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Crafting a Content Strategy That Drives Organic Growth
42 Plays8 months ago
In this episode, Ashley Segura, the podcast host and Head of Content at ContentYum, chats with Emma Valentiner, Head of SEO at ThreeColts, to uncover the critical elements of a successful content strategy.
Emma shares a wealth of insights, from her journey into SEO to practical tips for creating a content strategy full of content that ranks. She's dishing out all the details on how to develop a content strategy that drives actual results.
We're talking keyword research techniques, the importance of comprehensive content outlines, and the patience required in SEO.
Get those notepads ready because Emma breaks down her content creation process, from her approach to targeting different keywords to her three-month rule for evaluating content performance before making changes. She even covers what to look for when tracking key metrics like organic traffic, bounce rate, and keyword rankings over the three-month period.
Get bonus insights on incorporating video content, leveraging AI for competitive research, and why FAQs can add up to 90 seconds of extra dwell time to your content.
Subscribe now for your bi-weekly dose of content strategy wisdom that's practical, actionable, and twice as likely to make you question everything you thought you knew about SEO and content marketing!
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Transcript
Fluctuating Rankings: Google's Struggle
00:00:00
Speaker
Especially if you're new, Google doesn't really understand what your site's selling yet. They're trying to get get an understanding of the topics that you're going to be sharing about. So you're probably going to see your rankings fluctuate a lot.
'Content in the Kitchen': A Content Marketing Introduction
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome back to Content in the Kitchen, where we gather around the kitchen and chat about content marketing.
Meet Emma Valentiner of Three Cults
00:00:22
Speaker
Today, I'm excited to have Emma Valentiner, the head of content and SEO at Three Cults, joining us. Emma isn't just your typical data-driven strategist. She's got a rockstar edge that she brings to the digital marketing world. With a knack for driving organic traffic and brand awareness, Emma knows just how to make companies dominate the web.
00:00:40
Speaker
So in this episode, we're going to ask Emma all the questions about how to build a great content strategy. So grab your favorite cup and let's dive into the conversation with Emma.
00:00:52
Speaker
All right, then let's kick things off. And when you're not at your desk and you find yourself in the kitchen, what is your go to dish to cook?
A Unique Recipe: Broccoli Upside Down Cake
00:01:02
Speaker
I thought about this a lot because I'm so obsessed with it and I want everyone to try it. At least one, it's a broccoli upside down cake with cornmeal dough, like cornmeal batter on it. There is a website from like the mid 2000s chocolate and zucchini. It was a food blog from a girl in Paris.
00:01:21
Speaker
So she has all these really amazing recipes on like with lots of veggies and healthy eating and all that stuff. But this cake, cook the broccoli, pour the batter on, stick it in the oven for 20 minutes or something. And it's incredible. And you can add like toasted walnuts and golden raisins in there. And it sounds like broccoli cake, really. But I promise, it's so delicious. And you feel good when you're eating it because it's mostly healthy stuff. so That's a double win. So it's almost zucchini bread. ah ah Basically, yeah, I think. But it's sweet still, not just savory. Like a little bit. Like you can control the sweetness of it depending on how much sugar you put in the cornmeal batter. So if I'm feeling extra kicky, I might add a little bit of extra. But if I'm wanting to go like really savory with it, then I'll just nix the sugar.
00:02:07
Speaker
Ooh, okay. I love that you have the the option to go back and forth of like sometimes you really want something super sweet and other times you're like, yeah, just give me the health and wellness with a little dessert on top. Yes. That's it. That's it. So work so well because it's like broccoli and cake. I'm here for it. Yeah, definitely.
Emma's Journey into Content and SEO
00:02:25
Speaker
Let's start talking about content and content strategy. So can you kick us off by telling us about your journey on how you got into content and SEO and what really sparked your passion to get into this field?
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's a long journey. So I'll give you guys the short version of it. I started working in advertising marketing in the early 2000s and worked with an agency in Seattle that was doing a lot of health care, a lot of nonprofit work. And so through that got into copywriting. Like I'd contribute to some of the pieces that were going out for like ad copy or annual report copy, that kind of stuff. And so from that just got into copywriting a lot and like bounced through several jobs.
