Brendan Hufford's Recent LinkedIn Posts

30M people laughed AT McDonald's. Soon we'll call it a masterclass. (I’m serious). Here’s why: McDonald's CEO posted a cringe video. It flopped. 30M views of people laughing AT the brand, not with it. BUT, McDonald's is about to trick every marketer on LinkedIn. And it's going to work because of how our brains are wired. 1. Survivorship bias: in a few months, we'll only remember this video. Not the dozens of brand fails that stayed failures. This one will be "the exception that worked." 2. Outcome bias: if Big Arch sales are up (for any reason), we'll credit the video. See also : Sydney Sweeney campaign. Results rewrite the story. 3. Post hoc rationalization: their social team leaning into the memes? That was damage control. But soon it'll be called "confident brand strategy." 4. Availability heuristic: because this video is everywhere, it'll feel like a win. Salience beats data every time. 5. Attribution error: any success gets credited to the video, not McDonald's $200B brand, 70 years of equity, or massive distribution. Watch. Some marketing blog will write "What McDonald's Big Arch Launch Teaches Us About Viral Marketing." LinkedIn will eat it up. And a bunch of CMOs will greenlight cringe video strategies without the safety net of being McDonald's. The video wasn't genius. But exploiting how we remember it? That might be. ⚡️ PS - Set a reminder for 6 months. See how many "Big Arch marketing breakdown" posts hit your feed.

Every marketing team I talk to is exhausted. None of them can tell you why. Here's what it looks like from the inside: Weekly email. Daily social post. Weekly blog. Monthly webinar. Time + channel. The boxes get checked. The production goes out. Everyone's working until their eyes bleed. And then the quarter ends and the numbers are still flat. They're not... bad. They just aren't growing. This is checkbox marketing. "We're busier than ever but the numbers aren't going up" 99% of the time, the problem isn't volume. It's that nobody had the time and headspace to ask if any of it was actually good. Nobody asked: if we put this in front of 10 of our ideal customers, how many would say it's worth their time? Most of the time the answer is zero and everybody in the room knows it. But we keep going to meetings. Checking boxes. That's why B2B content is SO forgettable. Marketers aren't given the freedom to create impact. They're there to deliver their weekly production and keep it moving. Until your CEO asks why it's not working. And the only answer you have is: we checked all the boxes.

Digital marketing is starting to feel like a scam. Not because it doesn’t work. Like, I get that it *does* But because it’s starting to feel like it’s working against all of us. I'm drowning in “personalized” garbage. "Hi Brendan, saw you're hiring" (I'm not) "Quick question about your product roadmap" (I don't have one) “AI-generated insights tailored for YOU” (…and 50,000 others) It's less personalization and more like a metadata mad lib. I'm TIRED, y'all. And I think this *digital fatigue* I'm feeling is just simply because I've seen this movie before. So I delete. I bounce. I ghost. Because every click I give you costs attention I simply DO NOT have. So many of these digital systems are broken and we're just dropping AI on top of it to make it cheaper and bigger without fixing the fundamentally broken piece. My hope is we can pivot. We can end of marketing as a monologue. And start with things you can touch. Moments you can remember. Brands that feel like a person and not website popup. I'm not anti-digital. FAR from it. I'm just anti-disposable marketing. Because the digital fatigue is real and now seeing it backed new data from Sendoso & UserEvidence draws a clear line between winners and losers going forward... The brands that win are thinking about this and how we move in the new experience economy.

For 20 weeks straight, I published a blog post, podcast episode, and YouTube video every single day. It changed my career. It can change yours, too 👇 I got into SEO around 2009. I was... decent at it. But I was trying to compete with Neil Patel, Moz, HubSpot, and SEMrush for keywords. That wasn't going to work. They had the domain authority, the history, the teams. There was no version of that story where I won. So in 2019, I asked a different question: I can't out-rank them, but can I out-content-market them? I started 100 Days of SEO. 5 days a week for 20 weeks. Every day: a YouTube video, then rip the audio for the podcast feed, then write the blog post from scratch. No AI tools (they didn't exist). I was doing everything manually. - recording - editing - making thumbnails - writing - publishing Every single day. It was... a lot. But somewhere around day 47, something shifted. People started paying attention - not because the content was extraordinary, but because the consistency was. "Day 47 of what? I need to follow this." The visible counter gave people a reason to keep coming back. I got a job promotion because of that series. Made career moves that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Landed clients. None of it was predictable from where I started. The lesson isn't "create more content." Please lord do not read this as "create more checkbox copycat corporate chatgpt content." Instead, if you're stuck in your career, pick something hard and do it in public for 100 days without stopping. People don't follow perfection - they follow commitment. A 100-day project signals that you're the kind of person who finishes things. That signal is worth more than any single piece of work you'll produce along the way.

