January 19th, 2018
Podcasts are a great way to educate yourself. Whether you’re on the train, in the car, at your desk, or anywhere in between, this medium is an incredible vehicle for supplementing your industry knowledge. Every week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the best marketing podcasts around, spanning the whole marketing landscape.
Whether you’re new to podcasts or you’re a seasoned listener, I know you’ll find value in each weekly round-up. Let’s get listening, shall we?
Noah Kagan Presents: How to Turn Blog Posts into a Business with Vanessa Van Edwards
My friend and host of the Shareable Podcast Jeff Gibbard always sends me podcast episodes from Noah Kagan. I often receive these after I’ve written this week’s round-up and forget to include them for the next week—but not this time!
In this episode, this AppSumo founder and CEO welcomes psychology expert and speaker Vanessa Van Edwards from The Science of People onto his show for a short but wickedly actionable nine-minute podcast.
Takeaways: Vanessa doesn’t consider herself a psychology “expert,” per se, but she certainly has researched human behavior extensively. Vanessa has delivered insights to hundreds of businesses and taught thousands of students through Udemy by framing fascinating topics and insights for “ambiverts,” a word Daniel Pink popularized in his book To Sell is Human.
When she was first starting out in her career, she realized she’d need to conduct her own research in order to have something truly different from her competition. Her competition noticed her work and began citing her research in their own publications, leading to even greater search traction.
In addition to the backlinks she was getting from her top competitors, Vanessa began investing time in YouTube. She looked at which keywords were driving the least amount of traffic to her site and created (and optimized) a YouTube video around those specific keywords. The results were remarkable and point to the need to constantly evaluate what is performing for your business and what’s not, and if it’s not, how it can be repurposed to become a strength.
Copyblogger FM: 5 Keys to Making Your Content More Shareable
How do we make our content shareable? Sonia Simone, Chief Content Officer for Copyblogger, has some solid thoughts on how to make content move in 2018—”the great free ride,” in her words. Sonia builds on the conventional wisdom of more eyeballs not always equalling success and focuses on five factors to increase exposure and shares.
Takeaway: Ever heard of the “Second Customer”? Probably not, since Sonia came up with it herself! A Second Customer is someone who might never be a customer or user of yours but is a conduit to an audience who could be your perfect fit. They fit within the influencer category but, perhaps, without the crazy price tag. These people are terrific at moving your content and presenting it to a new group.
The other takeaway I found most interesting was the fifth of Sonia’s keys, which is this: What do you want people to do (or do next) once they actually find you? Whether it’s trying to get the visitor to read another article or selling them on subscribing to your email list, understand what kind of experience you’re leading your users into. Is your website experience one you’d be comfortable engaging with or sharing? If the answer is no, that’s probably where to start first.
Ask yourself, what do you want customers to do (or do next) once they actually find you? Click To Tweet
The Marketing Companion Episode 121: The future of the digital marketing agency with Mitch Joel
There was zero chance I wasn’t going to include this episode. Mark Schaefer AND Mitch Joel? C’mon. Game over. Mariano Rivera in the ninth. Case Keenum to Stefon Diggs. (Seriously, that play was crazy!) The point is, this episode was destined to be gold before they even hit record.
Mitch and Mark dove right into the role of the digital marketing agency in 2018. With so many brands and publishers building internal departments to handle the responsibilities once managed by creative and media agencies, large firms and holding companies have had to adapt.
Takeaways: Mitch, who is the President of the agency Mirum, touches on the recent pullback on advertising spend across the world and its correlation to sales. (If ad spend goes down, sales follow.) He also explores agency disruption and why everyone needs to go far deeper with Amazon than ever imagined. Agencies are finding ways to innovate at seemingly breakneck speeds in order to bring the best results to each client. As much as they are trying to differentiate, however, this has lead to a lot of sameness and confusion.
Add to this the recent developments in artificial intelligence, and Mitch has a fascinating question on his hands. It’s a question he still doesn’t believe there is a sufficient answer to. He asks that if AI truly delivers what it’s been promising, and there is no more competition, and everyone is marketing perfectly in the right time and at the right place without any kind of real marketplace, how do brands survive? What is a brand at that point?
Like I said, the stuff that is jammed into this special edition of The Marketing Companion is remarkable. I sincerely hope you listen to this. I rewound multiple times.
That’s all for this edition! I’ll be back with a new batch next week. In the meantime, share any podcasts you think I should know about with me @jwsteiert on Twitter or in the comments below!