WHAT IS CONTENT STRATEGY? NOT WHAT YOU THINK ... [HUBHEROES, EP17]

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed apartments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub Heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask into action and become the Hub Hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the League of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute Hub Heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

Welcome back to the Hub Heroes podcast. I am Liz Murphy. I am a content strategist and also our official Hub Heroes Nerd wrangler. Joined as always though, just by George B. Thomas.

Yeah, yeah. Notice you had to say nerd wrangler. Not like nerds with an S. Because I swear the entire country is battling sickness of some type of flu or cold or Covid or bloated toe or what. What people are like, I don't know. That's not a real thing. But like, people are just sick. And so it's you and me. We're going to create some content goodness about content which gets meta real quick. But first of all, Max, Devin, we miss you. Get well, we're thinking of you, praying for you, but we got to keep the fire burning.

I know I'm going to miss Max just walking around in the background of our recordings, picking up nerf guns, hammers looking very menacing in the background of.

Every single episode, wearing goggles or seeing.

What new throne Devin is sitting in while he just spits straight fire while sounding like a Barry White record. Like, I am going to miss that a lot.

How many chairs does a guy own, by the way? I'm like, dude, I gotta up my chair game.

Obviously, we will likely bring one of our other Hub Hero community members in here soon. His name is Franco Valentino. He is an SEO God. But do you know what he also has in his house? That man is so picky about his desk chairs that he literally has like a desk chair graveyard of chairs. He is just, I do not like you. I cast you aside. It's like in this one room in his house. It's amazing. I just.

I mean, it's something vitally important to think about. Imagine the amount of hours now I stand, I have like a little stool if I want to sit down for a little bit. Cause I need a break. But for most normal humans, if you're sitting at a desk, imagine the amount of time you spend at that desk. And the fact that you would even fat fathom or allow yourself to be uncomfortable for a small percentage of the time that you're doing that work is unimaginable to me.

I hate it. I'm. I have a great desk chair right now in that it's terrible. And that I will burn it as soon as I can. But to your point about the sickness, I do have to point something out before we get into my favorite subject. Creating content about content. So. My poor husband Patrick. I have to admit, and I'm sorry, George, I don't know if you're one of these men or you're not one of these men. Oh, my God, you are the worst. When you get sick, you are the worst. You will be like, oh, no, my whole life, my whole body, it's one degree off. I can't cope. Liz, help me. I am sick. I have the consumption. So I'll admit for the first few days that he was sick, I'm like, oh, he's man sick. This is not. Just blow your nose, take some mucinex and go to sleep. But that man, I felt so guilty cuz, like, three days into it, I finally went, oh, you're really sick. And he looked at me with dagger eyes. I'm like, I knew that and I love you so much.

No, I'm definitely one of those guys that, yeah, I'm a wimp when I, I'm. When I get sick, it's over. Yeah, it's just I don't do well with being sick.

Rub some dirt on it. Get over it. Jesus. Walk it off, loser.

Just kidding.

And on that note, are we ready.

To talk about one of my favorite.

Questions in the whole world? I am. Because it is one of my favorite questions. Things to do, things to teach. So I'm ready to dig in.

Yeah. In fact, if you are listening to this episode, I definitely want you to listen all the way through to the end because George and I have very, very, very, very, very big announcement for anybody who is creating content thinks that content is going to be a major player or needs to be a major player in how you drive growth and revenue for your business. In 2023. You definitely want to listen to this full episode and you definitely want to stick around for the big reveal later today. I am so excited. But first, let's talk about what we're talking about today. We're talking about one of my favorite questions. What is content strategy? And there's a reason why I love this question. Because it's so deceptive, right? It's like asking somebody what makes you happy. And on the surface it's like, this should be easy. What makes me happy? Cheese. Lots of it. What makes me happy?

Young Robert Redford.

What makes me happy?

Naps.

Like those are the types of things where it's like, it feels like it should be obvious and you're like, no, no, no. What really makes you happy?

And then I have butter and pickle sandwiches. That's what makes me happy. I'm just, okay, I knew that.

Stopping your checks my way.

I agree.

No, but think about it. When you think about what actually makes you happy. No, no, no. Move beyond the pickles and butter in the young Robert Redford movies and say, you know, what really makes you happy? You start having this like deep existential crisis, like, I don't know. And you have to think about feelings. And what is content strategy? Is the exact same thing. And can I get a, can I go on a little bit of a rant here for a second, George?

Yeah, go on a rant. I love rants.

Here's what freaking kills me about the entire content marketing industrial complex. And as much as I love HubSpot, in some ways they perpetuate the problem. We have spent more than a decade telling people, you need content. You need to make a content strategy. Somewhere a giant wizard from the sky makes the content and the content strategy. Here's how you amplify the content. Here's how you put it in an email. Here's how you nurture people. By the way, did you know you need content? How do I make it? What does it look like? You just need it. Move along now. To be clear, that is ham fisted. And I've seen seen some movement in HubSpot Academy, specifically where they're starting to talk about more about how the content strategy and content sausage gets made. But let's be honest here, guys. We have spent more than 10 years praising and preaching the gospel of content. And most people don't know what a content strategy is or what it looks like.

