Reducing friction in your digital content creation | Martin Michalik, Kentico

In this episode of the Discussing Stupid podcast, host Virgil Carroll sits down with Martin MacCulloch from Kentico Cloud. Martin is a product manager at Kentico Cloud. Kentico Cloud is a cloud-based environment for content management and delivery. Martin joins Virgil to discuss content friction, common workflow problems, and how Kentico Cloud is harnessing technology to improve content efficiency and cohesiveness. After their interview, Virgil shares his frustration with a new buzzword in the Stupid Buzz section of the show. 

As the conversation unfolds, Martin defines content friction as everything that causes inefficiency or damage throughout the content lifecycle. Martin breaks down some of the friction his teams experienced around new product launches. Namely, how they found it difficult to decide who would write the content, how to craft a cohesive message, and how to collaborate efficiently as a team. Martin and Virgil talk about how to build beneficial workflow systems and avoid perpetuating the problems you’re trying to fix. 

Next, Martin shared numerous technological and workflow issues that he has witnessed throughout his career. Some of these issues include inefficient file storage where hundreds of emails are exchanged, failing to work on the most recent version of a file in collaborative projects, bottlenecked team structures where a plethora of decisions have to be made by a single person, and more. Virgil then asks Martin about how Kentico Cloud is working to streamline the collaborative content-creation process, help brands craft a cohesive message, and improve the journey from ideation to execution. 

After the conversation winds down, Virgil dives into Stupid Buzz, where he talks about a buzzword that gets on his nerves. This week’s buzzword is “omnichannel.” Virgil shares his concerns about the way that people use the term incorrectly and points back to its legitimate meaning, which implies understanding your content on a microscopic and big-picture level as it relates to the various platforms it’s being published on. In short, omnichannel content is far more complex and specific than many people suggest through their inaccurate use of the term. 

LINKS
Learn more about Kentico Cloud
https://www.kentico.com/

 Download a free handbook of templates and best-practices from the Content Strategy Alliance
https://contentstrategyalliance.com/resources/csa-handbook/

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Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

Note. This podcast does not discuss nor endorse the idea of discussing stupid ideas because we all know there are no stupid ideas. Hello, and welcome to Hello, and welcome to discussing stupid, the podcast where we will tackle everything digitally stupid from stupid users and the crazy things they do to stupid practices and the people who use them. We'll explore the stupid things we all do and maybe even come up with a few ideas on how to do things better. And now that I got your attention, let's start discussing stupid.

Virgil: 0:41

Hello, and welcome to the broadcast of the podcast. My name is Virgil Carroll. I'm your host and principal human solutions architect at HiMonkey. Thank you for coming back for another episode. I think I have a really good topic. Actually, it took a little longer to get this topic because I was going to do something else, but then I happened to be going to the Kentico Connections conference. Kentico is a web CMS that HiMonkey works with. And I happened to hear about this phrase called content friction, And content friction gave me some interest and, actually, I thought that that could be an interesting topic to talk about this and kind of understand how we have frictions inside our content processes and how we can not only use good practices but also technology to get through that. So to help me with that today, I have asked Martin McCulloch from Kentico Cloud. Kentico Cloud is a cloud based environment for content management and for delivery. And him and I are gonna talk about content friction, some of the things that we see with it, and how we might be able to do things a little bit better. Well, thank you, Martin, for joining me. I appreciate you taking time, especially after you just headed back to the Czech Republic from the US this last week. I gotta imagine you have a little bit of jet lag there, but you brought around this new topic. You know, I've probably heard in different ways, but not really in this sense, around content friction. Could you first start by introducing yourself?

Martin: 2:16

Yeah. Sure. So hello, everyone. My name is Martin McCullik. I work as a product manager in Kentico. I focus on Kentico Cloud. And recently, we started talking about content friction. Why is it important to marketers? And we realized it's something that is not really covered in media or on the Internet. You can't find really a lot of information about it. And because we have experienced it ourselves, we thought it's a good idea to share our knowledge and let people know that there's something that can be done about it.

