Getting Content to Work For Your Business, Not Against it with Brad Smith

It's all about content! How often do we hear that as marketers, but do we really know what that looks like in practice? Is it about volume, keyword research, backlinks or quality? Simon talks with the CEO of Codeless & Wordable, Brad Smith, who is all about content, the creation, production and optimisation. Giving his insights on the do's and don't when creating content. How best to use your content to work for your business and not against it. Brad also takes us through what makes up good content, what to avoid when creating content and how to use content to boost your ROI.

Transcript

Simon Dell: Welcome to the Cemoh Marketing Podcast all the way from Denver, Colorado. It is Brad Smith. Welcome to the show.

Brad Smith: Thanks for having me, Simon.

Simon Dell: Very quickly. Let’s tell everyone who you are because you’re doing two CEO roles at the moment for a business called Codeless and a business called Wordable. So, let’s explain Codeless first for everybody.

Brad Smith: Cool. Yeah, so Codeless is a content marketing, content production company. We do something like three or four articles a month for very large software companies like monday.com, the big ones. So, a lot of it’s like, SEO based, a lot of it’s like growth based, but with like, actually good writing. That’s the difference. The typical “SEO writing,” in air quotes. We probably work with something like 60, 70 writers at the moment. So, it’s a large team. One of the things we do is manually upload format optimized content for every client across a couple of hundred articles.

So, we were actually a customer of Wordable before it went up for sale about a year ago. We decided to acquire it because like I said, we do that stuff manually already in-house and we kind of see the need for hopefully automating all that soul sucking, time consuming stuff. So, that’s the other gig that you were alluding to. As Wordable, we just rebuilt it, relaunched it. And yeah, excited to hopefully automate a lot of crappy content marketing things.

Simon Dell: So, how do you split your time, then, if you’re trying to do both of those? Or is the view that eventually sort of Wordable will have its own CEO? What was the sort of theory behind that?

Brad Smith: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Thankfully, Codeless runs pretty smoothly in that it’s been around for a while. We have a great team. They do a lot of the work. And so, I’m thankfully able to spend time on the stuff that doesn’t make a lot of money, but that needs to make more money. And so, the hope and goal is to step in, get Wordable going, get it off the ground, get it relaunched, bringing a team to take it from there. So, that’s definitely the goal long term.

Simon Dell: You joked about that typical SEO writing a moment ago. What’s bad SEO writing? What’s that typical SEO writing that you see out there?

Brad Smith: Yeah, there’s two big things. I see two big issues with it. There’s a lot of issues, but the two big ones I see it tends to be very generic and watered down, meaning the actual information on the page, the actual writing or recommendations or whatever, tend to be super, super thin, which might work in some areas for like, consumer products. Think $5, $10, $20 e-commerce products. Those types of readers aren’t going to care that much. They aren’t going to do all the research.

But once you get into complex services, anything technical, the reader is just going to see through that stuff and know automatically that this person does know what they’re talking about. The second issue is it tends to be very, very like, copycat and robotic in two different ways. Either they’re just like, following what amazing tools like MarketMuse that we use, and Clearscope and other ones to recommend things to better match search intent, to recommend things we should be writing about. People just take that as gospel and they don’t really like, dig in. They don’t really add customer stories, they don’t really add any nuance.

The other issue is they’ll just – a lot of times writers who aren’t subject matter experts themselves, they don’t always know what they’re talking about. So, they just regurgitate what’s already out there. They regurgitate what’s already in the space. When again, in a lot of cases, in any kind of technical field, nothing’s ever black and white. Yeah.

Simon Dell: So that’s the bad stuff. You guys are writing the good stuff. I mean, obviously, there’s a lot of things that need to be in a good article, but what are your top three to sit there and go, “This is what makes – these are the top three that make really good SEO writing.”?

Brad Smith: Yeah, definitely. I mean, if we’re talking about SEO writing specifically, then it does need to match search intent. So, I look at the top – if I looked at one article and I look at who it’s potentially ranking against or trying to rank against… Let’s say those are all list posts, and this one that you gave me is like a landing page or a product page, I’m going to tell you straight off the bat like, it might be written well, but it’s not going to perform.

