← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
Finding Your Voice in the Age of AI with Kate Mountz, Senior Content Strategist at Workweek | Ep. 360
00:36:26
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- [00:00]
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- [00:22]
Daniel Murray
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfil conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up.
- [00:48]
Podcast Host
We are back with another episode of the Market Millennials podcast. Today I have the one and only Kate on the podcast. She is one of the best writers I know and content marketers I know. So we want to we're going to talk about how she thinks about writing, her writing process, her writing style. But first I'd like Kate introduce herself and tell her how she got into marketing. So what's up Kate?
- [01:14]
Kate Mount
What's up Daniel? Thank you so much for having me and for that generous introduction. I came to marketing I think right after college. I worked a bunch of random careers, people graduating immediately post financial crisis did and I got into marketing and successfully transitioned because I was working in admin role at a startup and noticed that no one was doing anything with a social media account but they were dumping a ton of money into paid spend but there's just like an empty social all their social accounts were pretty dead and I put my hand up and offered to just start running and I was able to go rogue and a couple of months in wrote myself a job description and literally said hey, what if you hire replacement for what I'm doing now and let me be your social media manager. Cause I realized I was waiting for someone to tell me I could be a marketer and just jumping in and realizing I could probably figure this out was how I eventually made it official.
- [02:20]
Podcast Host
Yeah, that's amazing. I love the initiative but also I feel like there's so many gaps in businesses that could be filled with marketing and has not enough hands on deck usually.
- [02:33]
Kate Mount
So never enough hands on deck for sure.
- [02:35]
Podcast Host
I want to go into the topic of the day which is I think really important for marketers to know but like the writing process. So I wanted to start getting to like how you think when you get like how do you think about like okay, you have to write an article or a newsletter or a post. Like what is your first step to making that happen?
- [03:04]
Kate Mount
It honestly it depends and I think that people separate out marketing, writing or copywriting from other writing when they probably shouldn't because it has a lot of the same principles. So coming up with ideas comes from really intimately understanding your subject and the people who you would be writing for. And so I often start with a lot of research, especially if I am not super familiar with the topic, and start jotting down things that might be threads to explore. If there's a pitching process, I'll come up with a quick like this is what the angle is, this is what people are going to respond to. Here's why it matters. And if it is something like blog post, you want to make sure that you're not just wasting people's time. And I think that comes back to all, all writing, right? But it really for me comes to the research and the understanding as long as you know when to switch gears and stop researching and start creating, which can be the really hard part. But yeah, I think understanding the customer is one of those marketing cliches that's a cliche for a reason.
- [04:20]
Podcast Host
I want to go into two parts down two roads here. One, tell me, because I think research is one of the hardest parts that people don't know how to do. And I want to go on how you used to do research and now how AI and new technologies helping you do research. Because like a couple years ago was you didn't have like chatgpt and perplexity and all these places to find things. So let's go into like the OG way of like let's find articles because I think that will help you help transition to like how AI is also helping you do research these days.
- [05:00]
Kate Mount
Totally good question and spoiler alert. I think some of the OG ways are still irreplaceable. For example, reading customer reviews of your product or getting the opportunity to connect in person with your customers or at least like on a one to one level or tagging along to like a sales call even and you know, getting down to what, not what, what problem does our product solve, which is great to know, but what problems do our customers have and mapping in that direction. And it's also a good way to find out if your product is not really solving real problems that they care about because people have a lot of problems. So I used to start doing research by checking their social media accounts, like going through customer reviews, doing some interviews even, and then making sure I was a subject matter expert. And that would start with just like a Google and looking for recent articles on the topic from respected experts and seeing where we agreed, where we disagreed and ultimately what's our specific take on it because the more specific you can be, the more human you are and the more kind of paradoxically universal it becomes. And then now as far as using AI for research, you definitely have to fact check it. Of course we all know this, but using those research features like you get on a perplexity or in a deep research mode on ChatGPT is a pretty easy place to start, I think when I am going through, hey, here's the problem I'm trying to solve, or here's the market I'm looking to talk to, here's the type of product we're getting into, how can we make it more valuable? Help me map it against problems and giving it that frame and then really checking all the sources it gives you and going and making sure you're reading those first person sources, making sure they're current, making sure it's not a problem that doesn't really exist anymore. Because as you know, I feel like this world changes so quickly. An article from a year ago is often like completely out of date. But yeah, that's, that's where I start with research. And you know, last week I was lucky enough to tag along on a sales meeting with some folks, you know, and I got to see how they do really similar things when they're doing it well, starting with the client, like pretend our solution doesn't exist. Pretend everything we are trying to sell you doesn't exist. I want to know about your problems as a business and then we can decide if our product is like a good fit for you. And that was so rich. Getting to hear people talk about, oh, these are really our biggest concerns as a business. These are much more existential to me. Made me realize, oh, there's a big difference between a nice to have, which is great and like a must have. And that's the old cliche about like vitamins versus painkillers. So that research I think is still irreplaceable because it's totally first person.
