October 15, 2024 • 19 mins
We’re racing against the clock to cover the 8 most common content mistakes in under 20 minutes. From lacking a nuanced social media strategy to the pitfalls of not diversifying content formats, they chat about how these mistakes sabotage your ability to generate qualified leads and close high-value deals, and provide practical tips for avoiding these traps.
Join as we discuss:
Connect with us:
Benji: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benji-block/
James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescarbary/
Join as we discuss:
- The importance of a tailored approach to different platforms and why a one-size-fits-all strategy fails.
- How varying content formats and optimizing each element can enhance engagement and reach.
- The benefits of planning your content calendar wisely to include timely and relevant themes that resonate with your audience.
Connect with us:
Benji: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benji-block/
James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescarbary/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the next twenty minutes, we're breaking down the eight
common content mistakes that could be costing your business in
huge ways, fundamental errors that are sabotaging your ability to
connect with decision makers, produce qualified leads, and close high
value deals.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All right, James, I am starting my stopwatch. Now let's
give them eight you start, Okay?
Speaker 3 (00:26):
All right. First content mistake not having a social media strategy.
So this needs to be documented. You do not need
to treat or you should not treat all platforms the same.
That is stupid. TikTok is fundamentally different than YouTube, which
is fundamentally different than LinkedIn. You need people that actually
(00:48):
understand these platforms that are helping you shape the strategy
for each platform that you choose to execute on. When
you're thinking about YouTube, I want you to weigh in
on this. Don't use YouTube like a library. Understand that
it is. There is a great opportunity for massive distribution
if you can tailor your videos to actually get picked
(01:10):
up in discovery and in feed. But I know you
have some hot takes.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, well, I've even the last few days seen companies
that are so guilty of this library approach where it
looks like and that I could be wrong, but it
looks like multiple people are posting to YouTube all whenever
they can.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
So it's like we.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Had a podcast go live, a video podcast, and now
three other videos are burying it. One's showing to showcasing
a new part of the product, one is from a
live event that they just did. And it's like some
of these videos have thumbnails others of them have no thumbnail.
And so it's proof to me that their social strategy
at least has not gone all the way to YouTube.
And some of these are massive companies where you know
(01:49):
that they're using a platform for other social channels, but
they're not strategically thinking about how they're posting on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So again not having a social media strategy, this is
a big one.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And this could be we post and ghosts. This could
be you think you have the box checked, but it's
not really a strategy. It's like, as long as we're
putting content on these platforms, we're visible, and that counts.
Social media managers, I see you, it's a hard job,
but this is that's not a strategy, that's just posting.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I would also say if personality lad is not baked
into your social media strategy, meaning distribution is done through
personal profiles, particularly on LinkedIn, specifically B to B show.
So if you do not have baked into your strategy
the distribution from subject matter experts, executives, people on your
(02:39):
team that can speak to your market, you're doing it
wrong well.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
And if your content should be going out on those channels,
and in the same way if they are posting that,
you should be showing the type of reach that that's
those posts are getting the interactions that are happening on
those A lot of times that is overlooked, and that's
the value of content.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
All right. The second mistake that we see folks making
all the time is not diversifying your content or your formats.
So see this a lot. You know, Like I was
doing this talk in Iceland in a few weeks and
I was looking at hrefs, which is an SEO tool,
and I was looking at their thumbnails on their YouTube channel.
(03:22):
They have got an incredible YouTube channel. I think over
half a million subscribers for an SEO tool, which is insane.
But one of the things I observed is that all
of their thumbnails, like they don't use the same cookie
cutter template for a thumbnail. The thumbnail is developed for
that particular idea for that piece of content, and it
(03:44):
is optimized to get the click. So just like you know,
the title has to intrigue someone, the thumbnail has to
reinforce that, or it could be the opposite in the
hook in the hook, So those three things have to
have to dance together. But in not diversifying your content
or your formats, not thinking of new series, you're limiting
(04:07):
your marketing team's own creativity, which is a bad thing.
Hopefully you hired your marketing team because they are creative.