Dharmesh is one of my favorite people in tech BUT I think this AI project might be one of the most dangerous things you can do in marketing. 3 reasons why: 1. It fundamentally disrespects your audience. In marketing and content, the message AI avatar videos send is: "I am entitled to your time. You are not entitled to mine." Part of what makes video valuable is that you took time to make it. The effort IS the signal. When you automate that away, you're telling people: "I don't care enough to actually do this, but I still expect you to watch it." 2. It dilutes everything you've already made. Here's the thing about Dharmesh specifically: He's sincere. SO sincere. Really means what he says and says what he means. AND... he's rare on video for the reason he explained. That scarcity is part of what makes his videos extra special. Flooding the internet with AI Dharmesh slop risks cheapening everything he's already created. 3. It treats humans like tech companies. (this is a big existential one for me) The idea that we all need to reach the maximum number of people on every platform we don't even want to create for? Optimize, optimize, optimize. Produce, produce, produce. Grow, grow, grow. Always up-and-to-the-right. I don't know if that's right. People are people. Not software. Maybe part of our magic is that we aren't meant to be ourselves "at scale." Maybe the most human thing you can do is NOT be everywhere. ⚡️ PS - Am I overreacting? Be honest.

Strategy-only agencies are going extinct. Example: A client is publishing a report that's going to make a lot of marketers uncomfortable. And they have only one request: this can't sound like a dry AF Gartner report. So I sent over 3 different takes on the intro. Without being asked. On a Saturday. Kendra's reaction: "number 3 just made me go 'omg THIS IS IT' out loud. And then my husband was confused about my excitement 😂" This is the difference between strategy and strategy + execution. Strategy says "the intro needs to be more engaging." Strategy + execution says "here are 3 versions, pick your favorite." The best work I've ever done wasn't scoped. I saw something that could be better and made it better. No approval. No brief. No "let me check with the team." Just... done. And reactions like this are why I'm LOVING doing more for my clients now than "just strategy." ⚡️ PS - Is it weird to add "grateful for your lunacy" to my resume? Asking for a friend. Also, should I share the 3 intros I wrote? Let me know.

In 2023, a $200B reached out to work together. I passed - but I don’t regret it. The company? ByteDance. The company that owns TikTok. We’d done NDAs.  Multiple stakeholders looped in.  Real momentum. Then a seemingly silly issue came up. Their team was based in Singapore. 13 hours ahead of me. My working hours (9-5) translate to 10pm - 6am their time. Their response: "Unfortunately, we work as a global team with global operations." Letting me know I'd have to operate on their time zone. Not "let's figure this out together." Not "here's how we've made this work before." Just: this is how we operate. Adapt. So I… didn't. I told them: "Right now, I'm not taking client calls outside of my working hours." And they confirmed they’d be choosing another agency that could meet during off hours. Here's what 9:30PM calls would have actually cost me: My boys are 5, 7, 10, and 12. At 9:30PM, we're in the middle of the last stretch of the day - the chaos and the cuddles and the arguments about who has to brush teeth first. It's the part of parenting nobody posts about, but it's also the part I refuse to miss. I built Growth Sprints around our life. Not the other way around. Turns out, I also do my best work when I’m being a great dad outside of work. ByteDance is a $200B company. They'll be fine without me. My boys are only 5, 7, 10, and 12 once.

