S1E15 - Purna Virji Reveals Digital Marketing Missteps that Made Her a Star

Jim Banks [00:00:00]:
So hello and welcome to bad decisions with Jim Banks. My guest today on bad decisions with Jim Banks is Perna. Virgie Perna was named. I didn't know this. Perna was named the most influential PPC expert of 2016. How on earth did you pull that one off? I have no idea.

Purna Virji [00:00:16]:
I have no idea.

Jim Banks [00:00:18]:
But she's also a published author, keynote speaker, columnist for countless industry publications. Publications. She worked for Microsoft and was responsible for global learning and development and is now in principle consultant for LinkedIn for contents of. I am so pleased to have you as a guest on the show today. How are you, Jim?

Purna Virji [00:00:37]:
I'm so excited to be here and chatting with you.

Jim Banks [00:00:39]:
Yeah, it's been an absolute age since we saw each other in person. But I've been following your travels. You've clearly been traveling the speaker circuit promoting your book, which we'll talk about shortly. But where have you been? Where have you sort of spoken at recently?

Purna Virji [00:00:56]:
Many lovely places. I was just in Amsterdam recently. Then before that I've done stuff in Italy, in Edinburgh, in Chicago, New York. So it's been awesome. London, Paris, Munich. So, yeah, it's been lovely to get to go out there. I mean, the main goal is to get to go and hang out with other super cool digital marketers like you, Jim. So I'm just finding my friends all around the world to hang out with.

Purna Virji [00:01:25]:
Oh, yeah. I also did Barbados Seseo, which was amazing.

Jim Banks [00:01:29]:
Yeah. Because I saw Martins announced that he's not doing it in Barbados this year or something, so I'd be interested. And also because it was always one of those things, I would see all my SEO friends going, I'm going to do Barbados SEO. And again, as much as I want to go to an event in Barbados, and I'm sure my wife would absolutely not let me go without her. It was always one of those things I thought, I can't really do an SEO only conference. I know I do Pubcon a lot. That's primarily an SEO conference, but they do have a PPC track. But I saw that Martin's kind of.

Jim Banks [00:02:03]:
He's opening up to more digital marketing broader. So for me, again, I'm hoping to take bad decisions with Jim Banks on the road, maybe turn up with a couple of beers, sit down, shoot some videos, kind of live. And again, if you're at whatever the Barbados SEO becomes, I'd love to kind of have a follow up conversation with you. At that point, I just need to.

Purna Virji [00:02:23]:
Figure out your road schedule, Jim, and then just talk to you and be at all the different events that you're at be like, hi, Jim, I'm here. And then you're like, oh, my God, what a bad decision.

Jim Banks [00:02:31]:
Because it's funny, again, I'm sure, like yourself, I mean, I spend tons of time learning about things. I mean, that's obviously, that's kind of your job is to teach people, and there's different learning styles that people have. I mean, I was dreadful at school. Couldn't. Couldn't keep concentration for a second. Keep thinking. When you see people talking about ADHD, I'm thinking, sure. Like, a lot of, like, my sort of disruptive habits at school probably were elements of that.

Jim Banks [00:02:56]:
But at the same time, I'm thinking, well, I just, again, it was just that I probably wasn't learning topics that I really understood why I needed to learn the topic at that particular point in time. But also the kind of, the method of me adding was different. So again, I've become sort of obsessed with learning from other people that have, like, you know, podcasts, YouTube video channels, that sort of thing in terms of how they structure things. And again, I'm trying. I'm trying to get better each time I do one. I think, yeah, that was better than the last one. But again, I'm sure it's a kind of iterative process. It'll take some time.

Jim Banks [00:03:29]:
But a lot of them, what they do is they sort of pile a bunch of stuff into a suitcase. They go to a location and they just sit there and just film episode after episode of inviting people in. And then obviously they can have maybe 30 days with the content when they've only had to sort of sit and actually record for a day, which is great. And that's something I think would, once you go on the road, that potentially could be what I would do. So a couple of phones, couple of tripods, a couple of microphones, a couple of beers, a couple of drinks, whatever, and then just sort of sit down and crack on and see what. What goes on. So, Perna, like I said, I'm delighted to have you on as a guest. One of the things, like when I was doing some research into kind of your background and everything else, I didn't know that you went to university in Cardiff.

