Marissa Snook (President & CEO of corecubed) and Anthony Kelker (Search Marketing Specialist at corecubed) discuss the importance of content marketing, how post-acute care businesses can continue to make it a priority, and its impact on search engine optimization (SEO).
Marissa Snook (President & CEO of corecubed) and Anthony Kelker (Search Marketing Specialist at corecubed) discuss the importance of content marketing, how post-acute care businesses can continue to make it a priority, and its impact on search engine optimization (SEO).
Linda Leekley (00:14):
Hi everyone. This is Linda Leekley, chief Clinical Officer from hcp.
Amanda Sternklar (00:19):
And I'm Amanda Sternklar, our Director of Marketing,
Linda Leekley (00:23):
And you're listening to Vision, the podcast for leaders and forward thinkers in the care industry. Today, we're going to be discussing marketing for post-acute care, specifically how to efficiently create content and make sure that it has the biggest impact on your marketing efforts with s e o. So, to dive further into this, we're joined by experts, Marissa Snook, president, and CEO of corecubed, and Anthony Kelker, search marketing specialist for corecubed.
Amanda Sternklar (00:54):
Marissa has been working in public relations and marketing for over 15 years with a focus on in-home care marketing since 2005 when working for one of Washington state's top public relations firms. She won the Wind Beneath Our Wings Award. With her background in theater and directing for the stage, Marissa excels at getting into the mindset of a particular target audience and understanding the best ways to reach them.
Linda Leekley (01:16):
Now, Anthony supports his team with vast knowledge of advanced search engine optimization, Google Ads, social media analytics. He knows it all. His goal is to help companies grow and find untapped opportunities. Prior to joining Core Cubed, Anthony had more than 10 years of experience working with direct clients as well as agency clients in the tech, B2B and b2, c e-commerce spaces. Thank you both so much for joining us and bringing your expertise our way. I much appreciate
Marissa Snook (01:47):
It. Happy to be here.
Anthony Kelker (01:49):
Thanks. Happy to be here.
Amanda Sternklar (01:50):
Thank you guys. So we all start off on the same page. Can you share a quick definition of what content marketing is?
Marissa Snook (01:56):
Will Anthony take this one?
Anthony Kelker (01:58):
<Laugh>. So I like to, I like to think of content marketing as a strategy that businesses use to create and distribute information to their target audience. But we're not just talking about any information. We're talking about valuable, relevant, and consistent information that attracts the users, helps them get answers to their questions and find solutions, and then keep them coming back for more. So that's how we like to define content marketing.
Marissa Snook (02:22):
Yeah, I think a lot of people talk about content as, you know, content for content's sake. Just get it out there, but if it's not useful or helpful to your target audience, there's not a whole lot of point in the effort of putting it together.
Linda Leekley (02:35):
That makes perfect sense. Now, we know that many of our, our listeners, they're business owners with maybe small marketing team or no marketing team at all. Can they still be successful with content marketing?
Marissa Snook (02:48):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think the key is, I always say reduce, reuse, repurpose, <laugh> because
Linda Leekley (02:58):
We ares, I
Marissa Snook (02:59):
Mean, people think about all the different ways that you can consume media, you know, the press or blogs, social media, e-newsletters, and it's overwhelming, but you don't have to create different content for each of those pieces. You start with what you might call like a pillar piece of content, content that you can reuse, repurpose, take chunks out of. We used to start with a PowerPoint, and then you could take little blurbs from that PowerPoint for your social media posts. You could adapt that PowerPoint into a press release, you could shorten it down into a blog. It was all the same content. You were just rearranging it. And so a very small team of people, or even one person could use that piece of content across a wide variety of media.
Anthony Kelker (03:50):
Yeah, and I think the, the key overall is whether your team is, is on the, the larger side or the smaller side, is you just want to make sure that you dedicate some percentage of your marketing efforts to content marketing on an ongoing basis. So some of the, the brands that I've helped at that have done really well with content marketing, they've set aside 25 to 30% of their marketing efforts to focus on on content marketing. So new content creation, and then going back in to revisit some of the older content pieces to refresh those and make them perform better. So really, whether you're, you're large or small, you just wanna do something, keep the ball rolling and show Google that your site is alive, it's breathing and it's evolving, and then you'll, you'll do better than a lot of other sites out there in the long run.