Virgil: 2:54

So tell me a little bit, when you say content friction, what does that mean to you? And and and what is the problems it causes?

Martin: 3:02

Okay. So content friction. Well, it's a good question. I understand content friction is everything that hinders your productivity when it comes to not only content production, but when it comes to the whole content life cycle. So everything that's causing inefficiencies when you are transforming content into powerful messages and everything that cause delays in delivery that caused lower quality and everything that hinders the impact that your marketing messages might have. If I should use some analogy, I think the best one is if you compare your marketing team to an engine of a sports car, because you need your engine to run smoothly as well. You need, your marketing team to run smoothly in order to deliver the best messages. And the content friction is going to be the every piece of sand or dust that is going to slow down your engine until it eventually stops. So the the thing is that the content friction can have different shapes and different themes, can have different forms, and that's why it's more difficult to spot it and then address it.

Virgil: 4:18

So basically, what you're saying is content friction is the issues we have around kind of developing our messages and really delivering them in the appropriate way.

Martin: 4:29

Yeah. And also everything that kinda annoys you and frustrates you when it comes to content production, I think those are nice examples of content friction.

Virgil: 4:39

Okay. You mentioned earlier that one of the reasons you guys kind of define this is because you saw this yourself in some of the own things you're doing. Can you tell me a little bit about what were some of the things that you saw that were kind of friction in your own process?

Martin: 4:54

Yeah. For example, one of the things where we saw a lot of friction were our product releases or our feature announcements, because there was always this friction, who should actually create them? Should the content be created by, our, copywriters and content marketers who are the best when it comes to actually putting out the message and writing in a nice manner. So it tells the story Or should the message be created by the product managers who are not native speakers and might they might not know, how to actually create such a powerful message, but they know all the necessary details about the product release. They know all the all the niche scenarios that are important to the clients, and they know what's important about the release. So that's there was always this friction who should actually create the content until we eventually figure it out that we can use some form of templates that are predefined and each product manager actually fills it. And based on the content that is provided in the template, the marketing guys can actually use this information to create the powerful message. And this way, we have enabled collaboration between subject matter experts, which were us from the product management and the content marketers.

Virgil: 6:20

Yeah. No. That and, you know, that makes a lot of sense to me because, you know, in a lot of scenarios that I work through on a regular basis kinda fit along those same lines. There's, and and, you know, since a lot of what we, we tend to do is, you know, website redesigns, typically that website or the, you know, whatever marketing campaign or whatever, has kinda gotten out of control because too many cooks in the kitchen, too many people doing too many things, and not really communicating around them. And that seems to be a very common issue we see in the world is that we're trying to get out this unified message through our digital marketing efforts, yet at the same time, we're maybe letting too many people write it or we don't have good definition around what needs to happen or we don't really have to, you know, have the ability to be able to kinda control some of those messages depending on their situation. So when you guys define that and you started to use these templates, what other kind of things did you see that you needed to tackle to kind of make it that whole messaging process and kinda reduce that friction?

Martin: 7:29

Well, I think the important part was to actually put the templates, where it's, where they are available to everyone. And I think the part of the reducing content friction was actually content consolidation and putting content into one place. I think it's another great example of how can content friction look like. Because if you talk to a different marketing specialist, if you look on different marketing teams, basically, each team will have its I would call it a damn folder where they have the document that represents, let's say, the latest article they were working on. And they have, like, 16 versions of the document with appendix is, like, the final version and the final final and final v 2 and the final with comments. And the issue there is it's difficult to navigate among these files and find the one which is actually the latest one. And also when you consider that sometimes there are multiple people working on the content and those people are supposed to collaborate, it gets more tricky because those guys are usually exchanging those documents via emails. So you have dozens emails flying around with different versions of documents. And it can be really messy, and it can be really difficult to actually find out whether you are actually working on the latest version or whether someone has something that is more up to date. And it can cause some frustrations, especially when you realize after 2 hours of work that you are not working on the latest version of the content. So I think content consolidation and actually having content in one place where it is always up to date is another part of eliminating content friction.