Your content ends up becoming way too navel gazing and
self promotional, and you need unique top of funnel content
so it's not just a bunch of product updates. And
so I think thinking about your content and how it
(04:30):
needs to be diversified and the different elements inside. Like
I was just looking at my LinkedIn content and it
hasn't been performing as well, and I'm like, okay, we
need to start changing up. We're diversifying it quite a
bit in the videos, but I think we need to
diversify how we do the opening for my LinkedIn short videos,
and so doing stuff that's different will keep people on
(04:52):
their toes and keep people interested. But I say this
to not put so much value in the diversification of
the format that you are under emphasizing the substance of
what's actually being said. And so that is an obvious
that I would hope that you would get listening to this, Like, Okay,
substance has to be there, but do a lot of
diversification and how you deliver that quality.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
So it's also what's working right now on a lot
of these platforms is if you're doing short form video
and you find a format that works, you should double
down on that format. So if you start a video
series that you do the same thing like every day,
Like if one of those videos hits, keep doing that thing.
And a lot of times in business we don't even
(05:35):
try a format like what's working right now on TikTok
or YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. I would advise you
to go check those out. But like, if you find
a format that hits, run with it and keep doing
the same thing, or start a whole series of that.
But the only way you get to that, That's why
the quality quantity debate often is start with quantity and
then go to quality. You need the reps in order
(05:56):
to figure out what works, and then you sustain it
by saying, oh, this is why someone's subscribing, and I
do more.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Of that, So I think this is huge and you've
got to diversify it your content.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Third mistake is not planning out far enough in advance.
I am very guilty of this, entrepreneur the add I
just like, I have an idea, let's go, but you
end up missing out on really key things and not
and there's no reason why you can't plan it further out,
just like, hey, let's think about this. You're in Q two,
(06:29):
let's think about the series that we want to try
in Q four, And obviously you're going to have new
ideas between now and then, building that flexibility, but factor
in holidays, industry events, company milestones, and when you start
to widen out the scope of your plan, you start
to see like, oh, we could do something because we've
got this new product feature that's releasing in Q three,
(06:52):
we should do a series around that. But when you're
always in the just last minute planning, you don't take
that bigger and you miss out on those ideas. The
fourth one that I'll talk about, and then I'm going
to kick it over to you is so you've got
not planning out far enough in advance, and then the
opposite of that, which is rigidly overplanning. So you have
(07:15):
to leave room to be reactive to what's happening on social,
what's happening in culture, what's happening in your industry. So
trends are always changing. So setting these firm deadlines and
expectations and not being willing to move off of them
and be flexible is going to ultimately cripple you. It's
going to make it's going to frustrate that.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You can tell team, you can tell how many layers
of red tape there are with a lot of these
big or B like especially B to B companies, because
all of the personality gets sucked out in the layers
and then the content comes out and what you thought
it was going to be, or even what it was
when it was recorded two completely different things. So one
(07:58):
of the questions that I would ask is, if we
create content for social that is about a certain cultural moment,
like this thing happens, we want to react to it
in real time, how many people do you have to
ask before you can hit send on that?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
If it's more than like one.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I would beg you to reconsider how you're posting on
social You really need you talk about this all the
time on LinkedIn, Like let the creator cook, Let the
creator be the creator. If you're hiring them to do
this type of posting, don't be so overrigid. Have the
things that are like, hey, this is a company non negotiable.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
That's the planning portion.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And then have that person that's like behind the keys
and it's like going to be on a hot streak,
like the Wendy's person.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I've been seeing Alex Lieberman talk about this, but like,
hire a twenty three year old that cares about your
industry and they should be doing memes, replying like every
single day based on what is what is relevant now
in this moment, Like let them do their thing.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That's good, all right, we're at nine minutes, ten seconds.
I'm gonna keep us cooking. There's number five under estimating
time for research and creation. So the heavier that the
lift is on a certain piece of content, the harder
it is to replicate. That also means the harder it
is to create. So if you're going to do original research,
you can get more eyeballs on that research because you're
(09:22):
doing work other people aren't doing. Why aren't they doing it?
