Hey, what's up, everyone?This is David Lee Kim, co-founder of Omniscient Digital.
Today, we have a Kitchenside episode with me, Alex, and Ali talking a bit about the background of building the business, as well as some of the services we're doing for clients and what we're learning about SEO and our thinking around services and how things are changing.
We start off talking about the idea of perfectionism versus experimentation.
I think each of us at some point had some sort of perfectionist tendencies and perhaps through our experiences or perhaps just by necessity, we've developed more of an experimentation mindset, not just in doing a work like SEO experiments, but even experiments in the business and being okay with the idea that not everything we do will work, but it's something that we need to at least try.
And there's a potential upside that it will work. We also talk about the best career advice that we've ever gotten.And it's extremely simple.It's so simple.It's kind of silly that it's even a differentiator for folks in their careers nowadays.
But it's just about having urgency.We go into a lot of detail on what we mean by that.And we also talk about what an SEO program needs to succeed.And it has nothing to do with SEO.So I'll leave you with that.
I hope you enjoy this episode of our Kitchenside Conversation.
IRL stuff.It's fun.I feel like the first time you do it after just grinding at your desk, it's like you forget how to socialize a little bit.Yeah.Like I'm a pretty extroverted guy, you know?It's like I go into this happy hour.I'm like,
Hey, how's it going?I, uh, I have to admit.So during inbound, I was working out of WeWork and I was like dressed up and everything.Cause I was going to go to the events afterward.
And before I went to one of the networking events, I went to a bar by myself to have a drink by myself to. like pregame and warm up for the network.Cause I hadn't really talked to anyone in person except you all on zoom or like Google meet.
I was like, all right, I need to prepare for in-person socialization.Let's have a drink before I go to this event where I'm going to be drinking more.It worked, felt good.
Which it is interesting how, how it's significantly different talking on, um, like Zoom or Riverside or Google Meet from doing it in person.It feels genuinely different to me.I hate the virtual ones.They make me drain.I get tired.
I can't stand like, oh, I got a meeting at two, I got a meeting at three.The in real life ones energize me.Like I come back from those feeling even better than when I went.And I'll dread them at first.I'm like, oh, I don't want to go to this dinner.
I don't want to go to this happy hour.But then afterwards, the next day, I feel great.So.
Yeah, it's just like, I mean, we've talked about this before, but it's a little bit uncomfortable, like having to go out of your way to go to this event and talk to people in real life.But I think that's what makes it so special.
Versus here, you can just sit in the comforts of your home at your computer, where I sit most of the day.And it's comfortable.Like there's very little effort.
And I found that yeah, sure, I have to put in more effort to like, go to a place and then sometimes it's out of the way or like I have to drive and find parking and it's super annoying.But It's a better time, just objectively a better time for me.
And I make better relationships that way.
The extroverts used to run the world.And then during the pandemic, the pendulum flipped too far.The introverts, we've got to come back to the middle.
What's on a docket for you, Ali?What's on your mind that you want to cover today?
The only point I put on here was just further unpacking our culture of experimentation.It's been something I've personally been reminding myself about with recent changes that we made.
And it's been a personal mindset shift of mine as we've grown the business.
So... That's a deep one.I like it.That's cool.Yeah.Definitely more interesting than me and Stephanie and Alex Prado.
Do you want to eat the elephant?Is that what it's called?Eat the frog? Yes.Do the hard thing first.No, that means do the hardest thing first.It's a productivity hack.
with so Ellie, share more context around like, how you can't why this thing is top of mind, like what's happening?And what we're doing?
Well, this is like, every Friday morning, I've been trying to pause and like, check myself and like my mindset going into the end of another week.Sometimes I tend to just try to get shit done.And like, just get to the finish line.
And I don't save a lot of room for reflection.I've talked with both of you guys about this.And this morning, I was just sitting and thinking about like, where do I feel?
frankly, like the biggest insecurities, where am I feeling like the most ill equipped with what we're all working on.And I continue to like come up against this like perfectionistic tendency of mine.And I think I've gotten a little bit better at it.
Not taking things not it's not a personal thing.It's more of like taking the hits, you know, it's like, letting it roll off me kind of being the goldfish from Ted Lasso is something I try to remind myself of quite often.And we're making some big
changes to the team.And we have some big changes on the horizon for q4 and into 2025.And they're scary, you know, for me, because I'm like, what if I do it wrong? But I realized this morning I was asking the wrong question.
Because there's really not a matter of right and wrong with a lot of these things, especially if it's the first time that we're doing them.And David, you've been really good at reminding me of this.
Alex, I think this is just your mindset by nature based on where your career has been.
But I've always thought about experimentation and more of like the micro sense, like running ads, trying new marketing strategies, like that stuff is by nature, experimentation, gathering data, making changes, but
I've realized that it personally, with the way my brain works, it really helps to adopt that approach with some of the bigger decisions as well.
