Join Nate Matherson as he sits down with Meg Scarborough for the sixty-third episode of the Optimize podcast. Meg is the CEO and founder of Megawatt, a B2B content marketing agency specializing in technical content for the tech industry. With a deep passion for technology, Meg has built her agency around helping companies in cybersecurity, developer tools, and data infrastructure create content that truly resonates with their technical audiences.
In our episode today, Nate and Meg explore how to create impactful content for technical audiences, the challenges in cybersecurity marketing, and how AI is shaking up the SEO landscape. Listen to hear Meg discuss the importance of writing for the people who could be your buyers, focusing on their day-to-day challenges and how your content can make them look like heroes.
In this week’s deep dive, Meg shares her approach to creating helpful content that is not just SEO-driven but genuinely useful for technical buyers. Rounding out the episode, she also discusses the evolving role of AI in content creation, especially in the tech space, and how companies can navigate these changes to maintain effective content strategies. Closing the episode is our popular lightning round of questions!
What do you mean by saying, like, we need to write for people first?
The people who could be your buyers. What are their day to day challenges? What are their pain points? What are they struggling with? What problems do they have that if you could solve them would make them look like heroes? Um, And you know, in technical spaces, that means you don't need to be able to code to write intelligently for developers, in my opinion, but you do need to understand what their day to day jobs look like and what makes their jobs hard.
I think actually cyber security might be an even better example here. There is a humongous talent shortage in the cyberspace, and it's not going away anytime soon. And so even really large companies tend to have quite small cyber departments, um, as compared to other organizations within the company. And those people have really hard jobs to do because they need to stay on top of a really, really complex environment.
So, you know, what are the new threats that are coming out? What are the new technologies that are available to me that might help me do my job better? What are the best practices in my field right now?
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 Meg Scarborough.
CEO and founder of Megawatt, a B2B content marketing agency for tech companies. On today's episode, Meg and I are going to chat about the SERPs, creating fantastic content for technical audiences, search GPT, and a lot more.
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Optimize Podcast. It's brought to you by Positional. If you don't know by now, my name's Nate and I'm one of the co-founders of Positional and we've built what I think is a pretty awesome tool set for content marketing and SEO teams. We've got tools for keyword research, internal linking, content optimization, and even a couple of tools for analytics.
We'd love for you to check it out at Positional.com Meg. Thanks for coming on this week's episode of the optimized podcast.
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited.
You know, the first question I ask all of our guests is how did you get into the world of content marketing and SEO?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I, I've been a writer all my life. Um, that's always been my biggest passion. And, um, I majored in English in college thinking I would become an English professor. Um, that just sort of seemed like the most logical path and the one I, um, saw the most people who are kind of like me taking. Um, but I fortunately had a great work Study opportunity, um, on campus during college.
And, um, it was in the English department and I got to watch all of these PhD students graduating with English degrees and not finding jobs. They were just not enough jobs out there for, uh, people with English PhDs. And so before I, you know, undertook the likely debt and, uh, five plus year journey that that would have, um, required, um, I, I sort of took a step back and started reconsidering.
Um, I thought maybe I wanted to be a teacher of some other sort. So I tried that for a year straight out of college and quickly realized teaching was not for me. Um, and then I looked around for jobs and, um, content marketing was really starting to become a thing around then. This is like 2010. And, um, my first real job, I guess, was, um, working at a store.
Start up, um, doing all of their marketing. So I was the first marketing hire. I was teaching myself everything as I went. Um, it was a great learning experience, but I quickly realized I needed to get a broader view of what marketing could mean, what content could mean, what my career could look like. And I figured the best place to do that was an agency because I would get so much experience.
So, um, I've always had a lot of exposure to different types of companies and mentorship from people who had worked with tons of types of companies. So, um, I went to a PR firm that happened to be building out a content function, and I was there for a long time, um, started in PR, quickly moved over to content, and by the time I left, I was running the content team, um, which was a ton of fun, um, but I've always been a very kind of independent, um, entrepreneurial type of person, and, um.
Decided I wanted to give it a go on my own. So I became a freelance content consultant and yeah, just kind of taught myself as I went and, um, some of my first clients were in, um, cybersecurity. I've always really had a passion for technology and just found tech really fascinating. And as soon as I started working with some cyber companies, I developed a passion for that.
And that kind of spiraled into. Working with dev tools, companies working with data companies, working with infrastructure companies. And, um, so there's kind of a little niche with some sub niches around it that I, um, slowly started to absorb and, and really loved.
Yeah. I find the focus on cybersecurity and.
Dev tools, uh, really interesting. And, uh, I think a lot of our listeners know that, you know, I spent a couple of years in the developer tool space too, from a content standpoint. Um, and so I've been looking forward to this conversation all week, uh, because you and I recently did a webinar together with draft.dev on content marketing and SEO for developer companies. Um, and I felt like there was a lot more that we could talk about. Um, both in regards to building SEO strategies for technical audiences, but also SEO and content marketing more broadly. Um, you know, it's been a pretty hectic year, uh, in search. Uh, you know, you've got the helpful content system.