Even when they think they know. I don't think they really know. Here's what's funny because Liz, I agree with everything you said and the whole like the wizard from the sky and like, people are confused around this. But here's what's funny is, and again, I do think that HubSpot and Content Marketing Institute and anybody who in history has talked about a content strategy or creating content or growing your business using content, has forgotten a little piece of this. At least. Everything that I've read and everything that I seen, and I think it's why it took me so long to actually put the pieces together and figure it out, was content strategy. You hear the words like keywords and then it grows a little bit and you hear the words like topics. And somewhere back in the beginning you heard words like blog. And somewhere along the way you hear like semantic markup and alt image text and all the kind of content nerdiness. Here's the funny thing, you really can't have a content strategy if the word revenue is not in the conversation. What content are we creating that actually is leading to a place where at some point we can drive revenue? And here's the problem from the get go, it was this Mother Teresa thing of we're going to create content content and add value to the world for free, and then out of trust and reciprocity, they will want to give us their wallets. Okay, yeah, sure, sort of, maybe. But when you're sitting down at your desk and you're like, we should write about this and create this, hopefully you've realized that it should point to this, which is sales and deals and revenue and actually being able to stay open. That has to be part of the strategy. Anyway. I know we'll probably dig into that, but holy crap, I just went on a little diatribe there.

I'm sorry, I'm getting a little warm in here. Is it because George is on fire? So no, but I, I completely agree. And so before we dig into these topics more deeply, I want to level set on who we're talking to. By the way, that's all of you jokers out there. If you're a business owner or a business leader sitting there going, I'm just probably going to turn this off. But I'm going to forward this onto my content marketer wrong. I have some stuff to talk to you about. We got some problems and we need to talk about it. If you're the content marketer who has ever said, my editorial calendar is my content strategy. Until one day, after months of creating content, your boss walks in and goes, knock, knock, Hi, how are you? Can you give me the content strategy for all the content we're creating.

Thanks.

And then they just walk away and you're like, but I thought it was the calendar. What am I doing wrong? Is my job on the line? If you are the marketing leader who thinks maybe a content strategy is an editorial calendar plus a 10 page executive summary that no one will ever read, we're going to have a conversation today.

And if you are the business owner who literally has no idea, but you're the person who's like, I'll know it when I see it. Okay? No, and sales, okay? If you're in sales and you happen to be listening to this, let's just be honest. You don't care.

You don't. You don't care because most of the.

Content that's probably being created right now doesn't help you anyway. And we're gonna talk about that too.

No, we're gonna talk about that too.

Because they should care. And you started talking about it.

Oh, my God.

I know, I know. So we're gonna do all those beautiful.

Things and we're gonna get there. George, are you ready? Do we need to shake it out a minute? We gotta shake it out.

No, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I just. Here's the thing. I just. I'm so excited for the part. Be able to talk to the salespeople because how about that? I'll tell them when we get there. No, no, no, no. Make them hang around for a minute.

I want you to tell them why they should hang around. Give me in one sentence why they have to listen to this episode.

Content is the most important thing that you're forgetting to use. Boom.

But, George, question. What if you're like me because I told this story in the content marketing ROI episode, and if you didn't listen to that, you need to go back and listen to it. When I took over as the head content strategist and I became the editor in chief at Impact, I was. Impact is an inbound marketing or HubSpot partner agency. But I was the head of our content for the agency. I wasn't doing it on behalf of our clients. And so when I sat down with our sales team, Nick Sal, former hubspotter, then he worked with me at Impact, he said, I asked him, as the whole sales team, hey, how much of this content is useful to you? And they were trying to be nice because we're friends and we talk. And then finally they're like, oh, quite a bit at least 1 to 2%. And I about like fell out of my chair. I'm like, great. 1 to 2% is helpful in sales. 1 to 2% is helpful in sales. And I just about fell to the floor with disappointment and like, oh God, we have a lot of work to do. So my follow up question to you is, what if that sales rep is going well, none of the content is helpful that they're creating. Why do they still need to stick around?

They need to stick around because they need to figure out that actually they should be the one creating it. It, like here's the thing, you know your customer, you know your questions, you know the things that would help you better than anybody. So the fact that we as grown ass adults are complaining that marketing isn't creating the content we need yet we're not actually spending the time to create the content to actually speed up the sales process, streamline our day is shameful.

Max and Devin leave us unattended and we just sit here and spit fire all day.

We're, we're in trouble. We're in trouble.

And to you content marketers who are listening, who are sitting there going, oh my God. What? That's right. If you're not talking to sales, we're going to get to that later. Let's start with my first favorite question.

