These days, you need to create both a great Website and great content to rank on Google. 

Today, we’re talking to Brian Dean, an SEO expert and founder of Backlinko, about how to fuel your 10x content using his research method called the Skyscraper technique. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Black Hat SEO: Stuffing keywords and creating fake signals to rank in Google
• Google penalized sites using this strategy
• White Hat SEO: You don’t mind showing Google everything you did to optimize your site
• Backlinko teaches people White Hat SEO strategies
• SEO Elements: Keyword and topic research; create content around them
• Two types of keywords: Information and commercial
• Create and optimize content that gets the most searches around keywords/topics
• Differences between well-researched and not researched content and topics
• Provide one-stop shopping for all the information customers need
• Skyscraper Technique is a form of research to figure out what content will perform well:

1. Find a keyword
2. Search for keyword in Google
3. Create content better than what’s on first page of search results

• Ways to improve content - go bigger and better, curate, storytelling, and more
• Focus on quality over quantity; create less content, make it more valuable
• Common missteps when implementing “less is more” strategy and ranking

Links: 

• 10X Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
• Backlinko
• Backlinko on YouTube
• Jon Cooper
• Tim Ferriss and the 4-Hour Work Week
• Google Keyword Planner
• Reddit
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to podcast@coschedule.com 

Where do your customers hang out? What kinds of things do they like? What publications do they read? Customer research involves a lot of leg work, so does this information even matter? How can you leverage such insight for SEO? 

Today, we’re talking to Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro and author of Lost and Founder. He is a powerhouse in the content marketing and SEO world. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Background, origination, and purpose of SparkToro
• Reaching/Researching Audiences: Slow, frustrating, and inaccurate process
• Companies spend money contracting agencies for a list of top customers, blogs, podcasts, and events
• Bones of Audience Intelligence: 1) Identify audiences across channels; 2) Know audience density; 3) Use trustworthy and valuable metrics
• How to obtain, benchmark, filter, and analyze data
• Data Points: Which to focus on and where to get them
• Social Network Profiles: Report follower count and engagement
• Biases generate unrepresentative data influenced by SEO
• Significant sample sizes and diverse groups are needed for true coverage
• Examples of missing specific audiences
• SparkToro lets you find people who practice specific fields
• Does current audience intelligence data represent the market as a whole?
• Improve SEO by helping audience accomplish tasks, and identifying and broadening link sources

Links:

Rand Fishkin on Twitter

SparkToro

Lost and Founder

Project Event Safe

Moz

SurveyMonkey Audience

Nate Silver

SimilarWeb Pro

AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to podcast@coschedule.com

Quotes by Rand: 

“If you’re looking at a social network profile, don’t just report on follower count, go look at the last 20 or 50 posts...report on how much engagement did each of those get.”

“Go out there, build a company, make mistakes, just don’t make exactly the same ones I did.”

“You get biased by your existing understanding of the field.”

Copywriting can happen anywhere - from blogs to cereal boxes. It includes the whole world of marketing words. Conversion copywriting helps businesses build their business. Conversion copywriting is about getting people to say “Yes” and generating more leads and buyers. It measures results to see if something converted or not.

Today, we’re talking to Joanna Wiebe, a conversion copywriter, creator of Copy Hackers, and co-founder of Airstory. She is an absolute authority on copywriting and conversions. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• What makes people say, “Yes?” Whether it is clicking or trying something. There are different formulas you can use for this goal.
• Ask customers, “What was going on in your life that brought you to…” Then, you can identify their motivation.
• If you put a button on a Web page, people will click it because it is there. Lots of things will move people to click, but rarely lead to conversions.
• Stages of Awareness: Unaware, Pain Aware, Solution Aware, Product Aware, and Most Aware.
• Persuasion techniques are typically triggers used at the late stages in hope that you will make people buy.
• “Don’t put pressure on poor, little button.” It’s going to get clicked, but don’t put too many fancy marketing tricks within it.
• Where does it go? What will it say? Push best people to the most highly optimized button.
• There’s buttons for Calls to Value or Calls to Action. A Call to Action button is to tell the user exactly what you want them to do. For example, Download Ebook or Complete Purchase.
• A Calls to Value button regards why a customer is performing an action and completes the phrase, “I want to…”
• Change your button approach depending on the type of medium you are using. It depends on the context for an action or engagement.
• Map out actions based on context and location - email, Website, blog, etc.
• Map Calls to Action to move customers to the next stage of awareness.

Links: 

• 10X Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
• Copyhackers
• Airstory
• Google Analytics
• Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
• Intuit
• Aaron Orendorff
• MarketingExperiments
• Robert Cialdini’s Persuasion Techniques
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to podcast@coschedule.com 

Quotes by Joanna Wiebe: 

“It wasn’t the digital atmosphere we have today in marketing where everything, everything gets measured.”

“The real thing is we want to convert. We want more leads and we want more buyers. That’s what conversion copywriting is about.”

“We can’t do a lot of motivating with copy, but you can take someone’s motivation and turn it into something.”

“People want to click things. Mostly because they just want to move through life and get their problems solved.”

Content marketing is easy, right?! You just find a keyword, write a list post, rank #1 on Google, get tons of traffic, and crush your goals. It should be that easy, but the future of successful content marketing is changing. Now, the goal is to influence profitable customer action.

