How To Build an SEO-Led Content Strategy: Live Webinar with Mark Mazur & Jason Pittock

[Music] Okay, great. So everyone should be able to see this presentation. If you can't, please, uh, please put a message in the chat. By the way, I've kept the chat enabled. Generally, I will disable the chat in the presentation, but just for today, I'll just decide to keep it open and we'll see how it goes.

So, um, how to create an SEO-led content strategy that gets traffic? So obviously, um, the idea of this presentation is really to get out there what, what I mean by SEO-led. This is kind of something I've been working through the last couple of months and it's an accumulation of, you know, a couple of years of really understanding and putting in SEO, SEO systems and processes and, and really building the, uh, building the strategy.

So, um, the goal of this presentation is to go through what this means, how to apply it to your content strategy. And with that being said, I just wanted to say, obviously, a big thank you to everyone that has been part of this journey so far. So, I've obviously, it's been a very long journey and again, since I've, uh, since I've started and there's been lots of people being part of it. So, it's always good for you to, um, pause it for a few seconds and say thank you.

So, what we're going to do in this event is, we're going to be the first, uh, part of the event. I'm going to be actually talking about what does it mean, SEO-led. And obviously, it's a, I shouldn't say it's a new terminology or acronym, but it's actually something that, with a lot of people are doing, probably subconsciously. And, um, I really wanted to like define content strategies and what does it mean for businesses, if you're at the B2C or the B2B space.

And with that, we'll then talk about how to approach an SEO-led content creator, content creation. So, that is actually where I will be interviewing, uh, Mark Meza. He is an Emmy-awarded film director and content creator, and he has tons of experience in practically building up content structures, defining what's good, what's bad, how to scale, uh, content creation, and actually build, um, build really good narrative. So, I'll actually be interviewing him on that. Second and third point, we'll also be talking about how to choose topics and kind of narrow down your topic selection. And last of all, um, we'll look at how to brief content writers. And with that, I will be giving away tomorrow in an email, after the, after the webinar, uh, free template, a free brief template that will help you structure your content that is SEO-friendly and it kind of accounts for all of the aspects to building an SEO-led content strategy.

So, I'm just going to check that everyone can see the content because, can everyone see the presentation? Can we just check in before we, yeah, thank you. And faster. Okay, great. Let's keep going then. I just wanted to check because I actually shared my screen instead of the slide. So, um, I haven't done that before. It was a, it was, it was a test.

Okay, so, um, how to use the chat function? It's just a few, um, household tips before getting started. So, I'm gonna leave the chat on. It's on your right. So, if you're just joining now from what, wherever the chat function is on your bottom right, you can, you can put any questions in there or chat with the, uh, with the attendees. And I've left it on. Jim to actually turn it off the last one. When I turned it off, this one, I'm going to keep it on. And then at the end of the webinar, we're going to do like live Q&A. Um, and then the, the content and framework for the event for today, I just went through that. If some people are just joining, this is contents. Um, I'm hoping that this doesn't go over 60 minutes. I'm gonna try and keep it as, uh, punchy and precise and on time as possible. And at the end of the event, we're gonna have this open QA and I'm going to be joined by Mark. And this is going to be a really, uh, really exciting. So, let's get into it.

So, this is funny because this is actually a bit of a joke, but, um, a short punk story of how I found SEO. As you busy, it's not very short. So, I'm just going to explain a little bit about my backstory and kind of give you guys some, uh, insight. So, in 2002, uh, my dad moved from the UK, from London, from the south of London, a little town called Bromley, which in the outskirts of London, to Argentina. And I was an eight-year-old. And I grew up obviously in England, and then I moved to Argentina.

So, um, I grew up in a really like utterly restricted or religious household where access to the internet or computers was extremely scarce and it was basically prohibited. And as I went through my primary and secondary and tertiary studies, I obviously gradually, because it was just all the other kids were doing it or people around me were doing, were using computers, I got, you know, got access to the internet for the first time in around 2009. And I remember just the feeling of like touching a computer and like surfing the internet, as they used to say. And it, I, I can't really say that's where my SEO kind of passion started, but it was just that feeling of liberty and being, you know, had to be able to like do so much and have so much reach and impact just from a computer desktop and from anywhere and really fast forwarding that to today. And as I said, it's a long story, I'm trying to keep it short. Um, I, you know, I've really been passionate about, um, being obviously an SEO consultant, an SEO coach, and helping. I've done lots of implementation projects, but being able to help people have those breakthrough moments really remind me of that breakthrough moment I had when I was, you know, 10 or 11 or 12 when I first used the internet for the first time. And then as I, you know, came across more and more information and I built my, my SEO knowledge from very basic, very, very humble beginnings. And when I built my first website when I was 18, and, uh, and then I've since then, I've, you know, built multiple websites for myself, for, for other people. And, um, I've been hyped to do both implementation, auditing, and, uh, coaching projects related to SEO. And obviously, SEO is a very, very broad topic and it can mean a lot of different things and it's very, very dynamic. And I always make that very clear.

So, when we're talking about SEO, I like to be very clear. We can be talking in a B2B fashion or a D2C type business or a B2B or B2C. And it's very important that the things that I'm going to say, the recommendations I'm going to make, they're going to be very much, uh, generic and they would have, you would have to then apply them to a business model and obviously get professional advice. And most importantly, when you are, you're adopting SEO for your business, try and look at it as holistically and practically as possible. So, just start with something small and then grow. That's all I can really say from my SEO journey and how I really got here. And, and I am doing this today is because, um, you have breakthrough moments that kind of open up the next chapter. And it's a bit like a game, you just start, you know, you start moving through different levels of the game. And as you grow in SEO, what I've found is that you don't, you that's that understanding comprehensively and putting things together. So, today, 2023, I am actively working as an SEO consultant and coach for a very small handful of businesses. I don't get involved in hundreds of projects and I'm open to admitting to saying that I like to, you know, choose projects that make sense and can actually see the results on long-term and immediate term and be able to transfer that knowledge and get buy-in and really build something that is sustainable and, and scalable.

