Benjamin Ard00:01 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Lexi. Lexi, welcome to the show.
Lexi Croisdale00:06 — Hi Ben, thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited to chat today.
Benjamin Ard00:08 — Yeah, Lexi, I'm excited. This is going to be a ton of fun. Before we dive into the subject, though, let's get to know you. Let's let the audience get to know who you are, all that kind of fun stuff about yourself with work history, career background, all of that.
Lexi Croisdale00:21 — Love it. Love it. Yeah. So I am one of the diamonds in the marketing career that started in journalism, actually. Not really even having heard the word content throughout most of my college experience. But when I got to my senior year as a journalism major, I quickly realized that it's more about the doom and gloom and, you know, straight up facts cut and dry where I was really gravitating towards wanting a career that sparked more creativity, right? Let me stretch my muscles. Definitely included media and telling stories, but doing it in a way that evoked emotion and like passion versus like kind of feeling scared of everything that was happening in the world. And so I was really lucky to get an internship that allowed me to do that. And quickly when I got to the organization that I was interning for, I noticed they had no one on the marketing team that was actually accountable for video marketing and for social media marketing. They definitely had a content manager, but it was very traditional, you know, blogger mentality type of framework. And so I quickly, you know, raised my hand to take ownership of video, to take ownership of social. And when I, you know, made the move on in my career journey to a new organization, it was kind of the same thing. And I was like, wow, like marketing, you know, from my perspective as someone who grew up with a cell phone, like I would think that video is so ingrained into marketing departments and social is something that everybody's doing. They have a dedicated team, let alone a lot of organizations don't even have a social media manager. Like they kind of leave it as other duties assigned. And so that's kind of what charted my career of really being multimedia, looking at content through the lens of what you can do from a visual perspective. So I like to say that I'm a visual storyteller.
It's not just the words, the words definitely are part of it, right? But it's getting people on screen, it's having your employees share stuff on social media, it's telling the story behind your brand through the people that are living it day in and day out. And really thankful that that's kept me in the job market all this time and it's helped me grow my own career. So now I'm a director of global content at Varonis, which is a cybersecurity company, another industry, you know, that prior to being involved in it, you kind of just think it's very cut and dry and doom and gloom, but we got a lot of fun in cybersecurity. We get creative. And so that's kind of where I'm at right now in my career journey. I'm loving it.
Benjamin Ard02:52 — I love that. And I love the idea of bringing fun to your industry no matter what it is. So I love that approach. I think that's exciting. Lexi, we're kind of facing an interesting conundrum. And this is what we're going to talk about today on the podcast. And it's weird because just five years ago, we would have never thought to ourselves that we're facing this challenge. But the idea of this spectrum of fully AI automated content creation, everything written by the computer, to the opposite end where we have human based content where it's a hundred percent people typing out on their keyboard, making mistakes, being authentic, being themselves. And everyone in marketing and content is trying to figure out where they're comfortable on the spectrum and where things kind of break down and where they shouldn't and whatnot. So we're going to kind of talk about this tension between the idea of, AI can write all my content and it can write a lot of it and really quick and can scale, all the way down to, hey, we really want genuine human written content and stories. So we're kind of going to talk about the slider. So when it comes to your personal belief, what are you seeing right now? Like, where are you seeing content kind of break down? Where is AI creeping in? Where do you sit on the spectrum? Like all of that kind of stuff. Let's kind of kick it off there.
Lexi Croisdale04:08 — Yeah, a great opener for sure. So where I see content breaking down in organizations, I think a lot of this comes down to just how subjective content is, right? When you read something, you watch a video, or you see something cool while you're scrolling on social media, it captures your interest. And there's different reasons that I, Lexi, might like something versus how you, Ben, like something, right?
And so where it kind of breaks down in a corporate environment is you have to appeal to the masses with what you're doing. And sometimes that's kind of hard to do when you have a social media manager and a C-suite executive who kind of have those different interests and how things might spark their eye. And so I think that's where AI kind of comes into play here and where things are kind of creeping in when it comes to content creation is that we can definitely accelerate. We can create all the content, but is it going to do the job that needs to be done? And the job that needs to be done is selling the product, you know, making our brand visible, doing those types of things. And so there's a desire, you know, from the business that you want to ramp up, you want to be productive, you want to be putting out more and more if you can. But at the end of the day, it's like, if that content isn't resonating, if it's not hitting, do we need to do it? And I think that's been core to content marketing for years now, right? Like there's always been this, you can create more and more and more and more, but is more gonna get you to the goals? Is that gonna actually equal pipeline generation? Probably not, you know? Like early in my career, we would do webinars and you repurpose that webinar and you cut it up into snippets. And sometimes I'd have like over 20 snippets and like, that's great to have 20 talking points. But if you're flushing all of those out in a two week span on your social media, like people are probably going to tune out, right?