Jim Banks [00:04:16]:
How is that for you?

Purna Virji [00:04:17]:
Oh, I loved it. I loved Cardiff. And, yeah, had an amazing. I went to journalism school, and it's incredible. Cardiff uni is fabulous. And best of all, I met my now husband while at Cardiff, too. So I guess it was a pretty life changing decision. Overall, it was great living there and.

Jim Banks [00:04:38]:
How did you end up where you are now because you're in Pennsylvania, is that right?

Purna Virji [00:04:41]:
That's right. So I followed the boy. Gem. So it's a. It almost sounds like the start of a joke, where you have an indian. Me and an Albanian. My husband, an Indian and Albanian, walk into a cuban bar in Wales. And then, we mean, doesn't it sound like the start of a joke? So, yes, in any case, so I met the boy, and then the boy decided to move to America.

Purna Virji [00:05:01]:
And I spent a year between London and Philly trying to decide, do I want to move here or not? And in the end, I had the world's most unromantic wedding proposal gym, where my husband, on the phone, we were just lamenting about long distance. It's so sad. And he was like, well, just like, what? Where are the flowers? Where are the roses? Where's. What story do I have to tell our grandchildren? And so, yeah, so that's how I ended up moving here and then journalism. So I went off hunting for jobs, and I found a job in tv here. So we've got a public television channel here in Philly. And so I was very lucky. I started.

Purna Virji [00:05:35]:
You know, I got a job there, worked in tv for several years. Loved it. And then move to the dark side, which our very first day of journalism school at Cardiff Uni, our professor was like, most of you in this room will end up working in pr. And we were idealistic and young and were like, never. We're gonna cover. We're gonna be serious journalists covering, like, war and strife. And then we're like, oh, no, no. The dark side has better hours.

Purna Virji [00:06:02]:
It has better pay. Like, maybe. Maybe it's a better decision to move over. And so, anyway, long story short, through working in pr, my really good friend was working in London for AOL, telling me about this thing called SEO, Google, as it was called then, not Google Ads now, but. And so I started learning it. I'm like, this is pretty interesting. I fell in love with it pretty early on. Digital marketing.

Purna Virji [00:06:29]:
Those of us who work in it, we really love it. And so I made the case to my CEO to offer these services with all the gumption that you can only have when you're in your early twenties, isn't it? And then he luckily said yes. And so that's pretty much the start of the career.

Jim Banks [00:06:44]:
And again, whenever I talk to people that are in digital marketing, we obviously have a kind of really strong bond, close affinity to each other, support each other and everything else. But when you talk to people that are not in digital marketing. And you try and explain to people what you do. I mean, again, I've, I've had so many conversations with people and they just say to me, oh, Jim, you work with computers, don't you? And I'm thinking to myself, well, again, like, we have no more equipment. I mean, I probably have more equipment because I've just spent money on gear rather than travel when we had the pandemic. But generally speaking, we don't have any more equipment than they would have in a doctor, surgery, a dentist, anything like that. It's just typically a computer, a printer, camera, maybe a webcam, microphone. That's it.

Jim Banks [00:07:30]:
I mean, that's pretty much it. And everything else is online. And again, I've tried to explain to people what we do, and I jokingly would say, I mean, people would say, what do you do for a living? And I say, have you heard of Google? And they would go, yes, I have heard of Google, but maybe in your case I should be saying, have you heard of Microsoft? Because clearly you spent time at Microsoft. But it was always one of those that would be the start of the conversation. I would help people sell things online, blah, blah, blah. Right. But how do you explain what you do to people that are not in the industry?

Purna Virji [00:08:06]:
It's so hard. And I think one of the things that I learned was trying to tailor it, of course, into people's level of awareness. If they have no idea what it is, then I'll just say, like, listen, I help businesses grow through the power of content and digital marketing on social media and on search engines. I help them get found and so that they can grow their business. And I try to keep it really, really small, you know, simple. Or then I'll use an analogy. I'll use an example. I'm like, hey, when was the last time when you were looking for this? Let's say you're in Paris and looking for a restaurant to go to.

