S3E06 – How to play the role of head of content

Are content heads prepared for the challenges posed by AI, ChatGPT, and shifting search engine policies? In this episode of Damn Good Marketing, Hasita Krishna and Subha Chandrasekaran delve into the complexities of content management in the modern landscape. Join them to discover strategies for making your content stand out and how creative collaboration can enhance your efforts in an ever-noisier world.

Discussion Topics: How to play the role of head of content

• Lawsuits on Open AI
• What does a content head do in this situation?
• Hierarchies and expertise
• How much of the info is real?
• Biggest pain points of content heads
• Managing expectations
• The need for good editors is in the rise
• Things to be mindful about

Transcript: How to play the role of head of content

Hasita Krishna: So Subha, search engines led by Google have followed through very quietly with an interesting update they’ve made to their search engine policy wherein they no longer don’t allow you to rank for chat GPT written articles.

Lawsuits on Open AI

Hasita Krishna: On the parallel, as we know, a lot of authors have been suing OpenAI for using their books to train its models and there’s an article on Search Engine Journal, which is one of the more renowned publications in the SEO space, which says how to block OpenAI ChatGPT from using your website content.

And the subtitle is very suggestive, right? It says ChatGPT gets access to website content to learn from it. That’s how we trained it. This is how to block your content from becoming AI training data. And it doesn’t stop there. As of 8.9.2023, OpenAI has published a robots.txt standards file for blocking the GPT bot from crawling your website. Oh, wow. Got it. I’m just thinking how many lawsuits is everyone trying to avoid here?

Subha Chandrasekaran: And it’s all confusing, no? I’m putting out a lot of content on my website. Why am I writing these blogs? So that some robot crawls it and finds it.

Hasita Krishna: Preferably not the ChatGPT bot, apparently.

Subha Chandrasekaran: And it somehow lands up on a Google search. And now I also have to worry that the wrong robot won’t find it. That makes me think of content like ours. What is the misuse that you and I should be worried about? 

Hasita Krishna: Honestly, are we even producing enough to be misused, right? Like sometimes, if you have a GPT board, I could sit now and write 40 articles. What’s to stop me? How do you compete, right? Like I can make a listicle of a thousand things you should know before launching your content function. It’s not hard today.

Subha Chandrasekaran: That’s true. I get John Grisham’s anger and a lawsuit thing because I could give a prompt that says, 20-page short story. In the style of John Grisham.

Hasita Krishna: And this is your, yeah, this is your context. Like this is your environment. It’s happening in the streets of Mumbai or whatever. There are so many opportunities, which is an interesting dichotomy and sometimes I wonder like this, I really don’t envy the job of a head of content at this point.

Because this is way too many variables to keep up with and whether you are de facto or you’ve been, given that position. You’re still somebody who’s responsible for running a content function in these waters. So how do you do that?

What does a content head do in this situation?

Subha Chandrasekaran: No, quite tough because we’ve managed these roles for others in our earlier affairs. We continue to support content in different ways. And we meet with folks who are running businesses and trying to generate good content. There was, there were enough variables as is.

Hasita Krishna: Right, and in fact, we’ve also, at least I have at some point also worked with people who became heads of content in their own kind of spaces and rights. There are many interesting transformations that have taken place in the industry, not the least of which is obviously the use of AI and I think somewhere it brings in this idea of if we can all talk about everything under the sun. What’s to stop me from writing a science fiction novel which is very accurate to the physics of it?

Today, there’s enough information and I don’t even have to do the research therefore, if there are 10 billion topics that I can talk about, what should I still be talking about? 

Subha Chandrasekaran: And it just struck me that what you say makes sense and it’s making sense because even in my own mind, I have confused social media versus science fiction.

What I want to say, is because on a daily basis, you have access to so many other people and their thoughts that you’ve got used to commenting on topics, you’re way out of your depth. What stops you from putting a comment, right? Or what stops you from saying, Hey, I have an opinion or a view on this.

So today, if you post something on sustainability or the environment. I can comment on it, but I’m not coming from any expertise. But I would rather hear something you have to say, because you’re in that space, you’re thinking about it rather than me posing as someone who has an interest or a side interest or some thoughts about it because I have heard from five other environmental lobbyists.

Hierarchies and expertise

Hasita Krishna: That’s actually interesting to me because what we’re talking about is hierarchies and expertise, right? So for me, somebody else, and there are several of them who I look up to in terms of where I get my climate information from. And that’s a very interesting nuance, right? If I am a business and this is my industry and I’m a head of content for that business, then where in that hierarchy would I fit?

