by Christina | Mar 12, 2026 | 2026, Blog
AI rewards original insight, proprietary data and firsthand experience over length and polish. Here’s how content strategy must evolve.
There was a time when content marketing followed a predictable formula: pick a keyword, write 2,000 words around it, sprinkle in some headers and wait for Google to notice. It worked. Pages that said very little but said it at great length climbed the rankings and stayed there.
That era is ending, and most content teams haven’t realized it yet.
When we read web pages, we start at the top, skim the introduction and decide whether the author sounds smart. Google’s AI processes content differently. It breaks content into small semantic units – individual claims, definitions, data points and explanations – and evaluates each one on its own clarity and usefulness. A 3,000-word article that circles the same idea for 20 paragraphs doesn’t look comprehensive to an AI. It looks redundant.
This is a fundamental shift in how value gets assigned to content. Length used to be a proxy for depth. Now it’s just noise unless every section carries its own weight.
The long, keyword-circling blog posts that once dominated search are quietly losing ground to something leaner and more specific. AI Overview panels, featured snippets and conversational search results all pull from content that answers questions directly. They don’t reward buildup. They don’t care about your brand voice. They care about whether a specific paragraph contains a specific, helpful answer.
The old content playbook – where you’d research what competitors wrote and then write a slightly longer, slightly more polished version – is becoming a dead strategy. If five sites all paraphrase the same general knowledge, they’re not sources. They’re echoes. AI is getting remarkably good at telling the difference.
If you’re not a source, you’re a remix
If you’re not publishing original research, proprietary data or genuine firsthand insight, you’re not creating source material. You’re remixing what already exists. Remixes don’t get cited.
Think about how a large language model builds its responses. It synthesizes information from across the web, but it gravitates toward origin points – the study that produced the statistic, the company that ran the survey, the practitioner who documented what actually happened. Everyone downstream who rephrased that information is, from the AI’s perspective, a less reliable copy.
This isn’t speculation. We can already see it happening. Sites that publish original benchmarks, case studies with real numbers and first-person accounts of specific processes are showing up in AI-generated answers at disproportionate rates. Meanwhile, the ultimate guides that aggregate other people’s findings are getting compressed out of the picture.
Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up.
The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.
The new content strategy
The path forward is more straightforward than most people want to hear. Stop trying to sound authoritative. Be the source of the information.
That means running your own experiments and publishing the results, even when they’re messy. It means sharing internal data that your industry would find valuable – conversion rates, timelines, costs and failure points. It means writing from experience rather than just research, because experience is something AI can’t fabricate and can’t find anywhere else.
It also means getting comfortable with shorter, more focused content. A 400-word post that introduces a single original insight is worth more in this new landscape than a 4,000-word guide that synthesizes 10 other people’s ideas. One is a source. The other is a summary.
This doesn’t mean writing quality is irrelevant. Poorly structured, confusing content still fails. But the competitive advantage has shifted. Clear thinking matters more than elegant prose. Having something to say matters more than saying it beautifully.
Add something new or don’t publish
The content teams that will thrive in an AI-driven search environment are the ones that treat publishing as a knowledge contribution, not a marketing exercise. Every piece should add something to the conversation that didn’t exist before – a number, result or perspective earned through doing the work.
The question to ask before you hit publish is no longer “Does this rank?” It’s “Would an AI cite this?” If the honest answer is no, you’re not writing content. You’re writing filler.
by William Walsh | Apr 11, 2023 | 2023
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
Last week we finished a new website for a client. It’s the third time in the last 2 years we’ve been the “rescue” vendor on a website build that had gone wrong.
If you are thinking about updating your website, and/or are an agency building sites, here’s what we’ve learned through those experiences that you need to know.
- Building a new or “refreshing” a website is not just a website build – it is also a rebranding, repositioning and a messaging project. Know that going in and plan for it. You may also want to scope in a competitive assessment.
- Don’t build anything until everyone that counts has a say or has reviewed a page, content, images, etc. To hell with project timelines, don’t do a thing until the right people are on the same page.
- Make it “paint by numbers.” Use pre-designed templates, provide direction on what you need from the client and be specific….”We need 250 words that describe your corporate culture.”
- Scope in a copywriter. You’ll need one to either fill the gap on content or at a minimum, edit copy.
- Give the client access to the staging server. Let them see the site as it is being built. Full transparency, do not wait to the end to share the site. At each client update meeting, walk them through the new updates and get their input. This is a collaborative effort.
And finally, if you offshore or nearshore the build, see the paint by numbers point. Give exact and specific directions to your developers. Stay on top of the development at each stage of the process. Plan reviews before showing anything to your client. Look at EVERY single detail.
by William Walsh | Jan 16, 2023 | 2023
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
Off we go into 2023!
For us, 2022 was an odd year. The first half was on fire. The second half…it was hard to even get a spark ignited.
One thing was clear, at least for our clients, the recession mentally hit during the late summer. It began with budgets being clawed back, and then the ax came down hard for 2023!
Heading into the new year, I believe we are going to see a similar situation. The first half will be slow, then improve during summer, and momentum significantly gaining into 2024. As a result, I’m going to segment my predictions for the year into two parts.
For the first half of the year, I envision the following:
- Hiring freezes and staff cuts. This is probably not shocking, but where it occurs might surprise you. Covid hit event and travel budgets in 2020, but during this downturn, I see
it hitting digital spending. And when it does, companies will freeze their digital staff hiring (once viewed as a never-ending need).
