Episode 37
Creating an AI-Proof SEO Strategy With Parthi Loganathan
If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 2,200+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/
In this episode, Justin chats with Letterdrop's CEO Parthi Loganathan about the art of repurposing and distributing content for SEO. Parthi, drawing from his experience at Google and in the startup world, shares his insights on the evolution of SEO and its impact on content creation.
They dive into the importance of understanding customer needs and crafting high-quality, customer-centric content. From repackaging webinars to leveraging unique perspectives, they explore various strategies for increasing discoverability and engagement. Don't miss out on this engaging conversation that might just revolutionize your content strategy.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to differentiate your content and provide unique perspectives
- How to leverage customer conversations to create valuable SEO content
- Why SEO and "Push Channels" work together to capture and generate demand
CHAPTERS
[00:00:00] Intro
[00:01:49] SEO: Then & now
[00:08:39] Misconceptions about SEO
[00:15:41] Utilizing sales calls for unique blog content.
[00:24:25] Demand Capture vs Demand Creation
[00:30:31] Final Thoughts
***
CONNECT
🔔 LinkedIn: @justincsimon
🐦 Twitter @justincsimon
✉️ Email: hello@justinsimon.co
***
SPONSOR
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of my podcast production.
They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more.
Transcript
Everybody. Before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for producing
Speaker:this episode. You can get unlimited podcast, editing and strategy for
Speaker:one flat rate by visiting Hatch FM.
Speaker:All right, let's get in the show.
Speaker:Welcome to Distribution First, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week, I
Speaker:share playbooks motivations stories and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you
Speaker:created.
Speaker:Everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution First. Super
Speaker:excited to have Parthi ladder drop on. We are going to get
Speaker:practical, tactical, really kind of get into the weeds a little bit on
Speaker:how to better repurpose and distribute probably content
Speaker:that you're already creating or most companies are planning to
Speaker:create. And then how you can use those pieces of content
Speaker:to just build a little bit of momentum or build on top
Speaker:of each other to where you're not having to constantly reinvent the wheel, which is
Speaker:what we're all about here on distribution first. So, Parthi, welcome to the show. Thanks
Speaker:for having me, Justin. It's interesting, one of the things we talked about,
Speaker:kind of this evolution of SEO, a little bit of
Speaker:how things have changed, right? Like things have changed a lot. Like
Speaker:Google's releasing new algorithm updates all the time. I'm seeing it
Speaker:like, hey, people are getting hit by know some people are, some
Speaker:people aren't. I think to start, I'd be interested to just kind of get your
Speaker:generalized take on where SEO is headed, what's
Speaker:happening in that space, and kind of where you see it evolving from
Speaker:there. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to share my perspective. And
Speaker:for context, I think my perspective is informed from a couple of different
Speaker:places. A, I used to work on the search team at Google as a
Speaker:product manager there, back around 2016 to
Speaker:2019 or so. And now I'm kind of
Speaker:on the other side in startup land, building businesses,
Speaker:helping companies think about marketing, and helping companies think about SEO. And
Speaker:so I've kind of seen both sides of this. And so one
Speaker:thing remains the same, which is kind of like the ethos behind
Speaker:search, which is try to get people answers to their
Speaker:questions. You search for something, how can we actually search what's out on
Speaker:the web across different types of media and actually give people something
Speaker:that answers their questions? So that has remained true for the past
Speaker:25 years across Search now, how
Speaker:effectively Google actually executes against that is a
Speaker:different question because it's this sort of like Whack a
Speaker:Mole game where a lot of people realize this. They realize that's a great distribution
Speaker:channel to get your evergreen content out there and get people coming to
Speaker:you. And obviously people are trying to figure, okay, like, how do I
Speaker:game the system? And that leads to a lot of bad behavior
Speaker:leads to a lot of people putting out stuff that's not so
Speaker:great, which also makes the search experience worse. So I
Speaker:think when people think about SEO, they should just think about the
Speaker:macro level of this ecosystem and what people are trying to do.
Speaker:So fast forward to today search has definitely
Speaker:changed. It used to be page rank and backlinks
Speaker:and then started looking at the actual content of sites, and
Speaker:that was pretty simplistic in terms of keywords. And now today
Speaker:with LMS over the past couple of years, Google has like their Palm
Speaker:Two model, their Gemini model coming out soon. You've seen Chat? GPT?