See, and you said it right? Part of it. It's, it's definitely not a calendar. Sure. A calendar is a tool. That's a tool for what you might lay out to visually display the strategy that you've actually created. Your content strategy isn't your blog, by the way. That's not, that's not your strategy. The blog is the, the, the tool. Heck, the strategy isn't even actually the individual page, the article. The one thing that you think that if I write this, we're going viral because it's a massive amount of value. Like no, that's not the strategy. HubSpot is. It's not your content strategy. Sure it has social tools, sure it has dashboards and reporting, but it's, it's not your strategy. By the way, you yourself are probably not. Even though you've been hired to be the content strategist, the strategy, it's not call to actions that you have at the bottom of your blog. Hopefully. It' not the forms that people convert on, on major pages. It's not the story that you tell. None of these one things are your content strategy. However, when you start to combine them, we're not talking about what a content strategy is. We're talking about what it's not. And so it's none of those things. Now, Liz, I'm curious, when you have this conversation with a lot of people who create content and you hear certain things, do you go push a. That. That, my friend, is not a content strategy.

So we're going to get to this a little bit later. I believe that your calendar can be your strategy. It can be your strategic document, it can be your home base. And if somebody's asking you for a content strategy, you are not pulling it together properly and you have a communication breakdown. So what isn't a content strategy? A vanity project, brand awareness campaign, Something that isn't tied to revenue. Something where you feel like if you are a marketer right now and you're saying, I have this beautiful content strategy that our sales team just doesn't get, you are the problem.

It's interesting. I have to unpack this and I don't know why, but when you said you're the content marketer and you use the word beautiful and strategy together, I think my brain fried a little bit because I feel like any strategy is actually going to be a little messy, a little in the weeds, a little in the trenches, a little bit able to pivot over here and pivot over there, listen to the customer, make some decisions, put something else new out and different. Not like this, like shiny Christmas gift wrapped with a bow, and that's what we're going to use for the next 12 months, but something that's like agile and like mean, lean content fighting machine. Like, I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't like the word beautiful strategy together.

That's the whole point. I think you. Because that's why what it is. And we're going to, we're now going to start being able to unpack what it is. Because here's the thing.

You're absolutely right. And the reason why people create these beautiful, pristine things is because they think.

I have made my content strategy for the year.

No.

The most successful content strategies I've ever built. And I built them on behalf of.

Other companies and every conceivable industry you can imagine.

I have built them for impact.

And we were publishing between five and eight new pieces of content a week. I've done it for companies who were publishing once a month. And the best cadence is around 90 days. I do believe, however, you can build flex into it.

Because what I will say is there.

Is a fine line, George, between let's always shoot from the hip I want to be able to come to you and say, I want these three blogs because it can completely derail the strategic things that you need to accomplish with your content. But you. One of the things I used to do just to throw a super tactical tip out right at the top is in every One of my 90 day strategies, every single month, I had three to five flex spots for leadership. Now, to be fair, again, this was at the company where we were publishing between five and eight new pieces of content a week. So you have to figure out what that number is for yourself. But you should always have a little bit of flex space, a little bit of agility, and also when the world catches on fire. Like for example, I was running our publishing division at Impact when Covid hit and I had to take a 90 day strategy and throw everything out the window and come up with a completely new one from scratch. So you're always going to have that kind of stuff. But you're right, the beautiful thing, when people like I have made this beautiful treasure. Do not touch it, leave it. No, it should be messy. It's a document that should be showing you not only what you're doing, but your roadmap. It's what you're keeping updated. It's what. It's the home base for everything that people can find. Now let's start talking about what a content strategy is. And I know one of the places we're gonna go is that what qualifies as a great content strategy, especially from the SEO content strategy perspective, has wildly changed. Structurally. But I believe we can have this conversation at a higher level before we start getting into the weeds of. Remember those beautiful. Just spreadsheets of keywords for days. And now we have like topic clusters and pillars and everything that people keep.

Screwing up and just more nerdy words. More nerdy words that people don't understand.

We're gonna get there. But that's why I want to talk high level. High level. Without getting into the stewards. What is a content strategy?

Yeah, here's. Here's the thing. So a content strategy is a roadmap for you to follow in a place that you are trying to get your company to go. And what I mean by that, and one of the questions that I love to ask people when I am helping them with this topic is what do you want to be known for? What are the three to four things? Arbitrary number listeners. It could be five to seven. I don't know your business that well, but the way I teach it is what are the three to Four things that you want to be known for. I can tell you equivalently that, Liz. Most people, when I ask that question, there is at least 60 to 90 seconds of silence because they don't know how to answer the question of what they want to be known for. They have gone so fast into it's this keyword or that keyword or this product or it's that service. No, what do you want to be known for? When somebody sits at their desk and they start to type into Google's little box and you want to be on the first page of results, what are those three or four large things you want to be known for? Because when you know that, you can start to create a what I'll call a macro strategy that actually has probably some micro strategies inside of it, some swim lanes, if you will, to the actual place you're trying to get. So I'll just start there. Very high level. And again, an action item that you as a listener can take away. If I asked you right now, you're sitting in a zoom meeting with George B. Thomas, and I go, what are the three to four things that you want to be known for? If you, you can't answer that immediately a, figure it out, write it down. But then take what you write down and look at what you thought was your maybe content strategy, like six seconds ago and how you're going to move forward. It's going to dramatically change with the rest of this podcast.