00:03:06
Speaker
Like throughout the course of the 2000s and then ended up freelancing, I had moved to Canada and so that was a good way for me to bridge the gap. And then from that got into SEO like as I was doing freelance writing and then have merged those two things since then. So really focused on SEO specifically since 2016.
00:03:23
Speaker
and working in a lot of like tech and some franchise, some home services, some legal clients. It's been a really pre-mixed bag, but which is fun. like SEO is constantly changing and evolving. And then you add in all of these different industries that you're learning as you go. So it's been a really interesting like experience. And I don't think I could have said maybe 20 years ago that I would be like doing content at SEO and still be as excited as I am and still see it changing as much as it's changing on a pretty frequent basis. What do you think makes it so exciting to still be in it?
SEO Experimentation and Adaptation
00:04:01
Speaker
We're in Google's sandbox for the for the majority of what we do. like It's really on them. like We'll do the right things for our clients and follow the best practices. But at the end of the day, like we don't I do not have control over whether I'm going to be in the top three or not. And so learning how, I think SEO is a great practice for being willing to experiment. And I think that's like SEO's I think that's one of the things that got me so interested in SEO is there is so much great experimentation happening on what works, what doesn't. And you'll have things that work like FAQ schema. We were all so excited about that for a couple of years and Google's now phased that out. And so it's really interesting to see the strategies and tactics that emerge, but also the things that stay the same.
00:04:47
Speaker
You're still always going to want to do really like comprehensive keyword research. You're going to want to understand your competitors and where they're ranking. So even though things do change, we've now got AI and are trying to adapt for AI overview. And what does that mean for search going forward? So it's just this constantly dynamic industry. And we're all trying to find our way through it. And sometimes stuff works, and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you have to go down the rabbit hole of, wait, this blog post is amazing. Why is nobody reading it?
00:05:15
Speaker
Yes. And I feel like that happens all the time.
Crafting a Content Strategy with Keyword Research
00:05:18
Speaker
You mentioned when blog posts are like you publish a great blog post and it's just not performing. And when blog posts isn't getting the traffic that you're like, this is great. Why did that happen?
00:05:31
Speaker
There are so many reasons for it. ah Some of the most obvious reasons are like your site is really brand new and you don't have a lot of relevancy yet for the things that you're targeting, which actually, let me roll that back. One of the most obvious ones is not having a target keyword to begin with.
00:05:48
Speaker
Whenever I'm doing content, I like to create like a content brief before I even get started. So I'll have a target keyword in mind. i'll I'll do a Google search for that target keyword and see who's popping up and see what those results look like. So I love doing Google searches.
00:06:03
Speaker
for SEO in general because it tells me in real time what Google thinks is relevant. So I'll typically, I'll do that search. I'll go through, I'll look for like common keywords that are being used. If it's, I'll look for commonalities in the page title. So if I'm seeing a lot of like easiest recipe ever or satisfaction guaranteed or seven day free trial, whatever those verbs or those words are,
00:06:26
Speaker
That are working for those page one rankers. I want to factor those in. So by the time I sit down to do my content, I not only have my keyword research on there, but I also, as I'm doing that, I'm putting together an outline. So I might take a look at some of the ranking pages and see, okay, what do they have in here? That's great. What is missing from here? And then from that build out my outline, which I think.
00:06:47
Speaker
AI does a great job of building out outline so I'm gonna give AI a shout out for that not so much on the writing of the content but that's a yeah whole different story but I think that's been the biggest like process improvement for me is just having those briefs that way I know I'm really targeted when I go into it and that way like I have a clear expectation of what I'm expecting on the other end So I know, OK, I want to be ranking for this. And then from that, like I can see, OK, what does my page engagement time look like? Are people visiting here and then bouncing off? are they Are they visiting here and then looking at other pages on my website? And so once I have that basic idea of this is what I'm focused on, then I can start to look at the other pieces of the puzzle. And it will totally happen. Sometimes you're wanting to rank for a keyword that is just way too competitive for where your website's at now.