Virgil: 9:14

Yeah. I mean, that is kind of the whole nature of this whole process of, you know, a content strategy whether you're you're dealing with external content or or internal content. You know, you have that of trying to mix and mash everything together. I always think the the concept of content consolidation and kinda having a content repository is a very important skill and important piece of a good content strategy. But I also think one of the big challenges that happens from that is kind of the appropriate governance and processes and everything around it. So when you guys started to go through this or when you've seen customers do this by utilizing some of your tools that you guys offer, what are some of the ways that you get around that process of getting people to work together and getting them to actually be on the same page and then also be able to help them manage that process in kind of a unified way so that at least if people even do things a little bit different, you have those touch points where things are somewhat the same.

Martin: 10:22

I think there are 2 different ways how we can look on on these problems and how it can actually our product help you with that. You mentioned content governance, and I think the great part of the content governance, actually, how you are preparing actually before you start working on the content. So one thing that we started using, and I totally recommend everyone who's working on some content and has issues with changing requirements or content not reflecting what you were expected, just start actually using content briefs. Content briefs are a great tool that will help you to actually mitigate, those issues. Essentially, it's a document or it can be a content item, for example, in Kentico cloud, where you store all the necessary metadata, all and all the important information that we wanna capture. So for example, who's the target persona? What is the key message that you wanna share with the with the latest content? What are the roles that are going to work on that content? What are the goals for the content? Let's say you wanna reach 200,000 views. You should have the document in the content brief. And it's really important to have the document because you might be discussing the topics weeks or even months before you actually start working on them. You might be discussing them when you are preparing the content strategy. And we all are forgetting stuff. And if there are, let's say 8 weeks between the strategy and before you start writing the content, you might forget something. So it's really healthy to have those things documented, And it will help you to guide you when you are actually writing on the content. Now if you you can have it stored in the word document, that's a great thing. You should at least start with that. But you can also use Tentacle Cloud and have this information stored in there. And then you can use the abilities of modular content and link it directly to the content item, that you are working on, let's say, the blog post. I did it many times, and and it really helped me.

Virgil: 12:24

Yeah. I can see how that could be helpful. I mean, you know, one of the things I see a lot is you have a process where, you know, people are kinda creating in all these different mediums. So some people are creating in the word documents. Maybe some are working directly in your content management system. Maybe some are working directly in your other digital channels, Twitter and Instagram and that, and they're kind of all creating these different messages in in different ways. You really have no uniformity around that. You have no way to know that you're kind of following the same processes and going through the same checks and balances. At the reverse side, I think one of the other things that I see a lot, and I'm interested kind of what your experience has been on that, is also us overthinking those processes as well. So just as much as a process can help us be on the same page, a too complex process can also inhibit us and cause friction as well. Right?

Martin: 13:23

Yeah. You are correct. I think it's always important to think about those processes and about content friction in general, whether you are not actually overcomplicating stuff. Because I think it's important to know what level of, let's say, strategic guidelines or metadata you should keep. I think a certain level is always important. And I think the healthy approach to when it comes to content friction is every time you work on a piece of content, once you're done, you should do a small retrospective, you know, and think about the things that were okay and things that you were not satisfied with. And think whether there's something you should you could do differently, and it could help you, you know. For example, when I was talking about the, about the templates that we use for for sharing the information with, marketing guys, This is something that has evolved over time. It was not something that we started using right away. So first, we had a document where we kept those information in a simple table. Then we started using a more formalized way in a in a PPT document. And eventually, we migrated the document into Kentico Cloud. And you might find the same process in your activities and in in in your team. And it's going to differ in each team because each team has different dynamics.

