Animalz

Today’s piece comes from our CEO, Ty. Startup founders ask him how to start content marketing with no budget. He’s always telling them: LinkedIn. There’s no barrier to entry, the feedback is fast, and, of course, it’s free ninety-nine.

Back in 2020, we said, “Talk about your competitors.” It’s evergreen, and more urgent now. We’ve been getting this question nonstop as AI engines increasingly surface whatever’s been written the most, and most recently, as the “best” answer. If you don’t publish the comparison, someone else will, and AI will learn theirs.

Today we have a revision of a piece we first wrote in 2023. At the time we worried about Google penalties for AI content. We treated tool selection as the biggest challenge. GPT-4 had only just been released to the public. So young! So naive! Here's an update on what we've learned since.

For season 2 of the Animalz podcast, we sat down with enterprise content leaders at companies like Dropbox, Square, and Zapier. What became clear: the content they produce looks similar to that of any other size company, but the process of creating it is a different challenge entirely. Here are their strategies for navigating enterprise bureaucracy.

Sara Coggin has worked with lots of enterprise leaders over her tenure here at Animalz. One of their most common issues: receiving “urgent” requests from colleagues for blog posts well into a planned roadmap. She mapped out a method for managing those requests, inspired by our podcast interviews with enterprise leaders at companies like Dropbox and Adobe.

This week, Nathan Wahl explores how the definition of quality changes depending on the context of what you’re creating. His insights explain why you can spend weeks perfecting a piece of content that still underperforms, while a LinkedIn post you barely proofread gets hundreds of engagements.

Bloated archives with non-performing posts cost you. As AI floods the web with copycat content, Google penalizes unhelpful material even harder. The fix isn’t producing more; it’s our pruning playbook.

The more our Director of Marketing & Innovation Tim Metz uses AI, the more he’s tempted to fall into its traps. Today, he shares the principles that (mostly) keep him sane.

SEO or AEO? Why not both? You don’t need to abandon SEO in favor of AEO citations. The approach to perform best on either engine is pretty similar anyway. You can win both with just a little extra planning.

🎙️ SEASON FINALE: We just wrapped season 2 of the Animals podcast with a deep dive into everything we learned from enterprise content leaders. At enterprise scale, content success isn't about cranking out more pieces. It's about systems, stakeholders, and strategic alignment. Here's what stood out: • Role clarity matters. B2C companies like Lane Scott Jones's Zapier see content as a growth driver (454% ROI!). Longer B2B sales cycles mean content supports sales and product marketing. Both work when you match your role to your business model. • Distribution comes first. As Aditya Vempaty put it: "If you can't tell me how you're going to distribute it, you're not doing it." Tracey Wallace uses this as her intake filter. • Big bets pay off. Mallory A. Russell's Guy Raz collaboration and Stephanie Losee’s research reports built small wins into major initiatives year over year. • Physical still works. Matt Hummel's "flying distribution engine" cuts through digital noise by literally traveling to deliver research in person. • Governance scales impact. Leaders like Rhonda Hughes and Kate Pluth emphasized cross-team alignment and content libraries to avoid duplication. Thanks to all our season 2 guests, including Kay-Kay Clapp, Heike Young, Jennifer Clark, Kirti Sharma, Lauren Everitt, and everyone who shared their enterprise playbooks. Check out the full wrap-up episode below for all the patterns.