So, we’re kind of like, already screwing ourselves in the very beginning. Other things I typically look for then are the hook or the angle, meaning the topics like what you’re writing about. The hook or the angle is like, what makes this interesting? Like, why should people care? Why should people read this if there’s 3,000 other articles in the same thing, which there probably are? What’s unique or interesting about yours that’s going to make it stand out? And we can go into like some of those, but it’s protecting yourself from threats, internal mistakes you might already be making, simplifying your life or some sort of hack in some simple way.

Those are like kind of classic copywriting things that have always been around. Third thing is usually some like, writing style, for lack of a better word. That’s kind of like, the intangible stuff. So, when I read something, it’s like, is it interesting? Is this person, like – does it read like a magazine article that has a little bit of style and substance to it? Not like AI, just generated a bunch of super technical language that just kind of sucks to read.

Simon Dell: Is the whole – I mean, obviously, you know, SEO’s changed dramatically in the last 10, 15 years, but is there still… You talk about writing for SEO – and what comes to sort of other writing in a minute, but writing for SEO, are they still trying to stuff keywords in? And we’re still trying to get like, 4%, 5% of the keywords? Is that still a thing? Is Google still sort of fooled by all of that?

Brad Smith: There’s good news and bad news. They’re not strictly looking at just one keyword that we’re trying to stuff a lot in one document. However, there are like, semantic topic in keywords, meaning if we’re talking about like “engineer” as a keyword, well, that could be a software engineer, it can be an electrical engineer.

So, what are the other related topics or concepts around those things and how can we work those concepts into the article? That’s where, unfortunately, when marketers or writers just put their head down and go on like, robot mode. They kind of do the same mistakes. So, they kind of still do the keyword stuffing in a sense, because they’re like, “Oh, I just got to check these off my checklist. I got to say these 5 words or these 10 words.”

When again, in reality, we got to think a little deeper. Think about how do we walk that fine line of aligning with search intent and making sure we’re touching on all these topics, but also doing it in such a way that’s going to be interesting and unique and jump out to someone reading it.

Simon Dell: Because essentially, I guess that’s what you want. I guess Google is – you know, the more people read it. They want people reading it, sharing it, jumping onto the next article. So, I guess, when you talk about moving away from SEO writing to non-SEO writing, or just writing to attract readers, I guess you guys are judged by length of time on the article. Or, you know, how do you measure your success with writing an article? What’s the benchmark for you guys internally?

Brad Smith: So, internally – I’ll say what we do internally and then preface that with what external people usually look at. Internally, I want to say we have something like, 15 variables that we look at, almost like a little… I think of it as like a balance score card, meaning it’s got to be a little bit SEO, it’s got to be a little bit of copywriting, it’s got to be a little bit of like some kind of CCA.

If someone reads this, what are we telling them to do? It’s got to be part visual. So, we do custom designs for articles, for example. Are we illustrating concepts or are we illustrating examples and concrete examples? Because again, good writing often comes back to specificity, so really making concrete specific suggestions or recommendations and or highlighting examples, that sort of thing? And then, can we use images like video or custom design to illustrate those things?

So, that’s how we kind of look at it externally. Then we also look at like… A lot of the things that I’m mentioning are like inputs. So, they’re leading indicators, which are great when we’re doing a lot of content at scale. From a client perspective, it’s a lot of lagging indicators. So, in other words, keyword rankings, traffic time on site, like you said, what’s the next page or the next like micro conversion? So, if we get someone into the article, is 90% of those leaving, or are we getting those people to read one more article or opt into something or do a free trial? Those are usually like, the business outcomes that we try to figure out with the client. And then again, the problem is that might take 6, 12 months for all that stuff to start flowing in and start seeing.

Simon Dell: Right.

Brad Smith: Yeah.