Most SEO (and AEO) pages convert like garbage. Not because the content is bad. Because every page is built from scratch. I've built hundreds of comparison pages, alternatives pages, and "best X" listicles for SaaS companies. The ones that rank AND make you money all have one thing in common: modular architecture. Think IKEA furniture. Same dowels, same Allen wrenches, same particle board. But you can build a KALLAX, a MALM, or a BILLY depending on what you need. Your SEO pages should work the same way. Here are the 8 ingredients I use (+ examples) 👇 1. Empathy-based story - "Your sales rep just pinged Slack. Again. They need a cybersecurity reference for a deal closing Friday." 2. Ranking criteria - Focus on pitfalls and common mistakes that cost more time/money later. 3. Pros & cons - No softball "con: might be too powerful for some users" nonsense. 4. Fit guidance - "[Product A] is for Salesforce-first orgs with formal governance." Bonus: include a "do I need a [job title] to use this?" section. 5. Your value prop - "Based on 200+ customer reviews" beats "we think" every time. 6. Comparison chart - Every buyer ignores a 2-column "we're all good, they're all bad" fake chart. Organize around functional differentiation, not feature parity. 7. FAQ + CTA - "How fast can we show value without adding headcount?" gets a direct answer with a timeline and method, not a redirect to a demo. 8. Implementation pitfalls - "Internal stakeholders can hijack setup resulting in a messy first push that creates noise, low-quality output, and skepticism." Since you can see the mix below, here's the patterns between them (not in the image): - Every page starts with empathy. No exceptions. - Every page ends with FAQ + CTA. Also no exceptions. - Pros & cons appear in all four page types. It's the workhorse. - Comparison charts ONLY belong on "Us vs. competitor" pages. Nowhere else. - Implementation pitfalls ONLY belong on "Best [category]" listicles. That's what separates a useful roundup from a vendor brochure. - Fit guidance shows up everywhere except "Us vs. competitor" (because you're not being neutral there - you're making your case). - Your value prop only appears when you're in the conversation: "Us vs." and "Competitor vs. competitor" pages. On alternatives and listicles, you stay in guide mode. Build the ingredients once. Mix them for every page type. This works for Google. It works for ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity too. Not because of EEAT or whatever acronym Google invented to make us feel like we're doing something. It works because real insights from real experience are actually useful to readers. Weird how that works. ⚡️ PS - I would mass unfollow everyone who's ever said "EEAT" unironically if LinkedIn let me. But since they don't, here's an image that breaks down the ingredient combinations instead. Click those 3 little dots in the upper right and save it.

Strategy-only agencies are going extinct. Example: A client is publishing a report that's going to make a lot of marketers uncomfortable. And they have only one request: this can't sound like a dry AF Gartner report. So I sent over 3 different takes on the intro. Without being asked. On a Saturday. Kendra's reaction: "number 3 just made me go 'omg THIS IS IT' out loud. And then my husband was confused about my excitement 😂" This is the difference between strategy and strategy + execution. Strategy says "the intro needs to be more engaging." Strategy + execution says "here are 3 versions, pick your favorite." The best work I've ever done wasn't scoped. I saw something that could be better and made it better. No approval. No brief. No "let me check with the team." Just... done. And reactions like this are why I'm LOVING doing more for my clients now than "just strategy." ⚡️ PS - Is it weird to add "grateful for your lunacy" to my resume? Asking for a friend. Also, should I share the 3 intros I wrote? Let me know.

"You’ve never had an easier lead to close in your entire life and I’m letting you know right now... you are LOSING this sale." ... is what I would’ve said if I was an a-hole. And while I am one, I did not say that to the rep. I mean, this rep was clearly ramping up on the product. Checked their LinkedIn. They sold enterprise martech for 5-6 years. But only 4mo into the new gig. Here's why you, as a marketer, should care about this story: This company has a great brand. Great social. Great marketing, in general. But there was a BRUTAL disconnect between marketing <> sales. If I were in their seat, here's what I'd do TO-DAY: 1. Make sure all your sales calls are getting recorded - this is a non negotiable in 2026. 2. Set up Zapier to have Claude analyze the transcript from every single call for pain points, objections, stakeholders, competitors, current setup (status quo), etc. 3. Zap that analysis into a Slack channel for everybody to see. Instant visibility. Instantly better sales <> marketing alignment. ⚡️ PS - We gaslight marketers every single day saying they should be accountable for revenue, but I showed up with cash in hand and they still almost blew it. Get your SLA with sales in writing. Make sure they stick to it. At the very least, set up those zaps. Unless there's a better way to solve this that I'm missing?

