Is AI Rewriting the Rules of Your Content Strategy?

Bridget Folliard Terrones (00:02) it really relates to those unique human insights and those personal experiences that you can still build into your content. So again, like we're really focused on videos and testimonials because those things can't necessarily be generated from AI. And even if they are, they might be repetitive or used in another piece. So they don't bring that unique value of really building your brand and giving you visibility in those. results from someone searching. Ben Ard (00:53) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Bridget. Bridget, welcome to the show. Bridget Folliard Terrones (00:58) Thanks for having me, Ben. Ben Ard (01:00) Yeah, Bridget, I'm excited to have you on. This is going to be a ton of fun. Let's get to know your background and history. Let the audience get to know you. But Bridget, this is kind of weird. I'm going to request that you share that your, your original major, cause I haven't heard this before. I think this is super cool, but would love to kind of hear your background and all that fun stuff for the audience. Bridget Folliard Terrones (01:13) you Yeah, so currently I'm the vice president of marketing and communications at IHRM or better known as the Institute of Real Estate Management. We support and service over 18,000 residential and commercial property managers globally with education, membership and networking. I have almost 15 years of experience in marketing and communications. ⁓ and my journey started, how did I get into this field? know we were talking about earlier is my journey in college. started out as a forensics major actually. and really thought I was going to be like a crime scene investigator one day. And as I started taking courses and learning more, I actually got heavily more into the science part of it and thought I'd be in the lab with it. And then when that didn't work out and I found it really difficult and challenging, I took a step back and actually ended up changing my major to radio TV broadcast. And so that's what my undergrad degree is in. but when I graduated college, was shortly after the financial crisis in 2008. And so it was really hard to find a job. I was in a top three market for radio and TV. So that also made it difficult. And I ended up, ⁓ interning with an. a periodontics association in Chicago. I worked in their communications department and pretty much focused on social media, video work. And so from that internship, I got hired full time and I've been in marketing and communications within the association space ever since. Ben Ard (02:43) I love that. That's so cool. Forensics is one I haven't heard before. And so that was so exciting. I've heard all sorts of things, journalism, radio, TV broadcast, philosophy, psychology, sociology, all that stuff. But forensics, that was a cool one. So I had to make sure we noted that. That was cool. Marketing is full of people with all sorts of hobbies and interests. I love it. Bridget Folliard Terrones (02:48) Thank Yes, me too. I do love that. I find it fascinating. Ben Ard (03:08) Yeah. Well, Bridget, today what we're going to talk about, and here's kind of the pseudo title we have for this episode going on, how AI is rewriting the rules of search and content strategy. Now we've seen this over and over and over again, the phrase SEO is dying. I'm more inclined to believe that's kind of true now more than ever, but what do you feel is driving that talk today? Like what's actually changing when it comes to search engine optimization? Bridget Folliard Terrones (03:35) You know, it's all about AI. We know that's the hot topic these days. No matter what field you're in, how is AI impacting you? And as marketers, our biggest concern right now is search. it's, you know, what we're seeing is if you go to Google and you input a question now, you're getting fed an AI summary instead of, you know, having all those web pages come up on search, you know, at the top. where you're able to click and go to their website, find out more about that topic. And you're clicking on how many of them to get that information. AI is basically doing that heavy lifting for you with these summaries. And so what we see that changing is, it's not going to be about keeping those key words on your website or in your content anymore. It's going to shift to not only what kind of content you have on your website, but more importantly, the content vehicles that you're using in general. So do you have a blog? Do you have a journal or articles? Are you on social media? What does your presence look like on there? And are you doing video even or podcasts? And so what's changing is AI is now pulling from all those content vehicles to create that summary. So the more you are leveraging those different platforms and vehicles and your website, the more likely you are to be shown just in that summary, not even having people go to your website anymore. And so it's completely changing the game on how people search and how you show up in that search. Ben Ard (05:02) Yeah, 100%. 100 % is changing the game. How we think about things, what we do with it. That makes perfect sense. So what should we do? I mean, now that SEO is changing, you talked about the keywords and making sure we have the content. Where is your team? Where are you focused on? Like, how do we actually implement? experiment with track even, AEO and you know, the day and age of AI search instead of SEO. Bridget Folliard Terrones (05:32) Yeah, so my team is already talking about, you know, how do we pivot from here? One of the first things that we've focused on is really doing an audit at the end of this year to see what kind of content do we already have and what channels are we utilizing and where are the gaps? What are these questions? Because it's really going to be question based. What do we think our customers or our members are going to be putting in and asking? And do we have the answers? And does... Do those answers live not only in one place, but multiple places so that we're increasing our chances, again, of showing up in that AI search? And so that's what we're really focused on right now. And then just pivoting again, our content strategy, making sure are we on as many platforms that make sense for us as we can be? Are we pushing out content on a regular basis? And one of the things I read the other day is even titles of that content should really be questions so that when you ask those questions in the prompt, you're showing up in those summaries. And so these are all little tips and tricks that we're reading up on and researching and seeing what gives us the biggest advantage in really building up our presence. Because the last how many years you know it's been really focused on those key words. that we were including in our content and putting on our site. And I can't tell you how much time Irem spent when we rebranded