Episode 30: Stop Creating Noise: How to Make
Content That Resonates

Episode Transcript

Ashley: Okay, so my favorite first question to ask everybody, a little bit of an icebreaker, is when you’re not at your desk and you find yourself in the kitchen, what is your go to dish to cook? 

Mordy: I go eggs, hands down. Eggs? Eggs, yeah. 

Ashley: Okay, so are we adding cheese, cream, what’s the secret? No, 

Mordy: no, it’s just, it’s just eggs, because I suck at cooking everything else.

Ashley: Okay, but eggs can also be really difficult to cook. Are we doing scrambled over easy? No, not like an omelet, 

Mordy: like. And I’m good, I can do the whole flip thing. Like, it’s the one thing I can do. Yeah, my kids are all, like, kids are like super, one of my kids is a really good cook, actually. But he’s like, Oh, how do you do the flip thing?

I’m like, Oh yeah, like I’m an awesome cook. Check me out. I can flip an egg. I 

Ashley: mean, it is pretty impressive. It, without having to go all over the oven or the stove, that is pretty impressive. 

Mordy: Yeah. It’s one of my list of like many positive attributes. I can flip an egg. 

Ashley: Adding to LinkedIn immediately.

Mordy: Services, egg flipping. 

Ashley: Egg flipping. Remotely too. Well, you’ve, uh, aside from egg flipping, you’ve worn like a ton of different hats in SEO and branding. So what first got you really hooked to help brands stand out and resonate with our audiences? Like what made you want to go down this path? 

Mordy: It’s really, I don’t know where to start with that question because there’s so many things like my personal like background or my personal affinities that I wasn’t really aware of.

Like if you would have asked me, I don’t know, 11 years ago. Cause I’ve been doing it like 10 years. Where’d you ever think you’d be in a market? I’m like, I would never be able to market anything. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. And it kind of came by by accident. I got in on the content side of things that you are obviously super familiar with.

And I started working with brands and I found I had this knack. Of just being able to tap into what brands were looking for, what brands were trying to do, how brands are trying to get themselves out there, but in a more genuine way than just like, let’s throw like a bunch of like, add money at it and it kind of just evolved into that was that rank ranger a long time ago, it feels like a long time ago already as building up their brand.

Then I started working with wick and like that whole, like, it just kind of like fell into it, but it very much suited what I was like naturally. Good at at the same time. Which is like weird. Usually, you know, like I’m good at this. I will do this. I had no idea I’d be good at this kind of thing. 

Ashley: And it just, it just kind of happened and now you’re pursuing it.

And now you have a consultancy called unify. So what inspired you to launch that consultancy? 

Mordy: You know, I have like an SEO sort of reputation. But I’ve been doing a lot of brand building at this like for years already. And like, that hasn’t like been like a thing, like people like recognize me for, which is fine.

Like I kind of always like wanted it to be like, like the magician kind of like holding his like cards. Like you can’t see the sleight of hand. Like I’m doing brand building, but you don’t realize it. Perfect. But I, I, I kind of just wanted to pivot. Like I really enjoyed the brand building part of it. And I just wanted to get it out.

Like I actually do this. I know you all know that I do this. Yeah. But let me actually like do the brand connection so that you actually can make the connection between, Oh, right. He does that. So I can, I guess I’ve, I’ve always been consulting for a long time. I consult for SEMrush, I do comms communication, comms consulting for them.

And I’ve always done consulting on the side, but like, I always get like, Hey, can you do a keyword research project for me? I’m like, Nope, don’t want to do keyword research anymore. So I just, I felt like I needed a pivot. I really don’t like keyword research and that makes me sound horrible. 

Ashley: Yeah, I mean, it’s a lot and it’s its own specialty on its own.

So we can leave it at that. So I don’t bash it too much, but yeah, it’s, it’s a lot of work. And it’s so tedious. I’m like, 

Mordy: I already know what keywords you need. And like, you all, we all know what keywords you need. Like, come on. 

Ashley: Yes. Yeah. It’s part of general strategy. Dev. 

Mordy: Yeah. 

Ashley: So let’s dive into content resonance then.

