Join Nate Matherson as he sits down with John Collins for the twenty-first episode of the Optimize podcast. John is a content marketing consultant who partners with startups and corporations to build or reignite their content programs.
For this episode, Nate discusses the survey results of data compiled by John and Nigel (Organic Growth) so that all content and SEO professionals can improve their workflows, KPIs, content structure, value propositions, and CTAs. John and Nate cover a variety of topics related to trust, sales, content formats, AI, and more!
The research was conducted on behalf of OGM and John Collins by Incite Fusion, a global market research firm, in the summer of 2023. A total of 558 responses were received from people purchasing software on their employer's behalf. The majority of respondents held senior positions in their organizations - 66% were senior managers or above, with 23% coming from the C-suite or executive team.
Closing out the episode is our popular lightning round of questions! For more information, please visit www.positional.com or email us at [email protected].
Because so many people, particularly on the content side, just think of content strategies like, oh, I've got a blog, I've got a podcast, and I've got a couple of e-books. And actually, a good content strategy these days should be just much more, I think, about how do you support people with content throughout that journey. And so I think traditionally, people kind of go, oh, that's product marketing's problem. But I think good content marketers are figuring out how to partner with product marketing, sales, everyone down through the funnel and sort of seeing how content can be used throughout the purchasing process.
Hi and welcome to the Optimize Podcast. My name is Nate Matherson and I am your host. On this weekly podcast, we sit down with some of the smartest minds in content marketing and SEO. Our goal is to give you perspective and insights on what's moving the needle in organic search. Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with John Collins. John is a content marketing consultant who partners with startups and corporates to build or reignite their content programs. John has led content teams at incredible companies like Ramp and Intercom, and before that, he spent a number of years at the Irish Times. Our episode today is a special one. John is the co-author of a new report, OG Marketing's Content and SEO Survey. And on this episode, we unpack some of his key findings. I've reviewed the early copy of the report myself and I'm very excited to go deep with John.
And this episode of the Optimize podcast is brought to you by Positional. If you don't know by now, my name is Nate and I'm one of the co-founders of Positional and I'm really excited to announce that we just launched our content analytics tool set. This is very quickly become my favorite feature. It's one that I've wanted for the last 10 years and it's really effective in identifying which pages on your site users might be having a low quality experience on. What we do is we track metrics like scroll depth, bounce rate and time on page to score your pages and then allow you to go deeper to see where within a piece of content, for example, which paragraph is causing people to leave, or where, for example, you might want to add a call to action within that page. This tool set is called Content Analytics. It's our newest feature. I'm stoked about it, and you should be too.
John, thank you so much for coming on the Optimize podcast. Thanks for having me, thanks.
So the first question I always ask our guests is, how did you get into the world of content marketing and SEO?
Okay, well I suppose for our US listeners, I probably should emphasize that the Irish Times is the newspaper in Dublin, Ireland where I'm based rather than the chain of bars in the US, which I learned when I started visiting the US, the Irish Times is something different. But yeah, my background is I was a journalist for quite a number of years, mostly covering the sort of tech space, writing about startups and business. And this was, yeah, sort of like a decade ago, no secret to the newspaper world or the media world was not a good place. You know, there was a lot of change and churn happening there. And so I really began to look around at my other career opportunities. And as I said, always really interested in kind of the startup world and, you know, innovation and things like that. So reached out to a couple of people in my network to see, you know, like, what could the real role there for me? I'll be really honest, actually, I would say that like, you know, a decade ago, I kind of like, knew about content marketing, and it was like starting to become a thing, but really kind of assumed more that like, you know, for some of my skill set, it would probably be more working on the comms and PR side in a startup or in a tech company. Spoke to Owen McCabe, the CEO of Intercom and co-founder and test trainer, who's a co-founder, is chief strategy officer there. And they very much had the vision of what content marketing could be. They followed companies like Basecamp, I suppose, who probably were one of the earliest companies to do content marketing in a really sort of authentic way. And HubSpot was really taken off at that stage. We're talking 2013, 2014 at this stage. And so they had the vision of what content could be. And I suppose I met them and discussed that. And I got excited by that myself. And just, you know, just saw this opportunity to go in-house and to try and create, you know, particularly with Intercom, it was kind of like very authentic content, almost like an in-house publication that would appeal to buyers of their product. And, you know, I think I was lucky in the sense I hooked up with Intercom in that they had that vision and they knew that it wasn't gonna happen in a quarter or two quarters, that it was gonna take a bit of time. And they gave me that sort of time and space to sort of build out the program there. And ultimately, it became a huge part of the growth of Intercom as we grew the company from like 1 million in ARR to 150 in ARR in just over three years.