Marissa Snook (04:36):
Yeah, I think Anthony touched on something that a lot of agencies probably haven't even thought of refreshing their old content because some people have been doing blogs for years, and some of that is outdated. If you dig into the analytics, you'll see that some of those topics are just not visited. They're, they're not important and they're just sort of dead weight on your website. So revisiting that old content and refreshing it or adding on to it maybe there's like a secondary update article that you could write, things like that. Good place to start.
Linda Leekley (05:11):
Good advice. So if they don't have any content marketing yet at all what do you have, what suggestions do you have for determining or identifying that that pillar piece of content that they could start with? Do you, do you have suggestions for that?
Marissa Snook (05:31):
Well, Anthony comes at it from a data viewpoint, so I'm gonna have him talk first.
Anthony Kelker (05:36):
Yeah. I'm a really big data guy, and, you know, so I believe in, in every marketing step that you take, making sure it's rooted in data. And then when you're thinking about what type of content to produce or what should that pillar piece be, this is where I see a lot of businesses they really miss a valuable step in the, in the content creation process. And that step starts with using data to understand your audience and then writing about topics that your audience is interested in, that we know that they're searching for and that we know that are important to them. So if you're if you're still kind of going through the process and you're coming up with topics off the top of your head and you're, you know, bouncing ideas off your, your coworkers and you say, oh, we think this might be good to write about.
Anthony Kelker (06:16):
Well, it's a chance that you may be, you know, you may go through all the process, publish the article, and you might be getting very little traffic or worst case scenario, you might be getting traffic, but it's not performing the way that you want it to. So for every piece of content that I create or that I'm involved in creating, I like to lay the foundation with these three steps in mind to make sure you're writing about topics that'll engage your audience and get traffic. So number one is doing initial keyword search to make sure that the topic you're gonna write about has some type of monthly search volume. So keep in mind that you know, if you're writing about something that's not in demand that nobody's looking for, you're gonna put forth all those efforts and you're not really gonna get any traffic out of it.
Anthony Kelker (06:58):
So really just, you know, making sure using data to guide your, your topic creation. And secondly is understanding the searcher's intent. So when you consider a, a topic that you're gonna write about, make sure you understand what the user's looking for when they read that article. So, for example, if the, the title for your article is gonna be, you know, the, the top five home care agencies in California, you don't wanna only talk about yourself and say, you know, pick me, choose me. You wanna give them that list. You wanna understand what the user is expecting once they land on that page. And if you're able to nail that, you, you write about a topic that has search volume, you give the user exactly what they're searching for, you're gonna increase the chances that that user is gonna come back to your site when they're ready to, you know, find more information or ready to move forward in the process.
Anthony Kelker (07:48):
And then the third thing I like to keep in mind is understanding the competition. So when you're when you're thinking about publishing a piece of content, take a look at what's already out there. So for example, if you pick a, a certain topic to write about, see who's ranked in the number one or the number two spot in Google. So you wanna take a look at their content and, and try to figure out what's, what made their content so great that Google put them ahead of all the other millions of sites that are out there. Why did Google choose them to be number one? So what you can do is as you're planning out your piece, you can say, all right, great, this this piece of content is really comprehensive. They have a couple videos, they have some, you know, comprehensive guides. They really go in depth on answering questions. You can take all of that ammunition and use it to make your page that much better. So that's those are the the three things that I usually take into account when determining what type of a pillar piece of content to write.
Marissa Snook (08:44):
Yeah. And for the agencies that don't know how to navigate data or don't have you know, marketing team to help them pull data and they wanna make, make smart choices, how we say, you know, this isn't as, as based in data as like what Anthony is saying, but talk to your sales team because they are dealing with people that are calling them every single day with questions and issues. Is there a commonality between the different things that they're asking? Is there a specific topic that keeps coming up over and over again? That would be a, a great thing to start with. If <laugh>, if you can't dig into the data that's, that's something, or even as non-technical is going to Google and typing in a question and then looking at the people also ask section, there's usually like five other questions there. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I always say, do all of those relate to someone who might be looking for home care? If yes, then you probably have hit on a topic that could drive people who are looking for care to your company. That's the non-technical way. Those
Linda Leekley (09:52):
Are oh, gems the advice. But the last one of those, you know, questions, I always wonder what those are for, but that's <laugh>. I go to Google <laugh>.
Marissa Snook (10:04):
Yeah, it can spark a lot of ideas too. So, I mean, just use the tools that are out there. You don't have to start from scratch or entirely from your imagination. There's, there's a lot of things out there that you can pull ideas from.
