Usama Khan: Logan, it's finally happening, we've been planning this out. Or I should say I've been planning this out for a few months now. But it got delayed but got got the podcast rolling. How's life? How's everything?
Logan Singleton: Yeah, it's great. And like you said, I know we had a couple of misconnections on this, but I'm glad that it's finally happening, man.
Usama Khan: Yep. So let's get right into it, man. So you do come from a creative writing background and now content strategy is a core part of what you're doing. How has your relationship with AI and content protection evolved over the past year or so?
Logan Singleton: I I would say that my relationship with AI and and what I'm doing has evolved a lot. I think that maybe I wasn't skeptical about AI at first, but maybe I was a little bit stubborn just kind of saying like, you know, I or maybe I just didn't want to try it at first as much. But over the past year I would say I've gone from a I would say medium user of AI to what I would consider it's its integral.
integrated into pretty much my everyday workflow for almost everything I do. So my relationship with it is symbiotic at this point. It's I'm very much I'm I'm using it for everything, just about everything in what we do here.
Usama Khan: Right. A lot of people that I usually talk to about these AI tools and content marketing to be specific, what happens is that they tried Chat GPT, especially when it was really hot. People hadn't even heard about Claude Git. And so when it was right at the beginning they probably tried it for writing and obviously it wasn't that good, right? And
The second thing was we also weren't really aware of how to prompt it so well. And that first experience sort of anchored their experience with and they were like, it's not good enough. But what now is happening is that these AI tools are improving at a rapid pace, which is why we are also seeing a great adoption.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, I think that two things you mentioned,
early on whenever people you know, AI and Chat GPT were basically one and the same, right? That was the AI tool. Whenever
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: you had a conversation with someone, they said, I put it into Chat GPT.
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: but how much has that changed, especially in our industry? I'm not even sure that at least everyone here in our shop, everyone's using Claude. there are some things that I think Chat GPT is still great at, but as far as what we're working on, content marketing,
all of that stuff, I think Claude really went way above and beyond a lot quicker than ChatGPT was able to. And also, you brought up a great point. I don't think that we were really great at prompting it, you know, like I think that not only is AI getting better, but I think that we're becoming better users. So those two things are happening at the same time. And I think that's why for a lot of people who are using it more often they're seeing better results.
You know, because they've just begotten they've gotten better at using it.
Usama Khan: Exactly.
And one thing that I've really recently started to do since a few months is that instead of typing my prompts into it, I use super whisper and I can just talk
through it and it just translate that speech to text. So what happens is that I can just go on and on and give it all the context that I want to instead of typing let's say three hundred words and as humans we are just lazy, we don't want to type such contextual long prompts. So I just peek into it and just and the quality of output is just so evident.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, I think that it's funny you mentioned that because just before, maybe thirty minutes before I came here, I leaned over to my boss, Verenik, and I said, Hey, how have you tried just like putting on your headphones and talking to Claude? because we work in an office, so I was like maybe not the best for an office setting, but whenever I'm at home I do it. And you're right, I think it is the next reasonable jump for just dictating to AI because you can kind
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: of just free flow and let your ideas come out.
instead of sitting there with maybe that manual writer's block of having to type something in.
Usama Khan: Yep,
yep. So when you're producing content for clients across different industries, where would you say AI generally helps your team and where does it fall short every time?
Logan Singleton: I would say and I'm I'm I'm a little bit in a silo here because I work with a lot of graphic designers, brand strategists, project managers. So I'm kind of I don't want to say because I get help from so many other people, but as far as how we're using AI or how I'm using it right now, I'm using it from the beginning and I've been using it to help with keyword research. I've been using Simrush's bulk analysis tool. I think that's
what it's called, but it at first I was like it's not gonna be able to help with keyword research because it doesn't have access to the same data that's simrah but I was like maybe I can come up with the ideas and then bulk upload a hundred ideas into Simrush and then come up with ideas that way based on what it spits out and doing SERP analysis that way. But basically everything you know from the keyword research to the ideas to the actual writing to your point earlier I think
I that where my writing is, I'm able to use that by typing into Claude what I'm trying to write. I can be a little bit more free-flowing. I don't have to necessarily get hung up on how does this send sound. I can get all my ideas down and then synthesize it through AI and give it a bunch of different, you know, reference points. I've noticed the more you throw at it, brand guidelines, everything and upload.
