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How to Work With B2B Content Marketing Freelancers
78 Plays3 years ago
Many B2B SaaS companies are aggressively leveraging content marketing to attract and engage prospects.
One of the ways to generate content is to hire freelancers and contractors.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Brooklin Nash and I talk about:
- The pros and cons of in-house content marketers and outsourced.
- How to hire contractors and freelancers.
- Gated vs. ungated content, and
- Long-form content vs. short-term.
We also talk about Brooklin's approach to Twitter and how he's increased his follower count to 7,000 from 600 in the past year.
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Transcript
Importance of Content in B2B Marketing
00:00:07
Speaker
It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. Depending on your point of view, content is king. For many B2B marketers, content is a core element of the marketing mix to attract, educate, engage, and nurture prospects and customers. And over the past two years, it has been fascinating to see many companies embrace content marketing at a time when they couldn't attend or sponsor conferences.
Changes in Content Marketing: Interview with Brooklyn Nash
00:00:33
Speaker
To get some perspective on the content marketing landscape and where it's heading, I'm excited to talk to Brooklyn Nash, a content marketing strategist and consultant. Welcome to Marketing Spark Brooklyn.
00:00:44
Speaker
Hey, thanks for having me. As someone who has been immersed in the content marketing landscape and the content marketing business for many years, what's your take on what's been happening over the last couple of years as more and more brands try to embrace the value of content? Is it exceedingly crowded? Has it improved? Has it changed?
Shift in SEO Focus
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely changed. I think time will tell how it all shakes out. But I think it's
00:01:14
Speaker
What I've seen in the last eight years, I guess now it's been, that's weird, is these cycles of a major focus on one area of content marketing, that becoming somewhat overcrowded, and then a moment of differentiation where somebody tries something new. I'm sure that's been happening long before I was working in this field. When I first started out in content marketing, SEO was still
00:01:42
Speaker
top of priority lists for pretty much anybody, not just in content marketing, but marketing in general as a way to get audience in the door, right? And it's still obviously a very important part of the marketing mix, getting top of funnel taken care of, but I think more and more marketers are starting to realize that you can get a lot more out of content than just
00:02:06
Speaker
driving somebody to your site with 17 ways to do XYZ type article and then try to convert them real quick with a flashy CTA button or that free trial button up top. I think folks are starting to focus on content that has more longevity and that is more grounded in where buyers are really coming from instead of just as a top of funnel mechanism for
00:02:33
Speaker
Getting some some conversions that you can then feed down the funnel. There's a lot of different directions. We could go there. One of them is SEO as someone who has spent years writing and not so much focused on the SEO side. What's the balancing app between SEO optimized content?
00:02:53
Speaker
Content written for SEO purposes and content that's simply written to provide insight and value.
Balancing SEO and Valuable Content
00:03:00
Speaker
It's a bit of a balancing act because obviously you want your content to rank, but you don't want to wait for robots. You want to write for people. What's your take on this? Yeah, I think, I think the key is in seeing SEO as for what it is. I mean, search engine optimization, it's a tactic for a specific channel of content marketing. It's not.
00:03:23
Speaker
of replacement for content marketing strategy. So you can form a well thought out content marketing strategy that in many cases includes a heavy focus on SEO, whether it's because you have a low ACV and you want lots of folks coming in the door. You don't really need to qualify them all that much. They can sign up for a free trial or it's a $7 entry point like Ahrefs.
00:03:51
Speaker
Ahrefs trial, right? Or it's a freemium model, whatever it is, you just want lots of people coming in the door. So SEO makes a lot of sense. But it's, it's still just going to be a piece of the content marketing puzzle, right? So I think the difference going back to your question, like the difference between the few is those those few options is you can, you can create content that is primarily for SEO, just
00:04:20
Speaker
try to put more thought into it than you would then maybe you would have like five, six, seven, eight years ago, where the list of holes and the quick hit tips and all of that like worked really well. And then on the other side, you can create content that isn't necessarily for search because the volume isn't there or it's very far in the weeds. So people aren't really searching for it if it's a new area or it's topical, whatever it is. But then you can still take the steps to make sure that it's optimized so that
00:04:49
Speaker
If there is some search volume around it or if that takes up or if you come back to updating it a year from now, it's in a good place in terms of distribution or search is actually a viable distribution channel for it. So I don't know that it should.
