November 29, 2021 • 33 mins
In episode 107, host Eric Dickmann interviews Christopher Willis. With over 20 years of experience growing companies in the technology sector, Christopher is recognized as a thought leader in the areas of AI, DEI, and Content Governance. He currently serves as the Chief Marketing Officer at Acrolinx, an AI-powered content governance solution that improves the quality and impact of your content to produce better results.
Aside from leading his team at Acrolinx, Christopher is a speaker on the importance of content governance and brand alignment, sharing stories from his many years of working with some of the biggest tech names in the world.
Christopher continually believes in having a well-balanced life. He is a CrossFit coach who is passionate about physical health; as well as sports discipline and team building.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/diversity-equity-inclusion-communications-s7ep7/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:02):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Chris welcome to The Virtual CMOPodcast.
So glad you could join us today.
Christopher Willis (00:23):
Thanks so much Eric.
Excited to be here.
Eric Dickmann (00:25):
I'm excited to have you as a guest on the show
today.
You know, we love talking aboutcontent, the kinds of things
that businesses can use toreally drive growth and interest
in their products and services.
And you know, we love to talkabout technology too and some of
the fun tools that are outthere.
And before we really get intothe main focus of our show
today, which is really going tobe around diversity, equity, and
(00:46):
inclusion.
I'd love for you just to tell usa little bit about your
background, about the fun thingsthat you're doing with AI.
Christopher Willis (00:55):
Fantastic.
So I've been a CMO now forgoodness, quite a long time,
over 15 years.
I originally came out of mobiledevelopment.
So my first marketing gigactually was launching, I guess
it was the first of its type,packaged mobile application
company back in 2003 timeframe.
(01:17):
Before there was a Blackberry oran iPhone, or an Android device,
there was handsprings andcompilots and word wireless.
There was no wireless at thatpoint.And learning on the fly
what works in both launchingproducts and generating leads,
the two things that essentiallyget me budget.
(01:37):
I've spent 14 years, 15 years inthe mobile space, and over the
course of time realized inowning content organizations
that it's hard to developbusiness to business content in
technical company when we don'thave writers anymore.
(01:58):
reallly a writers pool, right?
So you don't go out and hire anauthor to come in and be your
content writer.
the by-product of what people dowhen they come to work, smart
people that work in yourorganization to create content
on a daily basis.
And with that comes thechallenge of they're not trained
writers, and they might bewriting super technical content
(02:20):
English as a foreign language.
Incredibly smart concepts, butbadly formatted, badly written.
And the editorial process justtakes forever.
It's super complex.
There's a lot of back and forthbecause I can't just change
this.
It's not just wrong and I changeit and it's right.
I might be changing the contextof what has been written.
(02:42):
So in 2017, I discovered acompany called Acrolinx and
Acrolinx is an AI poweredplatform that improves the
quality and effectiveness ofcontent.
Essentially what it does itmanages that process.
So.
In the first writing of content,Acrolinx knows the words you
(03:03):
want to use, the style guidethat your company adheres to,
the levels of clarity,inclusion, emotion that you want
in your content.
And it drives your writer in thefirst draft to create that
content in that voice.
And I think of it in terms ofeverybody has a whiteboard and
all the things that they careabout and their content is up on
(03:23):
their whiteboard, and theproblem with that whiteboard is
that, Hey, it's in my office.
And none of the writers in myorganization are in my office,
and B, they're not writers.
So even if they could see mywhiteboard, they probably don't
care.
Acrolinx takes all that rightoff the whiteboard digitizes it,
makes it actionable, and thenallows people writing content to
(03:45):
leverage those rules to creategreat content the first time.
And discovering that was, wasvery eyeopening.
I recognized the value in theproduct right away.
And now I'm not just a customer,but I'm the CMO, is there the
other way around?
I don't remember.
The old commercial.
(04:06):
But the idea of to go and workin this space, was really
exciting to me.
And we're doing some reallyinteresting things around
helping the biggest brands inthe world.
The top 20 global technologycompanies, many of the largest
banks, pharmaceuticals, medicaldevice manufacturers, and just
(04:26):
big equipment manufacturersthroughout Europe and the US
build out their technicalcontent, their marketing
content, their support content,all of which encompasses their
customer experience.
So being able to align thingslike tone of voice across the
entire life cycle of contentthat touches a consumer, it's
(04:47):
exciting.
And the people work here reallyare into it.
They love what we do and, itappears, Yeah, it's really fun.
Eric Dickmann (04:56):
Well, you know, what's so interesting to me and
this couldn't be a more timelyconversation because this is
sort of exactly what I've beendealing with this week is you
know, I have external writersthat help me with some of my
work and getting them to capturesort of my voice, my brand voice
is extremely challenging.
There are some great tools thatare out there.
You know, whether you're lookingat Hemmingway, at Grammarly, you
(05:19):
know, Microsoft's got something,Microsoft Editor, those are kind
of tools that help you withstructure, right?
But they don't really do a wholelot in terms of voice using that
language, that vocabulary thatyou were talking about.
How does the tools sort of takethings a step beyond what those
common plugins do then sort ofput your voice, put that
(05:42):
terminology into the contentthat they're writing.
Is it suggestion based or is itsort of after the fact?
Christopher Willis (05:48):
No.
So it's actually before that.
So you lead with the capture ofyour global guidelines.
And so what's a globalguideline?
Top of the hierarchy, guidelinenumber one, we all spell the
name of the company, right?
So if you work at a company witha simple name, It seems like a
(06:08):
thing that we all do, butAmerican express, are we
American Express?
Are we Amex?
Are we a E?
And when are we those things, dowe specify.com, when?
So building out that simplerule, this is what we do when we
refer to our company, this ishow we refer to it.
If you understand that as aguideline, then you understand
(06:28):
the scope of what we can do.
So we're different.
I guess the first provocativestatement of the day, PSOTD as I
call it, is correctness as acommodity.
Eric Dickmann (06:42):
Okay.
Christopher Willis (06:43):
So everybody has a correctness plugin.
Some of them are more gracefuland attractive, like a
Grammarly.
Some of them are moreutilitarian, like Clippy and
Microsoft Word.
But that correctness aspect,that's a thing that everybody
does.
Where we take this beyond increating content that aligns
(07:03):
across thousands and thousandsof writers.
So you talk about externalcontent creators and your tone
of voice.
When I got here to this companyin 2017, like any new CMO.
I want to put my stamp on thebusiness, I want to define our
tone of voice.