And when we’re talking about creating content that really resonates with your audience, I feel like that is kind of buzzword y, but there’s really a lot to it. And there is a connection here. So can you kind of break down what it means to create content that resonates, especially with your branding experience?

And What resonating even means when we’re talking about content? 

Mordy: Yeah, so like the way I kind of like break it down, there’s like core, or there’s like surface like emotions that we deal with every day. And like the one I like to like use is like having fun. Like, I don’t need to have fun today. I probably won’t have fun today.

I didn’t have any fun today. I might not have fun tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have fun on the weekend! But like, it’s not a necessity, like life necessity, like the quote, it’s the F word who wants, but there are deeper things that like everyone actually needs on a consistent basis, like connection, like we need to connect with ourselves, with other people, connection is a big deal that no matter how much you’re going to say, like, I don’t care, other people, you do need connection.

And without it, Cannot possibly live. So resonance has to deal with, with those deeper sort of emotion. And I’ve almost called like existential concepts surface, like fleeting, sort of emotional experiences, not to say that there isn’t resonance in those and there isn’t value in those, but real connection, which is what I think resonance really is comes from those deeper, more core human experiences.

Ashley: And if, if we’re trying to create content that. Addresses that deeper human experience. I immediately think this is going to be a lot of work. So like, how do you, how do you find that, that balance then? Because if you’re going to try and continually resonate with your audience, there’s this strategy aspect of, of knowing what’s fun for your audience, if they even want to have fun today and like going down that path.

And then there’s the path of then the execution and the creation. So when you’re. Creating this kind of content, not sales enablement, but content that resonates with your audience. What kind of workload are you looking at? And is this as big of a workload as it feels like? And sounds like, yeah, it sounds 

Mordy: like almost like a therapy session, right?

No, it’s, it’s yes. And, and, and, and, and in a way, in a way it is. But no, like not every piece needs to do this. Not every time you’re on social media, do you need to have like, yeah, that’s a powerful connection. What you do need to do is like, I guess it ties into that brand work. It’s like really understand like, what’s your identity?

What’s your, who are you? How are you sliding in? To the context of your user’s life context is recall positioning, but you really need to know how you slide in there and, and sometimes you’re going to hit that, that, that point and you could do it in very subtle, very slight ways. Like the topics that you write about, that’s a very strong positioning element, right?

If I’m, if I just get a horrible example, so I’m a big like sports. Not sorry, like I know like sports ball, but so let’s say you go to one of these like big sports. I don’t know YouTube channels like Rich Eisen. It’s all football all the time. And when you, when you look at the recent videos and all you see is NFL football, it tells me as a sports nut, like you’re not like an actual person I really want to dive into because you don’t talk about baseball or you don’t talk about basketball.

You know, that position, that kind, that topical creation, that topical focus. Is positioning right? Without you even realize what you do, because maybe he does want me to come for the baseball content. But if there’s nothing there immediately that I seen, I eyeball view right away on the YouTube videos, like the recent videos, I’m not going to walk away with that perception.

So it doesn’t have to be all the time. But there does have to be a perception that that you do hit on that, like whatever that thing is that you’d want to hit on how 

Ashley: much or how far should you go out on a limb then to create this kind of content? Because I could already see brand people being like, you know, you have to be really careful with this messaging.

Your football example is a perfect example of If there are other sports they’re talking about, but this week it’s a football game, then that’s their primary messaging. So let’s say a content creator who just has one specific niche, but every once in a while wants to. Get creative and talk about baseball too, along with their football reference.

Is there a proper balance? And how do you handle promoting a little bit of diverse content? 

Mordy: Yeah, there is a, there is a balance. And like, for example, let’s say I just want football. I don’t want to see baseball. Right. So like that was a perfect, you’re never going to hit everybody all the time. I feel like.

That’s just like this, like a reasonable digital expectation that we have that, that dude might talk about baseball all the time, but I happened to come like into his YouTube channel at a moment in time where, oh my gosh, the biggest NFL football story in the world happened. Everything is football. And there’s nothing to, like, maybe do about that.

I mean, obviously, like, you need to think about that and speak. The biggest thing is to be conscious. Like, if that, if that’s, like, that actually was the case, then maybe pin a baseball video up there if you can. Or if it’s, if it’s on your blog, like, pin something up there, even though it might not be the newest thing.