00:07:36
Speaker
And I would say if that's the case and that keyword is really important to you, add a couple different blog posts on related topics and include links back to that original post. Also, never miss like never underestimate the value of continuing to share content even if it's a little bit dated. There are people that are going to be in your Facebook feed or your X feed or your TikTok feed. that have never seen that piece of content before and maybe it's just what they're looking for. So I think there's a tendency to put a best by date on a lot of our content and the reality is the content that performs the best for the longest amount of time, in fact it will improve in performance over time, is that more evergreen content that's really comprehensive and really focused on if somebody searches for this target keyword and they click on my article, I want them to have exactly what they were looking for. How do you go even the step before the content audit or the excuse me the content outline and determine which keywords to target and which keywords to even even create content for? Because you mentioned competitiveness and I feel like every brand has a different scale of
00:08:44
Speaker
Competitive keyword volume that they're searching for and what makes something too competitive can really be based on your brand and your authority and how much content you already have. And like you mentioned, are you a brand new site? So how do you even take that very first step of identifying which keywords to create content for?
The Challenge of Thorough Keyword Research
00:09:03
Speaker
So keyword research, and this is true, like I have worked with so many young like junior SEOs learning the basics, and keyword research can be the biggest rabbit hole. And unfortunately, it's the rabbit hole at the start of everything else that needs to happen. So if you feel like you're drowning in keyword research, very often you won't do those other steps.
00:09:23
Speaker
that you are going to see success from. So I would say like for whatever your industry is, go look at what your competitors are doing and not necessarily from a competitive angle. But hey, these are people in the industry that I admire. So if you're a travel blogger, who are some other travel bloggers that you just really love what they're doing, whether it's the voice, whether it's the images, whether it's the places that they're going?
00:09:46
Speaker
and get a feel for what type of content they're sharing. And the idea isn't to like piggyback on that and and regurgitate what they've done, but maybe you're really keen on a photo journal they did going through like the Grand Canyon. What is something that you've done recently that you could do something similar with?
00:10:04
Speaker
and then look at how they are formatting their pages. I think that's one of the really interesting like aha moments as you're learning SEO is going to competitor blogs and being able to read through the page and be like, oh, that's a really smart piece of anchor text. And I bet that links to a blog of theirs that is perfectly optimized. And those are really great headers. I can read through this really clearly. I can find the information I'm looking for easily. The the whole goal of this is to give the the searchers the best experience and to help them find the information they're looking for when they get to wherever they're going. And ideally, it's your website. And so Google looks at those page engagement metrics, like the time they spend on your page, how many pages that they're looking at, the click-through rate, impressions, all of that stuff and crunches it. And the better those metrics can be, the more likely you are to get more rankings. And so there is an element of time in here. So I would say if you're new to this,
00:10:59
Speaker
And you've been at it for a couple of months, you've optimized a few things, and you're not seeing like the pickup you i expected, it does take some time. Like industry average, SEO organic traffic growth is around 21% a month, but or 29% a year.
00:11:16
Speaker
that's not a lot and so and it does like what in the first zero to three months like you're probably going to see double that in the three to six months it really does take some time and momentum to get going so i would say definitely look at what your competitors are doing but also there's free tools like uber suggest is really good oh yeah that's free i love stem rush so much it's a little pricey if you're a solo practitioner ahs is another good one but those both offer freebie versions of the tool so you can at least get started with doing some keyword research and just try. Oh, hey, that seems like a really interesting term. And you can try for something that's maybe less competitive. So maybe things that are maybe middle type volume. So maybe 50 to 100 searches a month. So the the the risk there is a little less than if you're going for something that has 40,000 searches a month. That's going to be a lot more hard to get and probably demoralizing when you don't get it.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. It's hard though, because if you only have 20 to a hundred searches and say you're a one man band trying to put it all together, is it really worth putting your resources there? But unless you do it and try it and see, okay, I am getting traffic, even though it's on a lot, but I am getting traffic, I am getting momentum. And then like you said, the internal linking strategy from that piece of content is that is where you can really create an entire content strategy around what the user flow will be.
