E539: Powerful strategies to grow on Instagram and convert followers in a variety of niches. What’s covered: - How to make an Instagram profile and Instagram content that converts. - Creative content ideas. - Click-through rate on Meta Ads and how to get them to convert better. - How to get the “Can’t be shown to non-followers" label removed from an Instagram account status. - Good growth stats for a new account. - How to do social media if you’re making strange art. - How to grow an Instagram page to a specific location demographic. The Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1hg8lml/im_a_professional_social_media_growth_strateist/ 00:00 Introduction 00:59 Advice for a Clean Beauty Brand 03:43 Tips for a Sports Photographer 06:28 Handling Instagram Restrictions 08:32 Growing a New Instagram Account 10:16 Strategies for Dog Creators 13:14 Balancing Passion and Engagement 15:43 Meta Ads and Boosting an Art Business 18:14 Promoting Unique Art on Instagram 22:15 Targeting Specific Geographic Audiences 24:22 Conclusion The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #instagrammarketing #socialmediamarketing #digitalmarketing #marketingstrategy

E538: This is why Ryan Reynolds turns out so many billion dollar brands, going deep into the marketing that he employs when he buys stakes in companies. He is the king of billion-dollar brands. Companies he co-owns or has sold are valued at $14 Billion+. If you study Ryan and his success, you’d notice he: • Is always on the lookout for opportunities. • Actively markets the businesses himself. • Becomes the face of the brand with his goofy personality. • Creates creative ads that are one-of-a-kind. • Moves fast, follows trends. • Uses a lot of storytelling. When Ryan sees a viable opportunity, he takes it. He tasted Aviation Gin one day, fell in love with it, and decided to buy a stake in the company. But he didn’t stop there.  He became the face of Aviation Gin. While many celebrities just pump money and sit back, Ryan is in the driver’s seat. He founded Maximum Effort, the marketing genius behind many effective campaigns including for the Deadpool films. Since he’s the owner, there is no red tape or lag. Ryan knows that as an actor, his strengths are in front of a camera — and he plays to his strengths. Who knows if he wrote the script himself, but boy, does he know how to pull it off. He knows how to become the brand. Even when he’s acting in an ad, he’s acting as him: goofy Ryan Reynolds. A++ for entertainment. He takes on typically boring spaces and injects his creativity. Standing over a bear trap, he expresses drily, “At Mint Mobile, we don’t hate you.” Give the man a medal! Ryan understands the power of ‘fastvertising’. Or as one commenter on YouTube calls him, “The human form of YouTube comments.” After Peloton’s disastrous The Gift That Gives Back ad, Ryan creatively reacted with an ad for Aviation Gin, titled: The Gift That Doesn’t Give Back Those who laugh are defenseless and Ryan knows this. All his ads involve comedy. He capitalizes on trends. He is part of a group of investors who shelled out $218m for a 24% stake in the Alpine Formula motor racing team. If the rising valuation of F1 teams is anything to go by, he has a winner on his hands. He’s also into tech and joined the star-studded line-up of 1Password investors. With 1Password, as usual, he puts his creative juices where his money is. Another pie Ryan has his finger in: football. When actor Rob McElhenney wanted a football club, he enlisted Ryan. Together, they bought Wrexham AFC for $2.5M. The club won the national league title in April 2023. We might not have a spare $2.5M lying about, but we can learn from how Ryan diversified his stakes in different industries: • Food & beverage • Tech • Automobile • Sports • Creative industries Ryan Reynolds is more than just an actor. He is also a savvy serial businessman who knows a thing or two about building a billion-dollar brand. He hunts for opportunities, gets personally involved in marketing the business, injects his personal brand, is always on the move, uses trending topics, and tells stories. Source: https://x.com/timjcarden/status/1772277477424971807 00:00 Introduction 00:32 Ryan Reynolds' Marketing Strategies 01:17 Maximum Effort: His Marketing Agency 01:45 Ryan Reynolds: The Face of His Brands 03:22 Creative Advertising Examples 04:18 Ryan's Investments and Diversification 05:15 Lessons from Ryan Reynolds 07:32 The Importance of Building a Brand 09:00 Conclusion The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #digitalmarketing #marketingstrategy #branding #personalbranding

537: All the scenarios where you would want to block AI crawlers from accessing your website or certain sections on your website. Then, exactly how to block these AI crawlers, specifying user agents, giving limitations, and more. Finally, the specific scenario where you absolutely do want AI crawlers to access your stuff. 00:00 Introduction 00:42 When to Block AI Crawlers 01:11 Managing Crawl Budget and Server Load 04:05 Risks of AI-Generated SEO Content 06:51 Protecting Paid and Private Content 09:09 How to Block AI Crawlers 11:16 When You Have to Allow AI Crawlers 11:41 Wrapping The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #seotips #searchengineoptimization #webdevelopment #ycombinator

E536: AI crawlers for generative AI companies like OpenAI or Anthropic or even Meta are REALLY inefficient. Crazy inefficiencies compared to Googlebot. And this means there’s actually a decent chance Generative AI can’t even access your pages and posts to learn off them. If the bots can’t access them, the generative AI can’t recommend your brand. So this is what’s wrong with these AI crawlers and then how you can fix this (and yes, there is a direct and actionable solution). Source: https://vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler 00:00 Introduction to AI Crawlers 00:48 AI Crawler Traffic 03:45 JavaScript Rendering Capabilities 06:31 Content Type Priorities 08:20 Crawling Inefficiencies 11:30 Recommendations for Site Owners 17:17 Final Thoughts The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #seotips #searchengineoptimization #webdevelopment #growthmarketing