So, with that being said, I have a short video, um, that I'm going to share. And it is, again, it's a, just a two-minute video and it explains, um, very briefly what I do. And I'm going to share that with a new mechanism here on the webinar feature. So, if you guys can hopefully see this and hear the audio, it would actually be, if you want to give us, hi, my name is Jason Pittock and I'm an SEO coach. I help business professionals and marketing leaders understand, execute, and scale SEO within their businesses or organizations. You know, he really takes his time to think through very strategically the psychology of the prospects and, and the market and how they think, how they make decisions. Based on that, you know, he crafts the marketing strategy, the ad strategy, and, um, you know, the proves and the numbers. He was able to get us results right away. He has been slow to make promises, but his follow-throughs through the roof. And, um, I appreciate how he is concerned with sustainable marketing. Always gets great results, really skilled at what he does, variety of different marketing techniques and tactics, uh, and takes the time to kind of review everything with you and make sure that you're happy. You know, our sales have have increased, uh, dramatically. Our lead generation from the web went from zero to hero in about six months with, uh, with Jason song. If you're looking for someone who will help you build sustainable marketing systems that can scale, Jason's your guy. Again, I would definitely recommend Jason and the team. Uh, thank you guys and we, you know, we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future. Talk soon. Highly recommended and, um, wouldn't hesitate to say, uh, Jason is a great guy to help you get that SEO journey started. Thanks, Jason. And anyone considering working with him, you're in good hands. If you're interested in SEO, please reach out or send me a message. Me or my team will get in touch with you as soon as possible. [Music]

Great. Okay, guys. So, um, just back to the, uh, back to the presentation. I'm going to, um, I'm going to share again the screen and we're going to get stuck into the presentation for today and all of the. Okay, great. We're back. Okay. So, that we have, I want, there you go. So, if you guys want to connect with me or, um, currently are considering any SEO projects or want to have, uh, just an open discovery conversation about your SEO situation, what you're going through, things you're dealing with, things you're working with, uh, please go ahead and scan that code. That will add you to what you've got. Obviously, like different options when you scan the code, you can add me on Instagram or LinkedIn, you can visit my website, and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is actually kind of what I'm focused on. And this period of, at this time, the last couple of months and throughout this year, I've really much committed to building my YouTube channel. So, that is the code. And let's get into it.

Okay, so the first thing about today, so SEO-led content strategy. So, what does this really mean? Well, the reality is, when you look at an SEO project, you have lots of touchpoints and there are so many factors that you have to take into account, what you have to work with. So, one of the things that I have looked at and classified over time is really how to unite the culture, uh, the systems, and the goals to fulfill the outcome of organic visibility, which is your content being visible, uh, for, for everyone, and specifically for your prospect audience. So, when I mean uniting the culture and systems, it's really uniting the everything that goes on around this SEO-led content strategy. And the goals are really the data, what you want, where you want to go, what you want to achieve, and how you're going to achieve it.

So, the outcome of using, and I would say employing, an SEO-led content strategy is number one is the visibility for increased traffic. So, this is like the logical outcome. We can become more visible, we receive more traffic, right? We have more content out there that is optimized for this visibility, it brings us more traffic. Now, it also contributes to improving conversion rates because if you have a lead or prospect customer who is considering your business and comes across your content from a non-branded keyword, that is going to drive up your authority and is most likely going to help you improve, improve that likelihood of conversion. You've got retained users, drive loyalty, increase your authority, increase your brand awareness, and of course, generate leads or whatever is your cons, you're considering is important for your next step of your business.

Now, when it comes to the uniting of these different aspects, I've created this like graph to try and like imagine SEO as like a universe. There's so many different things going on. You've got your content creation, you've got your content writers, you've got your website, you've already got your website developer, you've got your domain authority, you've got PR, you've got all of these things going on. And when you really want to build an SEO content strategy, which is kind of the underlying and it's the, I'd say like the, the primary, primary thing you want to be focused on when you're getting into the, into this stage of your business, you can really unite it by looking at your internal expertise, which is the knowledge that you have that you want to get out there, the data, which is really how you're going to build those conclusions, how you're going to build conversions about what you're going to publish, what you want to publish, uh, what keywords make sense from a business perspective. So, that's the data. And then the third one is leadership and culture. So, leadership and culture is right, how do you get buy-in, how do you get buying from all of your team, how do you build the processes so that people understand why SEO is important for your business, and how do you get that into your culture? So, SEO becomes a conversation and it's not like a disjointed operation that has, you know, multiple levels of separation between the business or the marketing and it's just like a thing. It really isn't because your visibility is your, is dependent, your business success, your business success is dependent to your visibility. So, um, having buy-in in the culture with your, with your leadership, with your team makes sense. And connecting that with the expertise is really what you want to get out there. And the data, this is how you can unite and you can start to understand, uh, content strategy.

So, obviously, you've got your internal expertise. The goal of your internal expertise is that you can resonate with your buyer profile, so with the person who wants to buy your product or services. You want to leverage your internal, like subject matter experts, often referred to as SMEs, the upper subject matter experts. Now, that being said, if you're in a service business or a product business or you know, like a subscription business, being able to connect with your buyer profile is key because they will then understand that you care about their needs, you care about what they're going through, their pain points. The leadership is getting your buyers before, like getting your buy-in from your, your leadership team or people that you report to, understanding, uh, that the, you know, you get your network from the leadership, make sure they understand there are clear expectations and show the roadmap to the team. So, you have clients from all those stakeholders. Culture, so develop the mindset that SEO first. For example, if you're going to do a website rebuild or you're considering updating sections, you know, people are already have this SEO or this SEO sensitivity that makes sense for them to be aware and understand that we care about it. And last is data. So, use data to build conclusions. So, when you're, you know, using, using different tools or software to find out, you know, search volume or in intent, or user intent, or metrics related to your SEO, you really want to use that to build those conclusions.

Now, step one of any SEO game is to be visible, right? This is the goal. And when it, when I mean be visible, what we're looking at is getting eyeballs on your content, right? You want to get the right set of eyeballs on your content. And this can be, you can look at lots of different metrics, but I try to, like, the goal of SEO and getting, you know, your content out there and people seeing it is really comes down to four categories of, you might say, takeaways from employing an SEO that strategy. So, number one is your impressions. So, obviously, this is people that are finding your content. Obviously, the second is clicks. That is actually people that's found your content and your content makes sense and matches their search, so they actually click through. The third is on-page engagement. This can be your conversions, your different types of conversions, or what you want them to do on your page or on your digital, on your digital asset, via a landing page, via a blog, the service page, whatever it is, you're going to have on-page for engagement. And then lastly, is your positioning yourself for more revenue opportunity.

Now, that being said, every business has a different, uh, different game when it comes to what it, where SEO plays or hits hardest. Now, what that means is, some people are, you might say, I have a small website and they're optimizing it to get more visibility, and it might not always be the same game for, for example, a big, uh, education or a university or, um, online, an online education business that, you know, might have a lot of leads coming at the top, but might need more content in the middle of the funnel to build improved conversion rates, drive authority. So, when it comes to, like, looking at revenue opportunity, connecting SEO's revenue opportunity isn't a straight line. Um, there's going to be lots of fragmentations of what that, where that can go. But the goal is that you move the revenue opportunity closer to the business by becoming more visible.