Virgil: 14:55

Yeah. And I can totally agree. Years ago when I used to do kind of governance speaking around, content processes more specifically to kind of internal content, But the same thing one of the things I said is, you know, it's like using an automated workflow tool. It's very easy to take a 10 step process and make it 15 instead of actually making it easier because it's too easy to say. Upfront, you sit down in a group and you start to whiteboard or storyboard out your process and you're like, and it could go here, and this person may need to look at it over here, and this person needs to do this, and that kind of stuff. And we naturally just tend to overthink those, and then we look at them like, oh, that'll cover every scenario we've ever had of any piece of content in our entire lives. But the reality is that probably equally has caused an issue and that we really haven't thought about it. So I've always looked at business processes in 80 20 rule. Otherwise, as long as it covers 80% of what you need to do, then that other 20% that tends to be those more unique scenarios are things that you have time to handle versus having to do it on that side. And I like your idea of templates and and, you know, kinda using that to collect that. We've used that a lot with customers, especially in the last few years where where we have some kind of template where they're collecting things, say, like, we're working with an educational customer, and they're collecting information around a major degree that that educational institution offers. Well, that's a perfect scenario for saying, here's the information we want about this degree. So then if somebody else from a user experience side is visiting your site, they see the exact same type of information for all degrees so that it's easier for them to consume and understand from that side as well. So I wanna back up for a second, and and I actually kinda skipped over this and wanted to come back. But one of the things you said is you said that a great place to start in that process is to develop a content brief. Could you maybe talk just a little bit more about that?

Martin: 17:02

Yeah. Well, basically, what we started doing, we do that basically now for each content that we are creating. Even though, for example, the the sessions that we had last week during the Kentico connections were first crafted and captured in the content brief. Because we found it really helpful when we are working on the content. Because it helps you actually formalize more your thoughts about what you are going to write. So for example, when we were preparing the sessions for the presentations, we had to identify who's the keeper zone. You know, we wanna talk to you. So because during connections, there are technical people, there are more business oriented people. So you need to distinguish who do you want to talk to? Then we identify the key messages that we want to put out and share with people. Then we prepared a brief outline, you know, what we wanna talk about in the session, how it can look like. And then we actually had few meetings, and we discussed the brief. And we discussed whether we all have the same idea of what we wanna share with people. And we were actually using those briefs to actually guide the conversation. We had some conversation a little let's say, this topic is too technical or not because the audience is going to be really technical or not. Another example of how we use content briefs was, for example, when we were preparing blog posts about GDPR, like, half a year ago, because it helped me to actually, to, again, define the persona, define the key message. But I also, as a part of the content brief, included their previous articles and previous content that we've created, about GDPR. And it really helped me to find out better whether there's some content that I can reuse or whether there's some content I should avoid because we've already written about it. So there are many ways how it can actually help you. But I think the the best thing on content briefs is that it can actually help you to better formulate your ideas. And so you have better idea what you wanna write about.

Virgil: 19:11

And you made an excellent point about and and I think that's one of the big things I see it. Especially when you start talking about omnichannel digital marketing, sometimes I I kinda really say, what does that really mean? But, overall, isn't that kind of the purpose if we have a good content strategy? We don't have to constantly recreate these pieces of content to fit the different mediums, but we're kinda looking at using it as a consolidated effort. You know, one of the things I recommend to a lot of customers is, and I'm not sure if you've ever looked at the the really nice template package that the Content Strategy Alliance has. If you haven't, it's a really good resource and it talks about things like content briefs and kinda can walk an organization through the entire kind of content process from start to finish. And, it's a it's a great free resource out there, and I'll make sure that I include it in the notes from that side. So another thing I kinda think of from kind of a a a content issue and something we commonly do, you kinda, touched on it a little bit about, you know, people not knowing what's the best version or what the current version of is. And, obviously, one of the things we know about kind of working in centralized systems for content is what happens if we're updating things at the same time? What happens if we're kind of not on the same page on what we're doing? I know in particular, Kentico has kind of tackled this in kind of a multi authoring type environment. So what kind of made you need to do that that you saw? What did you see in organizations that you decided that you needed to truly set something up so that if 2 people were working with the same piece of content and there was that friction on that side, that they could stay on the same page?