Speaker:GP four. Cloud two. All of these models. We have something
Speaker:that sort of resembles understanding of actual
Speaker:content. I think this is like Net good in the sense
Speaker:that it's helping machines actually understand and to
Speaker:differ between bad content and good content instead of actually answering
Speaker:the question. On the flip side of this, you also have the problem
Speaker:where people are abusing the technology and being like, okay, let's just pump out
Speaker:thousands and thousands of pages. It goes kind of both ways.
Speaker:I think at the crux of it as a company, most people
Speaker:should just understand that if you do what is best
Speaker:for your customer first, that's where you need to start. Do what's best
Speaker:for your customer, answer their questions, think about
Speaker:SEO second, and then go back to your content and think
Speaker:about, how do I make this easier for Google to
Speaker:understand as a second step? First step is definitely making sure it's for your
Speaker:customers. I think that will serve you best in the long
Speaker:run, independent of any sort of like Google update. The
Speaker:people who are generally impacted by this stuff over a longer period of
Speaker:time tend to be the people who did something wrong or
Speaker:weren't really thinking about their customers. It might last for six months, for
Speaker:a year, but over the long term, everybody at Google is working to
Speaker:make sure that that doesn't happen. And so that's my general advice.
Speaker:And I think there's more of a focus on information
Speaker:and having comprehensive answers to people's questions
Speaker:and being very customer centric and people first in the future of
Speaker:SEO. And I'm very excited about it. I'm with you. I think it's
Speaker:interesting, from the origins of SEO, you talk to
Speaker:anybody who was there when that was really sort of on the
Speaker:upswing. Black hat, white hat, all these things like how do we
Speaker:game it, how do we take this thing and twist it to where we can
Speaker:be number one, right? It's a little bit of a little bit of a game
Speaker:to try to do that. Despite all of
Speaker:the evolution of content, that's still kind
Speaker:of in the background in some of the SEO conversations
Speaker:in some of the world is like, because it's a very clear
Speaker:ranking system, right? There's a winner and there's a loser. There's a number
Speaker:one and there's a number 100. Right? And I've played
Speaker:those games. I'm eight. How do I get to three? What levers
Speaker:hey, everybody, let's get in a room. What levers do we pull to
Speaker:try to do that? While those conversations are
Speaker:fine and maybe valuable, at some point in time, it skips
Speaker:completely past what you mentioned, which is customers and what's useful to
Speaker:the end user. A lot of times the irony of that
Speaker:is to go from eight to five to eight to three, you have to
Speaker:have the best piece of content. It may not be that overnight thing, but if
Speaker:you do try to create the best piece of content for the audience,
Speaker:for the people who click on it, who, when they get there, they get what
Speaker:they need, you're not filtered with a definition and this and a that, and a
Speaker:blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, there, now I finally get my answer. Over
Speaker:the long term, you're probably going to win what you're saying? Right? Like, I think
Speaker:that's maybe the overarching thing that I would think about
Speaker:is with SEO, you have to think long term. It's
Speaker:not always this sort of like which is funny, because I think from
Speaker:the performance metrics standpoint, the thinking around it is keywords. I
Speaker:can get dashboards, I can show it feels short term, but overall it's really
Speaker:like a zooming out to look at the graph of
Speaker:over time growth versus the
Speaker:daily dip. It's like the stock market a little bit. Yeah, I
Speaker:totally agree. And I feel like here's a
Speaker:rule of thumb that we have internally at letterdrop for our own
Speaker:content. If we have a page on our website,
Speaker:we don't feel comfortable sharing it directly with a customer via
Speaker:customer support or in the sales cycle. It's not good enough
Speaker:because you secretly are ashamed of sharing this with somebody. You don't think
Speaker:it's helpful. Then why does it deserve to exist? Why does it deserve to
Speaker:be found via Google? And I don't think a lot of people think about that
Speaker:bar. They're thinking about vanity metrics like traffic. They're like, it's fine if
Speaker:it ranks somehow. Maybe there's low competition, there's nothing
Speaker:else better out on the internet. Or maybe I've tricked Google to get it to
Speaker:rank. But then what? They get to your page. A real person gets to your
Speaker:page, they look at it and they think to themselves, this is garbage.
