Content | How Original Research and Thought Leadership Can Transform Your Content Marketing

Join Heather Johnson on The SCORRCAST to explore how original research and thought leadership can elevate your content marketing. Learn how data-driven insights and expert perspectives can build authority, engage audiences, and drive impactful content strategies. Discover best practices for leveraging unique research to create compelling, trusted content that sets your brand apart.

Transcript

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The SCORR cast. I am so excited for this recording today because I am interviewing Heather Johnson. Heather Johnson is someone, gosh, it's been three years now since we first started working together at SCORR, back in 2021 and I think you might have left SCORR in 2020 22 2022 we'll get we'll get into that. But it feels like that is a generation ago, three years ago, and I was so excited when I was launching the SCORR cast, and I think you had commented on it right away, saying, like, Hey, this is exciting. And I replied within seconds, and was like, it is exciting, but you're gonna have to join me on the podcast, because I have always thought that the content a that you produced on behalf of SCORR for our clients, the content that you produced for your own newsletter and email, and certainly what you're doing right now for clients, and just kind of your thought process around content, has always been something that I was really passionate about and I admired about you, so I really appreciate you taking the time today to talk with us. I think anybody that's interested in life science, content, content that can drive leads, content that can drive brand awareness, is going to get a lot out of this conversation. So Heather, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know we've got some topics to give, you know, kind of an agenda for those that are listening. We're going to talk about good content. We're going to talk about what type of content should companies be creating, and then we're also going to talk a little bit about this human element of of content with all of the AI. And I'm not going to go on too much of a rant, but I'm certainly going to talk and put you on the spot about content creation, the human element within it, before we start running. Would love to just have you kind of give us a background, give the listeners who don't know you right now, a background, your experience, your position, what you do right now and then, you know, I always like to ask, what are you passionate about within the content world? And so I'll toss the microphone over to you for a little background here. All right. Thanks, Alex. The my background, I think of it in kind of a two different phases. I started working for myself back in 1999 you know, when internet really was it was a thing, but not much of a thing, and I was writing mainly for professional audio magazines. So these were the trade magazines that were read by recording engineers and other people that worked in recording studios or had something to do with recording studios. That was the bulk of phase one. And then there was a gap I don't want to during the Great Recession, where I was doing just whatever I could, because it was such a weird time. But in 2014 I started focusing on the marketing side of writing. Started learning everything I could about inbound marketing, content marketing, and by happenstance, some medical device and healthcare projects came my way fairly early on, and I loved it. I loved learning about and working with kind of this intersection of technology, which I had kind of a different background in, and people's health, making, ideally, helping people, you know, be healthier. So that's, you know, I stuck with it, and here we are on the SCORR cast. That's, that's everybody's dream, right? It's 20 years later, you're on the SCORR cast, that's like, that's, that's the best, that's the best case scenario. So right now, you know, I found it really interesting. You talked about, kind of the intersection of technology and human health and kind of your background. It's been really interesting interviewing. I think we're going to be 30 episodes here in 2024, of the show, which is, which is really just wild to think about. But how many people had, like, had a background in health, versus how many people had no background in health, but kind of just fell in love with it, and that's my boat. Is, if you would have told me a decade ago that I was working, you know, talking, couldn't. Research and drug manufacturing and that type of content, I probably would have laughed you off the stage. And then you get into it, and it's been a couple of years, three years, four years, and you're like, Wow, this is awesome. I don't want to, I don't want to leave it. And is that, is that kind of the boat that you you're in right now as well? