Mark Kilens: ...up everyone. Happy Tuesday, last day of February. What is going on? Looks like we already got some great action in the chat. Hello everyone. Hello. Hey, Greg, Katie. Got a few people coming in. Leanna. What's going on everyone? Welcome to Events Amplified. My name is Mark Kilens. I am the CMO at Airmeet. So grateful for you folks to be joining us today. We're getting snow right now. I'm a huge snow fan. I love all seasons, but I do love the snow. Go into the chat and put in a number one if you love snow, put a zero if you hate the snow. I'd love to know, do you like the snow or do you hate the snow? What do we got? Oh, Tory doesn't like the snow. Tory does not like the snow. Tom, nope, nope, nope. Ooh, we got a 10 from Eduardo. A 10. Nice. All right. Well, I think more people are... It's kind of split. Ooh, Joe does not like the snow. Five or six zeros. Unless skiing, Kim. Yeah. Ooh, there you go. That's a nice GIF. That's a nice GIF panda in the snow. Hello. All right, cool. So, thank you so much for coming today. It is going to be a straight- up conversation with two amazing people. I'm here just to hopefully help keep the conversation going, but I'm going to bring those two people up onto the stage in just a moment. It's all about how you can take conversations and turn them into cornerstone content. You might be asking yourself, " Hey, what is cornerstone content?" We'll get into that. You might be asking yourself, " Well, what classifies as a conversation?" We'll get into that. So, I'm going to bring up my two very special guests today. I've known one of these folks for a very long time. The other person I just met, but she's amazing. So, I'm actually going to start with that person I just met, who's got this amazing company, great name, I love the name. Share Your Genius. Share Your Genius. Rachel, let's bring you onto the stage. Everyone, give Rachel a nice warm welcome, throw her some emoji, she's coming onto the stage right now. Rachel, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Rachel: Thanks for having me. Hey, Mark. Hey, everybody.

Mark Kilens: Do a brief intro.

Rachel: Brief intro.

Mark Kilens: Tell us more about this amazing company name you have. First off, who you are. It just it's... I love the name. I really do.

Rachel: Thank you. Yeah, so Share Your Genius is a end- to- end production services company. We focus primarily on podcast production, and we like to say that we create outcome- driven shows, which for us really means, " It's fun to create stuff, but if it doesn't tie to anything, then it doesn't matter." And so that's us, and that's what we do.

Mark Kilens: That's so cool. I love that. I love that. It looks like you've got some super fans in the audience as well, Rachel.

Rachel: Oh, yay. Good.

Mark Kilens: Love your mic, by the way, too. That's a pro, pro mic.

Rachel: I mean, it's the mic that you should be using, Mark. Just going to throw that out there.

Mark Kilens: Well, can you, for everyone listening, name drop the mic. What is it? What's the mic name?

Rachel: Yeah, so it's an MV7 Shure Mic, and you should use it if you are recording any type of event, podcast, video, et cetera.

Mark Kilens: Yeah, you sound exceptional. Well, welcome. I cannot wait to dive into this topic with you all and let's bring on Lindsay. Lindsay from Casted. I've known Lindsay for a long, long time. She's the CEO of Casted. Lindsay, welcome to the stage. What's going on?

Lindsay: Hello, how's it going? I actually... I feel super excited because I've known you both for a very long time. So this is like... I feel like this is an extra treat for me, but yeah. Hello.

Mark Kilens: Tell us a bit about Casted.

Lindsay: So Casted is the first and only platform specifically for B2B marketers to help them both maximize and measure their podcast and video content, which includes, which I'm really excited about today, absolutely positively includes content from events like this. So let's get into that.

Mark Kilens: Love it. Let's dive right in. And so folks, this is going to be a conversation. We want to bring you folks onto the stage. If you want to share an opinion, a point of view, there's going to be a few debates that we have. If you want to share a pro- tip, an example, anything, just raise your hand. You can do that really easily inside of Airmeet. If you don't want to share an opinion on stage, that's fine too. I'll bring some comments onto the stage. You can throw in your questions in the Q and A. We're going to play a little fun Cahoot game throughout the show today and conversation. And we're going to break it down into three different ways. We're going to, first... This is going to be a good one, I think. We're going to first talk about live events. Is it better to go live, do your podcast live? Is it better to do it recorded? I can see Rachel and Lindsay both smiling. We're going to talk about that. Then we're going to get into... All right, so you've got some content now, right? You've got some content through an event. You did a podcast, you did... Well, how do you actually plan and strategize that overall content experience? How do you think about it in a bigger way? You just put a lot of effort into something. Let's unpack now the strategy behind it, which gets us into the third topic of today's conversation, which is all about taking those assets, taking the cornerstone content asset, and breaking that down into all of these great clips, commercials, micro content if you will, to drive people to your brand, engage them, grow your company at the end of the day, across all these different channels. So we're going to get into it. So I'm going to go right now, Rachel, to you first, and let's just debate it.

Rachel: Okay.

Mark Kilens: Is it better to do things live? Is it better to do things maybe not live? What's your take on this when it comes to creating a show?

Rachel: All right, here's my take. And it's... Well see, it's a reverse a little bit. So my take is that if you want to... It depends on what outcome you're looking to achieve. So if the outcome is that you want to come off as authentic, then I think you can go live all the way. And if anyone says they don't want to come off as authentic, that's a different conversation, but I think you can go live all the way. The only edit I would add to that is that if somebody hears live, they feel like there might be a sense of unpolished or raw. That's not what I'm saying. You can be polished and live and authentic. So I think you can go live.

Lindsay: I like it. Oh, I can't hear you anymore, Mark.

Mark Kilens: Oh, I'm sorry. I muted my mic. I mute my mic.

Lindsay: It's like maybe it's just me.

Mark Kilens: That was not inaudible.

Lindsay: The authenticity, things like that happen, and that's okay.

Rachel: And that's live.

Mark Kilens: Exactly.

Rachel: But if I were editing you, I would edit that out later. Just saying. We can talk about that later.

Mark Kilens: We'll get into that for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, before I give my opinion, debate this a bit like, Lindsay, what's your take? And by the way, folks, if you have a take, you want to come on stage, just raise your hand or just leave a comment in the chat. So Lindsay, though, what's your take?