Now you've got, uh, AI and now search GPT, uh, apparently coming out pretty soon. Uh, what do you make of all of the changes that have happened in, let's say the last 12 months?
Yeah, I mean, it's overwhelming. I. I struggle to keep up with it. Sometimes I feel really fortunate that some of my team members are really interested in this space and help me stay on top of it for our clients.
But I find that most marketers, especially our clients have realized by now that I can't create high quality complex content. But certainly it can handle some of the, you know, lower level, whether it's more derivative content or simpler content. Um, and so, you know, we're not focusing on selling as much of that to clients.
Um, I actually had a client say this week, you know, we don't really need you to write emails, promoting blog posts anymore. We can have chat GPT do that. And honestly, that's fine with me. That's good. Probably for my team, I think they're going to enjoy writing the more complex content anyway. Um, but, yeah, it's interesting because I've seen this, this trend, um, the way Gen I is impacting Gen AI is impacting marketing right now, um, has kind of already happened in a lot of other spaces like cyber security, for example, um, you know, we saw automation and then orchestration and then AI and machine learning.
Um, really start to automate away. Um, a lot of road tasks, and I think that's a great thing in general. Um, it means people can focus on more strategic and complex tasks. So I think I overall is is a good thing for marketers, although it certainly has shaken things up. Um, on this search side of things. Uh, you know, I think I think a lot of companies are trying to get their footing again.
Um, and, um, We're, we're definitely keeping a really close watch on it because I do think it's going to have a big impact on, um, how we think about content strategy for our clients and, and we can dive more into, into what that means. But I think ultimately it's a good thing. It's, it's progress.
Yeah. And I know that content marketing is not just SEO.
And I think at Megawatt, you create lots of different types of content for your client that clients that might not necessarily be geared just to like ranking for a specific keyword and search. Um, but I'm curious, like, have your clients been asking you about like AI overviews? Is there any sort of like fear or concern from them that.
Uh, at least organic search might not be as good of a channel and let's say two or three years from now, or are our folks not. Too worried about that at the moment.
Yeah, I see a mix. I definitely see some folks who are just kind of plowing ahead as planned while everything sort of shakes out. But I do think a lot of more forward thinking marketers are Realizing that this is going to change.
I mean, people, people know that they're getting less organic traffic to their websites, pretty much across the board. I think that's relatively fair to say. We are generally counseling our clients, but the more one on one level content that anyone could write, any company could write that's not super differentiated is, is no longer a great place for them to spend their, their content resources.
And, um, we're pushing them towards focusing on more. Complex lower funnel, um, higher intent keywords. And so it is definitely starting to shift our strategy. Um, but we're also just taking it one day at a time and seeing how things change and how things shake out.
Yeah, totally. Well, given that you work with, uh, you know, companies in the cybersecurity space and developer tool space, I imagine this content's.
Like pretty in-depth and involved, um, and also to, from like a keyword standpoint, these keywords are probably going to be maybe some of the last disrupted, um, from like an AI overview standpoint versus, uh, you know, if we're in a topic space, like. You know, where I started my career, consumer finance, like a keyword, like what is a bank account?
Nate Matherson:
It's probably going to get disrupted a lot faster. Like I mentioned, I spent a couple of years in the developer tool space. And, um, you know, I found that creating content was actually a lot harder. Um, it was actually a lot more expensive, uh, than where I started my career when I was writing about like, How to open up a bank account or how to check your credit score.
Uh, could you walk us through your content creation process? Uh, and then as a followup to that, what does helpful content mean to the customers that you serve?
Yeah. Yeah. Great questions. Um, well, obviously the content creation process varies a lot from client to client, but in general, when we're thinking about, um, you know, building out an editorial calendar or just kind of going through the content ideation process.
We use a mix of input, so we're certainly doing keyword research, or our clients, you know, may have an SEO firm that's done keyword research that they're sharing with us. Um, we're doing competitor and market research to understand, you know, where is their white space that we can potentially fill. Um, but I think the most important input for any type of, um, content is the keyword.
You know, what are buyers asking about? What are they looking for? Um, so anytime we can talk to sales and customer success teams about what buyers are asking, that's really ideal. Um, as far as an input for what we're going to write content about. Um, sometimes you can, you know, you can back into that by doing keyword research, but I think it's just hugely helpful to know, Um, what customers are asking about, especially as these spaces change really rapidly and we're seeing some incredibly rapid change in the tech field right now.
Um, you know, I think I'll get to this later, um, as far as, you know, how the keyword, um, research tools are basically lagging behind the market at this point, but it all comes back to understanding what, what the core, Challenges are for your buyers and what they're, what they're searching for and what they're asking about in the journey.
Yeah, no, I totally agree with you there. Uh, you know, customer support and the sales team. Uh, that's, that's where I recommend most startups. Start in terms of like, uh, ideating before they ever even use a keyword research tool. Um, and yeah, you and I chatted on the draft webinar that like keyword research tools, especially when it comes to like highly technical audiences, just, uh, you know, they're not great, uh, given the way in which like, uh, keyword research tools.
