Year. I think these are non-obvious, interesting, and worth your time!

Some of the items we discuss:

• Why enterprise-level AI integrations will finally begin to drive ROI
• The human-driven opportunity of experiential marketing
• Why brand communities are the new media
• Why marketing success might depend on change management
• How marketers will overcome a pandemic of dull

… and more!

Sit at the table with us, won’t you? Listen in as Mathew and I explore what the year has in store for us. All you have to do is click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 306

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this fantastic episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post Six marketing megatrends we’re watching right now appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the most famous blog post I’ve written, and arguably one of the most well-known blog posts in marketing history. I am not one to reminisce or grow crazy over anniversaries, but publishing this post ten years ago was a unique, unexpected life experience and cultural moment worthy of explanation.

Today, we’ll look at the impact of Content Shock and lessons from one of the most widely shared business blog posts in history.

The idea behind the blog post

It was the summer of 2013. I was on a plane to give a speech in Montreal, but I couldn’t relax because I was uneasy about my talk. The topic was familiar enough — social media and content marketing. But something was wrong.

Back then, producing corporate content was still a novel idea. Content fueled this concept of inbound marketing. Instead of cold-calling customers (outbound marketing) we could produce relevant content that would auto-magically bring leads to our website.

But it wasn’t working, at least not as easily as it had in the early days. The leading purveyor behind the idea, Hubspot, had never turned a profit (ironically its OUTBOUND sales costs were too high!). Niches were filling up with blog posts and podcasts and infographics competing for attention. We had to spend more of our budget on quality and promotion just to get a few views. And it was just getting worse.

The world was flooded with content, and the easy days of content marketing were coming to an end. On the plane to Montreal, I scribbled a note — “The world is in content shock.”

The premise

When I have a new idea for a book or blog post, I never go with it right away. I let it sit for months to make sure I’m right.

I didn’t publish the Content Shock post until January 06, 2014. I had seen enough by then to know I was right. It was simple economics: Any time there’s a huge surplus of a good, or a scarcity of a good, there has to be a response in the economic system. And we had a surplus of content!

Here’s a simple example. In the earliest days of TV, anybody could walk down to a studio and create a cooking show or a craft show. The entry barriers for success were low because the channel was so hungry for content. Similarly, in those early days, it was easy to advertise and support a show.

As television became more popular, the channels filled with content. Competitors appeared, not just on the local level, but nationally. Networks were created that attracted the best writers and the biggest stars. Content became more expensive to produce and sponsor.

Television entered a never-ending content arms race. You can still see it happening today. An episode of The Mandalorian cost a staggering $15 million to produce. A few years later, Wanda Vision cost $28 million per episode. The Lord of the Rings TV series cost $60 million per episode.

And so it goes.

This is exactly what is happening on Facebook. On Instagram. On Tik Tok. On every place we publish, whether it is B2B or B2C.

And so, I decided to write about this pattern. Content marketing was moving into a new phase, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

The outfall

Today, this idea of Content Shock is taken for granted. Of course if there is more competition, it becomes more difficult and expensive to compete. In fact, it becomes impossible for some.

While I knew this idea was true, I nonetheless sensed it would not go over well with the people in the industry actually selling content marketing as a red-hot, can’t-fail idea.

The post attracted thousands of comments — more like long conversations! To my surprise, about 95% of the comments were positive and suggested that I had tapped into a market reality, like this one from marketing expert Doug Kessler:

And yet, my blog post was characterized as “controversial.” If 95% of the people agreed with me, why would it be controversial? As I explained to my wife, if 95% of the people in our country agreed with something but the president disagreed, it would be controversial.

In this case, almost every content marketing thought leader took aim at me.  I was fine with it. I have a thick skin and enjoyed the great debate. That’s how we grow. But there was one comment I’ll never forget …

The laugh

The commentary didn’t end at my blog. My post sent a ripple of conversation into seemingly every blog, podcast, and video in the marketing industry. It was great that a professional debate was happening … with one exception.

On a well-known podcast, one of the hosts was asked whether my article had any legitimacy. He paused … and then laughed. “NO!” he said emphatically. He went on to describe the practice of content marketing as having unlimited potential. There was no concern about content saturation or the economic viability of content marekting, he claimed.

In my 15 years of blogging, this is the only comment that ever truly, deeply pissed me off. It wasn’t because he disagreed with me. It was because this was a respected voice acting as a charlatan to protect his own business interests. He was lying to an audience I cared about.

