How Ryan McGonagill Builds High-Impact Content at Scale Across 10+ Brands in 2025 🚀
Description
https://page2pod.com - What does it take to run a multi-brand content machine—and decide what not to publish? Ryan McGonagill, VP of Content at Centerfield, breaks down how his team powers 10+ owned brands like business.com and security.org while keeping content simple, useful, and relentlessly user-first. We dig into why personalization beats flashy interactives, and how to design for real decisions—not vanity metrics.
You’ll hear the refresh system that keeps nothing older than a year (and why ISP deal pages may need updates every ~2 weeks), plus how seasonality (think moving season) reshapes the calendar. Ryan also unpacks verticalized expertise, the team’s “gold standard” quality bar, and why user value beats dwell-time games every time.
On the PR side, we talk about crafting hooks that surprise and earn coverage, the DEI pronoun study that drew massive press (and even an Elon Musk reply), and how Ryan thinks about links vs. referral traffic. We close with a pragmatic take on AI, where human judgment is non-negotiable and LLMs assist without replacing expertise.
Finally, Ryan shares why content structure may matter even more as AI overviews evolve—and the single best link he’s ever earned.
🧠 In This Episode
• Centerfield’s model: owning acquisition end-to-end and publishing across ~10 brands, from business.com to security.org.
• Personalization > “cool” interactives: give users simple, relevant tools (even a basic calculator).
• “User first” beats dwell-time hacks—ship what helps people decide, not what inflates metrics.
• The refresh playbook: nothing older than a year; ISP pages reviewed ~biweekly; plan around seasonality (e.g., moving May–Sep).
• Verticalized writers + editors and a non-negotiable “gold standard” (third-party + firsthand expertise, real photos).
• How to prioritize: fortify winners before chasing breadth; align SEO (traffic/rank) with content’s profit focus.
• PR that lands: lead with surprising data and media-worthy angles; why links > referral traffic from research.
• AI in the workflow: frequent LLM upgrades, but keep human touchpoints for judgment, reviews, and accuracy.
This episode is a tactical blueprint for scaling content that _actually helps people decide_—and earns the kind of links and trust that last.
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💬 Comment below: What's your biggest challenge with content personalization or AI in your workflow?
🔗 Websites & Brands:
🧪 Notable Studies/Articles Referenced:
- DEI Pronoun Study – A viral study Ryan produced that got national media coverage (including a comment from Elon Musk).
- Marketing Interns Study on Job Market – Innovative research using interns to analyze the job market.
- LLM Comparison Article on Business.com – Compared outputs from various AI models for quality.
Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media
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