I want to start with your new report. So what led you to create this report with Nigel? And what was the initial goal to doing it?
Yeah, so I've worked a number of times with Nigel Stevens, OT Marketing, it's like a boutique SEO agency. We use them at Intercom quite successfully. I've worked with them at Ramp as well. And since I've been doing consulting, I've brought them into a couple of my client companies as well. And I think they just work very well with content marketing team because I remember the first conversation I had with Nigel way back when I was at Intercom, when he came in was, you know, the job's like 90% done here. You guys are creating great content. You just need to sort of like be more savvy about like your SEO strategy on top of it. So it's just a really good fit there in terms of like Nigel gets that like creating quality content is probably the shortest way to be successful in SEO and that there aren't necessarily a bunch of like hacks and tricks that are going to be a shortcut to getting there. So yeah, so like I said, we worked together a bunch of stuff on a bunch of times and different projects. I think particularly now that I'm a consultant, you don't want to fall into that trap, as I said, of just recreating the same playbook. And so we just really wanted to see, look, there's a lot happening right now, I think, in content and SEO. How are people actually using that? How are software buyers actually using content? And what do they think about it? How are they using search? Obviously, with the rise of the hyper-ChatGPT and AI tools, are people... Is search on the way out, you know, like, where are we on this journey? And so it was really just, let's actually get out there and like, talk to some, do some market research. So we actually engaged a market research firm inside Fusion, who did all the actual, you know, like surveying, but like, we worked with them on the design of the survey and like what we wanted to learn. And they went out and got over 500 folks in the US who are like sort of manager level above their firms, I think about 23% were C-level, but like all of them were involved in the purchasing of software. And so it was really just, we ran a bunch of questions past them about like what they think of content, how do they use it, how do they use Google, like what are the other tools they use, where else do they get information, like what information, you know, like at different stages of their buying journey, like when they're initially researching, when they're actually looking at a particular solution, and then like when they're actually going to buy, what's important to each of those different stages.
A lot of our customers and a lot of our listeners are in the SaaS space. And I think that this report does a really great job of breaking down the current expectation of searchers and also buyers. And it's helped me think about how we're creating content at Positional. And I saw that one of the key findings in the report was that buyers are still heavily relying on Google to get information, but it seems to be that there's this disconnect in terms of trust. I know one of the things you found in the report that was buyers are apparently not trusting the information they receive directly from companies or that they might tune it out. And so it sounds like Google is still a great channel to serve content, but there seems to be this disconnect in terms of the trust from the actual visitor or searcher that's landing on that content. What do you make of this?
Yeah, so I think first off, we were a little surprised at just how much people still sort of like, you know, not just rely on Google, but like are very happy with what they're getting from Google. So like 80% said that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the information they get when they search on Google for topics related to buying software. So, because I think there is a, like a quite a loud vocal majority about like, oh, search is broken and you know, it's polluted with page results and you know, yada yada, we've heard it all, but like, it's still their go-to. And I think, you know, it just, anyone who's sort of thinking, oh, I can start like putting my investments in SEO is, it's, you know, it's pretty naive. Unless, you know, they're in a very specific niche that they know for, that, you know, for sure that folks are not using Google or they use no trackers. So I think that was the first thing we were kind of like, OK, so, you know, Google is still the number one show in town. I think what was really interesting, though, was that like when we asked people like what sources of information they trust, just 12% said that like chose software companies, vendors as their number one trusted source of information. It was way behind things like they're going to forums and communities. So I think it's 29% said that they go to forums and community. 26% said their number one source was like third-party reviews. And even, you know, surprisingly, given that it's B2B buyers here, 15% said, yeah, they go, they're looking for influencers, whether that's like sort of on LinkedIn or Instagram, whatever it might be. And interestingly though, despite that trust thing, they do actually refer to the content. Like they do actually go and use content from websites. So I think it's kind of like there's an awareness, buyers are savvy and there's an awareness that like, hey, I've been getting this from a vendor, it comes with fabulous, you know. But they are definitely, certainly at the early stage and at the later stage, they're definitely engaging with content from vendors before they go off and then look at it further sites. But there's a bunch of stuff as well, which we can dive into, you know, things like people actually start to zone out, you know, content from vendors and like different formats they like and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I want to unpack that very soon in particular formats because I know there are a lot of different types and content you can create. And right now after like the most recent algorithm update, everyone is thinking about like how we can make our content uniquely valuable. And maybe that's also a way that we can build trust. And also to like today, like after this most recent algorithm update, we've seen just like the rankings and traffic to a lot of those UGC platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn and Quora really surge. So it's clear that Google too is thinking that this is a result that searchers are looking for. But for those companies creating content on their websites, is there anything that they can do to build trust or show that searcher that their result can be trusted? Is there anything tactical we can do there?