Now, I got one of my favorite memes is this: Your content needs eyeballs. So, your content needs to be seen. And it also needs to be built by people who understand who we're talking to. And that's why it's so important. And the whole concept of an SEO-led content strategy is that you can build a content strategy that you're, you're prospect leads, your prospect customers, the audience you're talking to, it makes, it makes complete sense. And this is a statement that I often use, um, if I don't drape up there comes a point when when seduction is over at forces wide. So, the long story is, you know, content can be a lot of things and sometimes content needs to happen because you need to get your, you need to get your website's assets out there, you need to get visibility for keywords. But content shouldn't be false. It shouldn't, it should be learning. It should be encouraged by conversations with your sales team, understanding the product and you're offering, understanding what keywords or search terms you want to, you want to optimize for. Um, so content shouldn't be created just to tick boxes. And lastly, content is a conversation. It's a conversation between you and the audience. And in that audience is your prospect customers. And I've created this, uh, little graph here that explains, sorry, I didn't, I didn't jump slide that, guys. So, um, they're the three points: content creation before, so it should be led. Content shouldn't be created to fulfill non-film APIs and just check boxes. And create content creation is a conversation. So, being able to have systems in place to capture the feedback and the conversation of sales team are having with your, your customers and your audience is really how you're going to build an ideal content strategy that is going to bring traffic and bring visibility to your, your business and assets.

So, organic visibility. So, I've been talking, I've mentioned visibility a few times so far. Thinking, what is organic visibility? Now, I talk a lot about organic visibility because I think it kind of wraps what, um, when we're, when we're, when we're talking about, uh, SEO, I think it really, it defines, uh, it defines us. It redefines the goal. It defines, they might say, the people that are behind this project. Um, you might say, if you're going to your board and you're talking about SEO, probably the best conversation you can talk about is becoming visible organically. And this is a bit like real estate. It's a bit like buying a piece of land and putting up a building. It is peace by peace. It's brick on brick. And this is how you really build visibility. Now, organic visibility really starts with content creation. So, if you create content and for your website, you're going to have started this journey of visibility. So, content really provides resources for the search engine. So, search engines, Google, Safari, Edge, Firefox, Bing, all of these different engine, search engines, really, they are satisfying the user experience of their browser. So, that's people that are making searches. So, our goal is to be positioned on those search engines. But if you, if you consider that the search engines are interested in the user experience, it really makes sense that our content strategy is SEO-led because if the content that we're positioning isn't great, we are not contributing to a positive user experience. It establishes the opportunity for the website to showcase their activities and authorities. So, you know, your business better than anybody else. You know, hopefully, you know your buyer profile better than anybody else, or at least you're trying to figure it out. You have some idea. So, it gives you the opportunity to show that to a potential customer. When you're creating content, if you can use the right words, you can have the right content creation process in place, you should be able to really communicate that narrative. And lastly, it allows you to really influence, attract, convert, and retain customers through bringing people to your website via your content.

So, step two is how to approach content creation. So, this is really exciting because this is really where we get to the, uh, the most important part of today is how students go about creating content that, that is SEO-led. So, here we have another Don Draper meme: Quality content with no visibility has no value. So, I often, uh, quote this and people probably get sick and tired of me saying this, but the, the reality is, quality content that doesn't have any eyeballs, as in nobody actually finds it, really doesn't provide any value because the goal is that people find it. And I mean, if you can build a timeline and and say, okay, I'm going to create a piece of content today on in February, and by the 15th of May or by the 15th of December, I want it to be visible, that's okay. But if you're going to create content and not concern that no one's ever seeing it, there is a problem. So, content needs to be visible. And that is the whole point of today's webinar is that we can show you how and give you some of the pointers to how to build a content strategy that will become visible.

This is a really interesting metric: 18 touchpoints. So, this is built by, uh, by a like a colleague, vendor, I actually found this resource and then I've worked with them before for different marketing campaigns, but they have a resource or a data, a database showing that when it comes to organic and SEO leads and customers, they're 18 touchpoints. And it's 18 times your prospect customer has engaged with your content before they actually become a qualified lead or a conversion. So, that is so important. As people come into the top of your funnel with search terms and visibility, this is how you will can move them down the funnel by having that right structure to your content.

Now, often people, you know, are thinking, well, you know, content is key. You know, the only thing I care about is creating content. I'm just going to go and, you know, subscribe to a writing assistant or ChatGPT and just push out content. And that's the right thing to do. Well, unfortunately, guys, it's not. And anytime something has appeared to be easy and to be simple and to be have absolutely no flaw and just be like the obvious solution, it's backfired. And there's multiple, uh, multiple ways to, to, to this, to show that. The first thing is that the king in your business is your opportunity, your revenue, your cash, your leads, your customers. That's the key. Now, content is a vehicle. Content is a way of you to find the right audience. So, and to get, get exposed to the right audience. But it's not the only, I should say, when people think, well, I want to just create, you know, tons of content and get it onto my website and get visible. Well, okay, that's fine. But if you're putting out the wrong content and not attracting the right audience, then it's absolutely fruitless. Content, when it's done well, will increase leads, it will build authority, it will give you potential retargeting, cross-pollinating with your paid media efforts, it will improve your conversion rates, and it will definitely enable retention and reducing that churn. So, the goal of any piece of content as a vehicle is to be on the best tabs with search engines, including Google. And the idea is that when content is created, it is created with a clear purpose. So, just creating content, spitting out, spitting it out like a, like a machine, is ultimately going to not pay the good dividends. It's not going to be positive in the long term because you haven't employed the resources or the effort to understand what your buyer profile or your audience really cares about. And that's some of the questions we're going to answer today when we interview Mark, which he's going to be joining shortly. And we are going to be explaining some of the ways you can approach really identifying a buyer profile and being able to understand the audience. And that's going to allow you to say, okay, this is the content I wrote, this is what people are going to care about.

So, when you think about, what should I create? Where do I start? Some of you are really creating content. You might have thought leadership pieces, blogs, articles, emails, whatever your content format is. You've probably got a YouTube channel, Instagram profile, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever, wherever you are at in any medium. There are really three parts to creating content. There's the keywords, that is the search terms, that's triggering how people find you. There are clusters, which is really the conversations that happen, like the topics out there. And then lastly, the topics, which are like sub-parts of those clusters. So, they're like generic groups inside those clusters. And that is a really good way of when you analyze content, that's really a good way to kind of start building this skeleton, uh, system that will then slowly become your content strategy. And the goal is that it's always considering the more you know about your buyer profile, the more you know about your audience, the better you're going to inform your content generation.

So, step three for today is how to choose the right topics for your business and create content that drives traffic. So, we are going to be joined, uh, very, very shortly by Mark Mazer. And he is going to give us a really, a really good insight into content creation, building those topics, and developing a content, an SEO-led content strategy. So, with that being said, I am going to stop sharing screen. I'm going to add him, and then we're going to get back to the presentation. And he is going to be sharing some of his pearls of wisdom and knowledge. Okay, so Mark, let me know when you can hear me.

Hey Jason. Hey, how you doing, man? I'm good. How are you? Yeah, good. Thanks for joining. Did you hear me okay? Was the, the audio okay? You said it was a bit louder at one point, right? Uh, yeah, when you pulled the mic away, it was, uh, much better. So, you're sounding really good over there. Okay, okay. Thanks, man. Thanks. So, we are, I'm, so do you want to just give a brief introduction and then we'll, uh, start working through the, the slides? Just tell the audience a little bit about, uh, about what you do, a little bit about your, uh, your background, and then we'll get back into slides.