This comment was the primary reason I wrote The Content Code book. I needed to insert some rational truth into the content marketing madness. The premise of the book: “The economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero. Here is a plan to ignite your content in an era of Content Shock.”

The laugh launched a book. And I’m still a little pissed : )

The legacy of a blog post

The Content Shock post generated tens of thousands of comments all over the web. For three solid weeks, I spent almost every hour of the day responding to comments. An important point — this most viral of posts had no measurable impact on my business. It did not even result in a meaningful boost in new subscribers. Goes to show that “Viral” is an overrated goal.

Hundreds of blog posts have been written about the original post. Thousands more linked to the article. I continue to get links to that post every week. “Content Shock” is still among the top 10 posts on my site every week, 10 years later!

Over time, the industry adopted the term as a way to describe the overwhelming competition in a world saturated with content. It has been featured in books, conferences, and speeches around the world. I’ve had people describe Content Shock to me, not realizing I was the one who came up with the term.

Two years after I wrote the post, Buzz Sumo did an analysis of marketing content trends, showing that content saturation was eating into the success of some of the biggest sites in the industry like Copyblogger and Moz. Founder Steve Rayson stated that “content shock is here.”

Battling the difficult economics of content saturation is a fact of life today in the marketing world!

Spiky content

Why did this post go viral? It was timely, it was relevant. But it was also spiky.

In my Personal Branding Master Class, I teach about the importance of “spiky content,” a phrase coined by Wes Kao. Spiky content provides a bold point of view that cuts through the clutter. It goes like this:

1. A spiky point of view can be debated.

2. A spiky point of view isn’t controversial for the sake of it.

3. A spiky point of view teaches your audience something relevant they don’t already know.

4. A spiky point of view is rooted in evidence, but it doesn’t have to be a proven fact or universal truth.

5. A spiky point of view requires conviction. 

“Content Shock” is a great spiky case study!

When I wrote this post, did I know I was absolutely right? I thought so, but there was no way to know for sure. The argument was built on evidence, but of course, it could be debated. And I wasn’t taking a stand to start a fight. I thought about this idea for six months before publishing. I wrote this post because I’m passionate about marketing, and I care about its future.

If you care about something, try creating some spiky content of your own. It’s really the only way to stand out today.

The future, the solution

After the initial post, I had another insight about Content Shock. It’s not just a trend. It’s a pattern (I explained this here). Every channel eventually fills with content, driving up the cost to compete. It’s a repeating pattern.

I wrote several follow-up posts, including one framing Content Shock as the most important content marketing strategy, instead of being a problem.

If Content Shock was becoming an issue in 2014, you can only imagine what is happening today in a world overtaken by AI. Some project that in a year or two, 95% of the content on the web will be created by bots. Bots don’t sleep, they don’t get writer’s block. Their ability to churn out content is infinite.

One of the counterarguments to Content Shock was that the world wasn’t being saturated with content; it was being saturated with bad content, so true artists still had a chance. Perhaps that was valid for a time, but most niches are filled with great people doing great work, or AI bots that are not far behind. The world is filled with so much great content, all of it vying for our attention.

Content Shock is here to stay.

I think there are two solutions to Content Shock.

The most common path is the inevitable arms race. Just look at what is happening in the battle between Netflix, Apple, and other streaming services. The demand for quality content, and the cost to produce that content, goes up, up, up. That is the inevitable pattern in every content niche.

There is another solution. What if you cared for the content and even more for the person or brand producing it?

Why are you reading this today? If you’ve made it this far, it’s because you’re interested in the topic. But maybe you subscribed to this blog in the first place because you believe in me. Maybe you will share this post on LinkedIn because you consider me a thought leader, or even a friend. The content matters and cuts through because I matter to you as a person.

This is a solution available to any business of any size, and it’s why I shout from the rooftops every day that you MUST be working on your personal brand.

I don’t have the resources to compete with the biggest media sites and cut through the Content Shock. You probably don’t either. But you can be the most human company in your niche and nurture an audience who loves you as a person.

Thanks for obliging me this Content Shock retrospective. It was a weird time in my life, but overall, it produced positive results and I’m proud of the blog post.

Go forth and publish some spiky content! Thanks for being here and supporting me through these many years.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Midjourney

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