Amanda Sternklar (10:16):
I was just thinking what a great way to even expand on your, your piece of pillar content using those additional questions. I know Anthony, you talked a little bit about creating a page. Marissa, you were talking about using PowerPoints before. Is there a specific format that, that kind of pillar piece should take a video, a blog, an ebook, something like that? Does one work better than another? When creating that first main piece of content?
Marissa Snook (10:49):
I think you start with content. I mean, like text content, I should be specific there. Don't jump straight to the video or something that's really graphics heavy. A lot of companies don't have that as a super strong suit. So start with the easiest piece. And typically that is just writing a blog. Blogs are pretty attainable for people. And then you can pull out from that or expand on from that to other pieces. When you create a video, I still think you probably are gonna have to start with something written first, get all of the ideas down and, and then do the video later. Even if it's an off the cuff sort of, I've got my phone and I'm just recording something. You don't want it to be full of ums, ahs, pauses, or have to edit it heavily.
Anthony Kelker (11:38):
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I'm always a big fan of starting with text-based content, like Core Pages or blogs. And I say this because we all know that Google is still the number one search engine in the world, and this is where roughly 90% of users start their journey is with a search. So I really like starting with the, the text-based content, and it allows you to jump in and compete with all these other tens of billions of searches that are happening out there. And then one tactic that, that I see that works really well is to just get that initial piece of content out there, and then you can always go in and add videos and, and add infographics. You can do things to improve that piece over time. But I've, I've seen lots of teams that that'll get stagnant because they're they wanna wait until they're comfortable with doing video, or they wanna wait until they, they hire a graphic designer to, to do their infographics. So, you know, they'll delay marketing efforts for, for six or eight months. But I say if you're, if you're able to get it going, get the text based content going right away, and then go in and enhance that that page as time and resources permit.
Marissa Snook (12:43):
Yeah, it's also a lot more expensive to add graphics <laugh>. So start with the cheap thing, the attainable thing. That makes sense.
Linda Leekley (12:53):
So if, if an organization ha ha does not have a blog today and they'd like to start one and they follow your suggestions, get a good key piece of content to start with, what is your suggestion for the frequency with which they should blog?
Marissa Snook (13:10):
I would say at a minimum every other week. So twice a month. I've seen that work. The more you blog, the more content that you have out there, the more chances that you're gonna drive additional people to your website. We've done studies of people who have blogged twice a week versus people who've blogged every week. And it is, it is exponential, you know, how much more traffic they get to their website when they blog every single week. But again, you know, for a smaller agency that may, may not be attainable, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I'd say at a minimum every other week. Cuz then you're putting content out pretty regularly versus having this, you know, once a month and then a huge lag. Yeah.
Anthony Kelker (13:53):
And then to, to add to that, I would say two things to keep in mind when you're thinking about blogging and the frequency is, number one is quality. So regardless of how much content you're putting out there, I would focus on quality over quantity. Always make, making sure you're putting forth your best piece of content, the most informative piece of content, and just really making it useful and helpful for the users, making sure they get everything that they're looking for. The second piece to that is consistency. So regardless of whether you're publishing, you know, two blogs a month or, or or four blogs a month, try to keep it consistent and try to maintain a pace that your team can handle. So, you know, if you're a really small team, you know, don't set too high of a goal to say, Hey, we wanna push out eight pieces of content this, this month, and we don't really have the resources. So, you know, one month we hit it the next three months. We don't try to find a pace that you're comfortable with. And you can, you know, with, with assurance, say that we're gonna steadily produce X amount of pieces of block content per month. Make that a goal, make that a part of your strategy.
Linda Leekley (14:55):
Good advice. Now you both touched on the idea of, of repurposing content. What's the best way to do that without it seeming repetitive or, you know, your audience saying, ah, I think I've seen this before.
Anthony Kelker (15:14):
So, well,
Marissa Snook (15:14):
I mean, if you start with, if you start with a, a blog or anything that's text-based, once you start adding images, you know, just take a blurb out of there or expanding on it, it does seem like fresh content. It's not like you're posting the exact same thing everywhere. Plus not everyone's going to consume all of that media. Just because they get a new newsletter doesn't mean they're also going to read everything on your social media page or even see everything on your social media page. So I, I don't think you should be worried about repetitiveness because people consume media so differently. Get it out everywhere so that you can reach as many people as possible, is the different way to think about it.