Yeah, excellent. Uh, so my name is, uh, Mark Mazer. And, uh, I'm an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, writer, and copywriter. Um, I've worked with a variety of brands. I ran a production company for seven years, uh, and then since the, when the pandemic hit, I had to kind of pivot a little bit and focus more on copywriting. So, in my time, I've worked with brands like 3M, Target. I've written for Netflix. Uh, I've done a lot of work on Netflix's YouTube channel and kind of optimizing those headlines. And a lot of the videos that I've worked on have garnered like, uh, tens of millions of views, like some of them have just completely blown up. So, that's been a lot of fun. Um, and so shifting my focus to copywriting, I've worked with a lot of e-commerce brands, mid-sized organizations, helped small people get started. And diving into writing blogs and creating content and, uh, writing tweets for IMAX. I've kind of done all, a variety of all kind of different work, but I really specialized in developing and writing content that not only informs people but also entertains.

Awesome, awesome, man. So, if anyone wants to, uh, wants to connect with, um, with, uh, with Mark, you can connect with one, you can connect with him by just hitting this next. I'm going to give you guys, uh, a QR. Can you see that, Mark? Yes, yep. So, if anyone wants to camp with Mark, just, uh, hit that Q-deck QR code and it should bring up his website. So, we've been, we've been, we've been talking for what, like, I think, like a year and a half? Yeah, it's, I was reflecting earlier today about how long we've been working together and, uh, the time goes fast. It does. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. And where are you, where are you calling in from? Uh, so calling in from, uh, Los Angeles. So, uh, yeah, currently living on here, uh, and doing a lot of copywriting stuff. And then, uh, also working writing movies. So, I have a couple movies set up that I'm developing. And the copywriting stuff is, uh, stuff that keeps me going during the day between, uh, waiting for people to read stuff. Really.

Awesome, awesome, man. Awesome. I'm, I'm so pleased you're here. Thank you very much for taking the time. I know it's, like, 5:30 PM or 6 PM, so I really appreciate you, um, you stepping in and, uh, and giving the audience. And again, this is going to be shared after on YouTube. I'm gonna share some snippets on LinkedIn and different formats. So, it's going to, I really appreciate your, your time and being able to join us here. So, absolutely.

Today, uh, the, the topic that we really want to ask you is, you know, how to choose the right topics for your business and create content that drives traffic. So, this is really the, um, the, the, the, the, the question that you might say, the incognito code. So, Mark, where, where do we start? Like, what's the, what's the starting point for this? So, how do we go about starting to piece together the right topics?

Yeah, so I think the, the most important aspect of, uh, when you're developing content is really to put yourself into the mindset of somebody that is going to stumble across or come across your content and finding, you know, what are, what are they looking for? What are they, where are they in their journey? And, uh, you're probably going to come across a number of different answers and meet people at different parts of that journey, uh, but imagining like, who is your ideal person to come across your company, come across your blog, come across your my Twitter, a profile, whatever you're working on. And then start to answer some of these questions. You know, what are they, are they looking for? Um, and then from there, we look at, you know, who are we specifically trying to influence? What are we trying to get them to do, aside from just reading our content? Um, and really, like, looking at that customer journey from when they first click on your link, uh, on Google, all the way to signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a trinket or, or, uh, signing up for a webinar. You know, what does that journey look like? And diving into the different sections. So, the first one is, is, you know, what, uh, is your, your buyer concerned about? What is that friction in your life that your blog is trying to answer? Um, so it's important to meet your customers where they are, discover their concerns and their frequent questions, and where they are on their journey. And your potential customer is arriving from different parts. One person may be completely new to what your blog is about, and somebody may be a seasoned vet and it's looking at different content that you can create along that journey for them. And to kind of like onboard them onto that, that journey. So, uh, it's important to find and develop content around these different areas. And then to discover that you're going to ask yourself, what are the questions that they're asking? Um, so we want to really discover what are they looking for? And then try to answer that question for them. So, you're to do this, you're going to start with basic questions. So, in this instance, we're going to start with, uh, I'm starting a succulent blog. I love succulents. We're going to dive in and we're going to make a vlog about succulents. So, we're going to start wide and we're going to look at what are the questions that you're going to have with succulents. The first is, well, what makes a succulent different than a regular plant? And what is a succulent? And that could be a great blog about, what is a succulent? What makes it special and different? And then you can dive into the different types of soils that succulents do well, and the lighting that they need, maybe the humidity, where do they best grow? I mean, in Southern California, we have a lot of sunlight, so there's specific types of plants that will do well here that may not do well in the Midwest. Um, so all of these can become individual pieces of content that they can put out on a blog. And, uh, you're casting a wide net, but you're going deep into that specific subject. You see, you're living in the world of succulents and diving as deep as you can into that world, but not letting yourself get distracted with diving into other houseplants or diving into outdoor gardening. You want to stay specific to what you're trying to write about. Yep.

And then again, we're going to look at, who are we specifically trying to influence? You know, the content that, what is our customer looking for in their life? And that's where you can kind of start to figure out, you know, if, uh, if you're starting a succulent company, you're studying a succulent blog, you may be looking at finding income from referrals. And this is where things, you know, that you can start to look at, like, well, is there a specific type of of pot that people like? Right? Is this a great starter plant? And helping people figure out, like, what do you want someone to do with the content? The ideas that you have? And then branching out from there. And I apologize, my Boston Terrier is whining next to me. He didn't get enough play today. So, if you're squeaking or see him popping up here, if that's what's going on.

No, it's real good. So, I think this is, this is also such a, like, recap, you know, like, what's your five percent of consent about? What types of questions or what are they concerned about? Like, what they, what would they use that it would usually ask? And really, who specifically are we, are we trying to to influence, right? So, very much focusing on building a, a profile of your buyer. And then, finding what are they looking for? And then finding pieces of content to plug in along that buyer journey, whether they're a complete novice or an expert at something. And trying to, uh, cast a net that can bring people in. And what you're going to find during this is you're going to discover specific questions that you're going to answer with your blog. And by finding those within yourself, these are questions that your audience undoubtedly has about the content that they're looking for. That's awesome. That's awesome. Um, brilliant. I mean, when it, I think when, when it comes to like streamlining, you know, the content process, you talked about stop the topics and, you know, figuring out really what they're concerned about. Um, so when people, as a business, like, when you're, when you're thinking about keywords, you know, you can start with topics. You don't need to start with keywords. You can start with topics, like conversations. And I don't know if you, if you agree with this, Mark, often like one of the things I do is group like product-related conversations, service-related conversations, depending on your business model, client-facing conversations, problems you solve, uh, typical conversations your clients have when they're, uh, when they're not so happy about the situation or they're not so, they're talking about another vendor. So, what is it they're concerned about? Like, what? And this is a good way to kind of start by, yeah, building out those topics before you even get to an interaction in keywords. What I often try and do is tell people, hey, don't, don't worry too much about the keyword. Let's try and figure out the overarching topic. And so we can then start putting that and piecing that together, building a content cluster, and then going into the weeds and finding the the keywords, right?

