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- [00:01]
Michael Stelzner
Hey there, Mike Stelzner. Before we get started with today's podcast, picture this. While your peers are struggling with basic chat GPT prompts, you're the marketer everyone turns to for AI solutions. You're automating tasks that used to take hours, creating stunning visuals in minutes and analyzing data like a pro. This, my friends, is not a fantasy. It's exactly what's happening to marketers. It's in the AI Business society. When you join the AI Business Society, you get monthly live training from leading experts, real world examples you can implement immediately, and a community of innovators pushing the AI boundaries. Don't let this moment pass you by. Visit social mediaexaminer.com AI and start your AI transformation today. Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Now, there's a really good chance you create content in your role, whatever your role is, and there's a really good chance that you're struggling to get that content to perform. Maybe it's not getting the reach, maybe it's not getting the engagement, maybe it's not leading to meaningful outcomes that you were hoping for. Well, today we're gonna talk all about that with Scott Murray, and I think you're absolutely going to love today's episode. By the way, I also want to just give a little thank you to those of you that have been with me for a very long time. You know, this is episode 678. That means I have been recording this podcast for 678 weeks. I don't even know how many years that is, but it's a lot. And over the years, I have evolved the content that we cover. And it's not just social marketing, it's obviously all marketing and content. And I just want to thank you for sticking around, those of you that have been around for a while, for the ride, and for those of you that are new, I want to welcome you and invite you into continuing to listen to the great content we've got coming your way. And if you're new, do subscribe by clicking the Follow button on the Apple Podcast or whatever app you're using so that you can continue to hear the great content we've got coming your way. Thanks again. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Scott Murray, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Scott Murray. If you don't know who Scott is, he's author of Undeniably Human Content. He's a content strategist who helps marketers and entrepreneurs stand out and develop meaningful connections with their content. His podcast is called the Human Content Brief. Scott, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
- [03:12]
Scott Murray
I'm good, Mike. It's nice to be with you and your audience today. Thanks for having me here.
- [03:16]
Michael Stelzner
I'm very excited to have you. Today, Scott and I are going to explore why our content often fails and how to make sure it connects for a bigger impact. Now, before we go there, Scott, I would love to hear your story. How in the world did you get into content? How in the world did you get into marketing? Start wherever you want to start.
- [03:31]
Scott Murray
I think the quickest and easiest place to start would be how. I pursued mass communications in college. Originally I was going to go for radio, tv, film. And then the college I was going to go to, my advisor said, hey, you still planning to do that? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, now they want you to take calculus. And I was like, oh, really? Well, what else can I do? So, you know, radio, tv, film, went to mass communications, and I followed that all the way through. And I had a. Had a professor that had this poster on her wall that said, what can I get with a mass communications degree? And there were all these jobs around it. And that's what I really liked because I had already done so many different things on the writing side and content producing side. And I like the fact that this degree could get me to go and do anything, any number of things by focusing on those areas. So in the early days, it was probably very, I would say, TV focused, video focused. I did some audio advertising where you would access these ads through this thing called the phone book.
- [04:27]
Michael Stelzner
Wow.
- [04:28]
Scott Murray
Yeah, they were called talking ads. And you would listen to ad copy through the audio after you typed in this 800 number and did some print advertising and did some TV work for a local city here. But then in 2007, I was asked to come to the Dallas Public Broadcasting station and help them improve their on air fundraising drives for radio because they weren't meeting goals, the drives were dragging, they were complaint calls. And anyone who's heard those drives is probably going, yeah, I have no doubt that was happening. So I was asked to come in and basically reboot, just change everything across the board, all messaging, content, strategy, coach talent, and then even do some on air talent. And once all that was done, we set fundraising records, we ended drives in record time and actually got positive feedback from the community. And so it was just a natural transition from there to go into marketing because I was already podcasting and doing social media after that. So I started picking up some jobs doing digital marketing. And what I noticed, I almost feel like it was great to have that nonprofit experience first. Because what I noticed this was probably around 2012, I noticed that consumers or audiences on the for profit side were suddenly wanting a lot of the things that people want on the nonprofit side. You know, that lack of advertising pitch and more of that meaningful language and meaningful connection. They wanted brands to show their humanity. So it was a really good time for me to be in there. So I just started to focus more on communication and content and humanizing content for the next several years for different businesses and different companies. And then I went on my own just about two or three years ago to really go out there and help companies and marketers that really knew and had heard this is what we got to be doing, but just needed some guidance and some help getting there because it is kind of a radical change for that sector.
- [06:21]
Michael Stelzner
So tell me more about, like, where you're at now. Obviously, you've written this book. What are you doing today?