Get their data, cybersecurity engineers or, or buyers of cybersecurity products just probably aren't as well represented and like the sample populations in which keyword research tools gather their data from as far as like the actual writing goes, like, uh, do you work with like freelance writers? Do you do all that content creation in house?
What does that look like?
Yeah, it's a mix and it's changed over time. Um, we've obviously seen some huge market shifts. Um, we, Megawatt became an agency officially in 2020 and, um, we built out our team in house at the beginning, but as the tech industry has gone through this really bumpy cycle over the last year and a half, we've found that, uh, working with freelancers is a great way to just give us a little bit more, flexibility.
We used to be entirely retainer based, but now we take retainers and projects and working with freelancers. Let's just kind of scale up and down a lot more efficiently. So, um, and the other good thing is, you know, when, when I started my wife, it wasn't that long ago, right? But it was a totally different talent market.
Um, and then, you know, we went through the, you know, The great resignation and it was so hard to find people who could write well about these topics for a long time, and it's still pretty challenging. I'm not gonna lie, but, um, the freelance talent market is, is getting better and better, which is great. Um, so it's a mix for us.
It's about probably, you know, 70 percent in house right now and about 30 percent freelance. Um, and you know, we're, we're kind of trying to stay as close to what's going on in the market as we can while we figure out kind of what, what is the best mix of those going forward.
Yeah. I imagine it's really difficult to find like a freelance writer who's Capable about writing about cybersecurity.
And it's a question I always get asked, like, where do I find freelance writers? And so I guess I'm going to ask you, like, how do you actually find these folks to create what is like pretty technical content?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm fortunate that I have a really big network in this world because I've been in this space for a really long time.
Um, so, you know, sometimes it's, it's references or referrals. Um, but. LinkedIn's a great place to look for people. Their search features are pretty good. So, um, it's getting easier, I think, to find people who are experts in this. There's also some really great content marketing communities out there, like SuperPath, that just have an absolutely enormous community of people who can write about these topics.
Yeah, we had Jimmy on the podcast, uh, I don't know, maybe like eight months ago, something like that. Um, yeah, it was a fun episode. And, uh, I'm going to ask you quickly, like Upwork, is that a place to use or do you prefer to actually go out and like source these folks, do outreach, find them in community?
Yeah. Honestly, yes. It's generally networking and getting referrals from people. I mean, it's been a while since I've actually like tried to source a writer on Upwork, but I, I think it's those types of talent marketplaces, I think attract more, um, it's a better place to look for writers for more like commoditized, um, topics, I think.
Yeah. And I'm going to ask you the million dollar question or at least the question I get asked like every day, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. What does it. Cost to like create a piece of content. Say we're like going to hire like a freelance writer and I know it's probably a range, but like what does it generally cost to create one of these like pretty technical pieces of content?
Yeah. Yeah. Huge range. Um, absolutely. And again, there's a lot of freelancers on the market right now. So, um, for better or worse, it's a, it's a buyer's market. Um, but it's interesting. There was, there was a post on LinkedIn. I forgot honestly who, who posted it, but. Somebody, um, posted saying that they had had a freelancer quote them 2, 000 for a single blog post and they were just outraged at that price tag.
And there were hundreds of comments that were largely saying, yeah, no, that's about the going rate for a, Blog posts in a pretty technical space at this point. Um, and yeah, I think you get what you pay for, for sure. Um, you could get lucky and find somebody who's really talented, who's not charging enough, but, um, somewhere between 1, 500 and 2, 000 for a regular length blog post is, is pretty typical, um, in the industries that we work in.
Yeah. You know, that's, that feels about right. Uh, I'm assuming that's like a pretty. You know, in, in depth tutorial or like guide, maybe, I don't know, tell me if I'm wrong, but is that like a, a 2000 word, 1800 word blog posts, something that's pretty in depth.
Yeah, pretty in depth for sure. Um, I would say like 1500.
To 2000 is about what you'd get for, um, for that price tag. It doesn't necessarily have to be a tutorial or a how to sometimes it is just more like industry thought leadership, right? Right. You still need to understand the industry pretty deeply to write well about it.
Totally. Yeah. And I found that you can get like pretty technical content.
Cheaper than that. If you source to folks who are not in the U S or like, uh, or in like an emerging market, but then, then, then the downside I found is that content often requires a lot more editing, which you then pay for on like the other side of it, as far as like. Budget scale, because I'm going to ask you another question that I just get asked all the time.
If I'm like, let's say like a series a startup and like, I want to take content pretty seriously over the next year, what type of a budget do I need to allocate to like a content marketing strategy?
Yeah, I mean, I would say on the low end, 10, 000 a month on the high end, 20 plus, it really depends on if you're including, you know, distribution and promotion and that if you're just talking about content creation.
Um, but purely content creation, I would say 10 a month. So 120 to 240 K over the course of a year is a very reasonable content spend. Whether you decide to spend that on an in house person or on an agency. Yeah, obviously I have some biases, uh, in that area, but I think that's a very reasonable budget. I think, you know, when you're putting your content budget together.