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the more I learn about the you know, how, whether it's a medical device company that's using new technology to make their product smaller or streamline things, or if it's, maybe it's a SAS company that has a great idea to help healthcare systems. You know, it's just, it's really cool to see the the marriage and what's coming around the pike, yeah, and I, I already know I joked with you beforehand that I was going to ask a bad podcast question. And I do this. I do this every episode where I we've kind of got a question on here, what makes good content good? That is what I'm alluding to a little bit. But I find it interesting that we, in my opinion, the industry, over complicates content, and we over complicate it in a plethora of ways. And someone who you know you mentioned 1999 you're creating content, and all these things, so much has changed within content distribution, and that channels, and I could be on LinkedIn, and then there's gonna be a new platform, and there's this, but the core of good content has stayed the same. Good content is good content. And so I ask you, Heather, what makes good content good? What do you look for when you're creating a piece or someone's asking you to review a piece, or if you're just seeing it in the in the open market? To you, what makes good content Good? Good. No typos, no. You know, good is subjective. For example, just my personal life. I'm reading the Power Broker right now. It's a heavy lift. It it won a Pulitzer Prize. It's been in print for more than 50 years. I mean reviews exceptional, you know, like Bucha is of great reviews, so it's really good, according to many standards. But then someone else could argue that, Oh, this isn't good because the sentences are so long, yeah? 1000 pages. It's heavy, like you pick it up. It's heavy, but in terms of marketing content, good, I think of as it's something that ideally it prompts the reader to take the action you want them to take, whether that's schedule a demo, download a thing, sign up for a thing. So to do that well, the content would need to hold the reader's attention long enough. It would need to give them something valuable. You know, tell them right off the bat, why should they spend five to seven minute minutes reading your thing. Why should they give up their email? I think people are more reluctant to do that these days. So it needs to be something that they want to know that's going to help them and that they can't, ideally can't get anywhere else. So I think of is good. And then, of course, structurally it, you know, thinking of your standard article or blog or white paper or whatever, it should start with a strong statement or an argument and give plenty of supporting evidence. The here's why, and it should be directed to your people, your your target audience. You know, in our industries, I would say that most of the time, you're writing to highly educated people, all the scientists or executives leadership, so they know what a CRO is. You don't have to tell them they know clinical trials are long and expensive. You don't have to tell them they probably don't want to think about it. So you don't need to tell them the stuff that they've heard a million times before. Just, you know, get to your point and move on. Yeah, there's, there's so much good there, Heather, and I've kind of got like, three different directions of of follow ups. And I think there was one thing that you said that we want the reader to take the action that you want from that piece of content. Content. And I think back to, I think it's the is it the 22 laws of copywriting, where it's like, hey, the goal of copywriting is to get them to read the next sentence and to read the next sentence, which then led me to, when you said, start with a strong statement or argument, which to me, I've often referred to on this podcast as like a position. If you don't have a position about the content that you're creating, it's probably, you're probably just going to be able to google it, and it's going to come up and say it right, and if everybody can say it, then your content is not going to be worth that, that exchange of information, that exchange of email address, or whatever that might be, and so really honing in on, you know, that piece of it, and then, like you said, the audience, and I think I was actually just on a conversation this morning, it's like, well, you know, we we tend to just write content for everybody and hope that this person finds it because we Were writing content for this, but they're not the end buyer, but, and it's like, well, if we're just writing content in the hopes that somebody is going to find it in this large world of crowded nonsense, frankly, it's not, it's not going to happen, right? It's not going to happen. And so, you know, and I get it, there's a lot of pressure inside organizations, and you feel like you have to do things, and so you end up just checking the box. Yep, we wrote a piece of content. Yep, we wrote a piece of content. Eight months from now, someone's going to come down and say, content doesn't work because we didn't have a position, we didn't have a strong call to action, or a transitional call to action, and we probably just wrote it to the entire industry, not to that segment that actually needs to hear it, right, right? And I think with you know, that comes back to the content strategies, back to your you know, okay, have your content plan and start thinking ahead, like, what goals do you want to accomplish? And maybe with your content, you create kind of these two to three pillars, okay, you know, in this case, we want to improve sign ups for x by x percent, and your other pillar goal is something different. And then you direct your content to those things. Yeah, you gotta be fired up. You got me fired up, Heather, because I can go, we can just throw away the rest of the questions that I had for you and just go on an absolute rant about that, because if your content pillars aren't laddered up to the business pillars, your content is never going to be successful. And so it always