The Future State Of Content Podcast

Welcome back to The Future State of Podcast! The podcast that helps you to think about and shape the future of an industry or vertical that will impact your life in the very near future.

This week Nick and I were joined by the brilliant Beth Gladstone, Beth runs her own micro agency Built By Content, specialising in content strategy. Beth joins us this week and drops some content gems on the current state of content and where the future of content is going.

Why Listen? We discuss everything content-related and go deep into the future state of content, including breaking down:

• Channels like TikTok, YouTube Shorts aka micro-content and why they aren’t for everyone

• Why video is a must for most not all

• What we can learn from Paris Hilton (no, not that… for her content approach on YouTube, Hulu etc)

• Long-form content is coming back and is having its moment again and why it is going to be imperative

• Why automation and SEO will always be essential channels. 

Listen Now On

Or Watch On YouTube 👇

Connect With Beth 👍

• Check out Beth's agency - https://www.builtbycontent.com

• Her Instagram is filled with recommendations and actionable content ideas - https://www.instagram.com/bethbycontent/

• Or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-gladstone/

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The Pod Breakdown 🚦

The Questions Beth Tackles:

• Where are we at with content today? 

• Why content & pairing with strategy is so hard?

• How do you manage the process of top-down content creation?

• If there are any channels you think are must-haves (and any that just should be avoided)?

• Why does everyone rush to new social networks and obsessed with micro-content?

• Should it be quality over quantity?

• How do you reuse and distribute content most effectively?

• What is the future of content?

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Great Take Away Moments 👏

Beth's Quotables 

• Brands need a mission to guide all content (look at Oatly & Olio for brand inspiration) - Watch The Tip

• The questions to ask if you are struggling with content: 

• Q. What is the aim here? Q. Why do you want to do that? Q. Does that map back to the overall company goals?  - Watch The Tip

• Vanity metrics seem great but don't get obsessed by them and what they need
  - Watch The Tip 

Danny's Quotables  

• Make art not content - make art that is not lost in social feeds - Watch The Tip

• E I E Framework: Educate, Inspire and Entertain. The core pillars that people should build content around - Watch The Tip

Nick's Quotables

• "the normal kind of VR production for example, is like producing a video game. Or a short film or something like that. It's very, very labor intensive, very expensive. You're talking 50,000 upwards to create a one-off VR experience that doesn't really live on. You know, it's an experience you have and once you've had it, once you're very unlikely to return to it, unless it's significant"
  - Watch The Tip 

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The Future State Of Content Predictions 🔮

Beth's 

• Longer form content 

• Content automation

• Mini docuseries for B2C brands (B2B brands have led the way for years)

• Programmatic SEO

• More experience-based content - drive multi-touch content

Nick's 

• AR & VR content creation tools 

• A lot more interactive content that we will be engaged with and seeking out 

• Content that drives the physical not just the digital 

Danny's 

• Experiences

• Creator editor role

• Livestream will come and go for most

• Live debate — duet remixing

• CCTV style content

• Make Art Not Content!

• Search vs discovery vs paywall 

Jump To The Prediciton Section Of The Future State Of Content Podcast ⬇️

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Thanks for listening today, if you would like to chat to Nick or me, happily hit reply or reach out on LinkedIn.

Email Us // Connect With Nick // Connect With me

Have a great week and thanks again,

Danny

Welcome back to The Future State Podcast.

Nick and I return with the 2021 wrap up and a look at what is going to be BIG in 2022.

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🎧 Listen Now 🎧

The episode is now live, click to up above or go and listen above on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Anchor and across all major podcast players. Go listen or read on for a teaser.

Favour: Quick 5 Seconds

Please do rate and review the podcast, it takes 5 seconds and it helps the podcast to spread to more people and make more people informed.

Rate On Apple // Rate on Spotify.

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The Podcast TLDR:

The most listened to The Future State of podcast(s) of the year:

Most Listened To:

1. The Future State of NFT's

2. The Future State Of Social Media & Social Networks Podcast

3. The new email client

👋 Which one was your favourite? Hit reply and let us know.

Nick’s app’s of 2021:

• Riverside - Why? For recording podcasts, webinars etc

• Canva - Why? Easy design

• Fiverr - Why? For cheap resources

• Apple podcast app - Why? For listening to podcasts

Danny’s App’s of 2021:

• Product: iPad Pro 2021 - Why? Replaced my laptop and brilliant for multitasking and removing the need to have multiple devices.

