The WP Minute+

Matt (00:01)
Matt Osmon, welcome to the WP minute.

Maddy Osman (00:04)
Thank you so much for having me.

Matt (00:06)
⁓ boy, it's been a while. You and I were on, I think it was like a webinar or some kind of panel many years ago talking about automation. You recently wrote a guest post or a post for Zapier, ⁓ speaking of automation, where you shared some of my ⁓ vibe coding. I was trying to find a way to insult myself because it was pretty bad. ⁓

Maddy Osman (00:16)
Yep.

vibe coding.

Matt (00:36)
Now, it was an excellent article. You wrote some great stuff, not just me, about others. ⁓ So it tells me you're still in the automation space. You're still covering technology. We'll get about we'll get to why you're still covering technology in a minute. But tell folks what you've been up to for the last couple of years.

Maddy Osman (00:55)
man, last couple years. Well, the biggest thing is I had a baby, so that like changes everything about my life. Thank you. And so that that definitely

Matt (01:00)
Congratulations, it does.

Maddy Osman (01:06)
through a bit of a wrench in, I would say like, you know, just career development stuff in the meantime. But I wrote a book over the pandemic. So that was my big pandemic project. Besides, I also started a sourdough starter twice. They got kind of funky, so I had to restart it.

Matt (01:24)
Ooh.

Maddy Osman (01:30)
And then I guess like the latest big thing is I launched a LinkedIn learning course that's kind of like based on what I talked about in my book. And now I'm just trying to figure out what to do in this world of AI. Make my way in. So it's on Amazon and it's called Writing for Humans and Robots, the New Rules of Content Style. I always keep one by my desk just for moments like these.

Matt (01:45)
Where can folks go to get the book?

Fantastic.

Fantastic. Is that something that you always wanted to do? Write a book or did it just like, did you happen upon it?

Maddy Osman (02:04)
⁓ so I did NaNoWriMo, if you've heard of that. For those who are unfamiliar, National Novel Writing Month, I think it's now defunct because it was like a non-profit. There's some stuff going on with leadership. But anyway, I went into November of that year basically saying I want to do this NaNoWriMo.

⁓ project, which the goal is to write 50,000 words in a month, which sounds like a lot, but if you break it down, it's about 1,666 per day, something like that, like a long blog post. ⁓ And so I didn't know what I wanted to write going into it, but then I realized like I have this great foundation of content that I've already kind of created for my own business in the form of a writing style guide. And so I kind of use that as an outline.

for my book and it and the pieces fell together but to answer your question no it wasn't necessarily something that I've always wanted to do it just kind of the pieces fell together

Matt (03:08)
It's interesting this AI landscape that we find ourselves in. And I love your perspective for somebody who spends her time like writing words for other humans to read. ⁓

Maddy Osman (03:17)
Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Matt (03:22)
You know, listen, I am optimistic, skeptic, but an optimist at the same time with this AI stuff. I don't see it taking over everything immediately. Like, I don't see this this rush to like, we're going to fire 30 percent of our staff, you know, and like some of these like call to actions that I see CEOs putting out. And then the more the more that I see it, the more I'm like, this is just you like

Maddy Osman (03:30)
same.

I'm gonna do it.

Right.

my God.

Matt (03:52)
doing PR stuff. This is you like pandering to either like your investors or to the market to be like, like every other company when the economy, air quotes, when the economy is bad, cut jobs because everybody goes, okay, so looks like you're doing something to like sustain this. ⁓ We'll get into deeper pockets of it in a moment, but like what's your outlook on AI and how it's impacting your business?

Maddy Osman (04:19)
Totally. Yeah, I mean, as a content creator, I think that was like one of the first, ⁓ I'm trying to find the word, you know, like.

just groups, right, to be kind of affected by AI, like in terms of professions. It kind of hit content creators like the hardest first because AI, the way that we're using it right now is generative. You can generate texts, you can generate images, ⁓ you can use it to do other important marketing functions and things like that as well. And so I think it's interesting what you were just saying too about the CEOs and kind of like how they're

responding to AI and my, guess, just digging into it, my understanding of AI so far is that like it really can't replicate everything right now.