Like hiring people, working with contractors, trying new services, like pricing and packaging new services.And if you maintain this perspective of like, prioritizing learning over getting it right, it really reduces the pressure.
And I've also seen that mindset, as we've infused it into the team, it really helps them keep moving forward, like it rewards progress over like, perfection, sort of our values.So I don't know, I just I came full circle this morning.
And I realized that just shifting that, that way of thinking makes stuff so much easier. I don't think you guys struggle with this in the same way I do, but that's what was top of mind.
I think I used to struggle with it, but then by nature of the roles I had in my career, I had to get over it.
I forgot who I was talking to, but someone similar where they have a lot of professionalist tendencies and overanalyze the options and it's hard for them to make a decision.
And I was like, oh, I actually have the opposite problem sometimes where people want to be more thoughtful.And I'm like, no, just make a decision and it will fix it later if it breaks.And that causes a lot of anxiety.
But I think it's really cool to hear that because
I think by admitting that we're viewing some of these things and not entirely sure what's the right answer, it gives the team, quote, permission to also move forward with things, even if they feel uncertain.
So it's less of a culture of like, hey, you better get this right or else all shit's going to go horribly.And more of what the information that you have right now, what do you think is the best decision?And like, we can always course correct.
I have a lot of thoughts on this.I don't even know where to start.One devil's advocate point is that I've found recently, so yes, the viewing things as learning and not permanent or like de-risking or de-pressurizing decisions.
I think that's important.One thing that I've come to realize over the past year or so is that you don't need to learn something from everything you do. And I used to pressure myself to, you know, journal or like, what lesson am I taking from this?
Like, what lesson can I learn from this?And I don't want to make fun of this person.I did this like hippie, dippy, breathwork, sauna, ice bath thing.And it's full of like Andrew Huberman, Tim Ferriss, fucking woo woo podcast listeners, right?
Who believe this stuff is like, stimulating their vagus nerve or something.And we do this whole sauna, ice bath, the whole cycle.And they do like a little vulnerability thing at the end where they're like, who wants to share stuff, right?
I never share it because I'm Midwestern.And one woman was like... Shove it deep down.I'm not telling this crowd of strangers nothing.Well, yeah, one woman was talking about how like the ice bath like teaches her that like,
The thinking brain is not always right and like your intuition, something, something, right?Like you got to overcome the thinking brain to just jump into the ice bath and like do it because the benefits are there.
And I was just, at first, old me would have been like, totally, totally.There's like macro, like philosophical lessons to learn here.But then I thought, it's freezing cold water.
Biologically, your body and brain probably thinks you're dying in that water.
So there's like a really logical reason that you don't want to do it and that by doing it and pushing through, your body produces a bunch of endorphins because it thinks it's dying and you feel better afterwards.
And like, there's probably not actually a deep philosophical lesson to learn. And sometimes it's good to do these post hoc, post mortems.But the same would be true when I was running A-B tests and experiments.
And you certainly want to learn as much as you can from inconclusive experiments, from lost experiments, from winners. But I would see people kind of extrapolate lessons that weren't actually apparent in the data.
You know, they would take like a blue versus red button color, just for example, right, the simplest possible test, and then explain that red, you know, promotes urgency, and it causes anxiety in the users.So then they like hesitate.
So like, that's why red lost.And you're like, I think red just lost.I don't, I don't actually think we can learn anything from this.
So like Googling color psychology.
So let's just move on and run the next experiment is my point.And, and, and that's kind of the second learning of this year is I saw a tweet about this and I think it was probably worded a little bit too strongly.
But it said something about how the most miserable people tend to be over thinkers, right?And under actors, it really produces like psychological spirals.And I think you just want to jump kind of into action when possible.
And Ali, I think that's what I'm speaking towards.So I think we are in agreement.
The learning is almost like a secondary utility to this mindset.It's more of like, don't it just keep moving.
Like that's kind of the point I'm making is like, even if you like mess up or make the wrong judgment call, take whatever learning there is from it if there is truly one, and then just keep moving because that's where I've struggled.
I put a lot index very heavily on being right thinking that's what it meant to be a leader had to unlearn that as someone who was a very good student, which is not a brag at all.I wish I was not a good student because it's been it was a very
reward heavy childhood, I think, and now I'm looking for the same in my career.And that's not how you build a career, right?You just like keep moving, keep iterating.
So that's really what I'm getting at is like, sure, if there is a learning, take a sec, jot it down, iterate.If not, just don't pause.Don't like withdraw from like execution and and moving forward.Yeah, it's not a big deal.Just keep going.
I do like, I like this.I love this thread of, I'll rephrase it as like, not everything that we do or every data point that we collect needs to lead to some groundbreaking revelation.
I remember I used to like meditate more and like do these sensory deprivation tanks.And I'd be like, oh yeah, I'm expecting to have some life revelation when I do this stuff. find some unique insight in the data.
