In this content marketing series, I am interviewing some of the most amazing bloggers and content creators, and digging into their preferences and processes so that we can all learn from their example.
Today’s interview is with an extremely impressive writer and entrepreneur, Kate Bradley Chernis. Kate is the Co-Founder and CEO at Lately.ai as well as speaker, ex-marketing agency owner, and Ex-XM rock ‘n’ roll dj!
Kate is witty and brilliant, and I can’t wait to share her insights with you, so let’s dive in.
What’s your poison? Blog or Video or Podcast? Why?
Podcast – you know, because I had that “other” career in radio 🙂
What has been your most successful piece of content marketing, and why? (Include link please!)
“What it looks like when you hit $1 Million ARR and you’re all by yourself.” 18,000 views!!!!
Follow-up Question from Mike: Can you hazard a guess as to why that was so successful? Have you ever tried to replicate that success?
I haven’t tried to replicate it but what’s interesting to me is that we’ve all been told how poorly video would do on LinkedIn and that’s changing but this was surprising. Part of it is because it stood out as video versus text. The words “all alone” likely pushed it up because LinkedIn loves “negative” ideas (whenever I previously posted about the hardships of startup life, those always got further reach than positive events). The hashtag #startuplife always does well for us and also including #covidlife helped with the negativity idea. Lastly, as ever, my entire team piles on, to like and comment on any post I ask them to, which we did in this case. As we saw it gaining legs, we consistently went back to like and comment on more and more comments. We do this all the time and usually see an average 2,000 views. Also the video is very short as is my text. Always a good thing!
How do you streamline your content creation process for efficiency and excellence?
By dogfooding our own product. Meaning, every interview I do, like this, whether in text form or video form – or even webinars we give – are automatically run through our own AI. The AI instantly clips up that longform content into dozens or even hundreds of social posts, pulling out the best quotes that it knows will resonate most with our target audience. We then consider any likes, shares or reshares as “warm” leads, qualify them, engage with them and move them into a demo.
Where do you get your ideas for content marketing?
Our AI picks them out for us. It’s so good at lifting the exact right quotes that people are most likely to respond to. It also helps us understand what ideas will ring true moving forward, so before we interview someone, for example, we know what topics to lean on.
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How do you, how do we put it… make money off this stuff?
Once we have them in a demo and we see a 98% trial-to-sale conversion – because by that time, those “warm” leads are on fire.
What would you say has been a defining moment in your career as a content creator?
When Gary Vaynerchuk created an entire Twitter channel fueled 100% by my product, that gets him a 12,000% increase in engagement https://twitter.com/garyveetv.
When it comes to content creation over the next year, what are your plans and intentions?
We actually create very little content ourselves but instead take the content others create about us and repurpose it like gangbusters. Because this gets us a 98% sales conversion and we’ve grown the company almost 300% in 12 months, we’ll be doubling on this tactic down. So that instead of only me doing all of the podcast interviews, other members on the team will do them as well. Why not have multiple people on the cover of the magazine, right?
Who is your favorite content creator and why?
Me. Here’s why LOL:
What’s the one takeaway you want to impart on someone who, let’s say, is a blogging or content marketing n00b. 🙂
86 the call to action “checkout” from your vocabulary immediately. It’s vapid and lazy. Choose a verb that accurately describes the value that peeps will receive as a result of completing said action. Your conversion rates will soar.
You can read and subscribe to more of Kate’s fantastic content at Lately.ai, and be sure to follow her on Twitter!
#CoolContentCreators Interview Series
- How Andy Crestodina Excels At Content Creation
- How Chris Brogan Never Runs Out Of Content Ideas
- How Jenn Herman Built Her Authority and Reputation With Content
- How Guy Kawasaki Fuels A Successful Podcast With Content
- How Jay Baer Spins Ideas Into Blog Posts, Speeches and Books
- How Ann Handley Consistently Writes With Confidence
- How Melanie Deziel Builds Successful Content Systems
- How Kate Bradley Chernis Powers Content Marketing With AI
- How Ryan Biddulph Succeeds at Content Marketing From The Beach
- How Mark Schaefer Uses Content Marketing To Establish Authority
- How Katie Fawkes Uses Content Marketing To Help Customers Win
- How Owen Video Uses the VideoPro Framework for Content Marketing
- How Gini Dietrich Overcomes Content Marketing Challenges
- How Yvonne Heimann Teaches and Monetizes Content Marketing
Don’t want to miss the next content creator interview? Subscribe to the Blogging Brute Newsletter. And if you know someone else we should interview next, let us know in the comments below!
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