- [06:25]
Scott Murray
So today I'm doing some speaking and I'm doing a lot of content and helping some solopreneurs and small business clients that have come up that, you know, sometimes it can be something as simple as, you know, hey, here's what our content looks like. What's it going to look like if we humanize it? And then we just look at some changes. And then after the change is made, sometimes those companies go, okay, we got it, we got it. Thanks. We can take it from here. Or we have more of a content audit sort of thing, or we're building something from scratch because you're talking about a company that's doing a new initiative or they've never stepped into the content fray before and they know how much they're up against and what's all out there. And they just want to see if there's some things they can do up front to stand out and make a more meaningful connection. So those are the types of businesses that I think generally are looking for me, especially those who really can implement change when they want it.
- [07:15]
Michael Stelzner
I love that you're keen in on humanizing content. Today we are obviously in an AI driven world where a lot of content feels somewhat not human, a little bit artificial. I might be getting ahead of myself here, but let me ask this question. Why is it now so important for marketers to focus on humanizing their content set in a different way? If this is done well, what's possible? What's the upside of this?
- [07:40]
Scott Murray
Yeah, well, the good news is I really focused on this before AI became a thing because it was already important to the people that were trying to reach. Whether it's B2B or B2C, we're still trying to reach a person there. And they were already looking for, I would say, humanized content from us. It's just now AI has just added another layer. It's something else we can take into consideration as we do this. But inevitably we're really trying to do two things. I mean, you know, you hear the phrase attention economy a lot. So humanizing really, I believe, is the key differentiator today. I mean, it does evolve content enough to where you can stand out from a lot of stuff that's out there today. Maybe it's AI content or maybe it's just generic marketing content that people are stuck in. I mean, there's really opportunities to stand out by humanizing content, but even more so when we see all the buzzwords out there about building trust and building relationships. And maybe people have thought, okay, great, yeah, sounds good. How do I do that? That's really what I'm focused on, is kind of a framework and a focus of adding that kind of humanized DN the content. So those deeper connections can be made through the way that we're communicating from brand to consumer or from brand to business through content. So we're able to stand out and make a more meaningful connection in the ways that we've all heard we need to make today.
- [09:00]
Michael Stelzner
I love this. Before we get into your process, I do want to just dig in a little deeper on what does it really mean to humanize content. Maybe you could just define what that is before we actually explain how to do it.
- [09:10]
Scott Murray
Sure. So, like, the framework we're going to talk about is really making it feel more like a means to make a connection or content that's really meant to have, I would say, a mutually beneficial goal to it. It's not just marketing needs to check these boxes. So we're going to do this stuff and hopefully we hit these numbers. You know, it's, it's less of a creation thing and it's more of a. Okay, we want to serve these people that we've identified as our target audience. We want to be able to be the best in the business. So what can we do to prove to them? Because that's a big part of this is proving our intent is not just to make money. They understand we need to do that, but our intent up front is we genuinely want to help as part of our process. It's not just about what we want, it's really making sure we're adding that other person into our work as opposed to kind of getting stuck into everything we're doing. On the company side of content, I.
- [10:01]
Michael Stelzner
Love this at multiple levels because I agree with you that it's really, really hard to stand out today, especially because content is now easy for people to generate. It's not nearly as hard as it was just a couple years ago, mostly due to AI. But in addition, you're competing with content. Some of it is exceptionally good, but people are also. The trust level is very low right now because this, a lot of people like just don't trust businesses anymore. Right. But if you can somehow establish this human connection that you're talking about through what we're going to talk about today, this all of a sudden can break through a lot of that distrust and allow you to accomplish your mission. And I feel like this could be a secret unlock for a lot of people. And that's why I'm really excited to explore this with you. So let's start with the beginning of your process. Like, where do we begin?
