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Experimenting with Content: Why Testing Beats Perfection
38 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, our host, Ashley Segura, sits down with Christine Skopec from SEMrush to discuss how experimenting with content can lead to meaningful improvements. Christine shares her journey from journalism to content marketing and explains how her unique background shapes her approach.
Learn practical ways to identify content worth revisiting, test elements like titles and calls to action, and refine your approach based on data. Christine emphasizes the value of trying new strategies, adapting to results, and maintaining a balance between producing quality content and keeping up with publishing demands.
If you're curious about reworking existing content, gathering insights from testing, or making informed choices to better connect with your audience, this episode is just for you.
Subscribe now for insightful discussions and actionable ideas that help you stay ahead in the world of content creation!
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Transcript
Writing for Web vs. Print Media
00:00:00
Speaker
Writing for the web versus like writing a traditional print is very different. Because if you're thinking about writing for a magazine, they always want to cover something new and interesting. It's a different take. And thus, it's it's it's something that nobody would ever search you know enter into a search engine. The idea was more to come up with something that people had never heard of before.
Introduction to Content in the Kitchen
00:00:23
Speaker
And if you do that for online content, unless you have a really, really great distribution plan,
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome back to Content in the Kitchen, where we gather on the kitchen table to chat about all things content marketing. Today, we're going to talk about the power of experimenting with your content, featuring Christine.
Christine's Content Strategy Journey
00:00:46
Speaker
She is a content strategist and editor at SEMrush, who has over a decade of experience in SEO and content strategy. She's worked with SaaS companies to really help refine strategies and polish content that helps brands succeed. And she's not afraid to experiment to do so.
00:01:03
Speaker
So in this episode, we're really going to figure out why striving for perfection isn't always the best strategy. And sometimes you just need to test ideas. So grab your favorite cup and let's dive into the conversation with Christine.
00:01:19
Speaker
All right, well, let's kick things off.
The Role of Perfection in Content
00:01:23
Speaker
When you're not experimenting with content and you find yourself in the kitchen, what is your go to dish to cook? So this is funny. I, it feels like two lifetimes ago, I was a line cook long before I got into editorial or marketing. I don't cook anything at home that is anywhere near, I'm not gonna, I'm not spending, you know, like eight hours prepping something at home to have that skill set.
00:01:48
Speaker
For me, I don't know, it really depends on the time of year. So like all summer long and even even into like late fall, I do um grill everything. It doesn't matter what it is, I'm gonna grill it. But it's winter here in Minnesota, so it's soup season.
From Journalism to Content Marketing
00:02:05
Speaker
Probably gonna make soup tonight. i don't know i I don't know what it will be, but there's gonna be soup on the menu tonight. I make a really good like black bean chorizo soup.
00:02:15
Speaker
oh Yeah, I was gonna say that was nice. my so I made that for my sister once and she tried to recreate it and she she told me, I don't know what you did. I know what you put in it, but and every time I try to make it, it just doesn't come out as good. And I'm like, well.
00:02:32
Speaker
Sorry. Yeah, yeah it's it's your recipe. It's your creation. It's got to come from you to be good. It's my baby. it's it's It's my recipe. I apparently needs my love or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Your special touch with it. Yeah, precisely.
00:02:46
Speaker
Well, can you start us off with in the content side of things, sharing your journey on how you got into content marketing and how you got into your current role at SEMrush? Yeah, for sure. It's been kind of a long and winding journey for me. I like a lot of other people started out on this journey in in the editorial side of things. I went to journalism school for my master's degree. And then I was in traditional media right after that. I worked for an online publication for a number of years. It was one of those places where we were just publishing so much content. I started out as a writer there, then I moved up the ladder a little bit. I became an editor. And then I feel like I was kind of at a crossroads. I knew that I wanted to take another step in my career, but I didn't really know what to do. I found myself in a weird position of I was interviewing with an agency that was for a content marketing position.