00:12:40
Speaker
by giving them a journey from that one smaller piece of content to some bigger, more pillar pieces of content. Yeah.
Strategies for Small Teams: Focus and Social Media
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah. And just being very patient with it. It's really easy to get demoralized because it does take like when you're starting out, it takes time to get that momentum. But one of the very best things is when you hop in a tool like SEMRAGE or Ahrefs and drop in that yeah URL of a blog post that you wrote and get to see how it's growing in visibility.
00:13:07
Speaker
So we did an initiative for a large corporation a few months ago. And we started with 29 rankings positions, all like 51 and lower ah in Google. So pretty bleak. And I think I checked today, and we're around like 2,000 rankings positions. And so that's just six, seven month period. We've managed to make a huge splash in terms of v visibility. We've increased the the value of traffic that's coming to us just in terms of the cost per click.
00:13:34
Speaker
it does that It is possible and it is possible to do it with national nationally known brands, but it does make kind of that perseverance and the dedication to like knocking down a Domino at a time.
00:13:47
Speaker
So to to get that kind of increase, how many pieces of content did you create? And totally, okay, if you don't know the number off hand, but was it a dramatic increase of new content or was it not true content? Like what was your strategy? It's a mix of things. So I would say we probably did in total.
00:14:04
Speaker
10 to 15 new pieces of content. And that in the course of that entire campaign, we started with a few like mid-level like feature type pages. And then we really went to town with the blog content. Like what are all different variations of this? And we also, even within that, the blog strategy itself, we had different types of content. so Hey, we're, we want to target this one for a really, not necessarily ultra relevant keywords. So in this case, maybe it's something like.
00:14:34
Speaker
Amazon Prime. For us to rank for Amazon Prime, not really going to help us. yeah But a lot of people were interacting with that article. And so Google saw that interaction and they're like, oh, hey, they're super relevant for this. Maybe some of their other content should also be ranking for this because it seems like people are finding the information that they need. So even within that that overall strategy, we had buckets of, okay, this is ah a visibility play. We really want to get a lot of eyeballs on this. This is really about impressions.
00:15:01
Speaker
And then this here, this is a conversion place. So these are articles that really go drill down into what you need for this kind of a software, what you need if you're trying to sell books wholesale, each of those different levels. So we're not just throwing everything at one one target and hoping it sticks or keeping a mix in there. That way, you can get a feel for what works and what doesn't. And typically, those different things will work better. One will work better than the other in certain campaigns and vice versa.
00:15:29
Speaker
That's really smart to organize your content strategy based on the goal itself. So often I feel like we all have the one overarching goal and that's revenue and whatever form that looks like, whether it's from ad revenue or actual sales conversions or service conversions, like whatever that looks like.
00:15:47
Speaker
But we rarely build our content strategy for all of the supporting elements in that, which, again, is all built around a user journey. So if you start one piece of content just hoping for impressions, doesn't matter if it makes us a single penny, we just want impressions. And then from there, have more of your middle top of funnel articles that support the whole ecosystem.
00:16:10
Speaker
But what if you have a really small amount of resources to develop a strategy like that? Because usually those are a little bit more robust strategies. You have multiple writers. There is a team. yeah yeah not exactly There's a team of people that are helping me. Yeah. yeah So if you're a really slim team or are the team, how would you go about still going with a strategy based on different types of goals, not just conversions and executing?
00:16:37
Speaker
So always, revenue is going to be the king driver. like We can look at these different strategies and the different goals that we're trying to target. But at the end of the day, like all we really want to be doing, yes, sharing really helpful information and getting people to our websites. But ultimately, we want to drive conversions so we can all stay in business. So yes, that's definitely always a factor. I would say for the solo printers, like folks that are themselves are a really small team, really niche down. And I know that this is an ethos that a lot of other people have spoken about, but i they do because it works. So really decide, OK, for this quarter, for the next four months, I'm going to or the next three months, I'm just going to focus on this topic. So maybe if you're writing about, say you're writing about pound cakes because I'm now I'm thinking of cake.