Because it's really freaking hard to do, So we think
of these It's pretty easy to sit around the table
with creative people and throw out ideas, but you're gonna
need to back up timelines quite a bit if you
want that heavier lift. So if you can pick one
or two big projects and say we're gonna need six months,
(09:43):
we're gonna need nine months. Maybe we're only going to
do this once a year. These heavier lift things are
going to set us apart from a content perspective, but
they're going to take more time, so we can't underestimate
the time necessary. We also need to remember that this
is a long term investment that each piece is adding
on top of each other to this bank that you have.
So you want to do the heavier lift thing because
(10:06):
people will go back and reference it as you continue
to stack those on top of each other. The series
you're doing now lives on. Hopefully you can create some
stuff that's evergreen, but also you're coming out with a
new series and people again bingeable content that you're creating.
So that's number five. Number six is ignoring analytics at
each stage of the funnel. There are actually different metrics
(10:26):
we should be tracking. And so I want us to
think through the funnel a little bit. And if you
think about maximizing engagement at the top of the funnel,
how do you get more eyeballs on your content? How
do you get people as far as reach goes, like,
just get people engaging. You talk about the ninety seven percent,
how many of that that ninety seven percent can you
(10:47):
just relate to posts stuff that they might be interested in,
might make them better at their job. We're really kind
of looking at some vanity metrics at the top of
the funnel, and that's okay. There's a time and a
place for those types of things. You're also looking at comments.
If we move that to the middle of the funnel,
you're starting to learn about the audience you're thinking through,
Like is someone clicking on a resource that we provided.
(11:08):
If I could give credit to this person, I would
I heard it might have been a roundtable that you
did where he was talking about like love give or
something like that. But the idea that you'll like something
at the top of the funnel and if they like it,
you'll love this, and then they convert down at the bottom,
so you're thinking about learning more about the audience. And
(11:29):
then finally at the end when it's the bottom of
the funnel, now you're starting to think through conversion, you're
starting to think about downloads or purchases. So we get
this wrong all the time as far as be in
B to B, we don't measure the three.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
We just go like, did they convert?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah? And we also don't give ourselves time. I mean
we're very guilty of this. It's you spend a lot
of time in ideation and then you even give some
time if you're planning appropriately to the creation, but you
don't connect back and look at the analytics and then
have that inform your next round of ideation. And so
(12:09):
it's an easy step to forget. I just had to
talk to anacon our team. It was like, Hey, we
need to be looking at my LinkedIn content every single
week for the past week, going Okay, what worked, what
didn't work, and how are we going to get better
for next week based on what we learned this week.
It's just easy to just keep going and then you
(12:29):
end up in this spiral death trap of not getting
progressively better week after week. And that's even if you
know sayingram and Badri says this all the time, getting
one percent better every day, getting one percent better every day.
It takes one hundred days and you're you're at one
hundred percent better than you were. And so we have
to be more thoughtful about that.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
We've already mentioned number seven slightly, but I'll go into
it a little further. So number seven is under utilizing
the personal profiles of your execs and subject matter experts.
Your distribution plan is incomplete if you do not equip
the most visible people in your organization with stuff to post.
And so we make this mistake when we're planning content
(13:11):
where we're thinking through our company content calendar and we're
not helping plan some members of our team or a
subject matter experts planning their content or thinking of ways
that we could incorporate them and ask them questions. So
don't make that mistake. And also going back to the analytics,
review those analytics on a personal level, not just on
a company page level.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Number eight.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And we're only at thirteen minutes and fifty one seconds,
so we'll have time for our research roundup within the
twenty minutes Number eight is spreading across too many platforms.
When we polled what was that last year, maybe two
years ago, when we polled B to B content marketers,
their thing was lack of focus.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Like, what's the thing that's hindering you, hindering your team?
It's lack of.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Focus And I think that would go beyond marketing to
so many teams. They're being tasked with one hundred things
to do, and it's like, what do I prioritize what's important?
How do I have the follow up conversation with my
exec where I say, Hey, I know you say this
is important. Two weeks ago you said this is important?