Simon Dell: Okay. And lengths of content. I mean, when I’ve been reading things, you kind of get the idea that Google gets really kind of excited by anything that like, 2,500 words long. Should people be spending more time pumping out 500, 600-word blogs, or should they kind of sit down and focus and maybe go and write 2,500 words? Because again, yes, not everyone can afford to employ a service like Codeless or Wordable or whatever they want to write themselves. So, when time is sparse, what’s the best solution?

Brad Smith: So, it kind of depends on two things. So, your space and your readers. For instance, consumers, e-commerce stuff, think of like, fashion. That’s going to be a lot shorter overall, a lot shorter. A lot heavier on visuals. A lot heavy on galleries. I would say, don’t write very long. Opposite for software or technology, or anything complex for selling to business buyers. If you’re selling services that might take six months to close, those people want to dig into all the details and actually get into the nitty gritty. The other thing is to mimic what’s already out there. So, in other words, go look at what’s already ranking, if the average across the 10 articles there, if the average is going to be two thousand words, then yes, definitely do 2,000 to 3,000 words, you know?

The good news is you don’t need to do 10,000 necessarily, unless everything else rankings also in the 10,000 space. But if the average is 2,000, 3,000 thousand, that’s where I probably recommend you’ve got to be more than 500. It’s not going to give you that bang for your buck. And the other thing to remember with search, for example, that’s really important is that unless you’re ranking in the top three, it doesn’t matter because you’re not going to get any traffic. So, if you think of – I think it’s like it’s a zero-sum game.

So, if you can’t break into the top three and if you’re not going to be able to create the content in a way that’s going to get you into the top three, like it’s not going to be long enough, not going to be whatever beautiful enough, don’t do it. Do a different keyword. Do a different topic because unless you’re in the top three, that’s where 60%, 70%, 80% of the people are clicking at any given time.

Simon Dell: Well, that kind of leads me to my next question was that I guess the challenge is then getting more people to read it. So, it’s kind of one of those self-fulfilling prophecies that the more people read it, the higher it ranks and the higher it ranks, the more people read it. So, if you’re not in that top three but you want to get in the top three, I guess you’ve also got to have the structure and reach. You know, you’ve got to be sharing it on social media or e-newsletters. So, I guess producing a piece of content is maybe like, 20% of the battle and 80% of the battle is then going out there and getting in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

Brad Smith: For sure. And also, selection of the topic and the keyword in the first place is a huge percentage of that too. So, kind of like I mentioned, if you’re trying to rank for something really competitive against really large websites, it might take you three years to crack into that. In which case, don’t do it, do something easier in the short term. So like, you alluded to – it’s a chicken and the egg problem. An example, though, like we acquired Wordable. Traffic was trending down when we bought it. I think site traffic was around like, 5,000 business a month.

We started picking up on like, “Okay, well, what content do they have that’s already performing well? How do we create a lot of like formulaic, scalable content that’s targeting low competition stuff around those things?” A year later, that content’s bringing in over 40,000 visits a month, and then we’re doing the harder, more difficult content now on top of that. Because like you said, if you’re not ranking for anything, you’ve got to go rank for some things. First, get traffic to it, then once your site’s bigger, once your brand is bigger, once you have more traffic, it’s easier to go after the more competitive stuff. So, it is definitely a chicken and the egg.

Simon Dell: So, I guess then, the golden question at that point is your keyword research. So, you know, you said before you start doing anything, you want to sit there and go, “What are we going to write about or what are we going to create content about?” And I guess, to me, there’s two things. Number one, what keywords are trending, where the traffic is? And I’ll be interested to find out what you use around that.

But I guess the other question is then what are the trending topics are there that aren’t necessarily appearing in search keyword results? So, where do you find out all of that information? Because I still use the Google AdWords tool. And every time I use it, I feel I should be using something better. But yeah, what sort of works for you guys?

