 I have to tell you guys I have been waiting for the moment that someone let me pick my intro music because I've been holding on to house of pain since 92 Yeah, it's so exciting. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you Cyrus. Yeah, it was super nice to meet you know to meet everybody here I Think I was destined to be a content marketer and let me tell you a little bit about why I need to give you some background And yeah, I've been in marketing a while. I've done a lot of it You know when I was little I was a bit of a precocious kid Had a brother that I didn't love But it got better. I Thought I wanted to be a model Turns out a mullet and stun a shades next to an s10 doesn't get you into the modeling industry That's a pretty good at school And I was and this program called quest and for anyone who isn't familiar Quest is sort of an accelerated program right where they have you write stories and do a little bit more work And I came across these books from kindergarten and I started looking at this and I thought this is amazing Hey, these are kindergartners writing entire paragraphs like five years old. That's great. I wrote 24 words You know, maybe I wasn't destined for content marketing. I Came across the one from second grade and my friend Krista She wrote a whole page and so did my friend Milena and so did Bobby But there I was With one paragraph But here's the thing I Knew then at eight years old that it was about quality not quantity, right? And I knew That my time was important after all I had modeling to do Time is still something that gets us as content marketers, right? It's still one of the biggest issues that we face as for content quality and quantity I Loved Taylor's presentation yesterday when she said nobody cares about your blog. I was like shit. That's harsh But true, right? It's true like two million blog posts every day like they can't all be good, right? We know that they can't all be good and here's the proof in that That content marketing's up Engagement isn't not at the same rate worse Our jobs as marketers are to provide value Right and are to attribute ROI and we can't do that. I don't know who this 5,000 person is but they need to get it together Right like that is so bad But here's the thing The problem is that for so long we've talked about content is this magical thing We even gave it a crown. It's king. It's queen. Whatever No, it's not Content is a piece of the puzzle, right? It's one piece of the marketing strategy Now don't get me wrong. I've been telling you that I love content and I do love content But I think we have some issues and I think there's some things we need to do Mark Trapp Hagen is one of like my absolute favorite marketers And so when he writes something I pay attention a few months ago He wrote this post about social media and the premise of this piece is that social needs to grow up It's in a similar place that SEO was a few years ago Where we're just kind of doing things and it's kind of crap But we can get away with it right because it's still sort of new And as I read this I thought gosh like it feels like we're sort of in a similar place with content, right? This like we're seemingly holding this golden ticket. It's this king. It's this queen Whatever it is, but we can't figure out the most fundamental piece of our jobs as marketers Is Mark said it's time for us to grow up And what do I mean by this? I Think there's a few keys to this and there's a few things that we need to actually do and The first thing is we have to be accountable Right if we want to grow up if we want to be seen as invaluable if we want to make more money Our work has to be tied to revenue. We have to be accountable The jobs are there right. It's no secret that content marketing jobs are up But there's also this right just another statistic that shows that we don't actually know how to measure what we're doing We also need to be more integrated and what I've loved about some of the presentations so far is there is this Common theme right like how do we integrate with other departments because most organizations it looks like this Right and as content marketers, we're writing content across all of these different things Well, if it's not consistent you have inconsistent messaging you have missed opportunities and more importantly you have lost sales This is a study that seismic did last year and it looked at the relationship between content and sales And if you can't read what that box says here it is Essentially people are losing sales because they don't have the right content and it makes me so sad right like that's so silly But it's such a common issue and until we break down those silos. We're gonna continue seeing things like that The last piece is goals whenever I talk about goals and I talk about content This is always the thing I start with the reason being why are you doing it? Right every other thing we do in marketing has a goal SEO paid email There's a goal tied to it, but for some reason content. We don't always tie goals to it So how do you know what you're even supposed to be doing? How do you measure value if you don't actually have a goal? So that's what we're gonna talk about today. How do we do these three things? Right, how do we make sure that we're accountable that we're integrated and that we have a goal? That's going to help us grow up So like I said goals the thing that I always like to start with because to me They're the most fundamental piece of your content marketing program right and to understand our goals We have to ask ourselves a few questions. The first is why am I doing this right? Why am I writing this? Why am I creating this? What do I want? What do I want to get out of it? What drives results? Where should I spend my time? We have to get away from thinking about how much and think about okay if I am creating this amount of content What