00:17:25
Speaker
But maybe you want to do four different posts. And maybe one of those is a bit like you're targeting a keyword that has huge amount of volume. So like, best sugar to use for pound cake icing or something. That probably doesn't have a lot of volume, but in theory.
Building Momentum with Consistent Content
00:17:39
Speaker
oh And then maybe the next one.
00:17:41
Speaker
you want to include some affiliate links to maybe like a ah flower company that's really good. And so you really want to drive visibility on that, but you also want to drive this conversion. So you might tweak that copy a little bit more to find those people that are looking for the best flower for their pound cake.
00:17:57
Speaker
So I would try like with each article of those three that you're three or four that you're going to do for that topic, try and find a slightly different focus, slightly different end goal for each of those. And rinse and repeat the next. So you're in a three-month time period. It's probably not going to be enough time to really see that momentum picking up on those keywords. But you should start to see to month two, month three, you're going to start to see stuff tick up.
00:18:24
Speaker
Then you'll be focused on your next quarterly topic whatever that is and then go back and check how is that one that you first started on doing what are there other topics that you can address that are still within that genre and build on it that way so it is slow it does take time and I would say in the beginning to lean on social media if possible. And it doesn't have to be everywhere. You don't have to be everywhere. But choose a platform or two that you want to share your content with because that's also going to help drive that early visibility that lets Google know, OK, people are visiting here. People are paying attention to what this person is saying. So it is, again, that small step by small step approach.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks for preaching that you don't have to be on all of them because we're already, it's too much. Yeah. Even those of us with like robust marketing teams that actually have content departments, SEO departments, paid departments, like so lovely, but we're still stretched very thin. Yeah. The amount that of content that we need to produce and then distributed on top of it. So trying to be so actively engaged and post the right type of content on every single network.
00:19:32
Speaker
It's not always realistic. So you can really narrow down on one or two to where you can, like you said, build your following, build your actual community through there. Then every piece of content that you share is more likely to have some kind of engagement or some yeah actual traffic to your website versus another zero impression, zero reach. It's so crushing. And I know like i I've had small blogs before. I've been responsible for them. I've had my own. And it in those early days can be really soul crushing because you're putting out content that you're excited about. But trust me when I tell you your audience is out there.
00:20:07
Speaker
Like the internet is so big, there is a niche for everyone and just keep doing it and learn, you'll learn as you go. When I look back at some of the work that I did before I really learned SEO back best practices, I'm like, oh my God. I was throwing away traffic. You know what I mean? it was like I was like repelling it. but But you learn these things as you go and now I can look back and be like, oh my. But you survive and learn some things along the way.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, you have the whiteboard of things. Do not ever repeat and do so much in the whiteboard of these are the things I'm going to try to do for that long. You mentioned post publishing like you're in the next quarter, you're focusing on the next topic, but you're also taking a look at last quarter's topic and all the content that you publish. So how do you have a specific rule of how soon you make any modifications to the piece of content? Say you want to re-optimize it or add more, take away.
00:21:01
Speaker
you I usually wait at least three months. like Sometimes I will get a little excited and be like, no, I need to fix this one or two thing. It's going to drive me insane. But for the most part, like I like to leave it alone for about three months just to give it a chance to settle in. Especially if you're new, Google doesn't really understand what your site's selling yet. They're trying to get get an understanding of the topics that you're going to be sharing about. So you're probably going to see your rank rankings fluctuate a lot. I have a really good example of this. I had a client once.