⁓ But you know, it is a tool. think I'm what I'm sort of discovering for myself is I had my head in the sand a little bit and I was playing with AI but I wasn't necessarily doing anything advanced with it, you know, just basic chat GBT back and forth kind of things. And then I don't know some sort of switch flipped for me in the past maybe six months or so where ⁓

My background's in coding. don't necessarily do that, you know, sort of hands-on, day-to-day at this point and running my business and being in the content world. But I really used to love doing it.

And I think that having things like vibe coding tools has brought back that love for me in a new and totally different way and supercharged because it's being able to do things that I would not have been able to do without years of coding knowledge and experience. ⁓ So I don't know, I'm kind of like you. I'm skeptical. I'm optimistic. I'm...

really interested in how we can use AI to create better workflows. I'm not as interested in using AI to replace human ingenuity, human thought, human opinion, that sort of thing.

Matt (06:31)
I had John Doherty from Editor Ninja on the podcast ⁓ a few episodes, a few episodes ago, and I thought it was funny. He and I kind of joked about this where he started out with like content, writing content for customers, and then customers were like, well, we really need an editor. And so he started like, you know, doing those services and really, you know,

Maddy Osman (06:34)
Another Denver.

⁓

Mm-hmm.

Matt (06:59)
punching down on the editing services, but then he had all these customers come to him with like, we generated all this AI content, can you edit it for me? And like in the back of my head, I'm just like, wait a minute, all you people did was replace like the originator of the content with AI, but now you're going back to a human to make it better. Why not just start with the human to begin with? Like, why did we swap this? Like it's great for his business.

Maddy Osman (07:02)
Totally.

Yep.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Matt (07:27)
But

it was just like, all you did was like swap one thing for another. How is that? How is AI and the customer's perceptions affected like your your blog writing for customers? Has it affected all positive or negative?

Maddy Osman (07:41)
Yeah, I would say more for the negative in general, especially when we talk about like this world of SEO content, which has been kind of what my business has been associated with. We do so many other things, know, white papers, case studies, landing pages, whatever, but it's like...

It's like people think that this world of SEO content can be so easily replicated by working with an AI tool in some ways for the super top of funnel things that are extremely straightforward and they have this wide body of work that already exists. I think that's probably true. ⁓ but that perception is kind of like floating down, you know, to the middle and the bottom of the funnel and the more like complicated assets that, that we humans create. And so, yeah, I mean, it is.

it is a tough perception and I think that what's actually playing out in the world is that these brands that maybe have traditionally worked with human writers are now kind of like flipping over to trying the AI side of generating content, you know, maybe working with a human editor kind of thing.

And what I think they should really be doing is doing both in tandem, experimenting with AI content and figuring out how that can fit into a workflow. not necessarily, I don't think we're at a point where we can give up completely that human originator to your point.

And like, you know, what you're saying about that too, reminded me of a client that we worked with recently who had given us, I don't know if it was a blog article, ⁓ maybe it was a slightly longer form thing, but they had used chat GBT or whatever to create it. And I think that it had started, you know, maybe with some original content, like a webinar, they were repurposing or something like that. And, and I'm all for that. think when you're repurposing,

your own body of work. That's like a different thing than generating something from scratch. The things that come along with that, is it plagiarism? Is it even correct fact? Whatever. But ⁓ with this particular client, they neglected to tell us that it was chat GPT derived and we kind of came to our own conclusions just looking at the pattern of words and things like that. it ⁓ creates a problem, I think, when clients

are not disclosing that because then it's like I don't even know where to start with fact checking, plagiarism checking, you know, whatever. It creates new problems when it's not disclosed, I guess.