Brad Smith: So, that tool is great for commercial keywords and topics, meaning typically bottom of the funnel stuff. The good news about that is it’s going to hopefully convert more the people that read it. The bad news is it doesn’t give you great top of the funnel suggestions, which are more around like education, information, common questions, common problems. For instance, if you sell, I don’t know, like air conditioning units, someone is not going to immediately go to like “brand air conditioner discount.” They’re not going to immediately go to… Usually, it’s like, “Why did my air conditioner break down? Air conditioner is running loud,” and “I feel air, but nothing’s coming out.”

Like, they’re going to go to those problems, and usually that kind of stuff, kind of like you’re referencing. I mean, you can find them in two different ways. Trending topics like Google Trends is a really easy place to go. That’s going to help you find more topical stuff that’s recently, and you can see the trend over time. So, you can see, like in the last year or two when COVID hit and everyone’s spending their time at home and they want to redecorate their house now or they want to like, you’re probably going to see this huge uptick in like, air conditioning repairs, painting my house, like all those types of things.

And the reason you want to use something like that versus Ahrefs, which we use for traditional keyword research, a lot of those trending things or things that spike aren’t always… The data is not always available. Historical data is not always available in Ahrefs, or in a Google keyword planner. So, for all other evergreen topics, traditional keyword research, we use Ahrefs because I really like two features on there. Number one is the parent and related feature. So, I can not just look at one keyword, I can look at everything around it. And that’s good from a content planning perspective, if I’m planning 100 articles over the long term, I want to see what all those relationships are ahead of time.

That helps me plan content, like when I’m actually going to send it to writers because I know, “Okay, this writer is already really good at these three topics.” So, I’m going to assign it that way. The other thing I really like about Ahrefs data is the competition stuff, and specifically around links. So, once I start looking at what’s actually ranking and what it’s going to take to compete, from a link building perspective, what is it going to take? So, how large are those websites? How many links do those websites have to all those individual pages?

It’s like another way that I will gauge competitiveness, again, going backwards to “Can I rank for this really quickly or not?” And if I can’t, but it’s important, and it’s commercial related and it’s related to my product. The long term, I definitely still want to do that, and I just know it’s going to take longer to pay off versus maybe I might prioritize the easier content at a time, less links. The website’s ranking are not huge brand names, not like Amazon.com or Wikipedia that I’m going against.

And then also, like from a link building promotion perspective, I think I can kind of beat it. So, that’s another important point, I guess, that I breezed over. But when you’re picking keywords, you should already know how you’re going to rank or get traffic to them. And if you can’t, same conversation applies. If you can’t, if you don’t know how you’re going to get 10 links guaranteed to this page, maybe you don’t do it. Like, that’s another thing that people should be planning in ahead of time, and they don’t always.

Simon Dell: And everyone, kind of depending on who you read and what videos you watch, the whole backlinks thing is very… It’s still important. You still need to get links back too. You write an article, you still need to get people, valid links back to that article.

Brad Smith: Yeah, definitely. I mean, and especially the smaller the website, or like the more large, indirect competitors, the more important it is. So, again, if you’re Amazon.com or whoever, or if you’re like Forbes, a lot of times in content and SEO, you’re not competing against direct competitors, you’re competing indirect competitors just for like, real estate on the search engine result page.

So, even though you don’t think you’re going to compete against Amazon for something, you might, if you actually look at what’s already ranking in your space. So, that’s definitely one of the challenges, is figuring out, “Okay, well, in those cases, maybe I can’t compete with them because again, they don’t need a lot of links, but I probably will, just because they’re such a huge website and their brand awareness.”

Think of link building… People get caught up in the trends and the shiny stuff. Think of link building as like, PR. And when we talk about like, site authority or domain authority, think of that as just like a proxy for brand awareness. So, if you’re driving brand awareness, it’s the same goal as the end of the day. So, don’t get caught up for doing link building just for the sake of doing link building, if that makes sense.

Simon Dell: Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess then, we get – you would probably get 10 times what we get, 100 times what we get, but we get the email saying, “Can I guest post on your site?” People offering even to pay for it and things like that. You know, when you’re producing content for, let’s say, Monday.com, are they taking some of those articles and going and putting them on other people’s websites and linking back, or are they kind of keeping the content to themselves? Is there a difference in value of doing that?