Purna Virji [00:08:41]:
Where would you want to go or how would you find it? And I'm like, exactly. That's really how I help the right companies show up when you're looking. So sometimes a real practical application helps it hit home. But I think we've all run into this issue in this industry.

Jim Banks [00:08:56]:
Yeah, I always remember I used to, one of my clients used to be the London tourist board, so visit London as they became. And I always remember walking around London and thinking to myself, there's like, you see all this groups from Italy and groups from Japan and groups from China and all over the world. America. And I'm thinking to myself, most of these people are here because they saw one of my ads. They went looking for something. They were looking for information about Buckingham palace or something like that. And I would have an ad on Google or, you know, Microsoft showing a link to an article, editorial, written article on the visit London website, which they could then go and then actually make a booking to come in. I'm thinking without me, a lot of these people would not be here.

Jim Banks [00:09:41]:
So I always take credit for that sort of, that sort of thing happening. So.

Purna Virji [00:09:46]:
So you should, Jim, you should.

Jim Banks [00:09:49]:
Absolutely. There's no. Again, I'm a bit concerned now. Like, I'm trying to, because I've got the podcast, I'm trying to do a lot more promotion of the podcast on places like Instagram, stuff like that. And when you start looking at what people are saying, I mean, there are so many, it seems like everyone on Instagram is a multimillionaire making so much money. And they keep talking about, you know, if I was going to make, I saw somebody post the other day, if I was going to make $100,000 each year, this is what I would do. I would post content every day for 365 days. I'm thinking, well, that's not going to work because just posting stuff without sort of purpose is pointless.

Jim Banks [00:10:31]:
I mean, it's just not going to generate 100 grand's worth of revenue for you. I mean, there needs to be a little bit more business thought to it. So you're clearly, you wrote your book on content marketing. I've got the title written down. I mean, it seems like an awful long title. What, what made you come up time with the title? High impact content marketing strategies to make your content intentional, engaging and effective.

Purna Virji [00:10:54]:
So I give full credit to my publisher, Kogan Page. So I was working with Stephen Dunnell at Kogan Page, and we were. The irony is that he said, you need your title and the book cover. Before I'd even written a single word about my book. And so at this point, I'm like, hey, I have an outline of what all the chapters would be, but I'm really not ready to write my headline, quote unquote, or title yet. And then he was like, no, no, you've got to get it all settled now. Like, this is our process. And it was the first time I was writing a book and some, oh, yeah, let me go along with your process.

Purna Virji [00:11:27]:
And so he explained, he's like, you want a very clear title with Punchy. And then the subtitle has to be really really descriptive. And so I had come up with ten variations. And this is like Steven's version where he's subtitle was from Stephen. And then I had high impact content marketing. And just, I love the word impact. It was a big Microsoft word where if you're a nonprofit, if you're something else, it's not all like high revenue content marketing because it can apply, but it's impact. It can mean different things.

Jim Banks [00:12:02]:
I think when Tim Ferriss wrote his book, he did Google Ads, and he tested various titles for his book by using Google Ads. And that's how he came up with the four hour workweek, which I thought.

Purna Virji [00:12:12]:
Was a great, oh, yeah, that's really smart. When he did that. Yeah, there's so many different things you can do. So I did have a little trusted fellow author group that I would share my. So when I had my title options, I had some, you know, trusted friends or other marketers being like, give me your thoughts, tell me. And doing that. So, yeah, I focus grouped it, so to speak. You always want to because you are not your end audience.

Purna Virji [00:12:36]:
It has to be you. You know, you're creating content for other people and does it resonate with them? Cause I'm not my audience for my book.

Jim Banks [00:12:45]:
Okay, so I've got a question. When I went to look to buy the book, the hardback book was $87.44. How on earth can I know?

Purna Virji [00:12:57]:
It was frightfully expensive. I'm not sure why the hardcover costs so much, to be fair. That's a good question.