00:05:05
Speaker
ever be an either or, but it's more about looking at what the purpose is of the content you're creating and deciding where to put most of your effort.
Long-form vs Short-form Content
00:05:14
Speaker
It's interesting when you talk about the format of content and it has evolved those quick hits that link bait type of content. In some respects, people have moved away from it. What are your thoughts on short-term versus long-term long-form content? So you talk to people or you listen to people like Neil Patel and they're advocating the value of
00:05:34
Speaker
long form content and the fact that it generates more traffic over time, especially if it's SEO optimized. But I often think of the fact that, yeah, long form content is great, but people have such short suspension spans. We've got ADD and we're bouncing from one task to another. Is there a role for long form content? And if so, how do you, how do you play it in the right way?
00:06:00
Speaker
It's a good question because it's a hard one to answer. And I think like a good marketer, I'm going to say it depends on what the type of content is. I think so people hear long form content. I think I'm going to, I'm going to assume most people are going to think of like the 5,000 word deep dive pillar guide to lead generation, right? Where it's A to Z every anything and everything you need to know about lead generation, for example.
00:06:27
Speaker
I don't know that that is serving its purpose like it once was. You might be better served by splitting that out into a bunch of different articles and glossary entries and treating it as a way to increase your own internal linking and kind of like spread the wealth around how you're using the content.
00:06:49
Speaker
let alone reusing it for that short form, like social posts, email, that kind of thing. But that said, I think there is a place for long form content in the sense of we're talking about a
00:07:03
Speaker
fairly complex topic or dealing with a large amount of research, ideally original research, and we need a good amount of space to talk through this in depth, right? And that's when I think a four or five, six, 7,000 word piece of content will come into play. So again, it depends on the purpose of what you're trying to do. But there's like, there's 350 word articles that are ranking for
00:07:33
Speaker
high volume keywords, you don't necessarily always need that 3,000 word pillar page to rank for something anymore.
In-house Content vs Freelancers: Which to Choose?
00:07:41
Speaker
One of the big issues facing companies that are looking to embrace content marketing is whether they should do it in-house or whether they should use freelancers and contractors.
00:07:56
Speaker
There are pros and cons to both approaches. Chris Walker, a very well-known high-profile marketer on LinkedIn, suggests that content needs to be done in-house because those are the people who truly understand the product and the customers. And there are people on the other side who suggest that if you hire the right freelancer with the right skill set, they can do what they need to do to immerse themselves in the topic and the target audiences.
00:08:23
Speaker
As a freelancer, someone who obviously provides contract services to many companies, especially B2B companies, which way works best? And at one point in time, does a company need to have an in-house team versus outsource it? I'm in this weird place where I am a contractor and I'm building an agency. So I should be advocating for outsourcing work, but there's always going to be outsourced work. Like the marketing teams are always going to need help with any number of things, right?
00:08:52
Speaker
I will say I think I mostly, I didn't hear what Chris said exactly, but I agree with that sentiment. I can't tell you how many times over the last year, then on the discovery call with a potential client, and I say something along the lines of, I'd love to be able to help you with that, or I could, I can help you with that.
00:09:16
Speaker
and not to talk myself out of work, but I think you might be better served by getting a full-time content marketing hire in place to work on it. And typically what I'm talking about when I say that is what it sounds like Chris Walker was talking about is getting the right strategy in place, talking to customers, collaborating very closely with product marketing to understand the pain points and the solutions that they're dealing with,
00:09:40
Speaker
opening up conversations with partners. There's just so much that goes into content marketing before you publish a single piece. I think all of those pieces are much better suited for an in-house role. And I tell potential clients that all the time. That said, I think you can, with a well-formed content marketing strategy, you can be putting out a lot of content. Bottom of funnel to help with sales enablement.