And I think we can err on both sides, right? One is to say, I’m an expert, I know everything. And I’m at the cutting edge of technology, which is also dangerous. But there’s also the risk of positioning yourself too low, right? And we see this a lot with startups, especially wherein I think a lot of where you place yourself is dependent on how investor opinion reflects on you, right?

If I’m seen as a valuable company, Then I’m allowed to have an opinion and that’s a very difficult cycle to break out of. So really where on that opinion hierarchy do you fit? I think that would be the first question to ask.

Subha Chandrasekaran: And I would not even counter it, but just take that one step further and say, okay, so there’s a hierarchy, but at your level in that hierarchy.

Do you at least have clarity as to who is listening to you? If today you talk about sustainability the guy who made the Apple climate change video is not listening to it.

Hasita Krishna: Absolutely and I wouldn’t want him to also, right? Because he will think I’m an idiot as I am is the point I’m trying to make.

Subha Chandrasekaran: But there are those who are listening to you for whom your content is. 

Hasita Krishna: It’s just at the level that they want it right, which brings up an interesting dichotomy even for other creators, including myself to say, do I stay there right? Or do I keep moving? Assuming my audience is also going to evolve.

So one, we’ve established a hierarchy. In terms of doing a very, I think, practical, objective reality check of where my strengths are, where are my weaknesses, and what are three topics that I feel passionately enough to talk about? Because what I’m counting on is the idea that even on a day when I’m not feeling motivated to do a lot of other stuff, I’m probably still consuming content in this regard.

And for us, that applies to say pop culture. We’re always trying to consume content around that. Maybe not always actively, or at least we’re sharing it enough with each other. So today, if there’s a Rajinikanth film and there’s also a Shah Rukh Khan film that’s fighting at the box office, we have something to say about that.

And then also to make actually two lists, I would say one is an objective, moral inventory of what should I not be saying. 

Subha Chandrasekaran: So important. No updates on my dog having diarrhea there are probably smaller circles in which that conversation would make more sense than a business platform, at least.

And the second is a basket of things. I may be excited about it or I may feel sufficiently motivated because it’s my industry, but I’m not ready to talk about it, right? And again, I want to go back to the Apple example of producing the series nine fully carbon neutral as a product, which is what the claim says.

And there’s a long report supporting that claim as well. But the moment I saw that ad, involving Octavia Spencer, my first thought was exactly that. Is it an ad or are they walking the talk? So also to be very conscious of the fact that today when it’s possible to create and consume so much information, people are also asking the question, how much of this is real?

How much of the info is real?

Hasita Krishna: Somebody as big and influential as Apple is not going to put out this ad and not be able to back it up. They are going to get questioned somebody is going to say this is greenwashing and many have said, and they are going to dive deep into it.

Subha Chandrasekaran: So they’re going to be doubly sure or triply sure that what they are saying is real, but you’re right. How do we know who we are consuming what from? And I think we hit upon something when in that whole hierarchy of things also, there’s another dimension of what is it that you do and hence an expert at over a period of time.

There are always enough people above you, better than you, who started earlier than you. And a set of things that you are genuinely interested in. Which you can also talk about. Not from the voice of an expert, but can I come along with you on this ride and learn more?

Hasita Krishna: Absolutely and that’s why that evolution component I think becomes that much more significant, when we started Motley through a couple of years ago, we could get away with saying, we put the marketing back in digital marketing, right?

And that’s still in fact, we stand by that. But the nuance of it has changed in the two years since we’ve started, right? No longer are people saying, Hey, here’s this shiny new object and I just want to be a part of it. Please, how do I get into the inner circle? No, that people are understanding. It is difficult.

It is tough. We need somebody to do it and take care of both the technical and the creative aspect of it. And that’s where we really just want you to come in and support us. And that nuance is very important for us to also be mindful of, because no longer can we send a pitch deck that says, Have you tried these four things?

No, the likelihood that they’ve tried those four things and they’re tired of those four things is very high. So now we need to start speaking that language of saying, okay, here’s a problem. Here’s the diagnosis. Here’s where we can do better. So a lot of, in fact, even the proposal stages have become us looking at campaign reports as looking through a lot of data before even proposing anything to them.

Subha Chandrasekaran: Very true, like you meet with so many content heads, Hasitha, like at least folks in charge of it. What do you think is their biggest pain point?

Biggest pain points of content heads

Hasita Krishna: Everything. But I always like to, I think these days more and more, I’m trying to do that as we do campaigns that have More financial value attached to them the stakes are higher if I think of that one person that you said, which is the head of content as a pinpoint in an infinite space.