An HR tech company (former client) thought they knew every competitor. They were missing the biggest one. It was... Microsoft? They had a full competitor matrix. Pages built, sales decks updated, positioning locked in. No keyword tool flagged it. No SEO platform surfaced it. No competitive analysis caught it. But we were also piping sales call transcripts through Zapier into an LLM for analysis, then into a Slack channel for the marketing team to review in real time. A few days in, something kept showing up: "Lead said they're currently using Copilot for this." "They built something with Copilot to handle that." "They tried Copilot but it wasn't quite right." Not a niche HR software. Not a well-funded competitor. Microsoft Copilot. About 50% of their most qualified inbound leads were already using Copilot to solve the exact problem this software solved. Never came up in a planning meeting. Never flagged by a rep. Never appeared in any competitive review. Found it in two weeks of transcript scrolling. Most deals are lost to status quo and every client of mine creates content around winning against status quo, not just competitors. This is also why I don't solely rely on traditional keyword research anymore. Keyword tools tell you what people are searching for. 3S (sales, success and support) calls tell you what they're actually doing. ⚡️ PS - I would rather watch every timothee chalamet movie in a row than sit through Gong calls where reps read scripts at people for 45 minutes. That's why I have Claude read the transcripts for me. Same intel. Zero suffering.

Notion makes millions off email… and I just got a look at their entire playbook. Most companies would throw bodies at this problem. Notion's team stayed small and just got smarter. Their 3-move playbook: 3. Test the words, then use them everywhere → 20% more opens from changing one word They A/B tested subject lines for a product launch. Found a winner. Then took those learnings to the product team and used them to position the product itself. Result: One of their best releases. Millions in revenue. 2. Catch people window shopping → 49-51% open rates (yes, on email) They noticed when users poked around a feature but didn't buy. Then sent them down a personalized path with helpful content. One of their best campaigns ever. 1. Welcome emails in your language → +6-7% lift in conversions 80% of Notion's users are outside the US. Millions of people. They built onboarding based on where you live and what language you speak. Started with Korean and French markets. Notion is a big name, but the team that did this was small - running quick & dirty experiments, iterating fast, and proving value with data. And it was all possible with Customer.io - real behavior data. real automation. small team. outsized results. They went from "just a lifecycle team" to trusted partners influencing product launches. Why don’t more companies do this? ⚡️ PS - If you're on a small marketing team feeling like you can't compete, bookmark this. #customeriopartner

I've wanted to build a LinkedIn algorithm playbook for years. I had the expertise. I talk to clients about this every week. I see what's working, what stopped, what the data says. But synthesizing 20+ sources, analyzing millions of posts worth of research, and turning it into something founders could actually execute on Monday morning? That's a full research team I didn't have. So I partnered with Perplexity Computer. I described the playbook I wanted: the algorithm changes in plain English, the 5 post formats still winning, the 8 mistakes bleeding reach, a 90-day reset plan. Here's the prompt structure that worked: 1. Start with a verb: "Research the 2026 LinkedIn algorithm changes and build me a playbook..." 2. Name the material output: "...as a PDF report with templates, a comparison table, and a 90-day execution plan." 3. End with the business result: "...that I can use as a lead magnet for my newsletter." It pulled from LinkedIn's engineering blog, algorithm research papers, creator case studies, large-scale post analyses. Synthesized everything. Built the report. A 17-page playbook with citations, templates, and a comparison table I actually use with clients now. Took an hour. The real output is what the tool unlocks. For me, that's a lead magnet I've wanted to build for months - now live, driving newsletter signups, helping founders and marketers stop guessing what works. Some context on why this matters: LinkedIn reach is down 50%. Video is down 72%. Company pages are basically dead. But one creator's impressions dropped 80% - while his profit went UP 70%. Most people haven't caught up yet. The playbook is free. Sign up for Growing Up and it's yours. No weird engagement bait required.

this is who runs a community of 1,200+ marketers going ALL IN on their careers, btw If you’re a SaaS marketer trying to figure it all out without losing who you are along the way, you belong in ALL IN - SaaS Marketing Community. Built by Brendan Hufford & Lindsay Adams 👽 Join us → allinhouse.co