Lindsay: Yeah, I'm going to try really hard not to just be agreeable, but I agree with Rachel. I don't... The key word being better. That's the word that I have issue with there, Mark. I don't know if there's a better. Anyone who has heard me talk or over the last four years, it's the first thing I always go to is who is it for and why are you doing it? So to Rachel's point, if you're going for something, really two things. Really like raw, unfiltered, authentic, catching someone's spur of the moment, just gut reaction, live. Also, if you're going to... And I know we're going to get to amplified marketing and amplification. If you're going for maximum efficiency, which I know is a top priority even more so than normal right now, maximum efficiency could be exactly what we're doing now, which is do an event live, record it, amplify, turn it into a podcast content, turn it into other stuff later, which by the way, we're going to do with this. So those two things. If those are why you're doing it a hundred percent, but if you're going for something else and you're going for something that's more, much more polished into Rachel's point, you can get polished out of live. But if you're going for something more polished and more deeply researched or more produced feeling, then there's other ways to do it too. So that's my take.

Rachel: Okay. But Lindsay, my only thought there that to add to what you're saying is even if you're going for more produced, more styled, more whatever, it all starts live, meaning you have to do the research. So you have to have conversation, you have to have connection. And I think that if anyone is here listening to this webinar, this conversation, every single time that they're in front of somebody and having a conversation, they should record it. You should just be getting that information and that content anyway, because Lindsay, I know we'll get into it, but you can use it.

Lindsay: Yes.

Rachel: You can use it. So my whole thought process is like it always starts live, no matter what. How you use it determines how you polish, produce it, amplify it.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Mark Kilens: Okay. All right. So audience, folks listening. A number one, if you think live should always go that direction first. Go live first, then edit. Or do you think" No, it depends. It's not always better." That's a number zero. What do we have in the chat? Throw it in the chat. Here we go. We're going to see what people say. And so then folks, with any opinion, again, if you have a strong opinion, raise your hand and we can get you into stage. But going back to what you just said, Rachel, it's practicing your ABCs. Always be capturing.

Rachel: Ooh, I'm like closing? Different conversation.

Lindsay: That's you.

Mark Kilens: Yeah, I mean, Greg... I think Greg kind of agrees. I mean, Lindsay, this is with you and Casted, right? You believe in that though too, right?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Mark Kilens: Right. I mean, your whole technology is built on that idea.

Lindsay: Yeah, I hesitate. I just don't want anybody to feel like they have to do an event in order to record a podcast, right? That's not the case. I mean, do what you got to do. Because when we were preparing for this, Rachel had a really good point. She's like, " Well, when you do a podcast and it's just the two of you... If it was literally just the three of us and we're recording, that would still be a live conversation." It's just whether or not it's in front of the live studio audience, right?

Rachel: Yeah.

Lindsay: So again, maximum efficiency, 100%, and I think you can get the same as, if not better, outcomes producing and polishing and editing after the fact with this kind of setup. But do you have to? No. But perhaps, should you? I think you should really consider it, especially this year. I mean, my word, especially this year. We talked to so many customers and prospects and just marketers in general that are doing events like this and also trying to figure out their podcast and it's like, " Bring the together folks."

Rachel: They can be together. I had a conversation recently with... She's a brand head over at We Transfer and we were having a conversation around brand story and why brands should do it and things like that. And one of the things that she said that I thought was really impactful, and it applies to how you think about live content and producing it posts, et cetera, is she was like, " If you think about your brand as a person, it actually helps you think differently about how you show up and create content." So I had never thought about story or brand in that way before where it was like, " Oh, wait a minute. If I'm a person, if the brand is actually a person..." I've always thought, you sell human, duh, you market to a human, duh. But no, no, no. Personify the actual brand itself, and you'll create way better content, and that question of is live better or not becomes a lot easier because some people are better. They're one take wonders. You know what I mean? And you're actually... Your skillset is improv, so I want you live, baby, because when I polish you, you sound polished and you sound scripted, and your personality doesn't actually come through. So I don't know. That really resonated with me is just that idea of no, who is the brand person? And then that might help determine if live is better or not.

Lindsay: That's a good point.

Mark Kilens: Well, and it's kind of like, to your point, community building. The reason I'm a little bit more bullish on and more on the live camp is how you can build a community, I guess, without having live shared experiences. But to me, for me, it's like it's a lot harder.

Rachel: Yeah.

Mark Kilens: Right? I don't know. You know? You got to get people talking, interacting. I mean, look at how many comments we've already had today versus if this was just me, you and Lindsay doing a podcast episode. We would never see all this. We would never have this participation. We would never get this. So I don't know.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Rachel: Wait, so how would you build community without any live component?

Mark Kilens: Yeah, I don't know. How would you? I guess that's my point.

Rachel: I don't think you could.

Mark Kilens: It's really hard, right?

Rachel: Yeah, I don't think you actually could. That might be another session, but I'm literally going, " How would you do that?"

Lindsay: Yeah, yeah. I mean asynchronously and then we get into, is that community, right? Is that community or is that... I mean, maybe that's the difference between community and engagement.

Mark Kilens: That's a good point.

Lindsay: Engagement asynchronously and community actually requires people-

Rachel: To be together?

Lindsay: ...Multiple people to be together somehow.

Rachel: Yeah.

Mark Kilens: I mean there's a lot of takes on this. I mean, you just scroll through the chat. People are like... I love it. I love this engagement.

Lindsay: I know.

Mark Kilens: And again, raise your hand. I'm happy to... I can pull up a comment and invite you to stage. I might start doing that and you can reject my invitation to the stage. That's fine. My feelings are not going to be hurt. But when I was thinking back to HubSpot days, even before HubSpot Academy was a real thing, we did one to two live events. They were mostly educational workshops, webinars, things like that, every week. And that ultimately created the momentum and the excitement of that HubSpot Academy community, which then turned into a lot of asynchronous content and courses and certifications and all this stuff. But it all started live. And I think the feedback loop... And before we move on to the next topic and conversation point, the feedback loop for when you do something live is so much faster than not. And the other point I'll make before Lindsay, you, Rachel, chime in with more thoughts is, you get people's attention, I think, faster. It's almost like a lightning strike because if you're doing something live, you're setting a date and time, and when you set a date and time, you're committing to something. And when someone signs up for this, just all of you coming here today, we greatly appreciate it, you've committed your time and energy to listen to something live. And that's, within itself, a pretty interesting signal.