• Apps:

  • Podcast tool - Descript Why? Edit podcasts by word and phrases not in audio format (audio format editing is super slick btw)

  • around.co - Why? App that helps to shape an organisation around communications and effective comms, like sending notes post meetings to all attendees.

The Future of 2022

Nick’s Predictions

• Life: Staycations

• Tech: Work - Private members clubs & branded workspaces

  Metaverse future - Apple's AR & VR (mixed) headset

  TikTok continued dominance, NFT's become usable, Improvement in NFT's, Improved audio.

Here’s Nick dropping an idea for Nike

Danny Denhard 📝 🎙 @dannydenhard

What @Nike could do to blend the work / coworking space + adding an utility NFT's into the mix. 💡 A bright idea from @NickWalter23 for the future (From the future state of podcast)

Danny’s Predictions

• Life: First super app, New UGC platform, a boom in Payless stores, contactless and innovation in online purchases, BNPL moving towards digital banks and going after food space

• Work: Consolidation In banks, food delivery, shift to third place, hybrid future of work, huge IT hacks (Danny’s brother’s IT support and solutions company)

Consolidation blog post referenced in the podcast - https://focus.business/blog/leaders-letter-72/

So what do you think? 💭

Are you in super apps?
Are you a BNPL fan?
Concerned about IT hacks?
Do you think hybrid is the only way we move forward?
Or do you think Nick is wrong with staycations or are we going to be travelling more as we value experiences more?

Let us know!

If you’d like Nick and me to discuss anything specific hit contact button below or if you’d like to appear and talk about the future state of your industry get in touch below.

🎄 Have a great Christmas and New Year and Nick and I will be back with a couple of brilliant pitch episodes and the future state of many industries.

Welcome back to The Future State Podcast.

Nick and I return with a Black Friday Recording Special.

This week’s podcast we channel our inner Martin Lewis 👀 breaking down savings, discounts & the numerous savings days.

We dive into the world of discounts and savings and the bigger crisis we might be facing, from a green environmental POV and a business POV.

🎧 Listen Now 🎧

The episode is now live, click to listen above on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Anchor and across all major podcast players. Go listen or read on for a teaser.

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A Quick 5 Second Favour

Please do rate and review the podcast, it takes 5 seconds and it helps the podcast to spread to more people and make more people informed.

Rate On Apple // Rate on Spotify.

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The Podcast TLDR:

The Good

• General savings for consumers

• Often makes expensive seasonal gifts more affordable

The Bad

• The strain it places on logistics

• The work environment in many businesses becomes more stressful, creates more issues with internal teams and many businesses actually lose money rather the traditional Black Friday where businesses started to make money

The Ugly

• Consumerism crisis

• The cost of delivery on the environment

• Material gifts at Xmas

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Important Elements To Savings We Discuss

• Black Friday has been undone in the UK - The biggest retailers are all doing it differently. It’s causing confusion and chaos for consumers

  • We saw ‘fake Black Friday’ a week early (19th) in the U.K. - devaluing what Black Friday and Cyber Monday was designed for

  • Many are pushing Black Friday week and Black Friday month.

  • We have seen huge year on year growth of sales for Black Friday

• Singles Day

  • The West has adopted Single Day, which is traditionally an unoffical Chinese singles holiday. Singles Day in the UK is actually in March

• Amazon’s Influence

  • Prime Day - The day(s) where Amazon drives savings across the marketplace - the biggest brands can drive attention and savings to their customers as part of their brand moat

  • Amazon are reportedly planning to open 260+ stores over the next few years aka they truly know UK are hybrid shoppers 80% in store - 20% online so shopping in the U.K. has to be considered to have retail presence + online.

  • We now have Prime expectations, subscription enables us to have: fair prices, quick delivery, free returns.

• Brands using biases against us: Cashless Effect, Social Proof,

• Brands that don’t discount might actually win the long game, brands include - Apple, Peloton, Chanel, LV, Tiffany & Co, Lululemon

• Unsung Heroes - Forums and groups

  • Many saving related forums are super popular

  • Thousands of Facebook groups dedicated to it

  • The science behind why Aldi and Lidl surprise aisle

  • Many groups dedicated to how to gain an extra saving, use certain points schemes, leverage the best deals

Watch the Decarbonising The Art World Video Nick mentions.