But pin something up there if that’s something you want to signal and it’s not like a perfect approach. It’s not like I’m going to sound like so non like SEO for a second or so non performance based. There’s no like checklist of like, Oh, every fourth post should be like, like, that’s just not real.

That’s not how it works. Yeah, but if you have it in the back of the mind and you’re worried about it, it’s almost like with my kids, I’m always going to spend the right amount of time with them because I just have like other stuff going on. I’ll feel bad about it. I felt guilty about it. Like I won’t do that baseball video, right?

Same, same kind of analogy. But if I’m conscious and aware of all, like I need to spend time with this kid, even though it might not be like the amount that I want or the way that I want, I probably will focus on it in some way, shape or form that will help. Come across. It will resonate with that kid. It’s your, your content or kids.

Ashley: Got it. Okay. So I, I see what you’re saying. It’s this balance of touching on perhaps trends and positioning your brand within that trends, but then also staying true to who your brand is. So if, if you mainly just talk about football, but baseball is trending right now, then. To acknowledge it, if you have a good position to say on it.

And that’s where you can create content that’s resonating with your audience because, okay, there’s, they’re sports fans regardless. Uh, and there’s some big news in baseball this week. So we’re going to talk about it, but then all of the other supporting articles are about football, which is what we normally deliver to you.

And that’s going to help resonate with you. 

Mordy: Basically, and you have to think first, you think about your current audience and like what you’re going to do for them, because like if all of a sudden you’re like, oh, we’re going to target someone, so we’re going to target the baseball fans, but your current audience or NFL football fans, you have a huge, let’s say you have a huge like, that’s not good either.

So it does be right. It does become sort of this. Funny kind of balance, but yeah, it’s the the guiding like the Jiminy Cricket of all this is who you are, right? Because yes, you can’t put lipstick on a pig. Although that would be really interesting to try I would actually like to try to put lipstick on a pig and see what happened.

I Think that’d be like a fun exercise. Like why don’t they do that at rodeos? I’m just thinking out loud now, like they have like bull riding, like, why not like pig lipsticking? 

Ashley: I mean, it would, it would touch on the phrase quite nicely. My dog’s name is actually pig and I think it’d be pretty easy to put lipstick on him.

So I will try that and I’ll definitely put a photo up. 

Mordy: Lipstick on a pig. 

Ashley: Yeah, I feel like it would be a little bit easier, but okay. So, so we’ve talked a little bit about identifying The personas that you’re writing for and that’s like the first step in creating content that really resonates and connects, but there are so many brands and, you know, like, okay, we’re this new year vibe that’s coming.

I feel like everyone’s always like, let’s restrategize. Let’s create a ton of new content. Yeah, yeah, and AI is just like blasting everything out and there is this huge gap of brands that are just kind of like shouting into the void with content that isn’t connecting and it’s not being seen by people.

Why do you think that this Happens and is happening. I feel like now more than ever. Like what’s missing with this new content? 

Mordy: It’s all it’s it’s horrible, right? It’s like I call it like a digital winter is coming There’s so much noise that I just don’t give a shit like shut up Yep. Yeah. I’m like things that are offline resonate like much more like a TV commercial resonates like way more with me because I’m sitting there.

I’m watching football. I can’t stop. And like, I’m just like doing one thing. I’m doing an activity. It’s a real life thing. Like, okay, fine. It’s not like a million things in a million. I’m on social media at this point. I feel it’s groundhog day. I go on Twitter. Someone replies, I write the same thing on blue sky.

They reply the same thing. I’m like, and then I reply the same thing that I already posted on Twitter. What the actual hell are we doing? 

Ashley: Yeah, it’s just this rinse and repeat of content and not a lot of new things are being said. Brands are afraid to speak up unless you’re Burger King and take sides and really get.

It quote unquote interest street interesting with things. So it’s kind of almost why even create new content if, if no one’s going to see it, like, where is this middle ground of, no, no, no, we should still be creating content, but how do we create content that, that is like that commercial that’s actually going.

To connect in some way. 