Matt (10:17)
Yeah, well, I wanna tell you how I'm trying to, so obviously people listening to this, you're listening here to the WP Minute, everybody kinda knows if you're listening to this, like the WP Minute is a blog, it's a newsletter, it's a podcast, it's a YouTube channel, it's omni-channel publication, as I like to say. But I too am worried about how AI is ⁓ interfering or diluting that experience because,

Maddy Osman (10:35)
Yeah.

Matt (10:45)
Well, whatever you're to go get your WordPress updates from chat GPT. You can ask it to tell you what's happening with WordPress every single day through chat GPT tasks. Why would you need to listen to me talk about it anymore? ⁓ But there's definitely like I do that. I do that to test chat GPT. And it's like the shittiest experience ever. Like like if you want chat GPT to give you WordPress updates, it just gives you ⁓ any kind of like security vulnerability.

Maddy Osman (10:52)
Right?

Great.

Yeah. ⁓

Matt (11:13)
that it finds on the internet and that's the WordPress update. That's all you get.

You don't get the human side of it. The point of that is, is one of the apps that I VibeCoded, which you covered for the Zapier blog, PulseWP, I'm using that as a way to replicate myself and build myself out of a job to see how good it actually does. But let's just hold that thought for a second. ⁓

Maddy Osman (11:24)
You

Yeah.

And I love

that app that you built. I've tried to replicate it myself in Replet. I can't remember. Maybe I did it for like AI news or something. So I just thought that was such a great idea.

Matt (11:47)
Yeah.

So we'll hold that for a second and we'll use that as a teaser to go down that path in a moment. I. I was terrible. I was terrible at writing growing up. Like, I think I've read three books my entire life. My my son, my son, who is eight, going to be nine, has read more books than I will ever read in my lifetime. And I'm like super happy that he does that. But. ⁓

Maddy Osman (11:54)
you

Mm.

You

Matt (12:14)
So, I used to, once I started the blog, once I started the WP minute, like I could sit down in a couple hours and write a thousand words on a topic that I'm like super passionate about. It was really doing a lot of that stuff. And then AI came out and to increase productivity, because I have a day job, I have kids, I have the WP minute. I was like, well, let me see if I can leverage AI to just make me more productive. And this is a long way of getting to.

Maddy Osman (12:40)
Yeah.

Matt (12:43)
So what I do now when I draft blog posts is I just audio, I just record myself in audio, big thoughts, big ideas. Like I'm getting old now. Like I don't go for runs as much anymore, but I go for walks, right? Cause my body, my body's like, you can't run anymore. You have to walk. ⁓ So when on those walks, I will just transcribe a thought for like 30, 45 minutes. And then I get back home and I feed it to chat GPT and I outline all this stuff, right? And

Maddy Osman (12:49)
Yep.

There you go.

Love it.

Matt (13:13)
Yeah, I'm more productive, but I guess what I'm getting at here is I feel like I kind of miss sitting down writing and being like, no, I don't like that idea. Let me formulate that again. it's yeah. And it's like, I feel like I'm losing that. like, I can feel myself losing that. And then it makes me like scared for humanity. Right. Because I'm like, like if we're not writing anymore, like should like should we be leveraging these things? So

Maddy Osman (13:24)
struggling with that a bit.

Hmm.

you

Matt (13:42)
Well, how has that affected, how has AI affected you on that like emotional level and that skill of writing? I mean, maybe you're not using AI, you'll tell us, but like how has that affected your life at all?

Maddy Osman (13:46)
Yeah.

Sure, and my process is very similar to yours. I am like ruled by my voice memos. I'm trying to vibe code like a new tool that I could use to like intake the voice memo and then like do like different things with it. So that's like very top of mind for me because that works really well with my process. ⁓ yeah, again, it's transcribing it. It's...

kind of like reworking it. think those are things that AI is exceptionally well at because it just like you're saying, you know, going on a walk, you kind of bounce around, you know, you go down this tangent, you go, you know, to this other one, and then it reminds you of another thing, or maybe you see something on your walk and then it just, you know, sparks something. So I think, I think something like chat GPT is great. The, the whole basis on identifying patterns, like it does that better than we do. So I think it is great.