00:03:41
Speaker
And I was also interviewing with like a traditional health magazine. And I just didn't have, I don't know how to explain, I didn't have a good feeling about the magazine. So I decided to go with the agency role and I'm really glad that I did. It was really, it was totally different than what I had
Transitioning to SEMrush
00:04:00
Speaker
done. It was, you know, my introduction, my true introduction into SEO. That was kind of foreign territory for me prior to that. Like we had one person at the online publication who was our ah SEO person. I don't even know what his job title was, but it was impossible. His job was impossible because we had one SEO person working with all of these writers and editors who didn't know how to do it. and I mean, it was kind of like, here are keywords you should target, but we didn't even know what that meant. like what does What does it mean to target a keyword?
00:04:31
Speaker
We didn't know anything about cannibalization, any of that stuff. So it was interesting then to get into a position where I was able to learn about those concepts and then start applying them. And I did the agency thing for a while and then decided that I wanted to kind of focus more on one brand. Um, obviously when you're working for an agency, you have multiple clients. I was interested in getting to really dig into like one specific brand as opposed to feeling, I don't know, sometimes you can feel a little bit scatterbrained. I feel like when you're in an agency, depending on who your clients are sometimes they can be a lot sometimes they can be very very different so i knew that i wanted to get into the software space don't tell me how i knew that me 10 years ago if you would said oh yeah one day you're going to do content and it's going to be b2b like software or software in general i would have been like what are you talking about that's not what i want to do with my career
00:05:24
Speaker
But that was, I mean, that's how I got to SEMrush effectively. I don't know how, how, if I can explain it in a way that's, you know, more concrete, but a little bit of a winding path. I was going to say obviously way before that, the line cook thing happened, but. Oh yeah. Yeah. A very important part of the journey.
Full Circle in Content Career
00:05:41
Speaker
ah but I mean, it was an important part of the journey. You learn a lot about having to manage a lot of things and wear a bunch of different hats So I think it was kind of useful from that standpoint. And then for specific for me specifically getting into SEMrush, I had been using SEMrush's tools for a really long time. That first agency job that I got, we used SEMrush. I had never heard of it before, but I was like, wow, these tools are awesome. So it was kind I feel like I've kind of come full circle and now that I work for SEMrush. It's great.
00:06:12
Speaker
like the fourth or fifth person I've had on the show that comes from a journalism background. And I come from
Print Journalism to Digital Marketing
00:06:18
Speaker
journalism to five or no, excuse me, seven years in the food industry, like prior to journalism. And I feel like it's this natural progression for so many of us is going from print journalism to then digital journalism to, okay, well, it's not just enough to write content anymore. If you want anyone to even see it, like pick up the paper from the traditional standpoint or pick up the magazine, then you have to figure out what optimizing was. and It was like this whole new world of web dev and then optimization and then email marketing came with it and social media and now you need to know a little bit of everything to be truly successful with your content.
00:06:57
Speaker
For sure, and the thing that I always find most fascinating is Writing for the web versus like writing a traditional print is very different. Because if you're thinking about writing for a magazine, they always want to cover something new and interesting. It's a different take. And thus, it's it's it's something that nobody would ever search you know enter into a search engine. The idea was more to come up with something that people had never heard of before. And if you do that for online content, unless you have a really, really great distribution plan,
00:07:31
Speaker
It's going to be hard for people to find it, you know? Yeah. and And for people to even want to find it because now the content that's on the internet is give me an answer to something. Tell me how to do something or entertain me.
User-Centric Content Creation
00:07:45
Speaker
It's very black and white.
00:07:47
Speaker
Whereas traditional writing is, I'm going to find a story and then I'm going to tell that story. And I'm going to include my style and my voice in it. And now we're writing for brands or for clients. So it's all about their voice, their style. Can we mimic that?
00:08:02
Speaker
and maybe put a little bit of storytelling in it, but also get to the point of like, you know, what's the user intent behind this? And and are we getting to that? Whereas traditional journalism is like user intent, that's out the window. We're telling them a great story. For sure. And one of the things that I think is that you need to keep in mind, at least for for me and like the brands that I work for, it's so different from that, that traditional ah that traditional media background where you're writing for people who are reading, you know, in their leisure time and stuff that they're interested, they're going to spend a lot of time on something. Now I feel like
00:08:38
Speaker
I feel like the content that I work on now, it's like somebody is rapidly trying to learn something over their lunch break, which is maybe true, maybe not. But that's the way I always think about it. This person is in a hurry to learn something. ah They don't have a lot of time to waste. Get to the point and tell them what it is they came to learn about. Don't and you know don't don't spend 20 paragraphs doing all of this backstory that isn't even relevant to them. They don't care.