Which one wins? Like, I don't have time for all
of this. So, going across platforms, what usually happens is
(14:15):
in an organization, someone is loud about, Hey, there's this
new thing we should try, and because it's new, it's exciting,
we add it to somebody's plate who already has a
full play.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Guilty. I wasn't going to say it, he said it.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
So we just have to be careful with this, Like
we know many times where we should invest the bulk
for B to B. It's primarily LinkedIn I've seen very
other few use cases. I will say, we work with
a client where Facebook Groups is the thing, so I
told them to double down on that. But that was
like one in the last thirty clients that I've talked to,
So really thinking through what would be the most important
(14:50):
and let's.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Over analyze that channel.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
If it is LinkedIn and you're also putting that content
on YouTube, care about YouTube, but care about LinkedIn more
and wait it in your conversations, in your review, think
about what's working on the platform you want it to
be working on.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
So we just hired a new marketing consultant and he
has really helped us with a relentless focus on original research.
So we're about to launch the twenty twenty five State
of Video Podcasting. You and I have talked ad nauseum
about the importance of original research, but we haven't done
(15:27):
any of it for like three or four years. To
do so taxing, it's so challenging to do, and we
ended up deciding to do this state of video podcasting,
and we figured out a way to do it to
where it's not as heavy of a lift as what
we did before. So now instead of like going out
and serve trying to survey hundreds of people. We're just
looking at the top one hundred and fifty podcasts and
(15:49):
analyzing are they on YouTube, are they on social, what's
the format of their show, what category in and so
it's you know, the top seventy five business podcasts, the
top seventy five general podcasts in the world, and we're
breaking down insights from it. We haven't even released it yet,
but we already are starting to get data coming back
(16:10):
from it that I know is going to help us
tell our story in the market better because now it's
not just our opinion. I can say only thirty two
percent of the best podcasts in the world have an
interview based format. I'm not just saying do cost to
commentary because it's it's my stick. It's no like the
best in the world, only less than a third of
(16:33):
them are using this format.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Yeah for a reason.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So anyway, all that to say, it took us getting
an outside consultant coming in to really allow us to
get focused here, and we can start to see now
that all of the other things we wanted to do,
staying active on social, like doing good YouTube content, like
all of these other things are going to come from
this upstream focus on this deep work that page has
been doing on the original research.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And someone out there is saying pillar car to pillar content.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah, Like yes, the pillar content.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And then a focused strategy of how that deep work
that someone on your team is doing is going to
flow into everything else. That's going to inform the product,
it's going to inform your marketing, it's going to inform
the show that you have. Like, yes, that is the
hub and spoke model. That is one hundred percent we
would preach that. Okay, we have two minutes to quickly
(17:24):
do a research round up, and I want to throw
a little bit of a curveball here, and I want
to give you research that I found to be kind
of misleading. So I'm going to bring you a few
stats that I found in a HubSpot report and it's
it's just interesting to see how people are conflicted around
video sometimes. So here's the fuse that I wanted to highlight.
Number one, ninety one percent of businesses use video as
(17:46):
a marketing tool in twenty twenty three, so this was
last year. Forty two percent of video marketers say they
spend between zero and five hundred dollars on average. On
an average video YouTube is most the most widely used
video marketing platform, and then last short form video is
the top trend. Marketers report leveraging in twenty twenty three.
Here's the problem. I have looked at so many business websites.
(18:10):
I have looked at the marketing material, I have looked
at the YouTube channels.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
I've looked at all of.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
This stuff, and this makes it seem like we're in
a good place with video and we're just not. These
numbers lie because these stats might be true that people
are like, yeah, we our business uses it for marketing,
but those are product video video emails.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Your sales teams sit out video emails is not what
we're talking about here.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yes, so when you hear these numbers from I would
think there would be more people on the front lines,
forward leaning going.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Video is so important. We're doubled down.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
We're doubling down on it in a way that's provocative,
that's interesting, that's exciting. But really what this says is
people are unaware of how to be effective with video
in twenty twenty four because they're doing what they've seen
other people do, which is primary using video as either
an ad that they run before a video that's highly
(19:04):
produced with no true personality from the team in it,
or it's bottom of the funnel product videos and there's
not this good usage of video to be personality led
to do ongoing series. So very interesting stats from HubSpot,
but I would say sort of misleading. We got to
be intentional about the data that we take in because
it informs everything we do. All right, close us out,
(19:28):
we are out.