are the results look like? So let's start with the what is this for right? Why am I doing this? What am I creating content for? Yeah, I didn't think this was like that much of a mystery, but like apparently it is it's for hanging your shirt up I gave a presentation last month on content funnels figuring out gaps in your content and essentially it broke down to We need to create content that works that resonates with our audience content that we need and the link for that is right there If you want to see the presentation if you want to see the breakdown blog post But when I was doing this research what kept coming up was the idea of a customer experience What is it that our customers want? Right, what is it that they want? It turns out. It's not that much of a mystery. They want you to help them Right, they want you to solve their problems They want you to answer their questions and if you do they'll reward you I love this consumers were a hundred and thirty one percent more likely to buy after reading a piece of educational content You know why I like it because we can write that right more content marketers We can write that piece of educational content that is going to drive someone to purchase How do we find out what our customers want what turns out? That's not really that hard either We now have tools at our disposal that do this Who here is familiar with the answer the public? Yeah, all right I feel like most people are at this point But like I love putting this slide up here just in case there's one person who isn't and they go to their site And they're like where the hell did you just send me I like it's kind of weird But what I like about it is what you put in a topic and it'll give you questions related to that topic And so this is pulled from suggested searches So here are the questions that real people are asking around your specific topic your specific business Another tool I like for this is keyword tool.io does something very similar, but here's why I always include it Because how people search on YouTube Amazon the app store is different than how they search on Google And if you're marketing there if you're creating content for those places You need to understand how people are asking questions there right like think about YouTube a lot of things We're doing or how to the people who are searching there might be a little bit different I always like to tell the story like I called my dad one day and I said what do you do? And he said I'm changing the brakes on my car. I said, do you know how to do that because I looked it up on YouTube Okay, I'm not gonna ride with you next time. I'm home Buzz sumo is like my absolute favorite tool. I've been talking about this for years. I love what they do I love the products that they put out. This is one of their new wish things It's been around for a little bit but this is their question analyzer and Very similar concept that it'll go through it'll look at forums e-commerce sites Q&A sites reddit and it'll pull all of the different questions related to a topic But what I also like and what's sort of been a key theme of other presentations is the idea of themes and entities and all the Things surrounding our core terms so it also breaks out questions that are related to it, right? So it'll break it up into themes for you But I also like about it though Is that it gives you where people are asking the question? I was learning the golf last summer and so I was looking at golf balls Backyard chickens is crushing it partly because they have the question Spoiler alert. Yes, if you put a golf ball in the nest the Hensville legs Anyway, what I like about this is that buzz sumo gives you that topic that question But it also gives you the place that people are asking What are other things we like? links Go and look at how people are answering those questions Turn that content into a better piece into a bigger piece something that addresses a number of things Oh, and then go back there and share that piece of content with the people who are asking for it Hey, now you've created a better experience not just on your site, but on this site, too FAQ Fox is another one sort of does something similar I like that it goes through reddit some other forums, but I'd like it's free It spits something out like this, but when you export it It gives you the list of questions and the list of URLs like you could take those lists or URLs You could throw them into screaming fraud you could find all the titles and keywords and blah blah blah The other one is keyword it very similar and the reason I keep bringing up reddit is because I think as marketers reddit Really knows like the inner workings of humanity, which I don't know if that's a good thing But it has a lot of information and so this is a tool that allows you to go put in your topic It'll pull out subreddits, and it'll give you all of the keywords associated to that subreddit So as we're thinking about entities as we're thinking about themes like awesome Okay, people in marketing are looking for entry-level jobs. They're looking for social media And if you click on that context, it'll give you all of the questions, right? So again, go in see what people are asking see what people are answering. That's pretty easy content And it's things that you know people want You know or else you can find this information on your own site This one just breaks my heart how simple it is and how easily people forget it If you have search functionality on your website, make sure that you have site search enabled in Google analytics These are people who are coming to your site and they're typing something in I was looking at something for a client and they're a marketing automation tool This was a couple months ago and I was looking at their site search and what kept coming up was GDPR Well, yeah, of course right there a marketing automation tool Of