- [08:15]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I think I totally agree with the first. I think also in this day and age that first person research is going to be more irreplaceable because so many people have access to the Internet now that could find all the sources that.
- [08:32]
Kate Mount
You'Re probably totally agree.
- [08:34]
Podcast Host
So that becomes first party data that you could separate yourself. Right. But I also think the other side of it is like when you do all that research that you have now, it's easier to have a tool that can help you distill all this information that you've like instead of like doing the research for you is distilling what you already found and do. Like what are some common ideas like common things or non common things, what article stands out, what doesn't to kind of just find holes or commonalities in the research you're doing right now.
- [09:13]
Kate Mount
That's a super important call out because as we know, the output of AI is always so much better when you give it something to work with. And if you've screened these sources and said here's kind of what I'm trying to solve and you give it a really specific task. Like you said, find commonalities, for example, bias towards recent content, that gives you a bunch of new rabbit holes to run down. And I'll often everybody's brain works differently, but when I am exploring stuff like that, I will think about hooks. Not pieces itself necessarily, but like bold kind of borderline annoying or controversial statements about sort of plant your flag in the ground and say this is what this is about, this is what I believe. Because that's often a really rich place to start writing from, I think.
- [10:07]
Podcast Host
Two things I want to ask you is one, when you're doing research, does it come from you have a hypothesis of what you want to write about and you're trying to prove it true or false? Is there a hook in mind that you really have? And then you're trying to find sources to prove that hook or prove it wrong? That's one question. I'll start with that question and have another follow up question after that.
- [10:33]
Kate Mount
Great, because I have trouble holding a lot of questions in my head at the same time. It all depends on my level of comfort with the topic. If it's something about marketing, for example, as you know, I will have stronger opinions or if it's something that I know really well, I'll have hills I want to die on or beliefs I have and biases and conversations that I've seen. You still want to do research to make sure because everything changes so fast in marketing. It's the best and worst part about this job to me. I will want to fact check myself always, but I will have angles in mind going into the research process if it's something I am completely new to. I've done consulting for creative agencies in the past and I remember going through and researching the first aid space and what were the pain points there and I was completely starting from scratch. Like what do people think about this? What are the industry standards? What are the benchmarks? What are common pieces of positioning for band aid all the way down to These indie kind of new wave, organic first aid providers. So there I had no idea. I knew what they wanted the positioning to be. I knew what the client believed that it was. But I needed to do a lot of verification to see if that was really going to play.
- [12:00]
Podcast Host
And then the follow up I have is, when you do all this research, how are you keeping it in one place? And then how are you taking. How are you putting that research on a piece of paper? I think that's also the next part of how are you piecing together the research to build a story or a narrative?
- [12:24]
Kate Mount
Well, with the caveat that no one should take advice about how they organize their thoughts from me. What has worked for my brain is abusing my helpful notes app. And in an actual document, if I'm working in a document, I will sort of have rough beats of the story and maybe paste supporting evidence or even a note to self, you've seen me tear up a draft where I'll be like, oh, something about this here. And not taking the time to really figure out what it is and not solve it in that moment. But if you have an idea, just get down something about this, make a point that shows that, use this evidence here to illustrate your point and going through the entire thing to make sure the jigsaw all sort of fits together before you start really getting into wordsmithing or creating. Because if you start with, you know, wanting to get the perfect copy right out of the gate and tell the story and agonize over every sentence, which is a bad habit I sometimes have, and I have to watch myself on it, I you will go down so many rabbit holes, you will lose the structure of the piece and the argument. And it's easy to lose sight of. What purpose is this serving? Is it really serving the reader? Or am I just entertaining myself or, you know, figuring it out on the page? Because to me, I have to organize my thoughts first to start the process of figuring out how I think about something. To me, the act of writing is an act of thinking. It's figuring out how you feel about something sometimes requires writing about it. For me, personally and professionally, it's like how I'm constructing this argument. Am I convinced? Is the audience going to be convinced? And sometimes you have to just write it and organize all your thoughts on a bird's eye view before you decide if you believe what you're saying or not.