I'm like, you know, sometimes there just isn't.And that's okay.Like, you're not, it would be weird if there was some massive thing that you had to change every single time you looked at the data or like every single thing you did.
And I remember working with one of our team members, Nia, there was a point where like, we had a challenge with a client.I was like, Hey, I'm trying to think of what we could have done differently.I'm coming up blank.
Like, I don't even know, should we even do a debrief?And she's like, no, I've thought about it too.I'm coming up blank too.I'm like, yeah, I think we did everything we could.There's like nothing to learn here.She's like, yeah, I agree.Great.
Don't need to spend 30 minutes debriefing this thing.
It's cool to know when the difference is because I think that over analysis is also a form of perfectionism.It's almost like you're applying pressure to yourself to derive some deep truth about the situation.
When sometimes if you lose a client, a new CMO came in or something, there's actually nothing you could have done.In the time series of working with the client, there's going to come a point where the relationship ends.
It does sometimes like you can learn something and then sometimes it's just a function of time Yeah, sometimes it's just like high-five and we did as best as you could.
All right, let's move on but Ali you're maybe broader point another part that I wanted to cover on the culture of experimentation is I wrote about this on my last newsletter I quoted this old article from Craig Sullivan who
He's like OG conversion optimization guy.He's like the godfather in some ways.But he wrote this article on the endless suck of best practices and optimization experts.So my piece was about best practices, when to use them, when not to use them.
And my thesis was sort of like, if the decision doesn't matter too much, just do best practices. that gives you time and space to innovate where it does matter.
And then if you don't know or you can't innovate in a better way, then just use best practices as a baseline.But this idea of best practices, and he wraps it up with the expertise thing.
So if you're an optimization expert, it's a little bit of a misnomer or like a little bit of an oxymoron, because what you're usually doing is operating in the world of uncertainty and running experiments.
So in some contingents of the optimization world, You'd have people who just come in and be like, hey, you need to add some human faces on the landing page.They speak with high certainty.They have high confidence that what they believe is right.
I've seen this work.It's going to work right.But that's bullshit.Then his whole article was taking that down.And his last point in the article was like, hire the humble one.There's no such thing as best practice for me.
Only users, the boundary layer between their minds and my product and the tools that I can use to understand what's happening there.
My experience in observing and fixing things, these patterns do make me a better diagnostician, but they don't function as truths.They guide and inform my work, but they don't provide guarantees.
So I think that's where like, yeah, the rate limiter is like, you know, we don't. We don't always know what's going to work for the end user or for the algorithm.
We've got a good layer of patterns and hopefully we've got a better sense of pattern recognition, but nobody in any domain can kind of guarantee an outcome.There's so many middle layer variables that are sort of like,
obfuscated, you know, you can't see like the three middle layers of the neural network.There's some opacity there.
Yeah, it just learning by doing been told that for a long time.And, you know, you don't know until you know, right, you learn something.
So cerebrally, but then when you start learning by experience, like, oh, this is what it feels like, like, I have to walk into this uncertainty.And I won't, it won't become certain until I start doing.
I mean, if I even felt that way, I know, we relate a lot of strangely, a lot of what we do to like working out and like fitness in the gym and stuff.And I've been doing a lot more strength training.
And sometimes I just have to do an exercise and like feel it out to figure out form.Like sure, I can watch 27 Instagram videos, or like YouTube or whatever.
But like until I do something for the first time, I won't really be able to give it shape or do it right.
Yeah, it's like, like a dork just watching every UFC match and like looking at jujitsu YouTube videos.And then they get into like a street fight and get bent up like a pretzel, you know?
Yeah, yeah.But I've learned so much.Well, I think this parlay as well into the other point that David, you had written down the career advice slash urgency.Do you want to explain that?
Yeah, you shared a video, I think what earlier this week of like the best career advice ever.I don't know who the guy was, but Brian, Brian, something.Yeah.Like he just kept repeating this thing, like do it now, do it now, do it now.
And he expanded on that and like, The best career advice is just don't, don't wait, do the thing now.Don't let a project, like if, if you agree to do something, don't wait two or three weeks to do it.
Do it as soon as you can deliver on it, be reliable.And I remember even thinking back to my career. I remember getting coffee with a coworker and she said, you know, you always seem so stressed.
And if you would just chilled out and worked half the speed you did, you would still be working faster than everyone else pretty much.And I took that as like a. hey, you're really good at what you do.But I was also like, I'm not going to slow down.
Why would I slow down?In fact, that further validates I should keep moving fast because I'm just going to get ahead of everyone.That's why you're a founder.
Yeah, that's why I'm where I am and why I was able to take on these projects and everything and why people were asking me, hey, why do you get all these cool projects?And I was like, because I'm pitching them.