Today, we’re talking to Jennifer Pepper, the marketing manager for content creation at Unbounce. She shares why it is more important than ever before to go beyond lifestyle or listicle content, to publish content that solves for intent, and to connect the dots for between your audience’s pain and your product offering.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• At Unbounce, Jennifer manages the production of content marketing initiatives and helps develop content strategy for the company’s marketing goals.
• Unbounce started blogging as a company before it even had a product. It started blogging to validate whether the problem it was trying to solve for marketers actually existed. The problem: Do people need to find a way to build dedicated landing pages without a developer or IT? Yes!
• Unbounce discovered that content and blogging was a great way to build a following by conveying authority and speaking in a way that resonated with marketers.
• Years ago, you could write content that stood out and drove traffic. However, rather than simply focusing on lifestyle, you needed to have a correlation between a product and lifestyle or journey to convert to sales.
• Many marketers realize that having so many channels, such as a blog, podcast, and ebooks, eventually do not produce results despite tons of effort. You need to create content that solves for intent and what the customer wants and needs.
• Unbounce centers on problem focus first vs. bringing a solution right away. What is the problem marketers are trying to solve? How do you meet them on the other end with the best answer on the Internet?
• By blogging first, Unbounce was able to help serve product development and validate assumptions through content.
• The process of connecting lifestyle to a core product involves what’s going to be the next growth channel in terms of content and focusing on fundamental questions and core problems. Learn to optimize the content you create.
• How do you know when it is time to pivot and change? At Unbounce, it reviewed net new traffic to a content channel and whether content attracted people and pushed them to a new trial start.   
• There was content that was driving traffic, but it was old. And the traffic was dipping because it was not ranking anymore. Do you invest further in a channel that is flatlining? Or, how do you go back to that content and refresh it to attract traffic and rank again?
• Keep cornerstone content fresh and relevant and at the top of search results. Does it still answer the core question? Would you click it from a search engine results page (SERP)? If not, make changes to the content. On the Web page, how quickly does it get to the core answer? If not fast enough, revise the content. Is the best experience on the Internet for this particular question best suited to a blog post or an online experience?
• Conduct keyword research to discover the intent of what people are looking for and refresh the content. Also, find and use synonyms that relate to your product and business.
• Unbounce uses a few tools that are handy to find relevant synonyms and conduct keyword research: Ahrefs and SEObook.
• It is important to pivot from lifestyle content to optimize for product intent because of how people are interacting with the Internet. Reach the right customers in the right ways to save time and money.
• Jennifer focuses on the customer journey through curriculums - marketing as a form of education and way to nurture prospects into customers. It is about creating content that ranks through keyword research and curriculum through grouping keywords by intent.
• To put a curriculum together, ask yourself the following questions: What’s the best way to show this information online? What are customers hoping to find? Map out and determine calls to action for the customer’s journey.  
• Mature content by analyzing traffic drops on posts that used to perform well. Go back to the content to identify its intent and whether the content needs to be refreshed or offer something new. Perform keyword research to cover fundamentals. Are they the best experience on the Internet?
• CoSchedule’s CEO and Founder Garrett Moon just published a book titled, 10X Marketing Formula, which discusses the content core - what you do and what you talk about to create content that gains customers.  

Links:

• Jennifer Pepper; Unbounce; Oli Gardner
• Rand Fishkin
• How to Diagnose SEO Traffic Drops
• Ahrefs and SEObook
• 10X Marketing Formula
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to podcast@coschedule.com

Quotes by Jennifer:

“We started blogging as a company before we even had a product...as a way of validating early on if the problem we were trying to solve for marketers actually existed.”

“We were always creating more instead of looking to better merchandise messages and content that we’d already perfected and produced.”

“We’re trying to look at being more problem focus first vs. bringing a solution right away.”

Have you spent a ton of time on a piece of content, only for it to get no traction or traffic? Does it end up in the graveyard of the Internet? What about a piece of content that drives traffic, but not to conversions? These are huge problems for content marketers. 

Today, we’re talking to Garrett Moon, CoSchedule’s co-founder and CEO. He will share content solutions and information from his new book, 10X Marketing Formula. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Content marketing is not living up to the hype that it promised and not generating the results that were expected.
• Who’s who in content marketing have provided positive testimonials for Garrett’s book.
• One core reason why marketers are not getting results with their content is that it is not good or unique enough to stand out.
• Need to Create Competition-Free Content: As a marketer that is creating content, your content is in competition with other content. Find ways to differentiate yourself.
• What are your top 5 competitors doing for content marketing? If it looks like what you are doing, then do something different.
• When CoSchedule performed an assessment of its competitors, it noticed a similarity in length of posts, consistent use of imagery, and low usage of resources in posts. Find opportunities that move you away from the competition.
• Garrett shared a case study of Groove HQ. It had a regular content marketing blog that focused on useful things for professionals. There was moderate success, but it was not great. The company needed to do something different with it. So, it launched a brand new blog called, Groove’s Journey to 100K in Monthly Recurring Revenue. The company shared what worked and didn’t, and the blog experienced overnight success.
• You need to have an appetite for risk to really stand out, but risk is not the problem. It is failure.
• Marketing has become about the methods we use. However, if you’re constantly building your marketing on top of methods, you’re just copycating what everyone else is doing. Take a risk and try something new.
• Stick with the plan, even if it doesn’t work.
• Content Core: What does your audience want to read about? What interests them enough to click on a link? Clicks don’t necessarily equal value and results. Don’t fall into that trap!
• Find an overlap between the topics you need to cover for your audience of existing and potential customers and the content you need to produce as a company. It’s about what your audience cares about and what value as a business you provide.
• What is the customer’s problem that made them hire CoSchedule to solve? How do you turn solving their problem into content?
• Marketing Projects: Allows customers to manage multi-media marketing campaigns.
• CoSchedule helps customers solve complex problems by offering free, simple tools. If you help your audience be successful without you, they’ll be dying to be successful with you!
• The best way to get results with content is to talk to your customers.