- [14:28]
Podcast Host
The next piece. Because I, I know we talked about, like, if you have an opinion, it's easier to, like, write about and find things to disapprove. But there's the other side of it. But and I know you've worked with a lot of like ghost written for a lot of like founders and brands and all that so. And I know a lot of like content marketers had to put themselves in the shoes of like different audiences and also they co they helping write for their founders on social and stuff like that. They had to get in the voice of it. So how best do you get into the perspective of the person or the brand or the person you're writing for and the tone and make sure like the, like the it also the audience doesn't like see that this is coming off as inauthentic and not real and not like what the brand says.
- [15:23]
Kate Mount
Right. I think it's a similar approach, different execution if you're writing for a brand versus a human being. And I, I really, I honestly prefer writing for others and putting on these different costumes and hats. And I think it's not just the language. Right. It's deceptively tricky because you also have to understand on a more fundamental level the way this person or this brand sees the world, how they're oriented towards things and what they believe. And then you want to be as specific as possible, which is really difficult when you're writing for someone else. If I am writing for someone that's super different from me, for example, I have to make sure I am not projecting my worldviews into their writing unless I know it's accurate. And so much of what makes writing great is being able to be specific about your experiences. It's why no one writes an intro about their day like you do because you were living it and you were at the center of that experience. And that's the challenge and thing you wrestle with every day. It requires a lot of buy in from the client, it requires a certain generosity of feedback and it sometimes just requires time where you get to be with someone and realize they use these little turns of phrases or they have these funny stylistic quirks that are, you know, little shibboleths to the audience about oh, Daniel doesn't usually sound like that, for example or you know, that person would never say that or what did they change their mind? It's an in, group out, group signifier. And sometimes if you get something like that wrong, I've heard a different creator we've worked with say there's like outside the fintech industry, people don't see a difference between payers or like a payment or payments. But inside fintech that's A total tiny. One single letter indicates whether or not you're in this world or not. And so the details are so important, especially at the beginning of that stage. For example, I know you and Ari always. You don't spell out your numerals and that's a tiny thing that would stick out to someone who is like a real fan that this wasn't something you wrote. But yeah, it's honestly my preference. I think it's easier to construct an argument when you have a little bit more distance from the brand. I don't know if I could do what you do as far as really just putting your face on something, sticking your flag in the ground and going for it, but I love the challenge of doing it for others.
- [18:10]
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- [18:42]
Podcast Host
I also think, like, sometimes the stylistic quirks you do, like, sometimes I do. For me, I do things on purpose just so people know that, hey, yeah, it's me. Like, I think, I think, I think it's important, like to have a unique personality in your writing. Especially now with AI, I was about to say, yeah, you know, like, okay, if I'm gonna like use emojis for numbers or I'm going to like cap something and not capture this or bold this and not bold this. Like that's like my quirks. I do. Yes, versus and that will help you stand out to know that you're writing from an authentic place as well.
- [19:26]
Kate Mount
And that's a great example of that brand voice expressed via style, like literal execution in the craft. And I completely agree about how it's way more important with AI. And it's sort of frustrating to someone who's like an old school writing nerd like me. I think it can be hard to accept. You spend a lot of time getting your grammar right and expressing things in a certain way and then AI is sort of amalgamating all of that and it can pull that off effortlessly. And so what makes you you? What is like a malapropism or what is a little quirk that you have that I would never do that becomes like a signifier of authenticity? Even typos almost are refreshing. I've Heard I have a lot of teacher friends and they talk about the joy of reading someone's work that has a lot of mistakes. But they clearly wrestled with the topic and worked through it themselves. And how sad it is that people will farm that stuff out to AI when you're trying to learn the thing. I think you've spoken about that before. You shouldn't bring AI into it until you really understand the topic.
- [20:38]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I don't like AI grammar copyrighting me. I feel like I like it as a way to balance. Is the idea strong enough or will marketers care about this? But I don't. I, I think like the little quirks you have as a writer that might come off as like, oh, you're supposed to have like an EM dash here or a colon here or like sometimes it's just like shows that you're talking to a friend and you're writing to a friend and not writing for. And it depends on the medium too. Like if you're like your audience is scholars, you might need to be perfect on grammar and sure. So it depends who your audience is, right?
- [21:29]
Kate Mount
It does completely. But I think for a lot of the kind of writing that you do and that I do, that really matters. And as, as you know, I was like the most die hard EM dash user and now I only use it really in my personal communications because I know how people react, how I react. If I see something that I suspect was written by AI and not, you know, or at least not effectively edited and I lose interest because you get a sense that it's not another human being talking to one another. And you, I think even subconsciously want to speak to other people. People follow people, as they say. And if you don't believe someone really put thought into something, you don't want to put any thought into understanding it or engaging with it. And so that editing process, that brand consistency is like an act of care that shows authenticity and shows people that you are not just like pumping out the maximum amount of written content that doesn't really serve people, but is quote unquote good enough.