Martin: 20:59

The main reason was when we talked to different agencies and different clients, they basically described the same process in different war variants. And usually had something to do with exchanging what documents, having a lot of emails flying around, or using tools like Jira or Trello, you know, to actually exchange those documents. And people always complain that it's messy, you know, that they always have to go and download the file and edit it and then upload it somewhere. And they are creating the content just to copy and paste it eventually into CMS. So we thought, how can we make this easier and why are people not creating content directly in their CMS? And when we did some exploration, we discovered why. And that's because usually the traditional CMS systems don't allow you. They don't have enough support for you to create content directly in them. So we took that as an important part of, experience with Kentico Cloud, and we were focusing on improving it. So that's why we have this override protection in Kentico cloud. When someone is working on the content, you will get notification, so you don't override their content. Also, we've included comments because we see them as important part of collaboration when it comes to content production. And we are working on a suggestion mode, which is a next level of collaboration and enabling multiple people working on the same content. And I think another very important feature that we have delivered are revisions. Because there is always going to be someone who needs to review the content, who needs to check whether the changes were incorporated and whether actually something changed. And I think it's really important to have a system in place that will help you to visualize the changes and make it easier for you to do these reviews.

Virgil: 23:05

Yeah. That's very true. I mean, I know, you know, when I go into a lot of organizations, they tend to use Word for that exact reason. They can do the track changes and do that. The ironic part is usually you hit that point in which so many changes have been made. There's changes on top of changes on top of changes, and it just gets overwhelming inside a Word document to kinda figure out what is what and who's who in that. Because what I've experienced is most people track changes, but they actually don't go through that approve and deny changes process inside the word document and so that they tend to get very messy. And so I've gotta imagine having a system where you can review that but not necessarily be overwhelmed with that would be a very good idea. So one of the things that kinda go along with that side is kind of when you start going through these processes and people are actually, you know, doing the content themselves, how do you kind of utilize the technology better to kinda keep them on the same page? So we've kinda talked about that you use templates, you know, a little bit of workflow, and then you also have some kinda co authoring type capabilities. But from a messaging standpoint, so otherwise, now we've we've created a tonality guide, we've created a, you know, kind of a proper use of our information guide in that. How do you kinda bring that all together so that one, people are kind of on the same page from a writing perspective and how can you use technology to help that? And then on the other side, give them the tools so that they can know if something like what they want is already written out there. Because if you have a really large content repository, you know, how do you really enable them to be able to make sure they're utilizing their time the best?

Martin: 24:57

Yeah. I think the way how can technology help you with this particular issue is actually allowing you to define certain workflows and notifications when something has changed in the workflow. So for example, you can define different steps in your content production process. Let's say you have draft, then you have editing, then you have graphic design, and then you have final review. Or if you have someone who needs something more complicated, for example, they have someone from legal department who has to check every content that goes out because it's important for your business. So having the tool that allows you to model this loop as well is really useful. And now if you combine this with notifications that will tell you that, okay, this review has been completed, and you are now able to publish the content right away. I think it's a great way how to keep everyone on the same page. And moreover, having this workflow somehow formalized will also help you to identify bottlenecks in your team. Because you will be able to tell where the content spends the most time and whether you need to, let's say, hire more people. So for example, if you are on time with editing and creating the content, but you spend a lot of time in the graphics design step, you know that your graphic design part of the content production is a bottleneck, and you need to invest more in their step. Or if you know that you spend a lot of time on revisions and actually there's a high return rate, you know, of your content. That you find a lot of mistakes in the content. That you know there are some issues in the content production when you are actually writing the content. So I think knowing each step and each stage of the content at every every time, you know, it's really important. And I think having a tool that allows you, to define these workflows and have them actually enforced in your content production process is really helpful.