Speaker:You're not giving them a chance to even understand
Speaker:what's going on. Build trust, be like these people, know what they're talking
Speaker:about, and then look for a CTA, click
Speaker:through, explore your site. And eventually what you're looking
Speaker:for with SEO is to become a customer to get them educated. And
Speaker:so I think it's that kind of short term thinking that's
Speaker:going to really hurt people or why SEO
Speaker:gets a bad rep. And I feel very strongly about this. Having worked in the
Speaker:search team. I feel like SEO is a dirty word now, and
Speaker:it really shouldn't be. It's a great way to search for information. It's
Speaker:just been abused quite a bit. Yeah. And I think sometimes
Speaker:people have internally have the wrong
Speaker:idea about SEO, which I think skews a lot of those things. I
Speaker:know just personally, as somebody who built content engines around
Speaker:SEO, you can fudge the numbers great, look at all
Speaker:these keywords we're ranking for, look at all our top ten pages, blah, blah, blah,
Speaker:blah, blah. But unless those things are
Speaker:converting or drawing people in or driving
Speaker:traffic, who cares? I've audited companies where they're ranking
Speaker:for lots of terms and they're number one or they have the
Speaker:snippet, and then you go there and it's just some tangential
Speaker:piece of content that doesn't kind of relates. But
Speaker:ranking number one really isn't doing anything for that other than you
Speaker:saying you're sort of padding your stats a little bit in terms of what that
Speaker:looks like. So I'm curious. And then we'll get
Speaker:into some of the practical stuff. What are some of the
Speaker:elements, things that people as you're building out this
Speaker:SEO content? Because I think that's the other thing too. Maybe when people think SEO
Speaker:content, this giant wall of text, 2000 words
Speaker:cram as much information on this page as I possibly
Speaker:can get all the FAQs on the end,
Speaker:I'm assuming that's evolved. What are some of the things that when you
Speaker:all are creating content, letter drop, when you're talking to other people, what
Speaker:are those things you advise they include? How should people sort
Speaker:of evolve their thinking around an SEO blog post? I
Speaker:think everything essentially revolves around search intent. So
Speaker:when someone searches for something, what is the underlying thing that they're
Speaker:looking for? If you put yourself in their shoes, what's the quickest
Speaker:way you can give them an answer and then kind of expand on
Speaker:that in a way that's relevant to them? And
Speaker:the way you answer search intent might be in different formats. It's not just
Speaker:like long walls of text. Sometimes search for how to
Speaker:tie your shoes. It's probably a YouTube video, for example. Certain things are better
Speaker:addressed by video, by charts
Speaker:illustrations, by first party opinions on
Speaker:reddit or quora, or by detailed
Speaker:research PDF. Search intent really matters. And
Speaker:so what I would say is, first put
Speaker:yourself in the shoes of your visitor and figure out what can
Speaker:I give them? I think it is useful to
Speaker:look at what Google is currently surfacing to people
Speaker:and understanding like, hey, is this a
Speaker:video? Is this a chart? What does Google think the right way to
Speaker:answer this is? And there's a lot of tooling out there,
Speaker:including artists, which does this in varying ways. But I think what's
Speaker:more important here is also figuring out how are you going to actually
Speaker:tell a story or say something that's unique, especially
Speaker:over the past couple of years with LLMs and it becomes easier and easier
Speaker:to just copy people skyscraper content. And so
Speaker:earlier this year, Google has said they launched
Speaker:Perspectives. They're really on perspectives. How do we get more people on
Speaker:YouTube videos, TikTok Reddit, Quora, first party opinions, and how do we
Speaker:surface that in search results? So you want to think about how do you embed
Speaker:real live opinions from experts in your pages.
Speaker:So think about multimedia, think about how do I pull in a
Speaker:quote for somebody, how do I do a podcast with somebody, how do I extract
Speaker:that, how do I embed that in my page? That's going to help you with
Speaker:search. And the second big thing is information gain.
Speaker:How do you stand out? How do you say something that nobody else is saying?