Jim Banks [00:13:05]:
Gold inlaid or something like that. Maybe that that's why it is so expensive. But again, I haven't actually. So I'm still working my way through Tim Ash's book. You see, again, I seem to have a lot of guests on that written books. I'm delighted to have you on that. You've written a book. I'm always concerned and I'm curious to know, so how long will it be, do you think, before the kind of content of your book will need to be updated for version two and then version three based on your knowledge of how things evolve over time?

Purna Virji [00:13:35]:
So that was one of the very conscious decisions that I made while writing the book was that I wanted it to be as evergreen as possible. So I'm not telling people, oh, use this platform in this way. I'm very much talking about time tested and time honored principles that have worked for centuries and infusing that, infusing an understanding. So I have a background in instructional design and learning and development. So I understand like adult learning theory. So there are so many parallels that marketers, whether you're content marketers, PPC, SEO can just take from adult learning theory and how to drive behavior change, how to hook people's attention, how to, you know, boost recall. So I've put a lot of those principles in my book. And so it's very evergreen, it's very timeless.

Purna Virji [00:14:28]:
I would say it should easily go by without any, will not need any significant revisions, but it will need maybe a couple. Because in my opening chapter, one of the things I talk about is AI and how, you know, right now things will get worse before they get better. Much like the.com boom where the.com bubble where, you know, everybody jumped on it, then it went bust, and then the Internet is what it is today. And I feel my personal opinion is that that's what will happen. And so maybe when that has happened, I'll update my book. No, it's definitely a very evergreen resource.

Jim Banks [00:15:04]:
Yeah, because you mentioned there that the kind of, the booms and busts, I mean, like again, we're in a challenging kind of set of times now with what's going on in the world. And, you know, again, there's economic pressures like pretty much in every country, inflation's been pretty high, you know, I mean, again, like in the digital marketing world, I know a lot of people are finding things tough, right. And again, that was part of the reason why I wanted to have a podcast to say, well look, you know, as a community, we're here, let's try and help each other to weather the storm and kind of get through. And we will get through. I've always maintained that, you know, whenever you get laid off or get made redundant, as we call it over here in the UK, it's the worst thing in the world to have happen to you. But virtually everyone I know, I don't think I've ever met anyone who was never better off as a result of it happening. Its painful at the time, but theyre always much better off as a result of it because sometimes they go, well, I really hated that job anyway, so im actually glad that I dont have it anymore. And again, I went through the 2000 dot boom and bust, the financial crisis of 2008, and this one, again, I think this one is probably less impactful than the previous two, but still impactful nonetheless.

Jim Banks [00:16:16]:
So can you give us some, some tips? I mean again, I always like to say I want people that listen to the podcast to get some tips. So I've got a content marketing absolute genius on, on the show. It would be remiss of me to not try and get some great tips from you on what you see as being good content marketing.

Purna Virji [00:16:33]:
I would say the number one thing is to figure out, and everyone's going to think that all the number one thing is go and understand your customers and that's actually not where to start. I would say the number one place to start when you're building your strategy, which as you had said before, just, it's not about just post every day, it's be strategic about what you're posting, what the outcomes you're trying to influence are. So start number one with your own organization. What's going to move the needle for you? What's a priority? Like many of us could have different, let's say if I'm a startup that sells different products, maybe like one of my offerings could be have a much higher lifetime value. Would be much more important for my business than something else. Though that something else might be more popular, quote unquote. But just because it's popular has high keyword volume doesn't mean that that's the one you go with. You want to prioritize your efforts on the things that are really going to move the needle for you and make you the most money.

Purna Virji [00:17:29]:
So start with figuring out how you're going to drive high impact for your organization. Like what is high impact look like. Then based on that, you want to go and identify who's the right target audience, who's my ideal customer? Who would if I, you know, we all have an 80 20. There's 20% of your customers that make 80% of the revenue. How do we get more of that cream of the crop and what do they look like? What are their characteristics? What are common reasons that they may have to make a purchase decision? Common, you know, buying, how do they buy, where do they buy? Like all of those sort of like category entry points, quote unquote, figure that out. And then, so then study those customers and learn more about your ideal customer profile. Because you just don't want to study a random cross sample. You want to study the types of people you're looking to attract more of and ask them simple questions.

