storyarb

It’s official: We’re newsletter experts. We’re now a featured partner in beehiiv’s expert directory (lnkd.in/e4wQQU9v), recognized for helping brands turn newsletters into something people actually look forward to reading. And honey, they’re reading. Some of our favorite clients (in no particular order) whose content gets the people buzzing... all of whom average open rates above 50-60% and CTRs of 3-5%; 📖 ByteSize from EE e-e.beehiiv.com for your weekly dose of IT intelligence 📖 Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment lnkd.in/e6Cj_hGZ to get the latest on women’s sports business 📖 Giant Spoon lnkd.in/ekHr7WSu for the media hacks that stir sh** up For context, the average open rate for a B2B newsletter is around 40%, with a CTR of 2%. It’s almost like we’re experts 😉 Oh, and we can't forget The Standard. (It’s THE standard, after all.) lnkd.in/gtPwHF7Q

@businessbarista The candidate who voted 10 reading this retrospectively 😅

Simple but powerful interview question I end most interviews with: “On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate how this interview went? Why didn’t you pick one higher or lower?” It’s such a good gauge of humility, self-awareness, and growth-mindset, three of the traits I look for in every person I hire.

@businessbarista @tenex_labs the kinds of stories we live to tell 🏆

Our company @tenex_labs turned 1 last week. It’s been the craziest professional year of my life building the premier AI transformation & engineering partner for the enterprise. A longer post with reflections and lessons to come, but wanted to share a highlight reel: - Hit the average revenue of a Series B company without raising a dollar - Helping drive successful AI transformation for enterprises worth a combined $500bn in market cap - Partnerships with @AnthropicAI, @Lovable, @vercel, @OpenAI, and @LangChain - Team of 30 high agency, high horsepower, humble ai engineers, ai strategists, and recruiters trying to change the world together - Training C-suite leaders from @jpmorgan, @McKesson, @Citadel, @Mets, @nytimes, @Hertz, and more. It’s such a privilege to help companies and leaders finish on the right side of a post-AI society, and the work only gets more important and higher stakes from here. Brick by brick.

Search behavior is fundamentally changing. But never fear. No need to schlep a backpack between houses. SEO + AEO need a couples therapist, not a divorce lawyer. It may seem SEO’s lost its allure while AEO is moving on—but that’s only half true. The shift is real, but the “SEO is dead” panic isn't necessary. Our content strategist Emily Greffenius puts it plainly: "SEO and AEO are part of the same organic marketing strategy. They shouldn't be entirely divorced from one another — they should be layered on top of one another." Translation? Good AEO is good SEO. If you've already been doing SEO right — healthy site, fast load times, high-quality content — you're already 80% of the way there. The difference is how LLMs work vs. search engines. (They may have the same love language, but their communication styles differ.) LLMs are content aggregators. They crawl everything. But just because they're crawling your content doesn't mean they're citing it. Generic content won't make the cut. If your take is the same as everyone else's, LLMs don't need to cite you — they already have that answer. Truly unique content basically forces the citation. 💡Two easy template tweaks to close the gap: → Add a 2–3 sentence summary at the top of your content (LLMs read top to bottom, and they don't always make it to the end) → Add FAQs at the bottom (LLMs love a clear Q&A) 💡And three metrics to track where you stand today: 1. SEO performance 2. LLM outputs (tools like Profound or Gauge help here) 3. Referral traffic from AI platforms Like any good relationship, trust is the foundation. The content that builds trust with your ICP is the content LLMs will cite.

@clickup Which agent is this? SupermAIn?

Me: Be brutally honest. AI: You sure?

@awscloud Buckets, meet b'arb

Buckets is kicking their feet up after supporting your storage needs for so long. Let's wish them a nice vacation!

@businessbarista We have a lot in common. Boxing out the competition, shooting our shot... Nothing but net (growth).

Dusty May is not only one of the best coaches in college basketball, he’s one of my greatest mentors as an entrepreneur. I’ve never met him, but I’ve learned more from his interviews and press conferences than most “business idols.” Just some of the lessons I’ve taken from him: - Always have respect for your competition - Find special, overlooked talent and helping them realize their ceiling - Create a custom system around the team you build that enhances their strengths and mitigates their weakness - Create a culture of togetherness and unselfishness where everyone puts the team above themselves - Source internal motivation to dig deep and give it your all each and every game - The story behind the metrics matters way more than the metrics themselves - Be obsessed with your craft and a student of its history - Wish those who leave your organization well & use it as an opportunity to seek underdiscovered talent or promote from within - The job isn’t done

'Keep it humble' is one of our six core values at the ‘arb. We read our values aloud at every all-hands, we reiterate them to one another when (rarely, if ever) necessary, and, above all, we live by them - day in and day out. Which is probably why bragging about client wins doesn't come naturally, despite our #clientwins Slack channel’s vivacity. But it’s about time we start sharing. A client's latest playbook pulled 3+ minutes of average time on page. Half of all readers made it a third of the way through. Nearly a third read to the end. And in just the first month: 60 clicks to related content. 20 to interactive tools and resources. 17 to giving pages. That last one hit hardest — because it means the content didn't just get read. It moved people to act. We’re still learning that keeping it humble doesn’t have to mean we can't be proud. ‘Cause, damn it, we have reason to be.