- [22:35]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I think also this topic we're talking about right now is why it's so important if you are writing for a brand to make sure like these stylistic quirks, these, the personality, this is what we say and this is what we don't say is so important to do up front. So anybody who comes in to write for your brand or write for a article for your brand or something like, knows that, like, I don't write like this So I think it's super important to create a brand writing playbook for each medium that people understand.
- [23:18]
Kate Mount
I completely agree. Because otherwise it's not. Well, here comes the word. It's not scalable otherwise. Because then it's only a single person who has all this esoteric knowledge about what the brand sounds like can create this stuff. And that's no way to run a railroad, as they say. And I think all that upfront work is really hard. You often are like, oh, that's a new brand quirk, or we've uncovered a different way of speaking to people. Or if we reposition and you say, oh, I know it and I'm doing the work, so I'll write it down later, I'll document these standards later. And maybe you never get around to it, or you don't do it while it's fresh, and then no one else gets the opportunity to learn it and be in lockstep with you. That's a great point.
- [24:05]
Podcast Host
Especially, I mean that the scalable thing is a true thing. I mean, at the beginning, any writer is writing for themselves and writing. And then when you get totally. When you get to a point where you. You pumping out 15, 20 pieces of content a week, you're gonna need other writers. And I think that's important. Why you. Why at least, like, especially at work week, we do writers rooms and idea rooms and places where we can coach each other and also come up with ideas that we're passionate about to be able to put onto paper. Because I think that is important to have different views, but also make the brand voice stronger and stronger and stronger.
- [25:01]
Kate Mount
Yeah. And to me, that's not just about that brand consistency and unified tone. It's also also, like, about holding on to the fun is, I think, yeah, I think every writer who starts out writing is doing it for, like, pleasure. Like, if you did it as a kid, if you were a massive nerd, like, I was like, you were really into it as this source of joy or self discovery or rebellion, figuring out again, like, how you feel about stuff. But I. Once you transition into that place where you're writing for others, which any, like, professional writer is doing. Like, I went to a craft talk my very first year of college by Michael Cunningham, and he was talking about, like, listen, yes, I do get joy in my writing, but I don't go home every night and cook a, like, bake this beautiful cake and arduously decorate it and then eat it all myself. I am doing this for other people. And you have to maintain that. But not lose that, that joy and fun. Because when you're cranking out all of this content, even if you're using AI, if you lose that joy or the fun, then. And it feels like it was a like total drudgery to write it. Everybody's going to feel that way reading it and being able to find the little entertaining thing, the curiosity of how something is going to turn out instead of falling into that line cook mode where you're just trying to get orders out as fast as you possibly can and you don't get to do anything menu planning or thoughtfulness. I think that's why the writer's room style approach works so well, is you get to play a little bit and you think about the brand standards as your creative constraints, which makes things more interesting. And then be like, what's actually fun? Like, where did the fun go? And how do we bring it to the front of the writing so everyone else can feel it?
- [26:53]
Podcast Host
What's really sad to me though, for me is I used to love doing when I was a kid writing little creative stories.
- [27:03]
Kate Mount
Yes.
- [27:04]
Podcast Host
And then, but then when I got later into my school career, I felt I had less room to be creative because I had to be so perfect with grammar that it made me. The whole writing process was me thinking, did I put. Did I make this colon right? Did I make this period right? Is the sentence structure perfect? It's not a run on sentence where. That's why I love marketing writing because you can make those mistakes and still put your point in. And sometimes if your point's good enough, it overlooks those mistakes. But when you're in school, you can have such a good point, but your whole paper could have marks because you had a run on sentence here. You didn't put a colon here. You didn't put an EM dash here. You did. You, you didn't break the paragraph correctly. You didn't do AP styling, you didn't source perfectly here. And that's where I got bad grades in writing is not the idea of my writing. It came from, oh, I didn't do perfect AP style. I didn't. I may have done a run on sentence here or there. And I wasn't perfect in the grammar side, but I had the idea side.