Speaker:If we say the same thing and HubSpot says the same thing, and
Speaker:HubSpot is HubSpot massive presence, like defined
Speaker:inbound marketing, there is no way or no reason for
Speaker:Google to say pull letter drops content up there when HubSpot is
Speaker:saying the same thing. There is a reason for Google to pull up our
Speaker:content or something that we say. If we say something that HubSpot isn't
Speaker:saying that answers search intent. So can we pull that unique customer
Speaker:perspective? Can we run an original study? Can we do something that's
Speaker:unique that warrants being pulled up? Especially
Speaker:with Google rolling out their search SGE experience, their sort
Speaker:of like AI experience on top of search, it is reading all these
Speaker:pages and it's trying to construct an answer based on what it's seen
Speaker:out there. And if it sees the same definition,
Speaker:what is X? Time after time across every page, it's
Speaker:just going to be like, okay, I got what is X from that first page.
Speaker:I don't need to get what is X from page number seven, but page number
Speaker:eight is talking about this really unique perspective that none of these other
Speaker:pages are talking about. I want to pull that up and surface it to people.
Speaker:And this is why I'm excited about the future with this,
Speaker:as scary as it is, is because it is generally moving in the
Speaker:right direction in terms of getting people unique information and getting people
Speaker:closer to answers from first party. Google understands that people are appending
Speaker:reddit at the end of searches for a reason and they're trying to
Speaker:really address that. It gets me really excited too, because I think one of
Speaker:the downfalls or the maybe
Speaker:more boring aspects of SEO content that
Speaker:I've lived through is that it does sometimes feel
Speaker:like you're trying to just copy and paste what
Speaker:one, two and three are doing. Even to
Speaker:all the title tags are the same seven ways, four ways,
Speaker:eight ways, and it's just like a different number and they're all the same.
Speaker:It all just kind of ends up feeling the same
Speaker:to where now if you can stand
Speaker:out and be unique even from a title tag.
Speaker:I'm sure you're this way. I'm sure most users you know
Speaker:what to avoid at this point, right? You're scrolling a LinkedIn
Speaker:feed. You know what ads look like before it takes you like a
Speaker:millisecond to, oh, that's an ad. I'm going to keep going. Google Search
Speaker:no different. I know by that title tag what type of post that is. It's
Speaker:not giving me what I want. That's going to be generic. And so having those
Speaker:unique perspectives, those unique ways of doing content, I think
Speaker:is going to be massively important. A, because
Speaker:you're competing with other people, and LLMs for
Speaker:generic answers, but B, people
Speaker:engage with other people. We want to know what other people think. We want to
Speaker:know it's why Reddit is so popular. You know what I mean? I've even
Speaker:found myself doing that more. And I'm not even a massive engagement
Speaker:on Reddit by any means. I type something in. I want to see what is
Speaker:this person's real life perspective on this thing that
Speaker:I'm searching for? For me, inherently, it might be wrong. I have
Speaker:to use some brain cells to figure out like, do I agree with that? Is
Speaker:that correct? Is this right? But it at least is a unique
Speaker:perspective versus the sort of canned answer I may get if I
Speaker:just click on the number three blog post that's ranking for
Speaker:that. Sometimes Surfer Dude 97 from
Speaker:Reddit is more trustworthy than your HubSpot
Speaker:blog. You never know sometimes because, honestly, Surfer Dude 97 is probably
Speaker:in the trenches right now trying to figure it out where that HubSpot blog hasn't
Speaker:been updated in two and a half years and stuff changes totally, which is
Speaker:wild. So I think that's a great transition point, like going to
Speaker:unique. How do we do that? One of the things you had mentioned to me
Speaker:was being able to use things like case studies
Speaker:or sales calls or things like using these
Speaker:pieces of content that are happening.
Speaker:Every company is doing sales calls consistently. How do we think about
Speaker:using those for sales enablement? How do we think about
Speaker:repurposing or distributing those things out for adding
Speaker:them into blog posts for SEO, for instance, to add that unique
Speaker:perspective? I think that's one of the things like, oh, how do I get
Speaker:unique perspective? Man, sales calls feels like a gold mine to me to be able
Speaker:to start mining, to be able to do that. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:And I think taking a step back, what is the purpose of
Speaker:content at a business? Right? Primary purpose is like customer education.