I agree with that. And, and this isn't an and. That's really.

Yes. And me, by the way.

No, I'm not. Yes, anding you, because this is.

Oh, you're not.

No, this is. You know what? I, I, yes. And has become so ubiquitous. Notice that I'm like, just say but. Just say but. Just say it. Just. But I like big butts in it. Yeah.

Anyway. Yeah. Not why we're here.

Not why we're here. No, this is a genuine. And when you're thinking about the three to four things. Because this really leads into what I believe a content strategy is, which is parallel to what you're talking about. We're talking about two sides of the same coin when you think about that saying when we think about a content strategy, what you are doing is you're establishing your authority as the number one teacher about the thing it is that you do or sell. Which means, means if you, the marketer, are not really keyed in with your leadership and your sales team or just quite frankly, your product or service catalog, and you are saying, I want to Be known for this. And it is absolutely freaking nothing to do with what you do or sell. You are playing in the wrong ballpark, my friends, because a content strategy, like I said, isn't a vanity project. It isn't brand awareness. I always hate when people are like, Liz, we can use content for brand awareness. Sure, but why are you making them aware? Because you want to go to brunch so they become friends with you.

No. So they eventually buy from you or.

They recommend you to friends.

You.

Hold on, George. I see you doing your little.

I know. So when I say that, what I mean is a content strategy is a mechanism by which you move your business forward, by which you hit your business objectives. So a content strategy, the reason why you never built out an annual strategy, the reason why you build it out on a quarterly basis and we'll talk about the tactics I use to pull it together later, is that you should be evaluating what your business objectives are on a quarterly basis basis. Start by knowing what are the three to four things you want to be known for. And that's not just to bring structure and clarity and cohesion and focus to your strategy. Google, from a search perspective, because of the way they've updated their algorithm to include machine learning and to include AI tools like Rank Brain is they are now looking at websites and not just saying, oh great, you do that keyword. You do that keyword. It now tries to crawl you and understand at a high level what are the one or two things that you're really about. In fact, I think it's only one. So like, if you're an inbound marketing agency, so you may be sitting there.

Like, we want to talk about video marketing, we want to talk about this marketing that.

I'm like, no, you're inbound marketing. And then under that, it's business websites, video marketing. Depending on what your core competencies are, you may be very selective about the things that you want to be into. But the reason why I bring it back to what you do or sell. And I'm going to use the agency example as a very specific for very specific reason. Now, marketing agencies, you can look at them and say, oh, they're all doing and selling the same thing. In fact, a lot of them don't. You don't. Some of them have core competencies in PPC and social advertising. Some of them have core competencies in organic social marketing, things like that. So if you, one of the big things you want to be known for is PPC and how you use paid advertising with inbound Paid advertising is going to be one of your content pillars that you really want to push toward. So your content strategy is not a vanity project. Sure. Drive awareness and educate, but remember, awareness should lead to something at the end of the day. But it's a business objective. It is businessman move.

That's the thing. Right. So first of all, I gotta unpack a couple things I said be known for. You said core competencies, by the way. Your core competencies. What do you want to be known for? What is it that you're good at? But here's the thing too, Liz is. And, And I was literally losing my mind. And I, I was like, I know, I know, I know. And. And I had to hold on for a second. But people talk about, like, brand awareness, content for brand awareness. Yeah, it's, it's, it's the same disease of content for just awareness in general. General meaning. If you think about the buyer's journey, awareness, consideration, decision, most companies will start creating what is easy, which is the awareness and the brand awareness in this surface level facade stuff. And it drives me crazy because it's like, what are you doing? You're inviting me to an empty room? There's nothing here. Like, I saw the party flyer, but there's no dj. I saw the party flyer, but there's no crowd. I saw the party flyer, but there isn't even a freaking bar where I can get like a Jack and Coke. Like, why did you not build the actual baseline decision and the actual. Like, I need to be able to think about considering if this is actually even a good party. Oh, so I was losing my mind. Losing my mind.

So here's what I want to say. I'm going to even take this a bit a step further. And I don't have Max's fancy sensor button. Alert, warning, warning, swear word incoming. I'm about to say a swear there. I am convinced that if people say, but this is for brand awareness.

No, it's not.

Your audience doesn't give a shit about what that is. That is a code word for an article that you want to write for you in some cases. Now, here's the thing. If we're talking about awareness, like education, if you think of awareness and you're immediately saying, no, I'm trying to fill the top of the funnel. We are not talking about the definition that I'm talking about. About. What I'm talking about are the marketers.

Out there who cling to awareness like a lifeboat. And the Titanic is going down and you're still going to freeze to death.

Like, I'm talking about not awareness stage. I'm talking to people who are like.

This is to build brand awareness, to.

Make people like us. Unless your content is answering a specific question or solving a real problem, not.

An imagined one for your ideal buyer.

What are you doing?

Oh, and just drop the mic. Just drop them.

That's the end of the episode.

No, I'm just kidding.

All right.