What are we and what aren't wein our communication?
And we're not arrogant, we'renot outrageous, we are
(07:25):
confident.
we're not aloof or boring, we'refriendly.
Maybe not corporate, but more onthe wise side and all that
super, right?
Sounds like a great marketingfodder, what do you do with
that?
And where we go from a productstandpoint is I want to be
relatable.
So I want to keep things simple.
(07:45):
I want to know and adapt to myaudience, I want to show
feelings, I want to avoid hypelanguage.
I don't want to use marketingterms and hyperbole, don't speak
in buzzwords.
And then so take thattechnically now.
How do I turn those intoguidelines?
I want to avoid long sentences,long paragraphs.
I don't want to rely onmarketing speak.
(08:08):
I want to reduce and eliminatecorporate overviews and
acronyms.
I want to use we and you to makeconnections with the readers.
And those are all rules that canbe turned into guidelines that
allow you to create an invoice.
And if you roll that across, wejust started with relatable,
then we moved to witty, then wemoved to competent, then we
moved to knowledgeable, and webuilt out a set of guidelines
(08:28):
that have started to make mesound or make all of my writers
sound like me, the way that Iwant our content to sound.
Then you go beyond that and sayfor this particular piece of
content, what am I trying topurvey?
What's the emotion that I wantbuilt into that?
How do I want to leave?
What's the feeling that I wantto leave a reader with?
(08:49):
Living in a world of importanceof DNI, how do I make this
content inclusive?
We struggle like everybody withvery simple, very ingrained
words.
I talked about a master contracttoday and it doesn't like
anything like, that doesn'tbad., but from an inclusion
(09:10):
standpoint, heads up, that's aproblematic word.
You should know that and makedecisions based on that.
So the ability to build thatinto the platform and give that
guidance, and all of that.
Is guidance.
It's not automated changes.
It's not, you said master, wenever say master, take that out,
it's pulled, it's gone.
(09:31):
This is problematic.
Here's why it's problematic.
The choice is yours.
Because it's possible that youwere making a point.
And that ties to the way we lookat terminology as well.
I want to say quality.
You said test, kind of the samething.
But did you mean test, likespecifically?
Or would you rather use ourwording, which is quality,
Eric Dickmann (09:54):
Yeah.
Christopher Willis (09:55):
Lots of ways to look at how the platform
works.
But it's really around to me,strategy alignment.
What's my strategy for contentcreation?
How do I align all theirwriters?
So again, back to your model,you have external writers that
you would like to be able tocreate content that sounds like
you, that's very much the storyof the way that IBM used our
product.
(10:17):
Thousands of agencies, a billiondollars worth of work being
created, and they weren'tproviding guidance back.
They were just reading thecontent with AI, looking for
content that works for them,that sounds like them, that gets
the points across.
They're trying to get acrossthat uses their language, that's
at the clarity levels of theiraudiences, and they're able to
(10:38):
make buying decisions, spendingdecisions, staffing decisions
based on that data.
Because you end up with thisnumeric score.
Good.
What's good content?
Eric, go write something andmake it good.
Eric Dickmann (10:52):
Yeah, it's a little ambiguous, right?
Christopher Willis (10:55):
Well, good could mean a lot of different
things or it could mean that,you know you were wearing a
black shirt that day and I don'tlike black shirts, and I don't
think it's good.
But if I could score good, goodmeans that it's clear, it's
consistent.
It's got the right character,and it comes out with a numeric
score., Then we start putting inplace the ability to have
(11:17):
gateways.
So putting gates in myorganization.
I personally don't rate anythinginternally until it has an 80 or
better Acro score.
And I know that that's our bestwhen you are using it.They're
doing it throughout the nation.
They're literally saying submitcontent to content repository,
if score, then next step.
And that can lead to nextreviewer or a direct score can
(11:41):
lead directly to production.
So you're able to review ahundred percent of your content
in a way that you want.
Eric Dickmann (11:47):
To be able to quantify it as really the key
there to open up automation andexternal tools to be able to use
this a little bit more.
And what I think is sofascinating about this is that
you know, things have changeddramatically.
You know, we've certainly justgone through the COVID-19
pandemic.
We have seen a major shift inthe company where a lot of
people are moving into more of afreelance role.
(12:09):
They don't want to be workingfor the same companies like they
used to.
And there is so much access totalent, and really creative
talent out there.
But now you not only have theproblem of having people
speaking in different voices,but you have them distributed
all over the world so they maycome with their own unique set
of terminology, their own uniqueperspective on things, and
(12:31):
trying to sort of usher all thatin and make everybody sort of
look at things the same way is achallenge.
And that challenge is only goingto grow in the years to come as
we bring more of this freelanceeconomy into our organization.
Christopher Willis (12:43):
Abs.
Absolutely.
And now multiply that problemwith the next thing that
happened as a result of thepandemic.
So you've got all these peopleworking at home.
But also for the last seven oreight years, marketers across
numerous industries have beenselling with this fear,
uncertainty, and doubt aroundthe digital shift it's coming.
You need be getting ready forthis digital shift.
(13:04):
Is your web presence, forinstance, ready?
Is your commerce site ready?
For the day when you'reprimarily going to do business
online.
And I'm not sure that any of usreally thought that was ever
going to happen, but it was agreat thing to tell prospects.
And then according to my deskcounter at my office, which I
went and visited last week onMarch 11th of last year.
(13:24):
I only know that because I havea flip calendar and it hasn't
changed.
On March 11th, the digital shiftcame.
And so your only touchpoint withyour consumer, at least for that
first several months, and ifnot, for much longer than that
has been through your digitalpresence.
People are not coming to yourstore, they're not visiting you
in person.
(13:44):
And so your content matters in away that it hasn't before.
It's not just the content.
We can create tons of content,it's the experience.
So if you're a global brandtrying to speak to your consumer
like a human, it's everywhere.
It starts in your product andthe UI strings that live in your
(14:05):
product.
It moves into your technicaldocumentation, it goes across
into your enablement and yourmarketing, and then back out the
post-sale with all of thesupport content and services
that come along with this.
Everything needs to sound likeyour brand is a voice to your
audience.
The thing is that's not howcompanies are built, right?
(14:27):
So the tech docs team, the UIdesigners, the marketing
writers, the people that arewriting support tickets, they're
siloed.
They don't have interaction witheach other.
So they may each individuallyhave a style guideline that they
should be adhering to.
