What breaks trust in brand content? | Erika Childers, Director of Content and Brand, Qualytics

Building trust in brand content is harder than it seems, especially in a world full of quick fixes and AI-driven solutions.

In this episode of Straight to Voicemail, Amanda Smith speaks with Erika Childers, Director of Content and Brand at Qualytics. With years of experience in B2B content marketing, Erika shares why trust is built in the details: through authenticity, consistency, and the human touch in every piece of content. She also discusses how brands often miss the mark when they prioritize scale over connection.

You’ll learn:

• Why scaling content can actually break trust
• How authenticity and consistency build lasting connections
• The role of human oversight in AI-driven content

Jump into the conversation:
(00:00) Why we wanted to hear from Erika
(00:10) Meet Erika Childers and the importance of trust in content
(01:00) How scaling content can hurt trust
(01:40) Why authenticity matters more than ever
(02:10) The role of humans in content creation
(02:40) Building trust through consistent messaging
(03:20) Why people-first content wins every time
(03:50) Erika’s insights from her experience at Qualytics

Straight to Voicemail is for CMOs, CEOs, and Heads of Marketing in B2B tech who want insights from the people who’ve been there. Each episode centers on one big question answered like a voicemail you’ll want to play again.

Don’t miss this conversation! Follow Straight to Voicemail and explore Genius Cuts for more B2B content strategy insights.

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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?

At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.

Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.

[00:00:00]

[00:00:10] Amanda Smith: As AI reshapes how brands create and scale and show up. One thing stays the same. You know, I'm gonna say it. It's the need for trust. It's still the foundation of every great brand and the hardest thing to rebuild once it's gone. That's something Erika Childers understands deeply.

[00:00:32] She's been in the B2B content marketing space for many years and believes trust is built in the details. So the care that you put into your message, the authenticity behind your voice, and the consistency that shows your audience they're worth the effort.

[00:00:50] To her, those small intentional choices matter far more than scaling for the sake of scaling. So I asked her, where do most companies go wrong in building trust through content? Here's what she hit me with.

[00:01:06]

[00:01:15] Erika Childers: Hey, Amanda, I was thinking about your question about where some companies are maybe missing the mark when trying to build trust through their content, especially in the age of AI, and here's my take.

[00:01:26] Trust is the most fundamental thing that brands need to establish and keep, in order to connect with their audiences. That's not a new thing, and it's not optional. I think especially now, brands are so concerned with doing things at scale, especially when scale is like right at our fingertips with everything we can do with AI. They forget that the most impactful brand building, trust building things are not that scalable.

[00:01:52] I think the care that you put into your brand shows and it tells your audience that they're worth caring about, they're worth the effort that it takes to create authentic, great content. And if they stop feeling that or seeing it, hearing it, that you're putting care into your brand and your content, trust really flies right out the window so quickly, and it's impossible to get it back once it's gone.

[00:02:15] I think most audiences expect AI is somewhere in most brands tech stack, but they still wanna know that there's a human in the loop ensuring that the content that's being produced is vetted, it's impactful, it's true. And they can certainly tell the difference. Do they connect with this content or not? It's intangible, but it's deeply felt.

[00:02:36] Brands have to use their content platforms to connect with their audiences and connection just doesn't come through the windscreen of AI. People wanna see themselves reflected. And I think brands of every size can do this at any stage. Baby brands to big brands. There's such a big opportunity to do this well and build connection at any stage.

[00:02:56] We used this philosophy at my previous company, Tackle. One of the first things that we did to build a brand was to create a yearly research report, which gave us credibility, because we were helping define the market and give people data that they couldn't get anywhere else, but they really needed, and that worked really well for us.

[00:03:13] And then we also had each of our leadership team kind of connect back with that data and tell stories about what they were seeing in the market; tie it back to what they were seeing in the data; talk about things that were being felt by the people who were experiencing it day to day.

[00:03:28] I think honestly, the brands that stand out right now are the ones who are refreshingly human.These personal stories, it's building in public, it's those cringe awkward music videos that we're seeing in B2B more and more. It's the research, like we talked about in data that doesn't come secondhand from AI hallucination. And consistency, meaning like their voice isn't changing on social media every two days.

[00:03:52] Ultimately, it's the people we can see and talk and connect with, and I think people are key to great content when your goal is trust.

[00:04:00] All right. That's what I'm thinking. You have my number. Give me a call back if you wanna chat. Bye.

[00:04:05]

[00:04:14] Amanda Smith: ​Thank you for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to Genius Cuts because it's never just a podcast.