I mean, it's not really because we have to talk about some technical stuff, but. But amazingly, we have. We've used up a decent amount of time so far. Like, talking about this content for content. It's amazing. I'm like, oh, my gosh, we better. We better get after it.

Oh, no. Are you ready to get after it?

Because that is actually my next question.

Because I love getting after it.

The reason why we had to have that conversation with you guys is because we could teach you all the technical stuff we're about to talk about, but it will absolutely do nothing for you if you do not understand. At a high level, a content strategy is meant to move your business forward. Your sales team shouldn't hate it. You can actually have an editorial calendar that makes it clear where in the funnel every piece of content lives. And if somebody's asking you for a content strategy, that means you didn't do your job. Pulling a content strategy together, the tactics and the technology won't work. But, George, Next question. Question. 10 years ago and today, what we just talked about was actually the same. That's what content strategies are supposed to do. But how you do it has wildly changed. So I want you to talk to me about 10 years ago. Paint me that picture. What did it look like? What did your content strategies look like 10 years ago?

Oh, yeah. So here's the thing. 10 years ago, it was easy. And a content strategy was the fact that you picked up a blog tool because as you said in a previous episode, that was a. The bfd. The fact that you could have a blog tool, you could have a voice, you could put it out to the world. And so strategy was understanding Google keywords, because back a decade ago, you could see the keywords and you knew, okay, these are the things that I'm talking about that people like. These are the things that I'm talking about that people aren't interested in. Let me talk more about these things that are actually of interest to the people who happen to be reading this thing that is called a blog that we had to then educate people on. Hey, it's educational articles. It's. I Hate the name blog, by the way, but really, let me set up a website. Let me, on that, have a place where I can create educational articles. Let me pay attention to the keywords that Google feels and humans feel are the things that I should. And rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Because. And by the way, most of this was textual at that point, because video hadn't really come on the scene. Podcasting was there, but it was, like, for nerds, it hadn't become mainstream yet. So we're literally talking about technical keywords, writing blog, maybe. Maybe some kind of image or two inside of there. Like, that's a decade ago.

Crazy.

And that was you.

Crazy.

Yeah, we are. We're. We're cutting edge, I'm telling you.

You know what's really funny, though? You said it was so much easier back then. I remember when I was at my first inbound marketing agency, it was like, 2014, and it was Quintain based in Annapolis. Hi, Kathleen. How you doing? She was the owner. She's now at Pavilion, an incredible company. Hi, John. I actually found that methodology really awful. I hated it. I thought it was really. And where content strategies are today, where people think it's more complicated, I was like, oh, thank God. This is so much more simple. Because the way it used to be for us lonely little content marketers is we'd have to get a keyword tool and just start randomly typing shit out and being like, I think this is what should be.

We should be writing about.

Or you were on the other side of the fence where you thought, oh, this is a company update.

We should share.

We just won an award.

Boom.

It's like, that's a. That's a media section of your website, sir.

This is a Wendy's. Like, that's not a content strategy.

Like, so I actually found it really hard.

So 10 years ago, for me as a content strategist, I was going into whatever keyword tool I could find, and.

Like, I guess I'll find something about insurance.

I guess I'll do it this way.

I found it horrifying.

A lot of guessing.

A lot of guessing. You've said. You've said guessing, like, multiple times, right? So there was a lot of guessing. That's interesting.

Is it interesting or is it illuminating?

Well, it is, because I think it's interesting, because I think I know where you're going on how it is today.

Well, let. Why are you starting us there, though? You take us where we are.

Yeah. So here's. Here's the funny thing where my brain is going with this, Liz, is the fact that. Fact that while I say that was easier back then because it was a little bit more willy nilly, if you will, today actually is easier if you have a strategy, if you pay attention to what's changed. Because where I think you might have been heading is now you instead of guessing, realize there's a structure to follow. There's a thing that is a pillar page. There is a thing that is topic clusters. There is this understanding of, of you have to get niche, right? What do they say the riches are in the niches? If you know what you want to be known for and you're focusing pillars and clusters around that and if you're paying attention to the way that things link together for SEO and the humans that are coming to those pages now there's. Yeah, now there's like it took me a while to get the words human on this episode, but. But now there's a structure, a repeatable process that actually makes it for people like you, easier to get the results that people want to see from the content that' been being created.

But before we get into that, I think the other thing that we have to talk about is that the way our content was ranked was wildly different back then than it was today. So I was talking earlier about like.

There were seven people blogging.

Number one.

There were seven people blogging. So that's the other thing. So there are a few things that have changed. Number one, you were just a little star child in the universe back then if you were creating content. Now every single one of your competitors is creating content. We'll talk about good to great content at another time. But there are a few big things that have changed. Number one, back then, few people were creating content. It was a bfd. It was super easy to rank because you were probably the only one who was actually writing stuff about it.

Now everyone's doing it.

The other thing that's happened is that what happens when marketers get a hold of anything, they try to ruin it and then the scammers try to ruin it. Right. So Google has changed in a lot of ways how they rank content to mitigate a couple of things.

For example, keyword stuffing.