Purna Virji [00:18:23]:
And if you can't talk to your customers, what I always say is if you take 45 minutes with or 30 minutes each with, you know, three or four of your best performing sales reps and ask, because they talk to customers all day long, we're just harnessing their voice to say what are common questions about this topic? How, what are the most common objections you have. What do you always say to close the sale? And if they don't work with us, who else do they want to work with? Then you have all of this amazing information that you can now use to decide the direction of your content and build out your content strategy that, oh, if I do this, this is the outcome I'm looking to drive. And then I'll leave you with one more point, which is too often marketers look at measurement at the end. And what I always say is, do not start writing a single word of content without knowing the outcomes that you're trying to influence at the end and how you'll measure it. So I know that if I'm going to try to put, so let's say you're doing this podcast, you're like, what do I want to influence with it? And I want to reach this many people, blah, blah, blah. I want to get this many subscribers. Like, that could be a goal. Then you'll know that.

Purna Virji [00:19:28]:
Okay, so my audience then tends to live on LinkedIn or Instagram, and this is where I will promote it. Everything will fall into place when, you know, you're not star. So that way you are going in the right direction. So anyway, very long and rambly answered.

Jim Banks [00:19:43]:
Jim, that's absolutely fine. Like I said, I love long and rambly answers. I give most of, most of my answers are long and rambly. So I'm delighted that you share my kind of love for rambling answers when probably something more succinct would be fine. But like I said, I love that, especially the last bit because again, I've been trying to go, I'm going to get this podcast going to put it everywhere because that's where everyone else goes and they're all talking about their download quantity and blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, I don't, I really, you know, I want to talk to a much, much smaller audience. If I was like a, you know, financial blogger or something like the financial podcast host and I was talking about, you know, the economy and loans and stuff like that, then I would expect there to be far greater volume of people wanting to listen by virtue of the fact that it's a more broad topic. Our topic is quite niche.

Jim Banks [00:20:30]:
I'm delighted it's quite niche. I consider myself to be a reasonable expert in it and I brought people who I know are reasonable experts in it into to have the conversations with me. So like I said, I think, you know, for that reason, I've got my own sort of set of objectives. I'm on my own pathway and yeah, I'll occasionally look and see what's going on elsewhere, but generally speaking, I'm on my own pathway and I'm happy to do that. And as you say, like, again, I've got an episode with Ashley Segura and one of the tips she gave me was, you know, to, again, talk to people and say, hey, could you go and listen to one of my podcast episodes and rip it apart? And again, I would love that sort of to thing to happen again. I've got broad shoulders, thick skin, whatever, you know, I'm happy to have people give me that feedback if it's going to be relevant for me to do that.

Purna Virji [00:21:21]:
Isn't that such an awesome characteristic that I think that digital marketers actually have in common? And we're such learn it all, the grounds beneath our feet shift so much and so often that we just learn to be scrappy and learn it all and refigure it out. Like, oh, let me find a better way. And that's awesome that if when you bring your Jim banks ness or your inherent awesomeness, and now with that mentality and like, trying something new, content creation is something you only learn by doing, which is such a good reminder that we have to give ourselves that, you know, it happens to every single creator where you look back six months ago and be like, eek, what was I thinking? And then each time, just because you've advanced so much from doing it.

Jim Banks [00:22:05]:
Yeah, so I love it.

Purna Virji [00:22:07]:
Do more. And anyone listening, like, please go out and start creating. You're never going to be perfect day one. And yeah, it's just a fun thing to do. And no one's expecting perfection anymore either.

Jim Banks [00:22:18]:
Yeah. And I always think it's, it's useful to have those first iterations so then you've got something, when you've made the progress that hopefully you'll make, you've got something to look back on and go, wow, that was really horrible back then. But look how, how much we've improved to where we are now, right? I think that's the whole thing. It's like, it is a journey. We're all on a journey. At some point in time, the journey will end, right for all of us. That's the only thing we all share in common, is that we're all going to die at some point. And ultimately you want to try and make a difference matter, leave some sort of, like a legacy of some description, if you can.