In the next twenty minutes, we're breaking down the eight
common content mistakes that could be costing your business in
huge ways, fundamental errors that are sabotaging your ability to
connect with decision makers, produce qualified leads, and close high
value deals.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All right, James, I am starting my stopwatch. Now let's
give them eight you start, Okay?
Speaker 3 (00:26):
All right. First content mistake not having a social media strategy.
So this needs to be documented. You do not need
to treat or you should not treat all platforms the same.
That is stupid. TikTok is fundamentally different than YouTube, which
is fundamentally different than LinkedIn. You need people that actually
(00:48):
understand these platforms that are helping you shape the strategy
for each platform that you choose to execute on. When
you're thinking about YouTube, I want you to weigh in
on this. Don't use YouTube like a library. Understand that
it is. There is a great opportunity for massive distribution
if you can tailor your videos to actually get picked
(01:10):
up in discovery and in feed. But I know you
have some hot takes.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, well, I've even the last few days seen companies
that are so guilty of this library approach where it
looks like and that I could be wrong, but it
looks like multiple people are posting to YouTube all whenever
they can.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
So it's like we.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Had a podcast go live, a video podcast, and now
three other videos are burying it. One's showing to showcasing
a new part of the product, one is from a
live event that they just did. And it's like some
of these videos have thumbnails others of them have no thumbnail.
And so it's proof to me that their social strategy
at least has not gone all the way to YouTube.
And some of these are massive companies where you know
(01:49):
that they're using a platform for other social channels, but
they're not strategically thinking about how they're posting on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
So again not having a social media strategy, this is
a big one.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And this could be we post and ghosts. This could
be you think you have the box checked, but it's
not really a strategy. It's like, as long as we're
putting content on these platforms, we're visible, and that counts.
Social media managers, I see you, it's a hard job,
but this is that's not a strategy, that's just posting.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I would also say if personality lad is not baked
into your social media strategy, meaning distribution is done through
personal profiles, particularly on LinkedIn, specifically B to B show.
So if you do not have baked into your strategy
the distribution from subject matter experts, executives, people on your
(02:39):
team that can speak to your market, you're doing it
wrong well.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
And if your content should be going out on those channels,
and in the same way if they are posting that,
you should be showing the type of reach that that's
those posts are getting the interactions that are happening on
those A lot of times that is overlooked, and that's
the value of content.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
All right. The second mistake that we see folks making
all the time is not diversifying your content or your formats.
So see this a lot. You know, Like I was
doing this talk in Iceland in a few weeks and
I was looking at hrefs, which is an SEO tool,
and I was looking at their thumbnails on their YouTube channel.
(03:22):
They have got an incredible YouTube channel. I think over
half a million subscribers for an SEO tool, which is insane.
But one of the things I observed is that all
of their thumbnails, like they don't use the same cookie
cutter template for a thumbnail. The thumbnail is developed for
that particular idea for that piece of content, and it
(03:44):
is optimized to get the click. So just like you know,
the title has to intrigue someone, the thumbnail has to
reinforce that, or it could be the opposite in the
hook in the hook, So those three things have to
have to dance together. But in not diversifying your content
or your formats, not thinking of new series, you're limiting
(04:07):
your marketing team's own creativity, which is a bad thing.
Hopefully you hired your marketing team because they are creative.