They did a Google update where if you were just throwing keyword, keyword, keyword.

Keyword, keyword in an effort to game.

The same system, you're out, you're getting, you're getting not ranked anymore. Now they're also not only taking into account how good is the content today.

What's the page experience like how long does it take to load? What is not just what is your website about at a high level? Like, how does all your content connect together? Do your. Are your images too big? Will, when someone bring up your website on your. On their phone or tablet, will they hate you forever? Do you have CTAs? No one can close over your beautiful content. Hmm.

Sorry, ranking. Bye. Bye.

So I think the thing that we have to keep in mind is that we have the human side of it, right? We have more humans creating content now than ever before. It is not a niche or big deal to be the person who's doing content marketing. Everybody's freaking doing it. So your content has to be good.

You can't just be like, how much does it cost?

$20 now Schedule A demo. Like, that's not going to work anymore. Then the technical side of it is how the robots are. Google overlords have wildly changed how they rank content so they can serve up more relevant results faster from websites with not shitty user experiences to their visitors, to the people who are actually searching. So that's where we're at. That's where we're at today.

I love that you brought up page experience and I don't want to go too nerdy into this, but if you're a content marketer, an owner, a marketer, somebody who's trying to figure out a content strategy, and you haven't paid attention to Google Analytics Analytics 4 and the way that Google Analytics 4 is actually measuring the page different than what Universal analytics was doing, because bounce rate, by the way, is not in four. It's something totally different. They don't even match up. I might be blowing your mind right now if you're listening this, but I'm telling you, as somebody who gives two squats about what Google and other search engines are doing, look at the analytics side of it. To reverse engineer what that page from a technical standpoint has to do anyway. I don't want to get too in that nerdy part of it, but an action item. If you're, if you have not yet checked out Google Analytics 4, you need to, because time is running out. Universal analytics is going away anyway. Totally different episode.

Yeah, we got to talk about that. I just made a note that we're going to do a whole episode about that. So if you're like, oh God, not today, it's almost Christmas. I just want to go and take a nap. We're going to get to it, I promise. So one of the big things that has changed is this idea that you like, think about our content strategies in.

The way they used to look, right?

Just random keywords that you went out and, like, used a tool and, like, I think this is what we're supposed to be writing about. And now you're starting to hear words like topic clusters and pillar pages. Now, I would pretend, like, most of you listening to this haven't heard these terms before, but all likelihood, you've probably.

Heard them tossed around, even though you may not understand what they are. George, I'm going to turn it over.

To you here in a second to.

Really succinctly say, this is what a.

Topic cluster is and this is what a pillar page is. But I want to take a step back further and just say at a high level, the problem that topic clusters and pillar pages solve for for is.

That instead of just creating these arbitrary.

Like, waterfalls of blog posts that you're putting out there, what it does is.

It brings peace, serenity, organization to your website.

Your content is literally clustered by topic.

It makes you more purposeful in what.

You choose, because those topic clusters should.

Be based around the thing that you.

Want to be known for, which should.

Be related to something that you do or you sell.

And so all of a sudden, sudden.

You are creating content with purpose.

It is an architecture that promotes clarity.

And purposeful content, not just any blog.

Article you feel like making.

So, Liz, it's funny. I know that you want me to dive into what is a pillar page and what are topic clusters. And I don't mean to be any type of douchebag way when I say this, but I have videos for that. And we're gonna. And we're gonna put videos in the show notes of this episode. So you can, if you don't know, you can go watch. And you can know, because I feel like the time is better telling a story of something I uncovered at inbound 2022, and that. That is the fact that when I pulled the audience because the topic was about pillar pages, it was about topic clusters, it was about the content that you were creating. And what's funny is when I polled the audience, 80% to 85% of people raised their hands to the fact that they were making pillar pages or had created pillar pages for their website. However, only 20% to 25% of those people said that they were creating blog content on a weekly basis. I actually had to lean it out to a monthly basis to actually get a. About a 45% hand raise. They weren't creating podcasts, and they might have been creating one to two Videos a month. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the problem here is when you go watch the videos on what is a pillar page and what are topic click busters, you cannot say like 80 to 85% of the room said, yes, we have pillar pages if you don't have content to actually freaking support the pillar pages. And by the way, don't even get me started on if I asked if they had conversion points connected to the pillar pages air quotes that they said they had. So here's the thing, Liz. You hit the nail on the head earlier. You've heard the words tossed around. You think you maybe know what they are. You've even maybe tried to execute on some of those things, but it's not working because you don't understand exactly how they're supposed to work together, what the user experience is supposed to be, what Google and all the search engines truly are looking for, and what you need to bring to the party to make it all work.

George, I just want you to describe how I'm looking right now.

Like, first of all, for about half of that story, Liz has been crying. Crying, sad faced, face in hands. I don't know if she'll be able to move forward after this podcast episode.

Oh, I can. I can move forward. Because here's what I'm thinking. I have a suggestion for you. So I know everybody's about to disappear for the holidays, and I feel like us getting into the topic cluster and pillar page conversation, that is a thing all to itself. I would like to suggest that you and I dedicate a full episode again.