But now we're talking about tensof thousands of people creating
content in a wild westenvironment with no connection
(14:51):
to each other or theirdepartments, or specifically to
each other as they write it.
And that's been the big shiftthat we've seen in the last year
is companies realizing that thiscustomer experiences more than
they thought, and the need forleadership to translate that
voice across all of thosechannels.
(15:12):
And interestingly, they're notalways the same voice.
Even though I want to talk as ifI'm one person, as a brand, the
way that I communicate inmarketing, for instance, can be
very different than the way thatI'm going to communicate in my
support ticket.
Because marketing can berelatable, witty, and fun.
(15:34):
But support tickets needs cellproblems so they need to be
clear and concise.
And weaving in.
emojis and fun, happy thingsinto service tickets kind of
annoys people as it turns out.
Because when I did this voice,this tone of voice project at
Acrolinx, I got power hungry.
I was like, well, this isawesome in marketing and sales,
(15:55):
were killing it.
Support, you guys should usethis, and they did.
Until they got massive complaintsaying is not, It's not cute.
Please just answer my questions.
And you learn that this is amultifaceted voice that needs to
cover.
It can be relatable andconfident, but witty and fun
might not have a place.
(16:16):
It's able to weave out pieces ofthis, it's what we do
specifically special.
Eric Dickmann (16:24):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
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(17:07):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
Well, all of this is really setagainst a backdrop of a lot of
things happening culturally,too.
As we've gone through thepandemic, we've also had the
Black Lives Matter Movement,we've had really the rise of
diversity, equity, and inclusionthat has come to the forefront.
(17:28):
It's very much a topic ofconversation now, we've got a
lot more cultural sensitivitythat I think companies are
looking at and how they portraythemselves on their website, in
their collateral.
You know, are they using facesthat represent their customer
base?
In their marketing materials?
And then, you know we've sort ofhave the whole climate change,
(17:49):
environmental issues,sustainability, all of that is
now front and center.
So companies may be talkingabout things that are even
outside their core business, butthey need to speak into the
language of what people arethinking about, what's on
people's minds, and what'sinfluencing buying decisions.
So I'm interested to hear yourthoughts on this, you know sort
of outside the product.
(18:10):
How do you see things shifting?
To me, that seems like a seismicshift.
These are big changes that seemto be happening all at once.
Christopher Willis (18:18):
And it is.
I mean, things always change.
And there's always somethingthat is at the forefront of
that.
But last year was a shift in theway that businesses think.
And I think what happened wasthat around the middle of the
year, companies started makingstatements about who they are
(18:39):
and trying to define their brandin 2020.
And the next step then is to.
I guess it's on a graceful wayto say it, but put your money
where your mouth is.
Are you just saying this is whoyou are or is that who you are?
Is that who you're going to bemoving forward?
And part of that wascommunicating with the audience
(19:01):
in the way that the audiencewants to be communicated with.
And you need to think throughthe words you use as a point of
reference.
Literally 10 seconds ago, I saidsomething about, Hey guys, I
struggle with this, That doesnot meet the definition of
inclusive.
And the fact that I think aboutthat now is a testament of the
(19:24):
world that we live in and thething that I do, What we're
aiming for, we put up ourstatement towards the middle of
the year of what we thought ofthe world that we were living
in.
And we thought really we shouldthink about how we're going to
back this up.
It can't just be a statement onan odd Thursday in the middle of
the summer.
(19:45):
It's gotta be more than that.
And what we have control overbecause of the type of company
that we are in, the product thatwe sell is both looking
internally at our diversity andinclusion initiatives.
And the first thing that we didwas put together an internal DNI
board to look at the way thatour company runs and to think
(20:08):
about who we are as a business.
And the byproducts of that werehandbooks and guidebooks that
many of our big enterprisecustomers are using for their
initiatives internally, bestpractices how to implement DNI
in your organization.
From a technology standpoint,though, We have a framework that
allows the coaching of contentcreation.
(20:31):
And so every enterprise, almostin the country put in charge of
this area, a Chief Diversity andInclusion and Equity Officer.
And that person and their teamsare tasked with things.
One of those things is definingwhat the language is that the
(20:52):
company is going to speak, howthey're going to in the public
domain.
And we had originally set out totry and define what inclusive
language was.
And we quickly learned thateverybody has a different view
of that.
Inclusive language really justseeks to treat all people with
respect.
(21:12):
It's a language that avoids theuse of certain words,
expressions that excludesilence, discriminate, assign
negative connotations topersonal characteristics of
certain people in communities.
And so has a different idea ofhow they want to build their
lexicon.
What we're able to do is helpthe management of that.
(21:34):
So help these people in theseroles, role out guidelines
across the organization.
They aren't just word playsbecause that's not terribly
useful.
For governance sake is okay.
But beyond just saying, don'tsay this, lets talk about why,
(21:54):
becomes a learning opportunity.
So if I'm going to guide you tonot say something, I better be
prepared to explain you why.
And then my expectation would bethat you won't probably do it
again because you'll learnsomething.
And so it goes beyond justagain, that correctness
commodity into an understandingand education tool that explains
(22:17):
that you shouldn't say thisbecause of these reasons.
And you know, we have customersthat have master slave language
in their code, thousands andthousands of times.
And things like that, I mean,that's super easy to go in and
identify across repositories,find and fix.
But explaining to writers andcoders in the organization, why
(22:41):
they don't in the future usethat language, if they do,
they're making a very specificand potentially odd choice, but
they're making the choice basedon education and understanding.
And what that, what that gets usis this more inward perspective.
Now how a company talks to andabout its employees and
candidates, and then thatexternal perspective of how a
(23:03):
company brands itself andaddresses customers in that
wider public.
And then the governance of thatacross the entire business.
Eric Dickmann (23:11):
Yeah, and I think it's so important to have a
statement to stand behind it.
But you know, when we're talkingabout things like environmental
matters, you know, they call itgreenwashing if you sort of take
a stand, but you don't reallylive up to that.
And the same can be true when itcomes to cultural issues or
inclusivity.
It really means that you haveto, like you said, put your
(23:33):
money where your mouth is.
You have to really live it.
And you know, one of the thingsthat I think is so interesting
when you start to talk aboutinclusivity, when you start to
talk about culture is you canget in your car, you can drive
around town.
And if you get into a Spanishpart of town, you'll immediately
notice that the billboards willsuddenly be in Spanish.
Or if you get into an area, likea Chinese part of town, all of a
(23:56):
sudden, you'll see the signagetakes on a new tone.