And so it's kind of thinking of it in that way where like, I'm really excited for what AI can do to speed up some of the production process. But at the same time, let's not get overexcited and kind of go on a roller coaster where like now our content is just kind of a spray and pray and hope something turns into actual revenue. We still want to be creating with a purpose. And so for me, like a lot of that actually looks like using AI in different ways than content production, like using AI to help make the mundane routine tasks of what work entails easier rather than, you know, using it to generate a first draft or to write some of my content for me. Like one of the biggest things is a lot of the recurring meetings that I have to send like notes and stuff for, I have agents that are trained, like how I want those notes to kind of be shared so that all I have to do is plug in the meeting transcript or turn on the record button and now my notes are kind of already generated for me. That helps me focus in on the meeting a lot more too, right, as like the person kind of running it, where back when
Lexi Croisdale07:02 — I think about those journalism days where I had my recorder and I had my notepad and I'm trying like to furiously write everything that's happening so I don't miss a beat, like with AI I don't have to do that anymore and that's great. But at the end of the day, like I still hear the words, I still formulate the sentence in my mind and I'm gonna do a lot of that on my own. Maybe use AI to polish, to gut check in some instances, but definitely not to build the pie fully.
Benjamin Ard07:27 — Yeah, 100%. And I like that you're focused on what is resonating with the audience. I think sometimes with artificial intelligence, we look at it and say, I can now mass produce content and because of that, I'm going to lower my quality bar down a little bit so that we can automate more of this stuff going on. And it sounds like you have maintained a level quality saying, regardless of how AI is incorporated, we're going to maintain this level of quality. Now it feels like, and I've seen this personally, people when they sniff, I call it the sniff test with AI. If they sniff AI wrote the content, there's almost like a negative taste in your mouth and people kind of scroll on or they delete the email or whatever it is. Are you seeing this? Why are people sensitive to this? Like what are you noticing here? Especially as you're talking about content that resonates with your customers.
Lexi Croisdale08:22 — Yeah, you know, the biggest thing that I hear a lot when it comes to like the sniff test, if somebody can sniff out if it's AI, it points back a lot to like LinkedIn, right? So I'll ask people kind of like, you know, we're asking people to be active on there. And we know now that the algorithm prefers people over brands. Like that's just something we know. But when I go to my internal team members or even go to some of our C-suite executives and ask them what the kind of roadblock to them being more active, participating in comments, you know, commenting on our brand posts, like, please, even if it's just an emoji, please give us some type of comment. Their first response is always that there's just so much AI slop in their feed. Like they open it and they see this or that and they automatically close it out. So I think that's the biggest thing that we're seeing with the sniff radar, is that all it takes is that one thing to stand out, whether it's an M dash, you know, whether it's like overuse of emojis, all it takes is that one thing to then completely stop someone's content consumption journey that they made. And we're all into like the doom scrolling and stuff. People are definitely still scrolling. But I think when it comes to B2B content marketing, you know, like not necessarily the B2C side or like a more entertainment factor that we get with YouTube and TikTok, those types of things.
When you look at it from a B2B content marketing standpoint, like the minute you lose someone, you're gone. And that's kind of the biggest thing that I'm hearing now, is like when people think they sniff it out, they don't give it a second chance. And that's where it's hard because, you know, as we see marketers love the dash, like it's been around for years and years before ChatGPT decided to add it into its style guide. And so it can be hard when you as a marketer or, you know, a creative person, you kind of get so attached to what you did. Like I stumble into this a lot too, where like there'll be a specific word that I just like really love or like I really love that sentence, you know, and someone wants to edit it and I'm like, but we can't. And so even now, like I run into a lot of the time, some of our SMEs or practitioners, can we remove the dash? Cause I don't want it to think AI, like
Benjamin Ard10:34 — Yep.
Lexi Croisdale10:34 — we're altering our styles because AI took our style away from us in some ways. And so I just kind of like try to echo like, you know, it's okay. It's by the masses. It's not one dash is not going to be the end of the world. Like I know that kind of combats what I just said of like all it takes is one chance for your reader to stop reading. But if you actually are posting with a purpose or you're creating your content with that purpose, and like you said, for me, it's always what's going to resonate with the audience, most of the time you'll be okay. It's where you're doing it on the flip, like, I need to create this thing because the CEO wants it out the door and it's very flat. It's all about us. It's not showing the value that the reader or the customer is going to get on the other side. That's going to, the sniff radar is going to go out, not just about like AI generation, but the authenticity of your brand communication and things like that.
Benjamin Ard11:28 — I love that. Okay, that makes perfect sense. And I feel like you kind of have outlined how you personally manage that with AI and where you're at in the spectrum and where you're comfortable with it. So let's shift gears back to like teams. When a team has this mandate from leadership, I just gave you a Claude Enterprise account or whatever it may be, or we have ChatGPT for the company. I need more. I need the 10X return I was promised and all that kind of stuff with AI. How can people avoid massive mistakes and now saying, great, I have to scale and I'm going to lose some authenticity. Like how do you avoid the pitfalls in that specific scenario that I think a lot of people are actually finding themselves in today?