I'm doing everything they asked me to do and I'm just moving fast and they don't have enough for me to do. And I've been thinking about that a lot because, I mean, it applies to working with clients.Granted, we can't always be urgent with everything.
And I think there is a line to be towed where the culture becomes every small thing is urgent, even though it doesn't need to be, which is highly toxic and very annoying.And I hate that type of stuff.
But there's a case to be made where if you say you're going to do something, the person shouldn't have to follow up with you about it.
Like that means you're probably taking too long or like either to have unrealistic expectations or it's just like, hey, where's this thing at that you said you would do?
And whenever someone just delivers consistently on time, that's like a strength in itself. We're just when they deliver earlier than you expected to, you're just like blown away.Oh, my goodness.
Or just worst case scenario, communicating if you're not going to deliver on time and explaining, I'll get to you within 24 more hours.
Worst case scenario, be surprised by folks that just drop off and they're like, oh, they'll they'll be fine if I send it tomorrow or the next week.
Yeah, I think there's a massive bifurcation happening right now.And granted, this is just my anecdote.I don't have data on this.But I've noticed more and more people are just like, delaying their communications or not communicating.
Like it's it's becoming kind of a problem a little bit like with maybe people outside the company.It just takes a really long time and there's an opacity of communication.
And then on the other side, there's still a large portion of people who respond right away.Even if they don't have the answer, they give you like, hey, I'm on vacation.I'll get back to you right away.
It seems like there's a huge bifurcation going on right now.But I've always... People have noticed this before.I'm not the one who noticed this, but
if you email a CEO, they get back in like two seconds, you email a director of marketing, they take three weeks to get back to you.
It's like the most the busiest, like most important person, whatever in the company seems to like have this urgency that where they just fire it off.Right.And I think that goes back to the not overthinking it.
Maybe there's a little bit of paralysis and perfectionism with the other person.Maybe there's more fear over getting it right.Whereas the CEO just sent from iPhone fucking typos all over.Right.
But I've noticed that, and I have to tell myself that too sometimes.I wake up and I'm like, do it now, do it now, do it now.If I got a bunch of emails, what am I waiting for?Just send a response.It takes me 20 minutes.It's not that hard.
Yeah, I'm all for like digital boundaries.I do think like, there's also phenomenon of like, if I send you a text or I send an email, like I'm owed a response.And I don't agree with that either.Obviously, in a business setting, it's different.
But I will say if the conversations been started, then continue and finish it.
It's like once you start engaging with somebody, and there's a back and forth, and then someone just drops off without explanation or out of office, automated email, whatever, just like, make that communicate is really what it comes down to.
And I've seen that happen to folks just drop off.And I don't know if they're like professionally ghosting or whatever.I don't know when that became a thing.
But yeah, it's strange that clearly you don't owe somebody a response for a call.
Yeah, that's how you don't know the person like just ignore it, right?Or like, if it's an email on a Friday afternoon, and you're taking the weekend, like get back on Monday or Tuesday, like reasonable.
But yeah, I've seen the same thing either like immediate responses where I'm like, do you need to go to sleep?Or like three weeks where I'm like, all right.
David, you mentioned something and it caught my attention because I think it's well-meaning, but I'm almost annoyed that we have to caveat things that we're not talking about the toxic version of this.Yes.Because I would caveat things too.
I saw you wrote a LinkedIn post about it today and had that caveat and I was like, to me, it's obvious.There's such a clear line in the sand between overwhelming somebody with ridiculous requests and expecting an urgency on the important things.
And I also think that it's not more stressful to do things more rapidly when they are sort of on your plate versus letting them sit there and fester in a backlog.Just personally speaking, I guess, like, I can't speak for everybody.
But for me, like, let's say I have a finite set of N things to do that are important.There's not more or less.And it's toxic when you add too many things to that backlog of N things.And for me, it's more stressful knowing that I have
a million and one things to get done and i'm just waiting i'm partitioning them out i'm yeah i'm like prioritizing them in some like way advanced way and it's actually less stressful for me to just kind of start attacking them back to the first thing i said they eat the frog right just yeah just do a small part of that slide deck that i've been
wasting or procrastinating on.It adds more stress by pushing it out, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Well, and sometimes I find myself just checking things off and not thinking about it.And then I'll be like, I just am going to get this from zero to one. It's going to be unedited a bunch of red grammarly lines underneath everything.
And then when I come back to it, I'm like, Oh, I can just leave clean this up and I'm done.
Whereas like when you sit down, maybe the day before some things do or whatever it is, and you're like, Oh my god, I have to bring this all the way from zero to one and like one hour.
I like that when you can just like, it's like brain dumping, you know, and then come back and give it shape.
There's an old SpongeBob episode, uh, David, you might remember this where he's supposed to write the essay.Yeah.
What I learned in boating school is what I learned in boating school is, and he spends all day just procrastinating and like doing things that he thinks are, you know, productive or he has to do beforehand.