Rachel: I mean, it elevates it to what I would think of it as almost more of an experience because it's live. And so you're experiencing it together for the first time as opposed to it being repurposed or re imagined down the road. I truly think though that the conversation around live is, it truly comes down to what is the experience then that you want your audience to have with your brand? And if it is authentic, if it is raw, then that's totally okay. But even leading up to live events, you do practice, you do rehearse. There are things that you're trying to accomplish, maybe we didn't, but a lot of times-

Lindsay: I do.

Rachel: ...You are doing those things to make sure that your audience and your community is getting value out of the time that they're investing with you.

Lindsay: It's also, and this is more serving the brand strategically than it is the audience, but we as marketers and as brand leaders and the faces of the company, the people that are crafting messages, we are constantly testing material. It's constantly putting something out there and being like, " How did this land?" It's like a comedian. It's like, " Did that joke resonate? Did that..." You're constantly looking for material. You're constantly putting things out there in front of your team, in front of customers, you're trying things out. And when it's live, to your point, Mark, it's instantaneous. And you can see, did that land, did that resonate or did nobody see it? And before you go create more content, before you go record a thing, you can get that feedback right away, which I think is... That's super valuable.

Rachel: Oh, okay. I have to lean into that for a second too, because Lindsay, I'd never thought about that. But you come from the stage a little bit. I've come from the stage a little bit, and there is a difference from being in the audience and having a live audience give you that immediate feedback than what you get later. And I actually think that, that might be a plus for the, is live better? Because you do have to practice, you do have to get immediate feedback. And if you have more at bats by being in front of a large audience, get it much... That feedback loop is a lot quicker. So maybe for people who are listening to this thinking, we're trying to perfect our messaging, we're trying to understand our market just a little bit better. Maybe live is better because you get feedback in real time.

Mark Kilens: Great points. This could keep going on, I feel like. This is just one topic, but yeah, Tom, great comment too. Like fail fast, fail cheap.

Rachel: Yeah.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Mark Kilens: It's a hundred percent. A hundred percent. All right, so before we move on to the next topic, which is all about the strategy that you got to think about before you start to chop some of this stuff up. By the way, one great asset from this would be just a cool infographic or something like the pros and cons of going live or not going live when doing a podcast or something like that. But before we get to the amplification piece of the conversation today, let's talk about strategy. And before we even talk strategy, let's just play a quick game, quick kind of exercise. Is everyone up for that? I hope so. So, Sid, can you launch cahoots. If you haven't used Cahoot, it's super simple. It's going to show up on the right- hand side of your screen. And we're going to have a couple questions, I think four questions, for everyone today. And it's just all about today's topic. It has to do with podcasts, has to do with content if you will, repurposing. So it's going to come up under the screen and all you got to do is type in" Click and Cahoot" on the right- hand side, you see that big CTA right above the chat. Type in 9, 6, 4, 0, 2, 0, 8. I'm doing it right now. Give yourself a nickname. I'm going to use my last name. It's usually unique last name. Here we go. We got a lot of people coming in. And we're going to do two questions to start with. Let's do two questions, Lindsay and Rachel. That sound good to you?

Lindsay: Perfect.

Mark Kilens: Okay. All right. We'll give everyone a few more minutes. We got 29 people. Can we get to 40? We have a lot of people in this event right now. We have well over 40 people.

Rachel: I just saw a podcast on there.

Lindsay: I was hoping he would show up.

Mark Kilens: All right, let's fire it off. We're at 34. Let's hit start. Let's do two questions. And again, they're timed so the faster you answer, the more points you get. Faster you answer, the more points you get. Here we go. Ooh, in what year was the term podcast coined?

Rachel: I have an unfair advantage. I'm not doing this.

Mark Kilens: Got 33 answers. Almost everyone answered so far. Two seconds. Evenly split. 2004 and 2002. 2004 is the correct answer. Nine was kind of... Nine people said 2007. It's not that old, Lindsay.

Lindsay: You know, I thought 2002. I will admit to my failure in this. I feel like it's been around forever. Okay.

Mark Kilens: All right. And, yeah, I should not play either. I'm not going to answer the next question's. Not fair to your point, Rachel. Let's go to the next one. One more. One more. Shaw. Number one, here we go. On average, B2B team spend what percent of their budget on content marketing?

Rachel: I wouldn't know this.

Mark Kilens: 10 seconds. It's all over the place. 14% up to 60%.

Lindsay: I'm really curious if people say here.

Rachel: I know.

Lindsay: If this is data or if these are guesses.

Mark Kilens: Oh, this is data. This is data. That comes with the Content Marketing Institute. That's stat.

Lindsay: No, I'm saying when people tell us what they did, are they telling us how much they did?

Mark Kilens: Oh, Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, 12 people got it right. 26% according to the Content Marketing Institute. That's about a quarter. Not bad. All right, we got a couple more questions. That was kind of fun. Just break it up because the next topic, Lindsay and Rachel, it's all about strategy. Speaking of content marketing, how do you take these live or maybe not live experiences and turn them into a holistic content strategy? Where do people start? I'll give my take at some point, this triple threat take, but I want you folks to go first. So Lindsay, I'll start with you. Where do you start when you're thinking about this holistic strategy for content?

Lindsay: Well, I guess I dropped it earlier, which is always, always, always start with who is it for and why are you doing it? Always. Whenever you're doing any sort of marketing strategy ever, who is it for? And the more niche the better. And why in the heck are you doing it? What are you hoping to get out of it before you do anything else?

Rachel: The thing I might add to that, because I wouldn't change it... The only thing I would add to it is then I would say... If I'm the one coming up with the plan, I would say, " What's the story that I want to tell my stakeholder about this effort?" And then I help and then I start to design around those three buckets.