course people are looking for GDPR, but they couldn't find it because it was buried Let's make sure that's on the home page. Let's make sure that's in a place that people can easily find it Support a couple years ago I worked in-house and one of the things that we did each week as the marketing team would sit down with the support team Because they're the people who are talking to your customers They're the people who are getting real-time feedback. They're the people who are getting yelled at God bless them But we would sit down and they would say here are the issues that people are facing here are the questions that they're asking if You have a support community Take a look at some of those questions Right that same client that I just mentioned one of the things we found is there was this educational section of their support community And it ranked really well, but it was buried So we took that and we created it on their main site right now. It's front and center now We're driving people to their site Very easy stuff that people want and like I hate talking on the phone I think most of us do it at this point right like someone calls you and you're like Oh, like why are you calling me to send me a text the same thing applies if I have to talk to a company if I have to talk To a company the first thing I'm looking for is chat. Do they have chat and I'm putting in my question I'm having the conversation there. Do you know what these chat tools do? They keep those logs Get those chat logs from Whatever the tool is make sure that your content marketing team has access to those Because that is good stuff like guys. This is gold like you should be so excited I talk about this all the time like you should literally feel like stretch But jump jumping into his money bank because this is real data. This is real questions You want to know what your customers want? That's it So when you're thinking about your goals and you come back to the question, why am I doing this? What do I want the answer should be to help your customers to give them what they're looking for Because they will reward you and it's good for your business We also have to ask ourselves like what drives results and where should I spend my time, right? I talked earlier about time time time time. We don't have a lot of it We don't have a lot of resources We have to focus on what matters and we have to prioritize the content that's going to make a real impact Here's an example. So this is another client that we've been working for working with for about three years I love them. We've been writing for them. This is the organic traffic Like that's pretty good, right? We were pretty excited about that You know who wasn't that excited their executive team because this is the same rate that their leads have grown So we thought you know they kept pushing back and we kept pushing back and it was like, okay fine Like we need to change our goals because at the end of the day leads are what matter revenue is what mattered Well, how do we do that? Right? How do we change our strategy without changing our budget without changing the time without changing our resources? We took a look at what content was driving traffic and what traffic was driving leads and we started mapping them to the buyer funnel Unsurprisingly top of the funnel content what was was driving the majority of that organic growth, right? And it makes sense right people are asking questions. We had written these really fantastic posts addressing questions And so as a result we were getting that visibility But what we didn't have was content for the end of the funnel and even worse We had very little content for existing customers Those are the people that you want to come back so we had to do two things and the first was to shift our keyword strategy We went back to our questions and we started looking at what are the things that people are asking later on right later on in the buying cycle Okay, great What that meant? Also had to shift our content strategy and this is where it gets a little bit more difficult right because same thing same time same resources We've been writing a lot of blog posts Because we had been writing so many blog posts It was really easy to take that content and create bigger assets right bigger assets that drive leads So that's what we did. We took those and we started creating these guides For their end of the funnel users for their existing customers. We also started looking at some of their older content Right, how can we take something? This is a company that does shipping, right? So this audience isn't interested in what is shipping they want to know like how do I get the best rates? What insurance do I need? What kind of packing do I need? Well, we have content on rates Easy, let's change that that's modify it. Let's make it so it's more targeted toward those end of the funnel questions and then we made banners I Think one of the biggest challenges with blog posts as you get people there and then they immediately leave How do we engage them? How do we keep them on there? Even if you have a great piece and I think banners are a really easy way to do that Create it the image that goes in your post at the end of the post and then you're driving people back to your related asset You're helping guide them and here's the result right? It's not like it just skyrocketed But that projection is much more in line with what we need and we started hitting our goals Right and we started doing something that had real value to the business Make sure you're thinking about that right when it comes to your goals focus on what works and what is important to the overall business objectives Which leads us to integration a couple years ago at search love There we go Danny de Tomaso gave this presentation and it's always stood out to me because she gave this example of Geico and we love Geico right