Links: 

10X Marketing Formula

Jay Baer

Joe Pulizzi

Blue Ocean Strategy

Groove HQ

AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to podcast@coschedule.com 

Quotes by Garrett: 

“Content marketing is just not always living up to the hype that was promised. It’s not always giving them the results that they feel they deserved.”

“As a marketer and a content marketer that is creating content, we have to actually realize is that our content is now in competition with other content.”

“Risk is all about failure, and I think you have to learn to sort of embrace failure and use it as a learning exercise and a way to improve what you are doing.”

Your customers use social media to talk about your industry, competitors, and brand. They provide valuable information that you can use to generate content ideas, understand why they go elsewhere, and prevent PR disasters. That’s why social listening is so important. 

Today, we’re talking to Joei Chan - content marketing manager from Mention. She shares some examples, tips, and advice that will help you capitalize on social listening opportunities. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Mention is a Web and social media listening tool for brands to track online conversations and listen to key topics and strategies for brand development.
• Joei leads content marketing partnerships to generate demands and leads for the sales and marketing team.
• Social listening is monitoring online conversations to understand what customers are saying and collect feedback about your brand and industry.
• Part of social listening involves understanding keywords and topics that your audience is talking about. Tracking when your company name or brand is mentioned. Also, track content marketing for keywords used in your industry.
• Identify keywords and topics that focus on your goals.
• Social listening is important for marketers to understand and care about because they need to know their target audience. Is what you have in mind when it comes to your audience, reality? Is your perception accurate?
• Social listening also helps you track campaign effectiveness. How far is the reach? Brand sentiment?
• Social listening can be used to improve campaigns and content by understanding what platforms your customers are using and what kind of content interests them. Also, utilize content directly from your customers to generate engagement.
• There are a lot of opportunities that you can discover by listening to what your customers are saying, and then tailor your content based on those conversations.
• User-Generated Content: For example, you can tie into users who like to show off your product after using it by asking them to use a specific hashtag or encourage them to generate specific types of content. It is a team effort between you and the customers.
• You can highlight and leverage user-generated content in various ways to promote your brand.
• Share entertaining and humorous content, even if it is your own expense and you need to welcome humility. Every brand messes up once in awhile. Embrace your failures and be authentic about it.
• Use social listening to find and build your audience. Understand your audience and give them content that interests and engages them. Listen and react to them in real-time.
• Competitive Analysis and Monitoring: Gather information on your competition. Your brand and products are never alone and always compared with others. What are your competitors doing that you can learn from?
• Inbound Marketing and Social Listening: Attract people to your brand through brand awareness and brand perception. What works in your favor? Your social media presence/reputation and positive reviews.

Links: 

Joei Chan; Mention

AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to podcast@coschedule.com

Reese’s Misshaped Trees on Social Media

Imagine knowing exactly what your target audience needs are and when they need them. Delivering exactly the right value at the right time. What would this mean for your marketing?

Today, we’re talking to Kyle Gray, an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and savvy content marketer. He has helped startups reach $1M in revenue, and his work is featured in some of the largest online marketing publications. Kyle breaks down two fundamental frameworks that content marketers can use to be persuasive and maximize helpfulness - making their target audience know, like, and trust them. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• How Kyle helps entrepreneurs create a powerful storyline for their business that drives sales, growth, and engagement.
• Kyle’s Scalable Storytelling Process features three steps: 1) Discover: Find the most interesting aspects of your story; 2) Define: clearly understand what the story is and how it should come across; and 3) Delegate: Bring on people to help you tell the story (i.e., freelance writers, social media marketers, etc.).
• Kyle’s book, The Story Engine, is a busy entrepreneur’s guide to content strategy and brad storytelling without spending all day writing.
• Kyle prefers frameworks because they organize thoughts and ideas. He prefers a framework that combines The Hero’s Journey storytelling formula with The Buyer’s Journey, which maps out what customers are thinking and key questions that need to be answered before they make a purchase from you.
• The Hero’s Journey: An older, wiser person nudges a hero along on an adventure. They depart for the adventure, only to face various obstacles and approach the big enemy. They feel like they may not be able to overcome such problems. However, during the darkest moment, the hero finds a treasure, secret, or tool to help them solve a problem that they once saw as impossible. As soon as they find this, they get results and return home wiser and stronger than before.
• The Buyer’s Journey: Is there a problem? Yes. Learn more about the problem. Make changes and seek help because you are in crisis. Then, you are open to making a purchase. You find your treasure, such as your purpose - an intense focus on your audience.
• Three stages of identifying and understanding customers: 1) Know: They need to know who you are; 2) Like: They need to like you compared to your competition; and 3) Trust: They need to trust that you can get the results.
• Don’t focus only on demographics when it comes to customers. Address their mindset, as well. They may not even know a problem exists, so you need to provide them with valuable content. Once they aware, they can do research and find options. Then, they solve a problem, especially if they have some knowledge and education related to it. They trust themselves to get results.
• Create content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Know Stage: Use short content, social media posts, inspirational videos, and quick tips to grab their attention and generate awareness. Like Stage: Use big, epic posts and detailed guides to educate and empower customers. Trust: Use Webinars and success stories that focus on the customer as the hero.
• Increase leads and ROI from storytelling: Create a connection with your customers.