You do need to know how much the average sale is worth to you and how you see content fitting into your overall, um, sales funnel to make sure you're measuring the right things and getting the right return.
And would you say that like most of your clients have, let's say a traditional sales motion and aren't PLG, or do you work with more PLG companies?
We work with more enterprise sales. Um, types of companies or driven companies. We certainly work with some PLG, more traditional SAS companies as well. Um, but a lot of our clients are selling products that have maybe a 12 to 18 months of service. Sales cycle. Um, so sales is going to be pretty heavily involved.
And in some cases, sales is the very first touch point, um, that ultimate customers are getting. But content is still a really important part of that journey in part, because it is a really long journey and you need to keep buyers engaged for a long time.
Yeah. And there's probably a lot to that, right?
Like maybe it's an email newsletter, maybe it's actual collateral, like a case study that the, the sales. Folk, uh, bring to the client in the buying process. And maybe it's like posting on LinkedIn and them seeing you again, six months later, uh, but also to like 200, 000, like I imagine for a lot of your clients, if they convert like one.
Customer from the entire channel, like it probably pays for itself. I think, I don't know about you, but like, I really don't like it when folks obsess about the cost of a single article. I, I, I tend to coach folks to like, think about. The total cost of what we're going to invest in this channel and then what we get at the other side of it versus like hyper analyzing, you know, was this 1, 500 blog post worth it?
Um, I don't know. Do you agree with me there?
Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
And speaking in terms of distribution, um, like are there like one or two like distribution strategies that, that you're excited about and let's say the next 12 to 24 months.
Ooh. Ooh, that's a great question. I don't know if it's necessarily what I'm most excited about, but I think the biggest thing that, um, a lot of marketers are working to wrap their heads around when it comes to distribution is zero click content.
So, I think of repurposing and distribution as really being part of the same engine. So, whether you're, Taking an ebook and you're putting it out there, um, through social media, which is getting increasingly hard to do because social media punishes you for pushing people off of their sites. Um, and you know, there's, there's paid strategies and things like that.
But, um, I think what's really important is that you're creating core pieces of content on themes that are important to your company and relevant to your company, but that buyers really care about, and that you can really own the Um, a topic around. And then you're thinking about what are all the different ways that we can get this information out there.
So it's not just like, let's create this big ebook and then let's figure out exactly how we get The most people to come here from all these different places to download the ebook. Um, that's great. That needs to be part of how you're thinking about it for sure. But you can't just publish an ebook and then not do anything from a distribution standpoint.
But you also need to think about different people that like to consume content in different formats. And most people prefer not to leave the platform they're on and the platforms don't want you to send people off them. So, um, thinking about how you can take your core pieces of content and your core ideas and turn them into zero click content is really important.
Um, so that's, you know, how do we distill the most Interesting aspects of this ebook we put together into, um, a medium form kind of linked in post that people interact with, and then you kind of have to take a leap of faith that they're going to connect, um, the person or the brand ultimately with you and what you're trying to get out there from a product perspective.
Um, but yeah, that's, that's definitely something I think is really important. I also think webinars are, I mean, I don't want to say that they're underestimated because. every tech company worth their salt is already doing webinars, but they are the number one channel still. Um, and I think sometimes people forget that and, and don't put as much behind, um, webinars as they could and, and then don't take the webinars when they're finished.
And, um, again, repurpose and atomize and distribute the information that comes out of them. So, um, so yeah, I think with distribution, it's like, What are we going to invest what are all the different ways we can get those ideas out there? Not just that single piece.
And it sounds like the overarching theme is like, uh, repurposing, like how can we repurpose this content, whether it's video from a webinar into maybe a shorter form video than to a LinkedIn post or from an ebook to a LinkedIn post or whatever it might be.
Um, and I, yeah, I was talking to a startup the other day and, you know, they were trying to think about like, What do we want to invest in to content? And, um, I, I, from an SEO point of view, purely, and they almost forgot like that, like, this is content that you can then take and put in so many other places.
And I kind of had to remind them of that, but, you know, pulling myself back to the. Outline because there is a question that I did want to ask you, um, because you and I chatted a little bit offline. Um, and you mentioned to me before this recording that we need to create content or, or we should write for people first.
Um, I, and I'd be curious to, to know more about that. What do you mean by saying like, we need to write for people first.
The people who could be your buyers, what are their day to day challenges? What are their pain points? What are they struggling with? What problems do they have that if you could solve them would make them look like heroes?
And you know in technical spaces that means You really do need to understand. You don't need to be able to code to write intelligently for developers, in my opinion, but you do need to understand what their day to day jobs look like and what makes their jobs hard. Um, I, I think actually cyber security might be an even better example here.
Um, there is a humongous talent shortage in the cyberspace and it's not going away anytime soon. anytime soon. And so even really large companies tend to have quite small cyber departments as compared to other organizations within the company. And those people have really hard jobs to do because they need to stay on top of a really, really complex field.
So, you know, what are the new threats that are coming out? What are the new technologies that are available to me that might help me do my job better? What are the best practices in my field right now? And You know, a security person needs to understand everything from like, how do I get my employees not to click on a phishing email to like, how do I choose the best, um, the best identity management solution?