frustrates me to no end when it's like, oh, we're writing this content over here, but actually our goal is on a completely different playing field. And so you have to start at knowing what your goals are for marketing, knowing what your goals are for the business, and then create the content that's going to support those goals, not the other way around. Otherwise, again, you're going to waste a lot of money and you're going to you're going to blame other people for that content not working. But it starts from the very beginning with knowing what content we should have been creating. Yeah, I think I worked with the client once that they were fired up about they wanted to create this massive white paper on a specific topic, do it in a specific way. And then once we asked them, well, why? Why do you want to do this? And it was because their competitor did it. I've done it, yep, always. Not a good reason. Not a good reason. Well, it's, you bring up that story, and all I think about is how many times you hear, you know, oh, we created the content, but then we didn't do anything with it. And, you know, I talk all the time about how content, in my opinion, content, is still the best way for your audience to know you, like you, and trust you. You have to create good content for that. But content distribution then becomes king, queen and executioner, because if you write the content I told you I was going to use bad sayings, but it's like the if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, type of thing. If you create good content and you hide it on your website and you post it one time on LinkedIn, no one's going to consume it, right? And so we have to have that, you know, going back to your point about the strategy from the very beginning, a lot of times, someone will say, hey, we want x. And I'll say, Okay, well, what are we going to do with it? Well, we just want it. We just want it to be done. We want to have it. We want the BDS to have it, or whatever it is, it's like, okay, well, that's probably going to end up sitting on a shelf like my to be red list. When I just keep going back to the same books over and over again, they're going to stay in the corner and they're not going to again be fruitful for the organization, right, right? Yeah. It makes total sense to do, you know, kind of have those dual. Goals, maybe you need case studies, or your sales reps need case studies. Yeah, they need to show the prospects data show what you've you know when you can do for them, yeah? But then also, yeah, like you said, with getting it out to the the larger world, yeah, it takes more than one time. So you mentioned case studies there for BD, you already mentioned white papers. I've talked about blogs and articles. One of the big questions that I get all the time is, what type of content should a life sciences company be creating. And I always joke my lean in real close. And I always say I've got a good answer and a bad answer, and it's a bad answer. Well, unfortunately they're the same answer, which is, it just depends. It just depends. And then I, you know, I can elaborate on that and talk about what I think, but I think one of the things is, is there's no easy way out, right? There's no silver bullet. There's no oh, if I just create this one piece of content and I send it out there, leads will fly in tomorrow, because for some people, it's going to be X type of content. For others, it's going to be y, type of content. Does everybody need a podcast. No, does everybody need an e book? Absolutely not. Not. You do not need an e book. If you're listening to this and you take nothing away from what I said today, you don't need the eighth e book, I promise. So Heather, I'm going to throw it back to you again and say when it comes, when your thought, when you're thinking about it. And it doesn't have to be the tactic the white paper, the case study. It could be the type of content, but what type of content should life science companies be creating and generating and distributing? Well again, it would, of course, go back to their their content goals and problems that they intend to solve for their customers or clients. Because really, in the end, it's about them and not necessarily about you. Yeah, selfless kind of thinking, but in terms of type I came across. So there's a report that came out recently from a market research company called red point, and they found that original research and thought leadership are the two broad types that appear to get the best results. So original research was the thing that actually led to revenue generation. I think they had an example of one company that did a research report and some content around that, and it led to, like, $600,000 in revenue or something like that. So, but that type of content, it can be based on a big internal survey, but it could also be content that's heavily backed by scientific studies, medical studies, case study data, and then thought leadership got top marks for raising brand awareness, of course, and around like kind of the thought leadership bucket that could be anything from those longer LinkedIn posts by your SMEs by your CEO. It could be an editorial in the media, an opinion piece or some similar kind of substantive content. It just needs to show what you think, particularly if you have a stronger contrarian opinion, it goes back to that. It goes back to that, having it, having an opinion or a position. I get a joke here, but I'm going to snip it that exact answer, Heather, and