Links: 

WP Curve

Self-Publishing School

DigitalMarketer

AdEspresso

The Story Engine book and blog

Dan Norris

The Hero’s Journey

The Buyer’s Journey

The Gut Institute

Hashimoto’s Disease

Frodo Baggins

Gandalf

Alex Turnbull and Groove HQ; Blog

iTunes Review; send screenshot of review to podcast@coschedule.com to receive a CoSchedule Care Package

Quotes by Kyle:

 “I’m a very process-oriented person. So, I love to take people through the same process over and over, and refine it and improve it over time. So, I’ve developed something I call the, ‘Scalable Storytelling Process’.”

“I love to use frameworks to really help us organize our ideas.”

“We not only need to understand the demographics of our customers, but we need to make sure that we create content for each of these different stages of the buyer’s journey.”

“We also take action on problems that we feel most empowered to solve.”

Content marketing is a highly competitive space. Every single day, nearly 60 million blog posts are published and five billion YouTube videos are watched. Are you always trying to edge out search results to be on top? Discover how to reframe your mindset when it comes to content marketing.

Today, we’re talking to Garrett Moon, CoSchedule CEO, about how to handle such competition when it comes to content marketing and his new book, 10X Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating Competition-Free Content That Stands Out and Gets Results. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Marketers are responsible for bringing in leads, sales, people - big tasks - to support core business metrics. Garrett’s book describes taking the formula, process, tips and tricks, and things that work and don’t for CoSchedule and making them available to anybody to use and implement in their business and marketing process.
• Gartner’s Hype Cycle: How new technology is adopted. When content marketing took shape a few years back, all of a sudden, everyone is adopting it and reworking their marketing teams, creating content, doing blogging, building email lists, and other tasks. Content marketing made a lot of promises to us.
• Now, Garrett believes we are entering the trough of disillusionment. We adopted content marketing, but what about those big promises that were made? What about the results? Why are you not getting the results your were promised?
• How do marketing teams provide business value? Content marketing need to be reinvented.
• Garrett describes the Me Too epidemic in marketing. There is so much free content online where pieces of strategies, tactics, and other items are copied and pasted. However, it does not create an entire picture or blueprint.
• The goal is to create a framework from start to finish process on how to find something unique to your business that only you can do and be successful with. Something that stands out and gets results.
• Creating Competition-Free Content: Not only your business and products is in competition, but your marketing is in competition with other marketing. Find a way to break past that barrier created by competitors.
• The book, Blue Ocean Strategy, refers to the Bloody Red Ocean, which is full of competition and where businesses are fighting each other to stand out - they’re at war with each other. However, the Blue Ocean is wide-open and uncontested. Your free to swim around and move about because you have successfully been able to differentiate yourself from the competition.
• To differentiate your content marketing, focus on your topics, how you create content, and how to connect that content and share it with your customers.
• 10X reference: look at what you are doing and ask if what you are doing will help your team multiply results, including increasing sales leads and the number of visitors to your Website.
• Marketing teams needs to focus on 10x growth rather than increments of 10 percent improvements. Marketing teams are designed to produce results, not worry about risks.
• Agile Manifesto: focuses on how software development could be better. A powerful way to cause engineers to rethink and reframe what they’re doing.
• 10X Manifesto: focuses on how so much of marketing is about mindset when it comes to how we do and approach things.
• Results or Die: 10X marketers work in a results or die oriented business, not 10 percenters allowed. Many think of marketing as a process for things they do - marketing is the blog, social media channels, conference booth, etc. There’s all these deliverables that a marketing team creates and hands off to others, such as the sales and support teams. Marketers are not here to produce Web ads or build a Website. They’re here to help produce business results and help grow companies.
• 10X marketers understand that growth requires failure, strength is in progress, not perfection. Teams that embrace failure (fail fast) understand that it is not about failure but acknowledging imperfection.
• Marketing comes with assumptions: assume methods used to get the message out will work; assume there’s the right mix of email ads; assume messages are right; assume the timeline is correct. Ever realize how much you are guessing?
• The problem is in the marketing plan. It becomes a risk-removal tool that leads to pointing fingers and placing blame on others. Instead of a plan, start with a goal.
• To start down the 10X marketing path, list what work you did this week. Are these 10X or 10 percent activities? Do any of these activities have the ability or potential, in a short period of time, to multiply results by 10X?

Links: 

CoSchedule; Garrett Moon; 10X Marketing Formula book

Gartner’s Hype Cycle

Blue Ocean Strategy  

Agile Manifesto

SpaceX; Elon Musk

Quotes by Garrett: 

“Everyone was really excited about it (content marketing). There was a lot of energy. A lot of hype behind it, and a lot of big promises that content marketing made to all of us.”

“If we’re going to really double down. If we’re really going to continue doing this, how do we really make it sing? How do we really make it pay for itself and become a true part of our results?”

“For us (CoSchedule as a start-up), it was results or die.”

“Once teams start looking at what they’re doing, how their processes are built, one thing they tend to find is that much of what they’re doing is based on mitigating risk vs. generating results.”