Mark Kilens: Tell us more about these three buckets.

Rachel: The buckets of who is this for? Why am I doing it? What's the outcome that I'm looking to achieve? And then what's the impact that I'm hoping this outcome achieves? So I think of impact determines outcome. And so I like to think of things in story form. So when I'm sitting in my virtual boardroom and I have to tell my stakeholders that we spent this money and I think about the story that I want to tell them, and then I design my strategy around that story that I want to tell. And often the story gets better because there's things you don't know until you do it. But if you have that end in mind, it actually helps you shape the beginning a lot more intentionally.

Lindsay: Questions that... And actually building on that, I think I sneezed and then disrupted the sneeze, but one thing that I often do, and it's funny, I actually don't think I've applied it to content strategy, but I will now, thanks Rachel, is going into something saying, " What do I want them to feel, think and do?" So who's it for? Why am I doing it? And then how I interpreted kind of build, connecting those two dots is saying, " Okay, as far as what the impact is, after they have listened to this, watched this, consumed this, gone to the event, attended the meeting, what do I want them to come away feeling, thinking, and then ultimately doing?"

Mark Kilens: I think the feeling piece is super important. We should double click on that a bit.

Rachel: The piece... That piece is so missed. It's insane, because we forget about... When you're creating content... Like this. We're creating content. This is a live experience, but that's what we are doing. You have to think about how you show up. You have to think about that experience. You have to think about what are you hoping that somebody feels when they experience your brand, when they experience you, when they experience the things that you're saying and the things that you're creating and crafting and blah, blah, blah, because if you don't, not tying it to an emotion, nobody's going to be actually invested in it.

Lindsay: And again, the more specific you are, the better.

Rachel: Yeah.

Lindsay: I want them to feel good. Do you want them to feel inspired.

Rachel: Cool.

Lindsay: Do you want them to feel fired up? Do you want them to feel motivated? Do you want them to feel peaceful? Do you want them to feel relaxed? Do you them to feel confident? The more specific you can get about who it's for, why are you doing, what specifically are you hoping to achieve and then really, really, really the more detailed, the better. What do you want them to feel they can do. That's a good start there.

Mark Kilens: So specific though. It's interesting, right? Because we talk about ideal customer profiles and then to me that's more like what types of businesses you're trying to sign up, coupled with of course the persona, the buyers of those businesses. The ideal... The actual end customer, end user. No. Do you have a layer cake then? Is it like, " Hey, let's start with, yeah, of course the ICP, which is part of the TAM and even part of the serviceable addressable market." But then from a specificity standpoint, is it at the actual cornerstone content asset level, the show you're producing? Is it at that level plus the level above that, which is for all the content you're producing for this persona? Talk to us more about specificity, because I agree. Specificity is everything, but how should people think about it?

Lindsay: Rachel's so good at this.

Rachel: The thing is, it's so funny. You guys say all these words that are like Tam and ICP, and I just don't think that way and I'm not trained that way. And I'm just like, " I don't even know what he's talking about." But what I do know, is that the best way to create content from a straight- up marketing content perspective is to identify very specifically to a very specific person. So for example, I would say I want more Lindsay's to buy from me. No, like Lindsay Chepcome. I want more of her. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go interview her. I'm going to go figure out what she likes. I'm going to figure out why she likes me. I'm going to figure out what she's thinking about when she's not at work. I'm going to figure out what she's watching on Saturday morning. I'm going to understand her and I'm not going to hack my way through that. I'm actually going to spend human time with her. And then I'm going to repeat that because there's... Lindsay, you are unique and you are a special gift into this world, but there are other people like Lindsay out there that have very similar interests and have very similar signals that help us understand what they want to buy and why, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I always start with... That's where I start with the who. And then you can think about the programs you stand up underneath that, which would be maybe pod castings for me. By the way, it might not be, let's be real. It might not be. Maybe video is for me. Maybe live events are for me because it's better. We've proven that out. But you see what I mean. I start with the who and then I figure out the right how. But I always tie it back to the why. And if I can do that and I can do it clearly and succinctly, I can create a show and a program that's going to knock my stakeholders socks off their feet or whatever that phrase is.

Lindsay: And this is where I run the risk of getting on the valiant soapbox is because it's more storytellers, less business leaders and both. We're all both. All of us are both of those things. So many people are both. But when we think too much about who's this podcast for within our TAM and what persona, we run the risk of making a thing when we could create art, when we could tell a story. And I get super fired up about that because we could, as marketers, so not all of us, but so many of us got into marketing because we are creative and we love connecting people and we have the technology available. Hi, Casted, Airmeet, and the strategists and the support of companies like Share Your Genius to say, " Hey marketer, go focus. The time is now. Go focus on being creative. Go focus on human connection. We have the tech and we have all the resources to be able to take that creativity and turn it into something that generates the sales, that drives the business. So go be creative, go tell the stories and create art, create connections and ring it out." I'm super excited about where the world is now and where we're headed to be able to do that.

Mark Kilens: It's well said. I want to chime in with a few things, but I invited Tom onto the stage because he was giving you a lot of love, Rachel, into the chat and had some good comments. So Tom, hello.

Rachel: Hey, Tom.

Mark Kilens: We can hear you. We can't see you. No need to go on video if you don't want to, that's fine. But do you have any perspective on this conversation right now? Anything you want to add?

Tom: I don't know. Well, hello first. This session is awesome. I know Lindsay. Met her a handful of times, and Rachel meeting you for the first time, and Mark meeting you for the first time. You guys are doing awesome. I'm loving all of this and just, it resonated with me. Marketing content, really starting with the human- centered approach as to who is this for? Why does it matter? What feeling are we trying to create? You just double click on that. It goes all the way to almost anything and everything organizations do, whether it's the products and services that they're trying to bring to market. If they skip that step and they designed a solution from behind their desk instead of going out there and immersing their selves in it and trying to see it from someone else's perspective, it's always going to miss the mark. So what you're all championing is something that I believe strongly in and I'm just glad that you guys hit on it. And I dressed up today wearing a hat because I had bedhead and-

Lindsay: We like it.

Tom: ...My hoodie.