Mordy: Can we use Jaguar as a perfect example of this? Because I feel like everybody’s crapping on them, so let’s do that. Okay, perfect. Um, I watched a great video. I forgot, maybe it was like CNBC, I don’t remember what the hell it was. But they were, it was like some big dude at Jaguar, like, you know, the CMO or whatever.

And he was explaining what the hell they actually did. I’m like, oh, that actually makes sense. Oh my God, you didn’t make sense, but you’re such an idiot. Um, 

Ashley: yeah, 

Mordy: because they had a whole thing of their whole history was they were, they were creating innovative car designs that no one else was doing. Like when that first Jaguar came out in like the 1960s, it was like, Oh my gosh.

I think for rot, they said like Ferrari even said like, that is the coolest car we’ve ever seen. That is so different. We’ve never seen anything like that, which is where they got like copy nothing. And they came up with this whole new, like weird thing. And like, we’re totally innovative. And the copy, nothing tagline now makes sense.

It actually ties into their brand identity of who they are, except who knew that history, absolutely fricking nobody. Yep. Nobody knew 

Ashley: that. 

Mordy: Yeah. It’s like, what are you doing? Like, so brands are like constantly either pivoting or, or, or chasing AI or doing whatever, and they’re not actually tapped into and, or communicating who the hell they are.

It’s like people, most people, probably myself, everybody to a certain extent. 

Ashley: I 

Mordy: have like, they’re like, you know, like unaware of themselves, dense 

Ashley: brands 

Mordy: are that. on steroids. They’re so disconnected from who they actually are and what they actually represent and what they actually mean and what they’re actually supposed to be doing.

Like, who are we trying to help? How are we trying to help them? What are we trying to achieve? That when they put things out, there is kind of all over the place. So Jaguar’s a good example of that. All the whole AI chasing is a good example of that. I feel like that’s, that’s brands who felt like, Oh, we have brand identity.

We know what we’re trying to do. We have a mission, blah, blah, blah. Who have now chasing their tails, chasing whatever AI thing comes out next. That just shows you, they didn’t have that, like that core identity that like that guiding light of here’s what we’re going to do and here’s how we’re going to do it and nothing’s going to take us off of that.

That’s where I feel brands go right in and it comes out in the content. The content ends up all over the place. The content is disconnected just like Jaguar. The content was completely disconnected because they weren’t actually tapped in. Not in this case, they were kind of tapped into who they were.

They just had no ability to tap into communicating that. 

Ashley: Exactly. Exactly. So how do we reverse engineer this instead of just, I mean, there is a standpoint to where, yes, creating a ton of content can be a good thing and a variety of content can be a great thing because you’re going to fail faster and you’re going to get a lot of data of like what is resonating and what definitely didn’t.

But we’re talking, you know, Limited resources, limited budget constraints, like in the real world for marketers and for brand owners, that’s what it actually looks like. So creating every new piece of content, there’s a lot behind that and it, it needs to work or, or give you some kind of really great data.

So if we’re going to backwards on all of this, where do you start off on the right foot? 

Mordy: So, I mean, this is where I started. I feel like everyone’s going to have like their own point of view on this, but like I start with that identity thing. I know like everyone’s going to start off like, what are you, your USPs?

What are your USPs? But before you get into your USPs, there’s a, your, right? There’s a you. So if you don’t, you’re not tapped into that, you it’s impossible to do anything else. So if you can sort of like create that, like identity that has like a layer of depth, we’ve talked before about before, like where it’s like.

It goes beyond like a surface level emotion and it taps into something. I’ll give you like another example that I use, like I’m an amusement park. So again, like the fun thing, like we’re exciting. We’re, but if you can position that like a little bit deeper, like we’re a place where you can escape from reality for a day, like that’s a little bit deeper, but it’s saying the same kind of thing.

If you can find that like locus of self, then you can experiment all the hell you want, right? Like, let’s try this. Let’s try, but it’s in a certain like context. Cause you are going to try different things. You are going to fail. You are going to try, this is going to resonate. That’s going to resonate.

That’s not going to resonate, but it’s all within like a certain ballpark of each other. But that, I feel like what brands misses that ballpark again, back to sports. I stop. Yeah, 

Ashley: clearly, 

Mordy: clearly that’s what resonates with me. 

Ashley: I love it. I love it. Okay. So, so a brand doing an analysis of who they are, even if.