And there are going to be branches outward, and these are two-way streets, right? There is communication from them to the others and communication from the others to them. And definitely for a head of content, a key other point in that ecosystem is going to be the person that they’re trying to influence. Whether that is an influencer in a buying journey or a decision maker.

And this is where we also say, get very clear as to who are the seven people in the buying committee. So there is that committee, which I think is a big circle. I would use some of the bubble charts, and references here in terms of saying really draw because circles give that circle the weight and importance that it deserves.

But also there are two other key stakeholders. Who is going to influence how that circle is impacted through you, right? The one stakeholder is your creative team, video producers, content writers, and ad planners. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say account managers. All of these people have an impact on how that other bigger circle is flowing through you.

But also I think one of the more underrated impacts, especially in B2B, more so in tech. Is the product team, the sales team, or the management team, whose unequivocal buy-in you need in order to be able to do any of these things, right? So for this road to not have potholes, you need that management team to be fully brought into the process, right?

And you really need people to say, I am willing to go all guns out on this plan, right? And this plan involves content. It could be explainer videos. It could be product demos. It could be us showcasing at an event physically, and therefore we need support.

It could be an email you send. To close the sales conversation where along these touch points is the content team able to support number one? And given that said and done we are operating in a very technically advanced domain. Where can I come in and contribute? Because the content team cannot imagine your product.

Some of the people came earlier in my life, at which point I didn’t even know what I was doing, but I’m so lucky for those opportunities to have come up that a lot of them started by giving me a product demo and saying, these are the screens.

This is why we have this prompt here. This is why I use the inventory management example because that’s where I did a lot of work and we worked with a product, which eventually has been sold to delivery, the logistics company in that product, there were nuances, which.

What’s so important to the writing that I was doing? So for me to say if you’re going to do just-in-time inventory management these are the seven principles you need to bear in mind at the back of my mind, I’m thinking, okay, in the product, there’s this feature that’s going to support the execution of that piece.

And that logical segue can only happen when these three points in the ecosystem of a head of content come together, which brings up the question of how, like if the job is to manage three different expectations, and that’s why I said, it’s not a very easy place to be in right now.

Subha Chandrasekaran: They had my sympathies and even more so now, but I think what all of this is coming back to you’re only as good as that brief that you get. Absolutely even as a content head or, how much clarity can you give?

So you have to be talking about and here’s why this is how it addresses different stakeholders and hence, starting from largely from and as any company, you’ll always start inward. So largely starting on what am I good at? What am I doing? What do I want to see? And then incorporating feedback, what does the customer also want to hear from us?

Managing expectations

Hasita Krishna: But in some ways, I feel like a brief is managing expectations, right? That’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s finally an A4 document or whatever it is, a storyboard. But what it’s doing is it’s telling these three different points, which unfortunately don’t talk to each other as often as they should.

That the common meeting ground is this, right? In the creation of this report, this white paper, this survey, this whatever else, this interactive line graph for all I care. What we’re trying to do is meet this common objective and therefore feel free. And this is where repurposing comes into the picture, right?

When we say repurposing, we don’t mean take from LinkedIn and put it on Twitter. What we mean is I’ve created this piece of content. I know it’s valuable because my brief was good. How can I use it in as many different ways and contexts as possible? Where can I share it? Where it makes the most amount of sense to the other person that’s receiving it.

And in that, I just want to bring out a small nuance today. I think a lot of teams that are 10 and above run on Slack channels, lots of interesting conversations happening there, right? So as a head of content, I would also keep my ears very close to that channel ground in terms of where the different teams disagree.

What is the product team saying, which is not translating to the sales guy? What is the sales guy saying, which is not translating perhaps to the design team? Where are they not able to see eye to eye? And how can content play a role in really even bringing some of these internal stakeholders together? And then that piece becomes a beautiful collaboration, which I can then distribute to the world outside.

Subha Chandrasekaran: Got it. What worked well in some of the engagements that we had is that you’re creating a lot of content. You need that one objective soul who is really thinking about how this sounds to the listener or the reader in terms of a title. It’s the editor, but you need one person who is not generating the content or is. Holding it so close to their heart, but

Hasita Krishna: They can’t be critical about it.

Subha Chandrasekaran: But, they need to see, or they need to be able to tell you that, Hey, this doesn’t read like us, or this doesn’t sound like us, or this is too technical or this needs to have some more references or examples or whatever you need to hear so that you hit your audience in the best possible way.

The need for good editors is in the rise

Hasita Krishna: So true and more and more, I think we need editors who can come in and say, okay, fine, produce however many blogs you want to chat GPT the hell out of.

