Authentic Leadership in Content Vs. Same-y Drivel

I was remarking to a colleague the other day that I felt these days SEO is harder to sell, but often easier to do in the age of AI. And not easier because AI does all the heavy lifting.

Easier because so many competitors lean on AI so hard that they end up being less of a competitor.

The internet is flooded with same-y articles making the same assertions we’ve heard a hundred times. These articles rarely reinforce those assertions with facts, figures, or tangible stories. You’ll see vague statements like, “X helps Y happen! Trust me, bro.”

How much does it help? How often has that seemed to happen? When does it actually not help?

Modern Copy Is Full Of Theoretical Statements.

My view is that if you’re writing suggestions for how someone can use a tool, the goal should be to make those suggestions as actionable as possible.

Avoid the temptation to pad your list with superficial advice. 8 tips that waste a reader’s time are lesser than 3 hard-hitting tips that make the reader think, “Nice! I’ve got to try this.”

None of us can try everything. That means we should stick to what we know well and have personally vetted. If we’ve simply heard someone else say a widget or a technique was cool, maybe we can mention that in a coffee meeting with a friend. But it shouldn’t be in our articles until we’ve done it.

Repeating someone else’s hypothetical doesn’t make it ours, no matter how many times we say it. We can’t be specific about how it works, why it works, or the time frames someone should expect if we haven’t seen those things for ourselves. And if we can’t do those things, what are we even saying to the reader?

To put this another way, I think we could all improve our writing by not taking a reader’s attention for granted. Doing that means accepting some hard truths:

• If we can’t articulate why something matters, it probably doesn’t.
• If our assertions aren’t based clearly on something, they’re based on nothing.
• If we write as if we’ll give them the “good stuff” only after they click or call, there’s no reason to do either of those things.

We need to act as if these things are true, because that’s how readers will interpret our content.

For me, this is informed by 18 years of trial and error.

I’ve written material that’s produced clear, sustained revenue for companies over the years. And over those same years, I’ve also created plenty of content that fell flat and did not move the needle enough.

This is how I know what doesn’t work.

Authenticity Still Sells.

In the last year there have been continuous claims that informational content is dead. That Google’s AI summaries cannibalize that type of material entirely, and that no one can win with it anymore. The reasons sound logical, and yet my experience has been the opposite.

A construction client of mine leaned into thought leadership. We went deeper than competitors, shared stories, and lent real expertise to a series of blogs. Those things on top of a good SEO foundation made more a significant difference in 5 months.

That client told me that for 20 years they’d considered a good month one where they obtained 20 leads. If any one lead source generated 20, that was a high-five moment. The month prior Google had generated 25 leads. The month of that conversation, our efforts generated over 35 leads. The next month, it was over 50.

These were real leads, several of which led to new business.

The correlation with this uptick and our content campaign was clear. Many of those blogs were informational and story-driven; exactly the kind of material so many experts on Linkedin say is dead.

My take on why this approach still works:

• SEO-wise, thoughtful informational material still contributes to a website’s overall authority. That means it becomes easier to rank for the “money keywords” that aren’t informational.
• Data and story driven material has always been more likely to attract links and be shared on social media.
• Just because Google’s AI summaries are there doesn’t mean everyone uses them or stops there.
• And of course, people like to read something personable.

Leveraging This Into An Advantage.

LLMs like ChatGPT are useful, certainly. But ChatGPT has never remodeled a kitchen, built a deck, installed a monument sign, or put on a theatre show. It can only rework someone else’s stories about those things.

If you have a bunch of competitors predominantly using AI content, it basically means they’ll always be a step behind.

When ChatGPT was newer on the scene, at first human writers were being crushed by websites that published dozens of articles per week. But then Google got hip to that and became pickier about what content is actually helpful or novel.

I realize the term “thought leadership” has been overused. But I also very much believe that when you genuinely participate in it and let that guide your content plan, you end up overtaking a lot of the competition that either can’t or won’t.

Ideally, an SEO’s job is to help Google acknowledge a company’s awesomeness. Without that piece, the SEO pro’s work is more about tricking Google into believing that company is awesome.

It matters enough that it’s become part of my sales process in recent years. I see those meetings as two-way interviews. I need to prove I’m the man for the job, but it’s just as much about them demonstrating to me they’re serious enough to show up that way.

I’m at a place in my career as a writer where I’m just not interested in running a campaign without that piece.

Converting Leads Does Not Require Perfection.

I’ve had conversion experts offer their critiques of sites I’ve seen and sites I’ve worked on. In every case, they point at some aspect of the content that could’ve more salesy, or could’ve employed a bit more strategy in the calls to action.

In many cases, they were probably right.

But I think where things get confused in this industry is that clients and other professionals alike act like they need to be an an endless cycle of perfecting the content. That until it’s perfect, it won’t generate sales.

For the professional selling conversion rate optimization, this probably helps them build a sense of urgency for their services.

But the difference between what’s working and a theoretical “even better” isn’t always worth the energy. Especially since as an OG writer and blogger I can absolutely say over-tweaked, over-edited material can end up being weaker than your earlier drafts.

A page might technically be missing some checkbox of “ideal conversion best practices.” But it might also be working because it reads as genuine.

Let’s Keep This Conversation Going

If you like what you hear so far, let’s have coffee! (Virtual or actual.)