Your content ends up becoming way too navel gazing and
self promotional, and you need unique top of funnel content
so it's not just a bunch of product updates. And
so I think thinking about your content and how it
(04:30):
needs to be diversified and the different elements inside. Like
I was just looking at my LinkedIn content and it
hasn't been performing as well, and I'm like, okay, we
need to start changing up. We're diversifying it quite a
bit in the videos, but I think we need to
diversify how we do the opening for my LinkedIn short videos,
and so doing stuff that's different will keep people on
(04:52):
their toes and keep people interested. But I say this
to not put so much value in the diversification of
the format that you are under emphasizing the substance of
what's actually being said. And so that is an obvious
that I would hope that you would get listening to this, Like, Okay,
substance has to be there, but do a lot of
diversification and how you deliver that quality.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
So it's also what's working right now on a lot
of these platforms is if you're doing short form video
and you find a format that works, you should double
down on that format. So if you start a video
series that you do the same thing like every day,
Like if one of those videos hits, keep doing that thing.
And a lot of times in business we don't even
(05:35):
try a format like what's working right now on TikTok
or YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. I would advise you
to go check those out. But like, if you find
a format that hits, run with it and keep doing
the same thing, or start a whole series of that.
But the only way you get to that, That's why
the quality quantity debate often is start with quantity and
then go to quality. You need the reps in order
(05:56):
to figure out what works, and then you sustain it
by saying, oh, this is why someone's subscribing, and I
do more.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Of that, So I think this is huge and you've
got to diversify it your content.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Third mistake is not planning out far enough in advance.
I am very guilty of this, entrepreneur the add I
just like, I have an idea, let's go, but you
end up missing out on really key things and not
and there's no reason why you can't plan it further out,
just like, hey, let's think about this. You're in Q two,
(06:29):
let's think about the series that we want to try
in Q four, And obviously you're going to have new
ideas between now and then, building that flexibility, but factor
in holidays, industry events, company milestones, and when you start
to widen out the scope of your plan, you start
to see like, oh, we could do something because we've
got this new product feature that's releasing in Q three,
(06:52):
we should do a series around that. But when you're
always in the just last minute planning, you don't take
that bigger and you miss out on those ideas. The
fourth one that I'll talk about, and then I'm going
to kick it over to you is so you've got
not planning out far enough in advance, and then the
opposite of that, which is rigidly overplanning. So you have
(07:15):
to leave room to be reactive to what's happening on social,
what's happening in culture, what's happening in your industry. So
trends are always changing. So setting these firm deadlines and
expectations and not being willing to move off of them
and be flexible is going to ultimately cripple you. It's
going to make it's going to frustrate that.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You can tell team, you can tell how many layers
of red tape there are with a lot of these
big or B like especially B to B companies, because
all of the personality gets sucked out in the layers
and then the content comes out and what you thought
it was going to be, or even what it was
when it was recorded two completely different things. So one
(07:58):
of the questions that I would ask is, if we
create content for social that is about a certain cultural moment,
like this thing happens, we want to react to it
in real time, how many people do you have to
ask before you can hit send on that?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
If it's more than like one.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I would beg you to reconsider how you're posting on
social You really need you talk about this all the
time on LinkedIn, Like let the creator cook, Let the
creator be the creator. If you're hiring them to do
this type of posting, don't be so overrigid. Have the
things that are like, hey, this is a company non negotiable.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
That's the planning portion.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And then have that person that's like behind the keys
and it's like going to be on a hot streak,
like the Wendy's person.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
I've been seeing Alex Lieberman talk about this, but like,
hire a twenty three year old that cares about your
industry and they should be doing memes, replying like every
single day based on what is what is relevant now
in this moment, Like let them do their thing.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That's good, all right, we're at nine minutes, ten seconds.
I'm gonna keep us cooking. There's number five under estimating
time for research and creation. So the heavier that the
lift is on a certain piece of content, the harder
it is to replicate. That also means the harder it
is to create. So if you're going to do original research,
you can get more eyeballs on that research because you're
(09:22):
doing work other people aren't doing. Why aren't they doing it?
Because it's really freaking hard to do, So we think
of these It's pretty easy to sit around the table
with creative people and throw out ideas, but you're gonna
need to back up timelines quite a bit if you
want that heavier lift. So if you can pick one
or two big projects and say we're gonna need six months,
(09:43):
we're gonna need nine months. Maybe we're only going to
do this once a year. These heavier lift things are
going to set us apart from a content perspective, but
they're going to take more time, so we can't underestimate
the time necessary. We also need to remember that this
is a long term investment that each piece is adding
on top of each other to this bank that you have.
