Paramita (00:02)
So I think discoverability is really now focused on credibility, how credible your content is because they're citing around that. You know, how many places you've got your content, not from a volume, but how many credible places, how many analysts, how many PR articles are out there
Ben Ard (00:47)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Paramita. Paramita, welcome to the show.
Paramita (00:53)
Thank you for having me.
Ben Ard (00:55)
Yeah, Paramita, I'm excited for this conversation. It's extremely relevant. Marketers everywhere are scratching their heads trying to figure this all out. I'm excited for us to dive into your experience. But before we dive into that, let us get to know who you are. If you don't mind sharing a little bit about your background, it would be great for the audience.
Paramita (01:14)
Sure, absolutely. So Ben, I am a full stack marketing leader and that I typically say it means I'm crossing all the way from brand and product marketing to demand generation to marketing operations and analytics and then strategic comms. I've spent most of my career in the technology space, you know, close to 25 years. And I would say a large portion of that has been in
larger Fortune 500 companies. And then most recently in the last few years, I've had great experience going through some dynamic, you know, high growth startup. So I bring a combination of the two. I also have a background where I've spent a lot of time both doing marketing for SMBs and mid market. And that means a certain kind of go to market motion.
And certainly in recent years, product-led growth has been a big component of that. But I've equally spent some time doing longer sales cycle, enterprise, go-to-market motion. And I typically look at go-to-market as the larger umbrella under which marketing and growth set. And so I'm very much a leader aligning product, technology leaders, engineering.
and then of course sales. I have, I would say really gone the wider expense of the technology space versus one particular area. So I've spent time in, know, creative technologies, digital media technologies, IOT, VRXR and 5G, and then most recently HR Tag. So I have what I call sort of...
you know, horizontal expense, a love for technology and a love for marketing in the technology space and not sort of a vertical one domain expertise. So that's sort of me.
Ben Ard (03:10)
I love it. That's amazing. And Paramita, thank you so much for bringing your expertise into today's conversation. This is going to be a ton of fun. Today we're going to talk about how AI is reshaping content strategy and specifically discovery, creation, and authenticity. So let's start with discovery. So besides the SEO side of things, how is AI shaping
content discovery, like what's changing on that front in your opinion?
Paramita (03:35)
Yeah, yeah,
it's amazing, right? Just in a span, I think of 18 months, it was obviously hitting even before that, but in I think in the last 16 to 18 months, companies, people, systems, algorithms have all just dramatically started to move. I would say, know, Ben, I am starting to beginning to look at it a little holistically. So yes.
I obviously as a marketing leader pay a lot of attention on what's going on in SEO and paid search and the combination of the two and other digital channels and what's influencing what. But I think the biggest thing I see if I just step back as content discovery as a result of AI is no longer about rankings on a page because you can go and you can see a snippet, you know, an overview.
as easily as seeing a full summary and insight of a particular topic. So it's no longer, if I choose shoes or if I choose cybersecurity technology that I go to a page and then I tend to click on what is on the top of the page. So I do think while ranking is still important in some ways from a visibility perspective,
but it's changing dramatically because you are seeing AI overviews. You are seeing summaries come up. saying, you're seeing, you know, snippets come up. And then most importantly, a lot of us, including you and me, are now doing Googling, doing, you know, something else. Google also, of course, has its own AI, but we are going to chat JPD and then typing this out and seeing a whole.
set of answers that's not really a web page.
So I think discoverability is really now focused on credibility, how much credible your content is because they're citing around that. You know, how many places you've got your content, not from a volume, but how many credible places, how many analysts, how many PR articles are out there
so that
you know, the AI engine is able to synthesize things that are there, including, of course, your own owned properties. And I think, you know, from that perspective, it's some of the core fundamentals still remains. And we can go, you know, as follow up questions into what those fundamentals are. But I definitely think discoverability is very much impacted at the level.
where tactics are starting to change and how you measure that is starting to change.
Ben Ard (06:14)
Okay, I love that. And I agree 100 % the way that we're searching and discovering content is changing so much. mean, the website traffic is down. People are relying on search engines way less. They're going to their AI, LLM of choice. So in your day to day, when it comes to content and you started to mention having your content show up in other places, what has changed in those last 18 months for you?
