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*Summary*

Tyler Hakes describes his week-long project to build a content marketing strategy, focusing on researching customer personas, developing strategies, and ideating content. He highlights the challenges for content leaders in mid-market and startups, such as aligning content with goals, managing resources, and using AI tools. Key topics include justifying the value of content marketing, maintaining quality, and aligning SEO with brand messaging. Hakes identifies two buyer personas: mid-market leaders looking for efficient solutions and young companies experimenting with AI-driven content. He also explores the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for Optimist as a content marketing agency.

*The central theses*

• Building a content marketing strategy involves customer persona research, channel research, strategy development, tactical execution, and content ideation.
• Mid-market content leaders lead the content department, collaborate with cross-functional teams, focus on SEO and growth, and optimize content workflows.
• Challenges for content leaders include aligning content with internal goals, convincing superiors of its value, maintaining quality at scale, managing outside writers, and staying on budget through reporting.
• Goals for content leaders include balancing measurable and non-attributable content, aligning content with SEO and brand messaging, and using data to improve strategy.
• Optimist's strengths lie in freelance talent, scalable processes, and high-quality content creation. Its weaknesses include a high price tag and limited expertise in technical SEO and audio/video content.
• Opportunities for Optimist lie in expanding into audio and video content, while threats come from the rise of AI in content creation and the evolution of SEO practices.

*Key moments*

[00:00] Introduction and setup
[13:11] Customer personality research
[27:19] The role of a mid-market content leader
[39:21] Goals for a mid-market content leader
[46:06] Concerns about a leading provider of mid-sized content
[57:45] Balancing measurable and non-attributable content
[01:21:57] Managing external authors and agencies
[01:29:50] Use data to improve content strategy
[02:07:14] Balancing quality and efficiency
[02:13:07] The role of AI in optimizing processes
[02:18:15] Challenges and solutions for startups
[02:25:07] The need for efficient and cost-effective content solutions
[02:36:08] The rise of AI in content creation and the evolving nature of SEO
[02:48:47] Helping content leaders become strategic enablers

*About Tyler Hakes*

Tyler has been working in content marketing and SEO for over a decade. He has worked in corporate and agency roles, and previously led the growth of a VC-backed startup. The team was able to scale from 0 to a stream of more than 100,000 targeted visitors per month—and over 1 million total website users—within a year of launch. They achieved this organic growth almost entirely through content, SEO, and social media.

In 2016, he founded Optimist, a full-service content marketing agency. As Director of Strategy and Managing Director, Tyler works with startups, SaaS companies, and other organizations to achieve sustainable growth using strategic content marketing and SEO.

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