Speaker:How do you get someone to go from unaware
Speaker:to problem aware to solution aware, to product aware,
Speaker:eventually buying your product? That's pretty much it. That is
Speaker:universally true of content. Now, how you distribute that
Speaker:content and what types of content belong on different channels, that is
Speaker:a separate problem. And so I think a lot of people start thinking
Speaker:about SEO as its thing on its own, or like LinkedIn as
Speaker:its thing on its own or Podcast as its thing on its own. But the
Speaker:same ideas can work on all of these different channels. They're packaged
Speaker:differently. But the same ideas can work on all these different channels. And
Speaker:all of these content ideas come from the same places. Sales
Speaker:calls or essentially conversations with your customers or
Speaker:conversations with your teammates, conversations with partners.
Speaker:Conversations like this essentially, right? It's like people talking to
Speaker:people, educating each other about how to do something and
Speaker:helping them get work done. And that's what B, two B
Speaker:buyers for the most part really care about it's just like how do I do
Speaker:my job? I do think every marketer should be really
Speaker:thinking about beyond just like keyword research because nobody really needs
Speaker:another top of fun. What is X in your category? I can guarantee
Speaker:unless your category is completely brand new, it's saturated to hell. That's not
Speaker:what you need. What you really need is trying to figure out, hey, what do
Speaker:our actual customers care about? What are the problems they're coming to us with? What
Speaker:are the questions that they're asking? You're going to find these
Speaker:in customer success calls, you're going to find these in sales calls, you're going to
Speaker:find these in communities, you're going to find these on
Speaker:LinkedIn, you're going to find these out there in the world where
Speaker:people are actually asking these questions. And that kind of stuff
Speaker:is a great source for what you should be creating content
Speaker:about. So at Letter Drop, for example, a lot of our
Speaker:content is influenced by what we hear from people
Speaker:in the community and on our sales calls, which is why
Speaker:we even bothered to build tooling to automate that as well.
Speaker:And so I think what people should
Speaker:really be focusing on is once we have these right ideas,
Speaker:how do I now maximize and going back to what your podcast is
Speaker:completely about is like repurposing distribution. How do I take this
Speaker:nugget of good information and how do I just put it out in as many
Speaker:places as possible where it makes sense? And so
Speaker:if you get a quote from a customer on a sales call, you sure as
Speaker:hell want to post that on LinkedIn, maybe anonymize if they are not comfortable
Speaker:with it. But here is what somebody who looks like you, who's
Speaker:another whatever CTO or another product
Speaker:marketer is saying and you want to post that on LinkedIn, or
Speaker:maybe you include that as a quote in your blog post, or maybe you even
Speaker:have a clip of that recording. You put that on
Speaker:YouTube and clip it and put on social media or Instagram or TikTok or whatever
Speaker:you have you. And so I think the really important part is
Speaker:going back to what I said earlier about unique perspectives. Those unique perspectives
Speaker:are going to come from these conversations happening in your
Speaker:community or with your customers. You want to make sure you are a
Speaker:noticing them, b saving them, c extracting them, and
Speaker:then D actually putting them out into all of your content to make it
Speaker:unique. Because this is essentially what's going to make you stand out from your
Speaker:competitors. If your competitors can say the same, if you
Speaker:take your content and post it on your competitors website or
Speaker:LinkedIn or what have you, your content is not
Speaker:sufficiently differentiated and you need to think a little bit more
Speaker:carefully about how do I use our internal resources to tell
Speaker:our unique story. Distribution in
Speaker:repurposing is only as good as the content you have to
Speaker:distribute or repurpose. And so one of the things I always try to work with
Speaker:from the jump is what are your strong points of view, which is kind of
Speaker:what you mentioned earlier, and using
Speaker:that to reverse engineer and using that as a gut check to the content
Speaker:you are even thinking about creating. So if you have a list out
Speaker:of your top points of view and sometimes the bigger the, the harder it is
Speaker:to maybe come up with those things or get alignment on those things. But it's
Speaker:still super important. This doesn't even have to be for the
Speaker:company moving on. It could be for a campaign. Hey, we've got this campaign going
Speaker:out. What is our sort of stake in the ground for this campaign? What are
Speaker:we trying to get across? And then you find the things to support that
Speaker:and then you start building those things around that to be able to
Speaker:actually make sure that point of view is getting out. Because sometimes it's
Speaker:easy to say, yeah, we believe that. And then you audit the content and you
Speaker:say, oh, we haven't said that in a year, we believe this. And I said,
Speaker:well, if you audit what's on your LinkedIn page right now, you don't believe that
Speaker:just because, you know, you believe that nobody else knows. You believe that because you
Speaker:haven't said it. And so it's like being able to understand that and then
Speaker:just ten x it because it's going to take ten to 20
Speaker:times of repetition over months and months to be like, oh,
Speaker:I get it. I'm just now seeing this a year into this.