Yeah, well, I think like first off, you know, I think that sort of jaded tactic of like, hey, I'm going to like, you know, CRM vendor and I'm going to publish an article on my on my blog about like, you know, top CRM vendors and oh, guess what? I'm going to make myself number one. I mean, that, you know, for a start, you can generate those articles with AI really easily. And so it's actually, it's gonna be super competitive. All your competitors are probably running that jaded playbook. And I think like what came through in the survey was people see through that, right? So there's a demand and people are talking about it, that they want to see more like sort of independent, objective information on things like, how does this software integrate with my existing platform? How does it compare with competitors? And not, I think there's an opportunity there to be very open about like, hey, we have a CRM and this is how we compete. We're designed for agencies. We are not the CRM that's all things to all people. And I think too many people try and do that, particularly because they think that any traffic they can get from search is going to be good. But at the end of the day, you've got to attract relevant buyers or qualified buyers. It's not just any traffic will do. So I think that's the number one thing is to kind of like rip that up and forget about all that. It's something that I'm working with a lot of clients on and it's no big secret, but this whole idea of community content, of trying to bring in outside experts. So I think in the old days, three, four years ago, you could get away with, you write an article on your blog, it's kind of like the company's view of like, here's what the best CRM products are. But actually you should bring in, whether it's customers or potential customers or just industry experts and actually interview them and get quotes from them. Like run surveys, you know, like if you've got an email list, why don't you actually survey people and go like, you know, what is the key feature of this, not our software, but just when you're making a decision, or, you know, it doesn't even have to be that far down the funnel where you're talking about your own product, but it could just be like, you know, creating thought leadership content in your space, but bringing in those outside voices that you are facilitating the conversation. I think that's a huge, huge way to build trust and become sort of seen as an expert in your area.
Yeah. And you're making your content uniquely valuable by doing all of those things. And I've never been a journalist, but I know you've worked in like a newsroom and it seems or sounds like a lot of what you've described is actually how like a journalist would go about creating a piece of content. Like, does that feel right or fair?
Yeah, I think like, you know, I know we're going to talk about sort of quality as well versus quantity and I think that is sort of like one of the things that people can take from the editorial or journalism world is by actually going out and talking to subject matter experts which don't always have to be in-house in your own company. They can be like industry experts, third parties, customers, whatever it might be. But actually, yeah, that's exactly what journalists do. They go and talk to those folks and research the topic. So it's a bit more like almost create magazine articles, sort of like where you've got a bunch of voices and a bunch of opinions on a topic rather than sort of like in the old days, it was more like a news article. It was just like, here's one voice or here's like, you know, the writer's interpretation of what's happening.
You brought me to my next question. I saw another one of like the key findings in the report was quality is more important than quantity. I think this is more important now than it ever has been. I remember back when I first started in this business in 2014, you could publish like hundreds of what were, like maybe back then described as high quality pieces of content. But today I would describe as very low quality pieces of content. I always tell our customers to focus on quality over quantity but what does that mean to you? Like in your opinion, what is a quality piece of content? I know we've talked about it a little bit but what goes into it?