Experimentation in Content Strategy
00:09:05
Speaker
No, no. and And I think when that was popular to do the whole, I work with a lot of food bloggers and it's always like the history behind meatballs that used to be the first five to 10 paragraphs before you got to the meatball recipe. And I try and remember like, was there ever a time as a as a personal user where I was like, oh, I really want to know about the history of meatballs or no, did I always just want the recipe? But I dealt with it because that that's the way content was presented.
00:09:33
Speaker
And now there's this major switch to where users really are prioritized. And so when we're like experimenting with new content and and especially as we go into a new year, I feel like post helpful content update there is a lot of experimentation going on and trying to figure out that balance of, okay, how do we do that lunchtime answer, which I love that analogy, versus how do we also meet the brand story? And what does experimenting for for you and in these scenarios look like? Like, how do you find that happy medium? It's, I mean, it's tricky, but at the same time, experimentation can mean so many different things.
00:10:14
Speaker
It depends on what your goals are. It depends on you know what what is most meaningful to you and your brand. It also just depends on what you actually have the capacity to do. We test things all the time, and sometimes they're big things. Sometimes they're really small things. You can literally test title tags. like you know where're let's What if we form all of all of these title tags as questions, you know, or what if we just make all of them shorter? Maybe you want to set like a really specific character limit for yourself just to see what happens. Do people click through more? Do they not click through more?
Setting Goals for Content Experiments
00:10:52
Speaker
You can do obviously huge, more meaningful things too. If you want to start experimenting with
00:10:58
Speaker
One thing that we're thinking about is how can we, well I mean, let's test including more originality and it can be, again, big, it can be little. Do we want to start doing a bunch more like large scale surveys? Do we want to start including more of.
00:11:14
Speaker
you know the data that we can get from our tools that other people can also access, but maybe not quite in the same way that we would do it. um There are all sorts of things you can test. And I feel like figuring out, again, it's it's it's what you're interested in and what you think is going to make an impact. And sometimes the experiment will be like, okay, cool. We learned that nothing major happened. That's not bad, but... Yeah, that's true.
00:11:39
Speaker
That's true because because usually we are trying to like chase this KPI and ah hopefully you've identified the KPI before the experiment and put the car before the horse. But sometimes we're just like, let's just change things and see what works and what doesn't. I love that you're acknowledging that, you know, sometimes what works and what doesn't is that nothing changed. yeah And that's enough of the KPI. Have you seen that recently with with the Semesh blog on when you're making big changes that you're able to get a lot of data that tells a big story or is it like a lot of data that doesn't tell much of a story? I was going to say it can be both. I mean, I feel like that that's always the way it is. Sometimes you get a lot of data and the answer is
00:12:24
Speaker
Well, this didn't really we didn't really learn a whole lot from this. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. there was I'm trying to think of a specific example. I can't think of one. I know that we've tested a bunch of different like CTAs, like call to action banners. I don't know that we've ever gotten anything super meaningful from you know using more of those versus using less of them. Again, that's not a bad thing. it it ah it Maybe it means that it that that just doesn't matter. We should focus on something else.
00:12:54
Speaker
That's true. I mean, that's that's a story and and report of its own. What about the content itself? like What are some ways that you can experiment with? I like how you gave the the title tags and asking questions as an option. But looking at, say, a singular blog post, what are things that you can experiment with in that blog post and change with it? And then how do you test? like Do you need a heat mapping tool? like how How are you identifying that an experiment is working or not?