Matt (14:46)
⁓ Do you feel

like that's still authentic?

Maddy Osman (14:50)
Like, like if I'm publishing something, for example, that I, that I use like that flow for, I think.

Matt (14:57)
Yeah, like...

Do you?

Maddy Osman (14:59)
I that you have to, I think that you can't just stop, right? At voice memo to transcript to here's my prompt and here's the end result. You still need to be like an editor on that. And honestly, in my process, I usually won't go straight to like a draft. I'll do an outline. And then I might ask it to draft it. If I've given it really sufficient material, if it's probably like a shorter form asset, that's something that I would do. But then yes, I would go through and I would check and I would see

Did it introduce anything new? I might even ask it that, you know, like, did you make something up here or is this like verbatim from what I said and you've just reordered it? ⁓ But what you were saying before, too, I think AI can become a crutch if we let it. And it's easy to fall into it because it's just such a big part of our lives now as we experiment with it, as we, you know, try new things. And so I think as content creators, it's

up to us to, you know, not let the crutch become that we don't ever struggle with those ideas, right? And coming up with ideas and the way of putting them ourselves and also that we are very careful to fact check.

Matt (16:14)
Yeah, I've been, I'm sure like everybody else, like critically thinking about how to ⁓ compete and how to survive in this AI era that we're in. And, you know, like I haven't sold websites as a website agency for almost like eight or nine years, like whenever I stop ⁓ working at my agency. And, ⁓ you know, one of the things is, like,

Maddy Osman (16:23)
Yeah.

Matt (16:43)
The advice I'm trying to give to folks these days, though I'm not living it day to day, is like everybody can build a website now. if you wanted to get into agency game, which I still think like services is still super viable, like I still think you can be profitable building websites, it's just going to be different. I think the particular angle you have to compete on is the experiences that you've lived as a human.

Maddy Osman (16:52)
They can't.

Rape.

Mmm, yup.

Matt (17:13)
If I'm going in to sell websites to say like nonprofits, I better have lived in that nonprofit world to really compete. mean, obviously there's nuances, there's edge cases, right? But I think if you really want to win, like you could dial down on the experiences that you've lived to really separate yourself from that other person who's also using these tools to be more efficient. So I'm curious of like, has that

Maddy Osman (17:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Matt (17:43)
transited into like writing to like, well, writers, well, customers hire writers that have lived these experiences, like Zapier, for instance, like you've you're writing for Zapier. I'm sure they must have been like, have you ever used Zapier before? And you're like, well, yes, I have. And I've used and and I've used automation in my business. Right. Like how has that how how do you see the human experience being the advantage ⁓ these days?

Maddy Osman (17:57)
I was like, no.

Yeah, no, I love that you

said that. And I think about it too, the way I kind of put it is like that expert operator.

and like all else equal, know, if I'm a writer using AI or marketer, whatever, and I'm going against going out, if we're doing a side-by-side comparison and I'm going up against somebody who doesn't have that background, doesn't have that lived experience, the way that we use this tool, because that's all AI is, is going to be fundamentally different, right? Because I'm also like questioning the outputs, right? I'm not just like blindly accepting it. I'm like, no, you kind of missed the mark here. You know, I was really looking for

this or, you know, whatever my initial prompt, I'm structuring it based on kind of what I know and what I want as the end result. So I do think that's really important. And like, I think something that companies have to consider too, is like, you could build like these different AI workflows and things like that, but you still need a human operator to run them so that they can catch the problems and also so that they could get the most out of them. And, and really too, you can build something. But I think like,

you something I've learned just with like using Zapier, for example, it's like, you always have to like maintain it too, because the different, you know, tools that are connecting, they might change, right? Or, ⁓ you know, just new technologies being introduced that affects, you know, your end result. And so, yeah, even if you, you know, were to like build a workflow and then like give it to somebody else, they need to become an expert operator to get the most out of that workflow.