- [10:51]
Scott Murray
Well, if we can all agree that we're now beginning to recognize content for really what it is, which is a means of communication between us and the people that we're trying to serve, then we really need to at first start thinking about some of the more meaningful communication principles involved in the person to person communication process. And that's why I like to start with self awareness. I think we've all probably talked to somebody at some stage of our lives that we thought could have a little more self awareness before they just blurt something, something out. So yeah, and so in a way, that's what we're doing. What this does is this gives us a little more of a meaningful first step in our content process. We're not just jumping in, we're stopping for a moment to stop and think about, okay, what is our intent? What's driving our reason for doing this? It's stopping to make sure that we're not stuck in old habits, that maybe we've been kind of habituating over and over and over again, because that's. And that's really not a marketing problem. That's a human problem. That's why we get stuck in our processes all the time. And next thing we know, we go, gosh, has it already been six years? It felt like it's only been two years. And we think, maybe I should have indulged a little more. Maybe I should have tried something new. And we can get into that same phase as marketers where we end up getting stuck in processes that we've been doing. Maybe it's a company culture thing, or it's just what our brains have decided. Nope, this is the marketing way. This is how we'll always do it. And we can break out of that because we're aware that's what we're doing. Another thing that we do as marketers that's helpful to be more aware of is, boy, do we like to copy what we see people do. That's why so many blogs have overlap in their structure, because we've all seen other people write blogs. And then when it's time for our company to do it, we go, okay, well, we'll just do it this way. And this is how you write blogs. And we forget that our consumers have seen all the other examples more likely, or at least a bunch of them before we get to our version. So we don't have that opportunity to connect with them because we haven't stopped to think, all right, how often have people seen this today? I think about when I go on YouTube, for example. How many years now have I seen shocked faces on these YouTube thumbnails and that people are still using. And now it's kind of the point where we're so numb to it, nobody really thinks they're that shocked anymore. And when I talk about getting stuck and you don't pick up on things, I actually have some research in my book about how Mr. Beast did this just random study where he found that when he did thumbnails where his face, his shocked face had his mouth closed, it performed better than the shocked face with the mouth open. And I feel like, you know, that's a prime example of something you may miss if you just default to, well, everybody else is making a shock face. So if we're going to do this, you know, that's what we're going to do. So making sure that we're not copying so much of what we see out there, because it is going to be possibly just another time our consumers or our audience has seen something, and we're not Going to be able to stand out so that self awareness is a way to make sure that we are not going to sabotage our content before we get to the creation process and we can ask ourselves some questions. You know, it can sometimes be as simple as, okay, you know, why are we approaching content this way? What is our intent? You know, there's some really good books about relationships and communication. Like Crucial Conversations is a great book. And they talk about stopping to say, why am I doing this? Why am I about to say what I'm about to say? We can do that with our content as well. We can stop and think, okay, is this language really going to resonate? Or does this sound like marketing speak that might actually create some distance? Or maybe we can ask a question where we say, okay, if I'm in my audience's shoes, would I care about this? Because sometimes when we get so locked into our marketing processes, we're fully capable of creating content at work and then going home and ignoring the same content when we get home. So self awareness goes a long way to setting us up for a little bit more success before we get into some of the creation elements of the process.
- [14:51]
Michael Stelzner
I absolutely love this, and I would love to just, like, throw some thoughts out on this and explore this with you. I feel like this is such a big problem, and I can see this from my position as the CEO of a company with a decent amount of employees. A lot of times people do things because they've always done it this way. And it started, like you said, a long time ago because somebody found a great example and modeled it, and they've never bothered to change it ever since. But the times have changed. Right? And sometimes when the times change, you gotta change with it. Now, the other side of this is just because someone else does it doesn't mean it works. Right. We should talk about that a little bit. Right. Just because you see someone you respect doing it, it could be an experiment. Right. We don't really know if it works for them. Isn't there some dangerous assumptions if we just do what somebody else does? What's your thoughts on that?
- [15:42]
Scott Murray
Yeah, I think assumptions is another thing that we could do ourselves a favor by becoming more aware of. You know, what are we assuming? You know, I was talking about crucial conversations, and sometimes they talk about will say something because we've written the story before we have any evidence of the story. I mean, it just becomes kind of an impulse. And we may say, well, we're going to do this and this is the success. It's going to have. And this is why our consumers are going to love this or our audience is going to love this. And maybe we make that assumption because we've seen so many other people doing it and we just think, well, if they're doing it, it clearly works, so why don't we do it? And then we find out it doesn't work for us as well. But I think it really all boils down to what are your expectations already about how much content sometimes is really about blasting something out to a ton of people. And a lot of times when we do that, our expectations regarding return might be very, very small anyway and we just accept, well, that's, that's the way it's going to be and we don't do more to see if we can really hone in on some, some of the things that people like, things that work for us to maybe be able to say, okay, if these people like it, maybe we can find more of these people versus just constantly going out there and blasting it to everybody and just hope for whatever we can get out of it.
- [16:53]
Michael Stelzner
It what if I told you while your marketing peers are still fumbling with basic AI prompts, you could become the AI expert your entire company depends on? That's exactly what's happening inside the AI Business society. Our members aren't just using AI, they're mastering it. They're automating repetitive tasks, creating professional videos in mere minutes, and making data driven decisions that leave everyone on their team completely amazed. Most marketers are barely scratching the surface of what AI can do for them. While they're stuck creating mediocre content, you could be leaping so far ahead that people look at you as if you're from the future. Here's how we make that happen. First, you get monthly live training from leading AI experts who actually use these tools in real marketing situations. Secondly, there is a incredible community of innovative marketers who are pushing the AI boundaries every day that you have access to to. Third, we have multiple meetups per month where you get a chance to interact with your peers and ask questions from our experts. As member Lisa Kanda said, quote, the quality of training offered is the best I've experienced and from an organization that I can trust. Here's the truth. The marketing landscape is changing very quickly. Don't get left behind while others race ahead. Visit Social Media Examiner.com AI and become the AI Enhanced Marketer your company or your client. Clients need future you will. Thank you. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI to learn more. So some of the key Take homes that I heard you say is, first of all, ask yourself this question. Why are we doing it this way? Folks that work for someone else, ask your boss, like, why are we doing it this way? And if they say, I don't know, well, okay, that's a good reason to like, you know, maybe try a different way. Right?