Zapier has 3M+ users. 7,000+ app integrations. And the biggest marketing challenge isn't competition. I sat down with Zapier's SVP of Marketing to talk about marketing a product that can do almost anything. His answer surprised me: "That's actually the problem." It's that when someone opens Zapier for the first time, they freeze. Dan Slagen called it "blank slate paralysis." He compared it to YouTube with no algorithm. No feed. No recommendations. Just an empty search bar. Most people don't know where to start. So they don't. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗭𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝘅 𝗶𝘁: 𝟭. 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 The goal isn't to show everything the platform can do. It's to help someone solve ONE real problem, build confidence, then expand. Momentum > positioning. 𝟮. 𝗘𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Zapier's CEO Wade Foster spends an enormous amount of time with customers. Not selling. Learning. Those insights become content, speaking, community. They've earned the right to lead with education because they actually know what people are stuck on. 𝟯. 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 > 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Zapier runs in-person experiences called "AI Outposts." Not slide decks. Not keynotes. Multi-day working sessions where people build workflows and leave with real progress. Attendees expect inspiration. They get execution. My friend Dmitry went to one of these and I've never been more jealous. 𝟰. 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘄𝗶𝗱𝘁𝗵, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗵𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲 Dan's interview question: "Describe a packed week." He's not looking for hours worked. He's looking for people who can operate across domains. Brand AND direct response. Data AND people. Systems AND storytelling. People who actively increase their own capacity through tools. 𝟱. 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 Zapier doesn't separate brand from results. They call it "performance branding." Brand is expected to drive outcomes. Just not always immediately. No rigid annual brand plans in a market that shifts weekly. The hard part about marketing infinite possibility? You have to give people a starting point. Not everything. Just one thing. The rest follows. ⚡️ I'm giving away the entire playbook for free (you don't even have to comment something weird to get it). Just sign up for Growing Up and it'll be in your inbox tomorrow.

Hyperbound went from zero unknown to dominating AEO & SEO with 3 simple strategies: When we started, they had zero marketing infrastructure. Few blogs. No SEO. A tiny (but powerful) team of two marketers. 12 weeks laster, they own their category. This is one of my favorite client stories because it proves you don't need a massive team or insane budget to dominate SEO and AEO. You just need the right order of operations. Here’s the 12-week roadmap we used: Sprint 1: Content-led SEO 20+ content briefs. Technical audit. Quick wins. We didn't try to boil the ocean. We found the confident bets and moved fast. Sprint 2: Revenue-focused content We left the keyword tools behind and target in-market buyers using what I call the "3S Strategy," listening to Sales, Success, and Support to create content that actually impacts pipeline. It helped that both of their marketers, Josh & Mia, were incredible operators and salespeople themselves. Sprint 3: Authority building Content briefs focused on making Hyperbound the journalistic center of the universe in their space. Audience research. Distribution strategy. When I met them in 2024, they were at about 3M ARR. By the end of 2025, they'd had 2 consecutive months where they'd added +1M ARR. (helps that they have one of the coolest products I've ever seen that solves a pretty real problem) But most companies out there have 10x the resources Hyperbound had and only get 1/10th the results. Turns out the advantage was never having a big headcount. It was knowing what to do and in what order. ⚡️ PS - This is why I love Growth Sprints. 12 week sprints. Clear process. No fluff. If 2026 is the year you stop throwing content at the wall, let's talk.

Morning Brew sold for $75M. The Hustle sold for $27M. Milk Road sold in 10 months for $10M+. What do all these have in common? They're newsletters, sure. But they also built the strongest ongoing relationship you can have with an audience. They built relationship loops. NOT sales funnels. What makes this hard is we've been *taught* to think in funnels. Awareness → Interest → Decision → Action → Purchase. The problem is that funnels end. But in SaaS, relationships don't! We need to keep that relationship through adoption and renewal to get that sweet sweet recurring revenue. You spend all this money and effort to get someone to buy... and then you start over. From scratch. Every single time. Relationship loops don't end. Every email is another touchpoint. Every send is another chance to build trust. Every week you show up, you're reinforcing: "I'm here. I'm consistent. I'm DEFINITELY worth your time." That's why these newsletters sold for insane multiples. Not just because of their content (good content is table stakes now). Because of the relationship they built with their audience. This week think: what's my company's relationship loop? And if it's a typical "3 blogs in a trenchcoat" checkbox marketing newsletter, your audience has already tuned it out. So you can probably stop sending it... and start building a relationship ⚡️ PS - Did you know Industry Dive, a collection of newsletters across industries, sold for $525M? Funnels get you a conversion. Loops build careers.