And it's so easy to see whenyou're physically present in a
location where maybe there isthat cultural diversity really
front and center.
But then you sort of abstractthat you come to content, you
come to a website.
And most of that gets lost.
All of a sudden it's a verygeneric sort of presentation of
(24:17):
the company.
And in some ways, you are tryingto appeal to a very broad
audience.
But in many ways, it showsreally the lack of diversity and
inclusion that many companieshave that they haven't been able
to find ways to include sort ofthat kind of cultural reference,
at least in some of the contentthat.
Christopher Willis (24:38):
A hundred percent.
I mean it's okay to askquestions in your interface to
understand who you're talkingto.
People like that, that's agenuine conversation, you know?
You're putting yourself outthere and saying, I want to talk
to you.
(24:58):
Who are you?
And then again, that genuineconversation of is this is how I
communicate specific to includeyou in our conversation.
And you don't get that very muchon the web.
I work in business to business.
So as inclusive as business tobusiness websites get in past
years was are you in marketingor are you in sales or are you a
(25:23):
developer?
And that's not getting at it.
It doesn't cover what we'retrying to get to.
It's kind of that role-basedversus understanding the people
that you're doing business withand treating them like people.
Eric Dickmann (25:38):
You know it's fascinating, and it's not easy.
But you know, many of thebusinesses who listened to this
podcast, they're small andmid-sized businesses so they can
look at this and said, well, Idon't know exactly how to
implement this in my business.
But I think it's so importantthat you understand who your
customers are, what is themarket that you're serving, and
(25:59):
then make sure that whether it'ssignage inside a restaurant or
you know, the menus that youhave available, or whether it's
what's on your company websiteor the downloadable collateral,
it all should be reflective ofwho your customers are and be
inclusive in that way.
It should be a broad brushstrokeif you will, to make people.
(26:20):
feel and make them understandthat they can see themselves
using your product or service.
Christopher Willis (26:26):
Yep.
Absolutely.
I mean for any business, but ifyou're not going to use an AI
powered platform, you just wantto go about this, it's thinking
about the fitness of yourcontent for the purpose.
And if you want to take thatanalogy, let's start with, I
(26:47):
want to run a marathon.
And so I have a goal, let's seta goal, I'm going to do it.
And let's go beyond that.
I'm going to run a four hourmarathon.
I'm going to finish a marathon,a goal.
Then I need to put a trainingprogram in place, and that's
essentially how am I going toget to that?
So it's identifying how I wantto communicate.
(27:08):
Setting those guidelines andeven without a platform, being
able to define the guidelinesthat I care about, the way that
I want to communicate, thelexicon that we're going to
communicate from the style ofguidelines or the style guides
that we're going to leverage,putting all those in place.
And now we're going to starttraining, that's the creation of
content.
(27:29):
So now I'm building to thoseguidelines.
I'm ensuring that I'm creatingwhat I intended to create, then
it's racist.
And I'm in production and Imeasure how production works.
All of that is something thatsomebody can just do.
It anything to try that.
But that thinking through theprocess of what does it mean to
(27:51):
me to create a voice?
What are the things that I careabout?
I talk about clarity,consistency, and character.
So thinking in terms of clarity,who am I writing for?
Is it a complex audience?
Is it a young audience?
What's the education level?
What is the type of voice that Iwant to have with that
(28:12):
character?
Am I creating lively, engagingcontent?
Am I a European bank, and I justwant to sound formal?
What's the character that I'mbuilding into?
And then consistency.
what are the words that matterto me?
How do I want to communicatewith specific language, whether
that's brand language or productlanguage, or inclusive language,
(28:33):
or emotional language?
What do I care about from words?
And that becomes the overallguidelines set for creating
content.
And it's an intentional act,it's taking something that's
been somewhat passive, theconcept of content governance,
which is this is how we'd likeyou to write.
Good luck, go get them to makingit more active.
(28:55):
These are the guidelines thatwe've put in place, these are
the goals that we have for thecontent that we're creating.
And this is the measurement thatwe're doing to ensure what we
thought upfront is correct.
if I use those guidelines and Icreate that content to those
guidelines, and I put thatcontent out into production in
the world, I better be measuringthe results because if I think
that I did perfectly set mygoal, build my content, put it
(29:19):
out there, it's perfect.
If it doesn't perform?
Somewhere, I was wrong.
And that's the opportunity foriteration.
So I put it out, it doesn'tperform, I'd go back to the
beginning and I changed some ofmy filters.
I change some of the guidelinesthat I thought were important,
and I deliver content that makesmore sense.
And any company can do that.
(29:41):
If there's one thing that youshould be doing on day one of
content creation, for thepurposes of conversion, for
sales, for support, for service.
It's thinking through whatyou're trying to do, building
the guidelines for that, andthen measuring post-production.
Eric Dickmann (29:57):
Yeah, I love the way you phrase that too.
I think it's about intention,right?
And this can be a big task,especially for large companies.
But if you put a statement out,you say that this is what we
believe in, and we have anintention to sort of get
ourselves on the right track interms of our content and
representing our voice in theway that we feel authentic.
Authentically that we can berepresenting our voice.
(30:20):
I think that's a great place tostart and then work on it over
time, get your content aligned.
I know as we sort of come to theend of the interview here that
on your website, you do havesome resources that people can
go and get and download,especially around you know, this
whole topic of, diversity,equity, and inclusion.
I'd love it here just at theend, if you could tell people
where they could find out moreabout Acrolinx and where they
(30:40):
could find out more aboutdownloading some of this content
and finding you on the web aswell.
Christopher Willis (30:45):
Sure.
So we are at www.acrolinx.com.
If you go to the website, you'llfind a resource center.
My general strategy for contentcreation is to create actionable
content that anybody can use.
You don't need to buy ourproduct to\ get value out of our
content.
You may want to, because itdoesn't absolutely accelerate
(31:06):
the process.
But I do expect that everybodywill get value.
And there is content on DEI,there's content on content
governance, and taking contentgovernance from being passive to
being active, and everything inbetween.
Please go and get some valuefrom that.
And to find me, I'm on LinkedInat CP Willis, probably lots of
(31:30):
other places too.
But yeah, that's the easiestpathway.
Eric Dickmann (31:34):
Hey, that's perfect.
I'll make sure that we have allof that linked up in the show
notes so that people can findit.
Chris, this is a greatdiscussion.
I think something that we needto talk about often, and I
really appreciate you coming onthe show today to talk about
some of the exciting things thatare happening with AI and the
tools to help us in contentcreation and sort of the
reasoning behind a lot of it.