There's a, I mean, there's two approaches to creating. And there's an outside and inside out. And outside in is like doing the SEO and keyword research in the beginning and then trying to form content from that. But doing the inside out, you're going to have a more authentic answer to the lot of those questions. Uh, and you're going to find, uh, your content is, is going to resonate with people more. And a great way to do this, uh, is make like, uh, one of those, um, a web. Start with a web and find out all the different branches that you can possibly think of in all those succulents. And you're going to start to branch out more and more and more on different topic ideas.

Yeah, yeah, 100. And, um, often like when, um, when we, uh, when we look at building these topics, what I often help doing as well is like batching them. So, like, you've got topics and you, you're like, okay, where are these in related to the buyer journey? For example, if it's applicable. So, how aware are they of my brand? If this is a topic that I want to, I get in a conversation I want to be in, um, where are they in relation to my brand and my solution or my product or, or whatever you're, you're interested in. The intent of the topic. So, do they, is the topic a buyer intent? Is it a solution intent? Is it, is it just a statistic intent? Like, what, what is the intent of of the topic? Like, where, what is the, what are they, where are they emotionally or when they're actually making those searches? Are they interested in finding something about it? And the last is how, how close is the topic to your internal expertise? Like, if you want to have a conversation and hold authority in a conversation, you need to be an expert. Especially if you're trying to bring somebody closer to your, your business and get them closer to your revenue opportunity. The more you can show your expertise earlier in the funnel, the higher the higher the likelihood of your conversion rate is being proportionately a lot higher. So, like, it just, just compound proportion. Like, often see when really loose content attracts traffic, the traffic is really bad. When you've got really specific, very well-curated content, the quality of the traffic, the time on site, the bounce rate, how many other pages they visit after reading the content is proportionately a lot higher. Yeah.

So, clusters will be referred to before keyword research. So, basically, you can refine your clusters and then you can, uh, then you can approach, you know, building out those content clusters, different topics. And a good rule of thumb, which I often use, is like, you can, like, if you're building a content strategy, say for like 2023, you can, like, have maybe, you know, four or six content clusters. And you could have a couple of topics or a couple of variations of that cluster. You're coming away with maybe 12 or 24 pieces of content that you can create without getting too broad. This is what you spoke about, that format is you want to be specific because if you're not specific and centered around your course, not as a product, you kind of get further and further away from your funnel, right?

Yeah. And when you were talking about, uh, using like ChatGPT, I think one of the big things that we're going to see more with the internet with the creation of these tools is a lot of the single versus the noise. And, uh, people can absolutely sniff out when something is not authentic. And I think you're going to see more importance on thoughtfully created content, and people will seek that out and care for it. And the reality is that search engines like Google or Bing are going to end up having to prioritize real content because that's what people will want to find. Of course.

Yeah. And this is actually a really good segue because when people want to start creating, like, a, for example, if you've got a new business, which is generally not the case in, um, in most businesses when they're starting out, if they're a startup, and you know, like, I'm on business or like a business in the last five or ten years, um, most of these businesses are aware that kind of content is, you know, primary way of bringing in traffic. So, it's really not the case. But when you're starting out and you're like trying to consider building a contractor, I have this like analogy of an onion. So, what fascinates me about an onion is that the onion is like a layer on a layer on a layer on a layer. And every layer looked pretty much the same. The compound it grows out and it is, uh, you know, it's a, it's a big piece, right? So, you might be at the right of the center of your onion. You can start by defining your topic and subjects or what you want to build up the subject matter expertise that you don't want to be an SME in every conversation in the world. Like, you want to choose something that is concerned that your client is concerned about. Going back to what you said, Mark, about those three pointers, what they're concerned about, what types of questions they have. And that is going to help you build your first initial topic and subject that's going to start some more. Then you can look at variations for long-term variations of your topic, long-tail variations of your subject. Then you can even go further and talk about statistics related to your, your area of expertise. You can look at comparisons, you can build supporting evidence, supporting content. And then finally, you can break out and start to overlap. I've seen businesses, for example, be very, very successful in a specific field, for example, a technology, and then they start to add on a completely different, say, like a different service, like something that's not related to technology, and it really struggled to rank. Why is that? And I get asked this question a lot. And the reason is, Mark, is that people don't understand that Google classifies domains and not just Google, other search engines classify websites according to the conversation they're having. So, if you are talking about lots of different things, then it's hard for a search engine to prioritize you outside of all the other ranking factors because you're so broad. So, when you go broad, make it like the last evolution of your strategy, like your plan. And, uh, let's talk a little bit now about keyword research. So, as, as you said, Mark, you said, what was, you said inside out and outside and how do you just repeat what you said? I thought it was really cool.

Yeah, so I, I was talking about when creating content, um, you don't want to start outside in. You don't want to start doing keyword research too early and trying to use those keywords to, you know, uh, back into content. You want to start figuring out what are the ideas that you want to use. And then at that point, look into keywords and find out, like, what points are you already hitting that you didn't even

Realize it by doing your keyword research. Yeah, yeah. And interesting, like this, this slide specifically about streamlining the content process, the your SEO-led content process. Really, you want to confirm your findings with research. So, like, when you do employ the queue, like, once you've done your approach, so if you've started with topics, then gone to keywords, or started with keywords, then come to topics and content classes, either way, you will want to, there'll be a point where you want to validate that the keyword metric makes sense.

And with that being said, we're going to choose the example of your succulent. Uh, um, and I did some analysis. So, succulent garden, um, it has like 8,100 searches a month in the US. So, global volume is, you know, nearly 15,000. Um, we've got a 56 difficulty ratio. Uh, we have lots of keyword variations. This is a pretty good proportion of keyword variations to the volume. Um, you don't generally see that. That's a pretty, that's a very good metric. This is why I chose this keyword out of the site. Killing was obviously a very broad keyword, right? Mark, likely, and it had heaps of volume. It had like half a million searches. So, I choose, I chose succulent garden because I found the keyword variation. So, um, and then you've got lots of questions. So, this is going to help you build your frequently asked questions within the article. And it's got a, like, a, it's a competitive keyword because it has a, has like 100. That means people are bidding on this keyword the whole time.

Now, how do these metrics help me as a content creator, or somebody commissioning the content, and in the marketing team, and I'm helping put together the content strategy? Well, when you're analyzing these keywords, guys, what you want to look at is, do they make sense for my business? Does that make sense for my buyer profile? And do they make sense for the internal expertise I have? What I was saying at the beginning about kind of when you have an SEO-led content strategy, you're uniting these different moving parts. You've got your overarching, uh, aspect, like your, your culture. Does this make sense? Does the, does the business want this content out there? Does it, uh, whatever your, whatever your goals are with your SEO strategy, if you're just writing a blog that, you know, about, about baking, I have a friend who has a sourdough making website, and he has, you know, lots of traffic. His only interest is to get people to go to Amazon and buy affiliate products, right? Um, it really depends. Uh, but the point is, is whatever your goals are, they, this, they have to make sense with these metrics. And what this means is that you just want to trust the metrics blindly when it doesn't make sense to your business. Even if you have low volume on a keyword, it doesn't mean it's bad. It just means there's less volume, but maybe that volume is really high intent for your buyer. Uh, you'll buy a journey. So, consider that when you're narrowing down your keyword research.

