How Do You Create Content That Converts?

In this episode, we interview Dr. Shelly Mahon, Director at Zia Consulting, who shares her expertise on crafting content strategies that drive traffic and convert leads into loyal customers.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• How to balance relevance, consistency, and personality in your content
• Key strategies for SEO and driving organic traffic
• Insights on the debate over gating versus ungating content
• Practical collaboration methods between marketing and sales teams
• Tips on leveraging AI for content creation while maintaining authenticity

Tune in for actionable advice and real-world tactics to elevate your content marketing game!

Transcript

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Benjamin Ard AI (00:00)
Here's a sneak peek at today's episode.

Shelly Mahon (00:02)
So I think that there's that balance of knowing your buyers, having respect.

for where they're at. And then also that fine line of trying to catch those people that you're trying to catch,

Ben (00:38)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Dr. Shelley Mann. How are you doing today, Shelley?

Shelly Mahon (00:44)
I've been doing great. Thanks for having me.

Ben (00:46)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited for the subject. This is going to be fun. But before we dive in, you have a really fascinating background in career history. Love to get caught up on what your work careers look like. And then we always ask, what do you love about content and marketing?

Shelly Mahon (01:03)
Awesome, yeah. So my career is kind of interesting. I spent about 20 years in human services. I have a PhD in human development and family studies. So I spent a lot of time being really interested in how families work, how they work well, and how we build resilient families and kids that can get through things. So that was kind of my history before I moved into marketing. Marketing came into my life when I was doing my dissertation and I wrote an online program for dads to adjust and parent after divorce.

what it takes to take a program to market, an online program to market. And that was way back in 2014, which was before we had a lot of services that did online programs. So it was really interesting, kind of cutting edge at the time. And I realized a lot of the things I'd enjoyed doing my whole life were part of marketing.

for me, think knowledge is the basis for people to make decisions. So we make decisions from what we know. And if we want to make better decisions, we need to go get more information. And that probably comes through as a PhD. But it's one of my fundamental beliefs. And so I think it's really important for us as professionals and leaders in an industry to take the content that we have and make it as on the thought leadership.

relevant, timely, as we can make it for the people that are going to be consuming that.

Ben (02:21)
I love that. That's awesome. So Dr. Shelley, if you're okay with me calling you Dr. Shelley, I love when someone has a doctor title, I'd love to use it. Like I'm so jealous of that. I only have a bachelor's degree, so I haven't gotten close to that. But Dr. Shelley, when we're looking at it, we're gonna talk about today content that drives traffic and converts into leads. Now, a lot of people look at that in many.

Shelly Mahon (02:26)
Sure. Yeah, that's fine.

Haha.

That's alright.

Ben (02:48)
different shapes and forms and it's really hard to understand. Every program looks different. Everyone analyzes it different. There's different areas where that makes sense, you know, from SEO to social media and anything in between. So when it comes to this subject, how are you looking at conversion-based content? So content that's actually driving results, how are you looking at it? What does that mean to you? What does that program look like to you and your business?

Shelly Mahon (03:15)
So I think there's a few aspects that are important. At its base level, think content needs to be relevant. It needs to really show what you do in the field, what kind of expertise you have. it has to be current. So I think it's important to revisit your know that the technology in particular grows so fast, it changes so fast. If you're talking about things that people aren't interested in, then it's not going to matter.

I also think that it is important to be consistent, that we know the research tells us that, you you've got to be consistent in putting content out there. You know this based on how you run your podcast. You know that when you put a lot of content out, more people are going to see it. And I think it's important to be concise because we don't have the attention span we used to have to sit and read a big long manuscript or blog that's

paragraphs and not bulleted, those things that really make a difference when we want to just consume information, find what we need, and apply it to our organization. then I think I would say, you have to show your personality a little bit. Like we just wrote a blog. do a lot of work in the SAP field. And we wrote a blog about the Sapphire conference that we went to. And it was called SAP Sapphire 2024 Murder on the Dance Floor.

kind of a play on the song, Murder on the Dance Floor, that was so popular. And the blog really talked about, was the conference, like one of the first statements in the blog was, there was a lot of conversation about AI during the conference. And it said, you know, was this a murder on the dance floor when it comes to AI, or was it relevant? You know, things that we need to know, we're having fun with this. And I think when we, when we show people that are

consuming our content that we have a personality, people like to buy from people they like and I think that's important too. So you have to have fun, you have to show your personality and you have to make sure that it's important, concise, relevant information.