In 2026, with AI, marketers are more productive than ever before. And that's the problem. Almost every marketing team goes through the same 3 phases. Most get trapped in the last one and never realize it. Phase 1: Random acts of marketing. You're just trying things. No real strategy. Some stuff lands, most doesn't. You don't really know why either way. Phase 2: Programs and playbooks. You've seen what worked somewhere else, or you made a hire who brings their system. You start running structured things. This feels like growth. Because it is... for a time. But programs and playbooks quickly become checkbox marketing. The programs have been running long enough that they've become routine. Weekly email. Daily social. Blog every Tuesday. Nobody questions it. The boxes get checked. The work goes out. The team is working until their eyes fall out - and nobody has time to ask if any of it matters. And then you sit down to look at the numbers and realize: you're producing more than ever and the results are flat. Or going backward. The worst version I hear: "We've never published this much. And we have less to show for it than three years ago." That's where they get stuck. The problem isn't effort. I know you're working harder than ever. It's just that effort became the metric instead of impact.

Most SEO (and AEO) pages convert like garbage. Not because the content is bad. Because every page is built from scratch. I've built hundreds of comparison pages, alternatives pages, and "best X" listicles for SaaS companies. The ones that rank AND make you money all have one thing in common: modular architecture. Think IKEA furniture. Same dowels, same Allen wrenches, same particle board. But you can build a KALLAX, a MALM, or a BILLY depending on what you need. Your SEO pages should work the same way. Here are the 8 ingredients I use (+ examples) 👇 1. Empathy-based story - "Your sales rep just pinged Slack. Again. They need a cybersecurity reference for a deal closing Friday." 2. Ranking criteria - Focus on pitfalls and common mistakes that cost more time/money later. 3. Pros & cons - No softball "con: might be too powerful for some users" nonsense. 4. Fit guidance - "[Product A] is for Salesforce-first orgs with formal governance." Bonus: include a "do I need a [job title] to use this?" section. 5. Your value prop - "Based on 200+ customer reviews" beats "we think" every time. 6. Comparison chart - Every buyer ignores a 2-column "we're all good, they're all bad" fake chart. Organize around functional differentiation, not feature parity. 7. FAQ + CTA - "How fast can we show value without adding headcount?" gets a direct answer with a timeline and method, not a redirect to a demo. 8. Implementation pitfalls - "Internal stakeholders can hijack setup resulting in a messy first push that creates noise, low-quality output, and skepticism." Since you can see the mix below, here's the patterns between them (not in the image): - Every page starts with empathy. No exceptions. - Every page ends with FAQ + CTA. Also no exceptions. - Pros & cons appear in all four page types. It's the workhorse. - Comparison charts ONLY belong on "Us vs. competitor" pages. Nowhere else. - Implementation pitfalls ONLY belong on "Best [category]" listicles. That's what separates a useful roundup from a vendor brochure. - Fit guidance shows up everywhere except "Us vs. competitor" (because you're not being neutral there - you're making your case). - Your value prop only appears when you're in the conversation: "Us vs." and "Competitor vs. competitor" pages. On alternatives and listicles, you stay in guide mode. Build the ingredients once. Mix them for every page type. This works for Google. It works for ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity too. Not because of EEAT or whatever acronym Google invented to make us feel like we're doing something. It works because real insights from real experience are actually useful to readers. Weird how that works. ⚡️ PS - I would mass unfollow everyone who's ever said "EEAT" unironically if LinkedIn let me. But since they don't, here's an image that breaks down the ingredient combinations instead. Click those 3 little dots in the upper right and save it.

I was getting crushed by AI anxiety. Then I remembered a Twitter character from 2013 who spoke like a T-Rex robot. His name was Fake Grimlock. Named after the Transformers T-Rex who spoke in broken all-caps. "ME GRIMLOCK. ME SMASH." He had a blog post called "Win Like Stupid." The argument: stupid people win. They're too dumb to quit. Too dumb to be scared. Too dumb to overthink. Smart people see all the ways something can fail and freeze. Stupid people just go. That hit differently when I started thinking about how I was approaching AI. I was doing the smart-person things: - Reading every newslette - Evaluating which model was best for which task - Trying to understand how everything fit together before I touched any of it. I wasn't building... anything. So I decided to win like stupid. Stopped trying to understand the full landscape. Picked the tool I liked best. Started building dumb, simple things. Example: A Sunday afternoon brief. Claude pulling from my emails, call transcripts, calendar - and handing me a rundown of my week before Monday hits. Gives me context on every call, every person, even flagged that I'd sent someone a gift last December. Built it in a day. Because I was too stupid to think it was complicated. It runs every Sunday now. You won't get left behind by AI because you know too little. But you will get left behind if you know too much to start.