00:10:08
Speaker
top of funnel with that scale and with volume around SEO or social or whatever it is. Right. So I think that that's where. Agencies and freelancers can come into play. Um, but even then I tried to aim towards engagements and contracts and projects where it's working more like a partnership and less like an outsourced task to be done. Right.
00:10:34
Speaker
Because I'm looking for that insight that you were talking about and that Chris was talking about. I'm looking for the messaging and looking for the value props and the bio personas and the pain points and the customer interviews to really understand what the audience is thinking and what they need and where the gaps are. So if I can come in as an outside vendor and understand those elements, I'm going to put together much better content than if I get
00:10:59
Speaker
like a one page brief that says, here's the topic. Here's the audience, which is probably something vague and not super helpful and writing something up that way. I think aiming for that partnership as you work with outside contractors is going to benefit you the most.
Hiring and Onboarding Freelancers
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree with the idea of a partnership. In fact, as a fractional CMO, one of the things that I advocate when working with entrepreneurs and CEOs is that you have to create a collaborative partnership. You have to be engaged. You have to be aligned and on the same page, otherwise it's not gonna work. So I think that's definitely the right approach. A question more, I guess, in tune with the services that you offer
00:11:41
Speaker
is how should brands hire freelance and contract writers? There are so many options out there. You can use Upwork or Fiverr or contract people via LinkedIn. And there's lots of other content marketing services and agencies. How should brands do their research? And once they've hired a writer like yourself, what are the keys to onboarding them successfully? A lot of questions. A couple of wraps up in there.
00:12:11
Speaker
I think no matter what kind of relationship it is, I think referrals are always going to be the best. I think that's, I don't know, I can't think of the specific stats around this, but like word of mouth is still the best channel for any firm marketing B2B or B2C. And I think that's true for hiring freelancers and agencies as well. So I would just reach out to
00:12:34
Speaker
If you're a large company, reach out to other teams and see who they're working with and if they have bandwidth and can move over or to people in your network, ask who they're working with, ask for referrals, post about it. If you have LinkedIn, Twitter, just start asking. There's a few sites that facilitate that too. You can look on, it's more oriented towards freelancers, but
00:12:57
Speaker
The activity there is peak freelance super path, which was started by Jimmy Daly, who was at animals, a large agency before. Well, not a large agency, prominent agency, I should say. And that's very much more operating like a job board for both for full-time and freelance content marketers. So I would recommend those types of channels. Like if you're going to go on a board, something like super path, where it's tailored, it's more community oriented, and it's less of a marketplace or job board, like upward.
00:13:27
Speaker
I think you're going to see better results that way. One topic I should have asked you about before launching into hiring a contract or freelance marketer is your take on gated versus ungated content. It is a huge topic within the content marketing community because brands are trying to
00:13:45
Speaker
Do this balancing act between offering insight and value and collecting email addresses so they can follow up with them via drip marketing campaigns and other other martech give me thoughts about what side of the fence that you.
00:14:00
Speaker
play on or like and your thoughts about the role or the type of gated content that works these days, given so many content options out there. I mean, big picture, you're probably gonna have to ask somebody much smarter than me to form an opinion on this one, just because there's so much that goes into it. Like you need to add like, this is a marketing operations and an almost a rev ops question and like a CRO question because
00:14:28
Speaker
The reason gated content is still a thing is because the vast majority of marketing teams are still beholden to their number one metric, MQLs. To get that, they need to get their content and then qualify them and then pass on, right? But ideally we're moving to this space where sales and marketing and every other team can be much more collaborative and marketing comes in as support at every stage of the funnel versus getting into MQL stage and then passing it off.
00:14:57
Speaker
But that's, like I said, that's like, marketing ops or CRO or somebody, right? All I know is my personal preferences as a buyer is ungated as a marketer. Like some companies are putting together some really interesting pieces of content and I would love to be able to access it, number one, easily at number two at all if they do the thing where you have to use your company email address.