They’ve been around for 10, 15, 20 years. It doesn’t matter. Like recap, who are you right now as a brand? And then identify, what do you want to say? What do you have to say and create content around that and see what resonates? 

Mordy: Yeah. Like we create content on like what you have to say that’s like unique to you.

Like you found something unique about yourself, like clearly. Cause it’s not just like, okay, I’ve tapped into myself. If that tapping into yourself, it happens to be the same thing as everybody else and tap deeper or tap different. 

Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I work with a lot of food bloggers and it’s this constant debate of, okay, well there’s a thousand cheesecake recipes out there.

Why would I create a cheesecake recipe? Just because I want to generate. Traffic or, you know, I’m a dessert blogger and I don’t have a cheesecake yet. So yes, it should be in my portfolio of content. It makes sense for the brand and I want to get traffic for it. Well, okay. How can you make cheesecake different or unique or even secondary topics?

I feel like that’s where a lot of this branded content is going is like, okay, well, what are the best pans to bake a cheesecake in or 

Mordy: toppings? 

Ashley: Yes, exactly the secondary content to really help resonate and connect with your audience and take them from that initial piece of content, bring them through.

And now they have this like personal connection with this brand. They’ve, they fully read or most likely fully skimmed two of your articles and like have a little bit of a whole history 

Mordy: of cheesecake and toppings. And then yeah, 

Ashley: we can avoid the history aspect, 

Mordy: which by the answer to his cherry, obviously.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Like, so let’s say that’s your thing. Like, you’re going to do things like we’re going to talk about toppings and pans. Like, that’s like, that’s what, forget like my audience for a second. That’s what I’m interested in. Like my whole thing is like, everyone has the same damn cheesecake recipe, but like, you can like next level it.

Like if you like have like the right, like pan or the right, like the right accessory ancillary thing. Right. But, but like, okay, does that, if that resonates with you, does that also resonate with your audience? Like try to think like, okay, like that’s who I am. Great. How does that slide into the context of like what my audience might be looking for, which in this case could be the very same thing, right?

Yes. You’ve tried every cheesecake recipe on the planet, but like, how do you like. Take that like up a level like how do you take it beyond what you’re already doing what you’re already seeing? Well, you’re already tried. It’s the same damn thing. Try something different Here’s small little like I will help you find small little things that won’t take you a ton of time to do But that will take the same damn thing You’ve tried a thousand times have done a thousand times over your family’s already eating at that but make it a little bit spicier Yes So that’s positioning, that’s a USP, and now you’re messaging and the content.

That’s like, that’s the easy part now. You’ve already like set yourself up. I can think of 30 different topics, like on the top of my head, like the pans, the spices, the toppings. I don’t know, like the cutlery that you’re going to use to eat. I have no idea. I’m not, again, like I flip eggs. I don’t know. 

Ashley: I mean, I To your point, yes, like this is the road that we go down, but how do you figure out that my audience doesn’t just want a cheesecake recipe, they also want to know what pan is the best to bake them in, like other than thinking Of yourself as a user.

Okay. I’m going to make cheesecake. You’re the steps. Like, are you using any tools for this? Or is this good old traditional marketing research? You’re diving into Reddit or where are you 

Mordy: here? Both like, yeah, one is like seeing like, like what are other, like on the other recipe blogs, like what are people commenting?

What are people saying? Like, what’s the sentiment? Like, I always say that about like, even in your own social media, like, don’t look at like, how many comments did I get? But look at the level of engagement, what people are saying, like, did it just say, yeah, great job. Or do they actually leave like a meaningful comment?

And what was the theme that you can find in that, in that, in that, in those comments and that content, if you do want to go the more quantitative way, then keyword research is a good thing to do. Like search volume trends, like whatever, like when people go to all recipes, what are these, like, if you only think good, like SEMrush and like, look up like all recipes, like.

What are they looking for in there? Like, are they looking for, like, best pans for cheesecake? Like, then you know, like, um, it’s oversimplifying it, but then you know, like, okay, there’s something there. But also another really good tool that you can use is Also Asked at alsoasked. com, which is just pulling in Google’s People Also Asked questions.