Speaker:Justin, distribution first. Yes. So. Justin's. Justin.
Speaker:Content hamster. Get off the content hamster wheel. Okay, well, I've only
Speaker:said it a million times over the last year and a half, so finally is
Speaker:starting to hit a little bit. But I'm curious,
Speaker:with the sales calls, like, you go into Hrefs, you go into
Speaker:Samurai, you're like, nobody's looking for this. How do you balance that in
Speaker:terms of being able to prioritize this is what people are actually
Speaker:asking versus like, well, we're getting a zero
Speaker:back. How do you kind of take that leap to be able to actually create
Speaker:that piece of content? Or is it in that case, maybe not a blog
Speaker:post? Is it something else? I will always pick the customer question
Speaker:over any data from SEMrush or Href. Case in point.
Speaker:And I've seen this across our customers. I've seen this across ourselves. Our
Speaker:best performing blog post from SEO
Speaker:perspective, that has brought us in probably three or four
Speaker:customers in the past month or so, has
Speaker:zero search volume. Like NA on SEMrush.
Speaker:As far as SEMrush is concerned, no one is searching for it. It doesn't
Speaker:mean no one is searching for it. What it really means is that the methods
Speaker:SEMrush or Ahrefs use to estimate
Speaker:and these are estimates, estimate search volume are off.
Speaker:They're putting click trackers on people's web pages, all that stuff.
Speaker:Maybe people who are my customers
Speaker:aren't in that representative sample of people have these click trackers. And so
Speaker:from SEMrush's perspective, looks like no one's searching for it.
Speaker:So that's my first point. So even if no people
Speaker:on SEMrush are Hrefs, or even like 30 people are searching for it,
Speaker:it's fine. I would rather get 30 qualified people
Speaker:to my site and have five of them convert and actually
Speaker:drive revenue for my business than go for some
Speaker:super fluffy term where they're in the unaware stage, has
Speaker:20,000 people searching for it, but they're never going to be customers, at least
Speaker:in the near future. And so I would always listen to your customers
Speaker:over any of that data. That data is just a gut check. More
Speaker:so than anything, I think a lot of SEO strategies which
Speaker:start purely from keywords, especially in
Speaker:2023, are kind of like doomed to fail. Like you really should be starting from
Speaker:your customer and not from keywords. Keywords are secondary. They're just a data
Speaker:point. The second thing I will say about this
Speaker:is SEO is a pull channel
Speaker:demand capture. Someone's searching for something, you just happen to be there, you get in
Speaker:front of them, and then you have your push channels, which are like social
Speaker:media, newsletters, all those kinds of things, where you're pushing
Speaker:something out into the world, and that's more so demand
Speaker:generation. And I think these work in tandem. You
Speaker:push a lot of stuff out into the world, you repeat yourself
Speaker:a million times, and people finally get distribution first, and then they go
Speaker:Google it, and then you kind of capture that later. And so both of these
Speaker:work in harmony. And so in some ways, you can actually
Speaker:create that demand on your push channels
Speaker:by saying distribution first, distribution first, so many times to
Speaker:the point where you start creating that demand, and now you can capture it
Speaker:via SEO as well. So even if there's no one searching for it, you can
Speaker:now create it. There are companies, reverse ETL. There are a couple of
Speaker:companies in this space that was not a thing which existed two years
Speaker:ago, people made it a term, they started using it a lot.
Speaker:People start googling the term and the companies which made
Speaker:the category or the term capture that as well. So you can
Speaker:see how this cycle works. And so I think the
Speaker:TLDR here is always be customer centric. If a customer asks
Speaker:you something that's way more important than what you're seeing on SEMrush,
Speaker:it can be a blog post, it can also be a social media post. Once
Speaker:again, a good idea is a good idea and the way in which
Speaker:you layer that on or capture it is different. So maybe you do the social
Speaker:media post first because you're not in
Speaker:the demand capture phase of content, but then you also create
Speaker:the blog post later to actually capture that demand. And
Speaker:so going back to your point, just like good
Speaker:idea, once get it out everywhere.