And they can't be an expert in everything. So I think that's where companies actually have a huge Huge opportunity to build expertise and then share that with people like, um, security analysts who just have such an enormous job to do. So that's what I mean when I say, Understanding people and what their challenges are and then giving them really genuinely helpful content or solutions to those challenges.
So it sounds like the primary purpose with this content is to not sell someone something, but to help them In their job, whether it's learning something new or, um, like knowing a best practice that they could go and implement. And then once they've gotten that value from the brand, then what, like, did, do we then try to sell them something?
It sounds like this content should be first helpful and secondarily like sales collateral. Does that feel right? A lot of the time.
Yeah. I mean, again, I think it comes back to. Understanding what the buyer journey is for companies that are going to potentially buy your product. And if it's a really long sales cycle, you need to be offering educational content.
You need to be offering content that helps them make kind of comparisons. So, um, you know, there's, there's legacy technologies that they might be more familiar with, but they might need some education on why a more, um, Forward looking approach is is more appropriate. So, like, um, D. L. P. Is there like a really old school way of dealing with data security?
And there's much more advanced ways of thinking about data security, data security, posture, management, things like that. Often there's, there's education there, but it's okay to be talking about why data security posture management is so important, even if that's what you're selling, even if you are a DSP M.
Um, and our clients find that buyers guides, for example, perform really well. Um, so people appreciate having content. Even if you're talking about your product versus competitors, people appreciate having content that really lays out what the differences are. I think you just, you know, you need to be careful about being, um, As as honest and straightforward as you possibly can and you also need to be thinking about the earned channels where people are talking about your products too.
And if what you're saying doesn't line up with what people say about you out there in the market, then it's going to work against you. I do think there's a place for just purely educational, helpful content that really is going to help you. Ultimately get buyers to associate your brand with a problem that they maybe don't have an acute, um, issue with right now.
But if, you know, six months down the road, uh, their boss comes to them and says, like, we're having, like, Major access for all issues and too many people have access to production or too many people have access to our customer database or whatever. I need you to solve this problem for me. And they're suddenly thinking, Oh, I read a blog post from XYZ about this 6 months ago.
Then you're in the consideration set. So. I think you got to cover the whole journey, and that includes case studies. I think case studies are one of the most valuable things you can do at the, at the point of actual decision making. Um, so showing how people have used your product successfully to solve the same kind of challenges that, that you've had.
Um, but yeah, there's, there's a time and a place for hard selling, and there's a time and a place for pure thought leadership for pure education.
From our content standpoint at positional, I would say 90 percent of the time the content we create, we, we almost try not to sell you anything, but then take the bet that like the content's going to be so helpful that you're going to want to engage with us.
Yeah. Like I did a demo last week where like. I, cause I always ask people like, how did you hear about us? And some, most of the time they don't remember, but we should probably have better tracking set up. And I do want to ask you about like KPIs and measuring success in a minute. But, uh, we, you know, we, we were ranking for this keyword author schema, uh, with a blog post on our site, which is like.
An interesting SEO topic, but not at all related to like our tool set, but we put together like a really nice guide on implementing author schema. And the person enjoyed it enough that they wanted to like, learn more about our product and, uh, see how our, our tools work. Um, but yeah, now I'll ask you like measuring success and know that this is working.
Um, I imagine there's more than one KPI. Uh, like what are some of those like KPIs or, you know, metrics we can track to know that like content marketing is working for a company?
We counsel our clients that it depends on what their goals are and it depends on. Where they're having challenges. So, you know, if they're, if they're having no problem getting people to their website, but those people aren't converting, then we need to pay more attention to engagement metrics to conversion metrics, more downstream stuff.
If, you know, no one's coming to your site to begin with, you don't have nearly enough traffic, then you need to be thinking about that. You'd be thinking about that. Where are they coming from and where do we need to be showing up? Um, so I think it depends a lot on on what your goals are and there's a lot of KPIs that matter.
I also think there are some things that you can't measure, um, perfectly and you still have to take the leap of faith that you Building a brand is important because again, if you're not in the consideration set, if you are not thinking of you when they think of X, Y, Z niche, then it really doesn't matter how great your content is or how great your product is.
People are not going to buy it.
What you're saying is it kind of echoes, uh, you know, A statement from, uh, we had a guest on it a few months back, um, a guy named Nate Ciani. And he said that like, you could rank first for a keyword, but if no one has ever heard of your company or your brand before, there's still going to be a much, there's going to be a much lower likelihood that you'll be able to convert them.
Um, and that his argument was that like, SEO can't exist within a silo. Like it can be important to rank first for that keyword, but it, you know, It's not going to work as well unless like there you've done all of the other parts. Right. From a brand standpoint, um, and a marketing standpoint, as far as like, when to worry about content marketing.
I mean, it's a question that too, I always get asked, especially from like early stage startups and. It's sometimes hard to answer because, uh, you know, sometimes you talk to a seed stage startup and like they take it super seriously and it works for them. Um, but then other times, like, you know, it's a seed stage startup and, uh, they've just got too much going on to really take content marketing seriously.
