Episode #8:

In this episode of The Craft, our host Rachel Westbury welcomes Ryan Law, VP of Content at Animalz — a content marketing agency for SaaS companies, to discuss how AI is changing content marketing. 

Ryan shares his winning content marketing strategy, and explains the importance of knowing your audience. 

As Ryan says, “I almost never write for keywords. I never care about traffic. I write for a very small, very precise audience. And when they find us, they talk about us, they care about us, and they are quite interested in working with us as well.”

Listen as Rachel and Ryan discuss keyword-free content marketing, embracing emerging technologies, and bringing your passions into your profession. 

How to listen:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Watch on Youtube

Guest name: Ryan Law

What he does: He's the VP of Content at Animalz.

Company: Animalz

Noteworthy: Ryan is a content marketer that’s worked with companies including Google, GoDaddy, Clearbit, Wistia and Algolia. He’s also the author of two novels, the host of the Ash Tales podcast, and the guitarist for The Schrödinger Effect.

Where to find Ryan: Website | LinkedIn 

• The Rainmaker Writings novels
• Ash Tales podcast
• Animalz blog 
• Ryan’s blog post: Top 50 UK Marketing Agency Blogs 
• 6 Predictions About AI in Content Marketing by Ryan Law for Animalz
• Your Blog Is Not a Publication by Jimmy Daly for Animalz
• Shorthand on LinkedIn

AI can be used to make content marketing easier

“A lot of the ways I'm using these [AI] tools are… I will create an article outline, I do the keyword research, the ideation, and the bigger content structure that this lives within. I then generate the text within my structure, and then I — the skilled human — edit it as well. 

“So there's the possibility that we will use these tools and our jobs will change, but they will change for the better — we will all become strategists that do slightly higher leverage stuff. And these tools still can't interview people. It can't have original experiences. It can't write thought leadership. So there's always that part of it, which I think is unchanged.”

Content marketing and SEO aren’t the same thing

“I'd very much grown up thinking that content marketing and SEO were the same thing, and that there was no daylight between those two concepts. So, I spent all of my time writing a bunch of articles designed to get as much traffic from search as possible.

“It was a success in the sense that we got hundreds of thousands of page views to the blog. And it was an absolute failure where it really mattered because we didn't close a single new deal for an entire year off the back of that traffic. 

“The big lesson I took from that was, there are different ways to use content beyond just SEO — and quite often, the thing that generates traffic is not the thing that will generate a lot of business for your company as well.” 

Write specifically for your audience

“Joining Animalz was a huge eye opener because we basically didn't do SEO. There was no keyword research. It was the exact opposite kind of content marketing. It was all storytelling, narrative-driven, interesting ideas, personal experience, and interview-based content. The strategy we use at Animalz is something I inherited from Jimmy Daly, my predecessor at Animalz. And I'm still doing it because it works so well. 

“We basically just solve the problems that our target audience cares about. We write for a very small, very precise audience. And when they find us, they talk about us, they care about us, and they are quite interested in working with us.”