As much content as you possibly can to say, like, this is what I like, this is what I want it to sound like, it helps. As far as where it falls short, I do think that you do have to wrestle with it still, right? You can't just take the first thing it spits out. Because even I'm sure you've seen this, I'll explicitly say something and it will still do the thing that I said not to do. So I think.
Usama Khan: Then I'm like, you moron, don't you understand what I just
told you?
Logan Singleton: Yeah, exactly. So I it will be like, Hey, take you know, use contractions, don't make it sound so editorial. And then it'll say, Got it, I'll do that, and then it y it doesn't use contractions. So I think where it's falling short is maybe for me personally, is the repetitive nature that you have to just always be on top of it, sorta s so to speak, where you really it's never I don't I wanna say never, but at least in its current form, it's definitely not
self-sustaining, it really needs someone who's gonna be that that constant, you know, check and balance at every step. So I would say that's where it's falling short for me. I can't really speak outside of the creative side of what the graphic design team uses here. I know that there's some other things that are falling short, but yeah.
Usama Khan: Yeah,
makes sense. I think a lot of these errors that you talked about that for example it doesn't use contractions or for example it uses certain sentence structure that comes up a lot. For example, it's not just about X, it's about Y, those sort of parallelism structures in AI writing. What I found helpful is that instead of prompting it every time, if I am doing something weekly, what I do is that I have created skills inside Claude for it. And those skills are very detailed.
I
tell it what to do and what not to do instead of repeating it again in prompts and I would say if I do a very good job
in the first ten percent of the task while prompting it properly and then it does that task and obviously the final check the ten percent if I nail that I think it's able to do a pretty good job. For example I recently created one for LinkedIn. I used to not I just found it very hard to come up with a process where I can stay consistent on LinkedIn. Now on Sundays I see what I I work over the week and I just prompt it very detailed in a detailed way and then the LinkedIn skill that I created in the back end that
Takes over and then I'm doing the final 10% checks.
Logan Singleton: Yeah.
No, I
like that idea. anyway that I can get stuff, you know, up front and I can like give it some like constants that I know I'm always gonna want. 'Cause you mentioned the, you know, X is not Y, it's Z. that drives me insane. And it it's you mentioned LinkedIn, it's everywhere on LinkedIn, everyone's LinkedIn post seems to start with that exact cadence. which is it just it it it reeks of, you know, I I don't really care what I'm saying, I just I'm putting out kind of garbage content.
content, but yeah I always try that's one a real big hang up is me trying to get out some of those rules so that I can get it away from sounding like AI. You know what I mean? Because there are those telltale signs of who that you can tell that someone just grabbed this from from AI.
Usama Khan: And you
have specific workflows inside Clod? For example you're working with multiple clients. Have you set up projects or do you use Clo Clot Cowork for that?
Logan Singleton: No,
so right now I'm just you know and I I I'm I'm learning every day, so I don't cons consider myself like a a clawed, you know, guru, but I'm using separate projects for clients. So in each project I'm saying we're lucky enough to be a brand agency. So a lot of our clients come to us from brand work and then once we're done with the brand in the website, they usually say, Hey, like let's let's keep it going with marketing stuff. So I'm luck we're lucky to kind
have all those files already where we have you know the brand messaging all the good stuff that you usually need whenever you're working with a client that you need to find out we kind of already have that so I upload as much of that as I can I upload as much approved content as I can you know if we're working on one pagers and stuff like that for a client that has a ton of language on there that I know the client has approved I'm uploading everything that I can into that project so that it has a
really good reference point of tone and words and some of those no-go words because we have some as I'm sure you have some clients and some verticals
Usama Khan: Yes.
Logan Singleton: they have some some like red flag words that they never want to say so projects helps me a lot and it helps me be able to pick up where I left off if I just tap into a client right now I probably have like 16 different projects. I don't have to you know reinvent the wheel every time I go in.
Usama Khan: Yep,
that's definitely useful. Pretty similar to what I'm doing currently as well. And obviously the more good context you give it through that folder uploads in the back end, the better the outcome gets so you're spot on there. So getting first hand expertise going into content is becoming the biggest differentiator right now.
But the hardest part is actually extracting it from subject matter experts. clients can often be busy and that makes it everything very hard for everything to get in time, right? So have you had similar experience and if so, how do you handle that at Hatchmark Studio?