Yeah, I mean, I think quality content, there's a number of sort of characteristics of good quality content. I mean, for a start, I think it should have an opinion. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's like contrary or, you know, like picking a fight, but you should have an opinion. You know, it shouldn't be saccharine and like something that everyone in your industry is going to, you know, agree with. So just using that example I gave earlier about like maybe a few of a CRM for like agencies to run their business. Be opinionated about why they need a different CRM than just the sort of one that's designed for like sales teams at like corporates, you know, and, and be like very clear about like, what's, what's different about like what your, your view of the world is and what you bring to the world. I think the other thing that like quality content has or does is it delivers something of value, you know, people should read the article and go, I've learned something here. You know, I think I call it kind of happy meal content, which is when people kind of like go too far down the SEO route and don't really sort of think about like delivering value, that you create this content that like, like a happy meal, it kind of looks good, I think it's going to satisfy you, you consume it, but 30 minutes later, you're kind of still hungry and you haven't really learned anything or picked anything up. So I think that's a huge thing, just like where can you add value? And I think one of the places people can do that is if you've got data in your product or that you're picking up as you're building out your product or your service, share that with the world. I mean, that was a huge, huge thing for us at Ramp, which was like, you know, we had all these corporate cards out there and people were spending on them. And it was like, particularly towards the end of like COVID lockdowns, people were going back to the office. We were like, Whoa, we've got all this. Like we can see how spending is changing as people go back to the office. And so we started releasing these quarterly Ramp benchmarks, just of like what we were seeing, what it meant for like US businesses, what we were seeing on spend, even like things as simple as like, which advertising platforms were people starting to spend more or less on. And, you know, that was just super valuable content. Again, not the kind of stuff that you're gonna knock out in a couple of days. They're big, but it goes back to that quality versus quantity piece. They're big set pieces, but you can repeat them every quarter. And then you start to have this data set that, you know, has even more value over time. But I think you just got to figure out what that is for your particular client or your particular business. Like what does, what is going to deliver some value in the space?
Yeah, I love data driven content like surveys, reports, studies. This is something that we did heavily at my first company. We were coming out with a new piece of data driven content every two weeks, which is an incredible clip. But they're fantastic for so many reasons. Like one, you can insert yourself into the news and press and get coverage in a very natural and non-promotional way, which shows your brand as an authority or thought leader in the space. Two, you get an incredible number of backlinks often when done correctly. And three, you can then take that data and weave it into all of those other pieces of content you're creating to further tell that story and make them uniquely helpful. So I totally agree with you there that all of the listeners should be thinking about data-driven content, or at least that's what I call it here in 2023. And that is just one format of content, right? But I know in your report, you mentioned a few times that formats are changing. One format might not be the right format for every company, and we should be using multiple different types of formats So I don't want to get ahead of the report, but tell me, what did you find in the report in terms of formats and how are you thinking about the formats of content in 2023?
Yeah, so I think the obvious thing to start with is different formats appeal to people at different stages. So I think in the early stages, there's still quite a big reliance on information that the companies themselves publish, whether that's blog posts, comparison, price comparisons, you know, whatever it might be. But short video is huge, like one-minute video. This is what our product does, short product videos. Forty-three percent of people said that they use them when they're in the early stages of research. And it wasn't, you know, we kind of, we didn't want to think of this sort of like from the inside out in terms of like how, you know, a content person or an SEO person think about it. So we didn't just sort of say like, you know, what format do you want content in? It was sort of like as you're moving through that buyer journey, like, where do you get information from? So it's kind of mixes formats and sort of channels. But referrals were huge at the early stage as well. from your network as opposed to forums or online communities, which were actually sort of like the next one after referrals. But it was interesting that people quite clearly saw them as different things. Long videos were not as popular in the early stage. They're actually much more popular when people are actually engaged with the product. So it might be more sort of like, you know, people are on a trial or whatever, you want to create video content that is going to actually help them get the value out of it during the trial. Interestingly, I think people really avoid sales reps in the early stages as well. Sales reps, they were the most referenced source of information as people went to make the final recommendation or adopt the piece of software. 31% refers to sales reps. And just some other stuff that came out, I think long-form content is just not really what it was before. A lot of feedback in terms of, I suppose, the quality of long-form content, that it's too long, it's hard to navigate. So I think people are looking for more snack size. What was interesting as well, at the early stage, it was quite clear there were some clear winners. As I said, that short video being a real one that I would be like, if you don't have a short one-minute explainer video about what your product does on your website, you're totally missing the trick. But it was interesting later down in the funnel in the purchasing process, it's a broad range of formats. And so actually, I think the takeaway for us is give your buyers choice. Because so many people, particularly on the content side, I think just think of content strategies like, oh, I've got a blog, I've got a podcast, and I've got a couple of eBooks. And actually, a good content strategy these days should be just much more, I think, about how do you support people with content throughout that journey? And so I think traditionally, people kind of go, oh, that's product marketing's problem, but I think good content marketers are figuring out how to partner with product marketing, sales, everyone down through the funnel and sort of seeing how content can be used throughout the purchasing process.