Just you and me. Sorry, Max and Devin, you left us alone. Now you must suffer that we drop day after Christmas as a little gift.

To really demystify what pillar pages and topic clusters really are. What do you think of that? Yeah, okay.

Oh, I love it.

I do want to describe at a high level, though, something. And it's going to be something where it's like if you answer yes to this question, you need to listen to that episode.

If you are creating pillar pages and the term topic cluster is something you have some familiarity with, but you're like.

I guess I'm not doing doing that.

Oh boy, you have created a long piece of content for nothing, you beautiful flower.

But let's bring this back. Let's bring this back. We're talking a lot today about what is a content strategy, Right? And it sounds like what we're walking away from is there is what is a content strategy at a high level and an evergreen way. The evergreen answer piece of this is that it is meant to establish you.

As an authority in the thing that.

You do or sell. It is a business objective, not a vanity project. It is something that your sales team should be involved in.

Hallelujah.

Tactically speaking, I'd even say there are certain things that are still evergreen because I think it's really important. We made promises to business owners and salespeople and marketers that we would bring them all together around the table every 90 days.

You should be talking to each other.

Content marketer, you should be going to leadership or whomever it is that you report to and say, hey, what are the business objectives? What are the parts of the business that that are really well fed so we don't need to feed them too much. What are the parts that are underfed? Hey, sales, what are the five to 10 articles I could create for you right now that would help you make your discovery calls more effective and efficient? Because it answers the most common questions that have almost always the exact same answers every single time. So you can send those in advance of your sales calls? What are the videos that you need? What are the pages where we really need a video to help decide sell this harder. Like what are the sales enablement pieces of content that you need? Do you want to know why content marketer that that business owner came into you and asked you for your content strategy instead of looking at your calendar and seeing like oh, it's this article that connects to this service and it has this cta. Oh, it's this article that was requested by sales that this. It's because you didn't involve them in the process. You weren't collaborative and showing that your content strategy was a cross functional initiative across across your company and you didn't involve anyone or make it clear in your editorial calendar? I hit in my old content calendars I actually had a column that says what is the business case service event sales request.

Yeah. So with about four minutes left of this episode, I have to give the hopefully growth focused content marketer or hopefully the business leader another little question because you started talking about like ask them this. Here's another question you can ask your sales team. By the way, Jimmy, Becky, Bobby, I need you to be completely honest with me for a second because I'm not going to get frustrated. This is an open and safe atmosphere. Could you please show me what you've been using in the sales process that marketing knows nothing about?

Do you know that they usually have their own little content directories of things that they've patched work together because salespeople are often underfunded, fed under, loved, and left to fend for themselves. But they have to drive these massive revenue goals. All right, so we only have a few minutes left. I'm going to forego our usual secret question because I have two things I want to get to. Number one, I want us to each share our one takeaway. But then, George, I need you to share the big announcement that we teased at the beginning of this episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, without a doubt. I've been waiting the whole time.

What's your one thing?

My big takeaway, I'm going to go right back to where I got super passionate at the beginning, is that sales teams need to know and whether this is is a salesperson listening to this episode. You're a marketer and you're sending it to your sales team. You're a business owner and you're sending it to your marketing and your sales team. Everybody that how somehow this has to drizzle down to sales and sales needs to realize the biggest takeaway is content is the most powerful thing to streamline your sales process, to allow you to send less emails, to create you as more of a thought leader, to build you as a personal brand so that people go, they are the XYZ goat of whatever it is that you do and it would make no sense to purchase from anybody but you. Content can do that and it doesn't have to be this holy crap, this is hard to do thing. It can be micro content, written content, video content, audio. I don't care whatever way you like to best communicate to the world, salesperson and people. Content is the biggest thing that most likely you're leaving on the table that could change your life and put more dollars in your wallet, which just always makes more sense.

Dollars in your wallet. So it makes sense. I see what you did there. All right, I'm going to keep mine short and sweet. Going back to something I've touched upon a couple of times today. Your content strategy can be an editorial calendar. It can be a spreadsheet that has multiple tabs, that talks about video, sales, enablement, all of the different areas of in which you are creating content to drive traffic, leads and sales for your business. If someone is asking you for a content strategy outside of the processes and the documentation you already have, you need to look at the tools you already have at your disposal. There is no mythical 11 page content strategy template you just haven't found yet. Although part of me now realizes I feel like I need to make a content strategy template I just feel like I need to do it. But here's what I'm going to tell you. You don't need to go out and find something bigger and better and better.

To bootstrap onto your editorial documents document. You need to have a piece of documentation that when somebody looks at it like a business leader, at a glance, they can say, yep, I understand the business case for why this exists. And it makes sense because I know you were either involved with sales or involved with me in determining what the priorities are of what we were talking about. Georgie, guess what? It's announcement time. Announcement.