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, it can be something that you're testing and looking at a heat mapping tool. I feel like, you know, those sorts of things are really helpful for if you're testing, you know, calls to action, especially. But one thing that I think about is something we were talking about earlier, you know, having those posts that have like a really long backstory introduction, something that we started doing a while ago was, well, what if we just like skip the introduction altogether? Like, what if we just go straight into the first H2? I know. Ooh, scary.
00:13:57
Speaker
And people people don't care. It doesn't matter that we don't have the introduction there. Sometimes it's actually better for the post. It gets to the point sooner. you know People start getting to the stuff that they care about, which you know is often stuff that we care about, too. So that's something you can certainly test with you can experiment with. You can also test you know the order in which you arrange things to a certain extent you know and structure as a whole.
00:14:24
Speaker
Do we want to cover this in a way where we're segmenting it down to like H5s? Or do we want to focus on the bigger picture and maybe just have fewer subsections as a whole? So I don't know.
Duration and Adaptation in Testing
00:14:37
Speaker
The sky is kind of the limit. There are a ton of ways you can experiment with your content. It can be the specific language that you can use. It can be, I'm trying to think of other examples. I don't know. But it it truly is whatever you want to test. Any time you have that question of like, well, what if I feel like that's worth testing?
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah. A hundred percent. how How long should you be testing though? Like what's a good chunk of time to be like, okay, this was successful or not. I know this could probably range from depending upon site size or company size, but do you have a general rule of thumb where you're like, it needs to at least be live for this long.
00:15:15
Speaker
I don't know. This is one of those questions. I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask about this. We have other people who I know have specific limits on it for time. I don't know that I, I would say testing for a couple of months is important, and especially if we're talking about, you you know, SEO where your result, you, there might be a couple month lag. I don't know that I have a question though.
00:15:38
Speaker
but That's true because it also depends on what you're testing because if your goal is improving rankings, then you do need to give it at least two months regardless of if you have a huge site in tons of traffic or a smaller site and you're you're trying for traffic. But if it's more of a CTA and you're testing, okay, moving the CTA here versus there, are we getting more calls or email opt-ins or signups, whatever that looks like,
00:16:05
Speaker
You could see that a little bit quicker from a time frame perspective than something like over trying to improve rankings it's gonna be a lot longer.
Proposing Content Tests to Stakeholders
00:16:15
Speaker
For sure and the other thing to keep in mind too is that sometimes you know the rule is often well you want to make the test be long enough to get statistically significant results.
00:16:26
Speaker
Sometimes you never get there though. If you've had a test running for nine months and you still don't have you know statistically significant results, I feel like you should probably just call it at that point. Yeah, that's that's true. Putting a timeframe on it is always very important. And then like, okay, you know, maybe a quarter, nothing happened. Extend it for a month. Okay, that that's enough. But going like a whole year, nothing's still happening. and You have to know when to pull the plug. But how do you how do you first make the decision that we should experiment with this content. Are you looking at drawing and content that isn't performing or is performing really great? Like what's what's your methodology behind? Let's experiment here.
00:17:11
Speaker
I feel like it's always worth looking at stuff that is not performing as well as it used to. I mean, sometimes it might just be that it's, you know, the information itself is outdated. But if you're seeing that you have posts that aren't performing the way they used to, and you're looking at them and saying, these are still great quality, this is all still really relevant, maybe it's not even that old, maybe it's only a couple of months. I feel like that's, that to me at least is a signal that it's time to test something, that it's time to experiment with some other ideas for sure.
00:17:41
Speaker
Is there ever any kind of indicators that that you've seen with the Semash blog where you're going to test something but it's it's new for the team or like it's a big test. It's not just making something a question and you need to go through stakeholders or you need to go through other departments. Have you ever been in those scenarios to where it's it's now ah all hands on deck tests and we need other departments involved? Like if you have, what does that communication usually look like?
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah, we've had we've certainly tested those sorts of things. I feel like, again, it kind of depends on what the test is, but sometimes it's just kind of putting together, it can be like a really informal proposal, but putting together some sort of proposal of, you know, this is what we're seeing. This is what we want to test. Here's why, you know, these are the things that we're going to be measuring. um i I know who who I need to present it to usually, but yeah, I i don't know.
