This edition is brought to you by our friends at beehiiv.
In a few weeks, beehiiv is hosting their Summer Release Event, and the language coming out of their team is loud: "largest updates in company history," "the project I'm most proud of in my entire career," "updates that will reshape this industry."
This is notable because as I’ve documented, the beehiiv team has launched so many huge products over the past several months and they’ve done it without any fanfare – just a casual Tuesday, “Oh yeah we do podcasts now too.”
So obviously my ears perked up when they started promoting this big secret event two months before launch. The catch is they won't let on what the actual announcement is yet (and trust me, I’ve begged for the inside scoop).
If you run a newsletter or create content online, or you're thinking about getting started, it’s worth RSVP-ing for their free, virtual event and tuning in on July 16th.
p.s. I’m not just saying this, as you know, we brought the newsletter to beehiiv because we like where they’re headed. Use our code SUPERPATH30 for 30% off.
Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.
Quick lesson from me this week because I have a bad case of World Cup fever. I’m just barely recovered from attending Canada’s last match last week, and now they have the nerve to play again today? What gives?
(I did a quick search to see the impact of the World Cup on your health, and according to this fun video from the BBC, the strain on your heart is the equivalent of doing mild exercise. So look at that—I’m a mild athlete.)
So today’s lesson is about inevitability and what I’m calling the “Sloppery slope” fallacy.
I’ve seen some version of this argument a lot lately: now that anyone can generate content in seconds, the internet will drown in slop, and nothing you publish will matter. (Heck, I’ve probably made some version of this argument myself on the podcast—or at least asked the question).
SEO folks and blog writers feel this most acutely. The assumption is that the SERP will get so flooded that trying to show up at all will be pointless.
I don't buy it, and here's why: almost nobody is actually trying.
As part of a GEO initiative I’m working on right now, I’ve opened hundreds of software listicle blog posts on the same topic. At first, knowing those hundreds of posts even existed was discouraging for someone trying to “beat” them. How could I win this fight?
But once I started digging into the content, it was immediately obvious that no one else cared as much as I did. Most of the articles listed irrelevant tools. Most of them clearly didn’t understand the job of the person who buys these tools. They clearly weren’t written with any semblance of helping. Multiple websites had a sidebar table of contents with dozens and dozens of jump links running down the side—the kind of UX error nobody would miss if they took a few seconds to care.
I’m not trying to paint a picture of doom and gloom here. I’m trying to paint a picture of opportunity.
Abundance tells you nothing about value. There is effectively infinite music available to you right now, for free, forever. There always has been. (And AI slop is coming for music now, too.)
But you still have favorite artists. There are still global superstars who sell out stadiums. The existence of ten billion songs does not make the one you love any less worth loving, and it doesn't stop new artists from breaking through.
As Chloe mentioned on the podcast recently (yes, I listen to her on occasion), you have a ton to gain by being the person who cares. So don’t get discouraged by what’s possible about the future of content. Just care more than other people, make good stuff, and you’re probably already in the top 1% already.
Cheers,
- Eric
PS. I ran into a fellow Superpath member at the Canada-Qatar match in Vancouver. How crazy is that? I won’t out them by name in case they took a day off sick with World Cup fever…
📝 New on the Blog: AMA with Melissa Rosenthal, Co-Founder at Outlever
We had one of Superpath’s most buzzing Slack AMAs last week with Melissa Rosenthal.
Melissa is a media and tech executive building the future of owned media at Outlever, where she and her team transform brands into the #1 news source in their industry.
Previously she was CCO of ClickUp, CMO of Insight Timer, CRO of Cheddar, and VP, Creative at BuzzFeed — where she was one of the first ten employees and built the branded content revenue model back in 2010. She's been featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30, Business Insider's 30 Most Creative People Under 30, and many more fancy-sounding accolades.
If you couldn’t attend and refuse to read an entire blog post, here were three takeaways:
Owning the audience > renting space on a channel. Traditional blogs optimize for an algorithm you’re not in control of. Owned media means you’re shaping the narrative and building an owned audience who trust you and come to you directly.
Trust the leading indicators. Are the right people reading it? Are they coming back? Are they sharing it? Are we getting the right ICP voices featured? If the answer to those is yes, the revenue tends to follow.
Start small and then build. You don’t need a whole publication from day one. Start with a corner of your site you can move quickly on. Start newsjacking on LinkedIn. Focus on the overlap of what the industry cares about and where you actually fit, be timely, talk to the right people, and then grow from there.
However, I know you are the person who loves to read an entire blog post, so here’s the entire AMA conveniently packaged in one URL:
📆 Upcoming Superpath Community Events
AI Show & Tell (Jun 25): Our monthly show and tell, where three people show off what they’ve been building with AI. All the past recordings are available to Pro members.
Superpath Social (July 9): Come chat content with other folks in small breakout groups. This month, we’ll have a ban on AI chatter!
We’ll also have our July AI Show & Tell, Slack AMA, and more. Dates TBD.
To get the invitations to our virtual events, join Superpath Pro. You get 30 days free, so you can attend all these events!
🎙 New on Content, Briefly: Brand mentions, backlinks, and AI search with Gordon Meagher
Alex hosted the final episode in our run with the uSERP crew, this time with Gordon Meagher, their VP of SEO. He's been doing SEO for 14 years, which is why his read on AI search is calmer than the rest of your LinkedIn feed.
Gordon's argument is that you shouldn't be throwing the baby out with the bathwater for AEO: LLMs rely on Google's index to assess authority, chat is still a sliver of total search, and the real winning move is a broad digital marketing strategy that shows up wherever your audience already hangs out.
Alex and Gordon got into:
Whether backlinks still matter, or is it just brand mentions now?
How Gordon's 14-year-old daughter searches for things and what it means for us
Why clicks from AI chats are tiny but convert way better
💬 Great Slack Threads This Week
Here were some great questions in the Superpath Slack community this week:
Anyone else feeling the squeeze from how fast product development happens today because of AI (i.e. vibe coding)? I'm publishing blogs I wrote a month ago and they're all outdated already.
Hey y'all, how's your organic traffic doing? (Editor’s note. There was a fun thread comparing our website traffic. It’s nice to be able to chat about these things in private.)
I'm updating a bunch of pages and adding a new updated date, but the original pub date keeps appearing in Google results. Any ideas on how to get the new one to appear?
📙 The Reading List
Here are some articles that got the Superpath Slack community talking this week:
🆓 Get a free 30-day trial of Superpath Pro
Superpath Pro is our paid community membership. On your free trial, you'll get access to:
A private Slack community with 400+ in-house and freelance content marketers
Monthly 1:1 peer networking calls
Monthly group events with breakout sessions
Monthly AI Show & Tell workshops
Graduate-level content courses
Niche channels and events for freelancers, content leaders, and more
"Most professional groups boast about their member numbers. Superpath intrigued me for the opposite reason: they deliberately shifted from a massive free community to a much smaller, paid one - so they could focus on it, nurture it, and make it genuinely excellent. And they absolutely deliver."
— Farah Cormack, Senior Marketing Leader