And he just ends up like getting so, so stressed out.And I believe the end of the episode, like it's a delayed, so he doesn't have to deliver the next day anyway.
But it's like he builds up this whole narrative in his head and is just completely filled with stress when all he had to do was write two sentences. Well, there was a common theme about that at the pavilion dinner that I went to last night.
There was a question, this could be an interesting one for us to answer too.I thought it was actually hard, but they asked, what's, oh man, I can't remember the phrasing, but something like, what have you learned this year?
over the scope of the year that's kind of like had a lasting impact.
And I would say at least 60 to 70% of the table said something along the lines of don't overcomplicate things, just do things, go with your gut, you already know what to do, stop overthinking it, like no midwit, like everybody said it in a different way.
I obviously brought up the midwit meme.But it was a really, really common sentiment last night.
Yeah, I think to me, that's interesting because at least
I don't know the makeup of the group, but there's more and more information that's available that might cause distractions or make us second guess what we think is the right thing to do, because there's all these, quote, experts and influencers on LinkedIn.
And I think a lot of them are kind of being expose in a sense that when I speak to a lot of people, they're like, yeah, a lot of people on LinkedIn are just BSing.I'm like, ah, everyone's realizing this together.
Two or three people said that last night, too, by the way, on the learnings was like, don't listen to everybody.Like, no one knows what they're doing.Right.
Yeah.And so, I mean, we've this that I'd say that's been a big learning for myself, too, is, hey, stop.Stop listening to all the things that people are saying that we should do or like second guessing.And if we have a gut to
a feeling of what we should do, like, yeah, sure, validate it, but don't delay making a decision because that's just going to be worse.And then like, again, we can just course correct down the line.
So funny how some of this stuff just comes in like seasons.I feel like From maybe 2015 through 2019, everybody was data-driven and built really advanced prioritization matrices and was into mental models.
And it seemed like there was a strong analysis layer.And I don't think the utility of that has gone away.Quite frankly, we do a lot of that in our SEO work.
Because when you're dealing with maybe 1,000 or 10,000 potential actions, it does help to filter.But I am seeing a little bit of a pendulum shift back towards, gut feel.Let's just roll the dice a little bit, especially with smaller decisions.
They're not going to break the business.They're not going to break the bank.Just get moving.It seems like that It's a little bit different than the last maybe 10 years of career.
It does make me a little uncomfortable.I remember at Housepot when I was doing growth on a product side, man, I would spend like a week or two writing out experimentation specs.Like, here's all the data to support that we need to do this thing.
Here's what I believe is going to be the outcome.Those documents were pristine.I enjoyed that. mental masturbation, to be completely honest.
It was really enjoyable for me because I just got to investigate and dig into data and splice it a certain way and be like, oh, what if I cut it this way?Oh, there's something here and just have a lot of fun with that.
There was a point where, honestly, I don't think I told you about this, but I wanted to bring that culture into art, into omniscience.I was like, oh, that's going to be way too slow. That is not the pace we should be moving at.
We're like not a HubSpot.We're like not even 20 people yet.And so I cut that.And so nowadays it's like, let's make a call.
Yes, let's document and like make everyone informed that we're going to make this decision and then inform everyone how it played out.But we don't need to spend weeks documenting what we're doing.That's like the meta work.It's not the actual work.
I used to do those too.And I would cut into the data in the same way.
But then even when it came down to like the hypothesis and supporting evidence and beliefs, like I would dig up like psychological research to justify what implementation I wanted to make.And it's like,
whatever like cognitive bias or research, it's like, does that, does by including that in the document make the action or experiment more likely to win?Like, absolutely not.
So you realize like, okay, if I took this part away, like I still have the idea and all I'm doing is sort of trying to find evidence to convince somebody else that it's important and I'm still going to run it.
And maybe in a big company where you need to get the buy-in, it makes sense.For an experiment, it's like you're capped on risk anyway.You're two to four weeks away from killing the experiment or shipping it.So you're already risk capping it.
So who do you need to convince?It made me see that there is some wasted time on my side on some of that.
Did anybody ever read that?
Uh, tough to know.Yeah, I think probably.I think they did actually.Yeah, I think because I got really elaborate comments.
But it wasn't like it didn't make or break the fact that you were running it to begin with.It was more just like additional resources and just nice to have data.
I think it was a medium for me to demonstrate how smart I was.
exactly.And everybody who's commenting to everybody who like comes in and like critique something or they're like, Oh, that's an interesting point.Can you elaborate?And it's like, we were all just demonstrating how smart and how critical we were.
And it's like, you could have just Just shipped it, you know?Yeah.
Could have just shipped it, gotten data and like, yeah.Yeah.What's, what's this heuristic?Like for SEO, you have your notes here, like for SEO to work long term, you need to have a non-SEO why for the content to exist.What does that mean?Yeah.