Anthony Kelker (15:59):
Exactly. And then part of that comes with just knowing your audience and realizing that like Marissa said, different people will consume content in different ways and on different platforms. So if you think about you, you might have a certain percentage of your users that prefer to read. They, they wanna read the blog post, they wanna read your informational content, but there's a whole segment of other people who consume their content and they want to find you by video. So it's I don't think there's any harm in, in having similar content a across multiple platforms. You're just essentially you're, you're expanding your reach and you're opening the doors to, to pull in more people through different channels. So having your content visible on your, your blog versus your social media page, your YouTube channel, all these different channels work together in building this continuous funnel of bringing new new people into your website and exposing them to your brand.
Marissa Snook (16:52):
Yeah. And repetition's not a bad thing either. I mean, I have kids and I don't know how many times I have to tell them to clean their room before they actually do it. So <laugh>, sometimes repetition's not a bad thing.
Linda Leekley (17:04):
Well, isn't there, you, you all know better than I as a nurse, but isn't there that whole marketing sort of rule of get something in front of people seven times before they actually remember it?
Marissa Snook (17:18):
So yes. Yep. Absolutely. back in the days when people used to do direct mail postcards, I'd always say, you can't just mail one postcard. You have multiples <laugh>. Now everyone's like, what? Direct mail <laugh>.
Anthony Kelker (17:33):
Yeah. And then subconsciously, when people see things more than once in their mind, it builds credibility. So for example, if you're googling a, you know, a, a specific set of terms around home care, say for example, and then you keep seeing this one website pop up over and over and over in your mind you're thinking, oh, this site is reputable because every time I do a search, they're right there, they're visible. But it really, like you said, it comes back to that rule of seven, I've, I've seen this site, you know, seven, eight or nine times. So in my mind they're reputable because they keep popping up. So repetition's not a bad thing.
Linda Leekley (18:05):
Good point. Oh, go ahead.
Amanda Sternklar (18:09):
I'll jump in on that one a little bit. And this is kind of a, a peek behind the curtain at Home Care Pulse's marketing team. Obviously one of our huge pillar pieces of content, we put out the benchmarking report every year and we very much use that in our content throughout the year. One totally <laugh>
Amanda Sternklar (18:28):
As to several folks. And I know that one way that we repurpose it, that we were talking about a bit when we were prepping for this episode was coming at it from different points of view and how other other companies looking to reuse some of their pillar pieces of content. Is there somebody else on your team who can talk about that same topic and use a lot of the research and prep work that you've already done, bring in a different point of view into it. For example, you know, our C E o Todd Austin will talk about the benchmarking report, you know, from an operations and financial kpi, p I point of view. And as our chief clinical officer shares a lot of her perspectives on training using the benchmarking report. So we discussed potentially having some of your leadership team, how can they come at the same topic and make it seem fresh and also make it speak to a wider audience.
Linda Leekley (19:20):
Do you have tips that for, for, for an organizational leader who wants to sort of get cemented as a thought leader in the industry, what's the best way I, I imagine it's content, but, but how do, do you have other tips for really how to, to sort of promote yourself as a thought leader, get comfortable on camera? <Laugh> <laugh>?
Anthony Kelker (19:49):
Yeah, I was gonna suggest that you know, being that face of the brand, and once again, that whole idea of consistency comes in. So, you know, setting a, a goal to publish, you know, one, two or three pieces of thought leadership content per year, whether that be, you know, within a blog or a white paper or with a video with a video series. So something that really establishes you and your brand as leaders in the space. So and not necessarily focusing on like, Hey, can this piece, you know, drive in traffic or sales, but really setting the stage for what's going on in the industry mm-hmm. <Affirmative> what trends are taking place, you know, what things that we see coming out the pipeline. So really being a visionary for, for the industry, and that goes a long way for for any brand is just showing that thought leadership presence and, and kind of setting the stage for for other people who aren't doing it, really because they're looking to you ultimately for guidance, guidance on what's happening in the industry. So thought leadership goes a really long way.