they put out these funny commercials they have that lovable gecko But when you look at their presence in search, it's like what the heck like it's so boring There's no continuity there And I think why it stuck out to me is because it was just such a perfect example of Departments not talking to each other right like even the organic listing is very different from the paid listing and it's hard Right, I'd be lying if I told you that the way that we do it is perfect that the way that we work with other teams Is perfect it's not but we have to try Because when we're thinking about that we're writing content that contents here and here and here and we need to be there We need to be ingrained in the organization as a whole and this starts by asking questions I want to tell you guys a sad story and something just makes me so mad a Couple months ago probably about six months ago. I had a client. They came to us. They said hey. We need content great Okay, they don't have the resources to do it so we put together the topics We did the research we started writing the content and we sent it off and It just sat there Who's that helping nobody it's so frustrating we asked why and they said well, we have enough content We have the content. We think what no Well fast forward a little bit and we're talking to a different person in the organization who says oh well our upcoming campaign is tied to X oh Well the content that we wrote a few months ago That's also tied to that campaign. Why don't we revisit it? We can rework it and use it for that I didn't even think to ask for campaigns and it's something so simple. It would have made things so much easier Anytime you're working in editorial planning whether you're working internally whether you're working externally Make sure you know what's happening right so when we're doing this We're looking at things like events. Do they have webinars coming up? Do they have any trade shows? Do they have interviews even something like a conference preview or a conference recap you guys know how far those things can go Right they get picked up. Everybody's excited to be there. Everybody was excited to be there That's an easy thing for you to write if you have those resources ahead of time if you know that We find out about campaigns and another client. We have a shared Quarterly theme calendar with their demand gen team with their PR team with us And we know here are the themes for each quarter and here's the content coming out and the content that we need to create The other thing that I love that we do this at our organization I certainly can't take credit for it, but anytime we're doing content. We interview stakeholders in their company We interview the subject matter experts and this is valuable for so many reasons right aside from just brand voice aside from just Consistency we get insights that we might not have gotten otherwise You talk to people and they tell you things that you didn't even think about or you didn't know or your contact Didn't even think to tell you it ensures you're aligned with the business at the most basic level it ensures You know what's happening? We also have to understand the cell I was at the tech SEO boost event in the fall and there was a panel and there was a couple developers up on the stage Essentially was like quit giving me things like it's super annoying and Jonah talked a lot about this yesterday And I thought that was so great because he made these great points that yes We do need other people to do our jobs, but that's kind of on us But the thing we have to remember They have their own shit to do Right like they do they have their own jobs and their own goals and when you're asking them to do something You're just giving them more work We need to understand their goals and we need to understand how we're positioning something So yeah, it's easy for me to say to you like oh, I need you to do this because it's a best practice Okay But if their job and their goals are to make a better performing site and you're saying if you do this It's going to increase performance by X or it's going to help. That's a much better cell Hey, think about that stuff The same time we have to stay in our lane and I think there's a thing that's been happening It's not a secret that all of these different areas are overlapping right communications SEO Content, it's all really overlapping into this one area And it's something that we find that happens pretty often now We work with a lot of external agencies whether it's on PR paid whatever it might be Sometimes people just have other agencies and so this is a couple years ago Our client had a PR team and we were talking to them and I sent them this list of potential buy lines And she was like no These are all ours They can't be all yours like you don't have time to do this But it made me rethink how I was positioning it and so now when we're working with another team I make it very clear. Here's what we're trying to do. We're trying to avoid overlap We're supplementing your efforts and we're supporting your goals, right? We're all working toward the same goals and it starts with communication and processes Right, that's where it starts is making sure that you're on that ahead of time now when we start a program We ask do you work with a PR agency? Do you work with any other agencies? Hey, can we get on the phone and talk to them? Hey, can we get some of these things sent in place? We actually work with the you know a company now and our PR process is so great We have great relationships with them and we have monthly calls and they send us their blog posts and their press releases And we send them, you know our blog posts and we have these relationships where it's like, okay We're all working toward the good of the client. It's a much better way We want to be integrated here, right because it helps us show value, but more