- [18:41]
Scott Murray
Yeah.
- [18:42]
Michael Stelzner
And. Or if they say because we've always done it that way, then, you know, maybe the logical next question would be, all right, well, are you open to trying a new way? Right. Because, you know, things have changed. And if you've been in this industry as long as Scott and I have been in this industry, we both know that things that we did 10 years ago will not work today. Things that we did two years ago sometimes don't even work today, sometimes six months ago. They don't work. So that's why you kind of need to get to the core of like, what is this underlying assumption that you talked about and what is the real intent and is it really working? I love this. I think this is such a big unlock. So anything else you want to add on self awareness before we move on to the next thing?
- [19:20]
Scott Murray
Not off the top of my head, although I will tell you that I've seen some social media posts that I'm noticing people talking about these realizations. They don't necessarily put it as a self awareness thing, but I literally saw someone on LinkedIn the other day talk about how they realized how much they were playing like Candy Crush and why they were doing it. And originally it started out as just this kind of mental break in the day and then it became this thing that was dominating more of her time and she was like, oh my gosh, you know, this is long past what I originally hoped to get out of this and I need to stop this. And she actually turned it into a leadership lesson out of it, but it was really rooted in self awareness. So I find that people are perfectly capable of having those epiphanies where like, wait a minute, why am I doing this? And I need to stop and think about, you know, why I've been stuck in this mode, even though it might have been so well intentioned several weeks or like you were saying several months or even years ago.
- [20:16]
Michael Stelzner
Awesome. Okay, what's the next step?
- [20:17]
Scott Murray
So the next step is two way communication, which is really important. Brafton, the agency that puts out a lot of really good thought leadership content, not long ago said that our marketing era today is basically they were labeling the relationship era before it was kind of just a Marketing era, it was just a broadcasting era because we had captive audiences and kind of like we were just talking before. We could take a one way communication approach, which is just blasting it out to everybody, to those captive audiences that could do nothing more other than either listen and respond and that's the end of it. But now we know that it's a whole nother level now. And if we look at just the fundamental definition of one way communication based on communication theory, one way communication, what we just described, you know, that's really the goal. You are blasting it out there and all it has to do is hit the audience and then goal achieved, mission accomplished. That's all that one way communication is. They don't have to catch it, they don't have to respond to it, they don't have to throw it back or anything. It just supposed to hit them and you've done your job. So we gotta make sure now that we have a frame of mind in our content, we're really trying to think more conversationally or more of a relationship build in our content and what we're gonna learn from the other side along the way. So if we think in terms of a social media framework, we can think about how we see one way communication in social media. All the time, people just blast out announcements or all the content looks alike, it looks like a rotating billboard. But then there's ideas where we can create conversation and something. I know one of the things that I, that I learned from you at your conference recently was this idea that you could do something as simple as go on social media and ask them to fill in the blank. So, you know, if I were thinking of something generic, I might say, you know, the most challenging thing for my business right now is blank. And we do that because it'll, you know, people will be willing to fill in that blank. It's easy. And everybody wants to chime in and think about all the things we could learn from those responses or the conversations that we can continue off of those responses. Taking a stand on social media, you know, if you have a lot of different things going on and you feel like the way you approach your solution or something like that is unique, and you say, this is why we do it, it's perfectly okay for people to disagree or create conversation that way, but it doesn't always have to be the safe way of talking about a solution in a marketing way. Take a unique stand about something you're doing. And the other thing that I'm seeing a lot more people talk about today that I'M really happy about is basically what they're calling egc, which is employee generated content. And this is like next level advocacy. This isn't just the taking your content and sharing it so everybody gets to see more of it. It's really people taking an active role in creating conversations and engaging through social listening and building those relationships. And it allows the brand to be able to have those conversations with people who have faces instead of it look like a logo is constantly responding to people when they're having those conversations. And I really like that. And I have a colleague named Ed Ferto who also talks about social media being a good way to start a relationship. You start commenting on each other's content and then you move into the DMs, you develop the relationship and that's before you even send out an email communication because you started that relationship on social media first. That way when you send that first email, they know your name. You're not just another company blasting something in their inbox. You've started the process by building that relationship on social first before going into that next phase. So much more of a two way relationship building approach, communication approach to content.
