What if we told you that three men could drop so much value in 21:15 minutes that writing a 2175-word article feels like writing a flier?
You’d believe.
There are many podcasts about marketing and content strategy out there. Some hide value bombs. Yet the stuff Filip, Gio, and their guest David talk about isn’t recycled from YouTube or LinkedIn.
Their insights are rooted in experience and backed up by numerous successful projects. And if anyone was the perfect guest for this episode, it was the COO of Maoio, David Blažević.
Let’s take a glimpse at the content strategy gems you’ll find in this article:
- Does everyone need content?
- People who don’t know you don’t want to read your content (neither do those who know you)
- The content cluster keeps you focused and prevents getting overly excited
- Align your goals with Google to kill two birds with one rock
- Most people ruin their chances to rank by aiming for easy keyword
- New companies can outrank their competition by doing the obvious thing
- You need to be where your audience is – diversify your content
- If there are more decision-makers in the process – target them all
- The list of most important tips for creating a content strategy
Does everyone need content?
Guys didn’t touch this one until the end of the podcast because the answer should be clear. However, we’ll mention it here to remove any shadow of a doubt you may have about producing content for your business. If you want a short answer…
Yes.
If you want a longer answer…
Yes, you really do need content.
If you insist on an explanation…
Yes, you really do need content because that’s the way to build authority, reach more prospects, and, in the end, make more sales. After all, ideal customers will approach you when they need your help.
Of course, that won’t happen if your content doesn’t help them and they don’t believe you can give them the desired outcome. Luckily, our guys shared a ton of value.
Get ready to gain a deeper understanding of content and how to create a good content strategy… But don’t get scared by the headline below. It’s not personal; that’s just how people are.
People who don’t know you don’t want to read your content (neither do those who know you)
One of the most common challenges and misconceptions about approaching content strategy is assuming that everyone waits for you to hit publish so that they can admire your content.
Unless you’re in the entertainment business, people don’t want to consume your content solely because it exists. Your audience wants to get value.
And as David said:
“Visibility is the first thing. Secondly, you must think strategically to give your audience what it wants. You must consider search queries and then focus on answering those queries with your content.”
People want to get from their current state (in which they have a problem) to their desired state (in which that problem doesn’t exist anymore).
Your content should help them get closer to the desired state by providing solutions for their specific problems. In a way, your content is a vehicle that should move the audience from state A toward state B.
But don’t cut the branch you’re sitting on by throwing everything out there for free. You want to help and create a relationship based on trust. Still, you want to position your product or service as THE vehicle that will take your audience from wherever it is to point B (the desired state).
That’s one of the hidden reasons why most coaching businesses can’t scale. If you give everything for free, there’s no need to buy from you. Then again, if your content doesn’t provide enough value, no one will read or watch it. Luckily, the solution exists.
The content cluster keeps you focused and prevents getting overly excited!
The content cluster is the foundation of your content strategy. Without it, it’s easy to get careless and produce blogs or videos that don’t interest anyone.
As Filip said:
“You need to have a proper topic cluster and communicate to your ideal customer or those whose problems you can solve. You need to narrow it down… Nowadays, people are doing content for the sake of doing content, which is simply wrong.”
Giovanni added:
“There’s no assumption about the topics. Oh, I think this is a great topic because we as a company believe that. There should be a confirmation through data that you understand what your audience searches for.”
Writing blogs to have something on your site isn’t a good strategy. It’s better to have 0 blogs than 430 poorly written articles that don’t help your audience.
Yes. Even poorly written articles can rank, but for how long? Did you forget who’s the boss when it comes to written content? Who determines if your audience sees your blogs?
Google!
Wrong!
Google might have the last word, but you can affect its decision more than some business owners think.
Align your content strategy with Google
You can have the best site and fill it with the most valuable blogs, but if Google doesn’t see your site as something worth showing to the audience, you won’t get much traffic.
Ask yourself how you can help your audience and create quality content around that topic (based on research) to help your audience get results. Some will solve their problems (and be thankful for that), but some will need more help. And that’s where you take over…
“If they give so much value for free and they’ve helped others like me, they can do the same for me…”
That’s how people see those who share knowledge with them.
That’s why companies with quality content marketing don’t have to do much outreach. Their audience trusts them because they’ve helped them in the past.
And the more people get value from your content, Google will trust you more and rank you higher. SEO, when done right, is like a magic loop – you help more people, you rank higher, you rank higher, you help more people…
That’s why Filip’s claim is one of the universal truths in modern marketing:
“You need to be on top of the game all the time. Consistency is crucial.”
However, consistently running in the wrong direction won’t get you closer to your goal. And checking out the competition is the trick to picking the right path for your content strategy.
