Mandy (00:02)
in order to keep the content so that feels authentic and feels real is if you're starting with a real story, whether that's a customer success, whether you've had different stories companies you're selling to or actual if you're on the B2C side like I am with customers and telling those stories as the root of what you're doing will automatically help you stay authentic.
Ben Ard (00:50)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Mandy. Mandy, welcome to the show.
Mandy (00:55)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here to talk about content marketing.
Ben Ard (00:58)
Yeah, Mandy, I'm excited to have you on the show. This is going to be a ton of fun. This is a subject that I have thought a lot about, and I'm so curious to pick your brain about it. Learn what you've done, learn your insights. I think it's going to be a great discussion. But before we get to that, Mandy, let's get to know you. If you don't mind sharing your background, work history, all that kind of fun stuff, let's let the audience kind of get to know who you are.
Mandy (01:20)
Absolutely. So I have been in marketing for over 15 years. I originally got my start while working in the music industry and fell into a marketing team and really loved the work that they were doing and got to be a part of that for 10 years in total with the industry. And after music, I moved into the technology education space with Nashville Software School. And I've been there for almost nine years as their director of marketing, leading everything from
content marketing, leading the team, anything that marketing touches. I've got my hands in. Sometimes I've had folks under me. also been solo on the team, currently solo right now. So I love getting my hands dirty and also being a part of the strategy and figuring out how I can do more in the time that I have for the organization.
Ben Ard (02:08)
I love that. So it's a really cool opportunity to talk to someone who is both responsible for the execution of a strategy, but also the creation of the strategy. So this is going to be a really cool discussion. I love it. So the working title for today and what we're going to talk about how AI can support more human connected content without killing the spark. So Mandy, when we're talking about this, sometimes people are afraid to use AI.
Mandy (02:18)
Yes.
Ben Ard (02:32)
Because it's AI, like it's not actual human interaction. It actually like feels fake sometimes like that. How are you creating content that creates connection with like, like, what does that actually look like on the day-to-day basis? And like, what do you keep in the front of your mind as you're doing that?
Mandy (02:49)
Yeah, I think
in order to keep the content so that it still feels authentic and feels real is if you're starting with a real story, whether that's a customer success, whether that you've had different stories from companies you're selling to or actual if you're on the B2C side like I am with customers and telling those stories as the root of what you're doing will automatically help you stay authentic.
And then you can leverage AI into the formatting of how you tell that story. some of the things that we do at Nashville Software School is we'll record podcasts. Well, that podcast also gets turned into a blog. It gets turned into short clips. It gets turned into social media posts. And that can take a ton of time, right, if you're doing that all on your own and.
manually. so being able to leverage AI into some of that, you're still having that authentic story, right? That that route of that student has gone through the program and graduated or the employer who has hired and the experience that they have had that has really manifested itself and sticks through with that content. So I think that is your first key to always kind of keeping that authenticity, but then also making sure that you bring your brand voice into these different AI tools. So if you're
⁓ using something like chat GPT, building out a custom GPT, which sounds very technical, but it's actually not that difficult to bring in your brand voice, make sure it knows who you are, how you talk, bring in real examples of things that you wrote pre-AI to help it match your style and things like that. So there's a lot of ways to help keep it more human without losing your voice.
⁓ And sometimes you'll put something in and the results are just crap and you just scrap it and go somewhere else and start over. Right. There's waves, right? There's some weeks where I feel like everything that's coming out of the different AI tools I'm using is just junk. And then there's weeks where everything is fine. Like it seems like it's working. And so there's always tweaks that are happening behind the scenes on these platforms that we don't always see or aren't always aware of.
that are changing those outputs, but just keep trying it. If you get something crap, it might be what you put in. You might need to be more specific. The more specific you can be with it, the better the results are going to be coming out of it. So yeah, it's been a huge help and lift in being able to do all the things that I do for Nashville Software School.
Ben Ard (05:15)
Very cool. love that. And I love the quote. You always start with a story. So you've trained your GPT, you've given it the materials, your brand voice, you've trained it on here's our tone. Here's how we discuss things. You've given it content that was written by a human. When you have it, write a new piece of content. Are you just prompting? Are you feeding a transcript? Like what's your preferred method of starting with the story to help the AI kind of produce this human?
Mandy (05:19)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Ard (05:43)
At least like, I feel like it's a made up word, but connectionable content that can create a connection. How are you doing that in the process?