- [28:25]
Kate Mount
Yeah, I mean, I was a grammar nerd, but I mean, does anybody really figure out who versus whom? Yes, they do, but it's, it's like how important is it to fully expressing your idea? Like, I had a professor who was like in college where everybody's first question because they Were trained from like childhood that oh, how long does it have to be? You have to turn in a 10 page paper or whatever it is. And it was mind blowing to me to hear this person hear from another freshman say how long does it have to be? We got this assignment, but how long is it supposed to be? And he said as long as it needs to be. And everybody goes, come on, tell us how long it has to be. And he said no, I'm serious. If you could write a well reasoned argument that about King Lear that is a page single page long and is fully fleshed out and has the information I need, I would love to read and grade that. I've never seen it yet. I've never seen anybody need just one page. But if you could pull it off, I would be floored. And so as long as it needs to be like what is your requirement? What kind of space does your argument require? I think we're trained in school like you said. Sometimes out of that joy by being like okay, what are the non fun creative restrictions of like okay, I just have to put on a bunch of filler. I'm going to make the font size 12.5 and the margins like 1.6 inches to get to where I need to be. And it becomes more about just fulfilling the assignment line cook style and not about what am I trying to say for real? Like what's my point?
- [30:05]
Podcast Host
Yeah. And that's where I think like my wife Ari, you know her well, but she's a really good writer. She was really good at writing growing up. Her family is grammar nerds.
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Kate Mount
I just knew it.
- [30:22]
Podcast Host
Her dad's a lawyer and he corrects my grammar all the time. But it. I come from a family that is not grammar nerds. So it's and more creative. So it depends also and I wish sometimes not everybody is good at writing. So the people who not good at writing perfect grammar. So I agree you have to learn how to do it. But also if there's restrictions on you need to be a thousand words you need to have. This is hindering someone creating a great article or a great essay or I think it's. That's why briefs are so important and they shouldn't be so rigid. And so yes, they need to have some idea like let, let the writer have creative freedom but also have some, some, some guardrails that so they don't go crazy in the writing.
- [31:20]
Kate Mount
Yeah. They're like you have to learn the rules so that you can hopefully eventually break them in smart and effective ways and throw the ruled out book out the window when it needs to be thrown out the window. Because great writing is really just like really good communicating. And you could have something that's aesthetically gorgeous, but if it's not really communicating anything, you failed ultimately. And this applies to all writing because we aren't writing it for ourselves, really, even fiction. It's what are we trying to communicate? What are we trying to illuminate? What kinds of empathy are we generating? These are much more important questions than like, oh, yeah, it has to be in this certain format. And I think a lot of people do have like this educational trauma around, God, I'm not a good writer, or I hate writing because of all of these restrictive rules that take the fun away. I think that's where we started on this, losing the fun.
- [32:24]
Podcast Host
Lastly, since we're coming up with time is I want to ask you a question I asked everybody in this podcast is what is a marketing hill you would die on?
- [32:35]
Kate Mount
I know you always ask this and I still didn't come prepared, but I think in this, I think that my marketing hill I would die on. And we'll make it AI specific. In this age of generative AI, I think we can't lose sight of the value of doing it the hard way sometimes, of really turning our brain on, because the act of writing is figuring out how you think about something so that you can communicate it effectively. Like being legible to other people, being entertaining, being novel. And if you can just kind of hit a button and be like, this is kind of what I'm looking for, it's good enough, or you're not editing the output, or however you're leveraging AI and obviously we're all doing more with less. Everybody is leveraging AI, but I think we have to make sure we're not opting out of that crucial part because that's that high value part that only human beings can do. Even the dumbest joke or the most grammatically like incorrect dashed off tweet, you can imagine if it has that hard part where you have a clear thought being expressed effectively, that automatically makes people more interested engaging with it. So, yeah, I think your writing has the like, that hard part is sometimes the key part, which I know is super old school, but I think that's the hill I will die on.
- [34:02]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I love that hill. I think it's super important. Lastly, where can we find you?
- [34:08]
Loom Advertiser
Kate?
- [34:08]
Podcast Host
I know you don't like being public, but where can we find you if we need to be, if we want to? It won't be one to find you. Where could they find you?
- [34:18]
Kate Mount
Well, they could certainly Find me on LinkedIn and I'm a Twitter lurker under Kate Mount's my name, so you can certainly always find me there. And yeah, I think I'm very happy being behind the scenes. But yeah, I also will chop it up with you about pop culture anytime. I love it.
- [34:38]
Podcast Host
Thank you for coming on. I think it's very valuable for people to just understand that the depth of writing, researching marketers, it's so important to set up your research, set up your writing to create a great argument.
- [34:53]
Kate Mount
Thank you for such a good conversation. I don't know the last time I was able to talk about writing this much, which is wonderful.
- [35:00]
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.
- [35:28]
Podcast Host
It.