Logan Singleton: Yeah, you're right. So I think early on whenever, you know, I'm asking because you're right. th Google just talked about it recently with non commodity content, it needs to be unique. it can't be content that you could just go onto any blog anywhere and get the same exact answers. So I'm usually at first I was interviewing clients to get their subject matter expertise, and then I realized that that's very difficult to sustain
Clients get busy. So what I've opted to is sending them a questionnaire. And I feel like they can do that on their own time. They could do it on the weekend. They could do it whenever. But that's still it's a process getting them used to it and convincing them that you know I think that there might be some, and I can't speak for any of my clients, but saying, like, why am I filling this out? Why don't you just write the thing? You know, why can't you just do the research? But I just explained to them like we
We need your subject matter expertise because that's what's going to make this content unique, and I think that that's what's going to make it something that people actually want to read. So I do the questionnaire thing, and that that seems to be working for the most part. There is a little bit of follow up where you have to say, Hey, did you get that? You know, did you did you fill out that questionnaire? Because
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: we can't start until you do. But that's just that's the nature of the business, right? I mean, you just kind of constantly following up with clients and saying, hey, like this is why we're doing this.
and explain to them the value and why it's important.
Usama Khan: Yeah,
it's interesting that you mention it because I've mostly had the opposite experience. Clients are like, Why don't you just onboard us on your monthly call? Marketing directors would just send the invite to the subject matter expert as well. And whatever for the month I've planned for them, I would just ask them questions to extract all the insights that I want. So it's just in one go for the complete batch instead of them doing it separately. So again it really depends on what
works best for the company internally and then sort of strategizing a way to make sure that we are getting those insights because again that is going to be the difference.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, and that's a great idea. I might try that, just trying to get it all at once. right now I'm kind of doing it per topic. You know, we come up with a topic for a piece of content, kind of extracting eight, nine questions about that topic specifically. I don't know if they prefer those bite-sized pieces or if they would rather sit down and kinda go through it all at once, but I mean whatever's working works and if if this stops working at some point I'll definitely
have to try something different.
Usama Khan: Yeah. And what does quality control look like for you in the final piece of content? It's not that AI is writing bad content, it's that it writes content that sounds fine if you're prompting it really well or if you have those workflows but it says nothing specific or nothing differentiated.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think it's just being honest with myself at the end of it. I think in in any I work in an agency, but I think that in any even if you're a freelancer or if you're a business owner, you can kind of get caught up in the I just need to get this thing done. You know what I mean? Like I two pieces of content are due, I need to get two on the website. but slowing down really and saying like is this even is this actually going
to be something that I would read because I think that on the technical stuff we get caught up in the trends. Sometimes I just sit back and I I treat myself as a reader and read it and say, is this something that even like someone would actually want to read through? And I think that's where I ask the hardest questions for myself is, you know, is it good enough for the website? And if it's not, if it sounds like it's you know
If it sounds like it's commodity content that's very average, then maybe go back to the drawing board or maybe come at it from a different angle. because you're right, with AI and stuff, I whenever I'm doing proofing or editing, you very seldom, if you if you know you're doing all the right things, you're not gonna come across anything that's like grammatically wrong or you know what I mean? Like the editing process is more about passing the the eye test for me and just saying like is this good enough for what it
Someone's client's blog or our own blog or whatever.
Usama Khan: Yep.
And I was recently reading this on LinkedIn. Ryan who's a content marketer at HRFs, he has built a workflow which I think stacks eleven skills and so it takes a keyword from keyword to the final article. And he did mention in the complete workflow on the article and he's published it on HRIFS, but he does mention that this works so well for me because I know what to put
in those skills, right? The requirements how what needs to be taken care of, what examples are good and what should AI be avoiding. And then those eleven skills, each of them are run individually so that a human stays in the loop and if there's any feedback there, it's provided there and then instead of, you know, course correcting everything when the final article is churned out. So it also really depends on whether you have those editorial and content
skills and you're seeing th things from that lens instead of just trying to do more.
Logan Singleton: Yeah. No, that's really cool and I
I would like to it's I'll be honest, my I guess my final pass or my editorial pass on any piece of content is still very human. I haven't found a way personally right now to you know put AI in charge of that process or at least let AI lead that process. But it's definitely something I want to get to in the next step to make, you know, my editing process even better.