Mandy (05:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, so if I'm starting with a story, so certainly if I have a transcript, I'm going to start there, right? And see what AI wants to focus on. What does AI think are the important things of this conversation? We don't always agree. So sometimes I have to kind of tweak and force it to go where I want it to go and have back and forth conversations. And I will take a draft, drop it in Google Docs, put it back in and say, OK, this is where I'm going with it.
What are your thoughts? And so using it as kind of a collaborative back and forth partner is very helpful. But starting with the story, starting with something that's real certainly is helpful. Sometimes I don't have a story that I'm trying to tell on a piece of content that I'm doing. And so I will just go into the custom GPT that I've built and start there and use that to just kind of start crafting the piece of content that I'm working on. Maybe it's something more.
more technical in nature or it's more like sometimes social media is just program updates, right? Here's what's open for applications and here are the meetups for this week and just kind of things like that where I don't need to be spending a ton of like mental energy writing that stuff, but I also don't want it to be the same. using AI to help create some of that simple content also works really well.
Ben Ard (07:05)
I love that. So I love the process for creating content, starting with stories, how to use AI prompt, try again, do all of this, create authentic good content. Now you put the content out there to the world. How do you know? And what signals are you looking at to know if the content's actually connecting with people or if it's just kind of a part of the noise? Like what, do you feel like makes the difference and how do you know it's working or not?
Mandy (07:32)
Yeah, so for me, particularly with Nashville Software School, the feedback comes back around a little differently than what most people are trying to track in metrics for marketing. So certainly, think monitoring your reactions, your comments, your shares are kind of your low-hanging fruit of whether or not that content is connecting, particularly like sharing with, where they're sharing it with their community themselves.
But a lot of our interactions actually, they start online, but the actual connection's offline. And so it's hearing it back through a student who comes in for an interview or hearing it back from a graduate who leaves us a review, whether that's a public review or they send a thank you email. So it's kind of more of an inner loop, right, ⁓ for the work that I do. And so it...
It really is about making sure that that content is thoughtful and is not, we're not just kind of like peppering and getting as much out there as possible. want everything to have a purpose and to really tell the story of, what we do at the school. And so that, that kind of differentiates from some marketers who are really kind of living by the clicks and the shares and all of that. We really just kind of, we want to hear it coming back to us as kind of a grassroots community.
Ben Ard (08:49)
I love that. So I love how you're talking about it provides value. And I love that as kind of a, indicator for content. you feel like this is improving someone's life? Is this actually something worth publishing? I love that kind of mental exercise. Is it helpful? Things like that. That's so cool. How do you handle the pressure though? Like it feels like so much content is being produced each and every day. How do you kind of balance that desire for real helpful?
Mandy (09:02)
Is it helpful? Yeah.
Ben Ard (09:16)
good content with this external pressure we sometimes put on ourselves to produce this massive amounts of content. Like how do you manage the two, especially when you're in a situation where you are in charge of both strategy and execution of that content, how are you kind of handling that?
Mandy (09:32)
Yeah, it's definitely a delicate balance, right? It's also being okay with saying, we don't have enough newsletter content this week. Let's hold it for one week. We're close to finishing up a brand new piece of content. We don't want it just to be all sales of all, you know, here's everything, you know, all the courses that are coming and go enroll or things like that. We want to actually have some new content that's not.
come here, right? And so sometimes we'll delay. We'll just say, let's hold for a week. We know we're close and then we'll pick it back up rather than sending out a newsletter and having it just be stuff that people who open it regularly see all the time. And so we'll do things like that. And sometimes the strategy or our blog some months is pretty quiet because we're, you know, I'm heads down with our CEO and founder looking at
where do we want to take this? Where do we want to go? What are our key priorities? What are our messaging? And sometimes you just have to be okay with being quiet. Of course, we're a small organization, that sometimes means a little less pressure than a larger organization to deliver. it's also we're very much know what our resources are and how fast we can get things done. But then this month we've gone ⁓ on a
pretty good content sprint. And we have put out three podcasts back to back week after week, which is not our normal cadence for things, but we had three great opportunities for interviews and we wanted to get them out pre Thanksgiving. And so I crammed them out. We got it done. So it's a matter of just making sure that you have a plan for everything. Those three that we pushed out quickly really made sense strategically for what we're working on and what we're talking about.
