To manage your content marketing efforts, you need a process. And to track that process, you need an editorial calendar. There’s no way around it.

The editorial calendar is, by far, your most important asset in content marketing. It’s the place where you always go back to for inspiration.

A good editorial calendar shows you:

1. What topics are relevant to your target audience
2. Which competitor keywords you can outrank
3. How valuable a certain keyword is for you
4. A list of all your drafted content ideas
5. Deadlines for each piece of content

… but there’s so much more to it.

Explaining an editorial calendar in-depth requires a guide of its own but, with this podcast episode, you get a first glimpse of what to expect.

Remember, editorial calendars are underrated yet they’re the single most powerful tool in your content marketing arsenal—by far.

Start learning about them in today’s episode!

Originally published Dec 23 2020

In today’s podcast episode, we’re talking about word counts (i.e. how many words there are in a piece of content) and their SEO implications.

Why?

Because they’re deeply misunderstood.

Don’t get me wrong, word counts are important.

But not in the way everyone thinks:

• You do not rank by simply typing more fluff words;
• It’s not the one-and-only ranking factor, and;
• The quality of your content matters more.

Today, we’re demystifying word counts once and for all. Find out how you this often misunderstood metric works and use it to your advantage.

Originally published Dec 16 2020

User Experience (UX) is a broad term that encompasses the overall experience of the end user, often as related to digital products or services.

However, UX is huge in content marketing too.

Here are some facts around the topic:

1. Google is releasing their UX-based algorithm in May 2021
2. Facebook has always relied on people-based metrics
3. UX is now officially recognized in many job titles
4. Analytics suites now focus on audiences

… and so much more.

While all tech giants have been pushing for better web experiences, some webmasters are left wondering how to optimize for this new challenge.

It’s not that easy to optimize for UX! In fact, the whole thing is getting very technical—very fast. But don’t despair, there’s hope…

Learn about the ins-and-outs of User Experience applied to content marketing in our latest Scale Your B2B Firm podcast episode!

Originally published Dec 9 2020

Taking a short departure from our usual topics, episode 5 of Scale Your B2B Firm with Content Marketing focuses on Domain Authority as a metric.

Does it matter all that much to rank high?

And if so, how do you leverage it?

I personally believe that many SEOs in the space take Domain Authority too seriously. It is absolutely a powerful metric, but one of many to leverage.

Plus, every professional SEO tool calls it differently:

1. Moz and SEMRush call it Domain Authority
2. Ahrefs has named it Domain Rating
3. Ubersuggest calls it Domain Score

So, which one is it?

The truth is, these are proprietary metrics invented by each individual firm. They aren't part of Google's algorithms per se but they try to figure it out.

So, let's dive deep into DA and see whether it truly matters!

Originally published 02 Dec 2020

The most talked about practice in both SEO and content marketing is, without a doubt, keyword research. It's the beating heart of content!

Yet not everyone goes much in detail about how to do keyword research the right way, and what the process feels like in practice...

In today's podcast episode, we:

1. Talk about the foundations of keyword research, starting all the way down from your topic clusters and going up to Google Autocomplete research.
2. Understand the HOW of doing keyword research that is immediately relevant for your business and can lead to fast lead generation.
3. Look into a few examples to understand what you could use keyword research for and what the ultimate goal even is...
4. Find out all the tricks that make the process of researching keywords a much more valuable activity, including using Google Trends.

If you're a data-geek and love to get into the nitty-gritty of marketing metrics such as search volume and keyword difficulty, this is the episode for you.

Originally published Nov 25 2020

Following last week's episode, today's show talks about the exciting world of messaging as well as how to create a tone of voice that resonates with your audience.

For this to happen, you need to work on the following:

1. Understand your value proposition and craft an elevator pitch
2. Create messaging "pillars" based on your positioning
3. Wrap it up with some writing guidelines

The craft of messaging is deeply anchored to your positioning. You can think of the latter as the "glue" that holds your business model together.

Once you've found the right benefits to create messaging pillars off of, you want to craft some key messages that resonate with your target audience.

These should tie back not only into the benefit itself, but also into your entire brand philosophy. A good example of this is HubSpot's "Grow Better" tagline.

All of HubSpot's content—from blog posts to social media to video to sales page—ties back into the philosophy of growing your business better.

This is reiterated over and over again.

Why? Because it works.

Psychology studies have shown that people need to see the same message 7 to 11 times before they fully internalize it. That's how many times you have to reach your prospects before they "get" it!

So, I highly recommend that you spend some time there.

Then, focus on your tone of voice...

What traits does your brand have that others don't? And how can you have those traits shine through into writing and audiovisual content?

Ask yourself how your prospects would like to hear something. Then put your branded spin into it and tie everything back to your brand mission.

A good example of this is Wendy's. They've been able to amass an incredible following of devoted fans "simply" by assuming a sarcastic tone on Twitter.

They run roasts, do all kinds of pranks, and even "mock" celebrities at times. However, it's their tone that makes things not go into lawsuit territory.

At Koala Rank, we call tone of voice assets writing guidelines. Feel free to reach out to learn more about how to get them done right.

Originally published Nov 18 2020

In this first episode of Scale Your B2B Firm with Content Marketing, Arrigo talks about the fundamentals of your content strategy:

1. The ideal customer profile
2. Your brand positioning

With these two fundamental exercises, your content marketing efforts will be rewarded strongly down the line due to increased clarity.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Where to start with your content marketing efforts
• What assets or deliverables actually matter
• Why they are so important in the long run

Remember that content strategy is not just about marketing, it's also about user experience. These two things cannot exist without each other.

At the end of the day, it's all about delighting your audience.

Are you offering an experience worthy of consumption?

That is determined by your audience and positioning, not the pretty graphics on your blog post nor the cool sound effects on your podcast.

I highly recommend starting with these two exercises.

Originally published Nov 11 2020

Content Marketing: Scale Your B2B Firm is a new podcast hosted by Koala Rank founder Arrigo Lupori to help you get the most out of your content efforts.

Offered in a weekly, 15-minute format, the podcast cuts on all the BS to get to the core of why content marketing is so relevant—especially in B2B:

1. Content strategy
2. Marketing automation
3. Content management
4. Distribution techniques
5. Analytics and reporting
6. Return on investment

... and so much more.

The podcast will focus primarily on the more technical aspects of content marketing rather than the writing, designing, and overall creation processes.

This is a conscious decision mainly due to the already-existing podcasts from the likes of Coschedule, Animalz, and other content marketing powerhouses.

Instead, Content Marketing: Scale Your B2B Firm will focus on practical insights that can provide you with sustainable growth for the long-term.

For free.

Every week.

Listen to an introduction from Arrigo in this first episode as he goes through some of the topics that will come up in the next few weeks.

Originally published Nov 5 2020