So you want to do the heavier lift thing because
(10:06):
people will go back and reference it as you continue
to stack those on top of each other. The series
you're doing now lives on. Hopefully you can create some
stuff that's evergreen, but also you're coming out with a
new series and people again bingeable content that you're creating.
So that's number five. Number six is ignoring analytics at
each stage of the funnel. There are actually different metrics
(10:26):
we should be tracking. And so I want us to
think through the funnel a little bit. And if you
think about maximizing engagement at the top of the funnel,
how do you get more eyeballs on your content? How
do you get people as far as reach goes, like,
just get people engaging. You talk about the ninety seven percent,
how many of that that ninety seven percent can you
(10:47):
just relate to posts stuff that they might be interested in,
might make them better at their job. We're really kind
of looking at some vanity metrics at the top of
the funnel, and that's okay. There's a time and a
place for those types of things. You're also looking at comments.
If we move that to the middle of the funnel,
you're starting to learn about the audience you're thinking through,
Like is someone clicking on a resource that we provided.
(11:08):
If I could give credit to this person, I would
I heard it might have been a roundtable that you
did where he was talking about like love give or
something like that. But the idea that you'll like something
at the top of the funnel and if they like it,
you'll love this, and then they convert down at the bottom,
so you're thinking about learning more about the audience. And
(11:29):
then finally at the end when it's the bottom of
the funnel, now you're starting to think through conversion, you're
starting to think about downloads or purchases. So we get
this wrong all the time as far as be in
B to B, we don't measure the three.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
We just go like, did they convert?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah? And we also don't give ourselves time. I mean
we're very guilty of this. It's you spend a lot
of time in ideation and then you even give some
time if you're planning appropriately to the creation, but you
don't connect back and look at the analytics and then
have that inform your next round of ideation. And so
(12:09):
it's an easy step to forget. I just had to
talk to anacon our team. It was like, Hey, we
need to be looking at my LinkedIn content every single
week for the past week, going Okay, what worked, what
didn't work, and how are we going to get better
for next week based on what we learned this week.
It's just easy to just keep going and then you
(12:29):
end up in this spiral death trap of not getting
progressively better week after week. And that's even if you
know sayingram and Badri says this all the time, getting
one percent better every day, getting one percent better every day.
It takes one hundred days and you're you're at one
hundred percent better than you were. And so we have
to be more thoughtful about that.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
We've already mentioned number seven slightly, but I'll go into
it a little further. So number seven is under utilizing
the personal profiles of your execs and subject matter experts.
Your distribution plan is incomplete if you do not equip
the most visible people in your organization with stuff to post.
And so we make this mistake when we're planning content
(13:11):
where we're thinking through our company content calendar and we're
not helping plan some members of our team or a
subject matter experts planning their content or thinking of ways
that we could incorporate them and ask them questions. So
don't make that mistake. And also going back to the analytics,
review those analytics on a personal level, not just on
a company page level.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Number eight.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And we're only at thirteen minutes and fifty one seconds,
so we'll have time for our research roundup within the
twenty minutes Number eight is spreading across too many platforms.
When we polled what was that last year, maybe two
years ago, when we polled B to B content marketers,
their thing was lack of focus.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Like, what's the thing that's hindering you, hindering your team?
It's lack of.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Focus And I think that would go beyond marketing to
so many teams. They're being tasked with one hundred things
to do, and it's like, what do I prioritize what's important?
How do I have the follow up conversation with my
exec where I say, Hey, I know you say this
is important. Two weeks ago you said this is important?