Jim Banks [00:22:53]:
And like I said, that's part of the reason why I'm doing this podcast to try and leave a legacy for people in digital marketing now who want to either change direction or what have you. But equally, there are a lot of people who may be not in digital marketing that might think, well, I don't really know where to start. Where should I go and listen to get information about what the industry is all about and who are the kind of leading experts to tap into to kind of get some information so that I can make informed decisions?

Purna Virji [00:23:22]:
Oh, I love that. You've always been such a generous, kind, thoughtful person, Jim.

Jim Banks [00:23:26]:
So you touched briefly on AI there. And again, we had a great conversation with Ashley about AI because obviously she's created a new company called Content Yum, and it's content marketing. And she said they don't use AI at all. What are your views on AI in terms of how people should be using it?

Purna Virji [00:23:43]:
So me personally, I have a big believer in AI giving us superpowers and helping us. I think the issue stands when we people try to take shortcuts and then just have the AI do the uncomfortable bits. I mean, I always say that if every time I've had to go to the dentist, I'm like, I wish I could pay somebody else to go for me, so I just don't have to go and deal with it. And sometimes there's shortcuts that you just can't, they're not worth it because then, you know, you can't afford to prioritize. I think when so many people. Well, let me back up for a second. I think the great thing about AI is that it's really reduced the barrier to entry for a lot of people. And more and more people are able to now create content, which is an awesome thing.

Purna Virji [00:24:26]:
It's become much more inclusive. It's like, come in. You don't need to have the super expensive studio set up or, you know, hugely expensive tools. Like when I worked for tv, we had, you know, it was like frightfully expensive. Even just final cut pro, our software for editing was just so expensive. And now I can do it. There's an app, there's a free app that lets people edit videos. So that's amazing.

Purna Virji [00:24:47]:
And you see content creators of all ages and walks of life from all corners of the globe. But what that also means is that with more and more competition, you know, content has become easier than ever to scroll past and ignore. So if you can find a way to stand out. So if you can use the AI as a tool as opposed to as a extra employee per se, then you have an advantage if you can use your AI to better understand your audiences, or if you can use it to help you reduce any awkward sounds in a podcast recording or something like that. Or add more unique, creative imagery. Or for example, on LinkedIn, we've got this new accelerate campaign creator, which is AI base. It'll help you create content. So it's almost like, leverage it to the capacity that you need.

Purna Virji [00:25:39]:
But just keeping in mind that what makes us human is always going to be in demand, and it's always going to be important.

Jim Banks [00:25:46]:
Yeah. Because I live fairly close to where I live. There's a fire station, there's a kind of an ambulance station. And literally, I mean, I think the only time I could probably create content would probably be, like, one or two in the morning. That's probably the only time I could actually make content safe in the knowledge that there wouldn't be the sound of an ambulance or a fire engine going by at some point in time while I'm actually shooting. I mean, while we've been talking here, I don't think I've heard any, but normally, like, I hear at least one or two fire engines. And as you say, AI helps me to basically take that audio piece and take it out of the audio to make it better for people so that, you know, they can have a better experience. But I think sometimes it's like, you know, you want to have the rawness and the roughness in there, because at the same time, it's like, it's part of your personality.

Jim Banks [00:26:32]:
I mean, again, you can't change your environment. You are what you are what you are. You live where you live. You have around you what you have around you. I mean, I was listening to the podcast episode I shot with Nave Hopkins, and she, like, I think before we said a couple of words, one of her dogs started barking. And it's like, that happens. I mean, I'm an old man now, and I was doing an episode with Dave Roth. I had to go timeout.

Jim Banks [00:26:55]:
I need to go for a pee, because I got. We've gone past the point where my bladder could cope with it. So I'm like, I got to go and do this and that again, that's just human nature, but it's also part of your identity. And I think it's that identity that people will tie into. It can be super polished. And I think sometimes that's where I think aa can be good. It'll give you the starting point, but you need to polish it and put your own. Like, again, I call it random gymnast.