- [23:56]
Michael Stelzner
Well and I can speak from my own experience on this one. For folks that follow me on either LinkedIn or Facebook or X, I write once a week very detailed stories about the journey that I'm on inside the business. And I always ask, I'd love to hear from you. And I engage with every meaningful comment that is obviously not an AI comment. And I start to notice and they start to notice me. Like there's some regulars that show up and add value to the conversation. And sometimes people interact with each other inside the conversation. So even if not everybody who reads the post comments on it, sometimes people love the richness that happens as a result of the fact that I started some sort of a conversation that's in the comment thread and that's also a gold mine, I believe, for us to mine to look for other topics to potentially create content on. So this is just kind of an example of it in action. So so far what we've learned on this section is that we are in this relationship era and if we can be more conversational, that'll help us stand out. Because some people are absolutely interested in interacting with your company, interacting with your brand. And of course you can get employees to chime in, which I know some employees will end up interacting with people in the comments that I post as well. And I love that. And some of them are obviously out posting their own Stuff. So let's move on to the next one. If you have any thoughts or if you don't have any more thoughts on two way communication, we can move right into your next one.
- [25:16]
Scott Murray
Well, what I would also say is, you know, this is just to prove that, you know, you talk about responding. I mean, that's everything. I mean it really, the optics aren't great. If you do post something and people respond and then whoever posted it never says anything back to anybody, then. Right. Like the only reason I posted this was so you all would respond and I get all the visibility. Thank you and good night. You know, and to your point, you don't always have to respond to everything. You know, if somebody says something, just general like, good point, Mike. And you know, you don't really know what to say to that. But if they say something like you said, that was meaningful, that you can actually respond to in a conversational way, I mean, you see how people respond to that. And part of that might be because the fact of the matter is not everybody does. And you know, it's really kind of off putting to see people post something out there and you take the time to respond and then that, you know, maybe it's the brand, maybe it's a person. They don't ever respond to anybody. Which makes you wonder, okay, why are we commenting if we're not creating a conversation?
- [26:14]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. Okay, what's the next part of the process here?
- [26:17]
Scott Murray
The next part is like right in the middle. It's. And we've already kind of touched on this a little bit. It's adaptability, which is really focused on company culture. So I will tell you, when I was talking about going into digital marketing, the first conference I ever attended was yours.
- [26:34]
Michael Stelzner
Oh, cool. Social Media Marketing World.
- [26:36]
Scott Murray
Yeah, I remember at that conference, I don't know, it was probably over 10 years ago, you had a session that literally was about how to take things like you were learning at that conference and then convincing your boss or leadership to understand why. Why it's what we should be doing or considering or changing. And then two years ago, I go to Content Marketing World and guess what, there's a session about how to convince leadership on the things that you're learning at that conference. Or I think she used the term content clueless as part of her presentation. Janine Ballas was her name. And she actually said, what made that interesting is she used to be one of those. So now she was teaching other people how to wake people up like, you know, up like she used to be. And I Think that speaks volumes, you know, doesn't it? That even after all the change we've witnessed and how long we've all been immersed in digital marketing, that this is still the thing. So I think it's important, especially as we start seeing all these changes from SEO and AI and attribution and all these things that are changing radically, that we create an internal culture that empowers people that are going to conferences like yours. And, you know, they have that growth mindset that so many companies say that they want. They're out there learning these things, and then they got to be able to come back and say, hey, we should talk about this or look at this, and then have a process for deciding whether, you know, something's going to work or going to try something out. It doesn't mean you change everything that you see. I mean, when I worked at that public radio station, I went to a conference and came back with some stuff that just did great for us and a couple of things that didn't. And I remember the CEO coming in to talk to me after one thing didn't, and I had been on such a winning streak. I was like, so demoralized. She came in and she said, said, you know what? Even the best players in baseball don't bat a thousand year round. And that meant the world to me that I had that kind of support. So, you know, really having a culture that empowers people to not only monitor change, but help the company evolve with the times and then have a process for deciding what works best for you, but at least be aware of it, because it happens so fast. I mean, sometimes if you adapt too late, you know, the catching up you got to do to the competition that might be building those relationships, it's going to be hard to pull those people away if you're late to the game.
- [28:58]
Michael Stelzner
And just a little tip of what I do inside my company, because one of the biggest challenges people have with adopting new ideas is having the bandwidth to add the new ideas. What we try to do regularly is to analyze the activities that our staff is doing that no longer matter anymore. And that frees up a lot of bandwidth, because once people get kind of in a pattern of like, documenting things in spreadsheets or doing certain kinds of actions, most people stick with that pattern kind of indefinitely and they just pile it on. So I think the idea of, like, asking yourself, like, is there something we can stop doing so we can make room for something new, I feel like that's a really wise cultural thing that maybe people could Experiment with. I don't know if you've tried that at all, but that's one of the biggest challenges is making room for new ideas often means killing old ones that don't work anymore.