Brad Smith: Yeah. So, we’re doing content just for their own site, just for their own domain and brand and everything else. A large brand like that often have better leverage, and they have more people saying yes to them. So, for instance, we did a huge guide for them that was like, I don’t know, 300 different project management tools, pros and cons and walkthroughs and like, all these – like, this super, super long, detailed guide.

And so, if we look at, “Okay, who’s already talking about project management tools? What journalists are writing about project management tools?” And then you go to those people and say, “Hey, we just put together this huge guide.” If you’re a huge brand like that, then people usually say yes to you. I was like, “Hey, I would love to feature that or send it out or whatever.” If you’re a small brand, they’re probably not going to listen to you. So, that’s where you’ve got to get a little more creative. Again, depending on your space you’re in, smaller brands try to piggyback on bigger ones.

So, what can you offer them? Can you run a contest with a bigger brand in your space? Think of like, not competitors, but think of like other people in the space. An example, I worked for the travel company years ago and we partnered with a hotel and a local car company. And like, I think we just covered the airline flight, but we created like a little, “Hey, we’re going to send you on a free trip to this location and you’ll get a free attraction. And we’re going to set this little agenda for you.”

And the free hotel and all expenses paid, all that kind of stuff. And all the partners in that just threw in their own product and service. So, out of pocket, it didn’t cost anyone that much, but we were able to go out and cross-promote this thing to like, a much wider audience. And again, what we’re talking about here, a contest and promotions and PR, it’s all going to drive good links at the end of the day if you’re doing it right.

Simon Dell: And it’s funny that you kind of talk about all those things. And when somebody talks about SEO and content, all of a sudden, these things are all kind of meshed together. There’s this kind of ecosystem. This is essentially what marketing is. It’s this ecosystem of lots of different activities that are all kind of working together to create this bigger result. So, you know, SEO people sort of sitting there, isolated on their own in their own little office and not taking into account everything else that goes on in marketing are probably doing themselves a massive disservice?

Brad Smith: Yeah, definitely. Because like you said, the good news about all this stuff is that the impact in one area influences the impact in the other areas. So, with the example I just gave you, we were talking about like, increasing brand awareness, cross-promoting other people’s newsletters, our customer bases, driving links. We also did one with bloggers and we sent bloggers on a trip, and then we got them to create free content for us, for our sites and free video.

That would cost us a lot of money out of pocket. So, all these things, it’s like this little virtuous cycle where again, if you think back like 10, 20 years ago, running radio ads in one space doesn’t necessarily get you a better response rate on your direct mailers or vice versa. Like, you don’t have that integration. So, I think that is the good news. It’s more complicated today because there’s more moving pieces, but over time, the leverage of different activities should definitely pick up and build on one another.

Simon Dell: It’s funny because I’ve worked with a lot of PR people, and their goal is to get an article in the news or an online news section or something like that, and they’re sort of high fiving each other once an article is published. And I’m sort of going, well… And actually, really – I mean, yeah, sure, I want people reading that article, but you know, backlink, I want the backlink. The backlink from that one news website to our website. That’s the most important thing. Yes, that the article is there, but the back link is the gold medal thing. That’s what we want to achieve.

Brad Smith: For sure. Yeah, that’s one of the issues with HARO, Help A Reporter Out, responding to that for links. Generally speaking, if a million people are doing it, you probably don’t want to do it too, just because it’s going to be really, really difficult to jump out. But one of the problems – not only does it take a long time to actually pitch those things. Two things often happen when you’re talking to journalists, especially journalists at big sites. They don’t give you a link at all. And if they do, they give it to your brand or your homepage. They’ll never give it to like, a product page, a blog post, whatever. So that’s one of the issues too, it’s like, are you getting the link? And then, where’s that link going? And a lot of times –

Simon Dell: You know, I never understood that from news sites, was that all they need to do is ring up the company and say, “Look, we’ve published an article about you that mentions you or whatever. You give us 100 bucks and we’ll stick a link in there.” And I’ll be like, fucking take my money, you know? It’s like… It always struck me that they were missing a revenue opportunity there. And they’re all using these kind of – I mean, I’d be interested to hear your thought on these content networking services that put the ads on. Taboola is one and Outbrain’s another. Do you think they’re worth investing in in terms of getting your content out there?