So this is another old school thing that y'all be familiar with from like the content marketing world of like 2012, 2015.But, uh, yeah, I was talking to JH, Growth Place, and he was referring to, I guess I can anonymize some of this.
But let's just say a company.And he mentioned that he didn't believe they really had a shot.A lot of the traffic trends didn't look great.
And his underlying thesis that we chitchatted about very briefly on the phone, was that to make SEO work, you first need to have an underlying first principle for why the content should exist anyway.
which sounds really obvious and almost like tautological.
But it's not how we've operated in general in the SEO space over the last, I would say 6 to 8 years, where SEO is like the first layer and the only layer that you look at in terms of decision making.
You don't have an underlying engine that SEO sits on top of to drive distribution.So for example, Andy Crestodino wrote this old article on having a content marketing mission statement or a blog mission statement.We write about X for Y audience.
And here's the promise of that content. And like CXL, we had that where it was like, every piece had to be the best ever written on that topic within the sphere of CRO and sort of A-B testing and technical marketing.And there was a utility for that.
It was a destination that you would go to even if you didn't find it via SEO.Obviously, our biggest distribution channel at CXL was SEO, as are most companies that are based on content.But without that, it seems like companies are
dying on the vine nowadays, as Google maybe gets better at parsing what's just merely SEO content from stuff that is optimized, formatted correctly for the distribution channel, but also has maybe an underlying purpose, right?
So if Coinbase is going to do content, they want to educate the world on the future of crypto.I'm sure that their mission is deeper than just like, we want to rank for Bitcoin.Why?I don't know.It's got 10 million searches a month.
And you're talking about a mission separate than like, we want to drive revenue.
Well, that's a KPI.I mean, that's obviously your business goal.
Right.Or like the product-led SEO, product-led content is a lot easier to do this with because it flows from the utility or the job to be done with the product.
So obviously Zapier and their integrations library has a very useful function in that people are trying to connect X product with Y product. And previously, they didn't know how to do that, but they were searching for it.
So Zapier created a bunch of pages that served that purpose.They were found in Google search because people were searching for it.And that's why the distribution channel was chosen.
But the function, the utility, the mission of the content backed into the product and laid underneath that SEO layer.
Oh, yeah.I've felt this way.
I love this heuristic.Yeah. I just spoke to a company CEO and they're talking to us about what type of content they want to produce.And they said, yeah, our target audience are developers.
Like they're working at Clay, for instance, and they're like, they get customer requests for integrations.So they need to build like a integration between Clay and HubSpot for this enterprise company that has a very particular setup of HubSpot.
And they also need to make it multi-tenant in that multiple people will want to use this enterprise level HubSpot integration with Clay, but there is no documentation online for that.They're like, that's what we want to serve.That's our mission.
It serves both SEO, but there's also a gap in the market for this type of education because it's such a specific use case.I was like, oh. there's like a bigger reason for this.And like, yes, SEO layers into this, but there's a gap in the market.
People are looking for this documentation that HubSpot doesn't provide.And so that you need to fill that gap.And so there's like a market need, there's an SEO play.And there's a clear tie into the business use case, too.
And I thought, like, oh, this is perfect.Actually, this is the ideal case where, yeah, let's do this.And we're gonna measure it.
The KPIs are going to be like business impact and SEO metrics, but there's an underlying reason for why we're producing a content beyond those KPIs.
reasons, I feel like are really good fuel for when things get tough.And when companies like fail or not fail, but struggle to perform in other channels.
Or as companies grow, like releasing new features or product lines, I think though that that reasoning is not only the tie that brings everything together, but it also gives a lot of
meet, I guess, for lack of a better word, for for teams like ours or internal teams to continue to return to not only for ideation, which is where I believe topics should stem from is a lot of that the mission and the purpose and then a lot of the the perspective of the audience, which we talked about last time.
But it really helps differentiate that content when it's written. So I've always I believe this ever since I really started and I was pitching topics as a freelancer.
And I was just like, I would, you know, ask a publication or a company I was working for.And I was like, Why are we doing this?Like, where are we?What what is this content doing?And this was before I wasn't even really familiar with SEO.
I just knew I liked to write.And I knew I liked business. And that was where I would start.And I think we've kind of we've had that thread in how we've trained our team.
Like I think, David, you posted this week on LinkedIn about like, spending time knowing your audience, right?Like number one on any listicle, but it's so easily forgotten.And we spent some time with a client, an external SME, I source for a client.
And I think I got more ideas for this clients content roadmap in that 30 minute conversation than I did looking at their competitors content or like looking through the site like plenty of other ideas.
But to me, if topic ideation begins with Google, I think you're kind of missing the boat.It's almost like you're trying to then backfill
Yeah, yeah.Square peg, round hole kind of thing.Audience filter needs to happen first.