Marissa Snook (20:52):
Yeah, I mean, we haven't talked a whole lot about video but you hear, you hear that a lot, you know, video, video, video, everyone is, that's, that's the way things are moving. And I get a lot of clients who are like, yeah, I have to jump on this video bandwagon. And then I say, okay, well, let's get you on camera. No
Linda Leekley (21:10):
<Laugh>,
Marissa Snook (21:11):
I don't wanna be on camera. And, and that, that is the thing, if, you know you want to put video on your website, you're going to have to find somebody at your agency who can be that spokesperson who can represent you on camera, because it's not something you can outsource to someone who isn't your brand. You can do some videos that, you know, use the little animated graphics or photos with a voiceover and things like that, but when it comes to, you know, really getting a lot of video out there, you're going to need some sort of spokesperson.
Anthony Kelker (21:42):
Great.
Linda Leekley (21:44):
Excellent point.
Amanda Sternklar (21:46):
I wanna dive a little bit more
Linda Leekley (21:48):
Yeah, go ahead,
Marissa Snook (21:49):
Amanda.
Amanda Sternklar (21:49):
Yeah. Into the more technical side of seo. I think we've alluded to it a little bit, but Anthony, can you talk more about how content impacts seo and, and what you really need to do with each piece of content to make the most of it
Anthony Kelker (22:05):
Great. So yeah, like I said before, everybody knows Google is undisputed the, the number one search engine in the world, and most individual searches start within Google. So we also know that Google's ultimate goal is to serve their users exactly what they're looking for and give them the best results possible. So I always keep that in mind. Anytime you're, you know writing a piece or any, you know, anytime you're doing any seo, is you just wanna make sure that your piece is serving Google's purposes and also serving the user's purpose. So quality SEO is more than just dropping a few keywords on the, on the page and hoping for the best. It's really about knowing what the users are searching for and showing Google that your page has the best and most detailed answers on the web, essentially. And that's where the the synergies between content and SEO comes into play. It's all about making sure your brand is visible when your audience is looking for an answer or solution. So that's in a nutshell, really how SEO and content kind of marries together.
Linda Leekley (23:07):
Is SEO o different Anthony in for a blog post versus say non-text medium like video?
Anthony Kelker (23:16):
Yes, there are some similarities, but there are also a few differences. So when you think about like optimizing a text-based piece of content, like a core page or a blog post when you're doing, you know, traditional s e o, you wanna look at things like your page title or your meta description, or your heading tags, and there's some more advanced things that you can do like your, your internal links in your schema, things like that. But the overall goal is really you wanna give Google these signals to show them that, hey, whatever this user is searching for, my page is the best. And this is, you know, the way it's optimized to, to give those signals. When you're optimizing for video, the goal is similar. You still wanna give Google those signals to show what your video is about and why it's relevant to the, the person who's just typed a query and to, you know, and to query into, you know, into YouTube or in, into the search engine.
Anthony Kelker (24:06):
So when you're optimizing for video, you still have levers that you can pull for like titles and descriptions, but they're also additional things that you can do, like optimizing your tags. And tags are essentially like they, they work the same as keywords but for video. So they let you tell Google what your video is about. So you can put in tags to say, Hey, my video is about home care, or it's about finance, or whatever the case may be. Transcription is another lever that you can pull for videos to show Google, Hey, this this what this video is about. And transcription is also another underutilized tactic that I, I, I see a lot of businesses don't take advantage of. So in addition to giving Google the signals and telling Google what this video is about, transcription is also great for the hearing impaired. So that sends another signal to Google to say, Hey, not only is this video about home care, but it's also optimized for those that are hearing impaired. So it just helps give additional information to Google in terms of who they can serve this video to and who it's gonna be relevant for,
Marissa Snook (25:11):
For those who are at work. And, you know, watching video during the workday, wanna keep the volume down. <Laugh> works for them too.
Anthony Kelker (25:19):
Exactly. And yet,
Linda Leekley (25:20):
Good to see those captions <laugh>. Exactly.
Anthony Kelker (25:23):
Yeah. Watch videos with no sound. So we all do it, we love it. And then there are a couple other things that we can do with video, like organizing your playlist. So you can give Google signals to let, let them know that, hey, there's a part one, a part two, and a part three to this video series. So those are things that you can do just to show how your video content is all connected, how it all relates together. And then you can also use video cards, which allow you to put in calls to action, or you can link to other video series, lots of cool things that you can do to, to video that gives Google those signals to show the relevancy for users.
Linda Leekley (26:01):
I can just sense all your excitement about this stuff. Anthony <laugh>,
Anthony Kelker (26:06):
I can talk about this stuff all day long. <Laugh>.