When is the right time for a company to, to take content marketing seriously?
Yeah. I mean, I think it depends a lot on your space. Um, So if we, if we just want to talk about SEO, for example, if you're a late entrant into a really well established category, um, spending a ton of effort and energy trying to displace your competitors in search rankings as a seed stage company, it's just not going to be worth the investment.
Um, I think you're probably better off like getting a few really good press hits that get you in front of the right people and that gets your name on the map. Um, I generally find that once you've found product market fit, that's when you can do content really well. And often seed stage companies and even series A companies, I don't think have found true product market fit.
Um, but that again, comes back to like, you need to know who your buyers are, who your ideal buyers are, who the champions are, what their questions are, what their problems are. And if you don't have product market fit, you can't answer any of those questions. And. Um, there's probably not a lot of point in doing a ton of content marketing.
I do think you still need to focus on your, your messaging and your website. You need to build a really strong website. Um, I would make sure that all of your core pages are well optimized for search and that you're getting your value proposition across really clearly. So you almost want to invest in, in brand messaging and clarity before you go really far down the content marketing rabbit hole.
But, Really hitting product market fit is I think the best time to hit the gas on content.
Yeah, because at that point, like the business is working. It's not a question of like, is this a product or not speaking of product market fit that I think there's a lot of AI companies out there, like even series a series B that have raised a ton of money, but might not have product market fit yet.
Do you, have you been working with like, uh, a lot of AI companies lately? Are they focus area for you.
What's interesting is that all of the spaces that we work in. So data, cybersecurity, compliance, um, dev tools are being, I don't want to say disrupted. I hate that word, but are being impacted by A. I. And too many of those areas have have been impacted by A.I. and Gen A. I. is really kind of the new kid on the block.
But A. I. as applied to, um, Security as applied to data, things like that has been around for much longer than than the layperson I think realizes, um, we don't work with any what I would call pure play AI companies. We tend to work with what I call applied AI companies and often it's it's something that they're bringing into their product later on.
So we have like a client we've been working with since I've been working with them on and off since 2018 since they were really small and now they're a unicorn. Um, But, you know, they're building tools to, um, ensure that code that's developed using AI is secure, um, and that is an interesting space when it comes to writing content, um, there's not a lot of content out there about it yet, there's not a lot of, um, products that have really Solved that challenge well yet.
So there's there's really interesting opportunities there for them to blaze a trail, even though they've they've been in the security space for a long time again. We don't work with any pure play a I companies. Um, and even I'll talk about a company we worked with. Um, that was using a I again long before Jenny.
I, um, for translation in customer service specifically. So, um, you know, they're Sure. Their founders were really smart engineers from Carnegie Mellon and places like that, who had done a lot of research in the, you know, kind of early days of AI and machine learning. And what we had to realize was, at the end of the day, the people who are buying this product don't really care that it's driven by AI or that AI is what's behind it.
They care about what the product does and what it does for them. So. AI is not the big selling point. I do think that's changed, um, a bit. And most companies are trying to figure out some way to say, and we do it with AI, but you can't be asked that for technical folks. You can't be asked that for data analysts or, uh, security people or developers, you know, they're not going to buy that.
You have an AI, whatever, just because you say you do.
That is funny. And the reason I'm kind of laughing is I hope they're not listening, but we had a customer like buy our product out of like their AI budget and they're like, Oh, you guys are an AI tool, right? Like, yeah, totally. Um, I mean, like we don't say AI anywhere on our website.
I don't know, maybe we should, but, uh, But we got bought out of the AI budget, I guess, um, which I guess I'll, I'll take it. But yeah, you can't fool a developer buyer as easy as easy. Like you said, how are you thinking about owned versus earned channels these days?
I think owned channels are incredibly important, probably more important today than they were five years ago, 10 years ago.
Um, especially before privacy laws started getting past. So, you know, we hear a lot of talk about how important first party data is now. And, um, it's definitely something that every marketer needs to understand when I think about owned media. And when we counsel our clients on how to think about owned media, um, You know, we tell them it's it's really important to focus on building a strong email list and engaged email list.
Um, it's really important to have great content on your website and most companies in in the spaces that we work in should at least consider it. At a certain stage, um, owning and running a community for either prospects or customers or both. Um, especially for things like DevTools, um, because it's just such a collaborative space and people learn from each other and they prefer that to interacting directly with the brand.
But I will say it's also true that there's, there's more competition than there ever has been and buyers are more sophisticated by the day. So you also have to recognize that as opposed to owned channels, earned channels like PR or review sites like G2 have a big impact on who ultimately ends up in the consideration set.
Um, and you can't ignore that. On the other hand, if you're talking about earned channels, like Stack overflow or reddit, right? Which are huge in the technical spaces that we are writing content for Again brands need to be really careful there Um, you cannot bs or weasel your way into those sorts of places and market your brand You can't just like join a reddit dev community around some topic as a marketer and like be like Oh, hey, have you guys ever thought about using this product like people will Find who you really are and dox you in a second.