00:18:37
Speaker
it I don't think it has to be like a huge presentation or anything like that, but putting together putting putting your thoughts down and just making sure that you are providing rationale for why it is that you want to test something. As long as you can provide that rationale, if you are presenting that to stakeholders, you know they at least have something to go on instead of just being like, well, so-and-so wants to test this. like what What even informed that? Why are we doing this? If you're providing that background
Measuring Content Success
00:19:06
Speaker
information, you still might get a no, but at least you give yourself some possibility of moving forward.
00:19:13
Speaker
versus we're just doing this for funsies and testing is fun. Yeah. We saw another brand do it. So we're going to do it too. Yeah. When it comes to experimenting, and I like to think of it from, okay, the content's already produced and we're going to experiment on how to improve it. Like you gave a great example of if they're something used to perform really well and it's not anymore. But what about going from the strategy, like the initial concept? Are you experimenting with different topic ideas that are yeah maybe say similar titles and which ones to move forward with? like What's the depth of experimentation within your content marketing? I don't know if I understand the question entirely. Let me rephrase it. so
00:20:01
Speaker
Are you mainly experimenting with content that's already produced? Or are you experimenting at the strategy standpoint of coming up with the topic ideas or the internal linking structure? like Where does experimenting start at SEMrush? Is it when content is already post-publication and now we want to see how we can make it even better or revive something?
00:20:27
Speaker
I feel like it often happens after something is published for us. So many, at least my like immediate team, so many, we have, you know, we've covered so many, so many of like our target keywords that we're focused on. oh yeah I mean, there's always certainly new things to cover, but there are so many of those topics that we've covered already. It would be silly to not experiment with stuff that's already published because there, there is such a huge body of work that we've published. I think the Semrush blog has been around for 12 years, something like that. I think it's i think it's been around since like 2012. Obviously a ton of that stuff has been updated. There's obviously old blog posts and some of them are things that are just not as relevant anymore. You know, things change.
00:21:13
Speaker
ah We wouldn't have had a post on AI overviews you know years ago because they didn't exist yet. So yes, we're really focusing on testing stuff that's that's already been out there. And I feel like it's it's helpful to do that with things that are already published too, because then you can very you have that historical data, right? So you can very clearly see oh, yes, this change was impactful, or no, this change wasn't impactful. If you are you decide that you want to start experimenting with a bunch of new yeah URLs, and you publish all those things, and they perform great, that's awesome. But you also don't necessarily know whether what you're experimenting with is responsible for that.
00:21:53
Speaker
Oh, okay. So that we're responsibility and assigning and responsibility. I feel like this is the hardest part about content marketing. Yes, this piece of content is the reason why our sales are up. How do you associate
Attribution Models and Core KPIs
00:22:05
Speaker
that? Or have you found a way, regardless of experimentation, just talking real quick on on measuring content? Because I'm always curious about how content marketers really measure their content, whether it's a new piece of content, or you're experimenting with a change or an update. How Are you quantifying success with content? I mean, my team is focused on like non-branded organic search. So it is obviously helpful to look at rankings in the organic traffic we're getting.
00:22:35
Speaker
There is a complex attribution model that I couldn't even begin to explain to you that we often use, but I think everybody is dealing with some sort of attribution model. But I think it's actually helpful to focus on just a few of those KPIs. I feel like you can you can focus on every metric if you want. And sometimes it's helpful for you know telling a story. I feel like especially when you are in an agency setting and you're trying to explain performance to your clients or stakeholders,
00:23:03
Speaker
You kind of need to rely on more of those metrics just to paint a fuller picture for them. But I don't know, I feel like we keep things relatively simple. If you're focused on those couple of KPIs, then it's very clear, you know, we're hitting our goals or we're not hitting our goals. And sometimes that can feel like sort of disappointing because maybe your engagement rate has gone you know way up and yeah and that seems like a super positive thing. But if everything else, all the things you're actually measured against aren't doing well, it doesn't really matter.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's that makes me think of the one meme. I think it's Parks and Rec where he has the board behind him and a bunch of things are pointing to another thing and he's like,
00:23:45
Speaker
stressed out by it trying to connect the dots. It's like, cool, we hit engagement metrics. But that wasn't even a primary or secondary KPI. But there's a story here. Maybe we can say that it was successful. And it's it's hard to not be excited when a piece of content gets any measurable success. But you're right. if If you have just a couple core KPIs that you're assigning to it and defining this is what will make it successful,
00:24:12
Speaker
it is easier to see black or white and and tell the story from the data that, yes, this works. We should duplicate this. Or it didn't work.