And then it's kind of like the SEO sandwich thing I talked about, where the bulk of the sandwich or the bulk of the project is the piece itself and the value that it's bringing.
And maybe then you... The bread on both sides of the sandwich is SEO, both in terms of search behavior I like you got to figure out like the terminology people are using if you want to distribute across different channels.
And then there's an optimization factor of like, okay, plug the word in a few times to give it a chance to be discovered.But don't build everything around, like what you're seeing on Google, because then it just kind of like waters it down.
It's an interesting and I think it will be filtered out.
I think I'm kind of implying what you were saying here around your unique brand POV.I think it's even broader than that, in that you don't actually have to have a brand POV to solve user desires or pain points.Let's go back to crypto as an example.
It's probably still true, but when everything was kind of emerging under the mainstream, I actually think a pretty solid user pain point or job to be done would just be understanding all the terminology.
So in that case, you know, there's always an exception to a heuristic or a rule.
We say usually you don't want to do a glossary of just terminology, but actually that would probably solve a really strong user pain point across like a pretty solid volume of search traffic. You really don't need to have a unique brand POV or take.
I think that could be right.Like we've got we've got a client data quality data contracts.Right.They have a very strong point of view on how data quality and governance should be done.And that's that's the.
the basis or the underlying reason for their content.And then we can find terminology that exists and weave that brand POV in.But I don't think it necessitates a POV.It's really... It's funny.It's the thing that SEOs miss the most.
And content marketers are marginally better, but I don't think much better. Product managers and product marketers are probably the best at this from a role function.But it's really deeply understanding what somebody wants to accomplish.
And then... Because it's like, you don't have to create SEO content for that.You can create products and product features for that.You can create case studies and customer stories.It gives you optionality.
But to first understand that kernel of what somebody's trying to accomplish, or even the pain point before they know what they're trying to accomplish.Because then that can dictate channel strategy.
It's funny you say that because I we have an episode I think we filmed it what two years ago about like why glossaries suck and I would never propose them but we have a client where I actually changed my mind.
And I think this is also where audience research comes into play.Well before topic research and topic strategy, it comes all the way back to site.How do you build your site?
How are you really serving your audience and how they interact with all of your content, not just your blog?And I was talking with this client and they... They were similar in that like, they operate within a space that's pretty well known.
But like, the bigger picture is like the terminology is changing.There's a like, it's somewhat politically infused, and it is part of their purpose to educate, right?They obviously want to drive revenue.
But like, if they really were serving their audience, they would help them like, define and understand topics.And they're okay if those pages don't necessarily like convert right off the bat.
It's more building that trust, helping folks like better understand these concepts and then potentially working with them.
So that that was where I was like, actually think a glossary might be a good a good play for y'all because I'm usually not on that boat, but I changed my mind in that regard.
It's hard because you have to answer some pretty fundamental questions before you start building kind of a channel from a best practices vantage point, right?You have to ask that question.It's very like ego destroying, which is why Why exist?
A little nihilistic, huh?But why me?Why in this world of endless distraction and education and entertainment, why would somebody pay attention to what I'm putting out into the world?
And if you don't have a pretty strong answer for that, I mean, the tactics and the channels can vary within that, but Once you have that answer, I think everything's pretty much easier.You get a pretty big tailwind, you know?
SEO becomes pretty fucking easy after you know that.Versus if you don't know that, SEO is like Sisyphean, you know?
Yeah.Is that how you say that word?Sisyphean? I would have thought like Sisyphean.Sisyphean?Which sounds a little bit like another word.
But I'll kind of apply what you just described, Alex, to like even this podcast.Like one could argue like, oh, it's just another marketing podcast where you're talking about the same stuff as everyone else.
And sure, maybe someone could make that argument, but I really enjoy these, doing these because I think we're just kind of a no BS point of view on a lot of these topics.And we'll say how we feel about things.
And if something doesn't work, or we tried, it doesn't work, we're not continuing to drink that Kool-Aid.And we'll check our own practice.Is that the right phrase?We'll check our priors and be like, Oh, actually, I was wrong.
And I've gotten feedback from people like, yeah, it's, you're actually talking about things in a way that's pragmatic.And you're pretty honest about your experience and what you're learning and what you're doing versus
us being dogmatic about one way to do things and always selling ourselves and the way we like, the way quotes should be done.
I don't even care if people disagree with me.Like I'm open to a conversation like talking through stuff.I just want someone like I just want people to be honest about the way that they feel about some of these topics.
And they're not just jumping on, you know, the LinkedIn bandwagon or all that jazz, which we already talked about.
Speaking of, this is totally unrelated, but I had it on my list, but disagreements and LinkedIn bandwagon.I had a viral post this week.Do you guys see?The one time I just share my epic failure, it goes crazy viral.That's what I wanted to talk about.