Which one wins? Like, I don't have time for all
of this. So, going across platforms, what usually happens is
(14:15):
in an organization, someone is loud about, Hey, there's this
new thing we should try, and because it's new, it's exciting,
we add it to somebody's plate who already has a
full play.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Guilty. I wasn't going to say it, he said it.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
So we just have to be careful with this, Like
we know many times where we should invest the bulk
for B to B. It's primarily LinkedIn I've seen very
other few use cases. I will say, we work with
a client where Facebook Groups is the thing, so I
told them to double down on that. But that was
like one in the last thirty clients that I've talked to,
So really thinking through what would be the most important
(14:50):
and let's.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Over analyze that channel.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
If it is LinkedIn and you're also putting that content
on YouTube, care about YouTube, but care about LinkedIn more
and wait it in your conversations, in your review, think
about what's working on the platform you want it to
be working on.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
So we just hired a new marketing consultant and he
has really helped us with a relentless focus on original research.
So we're about to launch the twenty twenty five State
of Video Podcasting. You and I have talked ad nauseum
about the importance of original research, but we haven't done
(15:27):
any of it for like three or four years. To
do so taxing, it's so challenging to do, and we
ended up deciding to do this state of video podcasting,
and we figured out a way to do it to
where it's not as heavy of a lift as what
we did before. So now instead of like going out
and serve trying to survey hundreds of people. We're just
looking at the top one hundred and fifty podcasts and
(15:49):
analyzing are they on YouTube, are they on social, what's
the format of their show, what category in and so
it's you know, the top seventy five business podcasts, the
top seventy five general podcasts in the world, and we're
breaking down insights from it. We haven't even released it yet,
but we already are starting to get data coming back
(16:10):
from it that I know is going to help us
tell our story in the market better because now it's
not just our opinion. I can say only thirty two
percent of the best podcasts in the world have an
interview based format. I'm not just saying do cost to
commentary because it's it's my stick. It's no like the
best in the world, only less than a third of
(16:33):
them are using this format.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Yeah for a reason.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So anyway, all that to say, it took us getting
an outside consultant coming in to really allow us to
get focused here, and we can start to see now
that all of the other things we wanted to do,
staying active on social, like doing good YouTube content, like
all of these other things are going to come from
this upstream focus on this deep work that page has
been doing on the original research.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And someone out there is saying pillar car to pillar content.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah, Like yes, the pillar content.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And then a focused strategy of how that deep work
that someone on your team is doing is going to
flow into everything else. That's going to inform the product,
it's going to inform your marketing, it's going to inform
the show that you have. Like, yes, that is the
hub and spoke model. That is one hundred percent we
would preach that. Okay, we have two minutes to quickly
(17:24):
do a research round up, and I want to throw
a little bit of a curveball here, and I want
to give you research that I found to be kind
of misleading. So I'm going to bring you a few
stats that I found in a HubSpot report and it's
it's just interesting to see how people are conflicted around
video sometimes. So here's the fuse that I wanted to highlight.
Number one, ninety one percent of businesses use video as
(17:46):
a marketing tool in twenty twenty three, so this was
last year. Forty two percent of video marketers say they
spend between zero and five hundred dollars on average. On
an average video YouTube is most the most widely used
video marketing platform, and then last short form video is
the top trend. Marketers report leveraging in twenty twenty three.
Here's the problem. I have looked at so many business websites.
(18:10):
I have looked at the marketing material, I have looked
at the YouTube channels.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
I've looked at all of.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
This stuff, and this makes it seem like we're in
a good place with video and we're just not. These
numbers lie because these stats might be true that people
are like, yeah, we our business uses it for marketing,
but those are product video video emails.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Your sales teams sit out video emails is not what
we're talking about here.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yes, so when you hear these numbers from I would
think there would be more people on the front lines,
forward leaning going.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Video is so important. We're doubled down.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
We're doubling down on it in a way that's provocative,
that's interesting, that's exciting. But really what this says is
people are unaware of how to be effective with video
in twenty twenty four because they're doing what they've seen
other people do, which is primary using video as either
an ad that they run before a video that's highly
(19:04):
produced with no true personality from the team in it,
or it's bottom of the funnel product videos and there's
not this good usage of video to be personality led
to do ongoing series. So very interesting stats from HubSpot,
but I would say sort of misleading. We got to
be intentional about the data that we take in because
it informs everything we do. All right, close us out,
(19:28):
we are out.
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