Yeah, I think the takeaway for our audience here is that depending on the stage of the funnel, the type of content should and will change, and also that content as a team is a very cross-functional team with other parts of the org. Does that seem like an accurate statement to you?
Totally, totally. And I think, like, as we said, like it really became obvious in some of the other questions, which people can see the results on the OG Marketing site, that, you know, there's definitely like opportunities down the funnel to try and be a little bit more objective and make it clear, like comparison content, or even like sort of almost technical content of like how does this software play with the rest of my staff? There's like huge numbers of people looking for that kind of information. So it's saying that they're not currently getting it from what they see out there.
Yeah. And I know in the report, you talk about avoiding sales reps as it seems like that's something that software buyers are looking to do. Personally, I don't mind talking to sales reps, but I know that in certain spaces, especially like developer tools, that target audience never wants to talk to a sales rep. Does that make content and SEO an even more important channel over the next few years? Do you think that trend will continue?
It was interesting, yeah, because we kind of thought, oh, particularly with so much talk about product growth these days and there's a huge opportunity there with content and SEO, that the sales rep is days are numbered. But it was quite interesting, yes, people definitely avoid them at the early stage. They're one of the lowest rank sources of information. But when it came to the actual decision making process, they were the leading referential source of information. Now, you could argue that like particularly the way that like funnel sales funnels and stuff are set up nowadays, that if you tried to buy a B2B SaaS product recently without talking to a sales rep, you know, like that so many companies set it up so that you have to talk to a rep unless you want like just the very basic plan. That may be part of this is just that's the reality in the market right now. But also I think it's probably when people get to that stage where they're actually committing to buying a product, they probably do want to talk to someone from the company and just seal the deal. But I think in the early stages, they don't want to be bothered. Hard to know where this is going to go in the future. Definitely, like we saw a bunch of stuff like that, as I said, people are starting to use AI and are comfortable using AI to do research. I think, again, it just goes back to that flexibility of on your buyer journeys, rather than thinking of buyer journey as like a ruse that you want to force all your leads down, think of it more like a model for how they can do it. But like always give these sort of like updates or like opportunities that they can literally put their hand up and say, Hey, like I'm ready to start sales now. Or, you know, I just want to get this thing done.
That's really interesting. So it sounds like sales reps are not the leading choice of information very early on for SaaS companies, but then they're a critical source of information further into the buying process. And I know when I do our demos, like whenever someone comes to me and says, like, hey, I've read your blog, or even like I've read every article on your blog before I actually do the demo, I know that there's a much higher likelihood that we're going to invert that future potential customer.
Just actually on that point, I would just add, like, we actually did do a bunch of research at Intercom about like the impact of content, because, you know, not to change topic too much, but there's the whole attribution thing of content and SEO always. But we did research and found that actually customers who had engaged with content, they generally spent more, bigger ACV, and they hung around longer than people who come in through other channels and hadn't engaged with the content. And I think part of that is if you are particularly, like you guys are doing, you're publishing good quality content, it's like, here's our kind of view of the world. Here's what we think is like wrong with the competition, etc. People are kind of primed and they're bought into the sort of the world view that they're going to get from your product, you know? And so I think they're just much more likely to be successful as customers. So I definitely think that's, yeah, it's, if people have been interacting with your content, it makes the rep's job much easier. I think probably makes it a different kind of sale somewhat than depending on like someone just clicked on a paid ad or something like that.
Yeah. I started my career in the consumer finances space. So I built a comparison website for financial products. And while that's not SaaS, we actually found something very similar. We had ad channels, but by far, from a quality standpoint in terms of customer content drove higher quality applicants, larger loan balances, better customers for the banks and financial institutions we ultimately served. And so maybe it's just like that person who's willing to like roll up their sleeves and actually learn or like find the best solution for them with content tends to actually be the best customer to onboard and work with across industry, I'm not sure.