E535: Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was a favored tool for digital marketing professionals. It was great for link-building. It was great for social proof and credibility building. It was great for public relations. It was great for so many things within digital marketing. It reigned as the supreme journalist expert tool for decades. Literally decades. And just a few weeks ago, after rebranding to Connectively, it shut down for good. No more Help a Reporter Out. No more Connectively. This explains why it shut down and the very excellent alternatives, especially the top one, that exist now. Here’s where to go in the wake of the Help a Reporter Out shutdown. Source for this episode: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/pour-one-out-for-help-a-reporter-out/ 00:00 Introduction 00:16 How Help A Reporter Out Worked 01:33 Reasons Behind the Shutdown 01:38 Pour One Out For Help A Reporter Out 02:55 Source of Sources 03:48 Why Source of Sources is a Great Alternative 05:44 Final Thoughts The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #digitalmarketing #publicrelations #seo #marketingstrategy

E534: POV camera app is making $100,000 per month with a very simple social media marketing strategy. Faceless content. Some paid. Some influencers. Images, and very few videos. Crazy. But we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible. They’re in a popular niche for SEO and can absolutely dominate the SEO game as well. This is a wild digital marketing breakdown. Source from Iamgdsa: https://x.com/iamgdsa/status/1869402132362994089 Google Doesn’t Want You to Know This Is Possible: https://youtu.be/XJecGYJk3mE My Exact Social Media Posting Strategy: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/social-media-posting-strategy/ 00:00 Introduction to the Success Story 00:26 Overview of the POV App 01:32 Social Media Strategy Breakdown 03:49 AI Faceless TikToks 09:07 SEO Hacking 13:12 Final Thoughts and Conclusion The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #tiktokmarketing #instagrammarketing #socialmediamarketing #indiehackers

E533: The Google Site Reputation Abuse Policy was rolled out and repeatedly updated to stop parasite search engine optimization. Major publishers were violating Google rules in droves, doing affiliate Parasite SEO, and making hundreds of millions of dollars. This is everything that’s going on with Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy, what the takeaways are, how the policy can be avoided, and how the SEO game is changing. Links in the episode: The Google Site Reputation Abuse [Parasite SEO] Policy: https://parasiteseo.com/google-site-reputation-abuse-policy/ Credit to https://x.com/Charles_SEO Five-Dimensional Reddit Parasite SEO: https://youtu.be/4e60q8Uh-yY Google Doesn’t Want You to Know This Is Possible: https://youtu.be/XJecGYJk3mE How to Do Great Work: https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html 00:00 Introduction 01:27 Understanding the Site Reputation Abuse Policy 02:19 Forbes and the Abuse of Authority 04:16 Manual Actions and Algorithmic Delays 05:13 International SEO and Algorithmic Challenges 05:45 Forbes' Response and Google's Updated Policy 10:57 Devil's Advocate: The Fairness of SEO 14:00 What Can We Learn from the Policy? 17:06 Modern Parasite SEO Strategies 20:41 The Long Game in SEO 24:09 Conclusion and Final Thoughts #parasiteseo #blackhatseo #seotips #searchengineoptimization

E532: I now take up 3 out of 4 of the top spots for my keyword on Google! All with video SEO. And even crazier, I called my shot. On yesterday’s podcast I said I thought I could get the #1 spot in just a few hours of publishing my content. 8 hours later, that’s exactly what has happened. Here’s what I did and how you can do this, too. 00:00 Google Doesn’t Want You to Know This 00:48 My Case Study: Outranking Competition 01:23 Creating and Uploading Optimized Video 02:04 Results and Analysis 03:11 Understanding the Algorithm: Recency vs. Length 04:54 Testing the Hypothesis 06:09 Video for SEO Dominance 07:29 Haters and Negative Feedback 09:41 Conclusion The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #seotips #searchengineoptimization #growthhacking #digitalmarketing 

E531: Crazy discovery. You can outrank an original video on Google with your own edit of it. Here’s how this just happened to me and how I’ll be doing this in the future. You can literally find videos about interesting subject matter, tighten the script with your own edit, target the same keyword, and outrank the original video on YouTube and Google for that keyword. Again, this works for both YouTube and Google and oftentimes the videos rank the next day! 00:00 The Marketing Agency's Strategy 01:09 Link Echoes 01:59 YouTube SEO 03:27 Replicating the Strategy 06:01 Creating and Optimizing Content 09:05 Embracing the New Strategy The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #youtubemarketing #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #contentmarketing

E530: In yesterday's newsletter, I shared a new strategy that has worked unbelievably well for getting TOP social proof… for free. I received a question back: “How do I use something like this to legitimize myself and have social proof when I'm not an expert on a topic yet?” Expertise has to start somewhere. This episode is a recap of yesterday’s newsletter (https://edwardsturm.com/articles/featured-free-tier-is-mental/), then how to use this strategy if you’re not an expert yet and want to make yourself seen as one. Mentioned in the episode: Pareto SEO, The 20% of SEO That Matters: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/pareto-seo/ LinkedIn Hacks: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/linkedin-hacks/ 00:00 Introduction to Social Proof and Free Publicity 00:51 Yesterday's Newsletter 01:27 How Featured.com Works 01:47 Quoted by HubSpot 06:20 Advice for Aspiring Experts 06:50 Building Your Online Presence 15:06 Sharing Achievements 18:08 Conclusion The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #personalbranding #brandinghacks #digitalmarketinghacks #publicrelations