Usama Khan: Yeah,
and that also what differentiates the content mostly. If human stays in the loop in that editing process for most part of the time, they could really bring together that different taste that they have which really differentiates the content. And unless these let's say AI tools become so good that they pick up your taste and everything and get you ninety eight percent there, which I do think they are not currently at that stage.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, I don't think so either. I think that this is still very much a, you know, I need you and you need me scenario as far as humans and AI. I do think that there will come a time when that might not be the case or maybe it'll be a little bit more the AI or we need AI more than it needs us. But I think it it's kind of comforting in a way, I guess, just from a very human standpoint that I like kind of the balance right now where it feels like in
put in, you know, and it needs me to to do the thing. I think whenever it becomes sentient on its own, you know, and I think that's where it gets a little strange maybe, and a little apocalyptic sounding. But we'll see what happens, you know, because it seems like with Claude and it seems like there's a new feature and a new launch every week. there's
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: a a new improvement. I feel it every day. It feels like it's working better every day. So yeah.
Yeah.
Usama Khan: Yeah, and when you open X you would just see people tweeting Claude just killed designers, call j Claude just killed cop copywriters, yeah. I I've always just yeah.
Logan Singleton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well and they the good news yeah, the good news
is that hasn't happened yet.
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: I think that everyone is
Understandably so they're they want to jump on the trend of having a hot take right about the thing that just happened. And I think for me personally, I like to weigh in, but I also am honest enough to admit that I don't know. You know what I mean? Like this thing just came out. We don't know what's gonna happen. and I think that more people should probably take that half step approach and say, you know, what we really don't know. we saw it with the Google device.
Direction with AI search, how everyone, you and I joked about some people backpedaling or backstepping what they originally said. And I think the important lesson is, you know, I don't think that anyone right now is truly an expert on the thing that just was announced a couple days ago. I think we're all learning as we go.
Usama Khan: Yep. Yep.
That's why I see a lot of agencies sort of positioning themselves not as an expert in AI but more from an angle of quick they run quick AI experiments and see what's working for specifically for AI optimization and then doubling down on what works. So that positioning is working really well for a few agencies as well, instead of saying like we are all knowing and we know what works and we we can just ten X your demos in three months.
Logan Singleton: Yeah. And what I tell some clients is like we're we're willing, we're experimenting on our own website. You know, like we're we're going through what we think is gonna work or like we're trying something new so that whenever we see something that we we think is working well, then that you know that's something we did a we did an article about like chat GPT versus Claude, like which one you should use, which pro plan you should use, and that comparison content is doing better than most stuff that is you know on our website.
website and I'm I have to think that you know based on what Google said it was because the tone was a little different in that one and we just wrote it from a hey we tried both here's what we think. You know what I mean? It's it it was very subjective in a way because we it was just our opinion. But I think some of that opinion content it told me a lot about the you know the next piece of content for a client is like maybe you should try some stuff like that, right? Like have your opinion on a on a comparison piece.
And try that next, you know. So yeah.
Usama Khan: Yeah,
I recently wrote a con a blog post on my own website about how I do bottom of funnel content and it was all through my personal experience and my own workflow that I use. And even though my domain authority is it's a new website, so it's I think eight, so it's pretty bad. And I was ranking in the AI overviews in within the first week. So I don't know whether that's because it's not non commodity con non commodity content, very opinionated or whatever the reason might be.
Just seems to be working for now.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, I think that there's something to it. I think that that opinion content is valuable because it's a unique point of view and I think that Google's algorithms and crawl are getting very, very good at noticing that right away and that tone and knowing that this is unique content. It's not just kind of cut and paste like here, top five things. Like that stuff is still going to probably do well for certain ver but everyone's doing it. So have
opinion about something, bring something new to the table.
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Do you think there is a type of content that should never be touched by AI? Like are there any formats or topics where you always go fully human?
Logan Singleton: That's good question. I don't
To me, right now, it doesn't seem like there's anything that's off limits unless I've been explicitly told by a client to not do it. which is interesting because that sentiment has changed over the past year, right? Like over the past year I can literally see where it started out as clients saying AI as a pejorative, saying like, please don't use AI to do this, like we want it to be done the right way.
You
we're kinda we're open to AI, and then we had a a meeting with a client recently where they said, you know, are you using AI? And whenever we said yes, you know, they said, I don't think that we would want to work with a team that isn't using it. So how fast that has changed from, you know,
Usama Khan: Yep.