six years ago. And we learned, you we were referring to our certifications as credentials. And what we learned in our research is people weren't searching for credentials. They were searching for certifications. And so we completely overhauled their whole website and changed our strategy at that point. And now we're going to have to do it again. we're going to have to look at, what are people looking for in a certification? What are those keywords that we can still include? It's still going to be important to some degree, but what are those other questions that we're asking in relation to that, that we want to make sure we have those answers for and make sure that it's outlined in a genuine way. So I think the biggest thing too is, know, with AI, we've been talking about how We're kind of playing around with using AI to even help us create some content now. And that's great. It makes us more efficient. But we don't want to lose sight of those human experiences and expertise that can really help us make our content unique and more likely to show up in those prompts. Ben Ard (07:57) I love that. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. for all the content creators that are following this podcast, that are actual marketers, that are content marketing, they're the ones responsible for creating content. You mentioned a little bit about AI content creation and some of the things we have to focus on, but any advice to content creators and what you think that they're going to need to do and how they're going to have to shift? Really how they execute their craft coming up in this day and age of AEO versus SEO. Bridget Folliard Terrones (08:25) Yeah, I mean, it really relates to those unique human insights and those personal experiences that you can still build into your content. So again, like we're really focused on videos and testimonials because those things can't necessarily be generated from AI. And even if they are, they might be repetitive or used in another piece. So they don't bring that unique value of really building your brand and giving you visibility in those. results from someone searching. So I think that's the biggest thing. And, you know, it's not like SEO is going to go away entirely or websites are going to go away entirely. I think one of the things we'll see is organic traffic decrease for sure, because if people are getting the answer they're looking for in this AI summary, they're not going to have to click through to your website. On the plus side, if they do, that's a really high value lead that you're building and you know how to follow up with that person. ⁓ So that's one pro of it. But you know, we're really going to have to focus on just shifting our strategy and still including those keywords on the website, but also building that content and even something that a lot of people refer to and seen as cluster content where, know, you have a page on your website that's really like an anchor or a pillar page providing a lot of information on a topic, but then you have cross promotion of different pieces linked to that page. That's journal articles, blog articles, videos that has that same information in it to back up your expertise on that question that's being asked. Ben Ard (09:55) Yeah, I love that. That makes perfect sense. So, Bridget, we are getting close to running out of time. These things go by so quick. Any rec, I know, right? We could go on for hours. Any advice for like the biggest opportunities that you're seeing in the industry right now, really some like big wins that people can start to get here in the near term. Bridget Folliard Terrones (10:01) I could talk about this all day. Yeah, I mean, as I talked about earlier, I think this is really content's time to shine. You know, at least in the association space, we have talked about, you know, with other communications professionals, how there hasn't been as much of an emphasis or prioritization even on content vehicles and really building them up as part of your marketing strategy. And I think this is our opportunity to shine. I think this is really, you know, a chance for organizations and associations to increase brand visibility, really showcase our expertise and create those high value conversions like we've talked about before. I think again, the overall traffic to your website might go down, but again, as a result, you're really getting those high value leads that are coming to your website and you're able to market to them almost a little easier, I think, in the future. Ben Ard (11:11) I love that. Any advice or I'm trying to figure out the right way to ask this question, but what do you feel like the biggest risk is right now with SEO transitioning to a EO? Do you feel like there's any things that we need to keep our eyes out for? Bridget Folliard Terrones (11:26) would just say the legal concerns. raises a lot of issues around data privacy and even intellectual property. know for iRum we've put a policy in place to help guide us with that, but we're still in a place where it's evolving and there's not a lot of legislation around it. And so we're just kind of going with things that we know right now at this point. and trying to protect ourselves as much as possible. I think the other piece is just misinformation too. So really being careful about, know, if you're utilizing AI, making sure whatever content you're creating, you're still, you know, human is still reviewing it, still putting that eye on it and making sure that it's credible, it's accurate. And I still think that's going to be super. important moving forward is there's people talking about how AI is going to replace people. I don't necessarily see that. I think it's going to make us more efficient and we're still going to need that human oversight and fact checking when we create stuff through AI and that's still going to help us even in this case. Ben Ard (12:29) That's amazing. Well, Bridget, like you said, we could go on for hours and hours about this subject, but it's meant to be a short episode so people can get on with their day. Bridget, thank you so much. For anyone listening who wants to reach out and possibly connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Bridget Folliard Terrones (12:34) you ⁓ Yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. And I just want to thank you, Ben, for having me on the show. It's always a pleasure to talk with other marketers and kind of geek out about, you know, our day to day and challenges that we're facing. And I feel like this is a big one in the future. So I hope this content helps people navigate what's to come in the future with SEO and AEO. Ben Ard (13:08) 100%. Love it. For anyone listening, scroll down to the show notes. We will link to Bridget's LinkedIn profile right there so you can connect. Bridget, again, thank you for being on the episode. Really do appreciate it. Bridget Folliard Terrones (13:19) Thank you.