Amanda Sternklar (26:11):
I'm gonna ask a question that I think folks who aren't familiar with SEO may not know that they need to ask, which is, you know, we've been talking about reusing and about duplicating content since duplicate content generally won't help your SEO efforts and, and could even hurt them what do you need to do to differentiate even it's, even if it's coming from the same pillar piece of content how do you differentiate each content piece enough? From a technical SEO standpoint?
Marissa Snook (26:39):
Yeah. Change up the words, change up the language, like, don't have paragraphs upon paragraphs of the exact same text in multiple different ways on your website.
Anthony Kelker (26:50):
Yeah. And I'm a big fan of making sure that every piece of content has a purpose. So even if you take one large piece of content and you repurpose it out to, you know, five different areas just ensuring that each piece has a similar content I'm sorry, has a, a different purpose and a different meaning that, that you're gonna send out to these users. So don't, you know, recreate the same piece of content that has the same message, same same wording, same call to action, just make sure that every piece serves a different purpose. But I think if you keep that in mind, you'll, you'll be fine.
Linda Leekley (27:26):
Can you kind of say in a nutshell, the difference between a great piece of content and a sales pitch?
Anthony Kelker (27:36):
Yeah.
Marissa Snook (27:36):
Well, I think both can be helpful, but when people are searching online, they are looking typically for answers to questions or problems, solutions. And can your service be the solution? Yes. But should that always be the main message? No, because it's, it's not going to be as helpful. I, I like to tell people, when you're writing content, think about it from the end user's perspective, what is going to be their issue or problem that they need solved, that your piece of content is going to solve for them? And throw that sales message in there in a more subtle way, educate them, answer their questions, solve their problems, and then show that you are the solution because you've got these services.
Anthony Kelker (28:27):
Yeah. And one thing that I've always done is, yeah, definitely keep in mind where the user is in their journey. So when you're thinking about high level topics like, you know, blogs or informational topics, so if a person was to Google what is home care, or what is palliative care or something like that, they're really high up in the funnel. They're not typically not gonna be at, at the decision making point. So at this point showing them you know, a little bit of information and just, you know, click here, buy now, sign up now, they're probably not gonna be at that point. So understanding where your users are in their journey, and at some point they may just need information, they just may need definitions, they may need you know, just a little clarity on how the whole process works. So at that point, you know, being too salesy might actually push the users away if they're, if they're not ready to be sold to at that point in time.
Linda Leekley (29:17):
Are there, are there common mistakes that you see organizations in the post-acute space making when it comes to seo,
Marissa Snook (29:26):
Low quality content content for content's sake, they'll throw two, three paragraphs up and call it a day. It's, if you're going to put a blog on your website, don't have it be a couple of paragraphs, you know, have it be, I say at least 500 words as close to 500 words as you can make it worth somebody's while to read it and make it worth Google's while to comb through it as the search engine.
Anthony Kelker (29:54):
Yeah. And then to add to that, not giving users exactly what they're, what they're looking for. So and I gave this example a little while ago, but if you say you're gonna provide a list of the, you know, the, the top five things that you should do with home care, and then they get to the page and you only list out one or two of those items, they're probably gonna see the, the site as being a waste of time, and they probably won't come back to your page because they don't feel like you've given them enough information to to make a decision or to answer their questions.
Amanda Sternklar (30:24):
And Google notices that, you know, if, if folks just leave and never come back,
Marissa Snook (30:29):
Right? They call it a bounce if, if they look at it and quickly bounce off the page and you don't want a lot of bouncing off of your page.
Amanda Sternklar (30:43):
Can you Anthony, earlier you talked a bit about some clients who've done particularly well. Can you share a couple of examples of things that have worked really well for clients in the past?
Anthony Kelker (30:55):
Yeah, so I've, I've seen a couple cases where we've helped clients shift over from quantity versus quality. So, you know, if you, I don't know if you, how long you guys have been in the marketing industry, but years ago it was all about how much can you, how much content can you put out and how fast can you put it out? So it's really over quantity. So, you know, at years ago, the sites that produced the most content, they did the best. But then as Google began to shift and put more of a focus on quality, what I've seen is that some of the, the clients have performed the best. They actually scaled down the quantity of the blogs that they're putting out. And instead of, you know, pushing out 10, 10 blogs per month, they focused on putting out two to three really good detailed blogs that actually tend to outperform the, the 50 or 60 other pieces that they put out in the past. So really just making that shift to quality from quantity is, is gonna, you know, take you a long way. And that's one big thing that I really can't stress enough.