Rachel: Hey, PS Tom, I'm a fan of the new shoe day.

Tom: Are you?

Rachel: My husband has the swag. Yeah. He's a runner.

Tom: Yeah.

Rachel: But what I find interesting about what you just said around that's how businesses are built, that's how companies grow, blah, blah, blah. I mean, Lindsay, I know your story. You founded Casted out of the pain and the feeling that you had. I founded Share Your Genius out of the pain and the feeling that I had. The best founder stories, the best companies that grow, they have a vision because they experience something that could be better. And that all comes back to story. That all comes back to human connection. And if you, as a marketer, as a content leader, as a brand leader, whatever, it is your job to find a way to tell that story, and you got to do it in a way that you can scale. I get it. You got to do it in a way that you can amplify it and make sure people are seeing it. But if you don't have that connective tissue, it's just going to be noise in a busy marketplace.

Mark Kilens: It's true. Well, thank you, Tom, for coming onto the stage for being brave. Thank you so much. Take care. Nice meeting you.

Speaker 5: Love the message.

Mark Kilens: Love it. I'll hide you from the stage. You're all good. I mean, yeah, there's so much to unpack here because we're talking about the intersection of audience, your point of view, and the stories that go along with that point of view, or it doesn't have to go in that order either. It could start with your stories that create your point of view that then help you identify an audience you want to build a product for, right? There's a few different ways you could take those three things and put them into a Venn diagram and see how they kind of mesh together. But I do think it's kind of related to those three things. And then two additional things, I'd love to get your take on this and folks listening because I think it's super important. One is this idea of brand spam that we've been now for 10, 15 years, been told, " Got to create a lot of content, got to create a lot of content, got to do all these things from an inbound marketing standpoint." And look, I'm a huge proponent of inbound marketing and the power that all these different platforms and technologies and tools that have given people to create. At the end of the day, it's kind of been diluted down. And a lot of it is coming from the voice of the brand and not from the voice of a person. So how do you move from your company first go to market to a people first go to market? Something I'm super passionate about, which is related to some degree AI, because everything you folks are talking about from storytelling, AI is the market story.

Lindsay: Oh, my gosh.

Rachel: I knew you were going to do it.

Lindsay: I'm jumping.

Rachel: Really? I was like, "He's going to say AI in about five minutes."

Lindsay: We're going to hear chat GPT, aren't we?

Mark Kilens: Yeah. But no, I'm not... I'm just saying AI now, unless you can plug into your brain, which I don't know if it can, maybe it could, but it doesn't know your stories.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Rachel: Oh, that's so good. It doesn't know your stories. Mark, that's a mic drop. That's a moment. Anyways. Can I just say one thing? You just said, how do brands go people first? They have to start by identifying themselves as a person. That's what I'm saying. I had that big aha moment where it's like, if you can start to be like, " No, no, no, no, my brand is a person. Who is that person?" And then we go from there.

Lindsay: Yep. Really quick. I want to say a quote that, oh, I think it's all of our mutual friend, at least friendly, is Jay Conzo in regards to bots and AI and all things was like, " If you are concerned about a robot taking your job, stop thinking like a robot."

Rachel: Yes.

Lindsay: Dang, that's good.

Rachel: Literally, the AI conversation, to me... AI, they're... I'm just... Because I'm just going to say it because you brought it up. AI is there to help increase efficiencies.

Lindsay: Yes.

Rachel: But literally, it's only as good as the inputs that you're giving it. And so it goes back to even if a podcast interview... The podcast interviews that are good are the ones that have really good questions. So you know what I'm saying? You don't get good outputs of things if you're not critical and creative to begin with. So to me, the AI conversation is almost synonymous with any other.

Lindsay: Yeah. Well, and here's the thing, is that I've got a big hot take on chat, GPT, and I don't hate it. I mean, AI is great. Chat GPT is great. All of the AI is wonderful. I used to work at a company that had AI and it's amazing. But the thing is, it's here to serve us as humans in connecting with other humans. It is not here to do, instead of. It's here to inform and to suggest and to recommend and to add efficiencies, not to do instead of, right? And it's when you get those prior, that order out of order, when you get that out of order, that's when you mess up. When it's like, " Oh, we could just have this do this instead." No, it's supposed to inform, it's supposed to help make what the humans can do, perhaps better, more relevant, more informed, more engaging. And also, to your point, Mark, about more noise, all of these things that we're seeing, like chat GPT, are going to make an already extremely noisy marketplace, so much noisier. And so again, just this broken record on repeat, how do we fight that? As an industry, as creative marketers, the most human brands win as we prioritize virtual live events and podcasts and videos. That's real. That's human. People crave that human connection, and it lets us turn down some of the noise and replace it with authenticity and just over and over and over again. The more we do that, we're going to be okay.

Rachel: Yep.

Mark Kilens: Yeah, I mean, I'll give a hot take before we move on to the next topic, the final topic and play one more, two more quick Cahoot questions. If I had one option, hire people, hire AI or buy AI, I would hire people all day right now versus hire AI or buy AI.

Lindsay: Same.

Rachel: Same. That's insane that... I mean, not whatever. It is insane that this is that big of a debate.

Lindsay: Yeah, it is.

Rachel: Because it's like then that literally is saying, " So then do you value not people first?" You see, if you don't value people first, then you don't value story, then you don't value connection. It trickles down to everything. So to me, it's silly.

Mark Kilens: Yeah. Yeah. And one... I guess two more quick things. One is brand archetypes are real, or personas. Our archetype at Airmeet is the creative hero, Rachel. Let's see. So we developed... We're trying to be the creative hero, and that means we want to use our brand as a platform for people to participate on top of an in, not the brand is pushing things on people. Instead, it's pulling people into it where the people then are the actual brand. So there's that. And then the five types of cornerstone content that I think are so important to focus on these days, and I can put it in the chat in case people don't get this quickly, but it's books, events, research, courses and shows.

Rachel: Why?