⁓ Whereas, you know, the month prior, we just didn't have everything set and the strategy that we really, you know, and the time sensitivity that we needed to just put out content, right? It doesn't do any good if we're just filling the void and cluttering up the blog with stuff that doesn't resonate with our audience. It's not helpful in somebody making a decision to come to a national software school.
Ben Ard (11:40)
And I love that. And I think there's going to be a lot of marketers nodding their heads of like, yes, I would love to just say, you know what? This newsletter is not up to our standard. Let's hold off for a week. Let's, let's break off of the content calendar a little bit, just because we have the standard of quality. How did you get everyone else on the same page and get them to be okay with this idea of yes, the newsletter goes out on such and such a date every single week, month, whatever.
However, if we are working on something, we will push it. How did you prep the team? I know some are going to be better than others from the very get go, but do any advice or anything that you've done to kind of prepare the team to be okay with a little bit of flexibility there so you can hit your standards of quality?
Mandy (12:22)
Yeah, you know, we've, always had a lot of flexibility, you know, over the years with the team of whether, you know, is this content going to be ready this week or is it going to be ready next week? And part of, part of that is, due to external factors that are beyond my control as well of, of like, okay, I can't control when I'm going to get this piece of content. And so I have to be flexible about where it lands. Uh, that, so that kind of is the first piece of
of needing to be flexible. And then I think if you maintain some of that flexibility, you can adjust. You can easily move things around. Having a content calendar allows you to swap. So if you have something that's not going to be quite ready, but you have something else that you can easily execute, go ahead and swap them as long as it doesn't ruin some strategic announcement or things that you're building up towards. So there's a lot of swaps that happen.
with content and just kind of making sure that we still have something out there. And then don't pause too often, right? You know, we do delay a newsletter. We're not afraid to delay a newsletter, but it's not happening every month. It's probably not even happening every quarter. It's probably more like twice a year to where the cadence just doesn't quite line up. And sometimes it's because there's a holiday, right? So our
Our general cadence is every other week for a newsletter. Well, next week would be a newsletter week. Well, it's Thanksgiving. And so it's just not an ideal time to send a newsletter. So we're going to hold it for the following week, which is actually better timing. As a nonprofit, it's giving Tuesday that week. And so we can use that as another tie-in for our newsletter. So some of it is just really looking at the whole content calendar itself. And if something needs to slide, having that flexibility just
it makes things a lot easier. It can be frustrating, right? If you have to suddenly get a last minute piece of content out there. But again, if you can't get the content to be up to your standards, then sometimes it's okay just to be quiet for a moment and then come back with something strong.
Ben Ard (14:21)
I love that. Plus, I love how you said it's the exception, not the rule. Like I do think there is some goodwill that gets built up inside the organization and with your readers that, it is pretty consistent. And the only reason it won't be consistent if there's a good reason, you know, instead of, I signed up for a newsletter every two weeks and I get it every two months. What's going on and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Mandy (14:25)
Yes.
Yes. No, I didn't feel like doing it. Right. Yes. Yeah, you
still have to have some consistency, right? And people do start to expect that, especially if you have a newsletter with avid readers and people who are frequently returning to it, they're going to expect their next update every other week. so
you know, I think for our audience there's kind of waves of how interested they are in the newsletter. So when they are considering coming to the school and they are a student, they are more engaged with the newsletter and what's going on at the school. As they graduate and kind of get out into the working world, they might fade away for a little while. And then as they look back at coming for continuing education, they start to re-engage again and look at what kind of continuing education options that we have. So
It kind of depends on where they are in the flow as well to how much our audience is paying attention to every single newsletter that we put out. I always still approach it with, okay, this is the first time they're hearing it. Even if it's something that I feel like has been in the newsletter 10 times in the past six months, I still want to make sure that it feels fresh to somebody who maybe hasn't opened it in a while.
Ben Ard (15:50)
I love it. Perfect. Well, Mandy, thank you so much. I really love the approach. Lots of really cool snippets of words of wisdom in there. And you're just approaching it the right way. So thank you for sharing that. I think this is really productive and helpful. Mandy, if anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Mandy (16:07)
Yes, the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. It's Mandy Arola and I hope to see you there. Just let me know you found me on Content Amplified.
Ben Ard (16:16)
Love it. And we will link to Mandy's profile in the show notes. So scroll down on whatever platform you're listening on, click on the link and connect with Mandy. Mandy, again, thank you so much for the time and insights today. I really do appreciate it.
Mandy (16:27)
Yes, thanks for having me.