- [29:47]
Scott Murray
Yeah, I think one of the things that's really helped, I think, along the way is it's been interesting to watch marketing, digital marketing advice. And I know obviously we both heard a lot of that over the years. I mean, I remember in those early years where they thought we had to be everywhere on all platforms and posting nonstop during the course of the day. And then we started to kind of learn, okay, well, maybe it's a good idea to just focus on the platforms where our audience is instead of being everywhere and then realizing, you know, spending more time on quality in blogs versus trying to get 30 out in a week. I think there's a similar principle there. I think we're in a much better position now and maybe AI helps this with some of the process components of what we're doing that we can maybe make a little more room for some of those changes, at least on the content side of things.
- [30:31]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. Okay, so I'm really excited about what we're going to talk about next. Tell us about the next part of your process.
- [30:36]
Scott Murray
So the next part is meaningful language. And really the best way to kind of wrap that up is we're getting away from marketing language and we're getting into basically meaningful language. We are beginning to find ways to get more comfortable talking more like people instead of the marketing way of speaking. And I think that's really everything. And it does take some adjustments. I've seen some good thought leadership out there that says, hey, look, this is how you're going to have to upskill your copywriters. They've been taught this, like, marketing speak for years, and that's what people are seeing everywhere. So now we need to figure out ways to be more conversational and speak a little more like human beings. And in my book, I mentioned a Forester study on this where they were looking into this very thing in 2018 and 2019. So I think imagine where it is today, where they had already identified that consumers were demanding more humanized communication from brands and content. So they were like, okay, what does that mean? And they found these really deep words like surprising and caring. And they really wanted it to generate an emotion. But the thing I really liked about it, they said that they would would definitely engage with brands that not only did these things and showed empathy, but also demonstrated an element of surprise. And that's what I think is the biggest component of the whole thing. Because if we talk more like humans and content, that's definitely going to surprise some people because they're expecting us to talk like an advertisement. They're expecting us to talk in a way that looks like we're doing this more for us instead of of them. So if we can evolve our language to sound a little more like a person that's trying to help another person and not a brand that's trying to get somebody to do something for them, that can go a long way. So on a social media side of things, let's just say that. Let's say we have a piece of content that's really, really humanized. Because I'll give you an example of a company I worked with. This company was responsible for helping colleges promote their online degree programs, including on social media. And they produced these really good videos. And they were students, which is really, really smart. I know my friend Brian Piper would love to hear that a university was using students as part of their marketing because they're the ones that are going to speak the language, right? So they did everything in these videos. They talked about why it was important, what they considered and why they liked getting this MBA and what value it's been not only getting it, but also that they were able taken on the road when they traveled, that they were able to do all these things and work it into their schedule. Okay, so we have that content now we have to share it on social media. So when we think about that, we remember that obviously on platforms like LinkedIn that video might play with no sound. So we still need to get them to hit the sound. Or maybe it's a platform where you literally have to hit play. So what do we need to rely on now? Now we need to rely on what does that copy above it say? And I looked at one of the ads and I wrote this down to make sure I had the right. So remember, good, meaningful human content is right there for the taking. Above it is copy that says, are you considering going back to school to enhance your career? Explore our 100% online MBA programs designed for your success as a consumer and as somebody who has gone after a couple of online degrees here of late. If I read that, I'm thinking the video is going to be the same. I've already decided. It's clear this is all about promotion and getting me to sign up. I may not even watch that good piece of content because that copy isn't speaking to me. So I've already sabotaged the opportunity to see someone speak like me. So we worked on ways to evolve that to highlight more about the deeper stories and maybe connect with someone who might be considering the same things and getting away from enhance your career or explore our 100% design for your success. We've also seen seen social media posts that say things like we're thrilled to announce the rollout of our new product line. You know, and we that you want to talk about something that's been around a while. We've seen.
- [34:45]
Michael Stelzner
They lost me at the word we.
- [34:46]
Scott Murray
Yeah, we. That's exactly right. I mean that's the challenge. Already we're saying we. Yeah, but we see it all the time. We're thrilled to announce this. We're thrilled to announce that. So let's say it's a product line. What if we wrote it and said guess what, our new product is here and we think you will love it. I'm going to be much more interested in that than an announcement that a new product is coming out.
- [35:07]
Michael Stelzner
Well, and as someone who is a copywriter, there's so many angles we could go at. If there was a brand new announcement, it could be from the CEO. I can't believe we've been able to pull this. Or I can't believe my team pulled this off. You're going to love this. Or, or you're going to. This is going to be a game changer for marketers struggling with blah, blah, blah. I can't believe we pulled it off. Here's the story. I don't know. There's something along those lines. Feels a little more natural. Natural. That's like something someone would really say. Or to get the customer back to that student example, you know, if let's say the student's name was Jane, you know, I could see Jane got the dream job she wanted and here's her story. You know what I mean? Something along those lines. Right? I just, I'm free flowing with you a little bit.
