Introduction

Andy Crestodina Andy Crestodina has been developing high-quality content for his business customers at Orbit Media for more than 20 years. As they have incorporated AI into their workflows at the agency, Andy has discovered that the best use of these new tools is to improve the quality of their content and service offerings rather than simply doing more. We talked about: his work as co-founder and CMO at Orbit Media how he uses AI to do audience research, develop personas, and address their needs through gap analysis his playbook for querying and validating information that AI generates for him: prompt, response, edit how they manage prompts at Orbit Media how their business operations are evolving to incorporate AI practices into their operations how he uses AI in his marketing analytics how the comprehensiveness of coverage that AI brings to his content helps with conversion the essential skills that persuasion copywriters need to develop to work effectively with AI his concern that some LLMs may be getting worse, not better the importance of setting aside a focus on how to be faster and instead focus on how to be better - to focus on quality over quantity of content Andy's bio Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, an award-winning 50-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 23 years, Andy has provided digital marketing advice to 1000+ businesses. Andy has written 500+ articles on content strategy, search engine optimization, visitor psychology, analytics and most recently, AI. These articles reach more than three million readers each year. He’s also the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing. Andy gives up to 100 webinars and presentations per year and is a frequent repeat speaker at many of the top national marketing conferences. Connect with Andy online LinkedIn Orbit Media YouTube Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/yNZiusTV5kY Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 18. Creating content that gets found by Google and then persuades potential customers to act is a core competency for modern marketers. Andy Crestodina and his colleagues at Orbit Media, the agency he co-founded 20 years ago, have built websites for hundreds of businesses and created content for them that helps turn their prospects into customers. Andy uses AI extensively in his work now. His top finding? Focus on how AI can improve the quality of your work, not just your productivity. Interview transcript Larry: Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number 18 of the Content and AI podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show Andy Crestodina. Andy is the co-founder and CMO at Orbit Media. It's a Chicago based agency that does website development and a lot of other marketing stuff. So welcome, Andy. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're doing these days. Andy: Sure, Larry. Well, thanks for having me. 20 however many years ago, 2001, co-founded an agency. An agency totally focused on the website itself. So we build sites and we improve them forever after doing optimization work, both search and conversion optimization. It's a 55-person firm that we grew strictly from organic and content marketing. So I'm someone that you might see if you go to an event like Content Marketing World, Social Media Marketing World, MozCon. I speak at a lot of search events and analytics events, but I'm an old-school content marketer who's built an agency focused on websites. Larry: Nice. Yeah. We must have run into each other somewhere along the line because I ran in that world a lot back around that same time, the early 2000s. But one of the things that's so interesting ... So we've seen this evolution together and seen a lot of the ... There's always been a lot of drudgery associated with our work and a lot of intellectual ...