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Most organizations do not fail because they lack content, data, or technology. They fail…
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Sarah Johnson shared thisin the most recent episode of The Content-first Poidcast, Torrey Podmajersky and I talked about something that quietly breaks a lot of organizations—meaning at scale. As teams grow, add channels, and bring in AI, the problem isn’t producing more content. It’s keeping the message clear. The same words start to mean different things. Things drift. And suddenly, everything feels just a little off. That’s exactly where Torrey Podmajersky has focused her work. She’s spent years helping teams create language systems that actually hold together as they scale. In her new book, she takes that even further—showing how to build content that stays consistent, usable, and human, even as complexity increases. In this conversation, we get into why meaning breaks down, what it actually takes to scale it, and how to bring clarity back into the way teams communicate and build. https://lnkd.in/er9Dx462Clarity at Scale: Fixing Meaning Drift in Product Teams - with Torrey PodmajerskyClarity at Scale: Fixing Meaning Drift in Product Teams - with Torrey Podmajersky
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Sarah Johnson posted thisIn my work with various organizations, I see that teams think they’re building an AI agent when what they’re actually building is a reflection of their organization’s meaning. When that meaning is clear and aligned, the agent feels intelligent. When it isn’t, the agent becomes inconsistent, and the breakdown shows up quickly. The instinct is to fix the model with better prompts or tools, but that misses the point. AI does not create meaning. It operates on whatever it is given, and when content is fragmented or undefined, the system compensates in ways that look like failure but are really gaps in the foundation. A content-first approach changes the sequence. Define what things mean, structure that content so it holds, and then use AI to expand and scale it. I wrote a short piece on this...If you’re working on AI agents, this is what determines whether they hold together or fall apart. https://lnkd.in/eJpzYBEm
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Sarah Johnson reposted thisSarah Johnson reposted thisOrganic reach isn’t dead Lazy content is. LinkedIn's algorithm in 2026 rewards usefulness, watch time, and saves. If you’re a founder or exec, format choice is strategy. The right posts turn expertise into inbound deals, talent, and speaking. The wrong ones burn time and keep you invisible. Here are the post types that earn attention: 1/ Educational Posts Teach one focused concept your market uses. ↳ Pick a narrow problem ↳ Use a named framework or checklist ↳ Show a quick example Takeaway: Education earns saves and positions you as the go-to. 2/ Personal Stories Share a specific moment with a practical lesson. ↳ Open with the scene and conflict ↳ Show the decision and result ↳ Extract the rule others can apply Takeaway: Stories build trust and memory. 3/ Step-by-Step Carousels Turn a process into clear, numbered steps. ↳ 5–9 slides max ↳ One action per step ↳ End with a summary checklist Takeaway: Steps increase dwell time and completion. 4/ Contrarian Takes Challenge a common belief with evidence. ↳ Name the myth ↳ Show data or lived experience ↳ Offer a better rule Takeaway: Contrarian posts differentiate your point of view. 5/ Behind-the-Scenes Show how the work actually gets done. ↳ Share redacted docs, templates, notes ↳ Explain the why behind your method ↳ Tie to client or business outcomes Takeaway: BTS proves expertise without bragging. 6/ Listicles Curate tight lists that save time. ↳ Tools, prompts, rules, pitfalls ↳ One-line items ↳ Order by importance Takeaway: Lists drive saves and quick wins. 7/ Social Proof Posts Show outcomes and third-party validation. ↳ Before/after snapshots ↳ Specific metrics and context ↳ Short testimonial screenshots Takeaway: Proof turns attention into trust. 8/ Engagement Posts Start a work-relevant conversation. ↳ Ask a pointed question ↳ Share your answer first ↳ Invite disagreement or alternatives Takeaway: Quality comments train the algorithm who to show you to. 9/ Repurposed Content Reuse high-signal ideas across formats. ↳ Turn a post into a carousel ↳ Clip 45s from a 30-min talk ↳ Update and repost winners quarterly Takeaway: Repurposing scales output without extra hours. 10/ POV/Opinion Posts State your belief and why it matters now. ↳ Clear claim in line one ↳ 2–3 reasons from experience ↳ Practical implication for the reader Takeaway: A sharp POV makes you referenceable. Most visibility problems are format problems. Authority grows when you teach, prove, and invite dialogue. Rotate these 10 and measure saves, comments, and profile visits. Save this for your next 30-day content plan. Use it to turn expertise into visible authority. ♻ Repost if someone in your network should see this. ✅ Follow me Alec Rickard for more on careers and personal growth.
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Sarah Johnson shared thisI had a great conversation with Steve Keifer on the podcast, and we kept circling back to something I see in almost every organization: most marketing problems are not marketing problems. They are meaning problems. When product, marketing, and sales use the same words but mean different things, performance starts to drift. Campaigns look right but don’t convert. Sales conversations lose traction. Teams respond by doing more, but the results don’t follow. We also talked about AI, and this is where it gets real. AI doesn’t fix meaning drift. It scales it. If your foundation is fragmented, you get faster inconsistency. If your meaning is aligned, you get speed, clarity, and real performance gains. Don't miss this is one. https://lnkd.in/gZ3-4Zt4Marketing in the Age of AI: Volume, Velocity & Meaning Drift - with Steve Keifer by The Content First PodcastMarketing in the Age of AI: Volume, Velocity & Meaning Drift - with Steve Keifer by The Content First Podcast
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Sarah Johnson shared thisHappy to share that I'll be speaking with Scott Abel, the Content Wrangler, on A Framework For Untangling Messaging Misalignment! Make sure to attend on April 9.Sarah Johnson shared thisUntangle the confusion that meaning drift brings to your organization’s messaging and discover how content clarity can transform your team’s results. Join Sarah Johnson, Founder and Strategic Consultant at Content-first Design, on April 9, 2026, as she introduces the content-first double diamond framework—a practical approach for stopping meaning drift before it disrupts your user experience. You’ll learn what meaning drift is, why it happens, and how unchecked misalignment in messaging impacts both customers and teams. Sarah will walk you through actionable steps to implement a content-first mindset, share real-world case studies of organizations who’ve succeeded with this method, and provide two valuable resources: The Content-first Design Readiness Checklist and 7 Signals Your Organization has Meaning Drift. See how cross-functional collaboration around content leads to stronger, more consistent communication across every touchpoint. Can’t make it? Register, and we’ll send you a link you can use to watch a recording when it’s convenient for you. This educational web presentation is brought to you by The Content Wrangler and sponsored by Heretto, a powerful component content management (CCMS) platform to deploy help and API docs in a single portal designed to delight your customers.