- [35:50]
Scott Murray
But yeah, no, that's exactly what we did. And then a couple times we got creative. Like I said, you know, this one guy was traveling all over the place place because that's what he did for his business while he was learning this curriculum on this mba. And you know, I said, you know what if we said something like he was able to bring this with him and it didn't even cost him an extra carry on, you know, it's just this big valuable thing he's got, but he can just take it with the rest of his stuff and still get the value out of it and it doesn't hinder his travel and it's valuable no matter where he goes. And all those were well received and it seemed to at least be highlighting that. Yeah, you're going to get some human stories here. And these are all people associated with our product program.
- [36:29]
Michael Stelzner
You mentioned Brian Piper. I've had him on my AI Explored podcast and on this podcast. And something that he mentioned, which many people could try, is we've all probably got a decent write up of what our customer, ideal customer or Persona is. You could go into an AI model and you could put it, feed it all this information and say you are the customer, you know what I mean? And you could even give it a name, explain its characteristics, that it's skeptical, all these things. And then what you could do is, is you could feed it your messaging and you could say, criticize this. Say this in a way that connects with you, you know what I mean? And then what you could do is finally you could say, oh, this is really cool because Brian literally has like a, like, for lack of better words, a control group of fake people that are built on the detailed avatars and they criticize the content before he ever publishes it to say if it's going to connect with them or not. I don't know if you've ever heard of anything like that, but that's the kind of stuff that I think maybe people could experiment with to just break out of those old paths. Patterns.
- [37:29]
Scott Murray
Yeah. And this is where I think we're getting into a really good example of how, you know, when we talk about humanizing, it's not anti AI. We're still incorporating AI into the process now. We're making sure from a self awareness standpoint that we're not so consumed in everything that it's going to do for us, you know, faster, quicker and all these things that we're forgetting. Oh yeah, there's got to be benefit to the people we're trying to help too. There's even been a couple times in my own writing and in my own content, in my own work where I thought, you know, I still think this could have a deeper human element. And I put something in a ChatGPT or Claude and said, you know, I'm trying to get this point across. I'm trying to make sure it doesn't generate maybe a negative response based on this and I want them to feel something like this when they read it. So based on what I have here, how would you improve it? If that's the goal and I have to tell you, there have been plenty of times where I've been very happy with the adjustments it made. And I saw someone recently mentioned that sometimes you can even use AI to analyze something and say, give me some insight on emotional intelligence with this, and it'll show you the gaps. Maybe things you missed or maybe things you didn't consider. So there's. Yeah, there's definitely room for AI when it comes to looking at how well you might be connecting with someone from a human perspective, even using an AI tool.
- [38:47]
Michael Stelzner
And for folks that don't want to use AI, AI, Any tips on, like, sending it around, staff inside the company or. I mean, like, what's your thoughts on, like, just getting another human set of eyes on this stuff?
- [38:57]
Scott Murray
Yeah, I mean, I think that plays really well into the last step, which is predictive intelligence, where we are spending a lot more time thinking about the other side. You know, I mentioned sometimes that we can get into a scenario where we might create content that if we were at home, we wouldn't engage with and stopping and thinking about. About judgments about people who, you know, what causes them to scroll constantly and not stop and look at something. I have a colleague who's a friend who I had on my podcast at one point in time. His name, literally is James Bond. Really?
- [39:31]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, great name.
- [39:33]
Scott Murray
Yeah, his name is James. He uses I. So it's James I Bond. And he wrote a book called Brain Glue, and it was all about, you know, these concepts, marketing concepts, that would stick to your brain. And the point he brought up was, you know, when you drive home every day, you see the same houses, and you know they're there. So when you drive past them, you know, you. You don't pay any attention to them. There's no reason to look at them. You just drive past them because it's stuff you've seen all the time. I feel like, you know, social media content can be the same thing. And he said, well, now if you drive by and the house is on fire, then you're going to suddenly do a double take. And really, that's kind of what, you know, we're trying to do. So we start thinking more about, okay, why do people scroll past things? What's going to get their attention? There's so much of what we're doing right now to try to get people to lower their defenses because they've had so many bad experiences with clickbait and spam and thinking this was going to be valuable and it was a trap. Or maybe it's gated content that they went to and they went ahead and filled it out and it wasn't what they thought. Now their brain is like, okay, we're going to make sure we don't go through this again. So we're taking more time to think about those experiences and what we can do on the content side to make sure that we may not generate, you know, defenses up and maybe we can lower them a bit. And internally, maybe that means we spend a little more time with other people in the company that have public facing jobs. Maybe it's customer service, maybe it's sales, maybe it's that group that just went and spoke on a panel at this conference and they came back and said, you know what, we got this question, this question and this question and we've never addressed that before. Or maybe it's something where we create content and we put it in front of them and say, hey, something sales. You know these people because you're talking to them every day. So if, if you put this in front of them, what do you think their reaction would be? And they could give us a whole nother insight. So we're just doing more to get to know our audience and we probably have a lot of good resources, both on the technology side and people side, even if we're not going to go all in on AI.
