For years, content strategy was simple: write helpful blog posts, rank on Google, and watch traffic roll in. But that playbook is breaking. Fast. Search behavior is shifting, AI is answering questions before users ever click a link, and social platforms are where more and more discovery is happening.
If you’re still treating content as a game of keywords and blog volume, you’re already behind. In this piece, we’ll look at how AI and changing consumer behavior are reshaping both content and distribution—and what marketers need to do now to stay relevant and win trust in this new landscape.
Content Strategy = Content + Distribution
There are two key drivers of a successful content strategy: compelling content and smart distribution. For each piece of content, a key consideration is who you are writing for and what stage they are at in the sales and marketing funnel. The three primary options include:
1) Top of Funnel (TOFU): People who might not know your brand or even that they have a problem. Content at this stage is designed to attract and educate a wide audience.
2) Middle of Funnel (MOFU): People who are interested but not ready to buy yet. Content at this stage is designed to nurture and engage leads who are problem-aware and looking for solutions.
3) Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): People who are ready to make a decision and evaluating vendors. Content at this stage is designed to convert warm leads into paying customers.
What awareness level prospects are at determines what type of content is best
Distribution has traditionally occurred on owned assets, such as a brand’s website blog or social media accounts. The narrative was very much, “If you build it they will come”, with the focus being high-quality content production blasted out to a mass audience.
But, in 2025, this is insufficient. LinkedIn’s algorithm is prioritizing personal profiles over company pages, as described here and here. To have maximum impact, brands must take a more personal, founder-led marketing approach, focused on talking to one’s audience instead of at them. This involves identifying where conversations are happening, which is increasingly in private online communities or in social media threads, and becoming a part of the conversation.
Brand post vs. employee post comparison
How AI and market trends are transforming content
Blogging was once at the heart of the internet's content explosion, with individuals and businesses using it as a powerful way to share ideas, build audiences, and drive traffic. Hubspot was one of the biggest advocates for this approach, and achieved remarkable success with its blogging strategy, boosting its traffic to over 10 million per month. A big part of Hubspot’s strategy was creating copious amounts of long-form top of funnel content, often with little relation to its core business (e.g. posts with titles such as “famous sales quotes” or “cover letter examples”).
But, AI has changed the game. Nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click. A big part of this has been the rise of Google’s Search Generated Answers (SGE), with some estimates claiming it shows up for 86% of search queries. In addition, a greater number of people are going straight to AI for answers, and the usage of ChatGPT and other AI search engines and chat bots has continued to climb over time.
The rise of ChatGPT
Furthermore, companies like Hubspot that had a proven formula for dominating SEO are now seeing the rug pulled out from under them. The rise of generative AI has triggered a flood of AI content across the web, which led Google to publish a core update in March 2024 designed to reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results. The result was a cratering in Hubspot’s SEO results, dropping from a high of around 24 million visits at the start of 2023, to around 6 million visits by the start of 2025.
Hubspot’s declining organic traffic
Long-term, these trends are likely to accelerate. Bill Gates envisions that in the future, users will no longer need to visit search engines or even e-commerce sites directly, because their AI will do it for them. "You'll never go to a search site again... You'll never go to Amazon again. Everything will be mediated through your agent.”
This trend of less web browsing and more AI answers has some major implications on content strategy:
1) TOFU content is less effective: Producing generic long-form TOF content doesn’t make sense any longer; people will get this information from AI chatbots and content summaries instead of web browsing.
2) MOFU and BOFU content require greater consistency: It’s crucial that your MOF and BOF content is consistent across channels and communicates your brand’s Unique Value Proposition (UVP) in a way that distinguishes you from the competition. As this fantastic article by data scientist and marketer Chris Penn states:
“In the old days, having irrelevant content wasn't necessarily bad in traditional SEO. In the modern, AI-first era, when someone invokes your name or your brand in AI, the associations that come back are going to be a composite of all the knowledge it has about you, and if there's a lot of irrelevant fluff, you will not have as strong a set of associations with the things you do want to be found for.”
3) Content requires better use case alignment: With traditional SEO, ranking highly on Google was the top priority, and it could often be achieved by indiscriminately stuffing your content with relevant keywords. But, if one’s aim is to get referenced by AI chat bots and search engines, it’s imperative that content is designed to address specific challenges faced by your buyers at particular stages in their buying journey. This requires marketers to develop a deeper understanding of buyer problems and search intent than they have done in the past.
4) Original research and data - Content backed by proprietary data or unique methodologies still cuts through the noise because it provides value AI cannot easily replicate.
Original research and data: Salesforce’s “State of Sales” Report
5) Deeper, richer expertise based content - Content strategies that effectively leverage internal experts to share authentic perspectives and deep industry knowledge create differentiation that AI can’t easily copy. Companies successfully amplifying their experts' voices are building credibility that generic brand content cannot achieve.
How AI and market trends are transforming distribution
Engagement content over discovery focused content: Generational and market shifts are key factors in transforming content distribution strategies. Gen Z increasingly turns to social media platforms, especially TikTok, for breaking news, often before traditional news outlets report on events. A 2023 Pew Research Center study found that 32% of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 regularly access news via TikTok, up from 26% in 2022. In addition, these same social media platforms penalize outbound links, since their end goal is to encourage more time spent on their platforms.
How different social media platforms incentivize zero-click content
These changes have far reaching implications on distribution strategy:
Community-first engagement - As people seek out authentic connections and real experience and advice, finding and participating in the specific places where your buyers are already having conversations will become table stakes. These communities are also fertile grounds for you to get a deeper understanding of your audiences and what they care about.
Strategic relationship building - Connecting with relevant industry voices who already reach your audiences and have the trust of their audience will be a key lever for companies to build their own credibility and amplifying their content. This is very much aligned with the concept of nearbound marketing, and increases the chance that your audience will be receptive to your message.
How Rocksalt can help
1) Understand your audience deeply: When it comes to crafting your content, Rocksalt can help you be much more tailored and specific. Rocksalt can identify relevant threads where users are engaging and where you can offer value. These threads provides great insight into which topics are actually worth writing about. They also help you to understand your audience’s most common questions and pain points, which should mirror those that are being asked to AI models. Furthermore, Rocksalt can tell you how relevant your content is and how likely it is to resonate with your audience.
Rocksalt helps to identify relevant social media posts
2) Community-based distribution: If you and your team are doing a good job of engaging consistently in the right communities where you have a critical mass of your ICP, then not only will you understand their needs deeply, but you also build trust. So, when you distribute content you have created, you will do much better than if you hadn’t taken these actions.
3) Increase amplification via industry experts: Rocksalt identifies leading voices in your space and helps you consistently engage and build relationships with them. As a result, when you share your own content and insights, they’re more likely to be amplified from the engagement of these influencers.
Rocksalt identifies leading voices in your space
Conclusion
The rules of content have changed. We’re moving from a world of search-first discovery to AI-powered answers and feed-driven engagement. That means the old playbook—pumping out long-form blog posts and hoping for clicks—isn’t just outdated, it’s ineffective. What matters now is clarity, intent, and distribution that meets your audience where they are.
Founders and marketers who adapt will have a huge edge. That means shifting focus from top-of-funnel content to building trust through consistent, high-quality engagement. It means writing content that answers real questions in the way AI and people actually consume it. And it means spending less time optimizing for search, and more time showing up where your customers hang out. Through helping surface where the conversations are taking place and identifying user pain points, Rocksalt is a useful resource for both content and distribution.