The Future State Of Savings And Discounts

1. Personalised savings - generic savings will be phased out

2. Investors looking to change the way they invest and invest in environmentally positive and forward thinking startups, as well into hugely profitable companies

3. Brands going against the grain and not building huge savings campaigns - they create value and affinity to their customers, rewarding in smarter ways

4. Bigger shifts online - less IRL shopping and more online shopping (hopefully with greener delivery options)

5. Repackaging Science. We will see brands turn to positioning and rethinking sizes and quantities to influence our purchases
   - Examples:

   1. Nespresso comparing against your coffee priced at £3.

   2. Red Bull positioning themselves vs Coffee vs Coke. How did they do this? Smaller cans higher price. Status in a can.

6. Mass savings being reduced down slowly, brands need to control their sales prices and their partners will be educated that their brand price is their brand price.

7. Many businesses will look to offer multi level discounts across the year vs big events and days

8. We see ride hailing, food delivery constantly discounting to drive usage - we are going to see some brands have to loss lead to get any traction in the noise of big saving days and events

Let us know what you think…

@dannydenhard and @nickwalter23

Or connect with us:

Danny on LinkedIn // Nick On LinkedIn 

The Future State Of Meta Aka Facebook

Why Facebook is moving to Meta and its quest to the Metaverse

Hello and welcome back to the future state podcast.

Nick and I are back from the mini-break and started Season 3 of The Future State.

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WTAF is Meta 👀

MEME ME: Zuck spuds himself…PR 101?

Nick and I go deep and long on the Facebook rebrand, their history, their issues, their opportunity and the way they will be potentially shaping a future for the next four generations.

Listen Online Now On:

» Spotify » Apple » Anchor

The Podcast Breakdown 🎧

• Nick and Danny dive into the Meta brand, the Facebook rebrand that has a wave of memes (here is the Iceland Tourism example, the PR machine created quite a buzz but as many questions trying to understand what it means. 
  

• I take you through the history of the brand, the reason why its journey is so important and why the fights and bets made by Facebook’s leadership team have led to one of the biggest rebrands in history. 

• I answer Nick’s question of why the rebrand was so important and the other potential it had  

  • Important notes: You have 4 master brand types you can:
    (1) Monolithic (FedEx),
    (2) Endorsed (Virgin),
    (3) Free-standing (Unilever with dove, wall's etc),
    (4) Hybrid (Coca-cola company, coca-cola - diet coke - coke zero + sprite, Fanta etc)

So What is Meta?

• Group of businesses - Facebook (big blue), Instagram, WhatsApp, - VR and experimental

• Money making (Facebook app, Instagram) vs money-losing (WhatsApp, VR, metaverse building)

• Comparable to Alphabet (Google's parent company)

• Nick dives into the metaverse and the VR and AR side of the rebrand and repositioning (well worth watching the haptics ​

  • ​Watch the innovation from the Meta tech team 👇

Boz @boztank

Bringing touch and sensation to the metaverse will unlock an even greater sense of presence, but achieving this demands numerous advances in technology. Here's a look at one of the long term research challenges we're exploring in the field of haptics: tech.fb.com/inside-reality…

• Nick and I answer a listener question: From James Sinfield @ Nestle
  “In your honest opinions, will Facebook (Meta) succeed with their aim of building a new version of Internet? Is there a flaw in their thinking?”

• Then comes the future state of Facebook and Meta (including the breakdown of the metaverse) 

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The Facebook Timeline Discussed

• Facebook launched 2004

• The social network everyone wanted to join

• Private => semi-private => public

• Owned the space for photo sharing - became the place to share your photos and didn’t matter the quality

• Where you become the real you online

• Newsfeed pioneers

• Log in with Facebook - default for many online profile creations

• Like button - open analytics for Facebook

• Smart Acquisitions of:
  2009 FriendFeed (newsfeed)
  2011 Gowalla (local),
  2012 Instagram,
  2013 Atlas (advertising),
  2014 WhatsApp, Oculus 2014,
  2016 MSQRD (filter trending app),
  2017 TBH (trending app),
  2018 Bloomsbury AI
  2021 series of VR, gaming and AI purchases

• Groups

  • Open and important for: Local, community, interests, random connections and sharing