Speaker:How do you maybe think about using webinars podcasts?
Speaker:These more multimedia. I mean, obviously I've got this show,
Speaker:so I've got my own ideas on it. But I'd love your take on it.
Speaker:How do you use those for blog content, for
Speaker:SEO content? I think one of the pitfalls is
Speaker:the classic we just throw the recording up after,
Speaker:or we throw up the recording and we also include the entire transcript underneath
Speaker:it. And it's like, well that's not great. Again, going back
Speaker:to user experience, not the best. I can't tell you a time
Speaker:I've ever read a transcript underneath a video unless I
Speaker:was watching the video and had to actually consume it as it was
Speaker:scrolling. How do you think about that Parthi? How do you think about using
Speaker:these? I mean, man, I was just on a call this
Speaker:morning creating six webinars a
Speaker:quarter. And what are we doing with them? Well, not much.
Speaker:We're building all this momentum up toward them and then fading them
Speaker:out. And so how do you think about repurposing those type of things for blog
Speaker:content, for SEO content, et cetera? I think for the vast majority of
Speaker:digital webinars and stuff like that, not a lot of people actually attend them
Speaker:live. A lot of people actually watch them later. And so your leads
Speaker:are not coming in. I feel like a lot of demand gen and sales folks
Speaker:are like, oh yeah, throw up a gated webinar and then we're
Speaker:going to get a bunch of emails and then we're spam the hell out of
Speaker:them. And I'm not saying you shouldn't collect emails and do. And I understand where
Speaker:sales is coming from with that, for sure. Our sales team also pressures us
Speaker:to do that. But I think there is a lot you can do with the
Speaker:actual content. I think the great thing about webinars is it's first
Speaker:party data. It's like people to people. It's human connection, people sharing their
Speaker:experiences. It is incredibly unique. It's a little bit of work
Speaker:to get going. You have to. Schedule time, have a conversation, all that kind of
Speaker:stuff. But this is where you're really going to stand out from having this kind
Speaker:of content. So I think the first thing people should be doing is thinking about,
Speaker:okay, how do I just really juice it for all it's worth? How do I
Speaker:get these insights out of there? How do I go back, audit all of our
Speaker:content, figure out the insights from this webinar, do
Speaker:snippets of these fit into our blog posts?
Speaker:Right? Can I take a snippet from this? Can I upload it to
Speaker:YouTube, clip it down? Can I take the quote, put it there and put it
Speaker:into a blog post somewhere? So that's going to help the blog post rank higher,
Speaker:it has more unique perspectives, all that kind of stuff. How do I take this
Speaker:and share it on social media? How do I once again take insights
Speaker:from here, clip it down, take a single insight, share it on
Speaker:LinkedIn, and then repetition matters. You can use that clip as many
Speaker:times as you want, post it every month if you want. Actually, social media is
Speaker:ephemeral. People forget really easily. And so I
Speaker:think a lot of people just leave their podcasts and webinars to
Speaker:die, just like somewhere on your website. Best case scenario,
Speaker:you maybe have a transcript, which to your point, nobody reads. You're missing
Speaker:out on SEO from that podcast or webinar not being
Speaker:discoverable because it doesn't have an easy to read
Speaker:text or blog companion to it that can be discovered via
Speaker:search. It is not being discovered via social media beyond maybe the
Speaker:initial launch because it's not being repurposed. Then insights from that are not being
Speaker:reposted. And I think a single webinar over a twelve month
Speaker:period can actually generate a lot of business for you if you take
Speaker:the energy to actually repurpose it. And so even
Speaker:me, I think we've probably talked about a lot of great stuff
Speaker:on this podcast. Once you publish this, I would love to take
Speaker:this. We're going to drop it into our own tool. We're going to turn into
Speaker:a blog post, we're going to clip it up, put into LinkedIn, and we will
Speaker:sure as hell have some of these insights. Whatever I'm seeing right now, our writers
Speaker:probably pull those put into our blog post and also post this
Speaker:to our social media. And I think content
Speaker:repurposing this way of getting one good idea and sharing it as many times
Speaker:as possible is going to really help companies, especially
Speaker:in this market, like do more with less and all that stuff. Instead
Speaker:of spending more money on new content,
Speaker:make sure you're collecting the sort of exhaust from your existing
Speaker:company, what's happening around you, in your community, within your
Speaker:company. Take that exhaust, recycle it, and put it
Speaker:out into the world again and you'll just get a lot more
Speaker:from writing that. Next, what is X Blog post
Speaker:love it Parthi. I'm just going to throw that on my website now and
Speaker:just have you explain the whole repurposing distribution
Speaker:value prop and then I can stop doing that.
