I (Rachel) read a lot, especially lots of stuff online. Some of it is good, some gets skimmed, most of it is fairly unmemorable. I assume that much of it — even the unmemorable stuff — adds to my overall “mental fabric” of ideas and thoughts and experiences, but there are few things that actually keep me thinking about it for days or weeks after I close the tab.
Here are five pieces that actually have done that.
(Also if you’re anything like me, you will scroll through this list, see a few things that look interesting, open them “for later” and probably not read them. I kept the list intentionally short and propose to you to pick ONE that you will read right now, or before the end of your workday, rather than attempting to read them all and instead reading none. I see you, because I am you.)
“The algorithm seems to value episodic content 10x over one-off videos.”
Read it >>> Is your Instagram engagement stuck?
“The algorithm seems to value episodic content 10x over one-off videos. Creating episodic content that follows a consistent formula is like saying to the viewer, “hey, if you follow us, we’re going to show you more videos just like this one.” It builds trust.”
I am not the only one, but I sometimes feel like I am the only one preaching the value of episodic or serial content — small pieces of content that add up to a larger story. This is not “well, we have a series of case studies.” No, you have a collection of case studies.
Serial content works like episodes in a TV show — small pieces that add up to a whole season. And this interview makes an excellent case study (see what I did there? 😉 ) for why episodic content works sooo well in today’s social media and algorithmic world.
h/t to Deedi Brown for this link!
“Strategy is not an end in itself. Its value lies in how it shapes real interactions between people and the organizations they encounter.”
Read it >>> The future of strategy is close to the ground.
“Strategy can only be as dynamic as the information it is built on. But when inputs remain frozen, the strategy becomes more of a time capsule than a compass…
The strategist of the [previous] era could afford to be fixed, declarative, and removed from execution. The strategist of [today] needs to be mobile, contextual, and aware of how ideas move through systems over time. As brand itself shifts from static identity toward ongoing presence, the role of strategy has to evolve with it.”
Really interesting piece on how strategy needs to shift from something static that you do and then check off, to something mobile, evolving, and flexible enough to shift based on customer feedback and input, so that it can actually impact the customer experience.
“As you learn more and grow more skilled, there is more reward associated with staying within a limited mode; the opportunity cost of remaining uncollapsed increases.”
Read it >>> Being creative requires taking risks
“Unless we actively push against it, it seems like we will mode collapse (similar to what happens with LLMs) like this in all domains. As Andrej Karpathy put it… children “will say stuff that will shock you, because you can see where they are coming from, but it’s just not the thing you say. They’re not yet collapsed. But we are collapsed.”
…We get stuck at good enough and then ever-so-slowly backslide.
In the ever-growing debate about boringness and quality in content, this is an interesting read and perspective.
(In my opinion) Part of the reason why B2B (and brand comms / content in general) is so boring most of the time is because very few people brands are willing to take a risk, try something weird, color outside of the lines, experiment with something that might not work. This writer compares it to the idea of “mode collapse” that we see with many LLMs. The more we’re rewarded for a certain input, the more we make that input, over and over until a slow regression to the boring-est possible mean appears.
Sometimes boring is necessary is business — when something works, we’re (often) right to double down on it. But gaining attention and memorability often requires real risk and creativity, too. This is an interesting look at the tension between those two.
“In fact, my hypothesis that AI brand answer lists are so random as for tracking to be entirely useless was (probably) wrong.”
As usual, fantastic research (actual research) from Rand Fishkin (from Sparktoro) and Patrick O’Donnell (from Gumshoe). A really deep dive into how LLMs and AI tools provide responses on brands and product recommendations, rankings and visibility, prompt variability, and what is and isn’t worth looking at when you’re trying to track how you show up in LLMs.
This should probably be required reading for anyone working on figuring out LLM / AI visibility right now (or in charge of buying tools to track that).
OK, on to the summary of our findings:
- AIs rarely give the same list of brands or recommendations twice (<1 in 100 times, no matter the question)
- AIs almost never give the same list of brands/recs in the same order, even in spaces with limited options like LA Volvo dealers or SaaS Cloud Computing Providers (<1 in 1,000 times, no matter the question)
- These tools are probability engines: they’re designed to generate unique answers every time. Thinking of them as sources of truth or consistency is provably nonsensical.
- Users almost never craft similar prompts, even when they have the same intent. The variation of brands/recs in AI answers around a space in the messy wilds of AI prompting is likely much higher than what our controlled experiments revealed here.
- Measuring your brand’s presence in AI answers with precision is a fool’s errand. You can, with enough prompts run enough times, get a dartboard-pattern-like answer comparing you with others. I’ve been swayed from my initial position and now believe visibility % across dozens to hundreds of prompts run multiple times is a reasonable metric.
- But, any tool that gives a “ranking position in AI” is full of baloney.
“You don’t own your [email] audience”
Read it >>> Here’s What I Learned About Newsletters in 2025
“The idea of “ownership” needs to change. At the end of the day, you don’t own the inbox — the reader does.”
This is focused slightly more on individual newsletter writers (or perhaps smaller brands, like nonprofits or founder-led startups), but I think some of this good advice applies more broadly.
If you’re working on a newsletter this year, good advice and reminders here, and the discussion on whether your email list is really an owned audience is particularly salient right now.
If one of these articles sparked some new ideas for you, or if you have something we should read or feature, reach out and let me know! ■
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