Revmade Chief Strategy Officer Andrew Hanelly will examine how brands can earn attention and build trust across algorithmically controlled platforms at Content Marketing World 2026 in Denver.
Algorithms influence much of what audiences encounter online. They determine which videos enter recommendation feeds, which articles surface in search, which posts gain momentum, and which creators continue reaching their communities.
Every decision happens before the audience chooses whether the content deserves attention.
Andrew Hanelly will explore that dynamic at Content Marketing World 2026, taking place October 5 through October 7 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.
The Chief Strategy Officer at Revmade will present “Trust Me, I’m an Algorithm: How to Earn Attention and Trust When Algorithms Rule Everything Around Us.” Scheduled for October 6 from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM, the session forms part of the event’s Content Strategy track.
Hanelly brings experience developing publishing, audience growth, and monetization strategies for Fortune 500 brands, major media companies, associations, and nonprofit organizations. His upcoming presentation will focus that experience on one of the central challenges facing content teams: creating work that satisfies distribution systems while remaining valuable to the humans using them.
Algorithms Decide Which Content Receives a Chance
Content quality matters once someone encounters the work. Algorithmic distribution determines whether that encounter happens.
Recommendation systems evaluate signals such as watch time, completion rates, clicks, saves, shares, comments, and return behavior. Search engines consider relevance, authority, usefulness, and engagement. Each platform applies its own logic, yet all aim to predict what people will value.
“Most content doesn’t fail because it’s bad,” Revmade wrote in a recap of Hanelly’s previous Content Marketing World presentation. “It fails because it never had a chance.”
That distinction changes the content strategist’s job. Producing a useful asset represents one part of the process. The team must also understand how the platform evaluates that usefulness and how audiences communicate value through their behavior.
The most durable strategy begins with the person behind each signal.
The Algorithm Serves as an Audience Proxy
Algorithms and audiences play different roles in content distribution.
The audience brings interests, needs, questions, habits, and emotional responses. The algorithm observes those behaviors and attempts to predict which piece of content deserves the next opportunity.
This perspective redirects attention from platform manipulation toward audience service. A marketer can study how a recommendation system operates while building the content around a genuine human need.
Audience research provides the foundation. Search queries reveal active questions. Comments show where people want greater clarity. Customer interviews expose frustrations and motivations. Community discussions demonstrate how people describe their challenges in their own language.
Those insights help teams create content aligned with both audience demand and the signals algorithms reward.
A Strong Hook Earns the First Moment
Hanelly’s existing approach to algorithmic content uses a framework built around four elements: Hook, Hero, Help, and Hug.
The Hook earns the first moment of attention.
Audiences make rapid decisions inside busy feeds and search results. A strong opening communicates relevance quickly, establishes a clear premise, and creates enough curiosity to encourage continued attention.
Revmade describes an effective hook as specific and slightly unfinished. It offers a promise about the value ahead while leaving enough open space for the audience to continue.
That promise must match the content. When the opening and the payoff align, audiences continue watching, reading, or listening. Their behavior then gives the platform evidence that the content fulfilled its purpose.
The hook therefore serves both the person and the distribution system.
A Human Hero Creates Trust
The Hero gives the content a credible and relatable voice.
Brands possess expertise across their organizations. Executives understand strategic decisions. Product specialists know how solutions work. Customer teams recognize recurring problems. Researchers and practitioners can explain developments through direct experience.
Turning those experts into visible communicators allows audiences to connect the information with a person.
Credentials establish authority, while relatability makes the expertise accessible. A successful hero brings both qualities together through clear explanations, recognizable experiences, and a perspective shaped by practical knowledge.
Hanelly’s work has examined how brands can transform internal experts into creator-style voices. The approach gives audiences a person to follow and gives the organization a consistent source of trusted content.
Human presence also strengthens continuity. An expert can return across articles, videos, podcasts, social posts, and live appearances, allowing the relationship to grow through repeated exposure.
Helpful Content Proves the Brand Is Listening
The third element, Help, connects content with a real audience need.
Many content programs begin with internal requests. A team needs a video for a campaign, an article for a product launch, or a series of posts to fill a channel. Revmade encourages organizations to begin with the audience problem and select the format afterward.
Useful content can educate, simplify a complex decision, answer a timely question, or provide reassurance. The specific form depends on what the audience needs in that moment.
Revmade points to search data, customer conversations, social comments, community threads, and call transcripts as sources of useful insight. These signals show marketers which problems deserve attention and how audiences discuss them.
Help also supports algorithmic performance. People save resources they expect to revisit. They share answers with others facing the same challenge. They spend more time with material that delivers meaningful value.
Each behavior gives the platform a clearer reason to continue distribution.
The Hug Turns Attention Into a Relationship
The final element, Hug, gives audiences a reason to return.
Attention can produce one view, click, or impression. A relationship creates continued interaction.
Recurring formats, shared rituals, audience participation, useful newsletters, member benefits, and active communities can transform a single encounter into an ongoing habit. The audience begins to recognize what the brand offers and where that value fits into their lives.
Revmade describes Hug as the difference between clicks and community.
Return behavior carries commercial and algorithmic value. Loyal audiences spend more time with content, participate more frequently, and develop stronger familiarity with the organization. Platforms can observe that continued interest through repeat visits, subscriptions, and consistent engagement.
The brand gains an audience relationship that extends across individual posts and platform updates.
Content Marketing World Connects Audience Insight With Impact
Content Marketing World 2026 will bring more than 100 sessions to Denver across content strategy, storytelling, artificial intelligence, analytics, audience development, and marketing effectiveness.
The conference will take place alongside The Market Research Event, creating a shared environment for content teams and audience insight professionals. Programming from Effie, WARC, and Contagious will further connect research, strategy, creativity, and business performance.
Hanelly’s session fits directly within the event’s “Insight to Impact” theme.
Algorithms translate audience behavior into distribution decisions. Marketers who understand the audience can create content that generates stronger signals and earns greater visibility.
The Hook captures attention. The Hero creates trust. The Help delivers value. The Hug inspires a return.
At Content Marketing World 2026, Hanelly will show why success inside algorithmic systems begins with a content strategy designed around the people on the other side of them.