And I think, like, that's a, a great example of, um, how you can take an idea of something you want to write and then use keyword SEO research to help hone that idea. Because if I was looking at writing a title, "How I Discovered the Joy of Succulents," and you, as an SEO expert, and we were collaborating, came back to me and was like, "Hey, just, you know, the, like, the succulent keyword, there's a lot of competition on there, but succulent garden has a lot more opportunity. I can tweak that headline, and now it's, 'How I Found, How I Discovered the Joy of Creating a Succulent Garden,' and we might get better traction on that." Yeah, exactly. That's why having the culture, like, in place in the business is so important because if they're just like disjointed operations, you could go ahead and invest a lot of resources into that article and it not ever be found by anybody, right? And so, yeah, 100% of that feedback. That culture is absolutely, absolutely key.

So, guys, now we're going to actually look at building a perfect brief. Now, I know we are running, like, we're nearly at six minutes, two. So, I'm going to try and get through this, um, to try and get through this. But again, I'm Mark. Where I love the fact that we've got your, you're here on the call. So, I'm going to hand this back over to you and talk a little bit about building that brief. Imagine yourself as the content creator or creating a brief for another content. So, again, I think, uh, if I was approaching, uh, somebody said, "We are, we're stuck in the company and we want to start developing our blog. Can you help us create content?" So, again, I would start with, you know, what are the ideas and what are the headlines that I want to dive into? And I would start intentionally with the bad ones first. Like, I would start with a list and just start listing out as many terrible succulent headlines as you possibly can. Because it's, yeah, by getting through all of those ideas and all those bad ideas is when you're going to start to find stuff that isn't as bad, and maybe stuff that you like a little bit. But it's important that you work through all of those headlines to find stuff that you, that you start to like, and stuff that isn't, uh, a cliché.

And then this is a great opportunity to get with your SEO person and start saying, like, "I wanna, this is kind of the general topics that I'm looking at that I like, and I want to write a headline and write on a blog about how I discover the joy of succulents." And that works in a couple of ways because one, we're working on some of those headless keywords, so SEO keywords. And Jason would come back and say, "Succulents is pretty heavy. Is it possible we could do succulent gardens?" And that's a great way that I can tweak that headline. And what I really love about that headline of "How I Discovered the Joy of Creating a Succulent Garden" is it opens a loop. What I mean by a loop is that it, it opens a question that the audience and your reader is going to find the answer inside the content, and they're going to have to open up that blog and start going in. And there's a natural human desire that we all have to close loops, to find answers to questions. And that answer will come, but we can tap into that evolutionary trait to find answers and use that to get people to open up.

Yeah, so now when you dig into big organizations, that's where you're going to start putting together a brief, and you're going to, there's going to be a lot more stakeholders involved that are going to want to know what exactly we're working on. Um, and that's where Jason and I and the organization we work with are a little bit bigger. So, we will put together project briefs for the different stuff that we're going to be working on, the content that we want to develop. And Jason and I will collaborate on these briefs to do the SEO research, to get the headline ideas, kind of what is going to be in this blog, uh, before the stakeholders will like give a thumbs up, and we invest more time and actually create the content.

No, that's, that's great. So, what, what this really means is, um, so when we, we look at this, we've got, like, you know, we review an SEO-led article brief framework where we fill out the outline, we get the buy-in from the subject matter expert, whoever is the voice or the actual, it could even be the writer, it could be somebody turned into this CEO, it could be the CTO, could be anybody, it could just be somebody, a sales rep or a, you know, an account executive. We're looking at resources. We're trying to build as many resources as possible, um, to better have an understanding of the landscape. Because we imagine when you create content, it's like sending a player out into the field. Now, when a good coach sends a player into the field, the first thing that he does is he will analyze who the player is going to play with. Because it makes, it makes no sense to send a player that is not going to be able to compete or gonna struggle to compete with the people around him, or if he excels, he might lack back. So, the important part is to get resources, collect, do that landscape research, so you know, like, what's out there, look for those keyword opportunities, and then you can start working towards a timeline, which is really when you come to the part of the, uh, of the project to publish.

Now, Mark, this is our content brief, right? Um, uh, the one that we, we're going to give this away, guys, after the webinar. I'm going to send an email, um, and I'm going to be giving this away. This is like a, like a true SEO content brief. Um, you can use it for articles, for long form, short form, um, for lots of different aspects. Maybe, uh, Mark, do you want to briefly touch on the, the content brief to kind of explain what it entails?

Yeah, so this is really a document that we'll use, uh, when presenting our briefing ideas to higher-ups or stakeholders and try to get as much information, um, that we possibly can before we actually pursue random content. And, you know, if a lot of the companies that Jason and I work for, uh, we may not be the subject matter experts. I may not be the one that knows about succulents, uh, but I'm going to work and I'm going to write and collaborate with those people. So, this is another document that we can use to get buy-in from them as well, um, so that, you know, if there are four or five people that will be working on this, everybody understands the direction that we're going, and it's a unified effort. So, this is an attempt to make sure everybody gets on the same page, and that we all agree, like, this is something we want to pursue and work on together before we invest more like man-hours and resources.

So, parts of this, uh, is the title is obviously really important. And this is a great example of, if I was working on this content brief for this succulent blog, I would have written out, "How I Discovered the Joy of Succulents." And and Jason would have done his SEO research and then came back and suggested a new title. And the reality is that Jason probably would have come back and threw him like three or four title suggestions, and we would have had a conversation about which one would work best. Um, so then after that, it would be a, a summary of, of what is going to be in this, like, what are the sections that we want to include. Um, another great example is putting in, like, the, the H1s that'll be in the article as well. Um, and that'll be used later on, uh, because those are like, is the most important content that we have. Um, are, is the H1s because a lot of people will just skim and find the sections that they want. A lot of people don't read the full articles. I don't read the full articles. A lot of times people will look for what they're searching for in something specific. So, great title and great H1s are a real big priority for us.