Speaker:No, that was totally, totally agree. I think two
Speaker:huge things there. The one is being more strategic
Speaker:with what you're creating. I think a lot of times it feels
Speaker:like as content folks, we have to constantly be creating
Speaker:everything. So we have to do in tandem three blog
Speaker:posts a week and a webinar every month and a podcast and
Speaker:this and that. The more I'm
Speaker:working with other companies and reflecting on sort of
Speaker:my life in the past, but then also looking ahead to where content is
Speaker:going, it feels much more like there
Speaker:are seasons of content for the creators
Speaker:and for the content marketers out there. Where
Speaker:your audience? I know this is not an original thought, but your audience doesn't
Speaker:care about your publishing schedule. I promise you they don't. I promise you they
Speaker:don't. They have no clue that you have six webinars
Speaker:coming this month. They have no clue that you are
Speaker:doing this video series and hey, we release it every Tuesday and if we release
Speaker:it on Wednesday, they'd freak out because they're expecting it. No, they don't care.
Speaker:You're not stranger things. You're not great British. Breakup. You're not
Speaker:that. So you can get over that people aren't bated breath waiting for your thing
Speaker:to drop. But also the idea of
Speaker:understanding what content you have to
Speaker:revitalize SEO, that's a huge I have done
Speaker:that for years is what was once
Speaker:ranking started to drift. Let's go update it. That
Speaker:means refreshing the content, but that also means to your point,
Speaker:what multimedia content have recreated recently that we
Speaker:can inject new life into that old piece of content? What
Speaker:original thought can we put out there? It helps to
Speaker:reframe the way you're doing content to where it's how you get off the content
Speaker:hamster wheel honestly, is like understanding
Speaker:the purpose of the content and understanding going back to
Speaker:the customer centric nature of it is why are we doing what we're doing?
Speaker:A lot of times it's like, well when you think internally it's revenue
Speaker:growth and MQLs SQL. That agreed. But at the end of the day,
Speaker:especially for content teams, like you said, it's education. It's helping people
Speaker:view themselves as the ability to be a new type of
Speaker:person. This transformation, this idea that I was once this
Speaker:now I can be that. That's how you get buy in. That's how you
Speaker:more and more especially for people selling
Speaker:products, products are there's so many products now, it's
Speaker:unbelievable. And feature sets and all that can be cannibalized, right? Like you
Speaker:said with HubSpot example, right? Or you're just going to go up against Google will
Speaker:come in and do something and you're like, well now I'm going against Google. But
Speaker:if you have those unique takes, if you have those unique thoughts. If you have
Speaker:this unique perspective, people will buy in or they won't.
Speaker:And that's okay because the people who aren't going to buy in, they're probably not
Speaker:going to be your customer anyway, right. It goes back to that 20,000
Speaker:versus 30 clicks a month, while 20,000 that converts
Speaker:at zero. I'd rather have the 30 that convert at five.
Speaker:Absolutely. Totally. This has been super fun Parthi. I
Speaker:say this, I feel like after every episode and so I'm eventually going to have
Speaker:to start doing it. We will have to do around two at some point because
Speaker:I feel like there's a lot we left out on the table. But super pumped
Speaker:to have you on. I think you gave a lot of people really good insights
Speaker:in terms of how to do SEO the right way, how to think
Speaker:about content and think about SEO as just a distribution channel. In a lot of
Speaker:ways. It's just a piece of how you're doing content. It's
Speaker:not an end all, be all. It's not a content strategy and it's not
Speaker:keywords aren't a content strategy. So I think lots to take away here
Speaker:and super fun to have you on. Thanks party. Thanks for having me, Justin. It
Speaker:was a blast.
Speaker:All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution
Speaker:first, and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you
Speaker:so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in
Speaker:this episode, one way or another, into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand ten X your content and transform
Speaker:the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe to the show and sign
Speaker:up for my newsletter at Justinsimon Co so you don't miss
Speaker:a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next episode as well. And
Speaker:until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