So a couple lessons on this one.I just wrote about how, let me get the exact wording because this is important to me. I wrote about how my personal website tanked.And I said, I tried to take a shortcut and it worked at first.
I heavily used AI and content optimization software to automate posts on my personal website. It was great until it wasn't.Traffic tanked.Right side is I have fewer taxes to pay this year on affiliate income.
Shortcuts in SEO often bring a sugar high, but they come with a crash.The cleanup, it's not fun.I'm still avoiding it, which is true.I still haven't fixed any of this stuff. So anyway, the point was really shortcuts.
There tends to not be free lunch in this stuff.So Icarus goes up fast, usually falls fast.Anyway, people read their own interpretation into this.And I feel like at least 70% to 80% of the comments were shitting on AI.
And I said AI once in that entire post.And I also said content optimization software.And I talked about how I basically automated a bunch of mediocre content.That was the real point.And everybody was like, yeah, AI content sucks.
And I was like, that was not the point.I could have easily hired really, really shitty content writers to do this and the same result would have applied.And it's just so funny seeing how People paint the world with their own biases.
It was not about AI at all.It was really under-emphasized even in the post itself.
Yeah, it is.I'm frankly pretty tired of these conversations about whether or not something was written by AI because it misses the point on whether, is it good?And is it performing?It was bad content.
Objectively, I have some stuff on my personal website that was written by AI.I'm like, I can't believe I published this shit.There's a part of me that just wants to unpublish it, but I'm like, It doesn't matter, David.None of this matters.
I saw a little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.I remember, dude, I wrote this one.I wrote a blog post on copywriting software.And I put Jasper or Copy AI or one of those tools at the top.And that was like my first foray into affiliate stuff.
And I remember I made like 50 bucks.And I was like, huh, that's interesting.I wonder if I could do that again. So then I wrote the next one and then and then AI tools came out and I was like, I think I could write a lot of these.
So then I just scaled it up and it was genuinely just for affiliate revenue.Like there was no, to get back to our point, there was no underlying the world needs this.I'm the right person to give this to them.
I have a unique format or unique take on this stuff.It was really just I found a way to make money and I just did it really fast.Funny.But I also wanted to make a point on this is maybe stretching things, but
We've talked about kind of like narrow targeting of content marketing and SEO being important, more so than like broad top of the funnel terms.I do think there's kind of a gulf.And once you pass that gulf,
and get to really broad appeal, impressions start to matter again, because there's so many people that some percentage of those are going to be the right ones.
Because I looked at the fall, I gained a bunch of followers and got a bunch of requests, and really solid people, right.And it was kind of a broadly applicable broad appeal post, it wasn't really talking about our value props or like,
traffic trap type of stuff.It was just saying like, hey, I fucked up on my own website.But of the 25,000 impressions, a small percent of those were really good people to get in front of.So I think it's like an inverted U-shape.
Or just a U-shape where it's like the really narrowly targeted stuff, specifically for your target audience that they just eat up is great.
And then there's kind of this middle dead zone where it's kind of like the mediocre middle where everybody's talking about the same stuff and you don't differentiate. It's broadly appealing, but kind of not.
sticky and interesting enough to really grab a hold of anybody's attention.Then past that, once you're like, like Neil Patel territory, like you're just numbers, your numbers are so high that it becomes worth it again.Does that make sense?Yeah.
I don't know how to reverse engineer that, but just something I'm learning.
I did have this conversation with someone literally right before this call.And they're asking me how I, what I thought of a particular, very popular marketing influencer in B2B. And I was like, you know, this person's content doesn't speak to me.
Like this person is very smart.They're not really in marketing anymore.They're like more of building an audience and they're a creator.
But they had a lot of interesting things to say in the beginning, but now their business is about getting a large audience and sponsorships and all that.And so by nature of that, their content has become a lot more broad.
And while I can respect them and them being a smart person, I, their content doesn't appeal to me anymore because that's, that's not who they're after anymore.They're writing about very one-on-one stuff now.
And that's, it's just a data point that validates what you just said, Alex, around there's a certain saturation point where depending on whatever your business is or whatever your goal is, you have to go broad.
I particularly, I'm not interested in writing about SEO one-on-one stuff or talking about SEO one-on-one, but I don't know, maybe in the future we have millions of listeners and we have to grow that by talking about SEO one-on-one.
I wonder, I don't know how it applies to maybe blog content or SEO.Maybe it's like... Extremely bottom funnel, and then the most top of the funnel.Like maybe you do want to rank for CRM if you can rank for CRM.
Or maybe we do want to rank for SEO if we can rank for SEO.
Maybe we should sponsor the Super Bowl.
Super Bowl?Well, that's what I was thinking.
There's kind of a barbell, right?Maybe with like paid ads, you want to go like direct exact match keywords and then Super Bowl and then nothing in the middle. I'm like purely conjecture at this point.Yeah Yeah
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