Yeah, this is the, um, this is, guys, this is the full brief. I'm going to give you this blueprint after. Um, but yeah, it's got pretty much everything. Can I, um, this is really interesting what Mark was saying is that the, the really, the goal, that's what I was saying at the beginning of uniting, like, the culture and the, the data, and and being able to get the best of everything is so important. Because if there isn't any buy-in, then they're not going to collaborate. They're not going to be, there's no one's going to find time to invest into to making this right. If you're going to have a conversation with a prospect customer, the quality of that first conversation is probably going to determine the conversion rate. So, if you put that to your front-facing content strategy, that is why having this approach is going to make sure that the content on the front end is 100% uncompromised, and it is, is focused on driving authority, building your credibility, and being taking them a step closer in the funnel. And that is interesting because in here, Mark, we actually have like objectives. What stage of awareness are they at? We filled up this one, guys, for the, uh, succulent blog, the one that we're talking about. But like, what solution is the content purpose for? If there's a solution, this could be a product, this could be whatever your business, if you have something that you want them, that you want the content to be purpose for, you can add in a comment here. What stage of the funnel was the reader at, etc.? So, the goal of this would be that we take them closer down the funnel, is that correct, Mark? They're like the next step.

Yeah, yeah. The, the goal of this is to really help you answer the questions that you didn't even know you need to ask about the content you're going to create. And really, uh, think about holistic content from all the different angles that you, that you should consider, and even some that you, that you shouldn't, you know, um, so it's a great way. And, and sometimes not all, all the questions are applicable to what you're working on, uh, but more often than not, uh, it'll get your brain going and really help you later on, uh, down the road. You know, the last thing you want is to write an entire blog and then try to back your way into a brief like this and realize that you did not hit a lot of points that should have been. Exactly. Yeah, no, 100%.

Okay, so guys, I'll be sharing that article blueprint. So, the blueprints you'd like to have that, um, as a takeaway. And then just, this is just like five points that when it comes to building those SEO-led content briefs, um, there are five things that you just must have. Like, you can leave everything, but these are like five things I always, always like recommend people to not forget. One is, identify the schema of the content. So, where is the content placed on your website or whatever the platform you're going to be using? What's the schema? So, how's it going to be indexed? How's it going to be found? What is the format of the content? Identify that very early on. That's going to help you then evolve and move from that, like, move out from that point. Properly format your content. People don't use this. I still, I see lots of content on the internet today, fresh content that isn't formatted correctly. Page ones, H2s, H3s, H4s, text titles. Very important that you format your content. Keywords are indexed, and the first thing they see is the tags, and that is your titles and your headings. So, format them correctly. Break up your content so it's completely readable and digestible. Uh, create short but query-friendly URLs. URLs, the longer they are, and this is a bit of a, like, a hack, and I, to be honest, is that the only SEO hack I know is that the shorter the URL, actually, the better they have in regards to being crawled. I don't know why, and I don't think anybody really has any, any reply exactly why that is, but I found from experience and years of experience, longer URLs do a lot less than the shorter ones. And I guess it's something to do with Google's crawler system or whatever. And losses include your frequently asked questions. These can often serve as like long-tail keyword opportunities.

So, I think that's pretty much it in regards to our brief and, you know, creating the content. I often say that, you know, create content that communicates, not just optimizes for search engines. I mean, we've talked a lot today, and I've been very, very like specific, you know, don't just create content for your content's purpose, you know, create something that is visible, is optimized, but most importantly, that it communicates something that is valuable. If it doesn't communicate value, then we, we have a problem. First of, we have a problem. And lastly, if you guys are interested in any, uh, content creation, you can talk to Mark. I will put his email in, in his website, and his email address in the next, um, and the email, the follow-up for the webinar. And if you are interested in any SEO, uh, coaching or consultancy, if you can book a free SEO Discovery call with me. Just go to my website, fill out the application, and, um, we can book a free, free session. And with that being said, guys, thank you very much for everyone who has joined today. Thank you, Mark. Uh, thank you for for taking the time and sitting on this and giving us your, your wisdom. And now is the time to ask us questions. So, I'm going to open up the chat and let's see if we have any interesting questions other than ChatGPT. Um, one second, guys. I'm just enabling the chat. So, here goes the chat panel, and I have a couple of chats from before. So, if anyone is still in here, yes, we have people. That's great. So, I'm going to have after a few questions, why some of the people, if anyone has a question, please add it into the chat. Um, no. Okay, so first question. Do you want to read these questions, Mark? I, my chat is not updating, so I can't see it.

Yeah, no worries. Just at the end of, yeah, yeah. I just came in, yeah. Um, thoughts on best keyword research tools by a good Jason question. Uh, well, it really depends on your, on how much you will use the application. So, if you want a free tool, I probably, I'd probably use like Google Alerts or Google, um, try to find, use the Google database. Um, you can actually set up alerts on Google and look at like trends on Google, which is totally free. So, for example, you can go to Google Alerts and set up an alert so every time somebody publishes or content is indexed on the internet with a certain search term, it will give you, uh, it will send you a weekly or a daily email to edits you set up. There's also Google Trends, so you can actually look at trends. It doesn't give you any volume of data, like keyword volume or data, but it does give you a good idea if something is trending. Now, there's one more free tool that I really like, and it is called Keyword Surfer. So, you can basically, I'm just going to plug it in here. So, Keyword Surfer is a free tool. Um, and it basically allows, it's like an extension to your, to your Chrome, and it plugs in and it gives you suggestions. So, like, you add it to your Chrome extension, and I've just pinged the, I'll ping the, um, so here it is. Here's the extension. I'm going to put it in the chat so that is a really good tool for finding free keywords. So, when you do a search, it gives you on the right-hand side of your search results all of the keyword variables in the volume. Now, if you're going to do more SEO work, I'd probably go with Surfer. I find Surfer is the most accurate, and probably after that, I'd go with with Moz. But again, there's only a price tag, and it just depends if you're not going to use the rest of the application. I don't see any point spending, you know, 100 or 150 a month if you're not going to be actively using the, the, uh, the application.

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Um, I've heard of Surfer before. Is the paid version worthwhile, or let's just get so much? No, I mean, I actually use the free version of of Keyword SEO Surfer. Don't go and pay for it. I don't know. It's very powerful. I actually use their API a lot to track like backlinks and do different crawling and and auditing. But when it comes to like just doing keyword research, I think it's too much of a heavy lift or too expensive. Got another question here on the slides from before. Um, Mark, should I use ChatGPT for my content?

Um, sure. Okay, here's what I'll say. I think there's great use opportunities for ChatGPT, and I have used it specifically for brainstorming and helping me develop ideas and things because it will do a great job of giving you things that you don't know anything about. So, I've actually used it as a great search engine. Uh, but you have to be careful because double-check the information because there has been a lot of complaints that it just spits out lies. But I think if you are diving into something and you want to, like, in this case, open up ChatGPT and say, uh, "What are some interesting topic ideas for a blog about succulents?" It'll spit out a lot of like decent ideas that you should definitely use. I would not use it to write full content. Uh, and I, strange enough, I had an incident with a client of mine who I wrote, uh, some Facebook ads for, and they decided that they were happy with ChatGPT's Facebook ads and put those up instead of mine. And a week later, came back and said that they were the worst performing ads and they needed to be shut off immediately because they were so terrible and not in it at all the voice of the brand. So, that was very, like, reassuring for me. Um, but I think ChatGPT can be used in a smart, intelligent way, but I would not, yeah. Um, I would not write articles with that completely. No.