So if you typed in like cheesecake, you might see like one of the questions people are asking, there are like, what pan is the best pan to cook cheesecake in? I wouldn’t look at, so SELs will look at that kind of thing. It’s like, Oh, let me answer literally each one of these stupid questions. Which is like, Oh my God, seriously, that’s how you’re using this data.

What the hell is wrong with you? 

Ashley: Yeah. 

Mordy: Um, what you should do, cause what the tool does it, if you, if you’re familiar with this SERP feature from Google, if you open up one question, it opens up new questions. And if you open up another question, it opens up another question, almost like a tree and you can see the tree and the tool, and then you can look at.

Themes, like what themes do I see in these questions? Oh, people are not just asking about the actual cheesecake recipe. They’re asking all these like secondary kind of questions. So that also tells me like, there’s an interest there. So all of those things together. 

Ashley: Yeah. And sometimes not everything needs its own article, its own blog posts.

I mean, sometimes these are just like supporting headings within a larger guide or instruction or. Whatever have you be in order to actually connect and keep them on that page. It’s not always about, we have to send them to five other pieces of content that are only 200 words each because we’re just simply answering a question.

Mordy: Wait, we’re not, you’re not supposed to do that. 

Ashley: I mean, I mean, that’s what I 

Mordy: see always been for like forever. And like, even no matter like how many times users will say, we hate that. And Google says, don’t do that. Like that’s what we, that’s what you should. No, I’ve been doing this wrong for so long. 

Ashley: No.

And like that whole internal linking thing, you know, there, there’s something there, but

I just buy all 

Mordy: my internal links. It has high DA, you know, 

Ashley: Oh, yeah. From, from your own website. Super high for 

Mordy: myself. Yes. I just take money from one pocket and the other pocket. And they say like, look at my high DA links. 

Ashley: I feel like there’s a tax break somewhere in here, too. 

Mordy: That’s a good point. It’s also a great way to LinkedIn message yourself.

Ashley: Exactly, exactly. Because we’re not getting enough of those. Just private ones. 

Mordy: Okay, sorry, I digress. 

Ashley: No, it’s good. It’s good. Okay, so we’ve gone through Identifying personas, identifying your own brand, what it is that you have to talk about, what you want to talk about, doing like kind of a brand analysis, then creating content in that direction, also going through the secondary topics to continue the conversation, all to create content that really resonates with the user.

Are we missing anything? 

Mordy: I feel like a ton of things. Yeah. Like, no, that’s the, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve nailed the entire marketing like process and world in, I don’t know, like 20 minutes. We did it. 

Ashley: Check. Done.

Mordy: If you’re not earning, I don’t know, like 5 million sitting on a beach and like, I don’t know, Bermuda. You’ve done it wrong. 

Ashley: It’s Bali. It’s that’s the, that’s the, yeah, 

Mordy: the way one more person shares like one of those like posts. I’m going to throw my laptop out of the window. I live on the first floor, so it’s fine.

Ashley: Now that doesn’t connect. That does not resonate. 

Mordy: Okay, let’s talk 

Ashley: about mistakes then. what it resonates 

Mordy: with? Douchebags. That’s what it does. 

Ashley: Yes, yes. And it does not connect 

Mordy: the script well. Okay, sorry, we probably cut that out of the podcast. 

Ashley: Asad, you may want to cut that out. Up to you. 

Mordy: I am fine with it.

You can leave, you can leave that in. No, there’s like a lot. So like all of that, like, that’s like, to me, like, that’s just like the foundation that you’ve, you’ve just hit, like the, the foundation is like, now you need to build momentum and engagement, your overall marketing strategy. And like, that’s a whole separate ballgame, but people tend to silo all of these things, which I think is like, 

Ashley: yeah, 

Mordy: silly, like plug for myself.

That’s why I called it unified. Cause they’re not different things. It’s all like, it’s all like quote, Neil Young. It’s all one song. The story behind that is someone yelled out at him at a concert. All your songs sound the same. And he said, it’s all one song. 

Ashley: Wow. What a poet, 

Mordy: brilliant, brilliant answer.

Ashley: Dropping magic. I love it. 

Mordy: It is all everyone’s favorite Canadian Neil Young. It is all, it is all one song. The, the brand marketing, the performance marketing, the engagement, the moment. It’s all one thing. leveraged itself. Like, and now like in the SEO world, now it’s like a huge conversation. Oh, like the brand impact.