Virgil: 27:05

Yeah. When we, first started, you know, kinda helping customers a long time ago in managing their content processes, we would tend to use spreadsheets. And the one thing I noticed about spreadsheets is where spreadsheets were good and you could kinda track things in kind of a a standardized way. Overall, one of the things that kinda lacked from it is one, it it wasn't tied to the content itself. Usually in the spreadsheet, you just had, like, a title of the content and maybe where it's located or who's working on it or something like that. But I think second more important, I kinda noticed the the the spreadsheets didn't always create a sense of urgency in getting their work done. And one of the things I've liked about moving into systems like Kentico cloud is that there's kind of that visual side that shows that sense of urgency. We did a project a number of years ago, and and we've seen this repeated over and over where a customer is doing a big redevelopment of its digital content usually tied to a website redevelopment or some other major initiative. And what happens is you kinda get them and you walk them through a content strategy. You kinda come up, okay. Here's how, you know, the new architecture of the website's gonna be. Here's how's the design is gonna be. And here's all the cons the new content that needs to be generated, which could be brand new content. It could be content that's just taking existing content and actually modifying it to fit more of the new tonality in that. It could be a lot of things. And you get 2, 3000 pages of content and you get these marketing people to think, oh, this is gonna be easy. No problem. I generate press releases and stuff every day and I'm just gonna get it out the door and we're gonna be done. And then you're 5 days before launch and people are still have another 700 pages worth of content to write because inevitably they never understand how much time it actually takes to do content. And probably one of the most common things I see out of that is the bottleneck. Otherwise, they've decided to go to 1 person for approvals or 1 person for editorial reviews or something like that that has kind of caused it to be very disjointed. And then all of a sudden, you have maybe a 5 stage workflow and you have, you know, 10 documents in one stage, 20 in the other, and 500 in another because you found this bottleneck point. So one of the things I like about systems like Kentico cloud is you're able to visualize that and actually see that point in your workflow process that you're having the issues. And, potentially, if you have the capability, either work around it or reallocate resources to that.

Martin: 29:50

Yeah. I totally agree. And what I wanna mention one more thing, which I think is really helpful because I believe knowing exactly when the content is ready by receiving a notification or knowing when there's some additional comment actually helps you to reduce the waiting time. So if you know that you send your document to for a review and you receive a notification that the review has been completed, you, you know, that you can send the content to publish and you're done. You know, you don't have to wait and check several times whether someone has actually started working on the review. So I think that's another benefit.

Virgil: 30:28

Yeah. That's a really good point. I mean, one of the things I think of is, you know, how many times with technology have we we tried to also solve personality conflict or people not kinda working together well. But it sounds like, you know, from what you're saying, being able to use a more standardized process, people understand where things are at and maybe don't get as concerned with other people and their workload or maybe even get more concerned. But what were some of the other things that you've kind of seen as you've been kind of going through this process? How did it help you guys work together better as a team, not only from just a work structure standpoint, but also, you know, inevitably we all have some type of personality conflicts or this person thinks this should work this way and that way. Have you seen some evolution where some of these processes that you've put in place have actually helped you guys cooperate better as well?

Martin: 31:26

Yeah. I think the whole collaboration on content and actually creating content in a way as I describe actually help us to actually reduce a lot of, I would say, personal friction between us and the marketing department. And also in between us in the product management, because for example, the content briefs help us to better refine the topics before we start working on them. So there's less conversations once the topic is actually being processed, once we start working on the content. So we actually have less reworks, which reduce the frustration, of course, because everyone hates when he needs to redo something because your colleagues don't think it's good enough. And I think that's the worst feeling, you know, when you, when you are working on the content. And we actually, thanks to this collaboration, have less of that. And I think we are also able to put out better and higher quality content out there. So I think those are nice benefits when you don't have to worry about what you should focus on next because it's clear. And when you have clear deadlines and, you know, when you have to do something and you don't have to wrap your head around what's the next priority, I think it really helps to reduce a lot of tension from the process.

