Executive content programs that keep a real voice

A CEO's articles, a founder's podcast, a CMO's posts on LinkedIn: an executive content program is worth something because it carries one person's judgment. Buyers read it to learn how that leader thinks and whether they would trust them with a problem.

That is also what makes it hard to scale. An executive has little time for content, so as the program grows, more of it is handed to other people. Done carelessly, the part that gets handed over is the thinking, and the program keeps publishing after the reason to read it has gone.

I started my blog in 2011. Over the years my own program grew to include the Working Without Pants podcast and, for a while, a short post every morning on LinkedIn. I later founded Content Allies, which produces B2B podcasts. This post covers what the executive has to keep, what a team can run, why to write down the program's purpose before choosing a format, and how to grow it one habit at a time.

DisclosureJake Jorgovan founded Content Allies, which this essay links to.

Decide what the program is for

When I had moved my own time to sales for Content Allies, I wrote two short posts for The Daily, my daily lesson series, about what I was learning from buyers. In "Understand your customers why", published September 30, 2019, I listed the reasons a customer gave me for investing in content. They wanted to look more credible to their own customers. They wanted to stand out by sharing their perspective. They wanted the market to see the firm differently, so it could charge for higher-value strategic work. They also wanted an audience they could offer other services to, steadier revenue with fewer peaks and valleys, a higher close rate on deals already in progress, and to grow the business. My point was that content was what they were buying, but those results were what they wanted.

"Show your prospect consequences", published October 10, 2019, was about the objection I kept hearing. Content wasn't a priority for buyers because it was a long-term investment, and deals stalled with "we can revisit this in a few months." What I took from Damian Thompson, as I worked on my sales process, was to show the consequences of not investing: deals lost for lack of trust and credibility, referrals that never came because the company was not top of mind, speaking engagements that never happened.

Those lists are a useful brief for an executive program. Each reason points to a different program. Credibility with existing customers calls for depth on the problems they already have. An audience for new services calls for consistency and a way to reach the people you want to build it with. Higher close rates call for content the sales team can send. Write down which results this program is for before anyone chooses between a podcast, a newsletter or a series of articles.

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The approach described in this article, shown as a visual guide.

Then agree how you will judge it. Enterprise content work often sits far from any quantifiable value, with no easy way to track what it moves. As I put it to Alex McClafferty in a 2025 interview (opens in a new tab), "you're totally in like vanity land, I think in a lot of them, which means you can be cut." A program that has named its purpose and agreed what to look at each quarter has a better answer when the budget is reviewed.

Keep the thinking with the executive

People used to ask me whether I wrote all my own content. In 2019 my answer was yes: I wrote all of it, and I was only beginning to experiment with writers who would turn my interviews into content.

What I had handed over was everything after the writing. In "How I systematize my content publishing", an essay I wrote in February 2019, I described spending about five minutes on a post or an episode once the writing or recording was done. With each article, I wrote the newsletter email, the social posts and the publish date in the same document. Then I sent it to two people: one edited it, and the other followed a checklist to put it live. For a podcast, I recorded the episode and a short intro and outro, uploaded the files, and emailed my editor and team the publish date, the headline and anything the editor needed to know. The editor produced it, and my content manager wrote the show notes and scheduled it. As I wrote then: "All I do is write and the rest is executed by a system."

Apply the same division to an executive program. The executive's part is the thinking: the ideas, the examples and the words, whether written, spoken in a recorded interview or said in a conversation on a podcast. Editing, design, publishing, scheduling and promotion are the system's part.

If the executive will not write, use their spoken words instead. Have the writer draft from a recorded interview or an episode, keep the executive's examples and phrasing, and send every piece back for the executive to correct before it goes out. A written brief works too, if it carries the executive's actual views and examples for the writer to preserve.

A podcast builds this division in. In a 2021 episode on podcast production teams, I described the host's part when a full-service company like Content Allies produces the show: a few strategy conversations at the beginning, recording the intro and outro, and then showing up for the interviews. Because the conversation is the content, no one else can draft the executive's part.

Plan for coordination, the hard part

Running the system is harder than it looks. In a January 2019 episode, I said I loved creating content but not the back end: every piece came with "30 to 90 minutes of extra work" on the website, links, thumbnails and show notes. I hired assistants to run my podcast publishing, and when they left, I stopped publishing. The gaps of three to six months in my feed were someone dropping out of that process.

The full team a company podcast needs is long. In that 2021 episode I listed a producer, someone for guest outreach, an audio editor, a graphic designer, a writer for show notes, social posts and articles, a video editor if you want clips, someone to publish to the directories and the website, and someone to promote each episode. Hiring those people was not the hard part, I said. Managing the process was. Their work depends on each other: the writer needs the designer for social graphics, and on the publish date someone discovers the thumbnail or the show notes are missing. Years of that with my own show led me to build Content Allies.

In the February 2019 essay I had written that my original goal with Content Allies, helping other people build systems like mine, had taught me that "this is something you can't hire out. This is something you must build for yourself." By 2021, with Content Allies producing podcasts for other companies, I said that hiring contractors directly costs less but takes a lot of project management. For someone higher up, with the cash flow and a valuable calendar, project managing a podcast is not where to spend time; at that point, I said, "it makes sense to bring in an outsourced partner."

For an enterprise program, that means one owner who is not the executive. Whether the work sits with an internal team or an outside partner, someone has to run the handoffs, hold the checklist and notice what is missing before the publish date. Put the time to write, record or be interviewed, and to approve each final piece, on the executive's calendar. The owner handles production and publishing.

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Keep the thinking and approval with the executive; give one program owner responsibility for production and publishing.

Write the system down while doing the work

I did not set aside a day to document my publishing. In the February 2019 essay on my publishing system, I described recording short videos of each part while I was publishing real posts, then putting the high-level steps in a shared document with a video for each. That was enough to hand the work to an assistant. There were mistakes at the start, so we built a checklist to catch the details, and later a team member took on quality assurance and managing the process. My advice then was: "Just record loose videos and let your team create the systems."

An enterprise team can do the same with its first few pieces. Record how each one moves from the executive's draft or recording to publication, write the steps down from that, and add to the checklist every time something slips. The owner keeps the document current as the program changes.

Add one format at a time

My own program grew one habit at a time. Around 2015 and 2016 I committed to one article a week and kept that up for almost half a year. About six months after that I launched the podcast, and built processes for sharing my content on social media with help from assistants. About three years after the podcast came The Daily, written straight onto LinkedIn each morning, and later a second, co-hosted podcast. "The key to becoming a content machine is to start small," I wrote in July 2019. I published every week, including weeks when I did not like what I had written, and improved along the way.

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Jake’s historical account, summarized from this article. These results describe his experience and are not a performance forecast.

For an executive, start with one format at a cadence they can keep in a bad week. Add the second only when the first runs without anyone chasing them for it. Each new format adds work for the system and for its owner.

My own blog was still bringing in business years later. In December 2024 I called starting it the "single highest ROI business move I ever made," (opens in a new tab) adding: "It still is what drives a large portion of our business today." The reason I gave was the search and domain authority it had built.

A one-page brief to agree before you start

Before you add another format or another writer, check where the program's words come from. Can the team point to the executive's draft or recording behind each piece, and show that the executive approved the final version?