Garrett Moon’s 10X-Marketing Formula features interviews with top marketing professionals to uncover uncommon marketing mindsets, methods, and growth strategies. There’s so much you can learn from them to help your business! 

Today, we’re talking to Pat Flynn, the founder of Smart Passive Income, about how to crush a $300,000 launch and keep up with publishing so much valuable content. Besides starting his own software and app businesses and Websites, Pat also helps thousands grow their online businesses by sharing his process of what goes well and what doesn’t. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Initially, Pat did everything on his own. However, his team has grown over the past few years to support his mission. Now, most tasks are handled by his team. Pat handles the big ideas, not the busy work.
• Pat has been able to output more content and not fall behind as a result, including through online courses, books, and speaking engagements.
• Plan ahead when it comes to your content. Develop a top-down view using an editorial calendar to maintain efficiency and consistency. What topics do you want to cover? What are customers talking about?
• Develop lead magnets associated with topics or themes. What potential incentive can you offer to customers? Incentives could include an affiliate product or offer for an online course or Webinar. Thinking ahead of time gives you opportunities to be more strategic with your content.
• An editorial calendar makes sure all team members are onboard with the same goals and tasks. It’s about content and what teams are doing related to it. Then, they know what’s coming and what they can look forward to.
• Pat’s team meets every two weeks to review goals and accomplishments of the past two weeks, as well as items they want to achieve in the next two weeks. It ensures that they are working on what they need to truly be working on.
• If everything goes as planned, that’s a bonus. Fire drills are things that happen and blow everything up. So, you need to have flexibility built into your editorial calendar for unexpected issues and to put out fires.
• As a manager, Pat is comforted to know what needs to be done and that his team members are handling tasks. It is motivational, too, because he knows his team is holding up their responsibilities, which makes him more likely to do what he is responsible for completing. It’s a cohesive unit that supports each other.
• An editorial calendar equals freedom, flexibility, and breathing room for you. It takes the weight off your shoulders because goals and structure are developed and in place. A little time upfront means less time spent later on.
• When implementing an editorial calendar, there are some best practices to follow. It takes iteration, experimentation, and communication. CoSchedule makes it simple.

Links: 

• 10X-Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
• Will it Fly and Let Go by Pat Flynn
• Smart Passive Income
• AskPat podcast
• Power-Up Podcasting course
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package 

Quotes by Pat: 

“I’m only now doing what only I can do. Everything else is being taken care of by the team, and it’s so essential.” 

“Have your own content, support your own content.” 

“Podcast was on everyone’s mind because we planned ahead, we utilized the editorial calendar, and we hit a home run.” 

“Stop, start, and continue has become an important thing for us.” 

How much should you give away for free? Should you solve every problem for your audience, even when they do not buy your product or service? Determining how much content to give out for free can be challenging. Whether it is free or fee-based, make sure your content is valuable and helpful to users. 

Today, we’re talking to Matt Snodgrass, Director of Marketing at MarketingProfs - which is all about learning. Whether it is for blogs, podcasts, or seminars, learn how to attract amazingly talented subject matter experts (SMEs) that contribute content to your business. Discover how to plan themes and content months in advance. Join us for a pack of actionable takeaways! 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• When it comes to marketing, you may play many roles and do a little bit of everything.
• MarketingProfs focus on various types of content because people respond differently to types of content, depending on whether they prefer to read, watch, or listen to content.
• Developing a process for prioritizing content to educate others and identifying SMEs/potential influencers and topics you need to focus on to guide your business.
• Make different types of content available on-demand. Let the users learn on their schedule.
• Compile a backlog of content, so you can tailor and customize it to some degree. For example, you can have one month focus on one topic, and then the next month, focus on a different topic.
• MarketingProfs’ product is content. Courses, Webinars, seminars - everything the company does revolves around content.
• It can be difficult to determine how much content to give away for free. MarketingProfs’ Website contains mostly free content. But for a fee, users can subscribe to additional in-depth content.
• Avoid junk by making sure the content you offer has value. Convey the principles of good marketing.
• Learn how to become an authority for your niche by not being afraid. Let go of worrying that people do not care about what you have to say.

Links: 

•  MarketingProfs
•  HubSpot
•  iTunes review and email to podcast@coschedule.com

Quotes by Matt: 

“Our goal here is to help people learn and, in the end, to create smarter marketers.” 

“We know that for each person, there’s going to be a different way of learning that works best for them.” 

“We believe in our heart of hearts that learning is transformative. We know learning can change lives. Honestly, learning has the power to change the world.” 

“Learning really can change you as a marketer, can change your role in your company, can change you as a person.”

“Going Viral” became a marketing buzz phrase in the 1990s and describes a piece of marketing content that generates a mythical resonance with an audience and spreads uncontrollably. For example, Hotmail had the idea to add “P.S. I Love You” at the end of every email users sent. The result: Big success and signing up 12 million users in just 18 months. But how do you keep such momentum going? What business results and revenue growth does this kind of phenomenon drive?

In this episode, Brittany Thompson, social marketing and media manager at Virtual Resort Manager (VRM), talks about going viral for clients and how that shapes VRM’s marketing approach. Brittany knows how it feels - shocking, unbelievable, amazing, and exhilarating - to go from a few thousand to millions of fans and followers just overnight!

