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Don’t Miss the Big News Hidden in Google’s Cool AI Tools Announcements

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Don’t Miss the Big News Hidden in Google’s Cool AI Tools Announcements

Last week, Google gathered to announce all the things they’re developing.

Google’s reveals focused on its main product and revenue model – search and advertising. Not surprisingly, those two categories pique the interest of marketers everywhere. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Among the more fun news comes an immersive view for routes in Google Maps for some cities, an AI-powered Magic Editor for photos, and an AI-driven Magic Compose tool to rewrite more positively, professionally, or Shakespearean-like text. (Google seems to equate AI and magic.)

Google shared news about Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. The waitlist is gone, and the tool operates in English, Japanese, and Korean. Plus, it can surface images in its responses, some of which may be integrated with Adobe’s AI art generator Firefly and possibly modified in Adobe tools.

Now, onto the biggest-but-less-noticed Google announcement.

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CMI’s chief strategy advisor Robert Rose shares his thoughts in this week’s CMI News video. Watch it below, or keep reading for the highlights:

The biggest news for marketers

What marketers care about came as almost a throwaway line in all the cool new features: Google plans to change the presentation of search results. To no one’s surprise, the look will integrate artificial intelligence.

@Google plans to change the presentation of search results and integrate artificial intelligence, says @CMIContent via @Robert_Rose. Click To Tweet

Robert says the fascinating development portends interesting implications for marketers who care about the future of organic search.

In Google’s demonstration at the I/O Conference, someone “asks” the search engine: “What’s better for a family with kids under 3 and a dog, Bryce Canyon or Arches National Park?” Google Search returns a lengthy answer detailing the pros and cons of each.

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“Now, search does the heavy lifting for you,” explains Cathy Edwards, vice president of Google Search, during the conference.

But does it? Does it really?

“If you read the response, it reads very much like what’s now beginning to become a classically formatted generative AI response,” Robert says.

Here’s how the result returned by the experimental generative AI:

Both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family-friendly. Although both parks prohibit dogs on unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon has two paved trails that allow dogs.

“Bryce Canyon has distinctive features like hoodoos, natural bridges, and waterfalls. At the visitor center’s interactive exhibits, children can learn about the geology, wildlife, and people of the area. You can bring your dog on the paved sections of both the Rim Trail and the Shared Use Path, both of which are also stroller-friendly.

“At Arches, children may enjoy the rock formations, and some say that Arches has more variety than Bryce Canyon. Pets aren’t allowed on any trails, though they are allowed at campgrounds, pullouts, roads, and parking lots.

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“Both parks offer guided tours, ranger-led programs, picnic areas, and restrooms, and both parks require pets to be leashed.

1684546059 337 Dont Miss the Big News Hidden in Googles Cool AI

Robert explains, “The answer is quite logical, well-constructed, has a lot of adjectives, and, ultimately, provides little value.”

Even @Google couldn’t return a valuable #AI-generated result to the searcher example it shared, says @CMIContent via @Robert_Rose. Click To Tweet

It pulls relevant but general features from both parks. It attempts to distinguish between the two by saying Bryce allows dogs on two paved trails. But a bit more digging would have led the searcher to discover both parks have the same policy – dogs are allowed on paved roads. Bryce just has a few paved roads that are part of some trails.

Though the result attempts to draw distinctions, a vague partial statement acts as the only real hint at the differences, “… some say the Arches has more variety than Bryce Canyon.”

But what that means isn’t terribly clear, and it wasn’t asked in the search question.

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At the end of the text response, Google offers up three options to explore further:

  • “Ask a follow up.”
  • “How long to spend in Bryce Canyon with kids?”
  • “How many days do you need in Arches National Park for kids?”

Those closing options could easily be turned into sponsored links to keep the Google gravy train rolling.

2 steps to sidestep deathly predictions

“I don’t mean to pick on Google. The tech just demonstrates what may be coming,” Robert says. “But I do want to pick on the knee-jerk reaction that search traffic will diminish, or this will kill publishers.

You can expect search engines like Google, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and many other verticalized products to eventually evolve like what Google demonstrated this past week.

So, Robert says, ask yourself how your brand will respond now and what it will do about it in the long term. He sees at least two safe bets to survive the future impact of AI on search results.

First, create content that not only attracts but retains an audience. Focus on more than getting people into your sphere of influence – your website, email, content hub, store, etc. Plan on how to keep people at your content by becoming a trusted, bookmarked source.

Second, invest in owned media by understanding how to create content in the context of questions asked. The expertise powering any AI search relies heavily on accessing owned media. It also uses a large language model (LLM) to learn that information.

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“Look at your content through the lens of a searcher who wants to distinguish between the most important aspects of their question,” Robert says.

Understand how to create #content that answers questions asked by searchers who want to distinguish differences, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Go back to Google’s example of the two U.S. parks. The searcher wanted to know which park is better for a family with a dog. When CMI’s human (aka Robert) spent 10 minutes digging into both parks’ websites, he found they did well detailing why dogs aren’t great to bring to the parks. However, neither explained why it would be suitable for a pet.

What haven’t you written about but should?

You often talk about the greatness of your business, products, and industry on your websites, blogs, and resource centers. But what’s not so great? Who do you not serve? Make it easier for searchers to see the distinctions.

“You can’t know where Google and other search engines’ AI will go, but you can know it’s going,” Robert says.

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What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments.

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute



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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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