that's going to be the LinkedIn post from this podcast, because it's interesting. I ask, what type of content should I be creating if I'm in this industry and so often we go right to the tactic, right? Oh, you have to be LinkedIn. You have to be a webinar. You have to do the ebook. You don't have to do the ebook. I'm saying it one more time. You don't have to, you don't have to do the ebook. And you go to the piece behind that, which is original research and thought leadership. And, you know, I say all the time that if, if if LinkedIn ceased to exist tomorrow, I, although that would be sad to me, I would then take the video content I'm doing, content that I'm doing, and I would put that on YouTube, and I would then do that on Tiktok, and I would take the written content and put it on medium or on, you know, Reddit even, and so the chain. Channel of distribution, you gotta find it out. You gotta learn what your audience is using, but it's less important than the actual nuts and bolts of the content, and so the internal surveys, the proof points, the data. This is why customer surveys and doing that research internally is so important to be able to speak to that, especially in our industry. But I also love the thought leadership angle, and I think that's so interesting, because, again, we over complicate this industry more than any other industry that I've seen. We over complicate thought leadership. There are so many brilliant individuals, and they're going to trade shows, they're going to events, and they're speaking, and they're putting together slides, and you're like, Well, why don't we just turn that into a a three minute snippet on LinkedIn or on YouTube? You know, use it as editorial use it as opinion pieces. Use it all those things, and we just don't, and we just don't do enough of it, right? We just don't do enough of it, and so I'm going to steal that. I like, I'm going to, I'm going to, still going to lean in and say, it depends. But I think that that's such a good way of thinking about content. Is original research and thought leadership. Content, that's what works. Yes, right? Yeah. And I also think with Thought Leadership, I often wonder if and you, you know, weigh in if some companies, be marketing departments or individuals, are hesitant to express their opinions, whether strong opinions or contrarian opinions, because they want to Stay safe they don't want to ruffle any feathers. Yep, so they stay in the safe zone where, you know, it could be to their benefit, to you know, and and to your point on that, I think, for a really long time, and I think a lot of organizations still to this day, view personal brand and personal thought leadership as a negative thing. And I will, you know, there's a lot that I disagree with, but I will never agree with personal thought leadership being a negative thing for a business. And I think we're starting to move more in that direction, that personal brands and company brand brands are blending together. Because, frankly, when you when you see me now on this video, I hope that people think of of SCORR marketing, right, like that should be the way that we're using it, and we actually, you know, SCORR just posted a blog a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was even last week that was like B to B. Marketing is especially social media is boring. It's stagnant, and it doesn't have to be. We can do better. And so much of that, again, comes back to these two buckets. If it's thought leadership or it's original research, if it's the original research and it's in depth scientific pieces, then you have the opportunity to go to that scientific level, go to that deeper level of expertise. But the thought leadership, I say all the time, there's somebody on the C suite of your organization that would be willing to sit down for five minutes and record a three minute video, or they'd be able to write a three minute, you know, social post, post it directly to your page. You don't even have to use like, treat your personal treat your company, brand on LinkedIn like a personal page, you know, like you can do that. And I think there's, again, misconceptions about what all of this means in the industry. You got me, you got me go another and now I'm now, I'm fired up. I told you, I told you it was bound to happen. I didn't expect it to happen in the first 20 minutes that I was going to be ready to run through brick wall. But it goes back to again, the over complication of I think we we tend to create content. You know, I think if I went through a lot of the content that's been created that I've seen over the last six months, most of it's not going to fall in those buckets of original research and thought leadership. And that's a really good, you know, angle to view it in is, does it fit in that bucket? Does it fit in that bucket? And if the answer is no to both, why are we creating it right now, right? Some thought, you know, and you know, it's not to say that there might be other fundamental types of content that don't do well. But based on, you know, the research, yeah, those seem to be the ones that rose to the top by a pretty healthy, yeah, well, and I always think about it as this, you know, if you were consuming the content as a as a potential customer, potential client, and it was just, you know, the me show, we're bragging about what we do and how we do it. Would you be interested in that? No, that's a promotional piece, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna engage