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Keep current on what’s happening and conduct research to determine what ideas are good for your industry
• Build a team by recognizing strengths and weaknesses
• Improve exposure and engagement with clients by auto scheduling posts
• Increase your company’s bandwidth
• Market your company and your clients at the same time
• Going viral is attainable when you know your audience’s wants and needs
• Keep the momentum going when successful by filtering content to meet clients’ needs
• Share your secrets, and learn from others
• Determine what makes the cut by filtering content by looking at analytics
• Emotionally resonate with your audience by knowing your brand better than anyone else

Resources:

• Virtual Resort Manager
• CoSchedule to automatically schedule posts; and its podcasts
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package with sweet swag

Planning and creating content that ranks well on the search engines can be difficult. It comes down to keyword selection and use, but that’s not all. You’ve heard the expression, “content is king,” and that’s still true: Your success has everything to do with the value and uniqueness that your content has to offer the people who will be seeing it!

Today, we’re talking to Tim Soulo, the head of marketing and product strategy at Ahrefs. Tim knows how to create valuable content, and today he’s going to share his best tips on finding keywords, promoting your content, and standing out from your competition.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Information about Ahrefs and what Tim does there.
• The most successful content produced by Ahrefs: the types of articles and pieces, as well as how they promote and analyze them.
• Tips on ranking for not only your core keyword, but also relevant keywords.
• The process Tim uses for coming up with content ideas.
• What it takes to outperform your competition.
• Why it’s important for an SEO marketer to do research that no other blog has written about or compiled.
• Tim’s thoughts on length and why it might not be important in the way that you are thinking. Tim also talks about long “ultimate guides” and gives his advice on making them more user-friendly.
• How to use backlinks to promote a piece to help it rank.

Links:

Tim Soulo

Ahrefs

How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines

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You know that content marketing has the potential to grow your company. What if you’re not getting results, though? If you don’t have something unique to say or value to offer, it’s tough to get traction in a competitive environment. How can you create unique ideas and overcome mediocre results?

Today we’re going to be talking to Jon Henshaw, an accomplished product builder and content marketer. Jon co-founded Raven Tools and is now with CBS Interactive. We’re going to talk about how to fix broken content marketing. You won’t want to miss today’s show!

Some of the highlights of this episode include:

• What Jon’s been up to over the past decade, from building up Raven Tools from nothing to entering the world of content marketing.
• Some of the “wins” that Jon has experienced over the years, as well as a “loss.”
• Jon’s process for staying ahead of the curve when it comes to content marketing.
• Tips on tackling the types of big, unique projects that will pan out, as well as Jon’s thoughts on the risks involved.
• How Jon promotes his biggest projects for maximum benefit.
• Where SEO fits into the promotion strategy.
• Jon’s favorite part of content marketing.

Links:

Jon on LinkedIn

Raven Tools

CBS Interactive

GA Config

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Quotes by Jon:

“One of the great things about content marketing is that it kind of levels the playing field among other companies.... You don’t have to have the tens of thousands of dollars or more in paid advertising budget. You just have to have good ideas.”

“The internet is a big place and yes, most things have already been done... You have to be even more creative.”

“The part that I geek out the most on is actually putting that content together and writing the code behind that content so that it can perform really well.”

On the Actionable Marketing Podcast, we are kicking off a new series called 10x Marketing Interviews. CoSchedule’s own CEO, Garrett Moon, has written a book called The 10x Marketing Formula. While writing the book, he interviewed some of the sharpest minds in marketing. We’re going to be listening to some of his interviews.

Today’s interview is with Ash Maurya, a successful entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup Movement, That’s Running Lean, and Scaling Lean. He understands how Lean works and is going to talk to us about how we, as marketers, can apply the principles and tools to our work. You aren’t going to want to miss this series or the interview with Ash!

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• The Lean Canvas: What it is, how it works, who would use it, and why it’s beneficial.
• The steps that go into creating and developing a Lean Canvas: Finding solutions, taking risks, and setting priorities.
• What a minimum viable product (MVP) is and is not, as well as how it provides value for both business-owners and customers.
• How to determine what’s next after the MVP process has been completed.
• How marketers can use the Lean Canvas to improve what they’re doing and to prevent them from going too far down the wrong path.
• The Lean Sprint mindset and how it can be used.
• Ways to take a big idea and turn it into a small MVP.
• Ash’s best tips for people who want to try Lean Canvas for the first time.

Links and Resources:

The 10x Marketing Formula

The Lean Startup Movement

That’s Running Lean

Scaling Lean

The Lean Canvas

Leanstack.com

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Have you heard the term, “growth-hacking”? It can be a bit of a buzzword. Today we’re going to learn about a real-life growth-hacking example. You don’t have to have a special sales and marketing gene... it just takes the willingness to learn. Today’s guest is John Rampton. He’s a serial entrepreneur, the founder of several companies, and a contributor to sites like Huffington Post and Entrepreneur. Today’s episode is a case study in perseverance, so you won’t want to miss it!

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• What John is up to as an entrepreneur and how his products help businesses, as well as how he got into the entrepreneurial world.
• The first steps John took to get involved in an online business, including a hack he figured out that wasn’t illegal... at the time.
• The framework John thinks about when it comes to risk-taking.
• Why hyperfocusing on specific niches and problems is one way to succeed.
• John’s thoughts on learning: how he finds time to squeeze learning into his busy days and making time for what’s most important.
• How something as simple as a calendar can function as a powerful tool, as well as information about Calendar.com.
• How an excellent marketing strategy can even sell a crappy product that provides no value.
• John’s most sage wisdom and best advice for marketers just getting started.