Most people ruin their chances to rank by aiming for easy keyword
After knowing your audience, knowing your competition is a vital factor in determining your content strategy.
David:
“If you’re a young company (1-3 years, depending on your efforts) with a young domain, you don’t have a lot of authority with Google.”
David continued:
“When you find a KW with a lot of volume, you’ll find that you have a lot of competition, a lot of big sites, strong sites… That’s another mistake that people make…They think writing a long article around a KW with a lot of search volume is the best way to rank. No, no, no. You don’t have the necessary authority.”
But then David shows a way around that.
Pick KWs with less volume and check if your competition has low-level content around them. If you see a chance for improvement, write better articles on the topic. Google will recognize that and rank you higher.
However, better doesn’t necessarily mean longer.
If someone wants to find a recipe for fried eggs, they don’t want to read about chicken, eggs, nutrients in the eggs, etc. Maybe they do, but not at that moment. That’s why search intention is vital. You must provide the solution for their current problem at the right moment.
Teach them how to fry those eggs first, and let them know what eggs do to their body later. And that’s one of the biggest content marketing mistakes in 2022.
Companies want to look good for Google, so they answer queries such as, How to tie a shoelace with 5000 words articles where they first list the complete history of shoes. We understand that such companies want to cover as many KWs as possible, get longer dwell time, and get more shares.
But if you focus only on Google, you forget about people. And people want solutions for their problems now, not after scrolling through 2000 words of irrelevant stuff.
So instead of you working for Google, make them work for you by creating better, more specific content around KWs with lower search volume (less competition).
New companies can outrank their competition by doing the obvious thing
We know how overwhelming creating and implementing a content strategy can be, especially if you’re just starting. New Google updates every couple of months, uploading stuff to your site, creating content… All of those require attention and time.
And new companies usually want to focus on their business instead of content. We’ll start investing in content once we grow a little bit. That prevents many new companies from scaling quickly and reaching their full potential.
Imagine you and your competitors are walking in a desert. The water well is 10 miles away… They started walking a long time ago; you’re far behind. But then you order a taxi and wave goodbye (or flip them a bird) when your cab passes their camels.
The same is with content marketing and creating a foolproof content strategy. It doesn’t matter how far ahead of you the competition is. You can catch up if they’re standing still (or moving slowly). No. You can even take the lead.
The best way for new companies to outrank their competition is to invest in SEO and PPC. Those who can afford the marketing takeover service from a proven growth agency have even less to worry about.
They can focus on doing their job while the agency takes care of the content, copywriting, branding, etc. And high-quality marketing takes more and more time every day because new platforms are emerging, which scatters potential audiences. That’s why you must…
Diversify your content – you need to find your audience, not the other way around!
As Filip mentioned, attention is more valuable than gold nowadays. Grabbing attention is one of the tricky tasks for every business. And to grab attention, you need to give them what they want in the form they want.
You can write the best articles in your industry… But writing blogs is futile if your audience consumes only video content. Yes, articles might help you rank… But where’s the point if your audience never looks for written content?
That’s why knowing your audience matters more than anything else. Without that, you don’t have a content strategy; you have a file full of guesses. And hope isn’t a good foundation for any business.
However, sometimes you’ll need to record Tik-Tok videos, write blog articles, send letters, maybe even pigeons (if you want to make a statement). But how to know when to divide your content-creating resources and when to hit only one content type?
If there are more decision-makers in the process – target them all
At the end of the podcast, David mentioned a client who has an online drawing academy for kids. There are 2 decision-makers in that situation, so we needed to convince both sides that our client is the perfect solution for them.
It was crucial to hook the kids with TikTok videos (because that’s where they are, and they seek video content). But without green lights from parents, all those kids who wanted to sign up because of the TikTok videos couldn’t do anything.
We produced blog posts for parents (because they want to read). Those articles let parents understand all the benefits our client provides for their kids. Kids and parents meet in the middle and conclude that signing up would benefit everyone.
But that’d be impossible if we insisted only on blogs or only on TikTok. Yes, our client would still get some students, but not nearly as many because:
- Kids who watch engaging and entertaining videos would fail to share the benefits of the drawing academy with their parents
- Parents who read informative blogs would have to force kids to sign up because they’ve seen the benefits (but kids might not have any desire to try something they’ve never seen)
You must remove all the friction if you want to convert people, and your content should do that. Content makes the sales process smoother. So we’ll leave you with a short checklist for a good content strategy.
The list of the most important tips for creating a content strategy
At the end of the podcast, Gio asked David to share the most important things to consider when it comes to content planning and creating. It’s just 14 words but packs everything you need:
- Know your audience
- Research your competition
- Always A/B test everything
- Diversify your content
Memorize that. It’s relevant now; it will stay relevant in 2023 and beyond.