Yeah, it's kind of self-identifying. If I actually have the time to engage with your content in a meaningful way, yeah, they're going to be that kind of buyer.
Yeah, and speaking of formats, I have to ask, I know we've talked about user-generated content and reviews and third-party content being really important in terms of building trust, and we've also talked about Google's recent algorithm update and a lot of these platforms getting more visibility. Should companies themselves be creating user generated content? I know I saw someone on Twitter the other day joking about like company forums are going to come back as a result of this. You think that's important or are there other ways in which we can add to that layer of content or format to like the content we're creating on our site?
Yeah, I mean, like it's funny, things always go full circle, don't they? You know, and like, yeah, I'm old enough to remember those sort of like user forums, you know, like Novell user forums or whatever it might be. But like, they were the early sort of like bulletin boards or like, you know, they were, they were very independent. You know, they, they, they were hosted by vendors, but it was literally people who were using that product networking together. And, you know, I think we see some of that in Slack communities and stuff now. I mean, I think there's been some quite successful. There's a few, few examples of them in the, the, the FinTech space, for instance, you know, where people have, there's off the ledger, which is a FinTech community that's like sponsored by a vendor. So I think like, yes, you can foster user generated content. But I think you have to be very, very careful as a vendor, if you're sort of like just pushing it and it's kind of propaganda, like you can, you can host that conversation. And I think you should actively be thinking about how you can do that. But be very careful that it just it comes across authentic. And it's not just like a place for you to push your own messages.
As far as reviews go, did you guys look into like reviews, like platforms like Trustpilot at all? Are they important?
Yeah, no, totally. I mean, just sort of like got people to rank them in terms of like, particularly in terms of trust. So I think like the one forums and communities, rather than sort of like third party review sites like the G2s and the Capitarias and Trustradius, forums and communities, which would vary, depending on the vertical you're selling into, will vary quite a bit. But they were the number, in terms of what people said they picked as a trusted source of information, they were clearly the most popular. Third-party reviews were next, and then industry influencers. But the actual, and even actually, Chats GPT, our other AI tools, were more trusted than vendors themselves. But I think it's clear that offsite SEO is no longer, sometimes it's kind of considered, okay, we've got everything on site, done, now we'll think about offsite. I think nowadays, you've got to think about how are we managing our reputation in these places? Are we engaging with these review sites? Do we actually look at the conversations that are going on in those communities and make sure that they're accurate as it was? And what's your strategy in terms of engaging with people who might be like scrunken customers, all that kind of stuff. And I think it's kind of scary for some folks because it's much easier to control stuff on your own site. But I think the conversation is happening. So you just have to figure out a strategy of how to engage with that. And I think right now in marketing, sometimes who is responsible for that varies across teams. We see a lot of customer engagement teams, you're like, you see community teams, sometimes content teams do it, you know? So I think it's really, really important that you like, you think about that. And obviously just like know your own space and where your buyers are and like what space you're in.
Everything we're describing sounds really expensive or a lot of work, whether it's like creating fantastic data-driven content or like moderating Reddit to know that like what people are saying about your product is actually accurate. Is content marketing just gotten a lot more expensive because the bar has gotten higher since you've first started in this business?
I would say, you really got to prioritize and it goes back to that quality versus quantity piece. At Intercom in 2016, we were publishing on our blog five times a week. And so that's expensive. So I think I would not be recommending. I don't... I just don't... We're way past that sort of peak blog content. I certainly wouldn't be recommending that to folks. But equally, I'm like, I don't know, I think content's always kind of suffers from this. Because everyone can write. Whether they can write well or not is a totally different matter. But because everyone can write, people kind of assume almost that this is something that people can do in their spare time or it's kind of an add-on to your day job, is you're going to like knock out a few blog posts or you know like do some ghostwriting for your CEO on like Twitter or whatever it might be. Yeah, like content is expensive but like it pays off, you know, compared to say other channels it can take a little longer to get a content program off the ground. But the great thing and particularly if you sort of like are publishing on sort of evergreen topics is that like it continues to pay off like months and quarters down the line, years down the line, you know? So I think, yes, it's probably more expensive than it was. I think you've got to ruthlessly prioritize, not try and do everything, do your experiments and figure out what's actually going to move the needle for your company, but then double down on those bets, you know?
