In this episode, David Ebner, Founder of Content Workshop, joins the podcast to talk about the future of writing, the impact of AI, and what storytelling means to him.
Watch the full episode and read the recap below:
What is Content Workshop?
Content Workshop is a storytelling agency, and you might be wondering what the heck that even means.
“We help brands tell their stories and utilize that function to drive new business,” David shared.
Content Workshop works with small and overworked marketing teams (hint: that’s all of them) in many industries, including one team specializing in cybersecurity clients. They use storytelling to help them meet these goals, whether it’s ranking on Google, organic traffic, or actual leads.
David also highlighted how Content Workshop implements storytelling into their processes: “We take storytelling seriously, and we have the student loan debt to prove it. All of our writers have Master’s degrees in the fine arts. And we try to take those artistic skills and apply them commercially for brands.”
What are your thoughts on ChatGPT?
Like everyone else, AI and ChatGPT have been on the minds of writers and marketers alike since its release.
“It’s like any great advancement in technology. At first, it’s a little bit scary to some people. At first, it’s a little threatening to the people whose jobs rely on the thing that’s just been advanced, right? Me being one of those people.” David shared, “But inevitably if we throw up walls and don’t look at things as potential tools. These advancements are coming whether we like it or not, and you can lay down in front of the train, or you can get on board.”
However, the big question with ChatGPT is not whether or not it is going to replace you; it’s how will you implement it into your workflows to help you be better at what you do.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand the basics of how ChatGPT works, so they struggle to utilize it effectively.
ChatGPT is a language processing tool that uses a database of content to find commonalities and tells you what is the most common word to follow another word in a sentence based on a prompt. It’s trying to give you a probability.
“For some writing out there, the tool is great. It’s perfectly fine. I can imagine a lot of products that just rely on volume quantity over quality. Playing the volume game, and this might work,” David said. “But for most B2B companies, for most with a prominent target audience, a known audience, when you’re fishing with a lure and not a net, you’re going to get a bunch of derivative, probably duplicative content.”
In reality, ChatGPT is a tool that you can start with to ideate topics, but it shouldn’t be a tool for creating final pieces of content.
“It’s more of a muse rather than a replacement for writing.”
As it stands today, AI software cannot create the kind of content that Content Workshop wants to produce for their clients.
“It’s not there, it’s not there yet. Maybe it’ll never be there,” said David. “The one thing AI can’t do is empathy. It can fake it, but empathy, by definition, is a human emotion. And if we’re trying to really build shared emotional connections between the audience and the brand. It’s going to be very hard to do that when one the things creating it is not a human being.”
Part of that has to do with human experiences and how they all influence the decisions we make and the work that we do. Humans have ideas based on experiences we have that are not relevant to our jobs. AI can’t do that because it doesn’t have lived experiences. “It dulls creativity down into something that’s programmatic.”
Moreover, AI like ChatGPT can’t infuse content with humor and essentially creates content for robots by robots.
What is storytelling to you?
“Great storytelling has to do with, in my mind, connection,” shared David. “That’s what makes it a piece of art. If you can build that shared emotional connection. If you can have a target audience and have an emotion you want them to feel after consuming your story, that is truly the art form of storytelling.”
The emotion has to come off of the page or the screen and go with the audience for them to recall and feel again. But, in a business context, you can’t take storytelling to your board or CMO without them wanting to know the ROI.
“Great storytelling is not about writing to the least common denominator. It’s about elevating the audience, bringing them to a place they weren’t before.”
A good piece of storytelling should follow the three E’s: you have to entertain, educate, and engage with the audience. And every piece of content should do these things in that specific order.
“Engaging people makes loyal audiences. Loyal audiences make people think about your brand. People who think about your brand in a time of need are going to look to you for answers. That’s the connection and flow.”
An example of this in cyber is the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report. It is such a hit because it’s entertaining to read, even though it’s 70 pages. It is a series of stories about cyber that is funny and entertaining. And it’s also educational because it has statistics.
“Anything can be entertaining. Are you brave enough to walk away from making this a piece about just the facts,” asked David. “The problem is that people are worried or they don’t have a brand that allows for that.”
Courage and bravery both come from the same root emotion, and that’s fear. Your brand has to be courageous and brave enough to step away from fear and do something different.
What things has your team done for cyber companies that your team has done that you’re really proud of?
A lot of this work still comes down to the traditional business mediums.
“I think case studies are probably the one thing that are misused, not just in cyber, but in every space. Because we just want to say, here’s what happened, here’s how I helped somebody,” shared David. “We’re not really getting into the story of the audience. We’re not telling the hero’s journey, and that’s the problem.”
Content Workshop’s approach to case studies is to try to put themselves in the mindset of the individual rather than the brand. “Leads are people,” said David, and marketers need to move beyond seeing leads as entire companies rather than individual people within the company with a problem that needs to be solved.
Take that person’s pain point and think about how they searched for a solution to that problem and found this brand as a solution. Some questions to ask for a case study include:
- What was the relationship like working with this brand or company?
- How did it feel to have that problem solved?
- What were the outcomes? How is this person’s life better now?
Avoid leaning too much on facts. A good case study should break them down and share them in a human way.
You can keep up with David through his LinkedIn and explore Content Workshop at contentwriterworkshop.com.
Interested in learning more about brand storytelling from David? Check out his upcoming session called “Be Brave, Not Boring: Using Storytelling to Build Bold Brands” this December at CyberMarketingCon.
To catch David’s full episode on the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity podcast, listen at Spotify, Hacker Valley Media, and Apple podcasts.
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