Christopher Willis (31:54):
Excellent, Eric.
Thanks for having me.
Eric Dickmann (31:55):
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us on thisepisode of The Virtual CMO
podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
(32:17):
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Thank you for joining us on thisepisode of The Virtual CMO
podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
(32:37):
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Chris welcome to The Virtual CMOPodcast.
So glad you could join us today.
Christopher Willis (00:23):
Thanks so much Eric.
Excited to be here.
Eric Dickmann (00:25):
I'm excited to have you as a guest on the show
today.
You know, we love talking aboutcontent, the kinds of things
that businesses can use toreally drive growth and interest
in their products and services.
And you know, we love to talkabout technology too and some of
the fun tools that are outthere.
And before we really get intothe main focus of our show
today, which is really going tobe around diversity, equity, and
(00:46):
inclusion.
I'd love for you just to tell usa little bit about your
background, about the fun thingsthat you're doing with AI.
Christopher Willis (00:55):
Fantastic.
So I've been a CMO now forgoodness, quite a long time,
over 15 years.
I originally came out of mobiledevelopment.
So my first marketing gigactually was launching, I guess
it was the first of its type,packaged mobile application
company back in 2003 timeframe.
(01:17):
Before there was a Blackberry oran iPhone, or an Android device,
there was handsprings andcompilots and word wireless.
There was no wireless at thatpoint.And learning on the fly
what works in both launchingproducts and generating leads,
the two things that essentiallyget me budget.
(01:37):
I've spent 14 years, 15 years inthe mobile space, and over the
course of time realized inowning content organizations
that it's hard to developbusiness to business content in
technical company when we don'thave writers anymore.
(01:58):
reallly a writers pool, right?
So you don't go out and hire anauthor to come in and be your
content writer.
the by-product of what people dowhen they come to work, smart
people that work in yourorganization to create content
on a daily basis.
And with that comes thechallenge of they're not trained
writers, and they might bewriting super technical content
(02:20):
English as a foreign language.
Incredibly smart concepts, butbadly formatted, badly written.
And the editorial process justtakes forever.
It's super complex.
There's a lot of back and forthbecause I can't just change
this.
It's not just wrong and I changeit and it's right.
I might be changing the contextof what has been written.
(02:42):
So in 2017, I discovered acompany called Acrolinx and
Acrolinx is an AI poweredplatform that improves the
quality and effectiveness ofcontent.
Essentially what it does itmanages that process.
So.
In the first writing of content,Acrolinx knows the words you
(03:03):
want to use, the style guidethat your company adheres to,
the levels of clarity,inclusion, emotion that you want
in your content.
And it drives your writer in thefirst draft to create that
content in that voice.
And I think of it in terms ofeverybody has a whiteboard and
all the things that they careabout and their content is up on
(03:23):
their whiteboard, and theproblem with that whiteboard is
that, Hey, it's in my office.
And none of the writers in myorganization are in my office,
and B, they're not writers.
So even if they could see mywhiteboard, they probably don't
care.
Acrolinx takes all that rightoff the whiteboard digitizes it,
makes it actionable, and thenallows people writing content to
(03:45):
leverage those rules to creategreat content the first time.
And discovering that was, wasvery eyeopening.
I recognized the value in theproduct right away.
And now I'm not just a customer,but I'm the CMO, is there the
other way around?
I don't remember.
The old commercial.
(04:06):
But the idea of to go and workin this space, was really
exciting to me.
And we're doing some reallyinteresting things around
helping the biggest brands inthe world.
The top 20 global technologycompanies, many of the largest
banks, pharmaceuticals, medicaldevice manufacturers, and just
(04:26):
big equipment manufacturersthroughout Europe and the US
build out their technicalcontent, their marketing
content, their support content,all of which encompasses their
customer experience.
So being able to align thingslike tone of voice across the
entire life cycle of contentthat touches a consumer, it's
(04:47):
exciting.
And the people work here reallyare into it.
They love what we do and, itappears, Yeah, it's really fun.
Eric Dickmann (04:56):
Well, you know, what's so interesting to me and
this couldn't be a more timelyconversation because this is
sort of exactly what I've beendealing with this week is you
know, I have external writersthat help me with some of my
work and getting them to capturesort of my voice, my brand voice
is extremely challenging.
There are some great tools thatare out there.
You know, whether you're lookingat Hemmingway, at Grammarly, you
(05:19):
know, Microsoft's got something,Microsoft Editor, those are kind
of tools that help you withstructure, right?
But they don't really do a wholelot in terms of voice using that
language, that vocabulary thatyou were talking about.
How does the tools sort of takethings a step beyond what those
common plugins do then sort ofput your voice, put that
(05:42):
terminology into the contentthat they're writing.
Is it suggestion based or is itsort of after the fact?
Christopher Willis (05:48):
No.
So it's actually before that.
So you lead with the capture ofyour global guidelines.
And so what's a globalguideline?
Top of the hierarchy, guidelinenumber one, we all spell the
name of the company, right?
So if you work at a company witha simple name, It seems like a
(06:08):
thing that we all do, butAmerican express, are we
American Express?
Are we Amex?
Are we a E?
And when are we those things, dowe specify.com, when?
So building out that simplerule, this is what we do when we
refer to our company, this ishow we refer to it.
If you understand that as aguideline, then you understand
(06:28):
the scope of what we can do.
So we're different.
I guess the first provocativestatement of the day, PSOTD as I
call it, is correctness as acommodity.
Eric Dickmann (06:42):
Okay.
Christopher Willis (06:43):
So everybody has a correctness plugin.
Some of them are more gracefuland attractive, like a
Grammarly.
Some of them are moreutilitarian, like Clippy and
Microsoft Word.
But that correctness aspect,that's a thing that everybody
does.
Where we take this beyond increating content that aligns
(07:03):
across thousands and thousandsof writers.
So you talk about externalcontent creators and your tone
of voice.
When I got here to this companyin 2017, like any new CMO.
I want to put my stamp on thebusiness, I want to define our
tone of voice.
What are we and what aren't wein our communication?
And we're not arrogant, we'renot outrageous, we are
(07:25):
confident.
we're not aloof or boring, we'refriendly.
Maybe not corporate, but more onthe wise side and all that
super, right?
Sounds like a great marketingfodder, what do you do with
that?
And where we go from a productstandpoint is I want to be
relatable.
So I want to keep things simple.