But how can I say it in a way that’s nice, we’ve had a writer who’s written some really nice headlines around infrared and the company that was so there was a nice natural rhythm to it, which she was able to extract.

So I think that’s fun. In the production, right? The reason we read is not only or even for that matter consume any piece of content is not only to be educated but also to be entertained in some ways and more and more as the democratic access to being able to produce content goes out, we’re going to need more people to come in and add that.

An extra layer, I would say, of just making it more relatable, more resonant, more relevant. And that’s where I think editors will have a very interesting job in the future. And I’m sure editors were able to look at articles and say, Hey, this was not written by you. We’ll have that much more of a greater edge because they’ve got that instinct for how to make something sound good.

Subha Chandrasekaran: No, it makes sense. So what do you want to leave this, now we’ve made them sound like poor Harris told you again, woke up this morning, and had a Google algorithm change. What do you think are the top three, or four things that they have to be, I won’t say to do, but at least to be mindful of, or to think about.

Things to be mindful about

Hasita Krishna: Yeah, number one definitely I think is to have that ability to consume as many diverse pieces of content through a critical lens of saying this was nice. This was not nice. Some of these maybe we could try and adapt to our use cases and policies and come up with slightly more, I think, creative interpretations of the channels and the media that exist out there.

Like I’m just thinking, following up on the Slack example. Why can we not start a podcast with guests? Not me. I don’t have a large enough team, but I’m saying in any team, that’s got 10 people and that’s got people who are functional heads of different things. Why do you need to have a podcast with guests coming from the outside?

You can just have a limited series, and have a nice story around it. Let people come in and really experience the joy of building the product that you’re building. And that could be a five-episode limited series and you launch the product off the back of that. So there are many interesting ways to do things.

Now that we don’t have to be bound down by the production itself. And I know a lot of heads of content and editors have had that problem in the not-so-recent past including myself, I’ve suffered from not knowing when the next article will come in. If you give them a due date, will it happen?

That’s not a problem anymore. So how can you then really use that as a launchpad and take it to the next level? So that would be, I think the first two things, one is to really consume and keep consuming and keep coming from diverse places and then translate that into how to interpret this for my business, my use case, the brand that I’m working with.

The third thing I think, in an ad agency, there is not as much as from the outside, we think there exists, there is no writer. There is no designer. These are all titles, right?

If I’m good at Adobe, I’m called a designer. If I am not good at Adobe, I’m called a copywriter, things like that. But what these people are studios of the human psyche. And in fact, some of the best campaigns in the world that have come from copywriters’ minds don’t have a single word in them.

So really to go diverse in terms of the interpretation of some of our ideas, right? So again, it comes from observation, but also to see if I identify as a copywriter, does that mean that’s all I can do? Or can I also make line art? I don’t know. And explain to the designer what I want. So creating those collaborative opportunities, I think between, so if we really zoom into one of the circles, which is the creative team, there are so many people within those circles.

So how can I really facilitate collaboration and trust amongst these people so that they’re all able to walk up to each other and say, this is not working? I think this is what we should do. Or this is a great idea, but I think this is how we make it better. So more and more, as I’m saying that, I think it’s becoming a, almost a soft skill.

What you need to be very clear on is that one singular vision, so much so that tomorrow, when you do get called into a meeting to justify your functions, cost versus return, or any number of those things, you’re able to say, this is the vision that I’m working towards.

So just come in and say, let’s whiteboard this. Let’s know for the next six months why we are doing what we are doing. And then it doesn’t matter, right? Make 10 creatives, make 20, make 40, I think today we live in a noisy enough world that the only thing that will stand out is that resonance. And if we can make one thing that’s.

Subha Chandrasekaran: Extraordinarily resonant. I think we could all benefit from that. No, that’s awesome. I think it all came together very nicely and very usefully, if I may it’s not an easy job and made it tougher with, oh, there’s a ChatGPT and God knows who’s actually writing what and all of that, but the code is still the same.

Hasita Krishna: And some questions can be asked in that regard, especially in organisations where maybe this is happening for the first time. It’s okay to say, let’s workshop this. And there are tools available to make that happen.

People are available if you need that external perspective to just come in and see. Let’s think through this, right? Like, why are we doing LinkedIn in the first place? Like, why is no one asking that question? I think I would really start from there. Makes sense thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode on all things.

How do I produce content at scale? Should I produce content at scale? What is chat GPT doing and how do I become more efficient, and more resonant as a head of content? We hope you enjoyed listening to us. If you have any questions, you know where to find us. The LinkedIn links are also in the show notes and we really look forward to seeing you next time.

Subha Chandrasekaran: Bye.