Brad Smith: They’re okay. They’re cheap. You could only really use them for top of the funnel content, meaning those problem-oriented, question-oriented type keywords, or something really like, clickbaity. So, if you’re running top of the funnel ads to those or using those, they’re relatively cheap, which is good, so you can run them and get like, cheap clicks. You’re going to have to retarget those audiences, because don’t think you’re going to get those people to your website and they’re going to buy, you’re going to retargeting.

Simon Dell: But yeah, the conversion rate for them is diabolical. It’s terrible. But yeah, okay.

Brad Smith: But again, if you are launching a new product, nobody knows you in the space, there are benefits of doing it. You’ve just got to know kind of why you’re running them and how you’re going to get those people back to your site, ultimately.

Simon Dell: Yeah, I guess if you retargeted them on Facebook or Instagram, potentially with a video that expanded on what the original clickbaity article was about. But yeah, I mean, I’ve always found that they’ve given great traffic, but very rarely do they actually. I’d always see them more as brand awareness. So, where I’ve used them successfully is with bigger brands that aren’t necessarily trying to sell anything online. They’re just trying to reinforce, potentially, the authority of their brand. We did it with a big insulation brand. It was all – you know, obviously, we do it leading up to winter. And saying, you know, “Three ways to make your house snug warm this winter.”

And it comes through and they learn about the brand and they learn about the product. And then when they go to the big Bunnings Warehouse, which is the Home Depot, or whatever you guys call it, over there. But then they see the brand, it’s about just being exposed to that brand and then triggering it when they’re out there in the retail space. So. Couple of sort of final questions. PDFs and downloads. Does that still work? I mean, everyone and his dog has created downloadable PDFs and books that – you know, e-books that you need to sign up for gateways and blah, blah, blah. Is it better just to say, “You know what? Just have the information. Just read it. We don’t want to try and get an email off you.

Brad Smith: Usually, yes. So, for example, like a case study, for instance. You see this a lot like, B2B services. If I’m giving away, or if I’m trying to give away a case study, putting up an email is going to – on the one hand, it’s going to limit the number of people who see it. The counterargument to that is like, “Well, I only want qualified people to look at the case study.” But again, it’s one of those things where it’s like, “Is the information in there really that interesting or valuable or unique that you need to hide it? Don’t I want more people to see that to try to increase the number of people who are actually going to reach out for a trial or demo, or like an instant quote or whatever?”

So, I’m a fan, usually, of that type of information, just like opening it up and letting people check it out and letting more people see it, the better. Again, you can retarget those people. So, you can still tell if people click on a certain page, they read something. The alternative to that is if you’re doing some sort of… Two ways to go or think about it, like a course or some type of like, multi-part series where you want to like, drip and nurture someone over time that you can gate, because you can deliver like, one episode, one video a day sort of thing for so many days and then try to sell them after that.

The other spin on that that, of course, I’m now forgetting, it was really good. Maybe I’ll come back to it if I remember.

Simon Dell: If we think about it in a minute. Well, I’ll leave you with my last question. Maybe this might trigger your brain. You mentioned a word, “clear scope” earlier on. AI content, writing, my business partner gets really kind of excited about how an AI is going to just write these articles and keyword descriptions, and all this kind of stuff. Do you think that’ll ever do you guys out of a job? Or is it something that you know, perhaps the AI hasn’t – still can’t quite get it? Where’s your thought on all this?