(07:45):
I want to know and adapt to myaudience, I want to show
feelings, I want to avoid hypelanguage.
I don't want to use marketingterms and hyperbole, don't speak
in buzzwords.
And then so take thattechnically now.
How do I turn those intoguidelines?
I want to avoid long sentences,long paragraphs.
I don't want to rely onmarketing speak.
(08:08):
I want to reduce and eliminatecorporate overviews and
acronyms.
I want to use we and you to makeconnections with the readers.
And those are all rules that canbe turned into guidelines that
allow you to create an invoice.
And if you roll that across, wejust started with relatable,
then we moved to witty, then wemoved to competent, then we
moved to knowledgeable, and webuilt out a set of guidelines
(08:28):
that have started to make mesound or make all of my writers
sound like me, the way that Iwant our content to sound.
Then you go beyond that and sayfor this particular piece of
content, what am I trying topurvey?
What's the emotion that I wantbuilt into that?
How do I want to leave?
What's the feeling that I wantto leave a reader with?
(08:49):
Living in a world of importanceof DNI, how do I make this
content inclusive?
We struggle like everybody withvery simple, very ingrained
words.
I talked about a master contracttoday and it doesn't like
anything like, that doesn'tbad., but from an inclusion
(09:10):
standpoint, heads up, that's aproblematic word.
You should know that and makedecisions based on that.
So the ability to build thatinto the platform and give that
guidance, and all of that.
Is guidance.
It's not automated changes.
It's not, you said master, wenever say master, take that out,
it's pulled, it's gone.
(09:31):
This is problematic.
Here's why it's problematic.
The choice is yours.
Because it's possible that youwere making a point.
And that ties to the way we lookat terminology as well.
I want to say quality.
You said test, kind of the samething.
But did you mean test, likespecifically?
Or would you rather use ourwording, which is quality,
Eric Dickmann (09:54):
Yeah.
Christopher Willis (09:55):
Lots of ways to look at how the platform
works.
But it's really around to me,strategy alignment.
What's my strategy for contentcreation?
How do I align all theirwriters?
So again, back to your model,you have external writers that
you would like to be able tocreate content that sounds like
you, that's very much the storyof the way that IBM used our
product.
(10:17):
Thousands of agencies, a billiondollars worth of work being
created, and they weren'tproviding guidance back.
They were just reading thecontent with AI, looking for
content that works for them,that sounds like them, that gets
the points across.
They're trying to get acrossthat uses their language, that's
at the clarity levels of theiraudiences, and they're able to
(10:38):
make buying decisions, spendingdecisions, staffing decisions
based on that data.
Because you end up with thisnumeric score.
Good.
What's good content?
Eric, go write something andmake it good.
Eric Dickmann (10:52):
Yeah, it's a little ambiguous, right?
Christopher Willis (10:55):
Well, good could mean a lot of different
things or it could mean that,you know you were wearing a
black shirt that day and I don'tlike black shirts, and I don't
think it's good.
But if I could score good, goodmeans that it's clear, it's
consistent.
It's got the right character,and it comes out with a numeric
score., Then we start putting inplace the ability to have
(11:17):
gateways.
So putting gates in myorganization.
I personally don't rate anythinginternally until it has an 80 or
better Acro score.
And I know that that's our bestwhen you are using it.They're
doing it throughout the nation.
They're literally saying submitcontent to content repository,
if score, then next step.
And that can lead to nextreviewer or a direct score can
(11:41):
lead directly to production.
So you're able to review ahundred percent of your content
in a way that you want.
Eric Dickmann (11:47):
To be able to quantify it as really the key
there to open up automation andexternal tools to be able to use
this a little bit more.
And what I think is sofascinating about this is that
you know, things have changeddramatically.
You know, we've certainly justgone through the COVID-19
pandemic.
We have seen a major shift inthe company where a lot of
people are moving into more of afreelance role.
(12:09):
They don't want to be workingfor the same companies like they
used to.
And there is so much access totalent, and really creative
talent out there.
But now you not only have theproblem of having people
speaking in different voices,but you have them distributed
all over the world so they maycome with their own unique set
of terminology, their own uniqueperspective on things, and
(12:31):
trying to sort of usher all thatin and make everybody sort of
look at things the same way is achallenge.
And that challenge is only goingto grow in the years to come as
we bring more of this freelanceeconomy into our organization.
Christopher Willis (12:43):
Abs.
Absolutely.
And now multiply that problemwith the next thing that
happened as a result of thepandemic.
So you've got all these peopleworking at home.
But also for the last seven oreight years, marketers across
numerous industries have beenselling with this fear,
uncertainty, and doubt aroundthe digital shift it's coming.
You need be getting ready forthis digital shift.
(13:04):
Is your web presence, forinstance, ready?
Is your commerce site ready?
For the day when you'reprimarily going to do business
online.
And I'm not sure that any of usreally thought that was ever
going to happen, but it was agreat thing to tell prospects.
And then according to my deskcounter at my office, which I
went and visited last week onMarch 11th of last year.
(13:24):
I only know that because I havea flip calendar and it hasn't
changed.
On March 11th, the digital shiftcame.
And so your only touchpoint withyour consumer, at least for that
first several months, and ifnot, for much longer than that
has been through your digitalpresence.
People are not coming to yourstore, they're not visiting you
in person.
(13:44):
And so your content matters in away that it hasn't before.
It's not just the content.
We can create tons of content,it's the experience.
So if you're a global brandtrying to speak to your consumer
like a human, it's everywhere.
It starts in your product andthe UI strings that live in your
(14:05):
product.
It moves into your technicaldocumentation, it goes across
into your enablement and yourmarketing, and then back out the
post-sale with all of thesupport content and services
that come along with this.
Everything needs to sound likeyour brand is a voice to your
audience.
The thing is that's not howcompanies are built, right?
(14:27):
So the tech docs team, the UIdesigners, the marketing
writers, the people that arewriting support tickets, they're
siloed.
They don't have interaction witheach other.
So they may each individuallyhave a style guideline that they
should be adhering to.
But now we're talking about tensof thousands of people creating
content in a wild westenvironment with no connection
(14:51):
to each other or theirdepartments, or specifically to
each other as they write it.
And that's been the big shiftthat we've seen in the last year
is companies realizing that thiscustomer experiences more than
they thought, and the need forleadership to translate that
voice across all of thosechannels.
(15:12):
And interestingly, they're notalways the same voice.