Jim Banks [00:27:20]:
I need to put some random gymnast on it because otherwise it'll just, like I said, I could do everything in chat GPT and that will like, in no way reflect who I am as a person, what I believe as a person. Right. None of that will be in there at all. And I think it's really important that again, you need to pitch your flag in and say, this is what I'm all about. And again, most people will go either, yeah, I have similar affinity to yourself or I don't. If they don't, cool. I'm okay with that. I don't expect everyone that you meet to fall in love with you and want to hang out with you and everything else, but at the same time, it's like the ones that do, hopefully they have a good experience.

Purna Virji [00:28:01]:
You're so right. And it's authenticity, for example, is the word of the year, isn't it? And that's what it all comes down to. It's that people need to get to know you first before they can decide if they like you. And then once they like you, then they're going to start trusting you as well. So it's the three things. Like they get to know you like you, trust you, and then that's a really good formula for whether for any content creator. But if it's also polished and you know, you're, it's so the analogy always uses, like if you, if you use AI as makeup. So let me see, I'm going to slap on this extra red lipstick to look very nice on a night out.

Purna Virji [00:28:38]:
That's awesome. But if you're going to use AI as one of those masks, then you're preventing people from getting to know who you are. So use it as makeup, don't use it as a mask. Yeah, because otherwise, if it's so generic and polished and what everyone else is seeing, then why should people care? It's ignoring content takes no effort. What actually takes effort is pausing to consume the content.

Jim Banks [00:29:00]:
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. So, looking forward, what do you see the kind of next big challenges for content marketers say in the next three to five years?

Purna Virji [00:29:07]:
I think it's just trying to figure out how to use AI and then go up against all of this competition. It's tough that going up against competition, standing out, all of that has long been the case for marketers. We're used to doing that, but more so to do this now in this sort of AI heavy world where even platforms are trying to figure out what's next. So, like, increasingly people just want the one single answer. They want the one true thing. If you remember, I'm sure Jim, you'll remember this. If we think five or seven years ago, or even, let's say eight years ago, it used to be the types of articles that would do really well were like 101 tools for this. It was those big listicles where you wanted like 50 answers or more.

Purna Virji [00:29:51]:
And that was seen as a super cool post. And now if I look at a post like that, I'm like, good God, I can't be bothered. I need, just tell me the one answer. We spend hours trying to sift through content and Google made a lot of sense at that time. And now it's so much to index. It's more, just give me my one or two answers based on me, what I like and do that.

Jim Banks [00:30:14]:
Yeah. I was rather one of my friends.

Purna Virji [00:30:16]:
One of our co workers at Microsoft used to say this. He'd be like, he would say, okay, if you are traveling to a brand new city, there's definitely going to be a restaurant that you're going to absolutely love. It's absolutely right for you. AI will know it, but you won't know it. Like, you're going to go through searching and this and discovery and, you know, if only there was just an AI assistant that would say that, okay, I'm hungry. Where do I eat? And be like, well, I'm, you know, you haven't eaten thai food in a long time, so this, this is probably, and you always like to eat thai food after this. And I found the perfect restaurant for you that has these options, blah, blah, blah. That's what we want and that's the world that's going to.

Purna Virji [00:30:54]:
So when we're getting more and more, discovery is getting less and people's patience is getting less. Like, how are you really going to connect and engage with your audience and get found?

Jim Banks [00:31:04]:
Yeah. Again, I always think that there's going to be again when my wife and I decide where we're going to go for restaurant to eat. First decision is are we walking or driving? Because obviously if we're walking, then it'll be what types of shoes is you're going to wear. So that can restrict how far we're going to walk. Right. If we're staying in a, let's say we're staying at a hotel somewhere, I'm not going to go, well, we're going to walk to this restaurant. It's like 45 minutes walk. She's not going to walk 45 minutes.

Jim Banks [00:31:30]:
It's not, she can't do it. It's just like, she'll probably want to put nice shoes on to go walking, and by the time we get there, she'll be a cripple. So for me, it's like those sorts of things I think will be something that you probably should factor in, like how long do you want to walk, what you're going to wear, what's the weather like, all those types of things which ultimately can decide whether you go to one place or another. I always remember, like, one of the funniest things we used to outsource a lot of our content to third parties to create when I worked in a travel company. And one of the best pieces of content we got was a. And it was just an idea. So they basically said, there are two communities. You've got people that live in Sydney and you've got people that live in Melbourne.