Matt (19:44)
Yeah, yeah, it's it's almost no different like for the writing prompts ⁓ as it is for the for the coding prompts, right? It's like understanding fundamental things, right? Like, you know, you can't just go to, let's say, replit and give it a two line, a two sentence prompt and expect you to like replicate this massive app that you're that you're trying to like replicate.

Maddy Osman (19:48)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Totally.

Matt (20:11)
I mean,

it'll do something from like a design perspective and it'll like it'll look like the app. You're like, this is pretty cool. Then you realize like none of it functions. And then you're like, my God. Yeah. So and the same thing for like writing. You know, one of the other things I really struggle with in the the discussion of the workforce of people saying,

Maddy Osman (20:14)
Right.

I'll pass you that,

Hmm.

Matt (20:33)
Hey, AI is gonna be great because it's gonna make us two, three times more efficient. We can do more. Oh, you won't lose your job. You'll just do two to four times more work, right? Yeah, yeah. And what I see is like the argument from, I listen to a lot of like other agency podcasts and I hear these agency guys and it drives me nuts where they're just like, if my team's not using AI, they're not efficient.

Maddy Osman (20:38)
Yeah. Right.

just great, get to do more work. ⁓

⁓ Yeah.

Matt (21:00)
then they're outta here, right? Like

you're not an A player, you're not gonna be working here anymore. Well, okay, I hear that. And if that means that you want me to be twice as efficient, and let's say I am twice as efficient, this also means that I could be twice as efficient at another job. So are you okay with me being really efficient for you at this set amount of money, and I'm gonna go over here and be, you know,

Maddy Osman (21:17)
Yeah.

Matt (21:28)
twice as efficient in this other side over here. Now, as an employee, I can make three times as much money, right? This is the way that I see it. Like, I'm not just gonna give you my efficiencies. I'm gonna get my efficiencies everywhere. So what I'm seeing is this future of like the workforce, not just getting the employer to demand me to do more work, but me to be like, you know what? I can actually work for multiple people now. Like maybe now I am that freelancer again, that agency owner again, where I have multiple clients.

Maddy Osman (21:33)
Thanks, all.

Right.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt (21:58)
Again, this is a long way of getting to like, what's your outlook, if at all, for the workforce taking advantage of AI? Do you see that as something that will evolve to our advantage, not just the employer's advantage?

Maddy Osman (22:10)
Mmm.

I really like that outlook and I would cheer on that future for sure. ⁓ I think that's not what it is right now or yet. And part of it is the experimentation, right? Like we're all sort of using these tools for the first time in a sense, like collectively, it's a new technological revolution. Even the commercialization of AI is like new. ⁓ And so like, I think what I worry about is

that employers see it as a way to squeeze much more out of their employees. And I think it's fair to have the expectation that maybe it would increase productivity in general. But yeah, this whole two times, three times, 10 times, whatever. I feel like what's so cool about AI, at least in terms of the potential for it, is that it

that it can create these efficiencies and that it can reduce the things that I say are a waste of human potential, right? Like the sort of like intern.

you know, data crunching, you know, whatever, like the just like very basic, like reformatting a spreadsheet, right? Like stuff like that. ⁓ I think it's a real win to be able to pass that off to AI when possible. And again, with the heavy caveat of like, you got to check the results. ⁓ But yeah, it has this duality of also, it's not just, you know, making your individual life better, but unfortunately, your company probably thinking that they can squeeze a lot more out of you.

And so it is kind of like a resurgence of the toxic hustle culture, which I hate, even though I love that AI workflows can make you more efficient.