Marissa Snook (31:59):
Now. I had one client who he started with press release and he used that press release in an e-newsletter. The press release went out to a local TV station who invited him to come and speak on their morning show about the topic. So he got that audience, he posted on social media about the not only the content, but also the speaking engagement at the TV station. So that one little piece of content got viewers from all over the place because of the different mediums that he ended up using it in.
Linda Leekley (32:40):
I don't know, I don't know how to word this exactly. If, if an organization says, look this all sounds awesome, I wanna do it. I just don't have time I wanna outsource it, what what should they look for in in a company or a person or someone to help them? I mean, what, how can they assess the quality of, of a resource that might, that they might hire to help them?
Marissa Snook (33:09):
I would definitely look at the marketing agency's portfolio, ask for samples. A lot of the big companies, they'll offer cheap prices, which is, you know, very attractive to people, but the content is, looks like it's cheap. It so you definitely want to go with somebody who has a good reputation, who can provide you samples of their work maybe even recommendations from their clients. So don't just go in there blind because the price looks right.
Anthony Kelker (33:42):
Yeah. And I'm a big fan of case studies. I like numbers and percentages. So show me some of the wins that you've had in the past. Show me the percentage growth and, and traffic that you've increased over the, the last, you know, six months or a year. Show me how conversions have have improved. So things like that just if, if you ask the right questions and you know, just make them show you the, the money. Don't just, you know, take my word for it, but show me the results, show me samples of your content. And those are some things that you can look for.
Linda Leekley (34:15):
Great. Another thing that occurred to me, Anthony, do you ha, to me, it seems like I'm not, I'm not a marketer, again, I'm a nurse, but it seems like the rules about SEO are always changing. So do you see anything coming down the pike SEO wise that's going to be different in the near future? Or are we kind of at a stable point?
Anthony Kelker (34:37):
I don't think we could ever say we're at a stable point, just because <laugh>, everything's changing. And Google releases probably, I don't know the exact number, but hundreds of algorithm updates every year. So the, the core foundation of, of Google and, and what they're looking for stays the same. Like, ultimately they wanna see really useful, helpful quality content. They want, you know, to, to serve their users the best page, you know, the best page on the internet. They wanna give, you know, send people to the right place so Google itself can make more money. They're, you know, that's the, the business they're in. So I think in a nutshell, yeah, things are gonna continuously evolve and change, but the basics stay the same. High quality content making your content informative making sure that there are no technical issues on the site that hinder the, the user's journey.
Anthony Kelker (35:29):
So, for example, when you when a user comes to your page, making sure it doesn't take, you know, too long to load or making sure you don't have broken links on the page, just overall making sure that Google can find your page, they understand what it's about and the relevancy of it, and then making sure that the user has a good experience and they're able to get into the site quickly, do what they need to do, or get the information they're looking for, and then either transact or, you know, or leave SEMA seamlessly. And I think that's kind of the, the core of what Google's looking for, even with all the algorithm shifts.
Marissa Snook (36:03):
Yeah, and I mean, cellular, everyone's looking at stuff on mobile now, and you know, even two, three years ago, people would develop websites for desktop. They wouldn't necessarily develop them for a really fast experience on mobile or even look great on mobile. And Google hasn't made it loud and clear that the mobile experience is the first thing that they're looking at. If you don't have a fantastic mobile experience and it isn't fast loading, they don't even care about your desktop website. Well that's, you know, putting it a little strong. But
Linda Leekley (36:39):
<Laugh>,
Marissa Snook (36:40):
Did you get what I'm driving at? Yeah,
Linda Leekley (36:41):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So if your content can't be consumed on a mobile device, then it's not gonna give you the bang for your buck, is what
Marissa Snook (36:49):
You're Exactly, yeah.
Linda Leekley (36:50):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> as well as your entire website, but yeah,
Anthony Kelker (36:53):
Exactly.
Linda Leekley (36:57):
After. Oh, do you have another question? Go ahead, Amanda.