00:15:23
Speaker
And then we're just wasting everybody's time because I'm putting, I'm having to take the time to put my info in. I get entered as a lead, even though I'm not a lead in any remote sense. So I mean, I typically err on the side of advising my clients to ungate. If you do need to still, I still definitely understand the need for gating with how lead generation works and all of that. If you're going to gate content, I would say ungate 80% of
00:15:52
Speaker
everything, including the deep dives and the guides and all of that, and gate just a handful of more of a tactical, in the weeds, personalized type content. So things like checklists, matrixes, step by step, questionnaires for self ranking, things where you can take an ungated
00:16:19
Speaker
piece of content like a guide to product analytics, for example, it's super in depth and helpful. But then gate at the very end, one piece is, here's your questionnaire to decide what stage of maturity you are with your product analytics. Then I think you're serving best in both worlds.
00:16:38
Speaker
It's really interesting because I think a lot of marketers, as you suggest, are dependent on MQLs when it comes to assessing their performance. And if they're not generating those MQLs, if they're not getting the email addresses, that can be a problem. But I think part of the problem with gated content, where there are many problems, one is there's so much free ungated content out there.
Challenges of Gated Content and MQLs
00:16:56
Speaker
So any barriers to entry, people are gonna balk at. The second is that once you provide an email address, you're essentially opening the doors for a,
00:17:05
Speaker
tsunami of a drip marketing is it just rolls in and rolls in and i didn't ask for that you can reach out to me once or twice that's fine but once you put me on a drip marketing campaign that is seems seemingly endless then you lose any brand affinity that you may build up so i think that's a.
00:17:22
Speaker
a reality these days. And we may have, as marketers may have killed the golden goose by, by using MarTech to essentially talk to people until they capitulate. Okay. I give up and I'll talk to you or many people just turn off at all. So that's really, really interesting to me. I bet you, I bet 20 bucks, maybe more like you ask any VP or demand gen director, somebody who looks at MQLs, I'll bet.
00:17:49
Speaker
As MQL volume goes up, conversion to meetings held goes down. So why are we focused on volume of MQLs versus the right people at the right time? Yeah. And I think a lot of it comes down to attribution. It's hard for marketers these days to do marketing and a lot of activity can't be attributed because a lot of it's in dark web and dark social. And as a marketer, your performance is assessed by how many leads we get, how much inbound we get, how much website traffic we get. When those.
00:18:19
Speaker
are less reliable or you just can't see it, then it does create, puts a lot of pressure on marketers to justify what they're doing. So I think it's going to be a very interesting evolution in terms of how, how content is delivered and how, how companies connect with, with
Using Twitter vs LinkedIn for B2B Marketing
00:18:33
Speaker
prospects. A lot of the people that I talk with on this podcast have very engaged LinkedIn presences. One of the things that I noticed when, well, actually one of the reasons I noticed you was that you are very active on Twitter.
00:18:47
Speaker
You're very engaged and you use Twitter in a way that I use LinkedIn. Like you've made a huge investment. Clearly you're very engaged with prospects and customers. And I am curious about your embrace of Twitter. As a B2B marketer, a lot of us just gravitate to LinkedIn. Increasingly, some of us are going to TikTok. Why Twitter? How long have you been using it in that way? And can you maybe talk about your approach to using Twitter from a tactical perspective?
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I've gotten this question before and I'm like, well, when I have a strategy, I'll let you know because I don't really have what I do. I've only been on Twitter for about a year. But that's not I've only been on LinkedIn before that, like two years. So I kind of fell into the B2B social space by accident when the startup I was working at, the growth marketer left, I was out of content at the time. So I just kind of like
00:19:45
Speaker
wanted to fill in the gaps and he had been focused on social channels. So I started focusing on more on social channels. And that was, that was the beginning of that a couple of years ago now. Twitter specifically, I just wanted to diversify as too fancy of a word, but I wanted to jump on a different platform besides LinkedIn. Cause I still, I mean, LinkedIn is still bread and butter, like where I post every day where I have most followers. Uh, but Twitter just felt fun, like a fun break from
00:20:15
Speaker
Honestly, LinkedIn can be a little self-serious sometimes, and Twitter can be a little overly snarky. So I feel like by being on both, you can balance the two out. So I just started posting more of the fun, silly, meme-y type stuff on Twitter, and then not as slowly bled back over into LinkedIn. But I mean, I don't really have a strategy. My only strategy is consistent posting daily, a few times a day at least, especially on Twitter.