Yeah. People like, Oh, it turns out like people do branded searches around your product or your service. Like that’s an influential, like figure for, for Google’s quality score. It just came out from Mark Williams cook. Kudos to Mark Williams cook for that. And Mark even said earlier in his presentation, like.

We all kind of like knew these things from our SEO sort of intuition. Like, you know, this, 

Ashley: we 

Mordy: all know this, but for some reason, when we start to actually implement, we just like. SEO is SEO brand is that is brand social. So they, but they all work together to create like a digital light that should be creating momentum.

But I think momentum is the most important thing you want momentum. 

Ashley: Yeah. And your content should support that process and it’s going to look different at different angles and different strategies, but. As long as you have momentum going, you’re producing new content, you’re updating your older content to really continuously figure out what connects and resonates.

That’s that golden ticket. And yes, of course, there’s like tremendous work behind the single sentence, but really like that’s, that’s where the needle moves and will continue to move, especially as bulk content is. Not going to change with AI. It’s just going to get way worse. Like it 

Mordy: we’re in for 

Ashley: a very wild ride with that.

Mordy: I, I, can I like say, like, I don’t get it. Like AI is good. A lot of cool things. I think AI images are awesome. Like it does a great job at like creating great images, like super cool stuff. It’s, it’s not always great at writing content. Like it’s good. Maybe like for like writing, like here, like write it on, write a product description or like, I use it for like rewrite this to like sound better.

Cause that sucked. 

Ashley: Yes. Yes, like here’s my word vomit of ideas, put it into something, 

Mordy: do something with it. Yeah, I, I, I, I don’t, I don’t get it, but, but to your point, to go back to what you’re saying, content is your brand. That’s how you’re communicating. Every, everything you say is who you are. It says something about you.

And all of that, all of that engagement momentum is all starting from your content. Like unless it’s in content, it’s just in your brain and no one knows about it. Like that Jaguar guy, it was only in his brain. 

Ashley: And if we don’t have these like outside sources to bounce ideas off of or. Being okay with testing pieces of content or social media posts and getting feedback from your audience You’re not gonna have that pulse check and it’s gonna be like, oh, well, why don’t people understand my brand?

I had this issue at Content Yum when we first launched it was supposed to be this like super simplistic New agency model, just pay as you go, no contracts, no calls. And people didn’t get it because they’re so used to contracts and calls and proposals. So especially if you’re introducing something new or you haven’t done like an internal brand audit in a while, put some content out there and see what people say about it.

Do they get it? Do they understand it? Are they missing the mark entirely? 

Mordy: Can I say the most non performance marketing thing in the planet? It’s, it’s all a kind of a feel, but you can’t feel like where it is unless you’re doing something. Like, what are you feeling out? 

Ashley: Yeah, you can’t be afraid to test it and put something out there and see if it sticks or not.

You can always delete. Yeah, what’s the worst that happens? 

Mordy: People hate your guts? Like Jaguar? I guess Jaguar is the worst that can happen. 

Ashley: Yeah, but in a year, maybe they’ll rebrand entirely and release something new. Yeah, they can rebrand. Everyone just rebrands 

Mordy: now. 

Ashley: Yeah. 

Mordy: Rebranding is the latest thing.

Like just, you can rebrand so many times. No one knows who the hell you are. You don’t even know what the hell you are anymore. It’s perfect. 

Ashley: That’s where the logos are changing. As we wrap up, I want to know what is your current secret sauce? What’s like the thing, the tool, the strategy, what’s something that you’re doing right now that’s really helping you stand out and succeed?

Mordy: What’s the secret? I don’t have a secret sauce. It’s all a lot of trial and error. 

Ashley: Oh, okay. Okay. It’s a lot of 

Mordy: error. I’m like the Yankees in the fifth inning of the World Series of game, of game. I make a lot of errors. 

Ashley: And are we cleaning up after those errors and not letting anyone see? Or is it part of the score?