Logan Singleton: don't tell me you're using AI to, you know, you might not get the contract if you aren't using it. so I think that for right now to answer your question, I don't think there's anything that's necessarily
off limits as far as content goes for me. Unless I've been told not to do it. which in that case is fine for me because I can still do my job without it. and I think that that's where, you know, having a writing background myself puts me at an advantage, I guess, in this industry is I can still, you know, if if the thing breaks, I can still keep doing my job. I'm gonna be a little bit slower, but I can still do it. And
Yeah, I can still do it.
Usama Khan: Yep. I've noticed that as well. So whenever a few writing projects come up, the job post usually includes no AI at all. We run everything through AI detectors and by the way I ha I don't trust AI detectors at all. I once gave it my I don't know, college essay and it came back as ninety percent AI and there was no AI then. So so I don't trust them
Logan Singleton: Yeah.
Usama Khan: at all. And now it's like we need someone mostly that uses AI very intelligently but
At the same time they are also sort of expecting more for less.
Logan Singleton: Yeah.
I think that that's th you just brought that up and I was gonna say something about that is that I think that there's two things going on. I think that clients are realizing that the capabilities of AI and but also I think they're realizing that the billable hours are changing, right? Like I know as a client that the thing that used to take you ten hours shouldn't take you ten hours anymore. And I think it's an interesting just a business perspective for the industry in general is
you know and you'll see this with everything. I talked to someone I know who's a lawyer and we talked about that. That industry is changing because you don't need a team of paralegals to review 300 pages. You can review it within within minutes. So I think
Usama Khan: Yes. Yeah you can do it much quicker. Yep.
Logan Singleton: that that's something that people need to get comfortable with anyways and be able to say like hey like I want this done quicker. I know you can do it quicker, but we can just do higher volume now.
So what I've seen is that the the overall the the end result you can still make the money off of the service. You're just probably going to be doing more the deliverables will be higher just in pure volume. But, you know, and and I have to put myself in the client's shoes sometimes. It's like why would I want you
Usama Khan: Yeah.
Logan Singleton: to sit there and do this the old way when you could do it the new way and we could get, you know, two pieces instead of one for the same price that we used to.
Usama Khan: Yeah. But
I do think you can also there's still room to differentiate yourself from the people that let's say these clients are comparing yourself with, with AI obviously allowing you to write content to do more. I I would say that creativity will have a lot of room. So for example, in the past if you were to r just write an article, let's say something related to, I don't know, a calculator or
calculating your profit margins let's say for an HWAC business. Now what you can do is that you can quickly just wipe code a calculator and have it there in the blog post. So it just makes it more interactive, more memorable and also sort of makes you makes the readers come back because they see okay they are writing very valuable content and they have they're going a step ahead with these
calculated or interactive other interactive elements. So that could definitely be an edge as well.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, I think that that's a great point. Just making, you know, the content more engaging and more interesting and I love the idea of giving someone a reason to come back to the content over and over by putting a useful tool embedded inside of it so that maybe someone bookmarks that content and maybe they visit that content weekly, who knows, you know what I mean, or at least until they make a decision on something. because we all know that the the sales cycle depending on which vertical you're in is very different, you know.
I'm with some clients who they their sales cycle might be a year or two before someone actually makes a conversion. You know, they kinda like they're they're thinking about it for a long time. it's not just it's not always a direct consumer product that people just click buy now.
Usama Khan: Yep. So this is a hard one, but if you had to bet on what content production would look like two years from now, what's your prediction? Would it be more AI, less AI, or a completely different model?
Logan Singleton: I think
Yeah, it's a tough one because I don't know. But I think it's going to be more AI. I think that if there are any final holdouts, you know what I mean, or people who are kind of still on the sidelines, I think more of those people will be converted. I think it's going to be for the business side of things, for clients, I think it's gonna be much more expected. I think that it's gonna change the business in that way.
and I I I do think that maybe the way we interact with it will change. I don't know if we were recording whenever we brought this up or not. but I think that dictating, I think that people use voice command a lot more. I think that type like manual typing might become, you know, for me maybe not, because like I said, I work in an office with other people, so you can't have everyone just like murmuring all day. But I think that that'll be
You know, we see it with vibe coding and stuff where people just kind of they code an app without you know, just by like talking. so I think that the voice to text will be a big part of it. but yeah, I think that I I can't imagine sitting here right now, AI being less a part of what we're doing. I just I don't think that there's any way that we're gonna go back, at least at this point.
Usama Khan: Well, that's a wrap, Logan. Thank you so much for joining.
Logan Singleton: Yeah, thanks for having me, man.