Definitely. And the last thing I was going to say about that in supporting it is that when I also talk with people who are using it or have used it, and, uh, yeah, the investigation research I've done around it is that all of these things are good, and they're all supportive. But if you don't use your intent and your intellect and your emotional understanding of where your buying profile, your audience is at, the copy applications only going to be as good as the, as the data that you give out. And, um, I know there are some possibilities of it in the future, self-learning in real time. I don't know if that is current, something like there's existing application softwares for that. I don't think so. But I really think that they're only as good as the, as the input that you give them. So, I think the potential an assistant, maybe yes. Do I think you can spit out content and have it ranked? No, I honestly don't. Or I think you might be able to for some time, but it'll only be so long until, uh, search engines find those trademark or like, they're going to be right with that content. 100%. They wouldn't, I don't think there'll be, uh, there'll be, uh, any space for Google's in Google's interest.

And, and I think it's important to remember how ChatGPT generates content and, and really what it's doing is, uh, taking its best guess as to what the next word should be when creating something. So, really, you're just making something that's incredibly derivative of everything else that's been made in that area. Um, so that's, you know, you're really just creating noise in that signal.

Okay, we've got one more question here. Um, how do you feel about posting frequency? Uh, is weekly okay if our content is good?

Uh, I will start with that. And the, the first is, I think it's a really good question. One of the things I found from experience is to always post on that once you find a day that you're comfortable posting on, but you have the time and you can actually get it out. Stick to that day. Like, I, I've found that, for example, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays on some businesses work really well, whereas the weekend for my, one of my personal websites works way better than the week. So, it really depends. Out the volume of that you want to post. If the content is good, and you feel that it is, uh, you're transferring your, your what we talked about today, the knowledge and your expertise, then, um, one a week is fabulous. Um, I don't think there is a, though the volume game here is like, "Oh, if I do 10 a week, I'm gonna get 10x results." No, because most likely that, uh, 10, you're going to be as quality as that, that one or two that you're doing consistently. I always recommend a, you know, choose quality before quantity. Um, but make sure that you can stay consistent with it. Because if you're taking two months to write a piece of content, and when it gets out there, it doesn't mean any, anything or value to your buyer profile, then it is, there's no point anyway. So, you have to have the happy medium. One piece of content, or two pieces of content, three pieces of content a week is great, but keep it consistent. That's the goal here. Is be consistent because that's how repetition, you will gain the, the, your gain the, um, the benefit of doing this on the same day, and it will help your indexing and scale your content visibility.

Yes, and make sure it's good. Don't just put it out because you need deadlines to be hit and just when they wait till next week. That's right. Yeah.

Um, what we got here? Okay, this one's for you, Mark. Um, are we better to write content ourselves as the founder and SME, or outsource to the content writer? How to figure out what strategy is best? Use the brief. Yeah.

Uh, yeah, so that's a great question. And as somebody who's a freelance writer, I think I'm probably a little biased, but I'll do my best to give the, the fairest answer. Um, I always find that people that specialize in what they do is going to give you the best content. And, you know, I work for a company that is highly technical in the cybersecurity space, and I am not. But I work with their SMEs to create content that fits perfectly with their brand. Um, and that, what that means is that I sit down and have conversations with them, and I go back and forth with the SME. But what I'm able to do then is craft a story, uh, and actually form an article that flows really well. And a lot of the issues that, that a lot of these SMEs have in this industry is that they're, they're so technical focused that they get lost in the weeds of the technicality and lose the bigger picture and are unable to speak to, uh, their potential customer because they are so zeroed in on on things that really, uh, shouldn't be in a piece of content like this. So, that's where somebody like myself is able to come in with a, a broader knowledge of how to craft an article that people want to read and get through. Um, and then like, through research and then plugging in tech, the, the technical stuff from an SME, I'm able to craft something that is a really nice synthesis between, uh, the technical knowledge and a general, like, entertaining piece of content to read and get through.

Um, so it really, I would say it depends on your writing background. If you have a really strong writer and, uh, you get good results with your content, you should absolutely write yourself. But also keep in mind your time may be more valuable elsewhere, and that's where hiring somebody who specializes in that, well, you can focus on building your business, that might be more a better use of your time and resources as well. I think it's good. Yeah, you go to a lot. You've got to have a balance between getting in the weeds versus, you know, doing it a sub, you know, finding somebody that you can trust for the process. But again, you really want to have that SOP, that, that you want to have that brief. You want to make sure that you go to your content writer with a brief, with that brief, or some type of brief, so there's a clear structure. And I hate the trial as to like, what the content is going to be, who is it for, how is it going to engage them, where do we want to be, what are the keywords, what are the titles? That is going to make sure that whatever you do, anyway, if you are the founder of an SME in the business, which is generally the case, you now know that your trust is one thing, but knowing that you've done the transfer of expertise is another, and you've basically enabled the writer to on your behalf create something beautiful that makes, that makes sense from business strategy and from also the, the facility of the writer being able to, sorry, facilitate content creation efficiently. Right? So, you're not like, as a, you know, as the business owner, kind of creating the content and and play that game, and at the same time trying to run your, I don't know, from personally, what I do is I, I use the brief, I get the brief to the content creator, when the content creator comes back, he actually comes back with suggestion bullet points out of the titles, and then they move forward to a draft. Once I've reviewed that, I review the draft, and then we go to publishing. But it all starts with having that subject and that brief now. So, yeah, I think that is everything.

Oh, one more question. Uh, for you, Mark, is how long should my content be and to be considered authoritative?

That's a great question. It all, it all depends on, uh, what it is. I would say generally, um, I would like want to match two pages is kind of what I feel like is is a good amount. Um, yeah, I would say I would say 750 to, you know, 900, 1000 words is great. Um, because you also have to, you know, we live in a time that TikTok is king, and people will swipe away very quickly. And I think there's a certain, uh, intimidation with really long articles, uh, that people won't even dive in if they realize it's a pretty big time commitment. Yeah. So, it's really about finding that right balance of, you want to get your points across, uh, and making sure that your H1s are really like hit the point. Because like I said, people will often just scrub through the article until they get to a section they want to read. So, really near those H1s, be succinct, and also be respectful of your reader's time. Um, but you also want to make sure the content is valuable, and it's it's more than just a tweet. Um, so that people will will want to engage in and also, uh, view you as an authority on this subject.

Awesome. Okay, guys, so, uh, this has been really, really fabulous. I think we've come to the end of the session. It is, okay, so we're a few minutes past the, uh, the, the, the allotted time. So, thank you everyone that joined. Um, and I know there was some really good takeaways here for for everyone. And I will be following up with the presentation PDF, the replay, and the brief. So, stay tuned for the email tomorrow morning. And, um, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Mark, for your time. Honestly, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Jason. Appreciate it. Thank you, everybody, for joining.

Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Have a, have a good evening. Bye-bye.

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