with it in that way, because it's, it's basically as if you're selling to me and giving me a capabilities presentation. And I have not signed up for a capabilities presentation. Mm, hmm. Um, yeah, if it were me, I would want to know specifics exactly, how are you going to help me? How are you going to help me? Really? Yes, wow. Are you going to solve the problem? You know, I was just on a call right before we hopped on here, and it was, you know, they had a lot of good, interesting points, but it came back to the question of, if somebody was engaging with their brand right now, would you be able to identify what do they do? How do they do it? And why should they care? And it was like, we could, we could go all over this website, and they have so much good information. What do they do? Why do they do it? Why should I care? How do they do, like, just those three basic questions. Couldn't answer those questions. And so then you're like, Okay, now you're starting to get into this thing. And you know, I talk about it at trade shows all the time, is you walk down the trade show aisle, and so much of that messaging is the same. And that this last conference I was at, at D farm, it was data driven insights. I can't tell you how many people said, data driven insights. We we optimize and streamline your data driven workflow, blah, blah, blah, over and over and over again and and, you know, at SCORR, we call it the big idea, you know, it's the hook, it's the tag, whatever it is. But you gotta have something that that stands out, right? That catches you and says, Hey, I might actually want to stop by and have this conversation, especially again. Then it goes back to the industry that we're in. There's new players coming in all the time that are just replacing the technology. It's this technology, but a little bit better. But if you say the exact same thing over and over again, there's not any differentiation or separation between those companies, yep. And I think, you know, from the perspective of what I do, I think about those sorts of things with respect to say, your website's homepage, yep, like it, you know, if you like, just just tell them. Like, just be clear. Just tell them. And instead of like, you know, starting out with this fancy tagline that doesn't really say anything clearly, like, it sounds good, but yeah, you know that, you know, just just tell em, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear. You know, it's the is it? Brene Brown, you know, clear is kind Clear, clear and clear and concise, right? Is I? I'm a big fan. I don't know if I have the book here, but of building a story brand by Donald Miller, like talking about how cute and clever is typically not the way that you want to go with your main brand messaging. Cute and clever could be pulled out at a trade show, at an idea, something unique, that 20% of the budget, but the other 80% of the budget. If someone has 13 seconds in their mind before they open another email, we need to be clear. We need to be direct, and they have to be able to grasp that right then and there, right right for sure. Okay, Heather, we've had so much fun, and now we're going to go into a darker part of the conversation for the next seven to eight minutes here, which is the human element of of content and and creativity, the role of human creativity in content and, frankly, expertise, chat GPT, all of these things. I'm going to put a disclaimer at the beginning of this. That is, you know, I use chat GPT. I'm not anti chat. GPT, I'm certainly not anti AI. I think there are use cases and benefits for it. You know, if I'm working on a really big proposal and I want to summarize it into an email, I might throw in some of my talking points and ask for a couple of bullet points out, I might use it as an idea like storage unit, where I'm just throwing in ideas all the time, and then I'm like, Hey, which one haven't I talked about a while? With that being said, I think that the world of automation is limiting our ability to do quality and things that don't scale that personalized insight, that really strategic content that makes a difference. I'm giving that soapbox and that disclaimer because, you know, it's a hot button topic, and certainly the SCORR market, SCORR marketing is an innovative company, but I think you have to have a blend of both. You have to use the AI tool, but you also have, still have to have the human element of creativity and of personalization and of insights. And so I don't think this is a fair question to ask you, Heather, but what are your thoughts? As I say, all of that we talk about the human element within. Marketing in 2024 really specifically within content, not just marketing, but content. What are your thoughts about AI, chat, GPT, other tools versus, you know, the human side of this? Yeah, good question. So much there. So, yeah, if you could just solve this problem for us right now, it'd be great, really. And as a creative person who writes a lot, I am, I admit, somewhat biased, but I can say that, you know, the role of the human, human creativity is essential, in my view. If I step back and take as best an as best an objective view as I can you know, like coming up with new approaches, new ideas for things that you might see, you might hear, you might read. At the fundamental level, an algorithm can't do that well yet. It can't bring empathy into copywriting, or, you know, most kinds of writing, yet it can give you some insight into your target audiences, challenges, maybe