Mark Kilens: First, all of those have a very people first kind of element to them. There's an author of a book. Even if you do a digital book, an ebook, we did this with Drift press, there should be someone that's writing it and you should highlight a ton of different stories in examples from people in the book. Of course, it's taught by people. An event is people. Research is literally responses from people. So I could go on about all five of those, but I really think before we get into the amplification and the clip amplification of those cornerstone content assets, if you have another one, let us know. But to me, those five are things that all brands over time, depending on how big you are trying to get and how big your brand is right now, should lean into. And they can all start, going back to the first topic, with a live approach.

Rachel: And I was going to say with a conversation.

Mark Kilens: Bingo.

Rachel: And I think the thing that kind of ties a bow is that corporate speak, I don't know, but ties a bow on some of the stuff we've been talking about, is if you don't know what your outcome is, one of the outcomes you could just pull away as an always is authentic. I want my brand to come off as authentic. Then you can create a show, then you can create a live event. Then you can create blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think if that's how I think about it based on our conversation today, and actually always.

Mark Kilens: I love it. Yeah. Let's go back into Cahoot and then we'll talk about Lindsay's all- time favorite topic, especially right now. Amplification. All right, Sid, let's pull up Cahoot, please. We got two more questions. You don't have to do anything, folks. It should just come right up. Oh, there's the leaderboard. Here we go. Tee gee. Number one. Number one. All right, here we go. It's timed remember. It's timed. Percent of businesses use automated marketing efforts for repurposing content on a regular basis. What's the percent? 70%? 45%? 25%? How many people are using automated marketing efforts to repurpose content? I wonder what... I can look at this question more too, because the question comes from... The answer comes from this link. I'm going to throw the link out in the chat for everyone, after people answer, obviously. What do we have? 45%. So if you want to learn more about what that means, I'm going to throw the link in the chat for you all. Yeah, exactly. Really? 45%. Katie? I don't know. That's it. Okay. So one more question, just a fun question about a podcast. Let's see, who's TG is on fire? Three in a row. Can they get the next one? Correct? Four out of four exit, five podcast.

Rachel: We're my ladies hosts though.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Rachel: I'm calling you out a little bit on that one.

Mark Kilens: Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, this is way too male dominated. Hundred percent agree.

Rachel: As Lindsay and I are both on the mics here.

Lindsay: Yeah, I recovered.

Mark Kilens: Yes, DG. My friend DG from Drift. All right, cool. Well, that's it for Cahoot. Just to break up the conversation a bit. Why not? Why not? You can play some fun games with the audience. This doesn't always have to just be conversation slides. By the way, maybe let's do a quick hot take, really quick. Slides or no slides when doing these types of online events or webinars?

Rachel: No slides.

Lindsay: I hate slides.

Rachel: I hate slides.

Mark Kilens: Wow. Okay. All right.

Rachel: We both had a really strong family.

Lindsay: I know. Well, it's funny, I actually... I talked to a couple of people on our team. There's a bunch of cast and people here today, and I will rant about it. I hate slides. I hate them. And for a content creator and storyteller and a creative person, I am allergic to them. I hate making slide decks and it's just still a necessary evil in my land anyway. But for something like this, no. No.

Mark Kilens: Yeah, yeah. I think of... So my take actually is sometimes. So I think yes, even for this, having three, four slides would not have hurt if we had a slide on those five cornerstone content assets. I should have done that. That's on me. I should have had a nice visual. Maybe visuals are better than slides, but let's throw it to the audience. Number one for yes, I like slides, we need more slides. Or zero for no slides. What is it going to be in the chat, folks? Number one for slides. Zero. Tracy's in slide camp.

Rachel: To be fair, I'm being really selfish in the sense of saying I don't like slides. Did brands create them as part of how they support their content efforts? Yes. You should have some slides, but I hate them.

Lindsay: Especially... I'm going to go back to, who's it four and why are you doing it?

Rachel: Who's it for, why are you doing it and how are you going to use it?

Mark Kilens: It's true. This is great feedback. It seems like most people would've wanted some visual, some slides. So next time we do this, Rachel, Lindsay, we need to come prepared.

Rachel: Yeah, do slides.

Lindsay: So Mark can make the slides and I'll be happy to talk to you.

Rachel: Yep.

Mark Kilens: I apologize. I like them. That's funny.

Rachel: That's fine.

Lindsay: You didn't have the visceral reaction that Rachel and I did.

Rachel: We really did. That was inaudible.

Lindsay: I hate them.

Rachel: I know.

Mark Kilens: Must give eyeballs some visual content as David. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I agree. Hope you're not getting too much snow in Montreal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Lindsay, Rachel, the moment is here. Repurposing, amplification. I'll put you in the spotlight. All right. As you kind of preach.

Lindsay: Yeah. So amplified marketing, I mean, goodness, if you are going to invest any amount of money, time, or resources into creating any, I mean, we're calling it cornerstone content, into creating anything, into doing a virtual event, doing a live event, doing an in- person event, doing a podcast, doing a show, any of those types of content that you listed, Mark, I think that starting here is a good place to start. But if you're going to create any of it, especially now as resources are even tighter than they've been before, and marketers are used to that feeling, and it is just ramped up right now, if you're going to create any of it, please, please, please have an amplification strategy for it. Please. Go create the thing and have a plan for, and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this. And you can do that as a one person shop. You can do that with 85 people. Take what you make and ring it out. And if you don't have any budget, you don't have the time, money, resources to create something new, look at what you already have. Look at the research report that you guys did last year when the sales were coming in. Look at the podcast that has since been sunsetted and how you might be able to reuse it, amplifying that content you already have, expanding your reach, expanding your impact. Why in the world would you not? It's my PSA for today. Oh, you're on mute. Mark.

Rachel: Mark, you're on mute.

Mark Kilens: Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Thank you. I was typing. I didn't want to have... I wanted to make sure you everyone heard you loud and clear so the typing inaudible. I mean, yeah, definitely. It's a do a lot with common sense, I'd say. Rachel, I mean, it sounds like this is maybe not a debate.