Virgil: 32:48

And it is kind of ironic that, you know, when we deal especially on on the the marketing side and kind of more of these content processes, people don't necessarily think of them like, you know, if if if you have an engineering group or you have a manufacturing group inside your organization or some kind of more scientific, more technical minded group, people fundamentally understand there's a process around that. You know, you you start here, you end here, and there's all these steps that go on between. But nobody really looks at it the same on your content journey or, you know, frankly, your customer journey that there's a process, there's a reason that customer starts to engage with you and that engagement leads somewhere. Sometimes the end result there is a little bit less defined, you know, as far as where they're going, but overall, they still have these stages. And I think to me, that's one of the biggest things about a content strategy. And when you talk about avoiding content friction is we have a story to tell. We have a journey that a customer is gonna go on, and we need to be able to find I take back we need to first understand that path, and then we need to figure out the best way to get that. And from a content standpoint, that doesn't mean just having a web page up there. That means, you know, what's on the web, how you're communicating via your digital media, the messaging your sales team is giving, all these different pieces that fit into the same story. And that's definitely a big motivation right now, especially in the world of digital marketing, is kind of understanding that cohesive story and having some consistency across what you're delivering across all the digital mediums that you use in that. And I personally have been around Kentico for a very long time, and I've been to many of your events. And this was probably the most cohesive message I've ever received at your events across all the different speakers in that. And it sounds like you guys really use this process a lot really to get ready for that conference.

Martin: 34:57

Yeah. Actually, we do. And I think the main reason is that you can see nowadays more and more companies competing for attention of their customers and their visitors. And I think it's natural because if you think that the amount of content doubles every year and that we all have definite amount of time that we can spend on consuming certain content, let's say, for our day, you are going to compete with other companies. You are going to compete with other vendors. And what is important is that you are not only competing with vendors and companies from your industry. You are competing it to also with people who you would think there are completely irrelevant for your business. But if let's say you have 4 hours a day to consume different types of content, and you have to decide whether you are going to check your Facebook, whether you're going to read the latest Twitter posts or whether you are going to read the coolest news website that you just received from, one of the vendors, all these free millions are competing with each other. And there might be vendors like Coca Cola with their coolest videos competing with your content about, let's say, I don't know, sports equipment.

Virgil: 36:20

Yeah. I mean, that's that is such a thing that, you know, now we're we're working so hard to compete for people's attention. And so, again, that kinda goes back to that whole cohesive marketing strategy and really kinda putting that together. Well, Martin, I I really appreciate you joining me today and kinda talking through this. I think this was some enlightenment around this process and some things, you know, I I've been doing content strategy for a long time. But when I was at the Kentu connections conference, I thought of some things that I hadn't necessarily thought about before. So to kinda wrap up, even though this isn't like a product promotion podcast, why don't you tell people a little bit about Kentico cloud and kinda what it has to offer specifically in kind of this area. And then also let us know if people wanted to learn more about Kentico Cloud or kinda what you guys are doing, how they might be able to get access to that.