00:21:32
Speaker
that did business coaching amazing love that yeah but on their blog they went with a strength training metaphor that was deeply and involved in all of their titles it was like how to become like ten x your strength power as a coach like teaching people how to be business coaches. Google saw that and they're like, hang on. From the from your homepage, it sounds like you do business coaching. But from your blog content, it feels like you do strength training. So like just because they use that metaphor and it was so deeply ingrained into their content,
00:22:08
Speaker
they would rank for things like strength training tips and also business growth tips, but not very well for either of those. So if they had checked into their rankings performance a little bit earlier than when they called me,
00:22:23
Speaker
they would have noticed, oh, hey, maybe we should clean that up. Google doesn't seem to be clear. yeah So all to say, like there are businesses that are very far along that can still make these kinds of errors because they're not looking at the data. So I would say, like as much as possible, look and see what you're gaining rankings for. But give it at least three months to get its footing. And I would say that if even for most companies that have well-established blogs, I would still say, give it a good three months. There's constantly, like,
00:22:53
Speaker
rankings are constantly changing, core algorithms are just things that we live with. So yeah, let it simmer a bit. Yes, yeah, exactly. I always try and recommend if you're producing a lot of content on a monthly basis, then do a content audit quarterly, like yeah internal content audit that you can pull using Screaming Frog or SEMrush and then get those analytics that way. But if you're slowly producing content on a month-to-month basis, like only producing a few pieces a quarter,
00:23:23
Speaker
you need a little bit more time to get the data. So the three to six months range seems to be a pretty safe estimate of, all right, now it's OK to go back and and actually make some changes or give it some more time. But yeah other than going through and like we we started at the initial the keyword research and then ah creating the piece of content based on the outline first and now you've published it. Now you're looking at the data. This is a pretty well rounded content strategy concept.
00:23:53
Speaker
Where are the new things that that we should be doing, especially with 2024? You dropped AI with the content outlines, but where else are, or should we be putting our focus when we're developing content strategies?
The Power of Video in Content Strategies
00:24:08
Speaker
I'm going to put this, I'll say a few words about AI. I do think there's value to it, but I would also say, and I say this as somebody that deeply loves the written word, deeply. I have been a reader my entire life, been a copywriter for most of my career.
00:24:23
Speaker
That said, people love video content. and Don't hesitate to include video content in your content strategy. And the way that I love to do that is like this, like doing an interview with someone, maybe I'm doing like a travel log and I'm making a video of that, or maybe I'm baking something and doing a how-to video.
00:24:43
Speaker
Take the video, host it to your blog, but then have a transcript underneath. That way, you catch the people that want to watch a video, but you also catch the people that want to read something more long form, and you also get the SEO benefit of that all of that content being on your website.
00:25:01
Speaker
So that's one thing i think that i would really love to see people doing more of because there is so much video content out now and we're missing that that extra opportunity to take yes have it on youtube and optimize your youtube channel so make the best use out of like where it says your your channel about your channel. Make great use of that. Send people back to your website. Send people to your other social profiles. like Definitely make sure you're robust on YouTube. But also, save that video share that video on your own website, too. And make it as easy as possible for people to consume it. And then you can also cut up clips of it and share those to Instagram Reels or TikTok. There's so many ways that you can repurpose video that is a little bit
00:25:44
Speaker
less intense than like having to rewrite and an entire article every time. Yeah, it used to be like infographics or white papers were our version of what we have with video now. But the time that it takes to make those was so much more intense from coming up with the stats, back checking the stats, working with the graphic designers to have all the supporting creative, whether it was going to be for the infographic itself or the supporting creative for the white label. and It just was such a timely process that you needed to squeeze every bit of content that you could out of that because it took so many resources. But now with video, we can chat for 30 minutes and I could have 15 different pieces of content from that, which is a combo of like you said, it's the written, the video, the shorts, it's on YouTube, it's on your website. And so video content on its own is even changing and we're seeing
00:26:38
Speaker
used to be 90 seconds was a good timeframe. Now it's 60, now it's getting smaller, then it's getting larger again. That's a whole conversation in itself on how to optimize for video content. But do you have any tips for, if you're just going to, for the first time, just starting with video content, what kind of topics do you approach first?