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Sarah Johnson shared thisMost organizations don’t notice meaning drift when it starts because it doesn’t present as a clear failure. It shows up as friction. Work takes longer to move through review. Teams quietly rewrite language that was already approved. Sales, product, and marketing use the same words but mean slightly different things. AI outputs sound right at a glance but don’t quite hold together when you look more closely. Nothing is obviously broken, which is exactly why it persists. But over time, that low-grade friction compounds. Positioning begins to soften, differentiation becomes harder to articulate, and execution slows down even as effort increases. Teams often try to solve this by refining copy or tightening process, but those are surface-level responses to a deeper problem. What’s actually unstable is meaning itself. I put together a simple diagnostic to make that visible. The carousel walks through where meaning drift tends to show up across your system, how to spot it before it becomes embedded, and why it becomes even more risky as AI starts to generate content on your behalf. If things feel harder than they should right now, this will help you understand what’s getting in the way.
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Sarah Johnson posted thisDid you know that 95% of AI failures are due to poor data inputs? This means Meaning Misalignment at an organizational level is causing your AI's to create hallucination instead of usable outputs. The Content-first Framework addresses this misalignment and gets teams on the same page with content used to train AI. How many people out there are experiencing AI failures?
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Sarah Johnson posted thisfinally, it’s happening. I’m giving away the exact tool that I used to diagnose meaning drift in organizations, large and small. Comment DRIFT and I will DM you the document.
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Sarah Johnson reposted thisSarah Johnson reposted thisA few weeks ago, I had the distinct honor of sitting down to discuss accessibility with the one and only Sarah Johnson. Someone recently described Sarah as "a woman on a mission," and that resonated with me. She is a passionate advocate for the content-first approach, a literal treasure trove of content design knowledge, and an incredibly kind human being to boot. Check out our conversation (link is in the comments), and let me know what you think. I would love to keep the conversation going here. 👇 Like, really! #ContentFirstDesign #Accessibility #UX #UXWriting #ContentDesign #UserExperience #Networking
Sarah Johnson commented on a post
29m
This is exactly it. Most teams don’t have a distribution problem. They have a meaning problem. When you skip straight to channels, you’re amplifying ambiguity. You can get impressions, clicks, even short-term wins—but nothing holds because the message underneath isn’t stable. It hasn’t been defined in a way that can carry across touchpoints, teams, or time.
What you’re pointing to about “there’s so much content to mine” is where the opportunity really is. Most organizations are sitting on valuable thinking—buried in whitepapers, internal docs, expert conversations—but it’s not structured into something reusable. So every campaign starts from scratch, and the story keeps shifting.
The shift is subtle but important: content isn’t just fuel for distribution. It’s the system that defines what you mean and how that meaning shows up everywhere.
When that system is clear, distribution starts working the way people expect it to. Without it, you’re just pushing noise a little farther.
You’re right—people want a story. But more than that, they want a story that actually holds together wherever they encounter it.
Sarah Johnson commented on a post
1w
This is exactly it. Most organizations are trying to solve an input problem with a more expensive output.
What you’re calling out as “cleaning the fuel” is what I see as establishing shared meaning before anything touches a model. When content is treated as narrative, documentation, or artifacts, AI has no choice but to interpolate. And interpolation is just a polite word for guessing.
Where this gets dangerous isn’t just hallucination. It’s inconsistency at scale. The same system gives different answers because the underlying meaning isn’t stable. Teams think they have alignment because they use the same words, but those words don’t resolve to the same definitions, structures, or intent.
Restructuring content into discrete, semantic units is the unlock, but I’d take it one step further. It’s not just about structure. It’s about designing meaning as infrastructure. Clear definitions. Explicit relationships. Agreed boundaries. Content that knows what it is and what it is not.
Once that’s in place, the model doesn’t need to be “smarter.” It just needs to be competent. And suddenly, all the money spent chasing better models looks like it was solving the wrong problem all along.
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Sarah Johnson liked thisSarah Johnson liked this"Oh, did you need that?" The absolute innocence. The frustratingly obvious problem. Am I talking about Bailey (the rescue horse pictured) stepping on the hose while I try to fill watering troughs? Or am I talking about the resources, meetings, and access required to do my job well, that other people don't realize they're blocking? When I work in design, I'm always working deeply in context. I absolutely need the context of what business problem this feature or product needs to do, and I also need the context for the user and for the customer. When I work on a farm in early Spring, I'm always working deeply in mud... like the mud I had just dragged this hose through, that Bailey is stepping on.
Experience & Education
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Content-first Design
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Publications
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Content-first Design, Moving content forward
XML Press
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Conversations with American Women Writers
UPNE
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Conversations with American Women Writers
UPNE
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The Last Sailor
Sourcebooks
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The Lightkeeper's Wife
Sourcebooks
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The Very Telling
UPNE
Courses
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Putting Content First
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