#38 - Jeffrey Zhao

Nathan Thompson has built AI content creation systems at Copy.ai and Fullcast, figuring out how to take content production from eight blog posts a month to as many as five a day. But as he built these systems, he realized that producing more content was the easy part. The bigger challenge was making sure the content was actually worth reading, which led him to focus more on the original ideas and expertise going into the system.He tells us all about how he built these AI workflows and how his approach changed as he learned what worked. We get into why he started investing more time in interviews and conversations with experts, how bringing that source material into his content helped turn more readers into customers, and why he thinks AI could fundamentally change the role of marketers by freeing them up to focus on better ideas and conversations.

Jeffrey Zhao is the co-founder of Ordinal, the social publishing platform behind more than a thousand B2B companies, including the marketing teams at Clay and Zapier. It's also the platform Good Content runs on every day. Jeffrey and Ordinal have a clear point of view on where B2B marketing is heading: social has moved from a brand channel measured in impressions to a revenue channel that actually drives pipeline.He opens the curtain on how the best teams he works with build real content systems around executive and employee advocacy, and why having a system matters more than any single strategy. We get into his playbook for sourcing, creating, and distributing content, why ICP engagement beats vanity metrics, and how teams should think about measurement when attribution will never be perfect. We also look a few years ahead at how AI is changing the job of the social manager, from an individual player to the conductor of the whole orchestra.

Anthony Pierri is the co-founder of Fletch, a positioning consultancy that has helped more than 500 B2B software companies get clearer on what they should be known for. He sees positioning less as a messaging exercise and more as a business decision, because once you choose the story you want to tell, you also choose what you are willing to leave behind.In this episode, he tells us all about the three positioning paths he sees most often: entering a mature category, building inside an emerging one, or trying to create a category of your own. From there, we talk about why each path leads to a different kind of content strategy, why homepage copy tends to expose whether the team is actually aligned, and why focusing on a smaller market can sometimes be the move that changes the whole business.

Eleanor Warnock is the managing director at Every, a media and software company at the cutting edge of AI. Every has automated as much as it can, built agents into the way the company works, and become a real model for what an AI-native company can look like. But Eleanor’s recent piece, “Socrates as a Service,” makes a case for one skill that AI still can’t replace: the interview.She tells us all about why the best stories still need a human to uncover them, what makes interviewing such an important skill in the age of AI, and why “extraction” is becoming more valuable as execution gets easier. We also get into her own process as a writer and editor, how she uses Claude without handing over the writing itself, and why the scarce thing now is not more content, but better questions.

Stephanie Bowker is the head of marketing at Metaview, an AI hiring platform that helps recruiting teams with interview notes, sourcing, application review, and more. Last quarter, she and her team made a series of polished commercial videos about the tension between recruiters and hiring managers, put them out across LinkedIn, LinkedIn Connected TV, and YouTube, and drove more than 15 million views and a 25% spike in direct and organic website traffic.In this episode, Stephanie tells us all about the process behind that work. We get into how she went looking for the real drama inside Metaview’s ICP, how she found the tension that recruiters already felt every day, and how her team tested that idea with scrappy lo-fi videos before putting real budget behind the bigger commercial spots. We also talk about what makes top-of-funnel content actually land, why LinkedIn Connected TV worked so well for this campaign, and where AI can help marketers move faster without replacing the human judgment that makes the work land.

Ara Kharazian is the lead economist at Ramp, where he uses the company’s spend data to produce original economic research. Because Ramp sees how thousands of companies are spending in real time, Ara is able to spot and explain patterns in where business is moving. He’s been especially focused on AI spending inside companies: how much businesses are actually spending on LLM tools, with which companies, and how those patterns are changing over time.Ara tells us all about how Ramp built its insights content motion, why first-party data can be such a powerful way to earn attention, and how he thinks about finding stories inside a company’s data set. We also get into how he built credibility with reporters and researchers, why Ramp makes parts of its data interactive and public, and what other companies should think about before trying to turn their own data into content.

Pranav Piyush is the CEO of Paramark, a marketing measurement company helping brands cut through attribution noise and understand what is actually driving business results. Paramark works with companies on measurement fundamentals like marketing mix modeling and incrementality testing, bringing more scientific thinking to one of the messiest questions in marketing: how do we know if this is working?He tells us all about why traditional attribution models are mostly broken, what smaller teams should pay attention to before they have enough data for real measurement, and how marketers can think more scientifically without overcomplicating the work. We also get into why product and marketing are more connected than most companies realize, how he thinks about building Paramark’s own content program, and why the best content in the AI era has to come from real conversations, real experiences, and real life.

Barney O’Kelly leads product and solutions marketing at AlixPartners, a global consulting firm with thousands of employees and billions in revenue. Inside a firm like that, getting executives to show up on LinkedIn isn’t easy, but Barney has been a lone evangelist for this motion, helping hesitant leaders get out there, share their thinking, and build real relationships. He tells us all about how he introduced executive-led content internally, the resistance he faced, and how he reframed “personal brand” into something that actually resonated: be seen and make friends.He tells us all about the psychology behind why executives hesitate to post, how to get past the “I’m not interesting” hurdle, why engagement metrics are often misleading, and how this motion actually drives real conversations, relationships, and revenue. It’s a practical look at how executive presence can work inside a large, legacy firm, and what it actually takes to make it stick.

Richard van der Blom has spent years studying LinkedIn more rigorously than almost anyone else. Every year, he and his team analyze more than 2 million LinkedIn posts and turn that data into his widely read Algorithm InSights Report. In this episode, we get into what he’s seeing on the platform right now, from declining reach to LinkedIn’s shift from network-based distribution to interest-based distribution, and what that means for anyone using LinkedIn as a serious growth channel. He tells us all about what “consumption rate” means for posts and videos, why overhauling your profile matters more than most people think, how Richard sees the balance between AI and authenticity on the platform, why there is still real opportunity on LinkedIn in 2026, and what creators and B2B operators should actually do if they want to earn attention, build authority, and turn that into pipeline.

Chris Eberhardt leads marketing at Clarify, a Series A CRM trying to break through in one of the most crowded software categories out there. Instead of chasing more channels and more volume, Clarify has focused on building trust around its founder, Patrick Thompson, and extending that voice beyond LinkedIn through a long-form executive newsletter.Chris tells us about how that newsletter, Founder Therapy, came together, why they built the audience from scratch instead of importing subscribers, what makes an executive newsletter work, and what they’ve learned so far about using long-form content to build trust with founders.