even what, quote, unquote, keeps them up at night. I've used it in that respect with some success, but it can't write from that place of, I feel your pain, I understand what you're dealing with. So that's, that's what I think about. That it I think of like the first slogan that comes to mind is L'Oreal, because you're worth it. That's human talking to human. Humans talking to well, and I love that you said that, because, you know, one of the big things I talk about all the time is B to B, B to see it's all human to human. The end of the day, you want to buy from humans that you know, that you like and that you trust. What I have seen over the last year is that when I get an email and I know it's written from chat, G, P, T, and it is a template, an email that clearly a person on the other end did not write they just put it into a system. They sent it to everybody, and the only difference was the name, hey, Alec, even if, even if, even if, it isn't automated. And again, I like automations. I do, but if I can tell that that was written from chat GPT or an automated software like that, the chances of me giving it the time of day are way less, right? It's the it's just spam, right? They're just sending that to everybody. And I think you can tell that right away. You can tell it on LinkedIn right away when content is written from, you know, a chat GBT, because it doesn't feel personalized. That's not how we talk, it's not how we communicate. And I think the best content is written the way that you would tell a story, and the more that we do the storytelling, the better your content is going to be. And when you don't do that, or when you use those types of tools, you you lose that creative storytelling angle as well. Yeah, to me, it's, you know, the writing I've seen from it is, I mean, it's amazingly good for a tool, but it's kind of surface level. That's a great way to put it, yeah, you know, it's, I use it fairly often for, say, getting my head around a topic, for getting some sort of insights into a particular market or a type of technology. I've used it as like a glorified thesaurus, yeah, yeah. Give me five words that start with the letter C that mean this, yes, yeah. Or, like, I've used it to clean some of my stuff up before, like, where I have a ton of thoughts, and I say, organize these thoughts for me, and, you know, and a priority order, and then I'll be like, Okay, well, I actually disagree with that. It's an unbelievable asset, and it's an unbelievable tool, but I think that's what it is. I think it's a tool, not a solution, right, right? Like I've used it to go through transcripts that are pages long, such a good way. Yeah, give me the, you know, give me the summarize this and tell me about XYZ, and it amazing job at that kind of stuff. But I one thing I don't do. I've I've used it create outlines for my own blog articles, but I don't use it in that kind of way for client work. It. You know, last year I got. My first contract that had a chat GPT clause in it, yeah? And it just, I'm totally fine with that, but it just kind of got me thinking, you know, it's like, kind of an affirmation that this is how I'm going to work from Yeah, this point forward. Yeah, I love that. I and maybe you disagree with this statement, so I'm interested to hear your thoughts. But for me, chat GBT is not going to replace writers. What I think it will do is it riders who are able to use it to become more efficient with the task that chat GBT is helpful with, while still being able to do the creative writing part will just, they'll just become a step above, right? It's not going to replace them, but the ones who aren't willing to use it, and let's say, let's say, used to take me 14 hours to do a project. Now by using chat, G, P, T to summarize my transcripts and my notes and all of this stuff. Instead of 14 hours do a project, I can do the same quality of work in eight now I've become much more lethal, and you still being able to hit it, that human element, the touch, the heart, the I love that you said it doesn't write with empathy. That's, that's the way this is going to go. And I think that's, that's where success is going to come in. Do you agree? Disagree with that? Yeah, yeah. I agree. And that's, you know, being able to cut down the mundane from and so, you know, a project goes from 14 hours to eight hours. That's good for you, because you can work on more important things. It's good for your business. It's, yeah, good for the industry, right? Like, I think that's, I think that's part of it is the content. What I hear all the time is that content is so hard to produce. And if one thing that we can take from these types of tools is we can streamline a little bit on how difficult content is to produce, then that that would be, that would be a really nice benefit to come from it. The fear, the con that I have is that you go and you're, you're on 12 different companies LinkedIn pages, and all they have done is gone to chat GPT and said, Write me a LinkedIn post that says, Well, we're going to be at the next trade show in October, and every company does that, and it's all the same cookie cutter thing over and over again, even when you're able to add, like, write it excitingly, or write it this, it's the same thing over and over again, and we just continue to check that box in order to be successful. Yep. And I mean, and it's possible you could create a custom GPT that maybe it would write in your company's brand, Brandon, yep, all that, but