Rachel: Oh, this is not a debate. No. This is a " I support you. How can I help you with this message?" Because I think it's sort of this idea of think once and then it's published again and again and again and again and again. And I think that what we tend to do is we think more is better and different is better when in reality we figured it out the first time. Just a lot of people don't know about it yet. And so that's where you start to think about how can I use my creative prowess to then create other things? But thinking about it as that, how did you talk about it as a cake? Think about that. Actually, it'd be the bottom layer of the cake. Let's think about that bottom layer of the cake and how do we make that the biggest, best thing possible? And then you just tear it up so the bites get better. They might get smaller, but they are going to taste great because it came from the same cake.

Lindsay: Also... But to that point, and I didn't hit on this part, I mean, there's so many reasons you should be amplifying. But efficiency is one. Another one, to your point, Rachel, is when you start from that same source, when you start from that same base layer, there's going to be that unity in message, that unity in content. And we all know as marketers, it takes, what's the number now? How many touchpoints with the message for it to resonate? Eight, 12? I saw that it was some way higher than that. Takes a lot, a lot of repetition across a lot of different places. If you say something once, you can't count on it resonating. But if I interview both of you for this, if we do literally this and then we bring it out and we use it at a hundred different ways, which we're going to, then it will actually start to land and resonate with people. Whereas if we just invested in this one thing and then maybe promoted it a little bit later, we would be missing so much opportunity. But instead, we get the opportunity to repeat the key takeaways over and over, which is, I mean, that's marketing 1 0 1.

Rachel: One of the things That-

Mark Kilens: Good point. No, go ahead.

Rachel: Yeah, sorry, Mark. One of the things that I think a lot about is how do we create that really strong base so that we can then turn it into other pieces of content that's really powerful. This is kind of a cheat sheet formula, and it's so simple that I don't need to share a screen for you to understand it, but it is literally think about your content as, " Am I empowering my audience? So is it empowering them? And then is it also functional? Can they do something with it?" If they can do, if your content checks those boxes, empowered and functional, it tells you that you're capturing story, you are resonating with an audience, and now I've got takeaways, I've got insights, I've got things that I can add to this so that they can do more with what I'm creating. But if you're creating content and stories specifically, think about it like that. That's your little formula. Empowered and functional.

Lindsay: I like it.

Mark Kilens: Love that. I'm writing it down. I love it. It's very good. It's very good.

Rachel: You typing?

Mark Kilens: Not typing. No, just I got notes. Oh, yeah. Paper, right? Like paper or this... A whole other debate like paper books, paper notes, digital. Anyway, I don't want to digress. There you go. Lindsay.

Rachel: Lindsay and I are cut from the same cloth, clearly.

Mark Kilens: I love it. So we're going to have a quick question for folks. Before we do the question in the traditional poll setting, so I want to ask you both this and then audience, everyone listening. Number one, if you agree, number zero, if you don't. Live podcast is better than a pre- recorded podcast?

Rachel: You have to define that, Mark. You got to define what live podcast means versus pre- recorded.

Mark Kilens: That's fine. Okay. That's fine. For each episode that you publish, you syndicate out, it's done live versus done in a recorded non audience. No audience. No audience. That's what... I'm sorry. Going back to your point, Rachel. No audience setting, but with an audience, no audience.

Rachel: You're going to hate me because there's too much context here because it's like, what are you trying to solve for? If you've got a busy CEO that's running a podcast, I don't have time to go get an audience. I got to get him or her on the mic. You know what I'm saying? So it comes back down to your outcome. And it's like if I'm trying to drive brand and engagement with my podcast, live might be a way to do it better. But if I'm trying to build a thought leadership platform and then ring out that content as a flywheel, because I'm trying to get my CEO to be on more stages, I don't really care if there's a live audience. I just need him or her on the mic and getting the content created. Also, that person might need polished and I might need to play cleanup because they may not be good at on the fly. You know what I mean? It all comes down to what outcome are you looking to achieve with that effort, and then you prescribe.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Mark Kilens: That's fair. That's fair.

Lindsay: Someone who forgot to turn off the phone notifications,

Rachel: And I would need to cut that out. Because the thing you have to really think about is this. When you think about podcasts specifically, or shows or videos... I say shows, because that could be podcasts or video, right? So if you're creating a show, the thing that you are really measuring is time spent with brand. And so I have to respect the heck out of the time that somebody is spending with my brand. And so if I do it live and the person that I have on the mic is not good live, that doesn't actually respect my audience at all. It actually shows them that I just decided that they're going to go live and I don't really care if they get value out of it. So you have to think about that as a cornerstone to the way that you make some of those decisions. Clearly, I'm passionate about those.

Mark Kilens: Okay. No, it's good. No, I tend to agree with most of that. There's some places I don't, I'm not sure we'll have time to debate all this, except I want to pivot into another one then. So say you don't do it with a live audience or maybe some episodes or with a live audience, another ones, there are no live audience. Would you argue though, what's the take on this? Even if you don't do with an audience, live the show, the podcast show should always, in some way have a live component to grow the community further versus just always be on demand with no audience participation ever.

Rachel: Well, that that's you then saying that the podcast has to have a live moment in order to grow a community. Is that fair or no?

Mark Kilens: Is it better to not have to not have to? Is it better to, yeah, is it better or does it not matter?

Rachel: I don't know if live is the word I would use, but I think you have to feature voices from the community, whether that's by them connecting with you in a different way. But you have to feature voices of the community in some way in order to build community with your show.

Mark Kilens: Lindsay?

Lindsay: Trying to come up with a hot take so I can get us all fired up. I go back to the who is it for and why are you doing it? And to me, if we're thinking in terms of a show, you can't go all over the place too much. And Rachel knows this better than anybody because your audience needs to know what they're going to get from your show. And so sometimes they get a really intimate NPR level conversation between two people that's really low- key. And then the next one, everybody's all riled up and hot takes and people are chiming in and somebody's stuff is clinging against the desk. Mine has been through this whole conversation. It's going to be distracting, it's going to be jarring. So you have to keep... Your audience has to be front and center, first and foremost all the time. And you have to be able to give them what they're looking for all the time. So is live better? Maybe. Perhaps consistency and keeping at the forefront your audience all the time. That's what's better. And then I'm obsessed with what you do with it. So that's where I come into play is Rachel's the big strategist here, and she's just such a great job with thinking a hundred miles down the road with what are we going to create so that it achieves the outcomes. I'm all a bit about, " Okay, once you've worked with Rachel, once you've worked with your strategy world to develop what you're going to do, what are you going to do with it?" So that's what I'm obsessed with. And so I love the efficiency of the live event because we talked about earlier you start with a live event and then you get a show and then you can do a hundred other things. So that's my long- winded non- answer for you, Mark.