- [41:32]
Michael Stelzner
Excellent. Okay, so just to kind of take it from the top, we're starting with self awareness, which is this important concept of. Or are you kind of in a repeatable pattern? You don't even understand why you're doing what you're doing anymore. Or maybe someone on your team is, and maybe it's time to like break that pattern and challenge that pattern. Or you're just kind of stuck in modeling, copying what other people do. You don't even really know if it works for them. Those are potential red flags. And then we enter into this, okay, we live in an environment that is a relationship era, right. And two way communication is really important. That means we should be creating content that stimulates some sort of interaction with our audience rather than just having a broadcast mindset. And then, you know, adaptability is like bringing it in house, right? Bringing it into house to yourself or your company or your staff. Like, do we need to change some things internally to allow for this opportunity for us to explore new ideas? Right. So far, do I have everything right?
- [42:29]
Scott Murray
Yes, sir.
- [42:30]
Michael Stelzner
And then meaningful language is the one that's really important that we've been spending a lot of time on, which is really figuring out how to, to make an impact with your language. And that's where we talked about the example of using the language of our ideal audience and kind of lowering people's defenses. And then this predictive intelligence thing is a little harder to grok. But I believe what I'm hearing you say is like, try to predict what kind of an impact your content is going to have on your audience. Do I have that right? Or can you clarify that a little bit?
- [43:01]
Scott Murray
Yes, that's it. So. And we could base that on any number of things. Maybe we've done a really good job as an organization of really knowing. Knowing who our people are. There's a lot of good, just fundamental research on behavioral science when it comes to learning about how people respond and how that taps into human behavior and the brain and emotions and emotions we're not even aware are happening. I mean, Nancy Harhut's book is a great book on that. Guy Kawasaki wrote a fantastic book on enchanting your audience. I think it was called Enchantment, in fact, where he talked about those types of things. And we can conduct surveys and interviews today pretty easily. As I mentioned, we can test our content. You know, if we, we put that fill in the blank question up that, that went up there, we can obviously learn from the responses there. Or if we're not getting the responses we thought maybe we're not asking the right question. And maybe that teaches us something about how we need to adjust what we're doing. So we just have so many different ways. And I think, you know, when we think about how our audiences really want to have those conversations, I think if we empower them to be able to have those with us, we can learn a lot about them. And we're just saving ourselves so much work trying to figure it out or hope that our assumptions are right, especially considering that, you know, the consumer behavior or buyer behavior today is just so hard to predict. So, you know, one of the best things we can do is just find more ways to learn about them. And that might involve engaging with them more on social media or just creating opportunities at conferences or creating some meetings and creating some interviews and surveys to learn that way and see what we can find out. But it just better informs the success of our content if we know a little more of not only what they're doing, but people's just general attitudes when it comes to what happens if you interrupt content and try to sell something. What happens if you put content out there and you force a click here or buy this? There's been academic research that shows the moment you say that on social media, people are out, they're not going to engage, they're not going to share. They really want the opportunity to and, you know, see something and decide for themselves if it inspires something without being told what to do. There's a lot of research out there and digital marketing has been around long enough where we can learn why people react the way they do. And that should be the type of thing that helps inform what we're going to do on the content side, especially since those are the people we're trying to reach.
- [45:25]
Michael Stelzner
Scott Murray, author of Undeniably Human Content thank you for sharing your insights. If people want to connect with you on the social media, what's your preferred platform? If they want to work with you, where do you want to send them?
- [45:38]
Scott Murray
I would say I'm Most active on LinkedIn. I mean, I'm on Twitter, but I probably read stuff on Twitter like your post on Twitter. I've read some of your stories and I find them very interesting. So I always stop to read those. But I probably engage a lot more on LinkedIn. I have a lot of activity on LinkedIn. That's the best one.
- [45:56]
Michael Stelzner
And then if they want to work with you, where do you want to send them?
- [45:58]
Scott Murray
That's there. And of course my website is scottmurrayonline.com but they can reach out to me either on LinkedIn. I respond to people on LinkedIn and there's obviously a way to reach me through the website.
- [46:09]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. And Murray is spelled M U R R A Y for those of you that are listening. Scott, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.
- [46:16]
Scott Murray
My pleasure, Mike. It was great to talk to you and thanks for giving me the chance to talk with you and your listeners today.
- [46:21]
Michael Stelzner
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 678 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, while I would love a review or I would love it if you would share this with your friends, you can tag me on Facebook, on LinkedIn and or X. Those are the ones I'm most active on. And also do check out our other shows. AI explored people are eating that like cotton candy. And also the social media marketing talk show. This brings us to the end of the social media marketing podcast. I'm your host. Michael Stelzner will be back with you next week. I'm I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing Keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Just a quick reminder before you go. If you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting social mediaexaminer.com AI I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.