Jim Banks [00:32:11]:
And literally, the content was an image on Facebook that said Sydney versus Melbourne. And there was obviously an accompanying blog post that went with it, but the content was just that image with Sydney versus Melbourne. And these verses are phenomenal. So we got something like 13,000 comments on there, about 25,000 likes and everything else, and everyone was like, oh, I think it should be Sydney, I think it should be Melbourne. And they would put why they thought it would be that way. And all we had to do was just steer the conversation. If people were being unfriendly and unhelpful, we would moderate and everything, but generally speaking, we just let everything run and we let other people answer why they thought one was better than the other. But what was really interesting is the person who worked in SEO, the company at the time, basically said, I'm not paying for that content because it wasn't 400 words.

Jim Banks [00:33:02]:
I'm like, but it was genius at the end of the day. And that's what really struck me immensely, is content, is content. And it doesn't have to be a prescribed length. It doesn't have to be a 600 word blog post with a certain amount of keyword density and everything like that. Sure, that helps if you're going to do blog posts and things like that, but at the same time, it doesn't all have to be. That's the only type of content that you put out. There needs to be other stuff in there as well.

Purna Virji [00:33:30]:
Speaking of bad decisions, I would say that marketers for two, because we're so siloed, or marketers, there's such a tendency in our industry to look at content as a means to another end, where it's like, oh, the content's going to help me. I'm going to put out all these 100 blog posts so that I can rank for local stuff on Google, or I'm gonna just need content so I can, you know, have a gated ad on social media. But that's not it. That content is so powerful in and of itself because at the end of the day, for SEOs, you are still trying to engage like, people are going to buy your content algorithms. You don't focus on algos over people because at the end of the day, people relate to people, people buy from people. And so, you know, your content has got to appeal to the people. And that 400 where all of that prescription come on now, you can't be chasing algorithms. I can say this, working, having worked at a search engine and a social media platform, like, focus on the people.

Purna Virji [00:34:26]:
Like who are the algorithms chasing the algorithms that keeping up with people and people's needs and wants. So if you're chasing the algorithm, you're always a step behind. Go and look at what people want, what they're, what's resonating with them and create for them. And if you create the content that people really like and enjoy, like the Sydney versus Melbourne people will start coming to you, they'll share others and bring that traffic. So, yeah, it's a big bad decision. Every time I hear somebody being like, oh, we need a content marketing team because we need to get more blog posts in this local area, I'm like, oh, we're missing the whole point. There's just so much goodness that is unshared that if you can put it out there, you'll get the pr links, you'll get all of this additional traffic and views, and, and then the Algos will reward content that runs additional reach.

Jim Banks [00:35:19]:
So, perna, I know you mentioned in the green room that you've got a cut and a hard stop. I really wanted to just say one. Thank you so much for being a fantastic guest on the show. I've really loved having the conversation. Way too short. We need to either sit down, do one of these live interviews when I go on the road, or find an opportunity for us to reconnect and talk in more detail about some of the stuff that you talked about. But it only remains for me to say thank you so much for being a great guest. If there is anything that kind of like you could say again, other than buying your book, which obviously there will be a link to the book in the show notes, what else would you like people to know as a result of you being on bad decisions with Jim Banks.

Purna Virji [00:35:59]:
Keep subscribing to Jim Banks this show because it's awesome. Follow Jim anywhere. Catch him speaking if you haven't, because Jim is the best and he's so loved and so respected. So that would be one and two. If you ever have any more questions, like hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter, I'm ernariji on both.

Jim Banks [00:36:16]:
There we go. Thank you so much. Well, Perna, thank you. Thanks again. And, yeah, so obviously, show notes will be there if you, as Perna said, follow the podcast, subscribe, do all that kind of cool stuff, tell your friends, tell friends that are not in the industry. It's a cool industry to come into it. So, yeah, so thanks a lot and we'll see you on the next episode.