That's it. That's it. It's. It's been a pain point for years. I've taught this thing around content for years, but it's always been just for clients of agencies that I've worked for. It's been a thing that's gone around on my br and I'm just passionate about content for, like, all verticals, all departments of a business. And so the big announcement is that we have officially launched the SEO Content Strategy Masterclass. Now, anybody that's been following my journey, I said we, not me, meaning I am a business of one solopreneur, but we, meaning you, actually have access to. Myself and Liz Murphy, we're both going to be the instructors of this SEO Content masterclass. And what's nice to is it's six weeks, so you're gonna have us for six weeks. You're gonna have us for an hour each week. We're gonna be doing Q and A and we're gonna eradicate all the things of like, I think I know what it is, or I think I know how it should go, or if you're asking your question, why can't I get ROI out of my content, then this would absolutely make sense for you. But that six weeks, one hour each week, depending on what kind of seat you want. There's a basic seat, lower price, there's a premium seat. If you get the premium seat, you actually get some additional time with Liz and myself where we get into the weeds. The granulars of what do you want to be just with you? Well, and maybe somebody from your team. But the point is, we get into the granulars of what do you want to be known for and what do those micro swim lanes look like for that macro strategy that you need to build for 20, 23 and beyond? What I'll tell you is that. And of course I'm going to let Liz talk a little bit about this too, because I get passionate, I Might skip points that she thinks is important. But you can go to hubheroes.com forward/SEO that's going to take you to the SEO content masterclass. You can sign up. By the way, it is limited registration and actually limited. It's not one of those fake jerky, whatever things. It is actually limited to a certain set of seats. You'll see it on the page. And registration actually ends January 12th. So you have between now, the time that you're hearing this between. By the way, it's. If it's after January 12th, I'm sorry, we'll probably do. We love you. We'll probably do it again. But you have until January 12th to sign up. Limited seating. Take your content to the next level in 2023. Liz, what else?

Oh, it's so great. I actually was just scratching my face, but I, I can definitely talk because I have a couple things I want to add here. If you are a business owner and you're wondering, I don't need to go to an SEO Content strategy masterclass, do you have a content marketer who you'd like to be an autonomous content strategy.

Alternative star using modern best practices that.

Are repeatable, scalable and guaranteed to drive.

Traffic, leads and sales for your business?

I bet you would. Would you like them to also know how to seamlessly, flawlessly and in a.

Robust and exciting way show you the ROI of every single piece of content you're creating?

Would you like to suddenly, whether you're a business owner or a content marketer, have clear understanding of everybody saying a.

Bunch of different things?

What are actual actually the content strategy.

Best practices that work?

What does Google's helpful content update mean?

What do the Google search gods actually look for now?

How do I actually have a lather.

Rinse, repeat process every 90 days that makes me not want to pull my hair out and doesn't make my boss come running around the corner going, hey, do you got that Content strategy? It's also limited because it's going to be live and George and I want to make sure that we have time to have people in our Interact show their work. There's going to be interactive and immersive pieces of this and that's really important to us. So when we say it's limited, we actually really mean it because you're not just going to be getting our brains, you're going to be getting our hearts. We're going to care about your business, we're going to care about you, we're going to care about your strategy. We're going to care about you and your specific growth.

Yeah, that's enough. Just. Just the fact that we care and you're getting our brains. And not just my brain. Not just Liz. Two brains. Caring, empathy. The focused on you.

The humans.

You. Ladies and gentlemen, the human.

The human. And on that note, George, I'll talk to you early next week for topic clusters and pillars.

Absolutely.

Bye, everybody.

Bye. Should we actually play a little thing after the thing they're about to listen to?

George, I have some grievances I need to share with you. Come with me after the credits.

Okay? Okay, Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out. In the next episode, make sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend, leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag hubbyerospodcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, always be looking for a way to to be someone's hero. I'm ready. I was born ready. Let's do. I got a nice warm fire going in the back. It's time for some Hub Heroes goodness.

I love hub heroes goodness, especially chocolate flavored.

Oh, yes. Anything chocolate flavored or peppermint flavored for me, Will.

I recently just got into peppermint. I was usually so first of all, Starbucks, you're on blast. They have gotten rid of my eggnog latte latte. And I am just crushed.

I know it's never coming back.

They got rid of it for a year, brought it back a couple years ago, then they got rid of it again and now it's gone.

And now basically your options at Starbucks are things that taste like warm leftover.

Cereal milk, cold leftover cereal milk, or my new boo thing. Peppermint mochas.

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah.

But I also like white peppermint mochas. The white chocolate peppermint mocha. That's delicious. So the. It's basically filling the void in my heart. Yeah, but Starbucks.

What are you doing?

Yeah, see, and you can already tell this is like a holiday version of the Hub Heroes podcast because we're talking about peppermint and Starbucks and. And stuff, so I know it's gonna.

Increase your ROI and leads and traffic and leads.

Yeah, ROI that I wish I had, like, some quick punny thing about, like, that being my waist size or, like, my belt manufacturer or something based on the amount of Starbucks that I've drink or don't drink, Actually, I turned into a Dun Duncan guy a long time ago.

Surprise. I'm so shocked.

Nah, nobody's shocked.

Okay.

Sam.