Matt (23:56)
yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think I think it's fair to hold to two mindsets, you know, in this, like, let's not grind it down to a stump. Like we can only do so much and you're only going to get so much efficiency, you know, and, you know, and I also look at these these leaders who are who are saying things like if you're not on board with these AI efficiencies, if you're not being, you know, five times more productive, you're out here. I look at them, I go, well, that you're just one person.

Maddy Osman (24:16)
Right.

Matt (24:30)
In fact, AI could replace you much easier than it is to replace like your entire team of people. Right. You're in this case, you're just that thought leader that you love to put out on LinkedIn. And in fact, chat GPT can do that probably better than all the tasks that we do where we're interfacing with all of these apps and solutions. So FYI, if anyone's in the crosshairs, it might be you. ⁓ Anyway, that's that's just my own personal rant when I see that stuff.

Maddy Osman (24:31)
Right?

Yeah.

and I'll

Right?

Right, Yep. Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point.

Now we're good.

Matt (25:01)
Customer comes to you, I give you a bit of a hot seat question, but let me frame it for you. Customer comes to you like, hey, Matty, we've been doing content marketing. We blog two or three times a month. We're not seeing ⁓ some results. We're not seeing as much results from this anymore. Google organic traffic is down. We don't understand what's happening with social. ⁓ How do you frame what success looks like these days ⁓ in?

Maddy Osman (25:04)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Matt (25:29)
in the face of AI, in the face of so much content on social media, how do you try to set your customer up for success so that they're thinking, you know, of how to reach success, whatever that is for them?

Maddy Osman (25:34)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Totally. Yeah, I mean.

I like to say that content marketing is maybe the second oldest profession. The world's second oldest profession. It's always existed in different ways. What's maybe changed is like the format and also how you reach your audience. And so what I would tell them is like, do you know where your audience hangs out online? Do they read blogs? Is that a format that they actually interact with? Is that something that they would even benefit from? Or, you know, are they more...

hanging out in communities like Discord and watching YouTube videos and maybe looking for tutorials that aren't blog posts, but that's still, attack a subject and break it down. ⁓ So that's kind of what I think the pivot is for a lot of brands right now is like they've invested so much into search as a channel and organic search specifically. And there's so much just like wonkiness with how the SERPs are.

changing, know, what's Google doing with the AI overviews and AI mode and whatever, to the point where I'm not suggesting that people give it up completely. I am always of the mind that you should experiment. You should have your control and you should have your, you know, experiment, whatever. Don't just, you know, give up one thing because maybe it's changing. You should still, you should still work with it and see if there's a way, if you've already invested, right, if you've already made that part of your channel.

same time. If it's not working anymore, you should really consider not doing that. But you have to have some data to work with, right? It's not, it's not like an emotional decision or because Google changed some things. I think what we're realizing with like AI search, whether it's on Google, whether it's on Chai GPT, whatever is like a lot of the same SEO principles still apply, at least as far as like create great content, right? That solves, that answers people's

people's questions that help solve their problems. It's an updated game as far as SEO or whatever we want to call it now, search everywhere optimization. But a lot of the principles still apply.

One thing I'm realizing as I interact with these new AI tools for the first time, you know, Replet, like the vibe coding tools, um, or like, you know, N8N, whatever, like things that get increasingly more complicated is because they're so new, they don't have a lot of, you know, documentation or, and even like community is kind of like a new thing, right? Because people are just finding the apps for the first time. And so there still is this great need for brands to be a guide for their users.

especially those first-time users who can very easily get frustrated. It's new technology, you know, there's just not established tutorials from the brands or otherwise. I think, you know, they're catching up on that. you know, again, if you're an AI tool or you have nothing to do with technology, people still need guidance on how to interact with you, what it's like to work with you, how to use your solution.