You: How do I know this content is actually gonna make us money? Me: Here’s how I drove $2M in pipeline from content in 90 days. That's not a typo. TODAY at 11am CT, I'm breaking this down with Rachel Elsts Downey. I promise at least 5 minutes of fun while you eat your lunch (or second breakfast if you’re west coast or a hobbit like me). We're getting into: → The "build once, sell forever" content system → How to connect content to pipeline (without pretending content gets all the credit) → The smallest team that can run a real content engine → What to publish first if you need pipeline in 90 days (and what to pause immediately) → How to connect content to revenue without pretending content gets all the credit → The 3 metrics that actually matter when everyone's arguing about attribution → Why most B2B content scales confusion instead of authority But first, Rachel's putting me on the spot. Rapid-fire "This or That" - no explaining, just pick: - SEO or AEO? - Gated or ungated? - More content or better distribution? - Podcast or newsletter? - Marketing owns pipeline or sales does? - Remote or return to office? - AI content or human content? - Personal brand or company brand? Disagree with my answers? Yell at me in the comments. 📅 TODAY 🕚 11am CT 📍 LinkedIn Live Join us: https://lnkd.in/euJ4PtWv ⚡️ PS - I’d love your take on the “this or that” above. In 2026 what are we saying - gated or ungated? Remote or return to office?

Flat traffic in 2026 is probably the best result your SEO team has ever delivered. Your CEO just doesn't know that yet. Here's the situation almost every B2B marketing team is living through right now: Traffic is flat. Or down 30-40% year over year. CEO wants to know what happened. The honest answer: almost everyone is down. Being flat is... winning. But we've spent 15 years selling one equation: Traffic = trust = revenue. Now Chatty G answers the question before the click happens. Google surfaces the answer in an AI overview above every result. People trust you without ever visiting your site. The clicks are NOT coming back. Sorry if that sounds pessimistic. There are no more "free" clicks to get. So what do you do? 1. You tell your CEO the game changed. 2. That flat is a genuine win. 3. That the traffic still hitting your site is higher-intent than it's ever been - people who already trust you and want to go deeper. Then you make DANG sure your site is worth landing on. Because the marketers still forced to chase a traffic number that no longer exists are going to have a very hard time explaining their jobs in a year.

Hyperbound went from zero unknown to dominating AEO & SEO with 3 simple strategies: When we started, they had zero marketing infrastructure. Few blogs. No SEO. A tiny (but powerful) team of two marketers. 12 weeks laster, they own their category. This is one of my favorite client stories because it proves you don't need a massive team or insane budget to dominate SEO and AEO. You just need the right order of operations. Here’s the 12-week roadmap we used: Sprint 1: Content-led SEO 20+ content briefs. Technical audit. Quick wins. We didn't try to boil the ocean. We found the confident bets and moved fast. Sprint 2: Revenue-focused content We left the keyword tools behind and target in-market buyers using what I call the "3S Strategy," listening to Sales, Success, and Support to create content that actually impacts pipeline. It helped that both of their marketers, Josh & Mia, were incredible operators and salespeople themselves. Sprint 3: Authority building Content briefs focused on making Hyperbound the journalistic center of the universe in their space. Audience research. Distribution strategy. When I met them in 2024, they were at about 3M ARR. By the end of 2025, they'd had 2 consecutive months where they'd added +1M ARR. (helps that they have one of the coolest products I've ever seen that solves a pretty real problem) But most companies out there have 10x the resources Hyperbound had and only get 1/10th the results. Turns out the advantage was never having a big headcount. It was knowing what to do and in what order. ⚡️ PS - This is why I love Growth Sprints. 12 week sprints. Clear process. No fluff. If 2026 is the year you stop throwing content at the wall, let's talk.