Lexi Croisdale12:15 — Yeah. I love this question. So we just, last week I was at an offsite where it was our full marketing department got together and this exact scenario, we're getting caught in a press, right? And it's exciting, but as a cybersecurity company, we also know a lot of the risks that come with AI use in a corporate environment. And so that's another layer of, I'd say fear of using AI for work that creeps in into our specific case. Like we know how powerful it could be and the risks that are kind of involved. And then we're asked, you know, 10 times your production or your work, like you need to be using this thing. And I think the biggest thing that's worked is again, just honesty. Like I was very honest with my leadership team, pre getting Claude Enterprise, that I really liked Claude. I'm using it on my phone. I'm using it for my everyday life. I don't have a personal computer. So the only way that I can use this for work is gonna be if you let me install it on desktop, right?
I'm also very honest that in order to use AI to do your job, you also have to find time to learn AI, how to use your job. And I think that's the biggest missing puzzle piece in organizations today where, you know, on one hand, people are like, use it, why aren't they using it? And then on the other end, I want to use it, but I don't know how and I'm scared of the outcome if I do something wrong. And so, you know, just kind of advocating as leaders, and then, you know, the junior roles that are in your org too, like advocating that you need to find, maybe it's a course that you need to take. Maybe it's like a paid professional opportunity. Maybe it's going to a conference. That's all about like raising your hand for those opportunities so that you can actually learn the ins and outs and how it works specifically for your job. And then on the flip side too, like asking the chat bots themselves what they think.
As we got Claude, that was a tip that was shared with me. I never really thought about it. I don't know how to set up an agent versus just asking a question, or now there's artifacts and all these things I didn't understand. I can straight up ask Claude, I want to make this a project. Give me the steps that I need to make this an ongoing project that you retain and you pull from memory and things like that.
That's a big part of it. I would recommend just like being vocal about wanting that training. If your leadership wants you to use it, they should be paying for you to learn how to use it. And then, you know, don't be afraid to ask the chat bot questions to get to the goal that you want. You know, what are other content marketing teams using Claude for? A lot of the answers came back about content creation. And I said, I don't want content creation. I want admin things. What are things? And me and my team built a whole reporting dashboard, you know, we all have different channels. We were all kind of reporting on them separately. And now we can just download CSV data, dump it into this Claude project, and it generates a whole report for the month for us with the insights we already knew. But it took away all the time that we spend formulating the sentence or putting it in the style guide that leadership wants to see. So there's definitely ways out there to experiment and to learn as you're being pressured to kind of use these tools.
Benjamin Ard15:25 — I love that. Okay, so now I'm sitting in that seat. I have the Claude Enterprise Edition and I'm actually taking the time to go and teach myself, figuring out ways I can learn whether it is an event, seminar, software, tutorial, whatever it may be, self exploration, et cetera. Now I have like this skillset and I'm still creating content, and this is gonna be the final question because we're almost out of time, Lexi. When it comes to baking in the humanity and using AI, how do I navigate those waters? You know, I figured out the agents, I figured out the artifacts and the projects and all that kind of stuff. How do I make sure that we authentically as humans still show up even as AI is a part of the workflow?
Lexi Croisdale16:11 — Yeah, I think a lot of that maps back to your overall like how humanity fits into your brand, right? You know, if you're like a technology company that's super into the AI and stuff like that, like humanity might not be your biggest thing to worry about. For us at Varonis, like we have a very human centric content strategy. And the way that we infuse that is always putting our people at the forefront.
We don't, you know, our blog is full of SME writers. It's not just me or, you know, one C-suite executive. We have many faces, many different bylines. If you have an idea for a story, we're gonna make sure that story comes from like what you built. We'll help you find the words to get there and the flow to like make it come out naturally. But it's about, you know, giving people that credit and ownership, and that amplifies into employee advocacy. I'm a big proponent of like put less pressure on your marketing or your brand logo to do a lot of that marketing, that you need to make your employees raving fans of the company. Let them build their own personal brand. Let them post on LinkedIn, Substack, whatever it may be. Because when you do that, that's going to bring publicity and deals to your pipelines as well. Nobody wants to be a lead at the end of the day. Nobody wants to be talking to a robot for fun. You got to build that human connection. And by giving your employees that power to also tell your story online without feeling like they're going to get a slap on the wrist for it, it's so powerful. It's keeping your content human centric.
Benjamin Ard17:38 — I love that, getting everyone involved, not getting them in trouble, letting them kind of show up how they want to. I think that's so cool. Lexi, this has been a great conversation. I have loved the insights. I love your perspective. I love all of that. For anyone who's listening, who wants to reach out and connect with you online, what's the best place for them to find you?
Lexi Croisdale17:54 — Thanks, I've loved the conversation equally, Ben. Best place to find me would be LinkedIn. First and last name Lexi Croisdale. Yeah, I'm somewhat active. You know, I have my moments where life gets busy and I don't post a lot, but definitely trying to up my game and post there some more.
Benjamin Ard18:11 — I love it. For anyone listening, regardless of what platform, scroll down in the show notes. We will have a link to Lexi's LinkedIn profile. Go ahead and click on the link. It would be awesome if you mentioned that you came from the podcast. That'd be so cool. Lexi, again, thank you for the time and all the insights today. Really do appreciate it.
Lexi Croisdale18:28 — Thank you, Ben.