• “Marketplace” sells peer to peer or local. - they just announced live shopping to marketplace. The QVC style shopping experience

• Unruly Power

  • Fake profiles

  • Election issues

  • Misinformation Engine - particularly with Covid etc

• Moved to become a hardware provider and product company with portals and VR headsets

• As someone who had them as enters the market, flirt as a competitor and then not put a dedicated team on it - made you realise it has power but its size and internal prioritises clash

• Hit or Miss?
  Missed blogging, missed creators, missed podcasts, struggled with workplace, killed on platform gaming, struggled to entice users on VR, struggled to make crypto work, struggled to make headways in charity and crowdfunding space

• Facebook are the masters of the false currency that is engagement aka likes and reactions

Facebook Papers TLDR

• Trust Brand vs Relevant Brand: I'd argue Meta needs to be rebuilt the brand so that is trusted with your credit card - very few truly are and it's hurting huge brands away from advertising revenues

  

  Famous images from the internal leaked documents aka Facebook Files / Papers

  

• Facebook papers findings

  Young people are spending less time on the service.

  • Fewer teens are signing up.

  • Many new teen accounts are duplicates, rather than unique new users.

  • Users across age groups are creating fewer posts.

  • Despite detailed research, employees don’t fully understand why these trends are happening or why product changes have failed to reverse them.

  The famous internal meme

  

  Here Are 6 Ways To Help Shape Your Thoughts For The Near Future

1. Facebook has turned into email 2.0 - a necessary evil for many 😬

2. Facebook was the gateway to the internet for millions of users - particularly in Asia and Africa and likely to be replaced with WhatsApp in near future 😟

3. Facebook isn't a social network it's an ad's network - Facebook's biggest challenge is its algorithms and controlling how content spreads.
   This is not under control and they struggle to do so, so why will people rush to the new Meta products, software or hardware-driven. 🚩

4. Meta has to shape and control the next generation of platforms. They never shaped the iPhone or any android device. 😓

5. "Our biggest competitor by far is iMessage" - Mark Zuckerberg on 31st Oct 2018 - they are desperate to compete with OS companies and know they are under Apple and Google’s control with app stores and ad revenues 💴

6. Meta is the mega brand rebuild - a new ten-year mission that will likely see a shift to more interaction, more tools, more games, more of your money spent on the platform 🚀

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What do you think of the move? And the future?

Let us know @dannydenhard and @nickwalter23 on Twitter

The Future State of Social Media Comments 💬

How about a 🆕 social network that allows you to have conversations in the format you want and have smarter conversations?

Welcome back to The Future State Of Podcast and newsletter bundle, Nick and I are back this week to help you think of how social media can be improved and inspire change in how we think and use social media.
I’m one of your co-hosts Danny Denhard and I’ll be sharing why you should listen to this week’s pitch podcast.

This me (left) pitching my idea at Nick who’s scribbling his notes

Listen Now 🎧

Click to Listen On Spotify

Click to Listen On Apple

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Need More Of A Tease?

• Hear how social media is damaged but can be fixed with better systems

• Why multi rich format updates and conversation will lead to better conversations and richer conversations

  • Think about how you can update with audio notes, video clips, writing long-form notes and uploading meme’s and emoji’s

• Why reputation scores will help build trust

• The big existing companies just will not be able to reset their algorithms and creator ranks to improve sharing and conversation

• How Quora, LinkedIn and Reddit will be kicking themselves on paying knowledge leaders

• Why red rope and KOL (key opinion leaders) will be essential to sharing information and leading conversations

• How we are about to embrace smaller social networks vs large social networks

• Nick being impressed again with my pitch and my idea

The Full Pitch

These are the full pitch notes:

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So What Do You Really Think Of The Future Of Social Media 💭

Let’s Nick and I know of the next wave of social media and conversation online?

On social media @dannydenhard / @nickwalter23 or on email.

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Got Your Own Idea To Pitch Us? 🧐

Do you have your own idea or think you could do better? We want you to join us!

Here’s the template to use:

What

Why

How

The Business Side

• TAM

• Difficulty

• How to make money

• Competition

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Thanks for listening today and please give us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review either Apple podcasts or Spotify.

Danny (And Nick)

Or now listen to our previous episodes

The Future State Of Food Bots - Pitch Edition 🤖

The Future State Of Email Client

The Future State Of Meditation 🧘‍♀️