Ben (05:06)
I love that. Yeah. And I love this idea of you're showing the personality, the unique point of view, the insights that really, if they read any other summary, it wouldn't give your insights, which is I think what people are craving and really want to know, especially if they're evaluating a business, do your insights, does your point of view align with mine? Is it similar? And do we agree on how we look at the world? And I love that.

Shelly Mahon (05:27)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah,

exactly.

Ben (05:31)
So one of the things we mentioned earlier on is driving traffic. Content that drives traffic, I feel like is changing and people are worried about the AI search results and all sorts of things going on, the zero click content movement, any other buzzwords you can imagine right now, there's a lot of things going on. What's your strategy when you're looking at content that drives traffic? How are you trying to do that and what insights do you have to share?

Shelly Mahon (05:57)
So AI is an important part of that, right? We're all leaning toward using things like the chat, GPT type of tools. And I will say that I do think they're useful and they're relevant and I do use them. I think the important thing is that that isn't going to do the things we were just talking about. It isn't going to make sure that that content really showcases your organization, your business, what you can provide people.

It isn't going to show your personality, and it might not even be accurate in the way that you talk about something. So oftentimes what I'll do is use that kind of AI tool as a way to get some specifics, and then I run them by my team. So I rely a lot on my experts on my team, my engineers, my sales and gals, to really look at that content and say, is this relevant to what we're doing, or would you say this differently?

When we're talking about driving traffic, also, we look a lot at our SEO. So one of the things that I've learned is that with the evolution of AI coming out, concept of the EAT,

So it was expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, and now they've added experience to the beginning of it. And the way that that's working in terms of Google is it's showing that you can't just go to chat GPT and say something and put it up there. Your site, your history has to show that you really truly have that experience. And I think that's really important as we move into people using those kind of tools a lot.

We use that to make sure that we understand what are people looking for. SEO is designed to drive that traffic to your site to help you know what people want to see. for us, even before we started doing SEO work, we got a lot of our leads from our website. I think a lot of that was content generated. So I would track how much content are people reading and what kind of content are people reading. then from there,

basing our new content on things that we know are working. But then now that we've layered in this other piece of SEO, we've also started to see, you know, how can we say things a little bit differently and make sure some of those keywords are in there that show that we have this relationship to what they're doing. And then the other piece is we work really closely with our partners. So I think it's important to ask your partners to put back links on their website, you know, to take your blogs and repost them, to make sure that you're listed on their partner page.

you want to show that you have all of those pieces in place so that people find you and they can see that not only are you saying you're great, but other people say you're great.

Ben (08:26)
I love it. I love that. So one of the things that comes to mind for me is this idea if you drive traffic and you're hoping to have your content convert that traffic is this heavily debated subject of gating versus ungating of content. How much are you tracking? How are you reaching out when to do it? What not to do?

What's your personal opinion when it comes to the gating debate of 2024? Kind of where do you stand on that hot topic?

Shelly Mahon (08:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, it is a hot topic. whether or not you choose to gate the content, think depends on the content itself. So for me, what I do is I look at who am I actually speaking to and where are they at in the sales funnel? Where are they at in the process? I look at it like most content when it comes to our blogs and things like that should be free. People are going to find that content somewhere else if they can't find it with you.

and I want them to look at my content. So I want to give them a ton of content that's free. it comes down to something that either has more meat to it, so when we were talking about a white paper, an e-book, we were talking about time earlier and how much time a person has to consume information. If I'm willing to say, I want to read this, what we know is going to be a longer white paper, then I'm probably willing to give my name for that.