so it goes back to this idea of accountability Is anyone here who has said they don't want to make more money? No, that's not a thing, right? No one's ever said that but when you look at content marketing salaries They're not exactly booming, right? They're pretty in line, but a little bit lower than the overall marketing a little bit lower than SEO And that's what I mean when I say we need to grow up because in order to increase that in order to be on the left We need to show value and we need to be able to be accountable to revenue. This is not okay Well, here's how we can do that Track all the things Right, we have the technology to do that we have analytics we have ever gauge we have visible we have tools like that Who can just track everything you're doing? One of our clients they track everything we track in content links the navigation their personalized content their banners their byline links We're integrated into their CRM and when a lead comes through that she's really excited about She sends us an email and says hey this lead came from this blog post that you guys sent This is awesome, and now I'm putting that in the quarterly report that goes to the execs And here's why that's important because last year their budget got cut and they cut all of their vendors except us Because they were able to see real value because we were tracking that and remember those interviews I talked about those interviews are with the CEO and the co-founder in the VP and They didn't want to get rid of us because they had interacted with us and they knew what we were doing They had firsthand view into our efforts That's really important Focus on doing things that are going to drive an impact. That's the other thing when we're thinking about time That just terribly sad story. I told you that same client. Guess what? They're not publishing our content But I still have to put together reports that say oh, yeah, this is growing Right, you still have to be accountable to that So we had to find other ways to do that and that meant looking at their existing content That was something we could do that was something that we could do that was going to make an impact Um, I started calling this the 510 concept But why I really like it is because it allowed me to get a slide of a wiener dog on stilts into my presentations This is so cute, but also it's pretty awesome, right? It's a pretty awesome concept And yesterday dr. Pete was talking about rankings and you know being in position like two through five Whatever it might be We like to go and look at content that's in positions five through ten The reason being is it's already in a pretty decent position But if we can move that up It's going to have an actual impact on traffic right if we can get that into position one two three the answer box Whatever it might be it's actually going to impact their content and here's a case study on that So we did this for a different client. We took a look. We found a keyword that was relevant Had a decent search volume. They had a pretty good piece about it We went and looked at the search result and here's what we found It had an answer box and it had people also ask boxes pretty common, right? We're seeing that a lot All right, so we looked at their competitors. What did their competitors content have? What does it look like? What kind of content it is? And we started refreshing the post we started adding in some of those questions We started making it more comprehensive and geared toward fitting into that search result and here's the result Month one not much happened month two Little bit of movement Months three it hit that answer box. We started replicating it across different posts. No, not all posts did this But when we're putting together that report We're actually able to show movement, right? We couldn't do those other things, but we were still driving results We were still having an impact We also have to stop creating content for the sake of creating content Please I beg you please just stop doing and we don't need two million blog posts a day I assure you and if someone's telling you that you do if someone's telling you that you need to be creating three posts a day Week month whatever it is ask why and pull the data to show well, here's what's working Hey, I loved Ali's presentation this morning when he was saying like I set this goal for myself But the reality is here's the thing that I actually wanted to achieve Goes back to our goals, right? Your content production should be tied to these These are the things that we need right track all the things focus on impact tie your content to goals That's what's going to change this Now I have to be honest I struggled a little bit when when putting this presentation together because it's not that tactical And I think you know it's it's one of those things where you want to balance like yes This is a tactical presentation. I want people to learn things, but at the same time I think we know tactics right there's a lot of tactics we can do that's much easier to learn But this changing this means changing our mindset And it's hard right like growing up is hard and on top of that while I'm sitting here asking you to change the game The game's already changing This was a description for a content marketing I'm pretty sure that the people who apply at our organization for content marketing aren't thinking they're gonna have to know CSS and programming But we do and it's cool like to me It's really exciting because we're now in this position where we have access to this data We can make decisions based on real data and we can take that decision and it can have a real impact on the business We have the opportunity to change what we're doing right to build our jobs to build what our roles To have value we have an opportunity to grow this into a position that we want Just have to make it happen Thank you