Martin: 37:14

Yeah. Sure. So Kentico Cloud is a headless CMS where we focus a lot on collaboration and actually allowing marketers to create the best content. As I told you, we have recently added a lot of features that support collaboration like suggestion mode or workflows, and revisions. And our goal with the cloud is actually to provide you the best ways how to create the content and how you can put out the message. We are always trying to find new ways how you can work with content. So that's why we recently started working, for example, on automated recommendations engine that we believe that also reduces the amount of work that you need to do when it comes to content personalization. I think it's really cool. And I think in general, Kentico cloud can help you to streamline a lot of content friction in general. It can help you with content consolidation because you can have different types of, content in Kentico cloud, not just digital, but you can also have their content for, your brochures, or you can have their content for your emails. You can use different delivery APIs that are not limited to, particular technology. We have a lot of different SDKs, so you can actually deliver that content that you have in Kentico cloud into various channels. I think there are many use cases how we can use it. We talk a bit about them during connections. You can use that as a content repository. You can use that as a delivery engine, or you can use it, for example, to deliver content to new emerging, channels, like voice assistance or Internet of Things, you know, and stuff like that. So I think if you wanna know more about Kentico Cloud, you can go check out Kentico cloud.com. You can find some use cases there, some case studies, or you can reach out to me via email and we can discuss that as well. I think you can, put on my email to the notes, and I'm happy to discuss, content friction or KenteCloud in general with anyone.

Virgil: 39:18

Well, great. Well, again, I really appreciate you joining me and sharing this information. I think, everybody's gonna find this really useful, and I will make sure to add that information on how to contact you in some of the supplemental information from Kentico Connections, in the show notes. So thanks again, Martin, and, have a great rest of your day.

Martin: 39:37

Thank you very much. It was my pleasure. Have a nice day.

Virgil: 39:46

Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode around content friction, and I hope we were able to give you a lot of great information from that side. I think it's a very interesting topic. It's been something I've been dealing with for a really long time and working with organizations, and I think it's something so critical that even if you're only 2 people or you're 200 people in your content process, you have to have those things planned out. You have to have everybody on the same page and that otherwise can cause a lot of friction. And I think that's kind of the point and the things we need to look at. So now we come to the segment in our episode where I talk about stupid buzz. And this is where I talk about a buzzword that kind of annoys me. And I thought kinda going along with this, one of the ones that I definitely like to pick on is the buzzword omnichannel. And you probably heard it a little bit in the episode itself that I talked about not really understanding what that means or where it goes, and this is kind of a phrase we like to say multichannel, omnichannel. We like to think that this is about taking content and pushing it out all these different directions, whether it would be through our digital mediums or through our social mediums or through our offline mediums. But, basically, the concept behind it is really developing content once and pushing it all out. But what we've kind of done is we've kinda hijacked this word to mean, well, that's omnichannel. That means I can use it for anything or that means I can do anything. And we've made this a very nonsensical word that really a lot of times when people use it in their discussions, they really don't seem to understand exactly what they're talking about. So one of the things from that side is if you're gonna really look at something like an omnichannel type strategy, you actually have to break things down to its most minute components including content and understand structurally how that content comes together, how it all builds out, and how it all layers on top of one another. And then from there, you have to also understand how that all goes together and how you push that out into different channels that have different needs, different mediums. If you're pushing something out, you know, via web page or Facebook or Instagram, you, a lot of times, have lots of different ways that you're doing it on a web page. You're maybe more word focused, a lot less pictures, maybe you have some kind of video. On Facebook, again, you're probably adding words and maybe some kind of video content. On Instagram, you're looking at the image, you're looking at the, really, the visual creativity to do something, yet you wanna be conveying the exact same message. So if you're gonna use something like omnichannel and you're actually gonna say this phrase, then you actually need to understand what it means and you have to live that in practice, which means you have to look at things at a very infinite level, and you need to understand how your content fits together and how you can convey that same message across all those different channels so that you truly have an omnichannel experience. So thank you again for joining me. Hope you really enjoyed it. As always, I will have show notes and more information and some of the links that we discussed in the episode up on the website at discussing stupid.com. If you have any questions or comments, you can feel free to reach out to me at me at discussing stupid dot com. That's my email is me@discussingstupid.com, or feel free to hit me up on Twitter at discuss stupid. That's not at discussing stupid. That's at discuss stupid. And, of course, we'd love to have you as a full time subscriber. You can subscribe to us through iTunes, Spotify, and almost all the other types of accounts that you can use. So thank you very much again for joining me, and I hope you had a really great experience. And until the next time we do, go ahead and start discussing stupid on your own.