Brad Smith: Yeah. So, we’ve tested it a lot. And thankfully, in the short term, it doesn’t look like anytime soon. It looks like we’ll be employed for a little longer. I mean, long term, probably, right? Like, long term, we’re probably all going to be destroyed by robots anyway. But short term, usually what happens is AI is currently like, pulling in all this data and kind of like pattern matching and regurgitating based on these things commonly show up together. So, when it’s like trying to write something, it’s saying, “Okay, if an example is like, how do I change a tire, then what are the common threads and things that come up when people search for something like that? What are all the common data points, and how can I like structure those things together in order or sequence?”

The problem is it doesn’t really know what it’s talking about. So, one section of a piece of content might not relate to the other section that much. Usually, when you’re writing, you introduce one section and then build on it in the next section, and you try to build on what the readers now learned. None of that can happen. It tends to be very fact based. So, in other words, it’s very concrete, very black and white. Again, it’s a robot. So, think of like, “What is ‘blank’?” It could do that type of query pretty well. So like, I don’t know, “What is a migraine?” Like, what is a migraine? It could do that sort of content decently well.

If you said, “How is a migraine different from, I don’t know, like an ACL injury?” If you’re comparing anything, if you’re looking for subjectivity, if you’re looking for nuance, you can’t do any of that. It also can’t do style or copywriting. So, for instance, if you’re trying to like, inject personality in something, if you’re trying to make something readable, interesting inside jokes, jargon, it can’t do jargon. It can’t do all those little things that get the reader to kind of like, understand, “Oh, yeah, this person is on my side. They know what they’re talking about. They kind of understand my pinpoints.” Can’t do any of that stuff, yeah.

Simon Dell: I guess that was my thought. You know, with AI, it can write content, but it can’t necessarily write an opinion, you know?

Brad Smith: Or an argument.

Simon Dell: Opinions.

Brad Smith: Or persuasion.

Simon Dell: Yeah, they’re uniquely human elements. And again, so maybe as AI gradually takes over all your start jobs, and maybe that’s the argument, is that we want real copywrite – as human copywriters to express an opinion about something, or to create an argument or something like that, because that is still uniquely human and uniquely kind of something that I don’t think AI will ever be able to replicate. Fingers crossed. Or unless [INAUDIBLE 00:29:13] we get killed by robots, who knows?

Brad Smith: At that point, we won’t be caring about copywriting.

Simon Dell: Yeah, I was going to say. What a happy thought to leave that on today. So, Brad, thank you very much for your time today. It’s been insightful enough that when I get this video, I’m going to show it to all the staff here and tell them to watch it. Not because they – none of them watch my podcast at all, ever. Any of them, no.

Brad Smith: Yeah, they don’t care.

 

Simon Dell: But I will force them to do this one. I’ll force the guys. I’ll say, “You need to listen to what Brad’s got to say.” So, I really appreciate that, and I think a lot of people will get at least two or three really key tips out of what you said today. So, I really appreciate that. And you’re off travelling, aren’t you, for the next – you’re off around somewhere?

Brad Smith: Yeah. Like a massive road trip. I’m in Hawaii right now, and we’re going to the mainland and we’re going to Lake Mead around Las Vegas, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana. Just a huge, big circle in the middle of the US. So, for a couple of weeks, I’ll be in a car.

Simon Dell: Enjoy that.

Brad Smith: Thank you.

Simon Dell: Yeah, look, and if anyone wants to get a hold of you, what’s the best way of reaching out to you? You’re obviously on LinkedIn, but anywhere else that you kind of…

Brad Smith: On LinkedIn, I think my thing is “BS Marketer.” Those are my initials.

Simon Dell: Okay.

Brad Smith: No other – no other reason. Wordable.io is what we have a lot of content around. A lot of these topics, we just talked about, and we kind of like, try to go in depth on the hows and whys of content at scale and how big companies are doing it. Codeless at Getcodeless.com is our agency, again, where we do lots and lots and lots of content and there’s more things up there. So, those are usually the best ways.

Simon Dell: Awesome. Have a safe journey.

Brad Smith: Thank you so much.

Simon Dell: Loved it. Thank you very much for being on the show.

Brad Smith: Appreciate it.