Matt (28:58)
Yeah, I said this similarly ⁓ on the Matt Report podcast a couple weeks ago or last week that like there it's so hard. Like nobody can be certain about anything right now. Like there's no I mean, there's never been certainty in anything except for death and taxes. Right. We've you know, we've we've heard that a million times. But like AI is changing at such a rapid pace that nobody can be certain about anything. I have this ⁓

Maddy Osman (29:12)
No.

for.

Mm-mm.

Matt (29:25)
I wouldn't call it a feud, but I have like this little debate back and forth with Justin Jackson, who's the creator of Transistor.fm. ⁓ like I'm of the mindset that in a couple of years, Apple will have, you'll have the ability to do what I do with Replet and Vibecode. I think they'll have that same kind of thing on your iPhone. Hey, make me a to do app.

Maddy Osman (29:32)
Mm.

Right.

Mmm.

I'm sure.

Mm-hmm.

Matt (29:52)
that has

a picture of my kids and every time I complete a task, a little sound effect plays or it shows me a photo, like just random little quirky things that you can build. It'll be with guardrails around it. Like you're not gonna, it's not gonna give you this replica interface where you're gonna see all the lines of code. It's just gonna like, it's gonna have these guardrails around it that says you can build these little Mac apps, these little iOS apps yourself and you can do fun little things. ⁓ He doesn't think that's gonna happen.

Maddy Osman (29:59)
True.

Yeah.

Right, right, right.

and

Great.

Matt (30:21)
I think it does. I think it is going to happen. But the point is, is you can't be certain about like how any of this stuff is evolving. The only certain. Yeah, the only certainty that I can tell people now that I've been advocating for is to talk to your customers now. Like, don't be that person where your customers start leaving and you're like, why are people leaving? It's because they're like, you're not talking to them. They want that human side because they're going to get a bunch of AI stuff thrown at them. So

Maddy Osman (30:27)
All right, none of us.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Totally.

Matt (30:51)
be human now because our goals in the future might literally be, I just need to have a human connection with somebody and then I'm gonna sell you whatever the hell I can sell you. Right, like your business might change to the point where you just need to secure a connection with somebody so that it's not being served up by AI and that might be the next battleground we're on. ⁓ Yeah, I mean communicating with humans.

Maddy Osman (31:08)
you

Yeah.

Matt (31:17)
super important. No direct question, but I'm just curious your thoughts on like building that trust with somebody.

Maddy Osman (31:24)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's always been important in business and, you know, coming from the WordPress world, I think we have such a vibrant and amazing community and, you know, some really great friends that have led to business things too. And yeah, I just, can't imagine being where I'm at and running my company without having spent a lot of time and effort in nurturing those human connections. And so to think that that could, you know, be like harder to attain in the

future is a sad thought, I think we have to keep fighting for it.

Matt (31:59)
How are you finding, you don't have to give away any of your secret sauce, but how are you finding customers these days? Are you spending time in particular groups? Like if there's other content marketers out there listening to this, and some of the agency folks that do listen to this are helping people with content, you know, at like a small business level, how are you like cultivating your own enrichment of communities? Like where are you going? What events, what groups, like how does that evolve for you?

Maddy Osman (32:05)
I'm

Okay.

Totally.

Mm.

Totally. Yeah, I mean, I've been pretty active in just a bunch of slack groups. That's been kind of like my way of getting community, especially to like after becoming a parent and not being able to get out as much. That's kind of like my window to the world. So for content marketers, I love Superpath, Top of the Funnel.

Women in Tech SEO is another really great one. And you know, there's these Slack groups for, you know, just about whatever interests you have. We have a bunch in WordPress too. But I am noticing too, that again, with becoming a parent that I've like not just like physically gone out and like gone to conferences and things like that. So I am trying to rebuild that in-person network.

you with the events that happen in Denver. And then I guess like the last thing I do is this thing called Lunch Club, where they like randomly pair, well not kind of randomly, they pair you with a person every week and you have like a 30 minute conversation. And I have it set up for people in Denver so that I could meet them in person, you know, if I wanted to after the call. But yeah, I mean, just trying to find it wherever I can, I guess, is long and short of it.