Links:

Due.com

Calendar.com

John on Twitter

JohnRampton.com

UpWork

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Did you know that you can scale and grow a business from zero to thousands of customers by using content marketing? You can see a massive ROI and even bu9ld an entire marketing team through blogging, video content, email lists and social media. Today we’re going to be talking to Tim Topham from TimTopham.com about this very topic. Tim has created a global community and has built his company around content marketing. You won’t want to miss today’s episode, so sit back, relax, and get ready to glean lots of great info from our discussion.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• How Tim’s background in music led him to founding his company, TimTopham.com.
• How Tim made the leap into pursuing his dream full-time.
• What Tim’s marketing looked like prior to his launch, including how he built his email list.
• Why having a specific niche has helped Tim to be so successful with his marketing strategy and with his company as a whole.
• The different types of content Tim uses, as well as tips for not getting overwhelmed as you build your brand from the ground up.
• How Tim makes decisions and plans his content ahead of time.
• Tim’s best advice on taking a passion and creating a full-time opportunity out of it.

Links and Resources:

TimTopham.com

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Are you sick of emergencies, of last-minute deadlines, and the stress of messy workflows? If so, agile project management might be just the strategy you need to use. Chances are great that you’ve heard of it before, but do you know how to use agile methodologies in your marketing? Today we’re going to talk about just that with Andrea Fryrear, the president and lead trainer at Agile Sherpas. She’s going to talk to us about what agile marketing is and how you can use it to prioritize your projects. Sit back, relax, and get ready to learn some high-value information that will help your business succeed.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Information about Agile Sherpas and what they do.
• What agile marketing is, what it focuses on, and what the most popular methodology is.
• The difference between Waterfall and agile marketing.
• How agile marketers prioritize their projects.
• The concept of boundaries and why multitasking doesn’t work. Andrea also talks about the importance of saying no.
• How agile marketers can focus on the projects that make the most impact.
• How to build obstacles and roadblocks into your workflow.
• Tips on using Scrum, Kanban, and Scrumban for agile marketing.
• What you can do first if you are a marketer who would like to start using agile project management as part of your marketing strategy.

Links and Resources:

Agile Sherpas

Scrum

Kanban

Scrumban

podcast@coschedule.com

Reposting your best content on social media is a best practice: the conversions and conversations are like gold. You might be wondering about the best way to go about re-sharing content. Today, we’re going to be talking to Christin Kardos, the social media and community manager at Convince and Convert, the #1 content marketing blog in the world, according to Content Marketing Institute. Today, we’re going to talk about evergreen content, how to capitalize on incredible opportunities, and thought on whether social media automation is the right tool for you to increase productivity. You won’t want to miss today’s show!

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Information about Convince and Convert and what Christin does there.
• Evergreen content: What it is and how to leverage it to your advantage.
• How you can tweak and update your content to make it rank for certain keywords.
• Best practices when it comes to sharing previously published content.
• What content curation is and how Christin handles it at Convince and Convert.
• Thoughts on balancing your own content and others’ content, as well as why it’s important to focus on quality first and foremost.
• The benefits and potential downfalls of social media automation.
• Christen’s best advice for marketers wanting to get started with automation and reposting content.

Links and Resources:

Christin on Twitter

Convince and Convert

105 Types of Content to Fill Your Editorial Calendar

Feedly

Pocket

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Are you getting more out of your marketing than you’re putting into it? Nathan Ellering is the head of demand generation at CoSchedule, and he wants you to be able to say that you’re getting the results you want from your marketing, your content, and your social media. Nathan is also the author of The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategy, so he’s a bit of an expert on the topic! We’re going to be talking to him today about how you can generate quality leads, get the traffic and traction that you want, and make your marketing strategy a success.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• What Nathan does at CoSchedule as the head of demand generation.
• The story behind the launch of the Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategy: what it includes, why it was necessary to write it, how it’s different, and why you should check it out. Nathan also shares why he created it as a microsite as opposed to a blog.
• The importance of following the acronym SMART when you’re setting your goals.
• An explanation of what 10x content is and how Nathan makes it work for him.
• How Nathan recommends tracking marketing ROI to be sure that your content is doing what it’s supposed to do.
• How to prioritize within your marketing strategy.
• The concept of goals-driven budgeting.
• Nathan’s best advice for someone just starting a marketing strategy.

Links:

CoSchedule

The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategy

Google Analytics

Facebook: Nearly a quarter of the entire world’s population uses it, and over two-thirds of those users checks in every day. Chances are good that your customers are using the social media giant. Facebook advertising is a great opportunity for you to connect with your audience. Today we’re going to be chatting with CoSchedule’s own inbound marketer, Rachel Wiinanen, about how to create high-converting ads, how to test your hypotheses, how to organize your behind-the-scenes processes, and how to measure your success. You won’t want to miss it!

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Information about CoSchedule and what Rachel does here as the inbound marketer.
• How Rachel approaches her advertising strategy on Facebook.
• How Rachel gets creative with both the visuals and the text on Facebook ads.
• Thoughts about A/B testing: how Rachel does it, why it’s important, and some surprises she’s encountered along the way.
• Key metrics to measure when evaluating the performance of your ads as well as some tools to use.
• How Rachel works within a budget for her Facebook ads.
• Rachel’s best tips on staying organized, planning, and keeping track of everything ad-related.
• Where a newbie to Facebook ads should start if they want to begin using the platform as part of their marketing strategy.