Paramita (06:31)
Yep.
Ben Ard (06:43)
And how you approach content, either how you write it, distribute it, how do you make it, like, what are you doing to adapt? And what should people that are listening do to adapt as well?
Paramita (06:50)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and I think a lot of this will continue. I think one of the things is you have to be doing things faster as also a lot of topics are getting impacted. So the idea should be, OK, you can have AI do your drafts, right? And then you do need the human.
sort of hand and human mind and the brain to refresh, refine with storytelling, your company's brand, your product feature elements, you know, making sure accuracy is there. So I think content creation in itself has changed from that perspective. I think, you know, if you think about a technology company where product marketing is essentially the subject matter expert on any product, and then a lot of the writers,
and other folks are taking that subject matter expert and turning it out into, you know, different digestible forms of content, that workflow is definitely shrunk because you can today really output, whether you're a product marketer, contact marketer, you know, PR person, but that subject, as long as you are training the LLM or at least inputting, or you have some sort of customized version.
and you are giving them your subject matter expertise and then you're outputting a lot of this first draft that can then get tailored into the kind of channel. So I think content creation in that sense is very much definitely impacted in great ways. I think from distribution perspective, I would say you definitely are looking at
multiple, far more content formats than I think we would have seen before. At least that's how I am. So you're thinking about, you know, just not your web pages and maybe a couple of case studies and maybe a couple of ads that are going, are now full fledged thinking about your customer references, you know, smaller tutorials, your product overviews, your, you know, both formal, you know, coming out of your
team and your company expertise around the space, but also generating first-party data, so things that are very proprietary that only you can take out. When you are putting, you're doing a lot of different kinds of formats, you're also reusing a lot of that content in different ways so that you can really be discovered.
even when algorithms are changing or different kinds of sources are coming at it. And then I would say the other thing, Ben, I have been, we've been talking about, I was at a conference recently and a networking event. There was this big shift into you're obviously building the pipeline, demand, gen, how much money can you spend on your PR and what does it really, because you can't measure PR. Now,
actually that shift is happening where you know if you don't have credible articles in there, you don't have your analysts, you know, citing you, you are not going to be discovered. So again, the kinds of content, how you're thinking of content, what formats you're putting there and what channels you're going out is definitely, you know, getting, you know, into the remix from that perspective. And then I think the other thing is the
You know, we've always talked about domain authority in SEO as you and an expert know. So DR, that authority still is very important. It just may not be the authority of a site. It is the authority of your content. It's the expertise of your content and the knowledge of your content. So I think that element remains people who can do this the right way will be winners because
Nobody can take that authority if you're having it. You know, the distribution and creation and all of that, a lot of that can certainly be commoditized, but the authority and the, you know, the first party information, the proprietary research, the data you hold, you know, is very unique. And I think that's what you sort of play off on in order to make sure that you're competitively out there.
Ben Ard (11:07)
love that. Lots of different content, lots of different places, make sure that you're all over the map. But I also really love this last point. I want to double click on it. The authority. I feel like there's a shift and I'm curious to see if you agree or disagree with this mentality where authority and authenticity are starting to merge. Like you said, it's not necessarily about the domain, but it's almost about the
person, you know, it is the content, but it's really proving that a person wrote it knows what they're talking about was a part of it. AI doesn't want to train on its own material because that's a downward spiral. If that happens, there's all sorts of AI, LLM chaos. When that happens. Um, do you feel like authenticity that more people inside of businesses are publishing content?
As themselves. That's why there's this movement of leaders at businesses, publishing content on their own profiles, things like that. Do you feel like with AI, we have to publish as people more authentic content now? How do you kind of look at authenticity and authority kind of shape out in today's landscape?