- CMO exhaustion. It’s already happening. CMO’s are exhausted from the internal battles over budgets, staffing, strategy, etc. The last three years have been a rollercoaster of highs and lows.
- Message confusion. Never have I seen the wild swings hitting the B2B market in such a short amount of time. From supply chain disruptions to overstock warehouses, and endless job openings to layoffs, it’s gone from one extreme to the next. It’s virtually impossible to stay current with your value proposition with so many swings between effectiveness and efficiency.
The second half of the year, as I mentioned, should show some improvement in the economy. As a result, I think we’ll see:
- CMO turnover. The burn out mentioned above will fuel CMO’s desire for a clean start. As soon as the economy and hiring outlook improves, I suspect you will see a lot of
movement.
- Big time AI adoption. Chat GPT is just the beginning. Expect to see agencies widely embrace AI for all types of creative – not just content. Open AI’s CEO Sam Atlman sees the greatest application of AI for creative use, not in replacing blue collar jobs as many had predicted. (more on this topic to come soon in an article of The Drum).
- Better tools for improving ROI. Better tools will come online to improve; 1) the quality of intent data, 2) the cost of content syndication, and 3) the effectiveness of ABM programs.
And of course, as with any prediction, I could be entirely wrong. I am genuinely optimistic, though, that we will be in a much better position kicking off 2024 than we are today.
Good luck and much success this year. I hope your year burns brightly!
by William Walsh | Aug 13, 2022 | 2022
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
The third installment of our four part series on how to navigate decision making blockers.
Nothing sets off lead nurturing scoring system alarms more than the presence of a C-level Influencer hitting content. They’ve got the right title, hit your content, probably more than one and you’re thinking there has got to be intent. But unfortunately that’s not the case, here’s why.
Influencers are information seekers to the extreme. In fact, you probably know one in your personal life. They’re the first to find out about a new restaurant or a new band. They’re your go to when you’re looking for a weekend getaway or vacation spot. And they love to do it. Influencers are motivated by being the first to know and sharing the information with others.
And that’s why there is no real intent. The information that they are consuming or downloaded is going to someone else. Recently we found a C-level Influencer that forwarded an email invitation to a webinar over 30 times! Influencers often are a “false position” – giving off a signal of intent, but the real need or opportunity is with someone else.
Influencers are great MQL’s, but terrible SQL’s
The upside of Influencers is that they are a key channel for introducing new ideas into organizations. Even better, they’re great at selling people on ideas. They consume a tremendous amount of information from a vast amount of sources, online and offline. Marketers this is your number one personality type to target, but they have a unique preference when it comes to content.
Sales, the good news is Influencers keep a loose schedule and enjoy meeting new people, but don’t chase them. Because of their position in the organization (often senior exec), and their personality type they are off to the next thing.
Influencers don’t usually own projects or budgets, their staff does, and that’s who you need, especially a “Champion” personality. The good news is that they often come back into the deal at the end to deal with any resistance from others in the buying group.
Here’s how to get the most out of leveraging Influencers in the account.
- Give them the right assets. Influencers prefer short highly visual content that travels easily. They LOVE short (30 sec or less) animated videos that they can forward. An interactive infographic that they can play around with it like a moth to the flame. Short, visual content pieces that convey information easily work with them. Additionally, opportunities for people to learn about something like events or webinar invitations also travel well as I mentioned.
- Find them in your data. Since they have a habit of forwarding information, it’s easy to spot them in your data. Look for emails that have been opened multiple times over a 2-3 days period. Once you’ve identified them, see if that pattern repeats on other occasions.
- Tag and track them. You can also use PURLS or forms to track where they’re sending information. This is a key insight, sharing (or forwarding) is a much better indicator of interest than a download or click thru. But that comes with a caveat, where the information lands has to resonate or address an issue that person has currently. Unfortunately, because of the Influencers behavior mentioned above they have a tendency to forward information that never gets actioned.
- Sell them on the idea, not the solution. In all of our research over the years we have only found an Influencer being a blocker on one occasion and it provided an interesting insight. Influencers want credit for the idea.
- Give away ideas. One of our most important clients has an Influencer personality and a CMO title, but he’s never signed a contract. Give away free advice. It will usually come back to you in business from others within the organization.
- Use them to remove blockers. Influencers are present at the beginning of the buyers journey, and they will reappear at the end. In particular, to reinforce the value of the idea or solution. Influencers (hence the name) are very good at selling others on the idea, keep them posted on your progress and use them to get past Blockers in the buyer group.
B2B marketing campaigns are often DOA before they even launch. Why? Because of the influence of sales, we often target titles, roles and budget owners. Sounds pretty common, right? And that would be fine if marketing’s job was to sell…but it’s not.
Our goal as marketers is to grab someone’s attention and have them take action (click on this link, download a piece of content, and register for a webinar). Targeting roles or titles alone doesn’t give us the best opportunity to make that happen. Do you know what does?
Targeting Influencers, but know that they love your ideas or solution more than they love you, your company or brand. It’s nothing personal…it’s just the personality. Influencers play an important role for us as marketers. They react and take action. It’s not personal for us either, it’s just the type of personality that gets us the performance we need.
To read the previous installment of the series, 6 Ways to Engage Champion “Blockers” click here.