Marissa Snook (36:59):
No,
Linda Leekley (36:59):
Go ahead. This is kind of a controversial thing that we batted around here at at hcp. The the ai, what do you think, what do you guys think about it? I wasn't gonna
Amanda Sternklar (37:15):
Be made enough to put them on the spot with that one
Linda Leekley (37:19):
In the back, talk about it. Right. Well,
Marissa Snook (37:21):
You know, I was listening to NPR last weekend, and they, it, it, the main through line of the story was you can use it as a way to get ideas or to get unstuck creatively, but you shouldn't rely on it as content because it's very bland, it's very robotic sounding. Sometimes, sometimes it sounds decent, but like, I find myself zoning out when I'm reading a piece of content from the ai. So it can be a starting point, but I would not rely on it as content for your website or anything.
Anthony Kelker (37:59):
<Laugh> agreed. Yeah. I I would, can
Linda Leekley (38:02):
You explain it? Anthony, can you explain it to our audience who may not know what we're talking about?
Anthony Kelker (38:07):
Yeah, so there are a lot of tools out there that, that are popping up in the marketplace that are artificial intelligence based. So rather than you, you know, sitting down and taking the time to write a a thousand word article or 1500 word article, they have programs out there where you can just click, type in the topic, give a, a sentence or two about what you want the article to be about, and then you hit submit and it'll, it'll generate the article for you. And like Marissa said, that's a great place to help with ideas, but definitely at this point in the game, I wouldn't recommend putting all your eggs in, in the AI basket and relying on that to create high quality content for you that Google's gonna love and, and choose to rank above everyone else. So I think there's still that whole human element that needs to be involved, that expertise, you know, especially if you, if your goal is to be a thought leader in your industry or an industry a leader in your field, you definitely wanna, you know, put some of your experience and your knowledge behind it and don't rely on, on AI, because essentially all AI is doing is going out there into the internet, pulling other people's opinions and thoughts, and then converging those into this article that you've told it to generate.
Anthony Kelker (39:19):
So I would say your expertise, your knowledge, your, your industry experience all goes a long way. And that should still be the most prominent when you're talking about content creation.
Marissa Snook (39:32):
Yeah. My goal when writing content, you
Linda Leekley (39:34):
Lose your voice, right? I'm sorry,
Marissa Snook (39:36):
I'm losing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my goal when writing content for, for clients would be to be the voice that the AI go to because it's such a great content. Like that would be, that would be nice at, at the same time you were like, oh, AI <laugh>,
Linda Leekley (39:53):
I just worry about our kids <laugh> the kids, you know, the young generation using it for homework. But anyway, <laugh>
Marissa Snook (40:02):
Don't give them ideas. Linda <laugh>,
Amanda Sternklar (40:06):
I dunno, teachers could figure out you know, kids plagiarized articles in school. I'm guessing that AI would even be a little bit more transparent than that to figure out
Anthony Kelker (40:19):
<Laugh>
Amanda Sternklar (40:20):
At least for now. But, you know, someday we'll see
Linda Leekley (40:23):
<Laugh>.
Amanda Sternklar (40:25):
I was just gonna ask before, you know, folks are hearing all of this, I'm thinking that's, that's a whole lot of work and I understand it's important, but they don't have the bandwidth and they wanna talk to you more about Core Cubed specifically. Where is the best place for them to reach you guys?
Marissa Snook (40:40):
Check us out@corecubed.com. I always have to spell it because it, it is a, a weird kind of nice C o r e C u b e d.com and we've got lots of content on there that you can check out lots of case studies and information about all of our services. You can certainly email us info core cubed.com or find us on social media.
Amanda Sternklar (41:06):
Awesome. And Linda, if they wanna hear more from you and some AI opinions, where's the best place to reach you? <Laugh>
Linda Leekley (41:12):
<Laugh>? No, not the AI opinions, but I'm happy to <laugh> to share about anything else. I can also be found on LinkedIn, Linda Ley, or my email for Home Care Pulse is linda ley homecare pulse.com.
Amanda Sternklar (41:28):
And I'm also easiest to find on LinkedIn. I'm Amanda Stu Clark, s d e r n k l a r. And in the past we've talked about, you can reach out to us there if you'd like to, if you have a story that you'd like to share on your podcast. We actually now have a handy dandy form for that, which can be found@homecarepulse.com slash podcast. And while you're there, you can find any of our past episodes. You can also listen to them wherever you find your podcasts. Thank you guys so much for your time today. Thank
Anthony Kelker (41:56):
You. Thanks for having us.
Linda Leekley (41:57):
Thank you so much. Great to spend the time with you,
Anthony Kelker (42:01):
<Laugh>. Thank you.
Amanda Sternklar (42:02):
Bye everyone. Bye now.