Paramita (12:21)
Ben, it's a great question and I have to be honest. I think it will evolve. And I do think you're right. Authenticity and authority are probably interconnected now more than they were before. think authority before was a very
technical slash content domain ways or mechanic and tactic. And authenticity was about voice and tone. I think, you know, to me, the voice and tone still primarily triumphs, you know, because I think at the end of the day,
that voice and tone and the uniqueness of something is very much at play here. I think the question is, do you hold something as a brand, as a company, that is not generalized and therefore will be only cited, you know, for you as you being the source of that
authority and is not generically shown up either in a ranking or in a AI search or in a chat bot or some other way. I think that to me, does it help if people inside of business are publishing a lot? does, there is some level of.
cohesiveness about what's going on. Because if it's duplicative content, won't matter. If it's generic content, it won't matter. It'll matter if the point of views are very different. If we are talking about a product platform and there is a CFO and finance angle coming at it and producing some thought process and thought leadership versus a CTO who, a technical viewpoint.
kind of thought leadership, different points of view, opinions, will get through the clutter of generic descriptions or generic content. So to me, I think it's always good when a lot is getting done. But I think now I'm even questioning, Ben, the volume component of it. Because back in the day,
not too far back. You know, it's not too long ago that we all believe that the more pages that were indexed, the more content that was indexed, the more you will show up, the more your sub rankings. But now, because it's not about sub rankings, or you're actually seeing the results without even having to click, it almost is volume or priority of the content more important.
Ben Ard (14:39)
Yeah, that day was not too long ago,
Paramita (15:05)
So that's something I think I'm still evolving on my thinking. I do think volume still is probably mattering because the world still hasn't completely shifted, but I do believe the content prioritization is going to be the other pillar.
Ben Ard (15:05)
I like that.
I love that. And I love the term point of view. I feel like when people talk about AI, this term comes up a lot. And I love how you talked about if you're just regurgitating information. Doesn't matter. It's just duplicate content. No one cares, but it's almost the trait that makes us human and makes our content readable and enjoying or consumable depending on the format.
If someone presents a point of view, because they have an opinion, they have experiences, they have a story and that's what makes it human. That's what makes it consumable. That's what makes it valuable. So I'd love that you brought that up and tie that into authenticity and to the whole point of having authority. I think all of that ties in. And I think it's so cool that people want this content anyways.
Paramita (16:04)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Ard (16:10)
But you're right. Google used to love flat out. Here's the answer to a question. No opinions. I just want the answer and we'll show those results. Now it's the complete opposite. I want to learn what people care about and what their perspectives are. And that's the kind of material that will actually get published and shown in AI.
Paramita (16:29)
Yeah, in my mind, Ben, the biggest aha moment for me in the last year, 16 months, and this is just personal, even personal use, not just for my career, for my marketing leadership career, has been the idea of summarization and insights. Think about like, I don't think that word existed in my vocabulary as much as it does today because
You know, when you went to research a topic, you kind of typed or, you know, looked at the topic in itself. You never said, give me a summary of this. You know, you only said that if you doing primary research, somebody actually spent two months going out and asking wave questions and then came back and, know, it was a 150 page report and you, you know, there was an executive summary that you utilized and you made sure that, you know, it was summarized.
But think about how much summarization because of AI we are doing. And that does mean your point of view and what goes in the summary is impacted.
Ben Ard (17:30)
I hadn't thought of that before, but you're right. A summary always has a perspective of what people are saying. Yeah, that's okay. That's that's got the wheels turning. I'm going to that's going to be in my brain all weekend. I love that. Okay. Well, parameter, this has been fantastic. Thank you for the time. Thank you for the insights. Again, the wheels are turning. I've got a lot of thoughts about what I'm doing with content. I think this is great.
Paramita (17:31)
Yeah.
Correct. Correct.
Ben Ard (17:55)
For anyone who would like to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Paramita (17:59)
am still available on LinkedIn until other platforms come through. So feel free to type Paramita Bhattacharya, full name, and you will see me there. And I'd love to connect with the audience of this podcast because I love content. Content is at the core of any marketing engine.
Ben Ard (18:08)
of it. Perfect.
I love it. For anyone listening, will have links to Paramita's profile below. So feel free to connect there. Again, thank you so much for the time and energy and all of your insights today. I really do appreciate it.
Paramita (18:29)
Ben, thank you for having me. Have a good one.