Even though I want to talk as ifI'm one person, as a brand, the
way that I communicate inmarketing, for instance, can be
very different than the way thatI'm going to communicate in my
support ticket.
Because marketing can berelatable, witty, and fun.
(15:34):
But support tickets needs cellproblems so they need to be
clear and concise.
And weaving in.
emojis and fun, happy thingsinto service tickets kind of
annoys people as it turns out.
Because when I did this voice,this tone of voice project at
Acrolinx, I got power hungry.
I was like, well, this isawesome in marketing and sales,
(15:55):
were killing it.
Support, you guys should usethis, and they did.
Until they got massive complaintsaying is not, It's not cute.
Please just answer my questions.
And you learn that this is amultifaceted voice that needs to
cover.
It can be relatable andconfident, but witty and fun
might not have a place.
(16:16):
It's able to weave out pieces ofthis, it's what we do
specifically special.
Eric Dickmann (16:24):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(16:44):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(17:07):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
Well, all of this is really setagainst a backdrop of a lot of
things happening culturally,too.
As we've gone through thepandemic, we've also had the
Black Lives Matter Movement,we've had really the rise of
diversity, equity, and inclusionthat has come to the forefront.
(17:28):
It's very much a topic ofconversation now, we've got a
lot more cultural sensitivitythat I think companies are
looking at and how they portraythemselves on their website, in
their collateral.
You know, are they using facesthat represent their customer
base?
In their marketing materials?
And then, you know we've sort ofhave the whole climate change,
(17:49):
environmental issues,sustainability, all of that is
now front and center.
So companies may be talkingabout things that are even
outside their core business, butthey need to speak into the
language of what people arethinking about, what's on
people's minds, and what'sinfluencing buying decisions.
So I'm interested to hear yourthoughts on this, you know sort
of outside the product.
(18:10):
How do you see things shifting?
To me, that seems like a seismicshift.
These are big changes that seemto be happening all at once.
Christopher Willis (18:18):
And it is.
I mean, things always change.
And there's always somethingthat is at the forefront of
that.
But last year was a shift in theway that businesses think.
And I think what happened wasthat around the middle of the
year, companies started makingstatements about who they are
(18:39):
and trying to define their brandin 2020.
And the next step then is to.
I guess it's on a graceful wayto say it, but put your money
where your mouth is.
Are you just saying this is whoyou are or is that who you are?
Is that who you're going to bemoving forward?
And part of that wascommunicating with the audience
(19:01):
in the way that the audiencewants to be communicated with.
And you need to think throughthe words you use as a point of
reference.
Literally 10 seconds ago, I saidsomething about, Hey guys, I
struggle with this, That doesnot meet the definition of
inclusive.
And the fact that I think aboutthat now is a testament of the
(19:24):
world that we live in and thething that I do, What we're
aiming for, we put up ourstatement towards the middle of
the year of what we thought ofthe world that we were living
in.
And we thought really we shouldthink about how we're going to
back this up.
It can't just be a statement onan odd Thursday in the middle of
the summer.
(19:45):
It's gotta be more than that.
And what we have control overbecause of the type of company
that we are in, the product thatwe sell is both looking
internally at our diversity andinclusion initiatives.
And the first thing that we didwas put together an internal DNI
board to look at the way thatour company runs and to think
(20:08):
about who we are as a business.
And the byproducts of that werehandbooks and guidebooks that
many of our big enterprisecustomers are using for their
initiatives internally, bestpractices how to implement DNI
in your organization.
From a technology standpoint,though, We have a framework that
allows the coaching of contentcreation.
(20:31):
And so every enterprise, almostin the country put in charge of
this area, a Chief Diversity andInclusion and Equity Officer.
And that person and their teamsare tasked with things.
One of those things is definingwhat the language is that the
(20:52):
company is going to speak, howthey're going to in the public
domain.
And we had originally set out totry and define what inclusive
language was.
And we quickly learned thateverybody has a different view
of that.
Inclusive language really justseeks to treat all people with
respect.
(21:12):
It's a language that avoids theuse of certain words,
expressions that excludesilence, discriminate, assign
negative connotations topersonal characteristics of
certain people in communities.
And so has a different idea ofhow they want to build their
lexicon.
What we're able to do is helpthe management of that.
(21:34):
So help these people in theseroles, role out guidelines
across the organization.
They aren't just word playsbecause that's not terribly
useful.
For governance sake is okay.
But beyond just saying, don'tsay this, lets talk about why,
(21:54):
becomes a learning opportunity.
So if I'm going to guide you tonot say something, I better be
prepared to explain you why.
And then my expectation would bethat you won't probably do it
again because you'll learnsomething.
And so it goes beyond justagain, that correctness
commodity into an understandingand education tool that explains
(22:17):
that you shouldn't say thisbecause of these reasons.
And you know, we have customersthat have master slave language
in their code, thousands andthousands of times.
And things like that, I mean,that's super easy to go in and
identify across repositories,find and fix.
But explaining to writers andcoders in the organization, why
(22:41):
they don't in the future usethat language, if they do,
they're making a very specificand potentially odd choice, but
they're making the choice basedon education and understanding.
And what that, what that gets usis this more inward perspective.
Now how a company talks to andabout its employees and
candidates, and then thatexternal perspective of how a
(23:03):
company brands itself andaddresses customers in that
wider public.
And then the governance of thatacross the entire business.
Eric Dickmann (23:11):
Yeah, and I think it's so important to have a
statement to stand behind it.
But you know, when we're talkingabout things like environmental
matters, you know, they call itgreenwashing if you sort of take
a stand, but you don't reallylive up to that.
And the same can be true when itcomes to cultural issues or
inclusivity.
It really means that you haveto, like you said, put your
(23:33):
money where your mouth is.
You have to really live it.
And you know, one of the thingsthat I think is so interesting
when you start to talk aboutinclusivity, when you start to
talk about culture is you canget in your car, you can drive
around town.
And if you get into a Spanishpart of town, you'll immediately
notice that the billboards willsuddenly be in Spanish.
Or if you get into an area, likea Chinese part of town, all of a
(23:56):
sudden, you'll see the signagetakes on a new tone.
And it's so easy to see whenyou're physically present in a
location where maybe there isthat cultural diversity really
front and center.
But then you sort of abstractthat you come to content, you
come to a website.
And most of that gets lost.
All of a sudden it's a verygeneric sort of presentation of
(24:17):
the company.
And in some ways, you are tryingto appeal to a very broad
audience.