00:26:59
Speaker
I would say for somebody that is a small business solopreneur, what are you really passionate about? like Ask me a question about SEO and you're not going to get away from me for at least the first 15 minutes. like Your eyes are going to glaze over. I'm so sorry, but I will keep going.
00:27:16
Speaker
And so find those things that you're that keen to talk on. And like from that, like you can even use those like little clips or whatever. You can use your social media. and Ask what people are interested in hearing about. Hey, I'm putting together a few blog posts on SEO. What are the the biggest questions that you have?
00:27:34
Speaker
And we use the network that you already have to start to get information or, Hey, I'm traveling to Italy this summer. Do you have any recommendations for the best places to go? And so really use your network. It's what the best thing about social media is that you get this like real time feedback and real time responses.
00:27:51
Speaker
So from that list that you get back from people see what you're really keen on talking about and start there. I think we're always trying to figure out like what what's the data say is the best topic for me to discuss and I'm huge fan of data driven marketing. I 100% believe in it.
00:28:07
Speaker
But I think in these cases, especially when it's your business, falling back on those things that you were so passionate about sharing with other people, there's nothing that beats that because there's something that happens like in your face and in your voice that comes across where people are, it's just genuine and authentic and people appreciate it.
00:28:25
Speaker
Whereas if I'm writing about something like paid that I don't have as much affinity for, or if I'm being asked to talk about paid, I'm just not quite as joyful as I am if I'm talking about like SEO and content strategy. Understandable, and I could definitely mimic you on that one, but that makes sense. As we wrap up, is there any secret sauce that you're just absolutely in love with right now? Is it a tool, a book, a strategy? We talked about video is something to focus on, but what else do you got up your sleeves as far as a secret sauce?
Leveraging AI for Research and FAQs
00:28:55
Speaker
So Secret Sauce right now, I have received so many questions from people about how can we use AI to create content? Are there any concerns about that? And yes, there are, but we absolutely can use AI within our process. So a couple of fun ways that I've used it, I love to use it to do competitive research. So I'll ask the AI, hey,
00:29:16
Speaker
I want to be ranking for this keyword. What can you tell me about the people that are the websites that are ranking there now? What are they doing great? And then from that list, I'll but get it a list of a few people that are ranking well. And then, OK, tell me a little bit more about this company. What are they doing great in their marketing? What's their messaging like? Who do you think their target audience is? So talking with AI like a person.
00:29:37
Speaker
yeah really drilling down into some of those questions. And then the other way I really like to use it, it's awesome for doing FAQs. And I've talked about this a bunch because I'm such a fan, but I'll load a ah blog post and be like, hey, what questions didn't I address? Like before I even post it, what am I missing here that somebody might have a question about after reading this? And so from that, I'll take, okay, here's three questions that I didn't answer in that content.
00:30:03
Speaker
And I'll add a few more paragraphs at the bottom of like commonly answered questions. And I've seen this ad like between 30 seconds to maybe a minute and a half more dwell time on those articles that had FAQs. yeah it was like like it was I was really not that keen on it to start. I was like, how good can this be? And then I did it, and I was like, oh, no, that's significant. Yeah, that's notable for sure.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really fun way to do it. I would hesitate to post just straight AI content to anywhere. I think it it just like my issue with AI is just that it regurgitates what's already out there. There's nothing new. And that's the thing when you're writing a blog or website copy, anything that you are sharing words with another person, you want it to represent you or your brand.
00:30:54
Speaker
And if you are and you want it to be authentic and creative and AI doesn't do that and not to say that it won't do that and won't do that. I know there's so many really smart brains working on it, but I would say there's we have yet to find a replacement for the creativity and the humanity of a person writing content.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yes, 100%. And i I honestly hope we don't ever get to that stage because then we're just reading robotic content and what's real, what's not real. If you read a book, you're reading it because someone wrote it and you want to learn from that person or be told a story from that person. So hopefully that doesn't ever get lost, but TBD with AI has a lot of things with us so much.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been really great. Loved all the content strategy angles from the beginning of keyword research to checking your data at the end and definitely implementing video. Very nice. Yes. Awesome. Sweet. Perfect.