Case Study: Content vs. Business Results
00:24:20
Speaker
Now let's start experimenting with it and see how we can hit those KPIs.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I have an interesting story that like sort of relates to this too. So the first agency I worked for, I'm not even sure an agency is the right word, but it was effectively an agency. We worked specifically with higher education institutions. And one of the schools, this was, it wasn't a piece that I worked on, but it was somebody else had written this piece. I think they, I don't know how they stumbled upon like, yes, we should do this. But it was basically about easy ramen noodle recipes that like any college student could make something like that. And yeah it for a while was driving a ton of traffic, but it didn't really drive any tangible business results. So it was kind of this double-edged sword. People you know pointed to it as like, oh, look how you know it's getting great rankings. It's driving so much organic traffic. But it's like,
00:25:16
Speaker
you're not even reaching the right people with this. being So it it yes it's cool to be like look at this great ranking and all of these you know these wonderful high numbers but at the end of the day it just wasn't impactful for the business and I think that was I mean it was a good learning opportunity but yeah it it all it ultimately was not not very successful.
00:25:37
Speaker
And at least you were able to get new traffic and in the process of it, but being able to identify that, yeah, it wasn't the right amount of
Aligning Content with Business Goals
00:25:45
Speaker
traffic. That was the keyword that you dropped there. like that yeah That's where we need to take the time and sure, give yourself a pat on the back that you got some traffic. But if it's not moving the needle and whatever that KPI looks like, whether it's like Customers calls more sales calls lead gen email options whatever that looks like then that content really isn't serving you and you that's your indication like okay it's time to experiment with like a whole new strategy or a whole new idea.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, like can you imagine getting to be it's it's kind of funny to think about now to like and getting to the end of an article that's like now you've gone over all of these ramen recipes like wanna enroll in college i feel like user would be like absolutely not. No, thank you, though. I want to go make dinner.
Embracing Experimentation Over Perfection
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna go use this recipe right now. Well, as we wrap up, I'm curious what your current secret sauce is when it comes to really creating impactful content, content that does move the needle and make sense for users. I don't know if I have a secret sauce. I mean, I feel like this is gonna sound so boring, but I feel like really focusing on
00:26:56
Speaker
making sure that your content is quality, but also, you know, high in quality, but not, not paralyzing yourself to the point where you feel like every piece needs to be perfect. Because again, keep the door open for experimentation. That's going to lead you down the right path ultimately. And if you're spending months and months and months, I mean, I could I could personally work on one single piece for like three months and still feel like it's not perfect. And that doesn't really matter. It doesn't have to be quote unquote perfect. That's that's subjective anyway. I feel like this, I don't know if there is a secret sauce. I think that we yeah all kind of know ultimately it needs to be you know the highest quality content that you can put out while still moving forward and getting things done.
00:27:42
Speaker
yeah Yeah, if you're not publishing content, then you have no data to identify how you should pivot your strategy, what you should lean into or not do any more of. but also kudos because I feel like that's a big, that's the journalist in you who's like, this needs to be perfect. I need to rewrite this a thousand times. Cause how many times do I stare at an article and want to redo it a million times before publish? And it's like, no, then it's never going to get published. I'm never going to figure out if this was even the right direction to begin with. Now time and resources is skyrocketing for a single piece of content that we don't even know if we're going to have tons of eyes on.
00:28:21
Speaker
and is going to matter or not. It's more of you need to just put content out and test. So I think that is a good secret sauce. I think you got something there. I'm not sure it's a secret sauce. It might just be mayonnaise, but that's.
00:28:36
Speaker
I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate everything you shared. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. This is really fun.