00:20:44
Speaker
And then usually it's either, is it about freelancing? Great. No. If it's about freelancing or if it's about content marketing, then it's fair game. And then some like other broader like work-life balance and tech stuff thrown in there. But that's about it. That and being proactive, I'll try to respond to comments and DMs and everything that's on there.
00:21:07
Speaker
On LinkedIn, there are vanity metrics. You can look at number of views, number of likes, number of comments, and it's self-validation. More traction engagement you seem to get, the more motivation you get to post on LinkedIn. Twitter's a different beast. Of course, there's retweets and there's likes. How do you assess how well you're doing on Twitter? What are the metrics that you look at, whether it's data metrics or just qualitative metrics? Do you look at it that way?
00:21:35
Speaker
I haven't been scientific about it. Like I probably should be. And I know that lots are, well, they'll look at the last week of their tweets and look at the ones that got the most impressions and double down in that area and categorize them and all that. I haven't, I haven't done any of that. The only metric I've really paid attention to is gaining followers there. Um, so I've gone, it hasn't been anything super crazy, but I've gone from, I think it was like 600 to
00:22:03
Speaker
Now just over 7,000 over this last year. Wow. Okay. This was for a while. My goal was okay. Like five, 600 new followers every month. Now after the last couple months, it's more like a thousand every month, as long as I'm tracking towards that because it's, I don't know, it is just a piece of inbound referral marketing puzzle for my
Diversifying Social Media Presence
00:22:25
Speaker
own business. Right. Um, but beyond that, it's just, it's kind of a,
00:22:29
Speaker
a fun way to engage with the marketing and sales community and tech community as a whole. You mentioned diversification when I started asking you about Twitter and what I've noticed in the last month is many marketers who spend a lot of time on LinkedIn have announced with much fanfare that they're now on TikTok. Do you feel that people are tired of LinkedIn? Do you feel that maybe they're not getting as much engagement on LinkedIn? Do you feel that perhaps
00:22:58
Speaker
They feel like there's danger in being a one trick pony as someone who has diversified their social media presence. Do you have any thoughts on how marketers may be feeling these days about their ability to be in a few places as opposed to one? It's Yeah, it's a good question. I think it becoming a little it feels weird to say overcrowded because there's so many people on LinkedIn. There's such a small minority that
00:23:27
Speaker
post every day, but it does feel like there's more than there used to be a couple of years ago. Um, so maybe it is harder to stand out. Um, and then the way the LinkedIn algorithm works, like typically folks recommend one max two posts a day. So you have to be a little more thoughtful about what you put up. And honestly, it's sometimes it's like a crapshoot, like one day you'll spend
00:23:53
Speaker
30 minutes putting together a super detailed thread on how you do XYZ and it doesn't get that much engagement. And then the other day you'll spend 30 seconds putting out some stupid thought that you have in the shower and it like goes viral for LinkedIn, right? Um, so that could be a piece of it. It's like a little more limiting of what you can put out. And especially as more and more people go that B2B creator route where they're actually looking to monetize this, it might be looking for additional
00:24:23
Speaker
channels for audience, right? Where you can Twitter, you can do five, six, seven times, tick tock idea, but probably a lot. So that could be a piece of it. One final question. Where can people learn about you?
Connecting with Brooklyn Nash
00:24:36
Speaker
What you do? Where can they find you on Twitter? If people want to reach out to you, where, how can they do that? Twitter, LinkedIn, a real Brook Nash is on Twitter. And then if you just search for me on LinkedIn, Brooklyn Nash. Um, although speaking of social, I just put my away message.
00:24:53
Speaker
So my wife, our new director, and I are putting together our new agency for launching in June. So I'm kind of taking a hiatus from social media the next few months from posting. I'll still like jump on here and there, but I'm not posting or really checking DM. So you'll be redirected to my email address. Okay. Well, good luck with that social media hiatus. We'll see how successful you are in terms of trying to avoid the racket for a while.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see. Well, thanks for being on the podcast. Really appreciate it. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, and share via social media. To learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor and coach, send an email to mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.