Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

In Episode #317, Eric and Neil discuss the 7 things to consider before you start accepting guest blogs. Tune in to learn how you can carefully evaluate your potential guest bloggers so that your website maintains its quality and consistency. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: 7 Things to Consider Before You Start Accepting Guest Blogs 00:35 – First is to make sure that you’re ready to deal with spam 00:41 – There are people who will try to sell links on your website, which will get you penalized by Google 00:48 – Be sure that whatever you’re accepting, people aren’t shoving in irrelevant links 01:00 – Second is to ask for 3 links to their most impressive articles 01:11 – It will give you a quick idea of their writing style 01:24 – You still want to add value 01:42 – Make sure that the people are authoritative 01:49 – Authoritative people won’t pass junk 02:05 – Make sure the content quality stays high 02:10 – Fourth is to ask why they want to do it 02:40 – Fifth is when accepting guest posts, make sure you’re still building a community 03:05 – Make rules for these people so there will still be growth 03:40 – Sixth is to ask for a couple of potential article titles and what will be a good fit for the website 03:58 – It can be an evaluation point 04:24 – Seventh is you want to keep new and fresh content; run their content on Copyscape to check its authenticity 04:55 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Watch out for guest blogs who will try to sell links on your website. Ask questions that will help you evaluate the guest blogger’s motive and relevancy for your website. Make sure you’re building a community within your guest blogs and make them adhere to your rules for consistency. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #316, Eric and Neil discuss the 7 tools to help you promote evergreen content. Tune in to learn which tools you can use to leverage your evergreen content to achieve that better ranking in Google and promote your best stuff!  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: 7 Tools to Help You Promote Evergreen Content 00:34 – First, Meet Edgar allows you to schedule posts on different social media sites 00:49 – Clean it up for things that are no longer relevant or for concepts that no longer apply 01:01 – Second is Ahrefs 01:03 – Type in the competitor URL that has similar posts, see who are linking out to your competitor and reach out to them 01:12 – It’s easy to do and provides great results, but is time intensive 01:35 – BuzzSumo can help you find posts and links that have a lot of social shares 01:55 – Build out a prospect list and reach out to people who shared them 02:12 – Fourth is Google Search Console 02:23 – For the posts that are gaining much traffic, look at the keywords that are driving you traffic, download the CSV file, take those keywords and innovate them within your content 02:45 – Repurpose your evergreen content 02:58 – Repurposing is similar to promoting it 03:29 – Your evergreen content can rank in Google 03:31 – if you’re going to make your title tags more appealing, you’re going to get more clicks and your search ranking will rise 03:46 – A headline generator tool will give you ideas to update your title tags 04:18 – If you have very good evergreen content, put it into paid advertising 05:00 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Repurposing your evergreen content will help you to continually maximize its value. Reach out to people who share your competitor’s post; perhaps they can help you to gain more traffic as well. A great title tag can make your posts appealing which will attract more clicks and improve your overall search ranking. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #315, Eric and Neil discuss the 7 fundamentals that every content promotion plan should include. Tune in to learn the checklists that you need for your content promotion plan and the importance of keeping your “unicorns” up to date! Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: 7 Fundamentals That Every Content Promotion Plan Should Include 00:36 – First is to have a checklist where you document everything you need as well as your standard operating procedure 01:04 – Second is to create a list of people you are going to hit up in your space 01:08 – Every promotion has an outreach 01:13 – You want to keep a list so you will know who responded and promoted 01:17 – You want to hit up the same exact person 5x a week 01:29 – You could also determine who to hit up for a specific type of post 01:33 – You don’t want to burn the relationship 01:40 – Have an inventory of the tools that you have 01:42 – Use LastPass to organize everything 01:58 – Eric uses Meet Edgar and Buffer for promotion 02:13 – Fourth is to test out timing 02:20 – Depending on your industry, there are times that are best to post 02:28 – Stick with that time and be consistent 02:44 – Fifth is to use paid advertising 03:04 – Look at your top performing content and check the ones that are getting the most shares and likes 03:12 – The top performing ones are your unicorns and you want to push them 03:14 – Larry Kim from WordStream and Dennis Yu from BlitzMetrics talk about this further 03:33 – Sixth is having your unicorns 03:41 – Every 6 months, check all the content that has done well, re-share and update them 03:57 – Update your old content or the traffic will decline 04:06 – Last is to measure results 04:15 – If you’re not measuring and managing results, you’re not being a good marketer 04:24 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Set a goal and have a plan in place to reach that goal for your content promotion—this way you can track and measure your progress. Keep your unicorns up to date so your traffic and engagement won’t decline. Make sure that you keep track of your processes, plans, and create checklists to help organize yourself. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #314, Eric and Neil discuss 3 simple ways to save money on SEO using PPC. Tune in to learn the importance of knowing the right keywords to use in SEO so you won’t end up wasting money or time. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: 3 Simple Ways to Save Money on SEO Using PPC 00:38 – Everyone looks at pay-per-click as an expense but it’s not a bad expense 00:49 – From an SEO perspective, it takes a long time 01:00 – The first way to save money is to target the right keywords 01:05 – You can use Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest or Keyword.io 01:11 – “Volume isn’t everything if people don’t purchase from those keywords—no matter how many visitors you get, it’s useless” 01:19 – With PPC, you can test out words and phrases and when you see conversion, start targeting from organic search perspective 01:35 – If you want to scale, use AdWords Editor to move things faster 02:00 – If you have a brand keyword, a competitor can start to categorize you as the brand owner 02:48 – Focus your SEO first on non-seasonal based terms 03:10 – It costs the same time and money with seasonal-based keywords 03:22 – Go to Google Trends, type the terms and make sure it’s not in the seasonality 03:38 – After the terms get consistent traffic all year round, then go for the seasonal terms 04:03 – More consistent income is better than the income that goes up and down over a few months 04:15 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: PPC is an expense, but it is NOT a bad expense—test if it’s right for you. While SEO can be cheaper, it takes time and testing to see which works best. If you have a brand keyword, keep it, as a competitor will start to see you as the brand owner. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #313, Eric and Neil discuss how to do SEO for small businesses with less than $1000 a month. Tune in to learn how you can still do SEO effectively—even with a small budget—and why you shouldn’t believe everything that Google tells you. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Do SEO for Small Businesses With Less Than $1000 a Month 00:35 – You can’t focus on everything 00:40 – Try to have your site on WordPress so you can have Yoast and not worry too much about on-page SEO 00:48 – Neil sticks to content creation and building links around the content 00:55 – Neil uses Ahrefs 01:01 – Put in your competitor’s URL and click on the top pages that will show you the pages your competitor gets the most traffic 01:29 – Look at that page and try to create a better version on your website 01:38 – Find the people that are linked out to the page and reach out to them 02:00 – Reaching out works, but it’s a long-term play 02:08 – Keep it simple 02:34 – “Don’t believe everything that Google says” 02:58 – When you only have $1000 a month, you can’t go really fast 03:10 – You can also use BuzzSumo which is similar to Ahrefs 03:26 – You can find a journalist who can write content at JustReachOut which is a PR tool 03:48 – For link outreach, you can use Pitchbox and MixMax 04:03 – You have to make sure that you stay consistent with your SEO 04:22 – Consistency will give people the impression that you’re starting to build your flywheel 04:33 – Scripted allows you to buy content at scale 04:53 – Upwork and ProBlogger also have people you can hire to make content for you 05:16 – Scripted is like a marketplace 05:37 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: There are ways to work on your SEO while on a conservative budget. SEO results takes time so you have to be patient. Leverage free and affordable tools that you can use to make your SEO work successfully. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #312, Eric and Neil discuss how to create an experimental culture in your marketing department. Tune in to find out how Eric and Neil do experiments with their respective teams and how it boosted engagement and a sense of value and pride for team members to be a part of the experimentation. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Create an Experimental Culture in Your Marketing Department 00:38 – Twitter was running .2 tests per week when they were still struggling 01:02 – After that, their usual growth skyrocketed 01:12 – Jeff Bezos of Amazon also brought tons of experiments that helped them boost quickly 01:17 – Driving experiments for the company or marketing department is really important 01:26 – Treat your experiment as a product 01:37 – Eric runs experiment meetings with his company, Single Grain 01:49 – Every week, someone is required to bring in new ideas 02:33 – You can use Trello to write in your experiments 02:43 – There should be a well-thought idea and a plan as well as data to back up the plan 02:58 – Neil enforces the culture to everyone until they fully adapt to it 03:06 – Neil also believes that no opinions that are wrong or right 03:13 – Just because you are doing marketing longer, does NOT mean you have better ideas 03:33 – It is a weekly process for Neil’s team 03:49 – Neil encourages testing and gives a pat on the back to who has the best idea 04:04 – Once you start with testing, people will love it 04:15 – The team will feel good that they’re making progress 04:34 – Eric tried to incentivize the person with the best idea, but now they’re having a monthly celebration 05:07 – One of the mistakes that Eric made with the experiment was that people were voting just by raising their hands—they shifted this to automated voting 05:43 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Engage everyone on the team in regards to the experiments and make sure that ideas are well-thought and planned. Your team will have a sense of engagement and responsibility when they are included in the experimental process. Incentivizing isn’t always beneficial for everyone—find what motivates your team. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #311, Eric and Neil discuss the marketing tasks they do daily. Tune in to know what Eric and Neil do every day and how these habits contribute to their success. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: The Marketing Tasks Eric and Neil Do Every Day 00:36 – The big thing that Neil does is post on social media 00:49 – Neil also responds to comments from Social Web and Social Profiles 00:59 – Neil looks into Google Console to track posts that are declining in views and clicks 01:07 – He will then update those posts and content and they will go back to where they were 01:27 – Eric is trying to work on the business more 01:44 – Eric is working on creating content 01:58 – Eric also checks his Google Console and track his posts’ ranking 02:33 – You do NOT have to do exactly what Eric and Neil are doing 02:35 – Eric also has a lot of one-on-one time with the team to see where he can help 02:48 – Eric checks the interns campaigns and coaches them if needed 03:09 – Neil reads marketing blogs and keeps himself updated on the industry trends 03:15 – Neil also responds to Quora’s questions 03:54 – The biggest hack for Eric is listening to marketing podcasts daily 04:04 – Eric recommends listening to Growth Everywhere and Digital Marketing Podcast 04:21 – There’s so much consumption you can do but you need to produce, too 04:48 – Eric and Neil both try to continue to level up and build a flywheel that continues to go 05:12 – Build all the pieces, hire the right people, put in the right processes and start to build the flywheel 05:20 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Keep yourself updated in the industry that you’re in. Tracking your post’s analytics does not have to be done daily, but needs to be checked constantly to assess if you need to update. Learning is useless without application. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #310, Eric and Neil discuss how to rank in Google image search. Tune in to learn how Google can recognize your images more easily and how to adjust for Google’s limitations to BOOST your ranking. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Rank in Google Image Search 00:40 – If you are in consumer-based industry, you can generate a lot of traction from Google image search 01:00 – Image filing should be restricted to what you’re trying to rank for 01:06 – If it’s a car, use all tags to describe to Google what your image is about 01:57 – You can also use a long description which is similar to all tags, but longer 02:31 – If you’re always ranked over time, make sure you’re surrounded with text as Google uses text to figure out what the image is about 02:40 – In the next couple of years, Google’s AI might be able to identify which is which 03:06 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: How well you rank on Google image searches will depend on the industry. Google will know what your image is about if you describe it well in text. Google’s AI will probably improve in the future and won’t require as much text to recognize an image. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #309, Eric and Neil discuss how to get tons of views on your LinkedIn updates. Tune in to know the number of views Eric and Neil received on their first LinkedIn update and why you should leverage LinkedIn NOW. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Get Tons of Views on Your LinkedIn Updates 00:38 – You can now write longer-form LinkedIn content now 00:55 – Eric has around 6K connections in LinkedIn and when he wrote about longer-form LinkedIn updates, he got a thousand views in just 10 minutes 01:10 – There were also 2nd degree views in LinkedIn 01:23 – A simple text update can get you tons of views 01:34 – Neil has also tested LinkedIn updates 01:44 – He got 232K views, 280 likes and 151 comments on his first update 01:57 – Neil learned that the more generic your update, the better off you are 02:28 – It comes down to how many views your content is getting by the right type of people that can potentially generate income—so be specific 02:48 – One guy reached out to Eric when he posted an update asking Eric if he can work for him 03:04 – There are also paid advertising managers who approached Eric 03:11 – One from Dropbox has reach out to Eric as well 03:33 – There’s a lot of potential with LinkedIn updates 03:54 – Go use LinkedIn now while only a few people are into it and leverage it 04:04 – AdWords is not restricting LinkedIn yet, so now is a good time to use it 04:14 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Take advantage of LinkedIn while it is not as saturated as other platforms. Posting specific LinkedIn updates can target the RIGHT people who are possible sale leads. LinkedIn updates can also help you connect with people who can become a part of your network. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #307, Eric and Neil discuss where you can hire great developers. Tune in to learn how you can find great developers at a much cheaper rate WITHOUT compromising on value and efficiency. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: Where Can You Hire Great Developers? 00:42 – Eric and Neil both tried Toptal which is not a bad place, but quite expensive 00:51 – The best company for Neil is Crossover which is based in Texas 00:58 – Their team of great developers are usually overseas 01:02 – The labor is cheaper and they’re well educated 01:08 – They have the software to know which is the best of the best 01:30 – They offer 30 days of free development 01:55 – It is quite cheap 02:09 – Eric currently has 2 developers 02:14 – One is based in Singapore and the other one is in Lithuania 02:26 – The developers are well-versed and get things done 02:56 – Eric found them in CodePen’s job board 03:20 – Eric has used Crew and Andela 03:40 – Andela hires developers from other countries so you will get them cheaper 03:44 – They have a strong vetting process 04:20 – Engineers and developers may not work well right away, but they should over time (once you find the amazing ones) 04:40 – Marketing School is giving away a free 1 year subscription of Sniply which allows you to overlay CTA or forms over social links that you’re sharing 04:57 – Subscribe, rate and review Marketing School 05:00 – Text MARKETINGSCHOOL to 33444 05:18 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: There are a lot of great developers overseas that will cost you way less than in the USA. Go to a website where developers usually lounge around—like forums and message boards. It may take you a few tries before you find the excellent engineers and developers that you need. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.