Links:

CoSchedule

Previous episode with Rachel

Kissmetrics

Google Analytics

How can you scale a business with marketing? To answer that question, we’re going to be talking to Brandon Andersen, the chief strategist at Ceralytics. He’s going to share with us why failure helps you improve, how to overcome your marketing challenges, and how to position your business differently than your competition does. Brandon has focused on some key marketing tactics that have really paid off, and today you’re going to learn how to implement some of them to begin reaching a much larger audience.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Some information about Ceralytics and what Brandon does there as the chief strategist, as well as what Brandon did before Ceralytics.
• Some of the marketing challenges that Brandon faced as he moved Ceralytics from a startup to a successful company, as well as how they got past those challenges.
• The concept of a blue ocean: what it is and why it’s important.
• Successful things that Brandon did right away to build an audience in the early days of the company.
• How focusing on influencer is a great marketing tactic.
• A step-by-step way to build relationships with influencers.
• Tips on getting into guesting.
• Brandon’s best tips on marketing strategy and how to build one as a new marketer.

Links:

Brandon Andersen

Ceralytics

How CoSchedule got started

Content Marketing Institute research

The 10x Marketing Formula

What triggers your readers to buy? How can you write better calls to action and get more conversions? Today we’re going to be talking to Roger Dooley, the brains behind the book Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers With Neuromarketing. He also writes the Neuromarketing blog and regularly contributes to Entrepreneur and Forbes about neuromarketing. What is neuromarketing, and how can you use it to connect with your audience and get better results? That’s what we’re going to be talking to Roger about today. You won’t want to miss it!

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• How Roger defines neuromarketing, the different types of neuromarketing, and how large and small businesses take advantage of the different types.
• Some of the principles of why neuromarketing techniques work, including social proof, authority, and reciprocity.
• Roger’s thoughts on case studies, emotions, and the words that potential customers and marketing professionals use.
• Why it’s important to understand your target buyer’s unconscious needs as well as their conscious needs.
• Roger’s best tips on building trust with your audience.
• How to turn your fans into buyers and how to create effective calls to action.
• Roger’s advice to a marketer who is just starting out in learning about and implementing some neuromarketing techniques.

Links:

Brainfluence

Neuromarketing blog

Roger on Entrepreneur

Roger on Forbes

Robert Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion

The Persuasion Slide

Perennial Seller

Do you have an idea that you haven’t told anyone about or a project that you want to work on but haven’t planned yet? Maybe you would like to become a leader in your niche but you haven’t done anything to make that a reality.

Today we’re going to talk to the marketing genius Mark Schaefer. Mark is the author of several books, including The Content Code, KNOWN, and The Tao of Twitter. He also speaks at tons of marketing conferences and has podcast called Marketing Companion. Mark is going to give us tips on becoming known. He’s done it extremely well and has mentored others in doing the exact same thing. If you’re ready to overcome  your fear of failure to become known, you won’t want to miss today’s show.

Some of the highlights of today’s episode include:

• Information about Mark and his books, particularly his newest one, KNOWN.
• Mark’s story about leaving corporate work behind and becoming an entrepreneur.
• Mark’s thoughts on the power of personal branding and the importance of being known.
• How people can build their personal brand even when they are working for someone else.
• Mark’s framework for helping people find their places and their spaces. He talks about four steps you can take.
• How Mark’s book lays out a path for people to follow and begin to see instant results.

Links:

Mark Schaefer

KNOWN

Marketing Companion Podcast

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Podcasting: Many see it as an amazing opportunity but don’t really understand the nuts and bolts of how to begin, how it compares to other marketing channels, and how to evaluate your ROI. Today we’re going to change all that by having a great discussion with Sarah Rhea Werner, the host of the Write Now podcast. As a columnist for Forbes on the topic of podcasting, she’s definitely an authority on the topic. If you’ve ever considered podcasting, you won’t want to miss today’s episode!

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• How and why Sarah got into podcasting.
• The types of opportunities Sarah has had since starting podcasting that blogging wasn’t bringing her.
• Audience-building advice for marketing teams and companies.
• Why it’s so important to create your podcast based on what your listeners like.
• Tips on striking a balance between providing value and marketing yourself through your podcast.
• Why it’s important to make sure any selling that you do on your podcast is delightful, interesting, and fun.
• How a podcast is both similar to and different from different marketing avenues.
• Some of the tactical challenges and practices of podcasting.
• Sarah’s best final advice for a brand who is toying with the idea of a podcast.

Links:

Write Now Podcast

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Social media automation: Is it the evil that some marketers think it is? No way! Automating this necessary task will help you get better results with less effort. Today we’re talking to our own Leah Schothorst, CoSchedule’s social media strategist. We’re going to talk about how much social media automation is too much and how to strike that perfect balance. You won’t want to miss today’s show!

Some of the highlights of this episode include:

• What Leah does in her position of social media strategist.
• Her definition of social media automation and why she thinks of it as a three-legged stool.
• Thoughts about what you should and should not automate.
• The facts on whether companies are penalized for automating social media posts.
• Finding a balance between organic activity and what you’re automating.
• How long it takes to start reaping the benefits of automation.
• Three important “buckets” you should have to pull post ideas from.
• Leah’s best advice for marketers who want to get started with social media automation.

Links:

Re-Queue

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