So that's one piece. And then the other piece is when I think about people who are at the bottom, they're really close to buying. They're really at that place where they're now very, very interested. You know it. I'll give an example of this. We have an ROI calculator for our SAP archiving solution on our website. Someone who is going to fill out the ROI calculator has to know what their numbers are and know that they're at a place right now where they want to buy. And they want to know what is going to be my return on investment in nine months.

And in that case, they know we're going to contact them if they put their information in, but they probably want to talk to us anyway. And we've also made a, we have, you everyone has their disclosure statement to unsubscribe, but we talk to a lot of people that we work with in the sales cycle. And if they're not interested in getting business development emails anymore, we take them off our list because they're already talking to our people.

So I think that there's that balance of knowing your buyers, having respect.

for where they're at. And then also that fine line of trying to catch those people that you're trying to catch,

Ben (10:41)
I love that. Plus, I love how you're focusing on the quality of content. You know, if this is a really good piece of content, people are willing to give some information for that. And also, if there's no other information available, people assume if there's some kind of a gate, it's probably reflective of the quality of the content or the amount of time and effort that went into produce that content that.

at least something is required in exchange and so it must be high quality. So I think there's something there to be considered as well. So I love how you look at that. These episodes go by super fast. So one final question before we have to end today, some of the best people at creating content that converts are really aligned with their sales team. And you mentioned this already as one of the bullet points that came first to mind.

Shelly Mahon (11:13)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Ben (11:29)
How do you collaborate internally, only on the lead handoffs and all of that kind fun stuff, but the creation and the refinement of your content?

Shelly Mahon (11:37)
Yeah, I constantly collaborate. I almost never have a piece that goes out that hasn't been reviewed by somebody on my team. And generally, there's a couple of things that have worked really well. One, I have a schedule because they're busy. And so I put it on their calendar. They know when I'm going to talk to them. They know when I'm going to send them things and when I need it back by. And I rotate. So I move through my engineer team, my project team.

and my sales team and even my executive team to get content from people. I'll tell you another great strategy is I don't ask them for content. I write content and then I say, tell me what you think. Or I say, can we hop on during this time that we typically meet? Can we hop on a call? I just want to ask you a bunch of requests questions and record it. And then I'm going to take that content and create something with it because they're not the ones, you know, my engineering team doesn't want to sit down and write a blog.

but they're willing to tell me and let me record of an important topic that I want to talk about. So I would recommend using some of those shortcuts to get good content from your team.

Ben (12:39)
I love that. And that's a good use case for AI. If you're going in and recording those and getting transcripts, AI is a great tool in that circumstance to say, help me write some content, but base it off of these insights. This is the point of view, here's the thoughts. And I think that that's really cool. And you've just reduced the barrier to entry for everyone in your business to help you create content. So I love how easy it, you're making it for everyone on the team. So I love it.

Shelly Mahon (12:49)
Exactly. Yep.

Yep.

Ben (13:04)
Well, Dr. Shelley, thank you, thank you, thank you. I have loved the insights. I love the way you approach marketing and everything you've talked about today. If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Shelly Mahon (13:16)
Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn under Shelly Mann, M-A-H-O-N. You can find me on our website, ziaconsulting.com, under the leadership part. And I'm on all social medias. Sometimes if you want to, if you're a biker, you can go to my Instagram account and watch me bike, but that's not going to really help you with your marketing. our Zia is on everything. So you can find us under Zia Consulting on Facebook, Instagram, X, all of it.

we put a lot of our content out on the social channels as well so feel free to to find us there.

Ben (13:49)
I love it. We will link to Dr. Shelley Mann's profile inside the show notes for anyone listening so you can quickly find her. Again, thank you so much for the time today. I have really appreciated it. Thank you for the insights and have a wonderful day.

Shelly Mahon (14:06)
Yeah, thank you. I enjoyed it.