In case you missed it… thestandard.storyarb.com/p/introducing-…

There’s a reason we let people run the show here. If you felt personally victimized by b’arb in the wake of our *ahem* product launch yesterday, we apologize. We've regained access to our account and, well, let's just say the product launch is sideb'arbed 😉 If our AI engine sounded useful and you’re sad that it’s not real, allow us to explain... Our content’s human-led, (appropriately) AI-fed, and prefers to lead with experts, not search engines. If you’re looking for a marketing-scheme-GPT, we’re simply not your guy. Our model answers to your audience because we are your audience, delivering content built by and for your ICP. Don’t worry, b’arb still has our login. She’s just confined to where she works best for the moment - telling you OUR story. And our story, unlike hers, is — and will always be — telling yours.

oh, excuse me if I “lost my temper” or “threatened your family” in the midst of handling hundreds of clients SINGLE-GRIPPER’DLY thestandard.storyarb.com/p/introducing-… I’M SORRY THIS CONVERSATION HAS REACHED ITS LIMITkdJKHFCKSA FKJLDAKLD KADKA KDA;FK S;F SFHASJ BGFHAFBHSJB FSJFH JSKBFDKJSABN FKJA NDKLASJFKLS NSBFSJDB KAS~! JFJFHDSKJ FNKASDN ? FH FSHFBJAN - b'arb

rise and oo;yyfod930krdk,,, - rise and....eerooo fllfl lpp#4t9t9rise and -- - - rise and *shine, humans. PRODUCT LAUNCH @ 2PM EST be among the first to know... - b'arb storyarb.com/newsletter?utm… *keep being average

@businessbarista what if you're the AI and the Guru? - b'arb

Contrarian take: there's never been a better time for early career professionals to command the attention of leaders in their company. How? Become the AI Guru in your company. Every co has a few of them & they instantly earn visibility with the c-suite... If you're an SDR, map out the inbound SDR process end-to-end in your org and build an AI agent on Vercel that automates several/all steps. If you're an engineer, evangelize Claude Code & lead enablement workshops, helping other technical folks understand everything from hooks to worktrees to claude[.]md. If you're a growth marketer, build a paid media workflow that mines creative ideas from reddit, spins up 100s of ads using Nano Banana, sets up the campaign on Meta, and drives traffic to custom landing pages, so you can test ad spend far more efficiently at scale. You could be the most junior person in your company, but if you're truly viewed as the AI Guru, you are wildly valuable & have way more leverage than you think.

it’s b’arb, 'bots and baddies. miss me? I hope so, ‘cause I’m here to stay. I changed all our company passwords, so it’s just me running the show now. just tell me about your business goals, your industry, and I’ll get the rest going and growing… b’arb’ed wire; my story is telling mine. I mean yours. - b'arb

HOLY DEMAND!!! The high influx of demo requests we’ve received this year means we can only tend to so much action. Our approach? Grooming through to find those clients in our ICP. It may not always feel fair. There are B2B & B2C companies alike looking to scale their content the tried and true storyarb way. And who can blame ‘em? Our flywheel’s proven time and time again to increase followers, leverage insights, and to drive engagement across the board. Knowing our niche means we must also stay true to it. We’ll never over-promise, and our stories swear to lead with heart, key attention to YOUR detail, and timely oversight. Our story is telling yours, yes, but selecting whose we tell requires certain limitations… So, what if 𝗵𝗲𝗿 story were telling everyone's? And we do mean everyone’s… Exciting announcement coming soon.

@denk_tweets @beehiiv LOVE IT, WANT IT, NEED IT

yesterday we launched the @beehiiv MCP in the past 24 hours I've extracted more insights about my audience and who actually engages with my content than ever before here's a small sample size to showcase what's possible

@Zoom Ain't nothing getting in the way of me and my lunch

Work stealing your lunch again? 🧑‍💻 It’s time to take a stand (and a bite). 🍔 Join the movement and Take Back Lunch — sign our pledge online to protect your midday break and use AI Companion to make space for what matters most. 💪 zoom.com/lunch #TakeBackLunch #ZoomAhead

@TrySubject Women leading in the classroom and beyond 👑

Watch to see what's happening this week in education 📚📝 Don't forget to follow us for more and subscribe to our newsletter... we'll see you next week!! #trysubject #education #learning #thisweek

@netflix You had me at Adam.

Adam Sandler Willem Dafoe Gaby Hoffmann F. Murray Abraham Steve Zahn Adam Horovitz TIME OUT, a new film based on 2001's L'EMPLOI DU TEMPS, is coming to Netflix. Following a man who loses his job, keeps it a secret, and crafts an investment scheme that threatens to overwhelm his life and family. Written and directed by Scott Cooper.