Rachel: Mark. I like the idea. I like the thing that I think is really attractive with the live component, with podcasting specifically is that you can actually, you have super fans of anything, and I think giving people an option to join a live recording as an exclusive or something special or" Hey, you're going to hear the unedited, you're going to hear the raw unpolished version of this. You should be a part of it because you love us." That to me, feels really special and really unique as opposed to being like every time it's live. So there's something there that people should definitely be exploring.

Mark Kilens: Yeah, no, I agree. And the reason I bring it up again, because at the end of the day, it's like it's another way to amplify. Because if you start without a live audience, then you can make it live. To your point with that thing, or go the other way to Lindsay, just comment. Right. But it is actually a type of amplification. Yeah,

Rachel: Yeah. Well, in live- streaming now on YouTube with your podcast, you can do that. I mean, there's so many opportunities. Yeah. Sorry, Lindsay, you got something.

Lindsay: Well, I was going to say, I was going to flip it. Mark, you're kind of getting at, is it better? Should you do, always do your shows starting live? Flipping it around, is there ever an instance that you shouldn't take something like this, take your live event, take your virtual event, and turn it into a show and turn it into something more. So it's like the reverse. Should you always turn it into... Should you always amplify the type of content?

Mark Kilens: Yes or no? Yeah. I mean-

Rachel: What are you going to say?

Mark Kilens: I think I, yeah, yeah.

Rachel: There's a case where you don't?

Mark Kilens: No, no, no, no. Always. You always do it. It's all... Yeah, okay. Always do it. Yeah, always. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. Even if it's a simple clip. Oh, yeah, yeah. Always.

Rachel: I don't know, man. I don't know. I think 98% of the time, but if you're building community, I think you can keep things to just a community, I guess you could say, that's amplifying to your community. The other thing I would say though is if you have an event or a piece of content, or a podcast specifically, because that's where my head went first. I know we're running out of time, so I'll wrap this up. But I know Lindsay, we're talking about, if you're talking about podcast specific, if it does not fit the premise of your show, it should not be on your show. Can you use that content on other channels for other things and amplify it? Yeah. If you're recording it, you should be using it if there's some pieces in there, and I look for things like takeaways, insights, research, to your point, mark, et cetera, et cetera, but I don't believe that there is a blanket rule on yes, always.

Mark Kilens: Okay. This conversation's got me fired up. I'm going to publish this poll really quick because Rachel and Lindsay are offering some help. We want to know you do a lot of podcasting, maybe? Yes. Not really yet. If you need some help, just let us know. Feel free to vote. I'll put it on stage for a little bit. I won't close it though. You can go to the poll section on the right hand sidebar to find it. But it looks like we got so far one person answering. I'm a pro at it. Some amateurs. That's no worries, no experience. I've done one podcast on my own for one season. Still have yet to do season two. Young kids get in the way. I mean, not that sounds negative. I don't get in the way. They'll hide it from this. You feel the pain. I think we all do, right? That have kids. But yeah, no, we want to help. Right? I mean, you can tell. Hopefully, folks listening, we're all super passionate about this, so if you want to connect with any of us, please, please do. You can send us a direct message before this wraps up in a few minutes. Just drop us your email. If you answer the poll, that's cool. We'll get back to you. But shoot us a message. Top right hand side of air meet. You could just let us know your email and we'll get back to you. I'm offering Rachel up for free. One hour for everyone.

Rachel: Great. I do have some templates I'm happy to share on a creative brief and a show flow and stuff like that. I'm happy to be your resource.

Mark Kilens: Kidding. Kidding though. But I want to thank you both and if you want to try this on your own, use Airmeet for something like this, let us know. I'm going to bring this other one up as well. Did the wrong one. Hold on. Let me show this one on stage. And yeah, just let us know if you want to try this type of live experience. I hope it was a little bit more dynamic for you folks. We're offering up a free webinar on the house. We'll help you set it up because at the end of the day here, here's a take one last take that I want you folks all to think about. And Lindsay and Rachel, I want real feedback from you on this because I'm considering maybe playing with our positioning around this. Do you like the term conversational webinar or is that like no good.

Lindsay: I feel like it's redundant. All webinars are conversational, or at least they should be.

Rachel: Is are you saying conversational because you're trying to hit it. That's like live. Is that what you're trying to maximize for by saying that?

Mark Kilens: Yeah. I'm just position prefacing it with something that helps people understand a bit more, that it's not boring and not conversations. A lot of slides, a lot of you're talking at people. The presenters aren't looking at the chat. They're not including people. There's no one coming on stage. There's no games. It's very just one way versus two ways. So that's the reason I was thinking of it like that.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Rachel: I mean, it made me think that it would be less slide- driven, less come buy something.

Lindsay: I feel like it's another way of saying, yeah, live podcast,

Rachel: Live event.

Mark Kilens: Let's give it up for Rachel.

Lindsay: Believe it.

Mark Kilens: No, no. Real feedback. It's like, all right. Maybe we won't lean into that. Jim says, yay. Thank you, Jim, for coming. Thank you to everyone who engaged during this amazing conversation. I mean-

Lindsay: Might be the most fun I've ever had doing a live virtual

Rachel: Event. Same. This was really fun. Really fun. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Appreciate.

Mark Kilens: You're welcome. Thanks, Mike. Thank you everyone. Greg, thank you.

Rachel: Big fan of us. You'll feed

Mark Kilens: Some of this content on the interwebs too, right? Amplify it.

Lindsay: Yep. Yep. We're going to be amplifying it very quickly and then polishing it up and repurposing. So you're going to see a lot more of this. Yep.

Mark Kilens: Amazing. Thank you to you both. Thanks everyone again for coming. Have a great rest of your day, week. We'll see you at the next one. Bye.

Events Amplified: Turning Conversations into Cornerstone Content