Colleen Jones: AI and The Content Advantage – Episode 39

Colleen Jones Now in its third edition, Colleen Jones's book "The Content Advantage" has become a classic in the content-profession literature. The new edition of the book continues to highlight content intelligence and content effectiveness and adds a new focus on the impact and use of AI in content programs. It also takes a fresh look at the enduring concepts of digital disruption and digital transformation, both of which have been accelerated by the arrival of new AI technology. We talked about: her work at Content Science and how it informs the forthcoming third edition of her book, "The Content Advantage" her take on the concepts of "digital disruption" and digital transformation, both of which have been accelerated by the arrival of AI the title she'd give a movie about pace of organizational adoption of AI: "Slow and Slower" how elevating content concerns to the C-suite has garnered better results for companies lke the pharma giant Pfizer how AI can accelerate the implementation of content visions, strategies, and experiences how AI can improve content intelligence and aid in the assessment of content effectiveness how the structure, framework, and methodology for assessing content effectiveness remains the same in the age of AI her push to get organizations to use digital transformation as the lever to take an end-to-end view of their content how she consciously crafts the language she uses to talk about her consulting services - for example, using the term "end-to-end" instead of "omnichannel" a correlation that she's identified between operational maturity and AI implementation how AI might improve the process of improving content performance her optimism about the prospects for content professionals in the new AI-dominated tech world Colleen's bio A content expert and Star Wars fan, Colleen Jones is the founder of Content Science, an award-winning content firm where she has advised or trained hundreds of the world's leading organizations to become content Jedis. She has worked with many of the Fortune 50, the largest U.S. web properties, the largest nonprofits, and several U.S. government agencies. She also served as the fractional head of content at Mailchimp during its high-growth period before its $12 billion acquisition by Intuit. A member of Mensa, Colleen shares insights about content, AI, and business by writing for Entrepreneur, MediaPost, Forbes, and Content Science Review and by speaking at events around the world. She has earned recognition as a top content change agent by publications such as Technical Communication and a top voice for content strategy and artificial intelligence by LinkedIn. As a top instructor on LinkedIn Learning, Colleen's courses have reached hundreds of thousands of professionals. Connect with Colleen online LinkedIn Resources mentioned in this interview Content Science The Content Advantage, third edition November 2024 Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/lumGk_5EH6Q Podcast intro transcript This is the Content and AI podcast, episode number 39. The arrival of generative AI has upended many corners of the content world. As a long-time content consultant and researcher, Colleen Jones is very aware of this phenomenon. But Colleen is equally aware of the enduring value of intelligent, effective content, and the fact that all content efforts must ultimately engage and motivate actual human beings. When applied thoughtfully and strategically at an organizational level, AI can help achieve all of these goals. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 39 of the Content + AI Podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Colleen Jones. Colleen is the president of Content Science, and also the author of the forthcoming book, The Content Advantage, in its third edition. It's been out for quite a while and the new edition has a lot of new additions about AI. Welcome, Colleen. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Colleen: Thank you so much, Larry. It is great to be here, and fantastic to connect with you again. Content Science, we have been doing all kinds of interesting things in and around content. We do a lot of professional services as part of that. We do a lot of research and analysis, and we get the opportunity to do it for clients, but also independently, just delve into things that are of interest to us or that relate to trends that we're seeing. We've been continuing that over the past several years, and I'm really excited with the third edition of the book to bring some of those updated insights, facts, stats, all that kind of good stuff into our current, very interesting situation with AI and content. Larry: Yeah, and I think that very interesting in air quotes is appropriate. And one of the things, I can't remember, I read the second edition of your book maybe five years ago, so I can't remember if digital disruption figured as prominently then, but that's how you open the third edition of the book, is with this notion of digital disruption, which I think is really apt in the age of AI, but I think it's also just in general, it's related to digital transformation and a number of other phenomena that are going on. Can you talk a little bit just about what your concept of digital disruption, and how it applies especially to content practice? Colleen: Yeah, absolutely. You know what? I mentioned it in the second edition without really having any clue of just how much disruption would happen between the second edition and the third edition, so made it much more prominent in this third edition. And really, what that is about is the pace, the acceleration of change driven by technology. And right now, what's really driving that is artificial intelligence. At a macro level, big picture view, when disruption happens, that really drives the need for change. Business models might need to change just the way a current business model is executed, might need to change all kinds of implications. Colleen: That really is what digital transformation is trying to address. And I know a lot of people see that as jargon, but in the business world it is taken kind of seriously, a lot of big budget around it. And with my book, The Content Advantage, I am really trying to tie in content to business decisions. I thought it was important to mention both digital disruption and digital transformation, and really kind of make the case for how important content is to both of those concepts. Larry: It just occurred to me literally, as we were talking that in both the case of digital transformation and the adoption of AI, you get the sense that there's a lot of director and VP and management level people who are getting the charter from on high, "We have to do digital transformation, we got to do AI." And I think that's the level that most of us operate at. Is that a correct assumption on my part? Because you're way more in the management consulting side of this than I am, I think. Colleen: Yeah, I think that there's certainly that reactive stance of, "Hey, there's a lot going on here. We really need to take this seriously. Do we really need to get into implementing AI and so on?" AI, in some ways is a shiny object. It is getting a whole lot of attention. There's that kind of reactive stance, but then we're also seeing a little bit more of a strategic approach. Something that I think is interesting is that individual adoption of AI, what we've seen over the past couple of years, especially generative AI, that can be fast. Someone creates their own account and they can start generating content, refining their prompts and so on. But organization-wide AI adoption, it has been slow and it's getting slower. If I gave it a movie title, I think I'd call it, Slow and Slower. Colleen: And I think that's a good thing because there's a little bit of pause around all of the potential pitfalls that come with AI. I think there's more realization of just how much impact generative AI can have, how much it affects an organization because content supports just about every business function. So it's far reaching in terms of implications, and so it's an opportunity to get more strategic. I think the slowness isn't necessarily bad. It's an opportunity for organizations who are really looking at potentially implementing AI at a larger scale to think about doing that strategically. And it's a big opportunity for content leaders, professionals or allies of content leaders and professionals to be a big part of that conversation. That's what I'd really love to see more of. Larry: Yeah, I've talked to a couple of people on the podcast too, especially in the content design world, in that product content world where they're often like the perennial fight for the seat of the table on these product and teams. And when they demonstrate their AI chops, they often not only get a seat at the table, they have the C-suite calling them for advice about stuff. Are there any examples of that in your practice? I'm going to keep in mind throughout the conversation that you do all this kind of independent curiosity of your own research. Are you finding any places where content people have sort of an edge, like an edge in that AI gives them a competitive edge in terms of that seat at the table or influence in an organization? Colleen: Yeah, absolutely. We've worked with, over the past year, director-level content leaders and above who really are trying to update strategy and operations to factor in AI in the right way, which I think is super exciting and that's the right way to do it, doing everything from a series of AI readiness workshops to really kind of dig into, where are the opportunities, what are the gaps we have to be able to make the most of those opportunities? That type of thing.