So I think you just have to be really careful about that. But if you have someone on your team who is legitimately, um, an influencer or a well known voice in a particular space and already interacts in those communities, um, I think that's a huge asset that you really should, um, invest in. I saw, this is another interesting LinkedIn conversation I saw where Somebody had asked for a raise because their personal brand, they believed was having a big impact, positive impact on the company brand.
And they wanted a raise as a result. We're outraged by that, but I mean, that's crazy, right? Like that's a huge value that they're bringing to the table and they should absolutely get paid for it because again, you can't fake that.
Are we talking like developer advocates? People like that who might have like a hundred thousand followers on Twitter or something like that.
Exactly. Exactly.
At that point, there's like two parts. There's like, is this an employee doing their job? And then there's also the, like, this is an influencer who can probably sell sponsored content if they wanted to. Is that important? Do you think for founders too? Like if they can build their own.
Influence or stature on a platform like Twitter or LinkedIn or, or even on something like Reddit.
I think, I think it's important, but I don't think you should fake it. I think if you are not someone who wants to be a LinkedIn thought leader or a Reddit thought leader or a Twitter person and you just want to pay somebody to like, be you on that platform.
You can certainly pay somebody to give you strategy advice, to get you started, to help you figure out, like, what kind of content is going to be interesting, isn't going to be interesting, to edit your, your thoughts, or to, like, interview you and turn it into content, like, all of that is fine, I think, but if you fundamentally aren't interested in doing that, or in being the face of the brand, I don't think, I almost never see that work out over the long run, you'll lose steam, Uh, you'll frustrate the people who are trying to help you do it and it won't resonate with your community So I think if you're a founder who's not like that don't try to be like that If there's somebody else at your company who is like that let them be that person Um, I see like, you know some cmo's who are Way more active, um, on LinkedIn than the CEO at the company.
But they're talking about all the right things and people are really, um, interested in their opinions and they're engaging and they enjoy doing it. Like, that's great. And then if you don't have somebody at your company who can do that, like influencer marketing is, is a very real, um, channel that you can invest in.
And I think it's, it can be done really well. It's. Also not as expensive to do in B2B spaces as it is in B2C.
Yeah and, you know, I have a friend, he won't be named. He's the founder of a company in the developer space. It's like a, you know, Series A stage company. And he doesn't tweet that much. And then like one day I like noticed that like, All of a sudden he was tweeting like four times a day, putting out memes.
And I'm like, I texted him. I'm like, did you, this is definitely not you. Did you, did you hire like a ghost, like a ghost tweeter? Uh, and he's like, yeah, I did. And, uh, but like I saw through it. So like, I don't, I can't imagine. I'm like the only person that can see through that if it just. It just doesn't feel authentic all of the sudden.
It'll just run its course if it's not, if it's not really you, if it's not authentic. I think authenticity is such a, such a theme right now. And um, you just can't fake it, especially in these spaces.
I've found on LinkedIn study posts on LinkedIn a lot, like anytime you can, uh, like in your content, like strike an emotional cord.
Like those are the LinkedIn posts that, that do like 20 times better.
And it's interesting because LinkedIn, I think is trying to disincentivize some of that, at least the more like personal posts, but it is what the people want. So.
How about Tiktok? That's, uh, is that a good channel for developer tool companies or the, we should just ignore it?
Oh God. I'm not an expert on that. I'm like too old to be an expert on that.
I've actually never used Tiktok. So I don't know either. Um,
You know, I, I got really sick over the winter and I was like in bed for a few days and I, Ran out of things to look at on Instagram and finally went on TikTok. And I have a good friend in the demand gen space.
She's a demand gen consultant that does a lot of work for cyber companies. And I know she really believes in, in TikTok for B2B marketing. Um, I do think it all comes down to knowing your personas and your, who you're speaking to and knowing whether they're on TikTok or not. So if you're selling directly to.
Developers and it's a, it's a truly like PLG, SAS led motion. And, you know, it doesn't need to be a VP of engineering. Who's probably like, you know, 40 plus that I think TikTok could be a smart place to be, but test that out and make sure your audience is there before you really invest in the channel, just because it exists.
Yeah. Speaking of investing in channels just because they exist, uh, have, and I've been thinking about it, but I haven't done it yet. Have you seen like LinkedIn has almost like a Tik TOK competitor now? Like, what do you think about that? Should we be doing that?
Yeah. It's interesting. So, I mean, it's in beta right now and I don't have access to it.
So I, a few people have shown it. To me on like a zoom screen share, um, and I'm jealous that I don't have access to it. But what I've heard is that it really is not well curated, right? So you're not necessarily getting served the right content based on your interest. The way LinkedIn is pretty good about that in your like regular feed.
Um, and I think until they figured that out, It's not a channel worth considering because it's really random stuff to random people.
Yeah, that's, uh, that's what I found too. I guess I have access to it. I didn't know that only some people got access to it. But, um, yeah, I was scrolling through it on my phone and like the videos were like not at all related to stuff I'd be interested in.