But in many ways, it showsreally the lack of diversity and
inclusion that many companieshave that they haven't been able
to find ways to include sort ofthat kind of cultural reference,
at least in some of the contentthat.
Christopher Willis (24:38):
A hundred percent.
I mean it's okay to askquestions in your interface to
understand who you're talkingto.
People like that, that's agenuine conversation, you know?
You're putting yourself outthere and saying, I want to talk
to you.
(24:58):
Who are you?
And then again, that genuineconversation of is this is how I
communicate specific to includeyou in our conversation.
And you don't get that very muchon the web.
I work in business to business.
So as inclusive as business tobusiness websites get in past
years was are you in marketingor are you in sales or are you a
(25:23):
developer?
And that's not getting at it.
It doesn't cover what we'retrying to get to.
It's kind of that role-basedversus understanding the people
that you're doing business withand treating them like people.
Eric Dickmann (25:38):
You know it's fascinating, and it's not easy.
But you know, many of thebusinesses who listened to this
podcast, they're small andmid-sized businesses so they can
look at this and said, well, Idon't know exactly how to
implement this in my business.
But I think it's so importantthat you understand who your
customers are, what is themarket that you're serving, and
(25:59):
then make sure that whether it'ssignage inside a restaurant or
you know, the menus that youhave available, or whether it's
what's on your company websiteor the downloadable collateral,
it all should be reflective ofwho your customers are and be
inclusive in that way.
It should be a broad brushstrokeif you will, to make people.
(26:20):
feel and make them understandthat they can see themselves
using your product or service.
Christopher Willis (26:26):
Yep.
Absolutely.
I mean for any business, but ifyou're not going to use an AI
powered platform, you just wantto go about this, it's thinking
about the fitness of yourcontent for the purpose.
And if you want to take thatanalogy, let's start with, I
(26:47):
want to run a marathon.
And so I have a goal, let's seta goal, I'm going to do it.
And let's go beyond that.
I'm going to run a four hourmarathon.
I'm going to finish a marathon,a goal.
Then I need to put a trainingprogram in place, and that's
essentially how am I going toget to that?
So it's identifying how I wantto communicate.
(27:08):
Setting those guidelines andeven without a platform, being
able to define the guidelinesthat I care about, the way that
I want to communicate, thelexicon that we're going to
communicate from the style ofguidelines or the style guides
that we're going to leverage,putting all those in place.
And now we're going to starttraining, that's the creation of
content.
(27:29):
So now I'm building to thoseguidelines.
I'm ensuring that I'm creatingwhat I intended to create, then
it's racist.
And I'm in production and Imeasure how production works.
All of that is something thatsomebody can just do.
It anything to try that.
But that thinking through theprocess of what does it mean to
(27:51):
me to create a voice?
What are the things that I careabout?
I talk about clarity,consistency, and character.
So thinking in terms of clarity,who am I writing for?
Is it a complex audience?
Is it a young audience?
What's the education level?
What is the type of voice that Iwant to have with that
(28:12):
character?
Am I creating lively, engagingcontent?
Am I a European bank, and I justwant to sound formal?
What's the character that I'mbuilding into?
And then consistency.
what are the words that matterto me?
How do I want to communicatewith specific language, whether
that's brand language or productlanguage, or inclusive language,
(28:33):
or emotional language?
What do I care about from words?
And that becomes the overallguidelines set for creating
content.
And it's an intentional act,it's taking something that's
been somewhat passive, theconcept of content governance,
which is this is how we'd likeyou to write.
Good luck, go get them to makingit more active.
(28:55):
These are the guidelines thatwe've put in place, these are
the goals that we have for thecontent that we're creating.
And this is the measurement thatwe're doing to ensure what we
thought upfront is correct.
if I use those guidelines and Icreate that content to those
guidelines, and I put thatcontent out into production in
the world, I better be measuringthe results because if I think
that I did perfectly set mygoal, build my content, put it
(29:19):
out there, it's perfect.
If it doesn't perform?
Somewhere, I was wrong.
And that's the opportunity foriteration.
So I put it out, it doesn'tperform, I'd go back to the
beginning and I changed some ofmy filters.
I change some of the guidelinesthat I thought were important,
and I deliver content that makesmore sense.
And any company can do that.
(29:41):
If there's one thing that youshould be doing on day one of
content creation, for thepurposes of conversion, for
sales, for support, for service.
It's thinking through whatyou're trying to do, building
the guidelines for that, andthen measuring post-production.
Eric Dickmann (29:57):
Yeah, I love the way you phrase that too.
I think it's about intention,right?
And this can be a big task,especially for large companies.
But if you put a statement out,you say that this is what we
believe in, and we have anintention to sort of get
ourselves on the right track interms of our content and
representing our voice in theway that we feel authentic.
Authentically that we can berepresenting our voice.
(30:20):
I think that's a great place tostart and then work on it over
time, get your content aligned.
I know as we sort of come to theend of the interview here that
on your website, you do havesome resources that people can
go and get and download,especially around you know, this
whole topic of, diversity,equity, and inclusion.
I'd love it here just at theend, if you could tell people
where they could find out moreabout Acrolinx and where they
(30:40):
could find out more aboutdownloading some of this content
and finding you on the web aswell.
Christopher Willis (30:45):
Sure.
So we are at www.acrolinx.com.
If you go to the website, you'llfind a resource center.
My general strategy for contentcreation is to create actionable
content that anybody can use.
You don't need to buy ourproduct to\ get value out of our
content.
You may want to, because itdoesn't absolutely accelerate
(31:06):
the process.
But I do expect that everybodywill get value.
And there is content on DEI,there's content on content
governance, and taking contentgovernance from being passive to
being active, and everything inbetween.
Please go and get some valuefrom that.
And to find me, I'm on LinkedInat CP Willis, probably lots of
(31:30):
other places too.
But yeah, that's the easiestpathway.
Eric Dickmann (31:34):
Hey, that's perfect.
I'll make sure that we have allof that linked up in the show
notes so that people can findit.
Chris, this is a greatdiscussion.
I think something that we needto talk about often, and I
really appreciate you coming onthe show today to talk about
some of the exciting things thatare happening with AI and the
tools to help us in contentcreation and sort of the
reasoning behind a lot of it.
Christopher Willis (31:54):
Excellent, Eric.
Thanks for having me.
Eric Dickmann (31:55):
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us on thisepisode of The Virtual CMO
podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
(32:17):
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Thank you for joining us on thisepisode of The Virtual CMO
podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
(32:37):
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
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