No, I’m 

Mordy: totally transparent. Like, if, if there’s an error, like if I like that, that was terrible. That was really just like bad. I will say that that was just bad. And I think by the way, that that’s like, that’s kind of, okay. You want to like my secret sauce, like my personal secret sauce. Like now that you’re making me think about it, cause I never thought about it before, um, it’s kind of just like doing my thing when I feel like I’m, what I’m doing, my thing, I’ll tell you, okay.

Shout out to Greg Finn. Who we all know from like the PPC world, who’s a great guy and I really crap on him sometimes like on, on like our video thing we do with Barry, but he’s a good sport about it. Anyway, I was doing the copy for my website and I was like super nervous about it because I was launching my own thing and I’m like, I’m targeting like, you know, mid market companies, not startups.

I need to sound professional. He’s like, this does not sound like you. 

Ashley: Wasn’t the brand. 

Mordy: Yeah. I’m like, okay. You know what? You’re totally right. Like I got so like caught up in like my own fear and anxiety, which of brands, by the way, like. All the time. Brands are anxious. Brands are super anxious. And that’s normal.

It’s part of the whole process. But like, just like, know that. And it’s not like, on a personal level, you know like, you’re crossing the street, there’s a car coming, you’re anxious. You know it. It’s so subtle and so under the surface that you don’t, like, brands aren’t aware of that anxiety. But it’s there so deal with that.

So like I got caught up in that anxiety of like, Oh, I got to make sure like I sound a certain way and like, cause I’m goofy and like, I’m fun, but I don’t want to like, all right, companies. And, and I lost, and there was a balance there. Like there’s a balance of like coming off like, Hey, I’m like, and, and still being true to who I am.

And Greg called me out on it. I’m like, and I went back and I rewrote freaking everything was super annoying. And I drove my dad, the guy who did the shout out to the Samuel Skinner designed the website. I drove him nuts because I read it everything like 4, 000 times to get to that point where I finally felt like it’s a good combo of me and a good combo of coming off like, okay, like I know what the hell I’m talking about at the same time.

That, 

Ashley: that makes sense. Yeah, no, I love that. And I love that you mentioned the anxiety behind brands, because like, as marketers were anxious as could be as a brand owner, you’re so anxious, we’re all just hoping something’s going to work and that we’re going to hit the right KPI or goal that we’ve set for ourself, whereas you, you’re trying to speak to a certain kind of demographic.

And so there needs to be a balance of. Yeah. You know, maybe I can still hit my KPIs while being true to my brand or my voice or my tone or my style. And so often that does work. And those are the brands that were like, we remember those ads. And we remember those commercials or their fails and they still got great publicity from it.

Mordy: Yeah. If, if I was Coke. Like I, they just had got, if you’re like, I don’t remember like this is getting released, but like they just recently, a couple weeks ago, released an AI Christmas ad that got trounced on, like, I would own that. Yeah, it was terrible. I would own that. Like, Hey y’all, we like, we like AI was super cool.

We got all cut up and it just like, you’re like, we’re back to ourselves. Like. I would just own that. 

Ashley: That’s what Twitter is for. That’s, that’s why we still go to Twitter just to see brands be like, Oh, oops. Wasn’t that funny? 

Mordy: Yeah. Or like, and some brands are so good. Like McDonald’s, like the, like the fast food, like Wendy’s are so good.

And that’s why they resonate. That’s why they resonate with us. Cause like they’re human. They made mistakes, but making a mistake is human. Like I wasn’t supposed to nail my website copy the first time around. 

Ashley: No, no, 

Mordy: like I’d be a freak if that’s what happened. 

Ashley: And you’re still probably going to change it in like three to four months.

You’ll learn something 

Mordy: with every last line. You have no idea.

Ashley: Oh, you’ll get there. You’ll get there. Well, thanks so much for, for everything that you shared on the show today. This has been really inspiring and definitely makes me want to do some, some inner work on tone, style, and brand and figuring out. How do we keep creating content that finally connects? 

Mordy: Finally, one day, we’ll get there.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. 

Ashley: This was such a good conversation with Morty today. If you want to hear more of his insights, check out the SERPs Up podcast, or find him sharing wisdom over at Unify, Wix, and SEMrush. I’ll link everything in the show notes. And hey, if this episode hit home at all, go ahead and share it with someone who could use a content resonance reboot.

Take care.