Matt (33:43)
Yeah.

I'm sure you can relate to this as a parent. Like you see you see like your other parent friends on Instagram and you're like, you're out at the brewery again. How do you get out of the house? Like, know, like how are you? Who's watching the kids is what I want. Yeah. As we sort of wrap up here, ⁓ what what is your outlook on WordPress as somebody who's writing content again for other customers, other brands is is WordPress still

Maddy Osman (33:51)
Right? Right. Sounds like a lot of effort. ⁓

Thank

Matt (34:12)
like leading the pack for you or are you starting to see customers say like, hey, we've got Webflow, we've got Drupal, like where does WordPress land in the overall adoption in your customers?

Maddy Osman (34:25)
Sure, yeah, mean, I wouldn't say that. So I work with a lot of enterprise. They have like their own, you know, whatever going on. But just like small business owners and things like that. think WordPress definitely has staying power. I will say, I think that it will be very necessary for them to adapt the sort of like AI generative, you know, pieces of the puzzle. Like,

it's maybe a surprise to me that we can't do that yet, that I can't, you know, and I know I think wordpress.com recently released some kind of feature like that, but again, it's not like the bigger wordpress.org. So it doesn't necessarily affect me yet. ⁓ But I think that is like the real key to WordPress sort of like surviving the next era is it's going to have to adapt. And I think like WordPress is always sort of catered to like more like

It caters to technical users, people that are non-technical users really love it and can get a lot out of it once they get to know it. so that's really what I'm talking about is catering to non-technical users and developing a natural language sounds like a good way to do that.

Matt (35:40)
And just to be specific, when you're looking for the AI stuff, is it for the content side of it? Is it for the layout side of it? Or is it like everything?

Maddy Osman (35:44)
Mmm.

For me, it would be the design specifically. And like right now I'm using tools like lovable for that, know, to whip up like a quick landing page or, you know, very simple website. And for me, it's like fun experiments for right now. It's not necessarily like something I would, you know, sell a client or, ⁓ or even like maybe use as like an official webpage. It's mostly for fun. ⁓

But I'm getting closer to the point where I would use that as an official thing for my brand.

Matt (36:23)
Yeah, that makes sense. ⁓ When you use these enterprise CMSs, are you like, these are awesome? Or are these like, because I think everybody has a stigma of like, God, probably super complex, probably, you know, old and terrible. But are they really good? Like when you're using them?

Maddy Osman (36:38)
we got?

We don't do a lot of like the uploads to their websites. It's mostly creating content and it's like you do with it what you want when it's done. ⁓ But in my past job in college I had experience working with a bunch of different CMSs. We did Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe.

Matt (36:43)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah,

Maddy Osman (37:01)
That was actually what got me really interested in WordPress because I was like, those ones are all way too complicated. ⁓

Matt (37:08)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah, it's definitely a disc, obviously, I mean, like, with WordPress, I don't want to say under attack, but with like a lot of other alternatives out there and with AI, ⁓ you know, people are like, well, how can we get into the enterprise? It's like, well, we've been asking this for years. ⁓ So as these prices go up in the enterprise, hopefully, WordPress becomes a little bit more attractive. ⁓ Maddy Osmond, where can folks go to say thanks for doing?

Maddy Osman (37:24)
you

Yeah.

Matt (37:36)
doing today's interview, where can they go to get your book?

Maddy Osman (37:39)
So check out Amazon for the book Writing for Humans and Robots and ⁓ look for me on LinkedIn. I'm Maddie Osmond and French is like in a parentheses because that's my official name now. But I told my husband that I'm still going by Maddie Osmond professionally.

Matt (37:57)
This

is the branding and SEO. You're not going to give it up.

Maddy Osman (38:00)
Right? I already built this, you know, huge content program around that.