Should companies be doing this entirely in-house or should they also hire agencies or freelancers to help them into these many different parts of the content marketing processes?
Well, of course, they should hire amazing consultants that are available on the market. Now, listen, I suppose there's a number of different things. It's like the strategy piece. Do you need help with that? Some folks actually don't necessarily because they really understand their buyers and they understand the market. And so they probably need less help with strategy because I think that's the key thing, obviously, is content. When I have a call with a new client, I'm like, hey, can I listen to some gone calls or sales off calls or whatever? I just need to find out like how your buyers are actually thinking about the space and the problems that they have. So I think that's... If the founders or some early employees or whoever it might be really understands that, I think you don't necessarily probably need as much help with your strategy. Then there's just the content production piece, which, as I said, everyone can write to a certain degree, but some folks just aren't as comfortable producing content, doing it day to day. So I think there's just so many good sources of freelancers and folks out there that you can get to actually create content. But I think it's tough. You have to get the strategy right first. And I think that goes back to that understanding of the wire. So yeah, I mean, I've rarely come across content teams now that are fully in-house. There's always some element of like, whether they've got an SEO agency or they've got like, someone maybe helping you produce a podcast, because it's like it's a different medium that like has different requirements. So yeah, it's pretty rare to see everything in-house these days.
And as far as like competition goes, would you say that like content marketing today is the most competitive it's ever been or not?
It's competitive in the sense that everyone's trying to do it. But it's amazing how much bad content there's out there. There's just an ocean of really mediocre content that's not getting consumed. I had that feeling when I was in-house because you'd obviously be looking at what's out there. But as a consultant, when you have to do a competitive analysis, right now I have a couple of clients in FinTech, I have a vertical SaaS and I have like an energy company. So I'm kind of looking at like content across a bunch of different fields. And it's kind of surprising, like the quality, the good stuff really stands out, because it's actually relatively rare. So there's a lot out there. But would I say it's competitive in the sense it's hard to break through? Not really, if you approach it in a sort of a, you know, a strategic and sort of systematic way.
And in your report, you mentioned, I want to take a step back that like chatGPT or other like AI based information retrieval mechanisms are a channel or a source that like buyers are using to find helpful content. Do you think that's a trend that will continue or is this like a blip in time and we shouldn't worry about it?
No, I think it came through pretty clear that people are already using it. And probably around a third of buyers say that they use it right now. I think it came pretty clear in the comments from people though that we're in that sort of early phase and people see that there's potential here, but they're still trying to figure out how to apply it to their businesses. So, look, I think it's like any sort of... And it's not necessarily that new a technology, but the mainstream availability of it is new. And I think there's going to be all sorts of interesting applications of it. But I mean, I would certainly say to content teams, like, you should be on it and try to figure out, where can you apply generative AI right now? And I think it's a huge opportunity just to get over that blank page issue of like, you need to create something, and you just want to do that basic initial research or just get something that you can start buzzing off and getting some ideas from. And like, ChatGPT in particular is amazing for that. But there are a bunch of other tools out there as well, like specific to content creation and content marketing creation.
Yeah. As far as like the information retrieval systems go, like a ChatGPT, if someone was looking for like the best SEO tools, is there anything we can do as like a content marketing to convince an AI model like ChatGPT to want to include content from our company in their response?
My understanding is, I mean, it's going to be similar to what works with SEO. It's like getting good quality content out there. Think about it, in the same way you think about what are people actually searching for, which is like keywords, you optimize for keywords. I think you're going to need to start thinking about what kind of prompts are people going to be putting in and optimizing for those prompts. But again, I think it's super early days and I don't know. I think most content marketing teams, they've got plenty of other fish to fry or plenty of other fires to put out before they start. Yeah, definitely something to keep an eye on, but I think there's better sources of growth right now than that.
Well, this has been such an awesome episode. If it's okay with you, I'd love to transition to the rapid fire question section. Does that sound good?
Let's do it.
Is long form content dead?
It's dying. You got to do something to really stand out. Like, yeah, just those like two and a half thousand word, like keyword optimized articles. Forget it. What do you make backlinks? I know it's a controversial topic sometimes. Yeah, I think they're still important. Don't obsess over them. I mean, they will happen organically to a certain extent, but you can also just make it easy for people to backlink and just even think about like, who would we want backlinks from? But yeah, people can really obsess over it and think like it's the key to SEO. And I don't really think it's one of the things that contributes to good SEO.