yeah, there still could be something missing. And you know, similarly, I also worry in that respect, that it will make us lazy. Yeah, because if we're relying on a tool to write our emails, our articles, our letters, whatever, yeah, then we're not using our brain. And you know, it's probably a good idea to use our brain just for the health of our well. And I also think you make a good it's an interesting that's an interesting point. And then I'll ask you a final question, but it's an interesting point about, like, subject matter expertise, right? And I when I create content, it helps me learn through that process. I'm doing a little bit of research on my own. I might do some, you know, ideation over here, but then I'm going to write out a script, or I'm going to write out a long LinkedIn post, or, you know, questions that I want to be asked in an interview. We're going to CP h i worldwide while the time people are listening to this. Well, I've been at CP HR worldwide, and I did use chat GBT to help me come up with like, topic ideas for an interview. But then I go and I like, how would I answer that question? How would I do this? I'm not going to ask chatgpt, how would I answer that question? I'm going to do that myself and do my own research. So you're also like, it's also helping my own subject matter expertise, whereas I could have just said, Okay, chatgpt, write me five answers to these five questions. And whatever it is, I would just answer those questions in that way, or do the FAQ that way, and that's going to be generic. It's not going to be something that is unique. It's not going to have the argument, the position, it's not valuable, it's just stuff that's coming from Google. And also it's not improving me in that, in that subject matter as well. So I think it's a really interesting point there, too. Yep, for sure. Yeah, that's why I'd use it. I Well, that's why I don't use it to create outlines. Yeah, yes, yeah, because when I'm working on the outline, by the time I have the outline done, I have a pretty good idea in my head of how a story is going to go. Yeah? Got the intro kind of fleshed out. If. Exactly on the page. It's in my head. And, you know, I'm all it's organized in my head. So, yeah, yeah, I love that. I told everybody that's listening at the beginning of this that they were going to get so much out of it about content. We are about 40 minutes in, and it has just flown by. It has been an absolute blast. Heather, I do have you know, we talked before we started recording about, you know, New Year's resolutions and 2025 and one question I ask everybody right now that I've been recording with over the last month or two is just kind of like, what are we looking forward to in 2025 is there a is there a piece of content that you're like, hey, I really want to focus on this. Is it more on the strategy side? Is it, you know What? What? What are you looking forward to? Heather for, for 2025 within your own work, within the industry, you can go any direction that you so choose. It won't be 2024, it's been more of a roller coaster year for me, personally and professionally, than I would like, yeah. So I'm looking for something a little less ups and downs, but business wise, I'm kind of moving toward this, what I call, I think of it as kind of a hub and spoke model, yeah. So if, say, a company just needs me, maybe they need someone for content development strategy, then that's fine. They can have me, but then if they need supportive services. I can pull in partners to help, whether it's graphic designer or whatever the case might be. So that's kind of my when experimenting. We'll see. I might change my mind tomorrow. I love it and and I know I belong to the newsletter where can somebody sign up to? You know is that, should I just send people to the LinkedIn? If you're listening to this and you want more content from Heather Johnson, where can they go to get more content? Let's see. LinkedIn is good, um, on my website, which is really hard to spell, but it's Outward Bound, com.com, okay, word with a the letter o, they you can sign up. I have a monthly newsletter that gives kind of a miscellaneous mix of marketing, med, tech, news views every month, only once a month, so you're not swamped with emails or anything. And I can vouch, I can vouch for it. I think I was one of the first when I saw you. You post on it, and it's something that I look forward to reading each month. And so if you're still listening to this, certainly sign up. We'll include it in the show notes linked as well. So Heather, thank you so much. This was a blast. I kept you a little bit more than I promised I would, but once you got me talking about original research and thought leadership, there was just no way I wasn't going to continue ranting. And so I really appreciate your expertise. You You know, being willing to come on the show and share it with everybody. I think everybody is going to get, you know, a lot of value out of listening to this episode. Oh, thank you. It's been, yeah, it's been fun, so awesome. Sure, I appreciate you having me. Yeah, absolutely and everyone, thank you listen. Thank you for listening to another episode of The SCORR cast. Oh, as always. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The SCORR cast, brought to you by SCORR marketing. We appreciate your time and hope you found this discussion insightful. Don't forget to subscribe and join us for our next episode. Until then, remember, marketing is supposed to be fun. You