Like maybe it's, Cause I just didn't spend enough time on it and they didn't figure me out. But I think that's so much data about you, right? If you've been, they should know, they should know what I'm interested in based on what they show me on the feed normally. But yeah, we're like videos about, I get my real estate license and becoming a drop shipper.
Like, uh, no, I'm okay. This has been a lot of fun. I've got like a handful of lightning round questions. Does that sound good? Okay. This is a question I'd ask, like. At least a few times in the last month, uh, but not specific to Boston. Uh, what's your favorite restaurant in Boston or where should our listeners go next time they're in town?
Row 34. It's a seafood restaurant. Um, it was part of the Island Creek group, but that kind of disbanded. Um, Island Creek had been around for a long time and they. actually own an oyster farm in Duxbury. So row 34 was the 34th row of oysters, and they are really famous for babying their oysters. So their oysters get touched like some insane number of times throughout their life.
Um, so they're really like. Farmed oysters, you know, they're, they're, uh, they make sure they're getting exactly the right type of nutrients and that they have plenty of space and blah, blah, blah. But row 34 was the kind of a, um, control row that they left on their own to do their own thing. So same DNA and genetics and whatever behind these oysters, but they don't baby them in the same way.
Um, and so you can go there and you can taste the oysters that have been babied and the oysters that are kind of more, um, Au naturel, if you will, which I love oysters, so I find that fascinating. But beyond that, they just have absolutely fantastic food. They have a few locations now around Boston and a lot of like Neptune oyster gets a lot of press.
But I, I think row 34 is the best seafood restaurant in Boston. So if you like seafood, row 34.
Yeah, it looks good. I'm on the site now. We'll put a link to the menu in the show notes. Um, I, I think there's only one right answer to this question, but like, what is the region where the best oysters come from?
Oh, I actually don't think there's one right answer, uh, which might be a bad New Englander. It has to be cold, right? So I am disgusted by Southern oysters.
Terrible. They're terrible.
My parents love them. They're from the South. I could not. They're too big. They're gross. New England, uh, Canada, especially Prince Edward Island. And then I do think Northern California has some pretty amazing oysters.
Those are expensive.
They are.
The Northern West coast oysters are vary, depending on where you go. But no, I think the right answer to that question was, uh, was PEI. Uh, but yeah, I totally agree with you that like the, you know, they have Charleston oysters, uh, down here in Charleston and I will tell you the French laundry only serves Island Creek oysters.
Is there one company that you don't work with and haven't worked with that you would love to work with?
Classic blue chip, you know, they've also got an awesome content marketing program strategy.
And I've been following them for a long time, like since 2010 when, you know, I just, I have a crush on it last year for sure.
Yeah. I was hoping you weren't going to say crowd strike. Um, it sounds pretty stressful to be in any sort of a content creation program.
Role at like CrowdStrike right now. I, I, you don't, I hope you don't work with CrowdStrike, but if you do, good luck. And then my last question is, uh, uh, the market for agencies. Um, I've, I haven't asked this question in a while. I've I've, it's probably been like six months since I asked this question and. I feel like six months ago, it sounded like things were getting better for agencies than they were like 12 to 18 months ago.
Is, is that what you're seeing or, uh, you're seeing the opposite?
It is so hard to separate signal from noise. I'll say our, our pipeline is fuller than it's ever been. Um, but sales cycles are slower than they were a year, year and a half, two years ago. Certainly. I think it's getting better. I think it'll be way better after.
If we do see an interest rate change in September, uh, and post election, at least in the U S I do think the market for agencies who target tech is going to get a lot better, but it's a mix. I wouldn't say it's, it's great. Um, but I think we're directionally it's imperfect.
Yeah. If, uh, Jerome Powell's listening, we need 50 basis points in September, Jerome.
Um, Meg, thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to say, uh, to our listeners? How can they learn more about you and, uh, Megawatt?
Yeah. Um, feel free to visit our website. We've got tons of information on there about who we are and what we do. It's a www.megawattcontent. com. Um, and I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and I love meeting new people.
Um, as you can probably tell, I'm super passionate about the areas that we work in. So even if you're not looking for content right now, if you're curious about, you know, best practices for content in technical spaces, and you want to have a conversation, please reach out, I'd love to chat.
Building that sales funnel.
All right, Mac, thank you for coming on.
Nate Matherson: And that's a wrap. And I just want to thank our sponsor positional. They've got what is a pretty awesome tool set for content marketers and SEOs. They've even got a couple of tools for social media. Uh, we'd love for you to check out positional and the tool set that we've created, uh, over the last 15 months at positional.com. And you can always reach out to me if you have any questions. My email is Nate at positional.com. Whether you've got 53:00 questions about our tool set or comments and complaints, uh, or even positive feedback about this podcast, I'd love to hear from you. Um, and don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button, uh, wherever you are listening to this podcast.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
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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 used to create outlines for our posts, either by paying a consultant $75+ each, or by spending 1-2 hours researching and creating each one ourselves. With Positional, we can create the best outlines for our target keyword clusters and get alternatives within a couple clicks.
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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 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!
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