Should content marketing teams be thinking about conversion rate optimization or is that something they should be responsible for? Or is that fall to like someone else in the order?
I would generally say that like ownership of it falls to someone else, but I think you got to like partner very closely with those people, particularly like looking at sort of a quality content strategy rather than like a numbers driven one that you just don't want. Like the CTAs and everything, all those like CRO that you're doing, it needs to sort of like sit nicely with your content. And I think it's like having a strong partnership with whoever is looking after Sierra.
We haven't touched on newsletters. Are newsletters still important or effective in 2023?
Yeah, I think so. Particularly, I think in verticals, I've seen like I've worked with clients who have like really, really, not super niche, but like relatively niche newsletters and really have become sort of like authorities in their field. There's a reason so many people are trying to build businesses on Substack. They're still a thing and people still use them.
AI-generated content. I know you mentioned it was helpful to getting up past that blank page. Is it something that we should be using to create content on our websites?
I think it can be part of the process, but at the end of the day, it is basically sucking up everything that's out there, existing content, and giving you the average of what that indicates. And so you're never gonna get content that stands out from the crowds by just using generative AI. I think you gotta, like, you get generative AI to do a lot of the grunt work, and then you bring in, like, you know, writers or editors to really make it stand out from the crowd.
Makes sense. And as far as the report goes, is there anything else, because I know it's a fairly large report, and we didn't cover it all, are there like one or two things from the report that stand out to you that we should talk about that we haven't yet?
I think the big thing is just thinking about the opportunities for vendors, and we've touched on them throughout. Google is still the go-to source of information. It's quality over quantity. You need to have a bunch of different formats to provide the best experience for your buyers. Third parties are more important than ever, and I think they're going to continue to be important. And yeah, I suppose the other thing is just like sales. Sales still matters. And you know, don't get rid of your sales team just yet.
Well, that's all great feedback. And for everyone who's DM'd me lately about the helpful algorithm update, I hope that this episode was helpful because I think a lot of what we talked about comes back to like creating uniquely helpful content that creates a higher quality experience for a reader. So John, this was an awesome episode. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll include a link to the report as well as your social profiles and the show notes. Thank you so much.
This was fantastic. Thanks. It's been a pleasure. I love talking about this stuff.
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Positional has been an amazing addition to our SEO and Content team's workflows, enhancing our overall efficiency. We particularly love using AutoDetect and Internal Linking on a daily basis!
Nate and the positional team are the best of the best in SEO, content marketing, and helping you grow your organic traffic. The combination of their expertise and the SEO and content tool they’ve built has allowed us to build a scalable content engine. Reach out to me anytime for a testimony. They are truly phenomenal.
As an SEO novice, Positional makes it easy. I can quickly go from keyword research, to clustering, to content outlines, then go focus on just making good content. I felt like it helped bridge the gaps between what would’ve taken 3 or more tools in the past.
The first time we used Positional's toolset was to revamp an older but important piece of content. We used Optimize for optimization, and Internals for internal linking suggestions. We went from position #6 to #1 with the changes and increased our organic search traffic to the page by 400%. Today, Positional is an integral part of our blogging strategy, from topic generation to blog renovation.
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Positional's tools are an essential supplement to any search-driven content effort. They help us save time and produce better content for both our company blog and our clients.
“We’ve been moving up the search rankings. When we first started using Positional, we had about 1,000 visitors from organic search per month, and today, we have over 12,000 visitors from organic search per month. And obviously, Positional has played a large role in our growth.”
Positional takes the guessing game out of our content and SEO strategy. It allows me to do extremely quick keyword research which I can then turn into detailed instructions for our content writers through their Optimize tool. I love the speed new capabilities are being added!
I've been using Positional since its closed beta, and it boosted our SEO results so far! We've published over 80 articles with Positional and it has gained traction very well. The "Optimize" tool is my favorite — it ensures we use the right keywords for better rankings. The "Content Analytics" tool is also great for showing us exactly where we should improve our content.
Positional's tools are an essential supplement to any search-driven content effort. They help us save time and produce better content for both our company blog and our clients.
